The LadyKillers

The Genesis of Janet Evanovich

                                                     

Janet Evanovich is my favorite author. When I first discovered her book, One for the Money, I fell in love with the writing, the characters, the setting, and most of all, the humor. One way to learn more about your craft, they say, is to study the work of the artists you admire. While that’s true, I also think studying the life of the writer is even more inspirational. It’s surprising—and refreshing—to learn that while Evanovich appears to have hit the big time quickly and with little effort, the truth is, she struggled much like the rest of us.

Evanovich was born in 1943 in New Jersey, of course, and worked odd jobs like many of us—car sales, insurance claims, waitressing, secretarial—before penning what she called “Indiana Jones adventure stories set in Trenton.” Throw in a feisty bounty hunter, an African-American hooker, a funeral-attending grandmother, and a hamster—plus two love interests vying for her affection (a hot cop and an even hotter bounty hunter)—and you have the formula for a blockbuster.

So where did it all begin? What was the genesis for this incredible career with best-selling print runs into the half million copies? Well, it helps to be born with a rich imagination like Evanovich, who spent much of her childhood in fantasy land, with make-believe horses, space travelers, and Inca treasure hunts. And what did she read? Nancy Drew, of course, along with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books.

Evanovich studied art in college, married her high school sweetheart, and painted while taking temp jobs. Frustrated with her art, the mother of two young children turned to writing at night when the kids were asleep. Overnight success? Hardly. Just like many of us, she sent out manuscripts and garnered rejections—enough to fill a large cardboard box—which she eventually burned. Discouraged, she took a secretarial job, and four months later got a call from an editor at Second Chance at Love books. The wanted to buy her romance novel! She took the $2,000 advance, quit her job, and began writing full time.

Evanovich wrote a dozen romance novels for the next five years, under her name and the name Steffie Hall. She claims she “ran out of sexual positions,” reinvented herself, and turned to mystery writing. Again—an overnight success? If you count the two years it took her to research the genre and develop her protagonist, maybe. Inspired by the movie “Midnight Run,” she created Stephanie Plum, used “Seinfeld” as a template for the series, and set the books where she grew up. One for the Money came out in 1994 to glowing reviews in the New York Times Book Review.

The rest is mystery history. Evanovich has won many awards, had dozens of film options, and made tons and tons of money. All it took was hard work, perseverance, a belief in one’s self, and patience. That’s the genesis of an overnight sensation.

Starting a new story

 

-from Susan

At a party the other night, a woman I’d just been introduced to said brightly, “I could never write a book. I mean, where do you even get your ideas? How do you start?”

The noise level was high, her comment was merely party chatter, and we had moved on to other topics within a minute. Knowing she wasn’t an aspiring writer, I didn’t try to answer the question seriously, just murmured something about ideas being all around us. But for LadyKillers, I will offer a few parts of an answer that shifts, deepens, and changes over time for me. I’d like to hear others’ answers too.

1. Ideas really are all around us. I think writers are observers, standing back from the world a bit, listening (okay, eavesdropping), watching how other people interact, noticing oddities in the news, and people’s behaviors. It seems to come with the writing gene.
2. Our imaginations are healthy. If you’ve been to a writers’ conference, you’ve heard at least one panelist explain the “What if…?” habit. I see a skinny man at the ATM who’s shifting from one foot to the other, holding his cigarette in a curled hand as if to shield it from other people’s view, and glancing jerkily over his shoulder every few seconds, and I can’t help it. “What if he’s waiting til foot traffic dies down to rob an ATM user? Or install one of those ATM hack machines? Or plant a bomb?” He becomes a bad guy in my imagination and a physical model for a character whose crime could start a new story.
3. Writing is an itch that must be scratched. Starting’s not so hard for us, even if the start turns out to be a false one, as Michael’s story yesterday shows. We write because it’s essential. It’s our way of being in the world.
4. We crave attention for our stories. Why else would we keep at it when the first draft caves in the middle, or the complicated rationale for the crime threatens to morph into nonsense, or the editor wants a fifth rewrite?

We start because the wished-for outcomes – if not fame and riches – are readers who get a weekend’s pleasure from what we’ve worked on, and who tell us they never guessed who did it, and because we got to tell the story of the desperately ill man whose calloused hand curled around the cigarette to shield it from the rain, and whose wife never met him at the ATM because she had been kidnapped….Ooops, there I go.

Bye for now. I have a story to start.

 

Genesis By Michael A. Black

Genesis . . . Wow. Where do I begin?

If we’re not talking about the book of Genesis, (and I make it a point not to discuss religion or politics) I guess we can begin at the beginning. After all, that’s what the word genesis means, right?

As writers, we deal with beginnings a lot. It’s essential to have a good opening to your story, and it’s often difficult to figure out where it should begin. Homer began The Odyssey at the end, having Ulysses finally arriving home after his long journey and reflecting back on his adventures. It’s an effective way to begin.

Another effective opening technique is to begin in the middle of something. Opening with an action scene is the staple of modern thrillers, dating back to the not-so-modern-anymore days of the Mid-Twentieth Century. Who can forget, for instance, bad guy Robert Shaw dispatching the James Bond look-alike in the opening of From Russia, With Love, or Sean Connery coming out of the water as he slips out of his frogman wetsuit in Goldfinger to reveal his impeccably tailored (and completely dry) tuxedo? It catches the reader’s (or in the aforementioned examples, the audience’s) attention. This technique establishes the prowess of the protagonist, and then usually opens up with the introduction of the main plotline.

Be it screenplay or prose, a writer wants to set the tone and get the reader in the right frame of mind to become enamored (or at least engulfed) in the story. Sometimes this can be done with a great opening line. In James Dickey’s novel, Deliverance, he accomplishes this quite well:

It unrolled slowly, forced to show its colors, curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned loose.

Notice how the narrator seems to be describing a living thing that’s savagely striking back at the unwanted intrusion. Actually, the scene takes place in a bar and four men are looking at a map of a mountain area and the river upon which they’re planning a canoe trip. It sounds innocent, doesn’t it? But the next line reveals even more. The whole land was very tense until we put our four steins on its corners and laid the river out to run for us through the mountains 150 miles north. Lewis’ hand took a pencil and marked out a small strong X in a place where some of the green bled away and the paper changed with high ground, and began to work downstream, northeast to southwest though the printed woods.

Those four guys should have paid more attention. That first line foreshadows the ominous danger that awaits them as they venture on their idyllic little foray back to nature. Now that’s a great beginning. I wonder how long Dickey labored over that first line until he got it just right. Incidentally, Dickey wrote the screenplay for the movie version and even played the sheriff in the film. He was a nationally known poet at the time Deliverance debuted, but writing a novel was something new for him. It was sort of a new genesis.

My buddy, Doug Allyn, who’s one of the best short story writers around, once told me he was revising a short story he’d written and felt the first line wasn’t quite right. He kept writing and rewriting it over and over. Finally, after about an hour and several pages of writing later, he suddenly felt he had it. He read the new first line, and it had a ring of familiarity to it. Sure enough, he looked back and found that it was the same line that he’d originally used to open the story. So sometimes, your first try is the best.

I’ve always been a proponent of thinking a story through before the writing begins. It’s the way I operate. Back in my undergrad days I had a different outlook and would just sit down and come up with a first line out of the blue, then continue writing as the muse directed. I have to admit, it was a lot of fun and I came up with some pretty wild openings, but what I eventually discovered was that I had to throw most of what I’d written away. After several pages I would inevitably come to the conclusion that the real story began on that page, and all that preceded it was merely fluff. I was writing myself into the mood of telling the story.

But where do new ideas come from? Speaking for myself, I can attest to a thrill of getting an idea for a completely new story. Oftentimes, I’ll be three-quarters way through the project I’ve been working on when a new idea will strike me. It’s a neat feeling to have to stop, jot down a few notes on the new one, and then go back to writing the current story. In a way, this genesis gives you the impetus to finish the work in progress.

I’ve mentioned before how my high school physics teacher, Mr. John Rush, used to be fond of saying, “Starting is half the battle . . . So start twice and the battle’s over.” Starting is hard, but if you can manage to jump start your creative efforts, the rest will follow.

NEWS and "In the Beginning"

NEWS

• Michael A. Black is interviewed at The Book Cave about his Doc Atlas series. You can follow the link to here a podcast of his interview from here.
• Diana Orgain is a contributor ins the new release “Now Write Mysteries” – available on 12/29. It can be preordered now at http://nowwrite.net/mysteries/contributors
• Mary Anna Evans is running a promotion to give away a free Kindle or a $100 gift certificate to the winner's choice of an independent bookstore, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.  Anyone who likes my facebook author page will be entered in the contest.  Here's the link:
  
  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mary-Anna-Evans-author-of-the-Faye-Longchamp-archaeological-mysteries/8113134580

The Next Topic: GENESIS

When you think Genesis, do you think of...

  or...

or...

or...

or (especially if you are a writer)...

?

Join us this coming week when the LadyKillers tackle the topic of GENESIS.

Libraries

Staci here, on my every other Saturday.

Just hearing the word “library” instantly soothes me. I immediately feel myself pulled back into the hushed world of long, full book shelves and whispered conversations. Like Ann mentioned in her Thursday blog, one of my favorite jobs was also working at a library while I was attending college. I loved wandering the aisles, pushing around a cart full of books and reshelving them while people sat at the tables or in the comfy chairs, some studying, others reading for enjoyment. The library provides endless possibilities for discovering new subjects, learning a little bit about everything or a lot about one thing.

Of course, nowadays, this same feat is possible on the internet. You can enter any subject in Google and get back a list of hundreds or even thousands of web sites covering that one topic. But sitting at a computer doing research doesn’t have the same sense of accomplishment as roaming the rows at the library, reading the titles on the spines, and finding the exact book you need. And sometimes I can’t Google a particular topic because I haven’t thought of it yet. More than once, a book has caught my eye while browsing the various library displays and introduced me to topics I never knew I was interested in. It’s much harder to stumble across things on the internet.

But now the internet has made its way to the library. Being used to the silent atmosphere with the stern librarian shushing anyone who made too much noise, I was initially resistant to the introduction of computer labs at the library. How could librarians maintain that sense of quiet and studiousness with tables of buzzing machines and flickering monitors? Then I admitted to myself that the days of sending your kid down to the library to research their latest book report project are fading fast. Libraries need to offer internet access to stay competitive with home computers and smartphones.

In the end, I decided that if the availability of computers draws in extra patrons who then discover all the benefits and wonders that still exist at the public library, then I’m all for it. Just as long as they don’t talk too loud. 

Libraries I Have Loved -- by Sharan

The main branch of the Multnomah County library in Portland was my haunt all through high school.  It was built in 1913 with palatial staircases, high ceilings and long windows.  I did all my term papers there and discovered authors both modern and lost in time.

It has always been my ideal of what a library should be.

Like Ann, I grew up with the idea that silence was the cardinal rule for libraries.  Recently, I’ve noticed that it is no longer the case.  At first this bothered me.   Then I started paying attention to the nature of the noise: a storyteller enthralling children and adults, people being tutored in math, parents reading to their children and librarians giving reference information.  That is what a library should be, even if Marian the Librarian might not approve.

Over the years, I have had the chance to do research in some elegant libraries.  Two of the best are the Cathedral library at the University of Durham in England.  It is part of the cathedral complex, a thousand years old, in a long room that used to be a monks’ refectory.  To leave, I walked through the cloister and into the church, past the grave of St. Cuthbert near the altar.  The Richelieu branch of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is six hundred years younger but redolent of the extravagance of pre-revolutionary France.  Now it houses manuscripts from the Middle Ages to the present.  One of my greatest thrills was to be able to look through a manuscript I had been studying.  I put my hand up to turn the page and saw the roughened mark in the vellum where thousands of people over the past 800 years had touched it. 

But architecture doesn’t make a good library, of course.  One of the most important libraries I found was just a wall across from the coat rack at the one-room school house in Egegik, Alaska.  This collection not only provides book for the students but is the only library in a town inaccessible by roads with a population that dwindles to only about 100 people each winter.  This is the best kind of public library.

As a writer and historian, I have amassed a fairly comprehensive collection of my own.  For years I dreamed of having all the books out of boxes and arranged on shelves where I could get to them every time I needed a reference.  About fifteen years ago, I bought a house solely because it had a long room that might have space for them all.  My sister designed it and had it built and now I have my own quasi-elegant library, although the collect has expanded to the point that there are boxes under the stairs again.  It is often cluttered with papers and noisy with children or meetings, but I have finally come to terms with my antiquated notions of what a library is and I revel in it.

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Breaking News: Sharan will be on the Barbara Simpson show tomorrow (Saturday) at 5:00pm, talking about the end of the world.  The link to listen on line is:  http://www.ksfo560.com/showdj.asp?DJID=2364

Shhhh! The Tale of Ann the Library Enforcer

Ann Parker here, every-other-Thursday at the LadyKillers. Libraries, I love 'em. As I thought about my decades of experiences at libraries, I realized that my most and least favorite jobs were both at a library... the same library, it so happens, where Camille helped orchestrate the Pass the Book event she talks about in her post yesterday.

At the time of my story, I was a student at a nearby junior college. (This was in the Dark Ages, aka early 1970s, when community colleges were still called junior colleges.) I had to get a job to support myself, and I was getting pretty desperate. On the job board (which was a real cork board, not a virtual job website), I spotted a listing at a nearby library. The job paid *really* well by the standards of the day: about $13 an hour, as I recall. (Remember, this was the early '70s, when the minimum wage was about $1.65 per hour, according to this chart.) Wow! Talk about good money! The job was also only two hours a day four or so times a week, so it wouldn't overly impact my coursework. For a poor college student, it was perfect.

Only one teensy problem:

This incredibly well-paying job entailed being the "enforcer." This was the era when libraries were supposed to be quiet--all the time and everywhere. (Nowadays, libraries seem to favor "quiet rooms" and to tolerate the rumble of conversations. Not back then, I assure you.) My job was to roam the floors, looking intimidating, glaring at people who dared to talk too loud, and basically telling them to pipe down... or else.

Folks who are reading this and know me well are probably chortling right about now. Intimidation is not my strong suit, and back then, it was even less so. The job was, in a word, painful. I honestly didn't like it. I dreaded the days when I went to work. But it was only two hours at a whack, and it paid the rent (and the textbooks!), so I persevered.

Library enforcer was my least favorite job, ever.

Now, for my favorite job, which was at the same library.

You see, after some space of time (can't remember exactly how long... four to six months, I think), the position of "enforcer" was cut. The head librarian, who had to deliver the bad news to me, offered that there was a position opening as library aide, if I wanted it. "It doesn't pay nearly as well," she warned. "But you'll get more hours, so that will help a bit."

I jumped at the offer. Being a library aide was my dream job come true. I was assigned two areas in the stacks—one in the children's room, the other in adult non-fiction. I was responsible for shelving books in those two areas and keeping them in order. I also worked the front desk, checking books out with one of those old-fashioned date stamps. I chatted with patrons, and answered their questions or directed them to a librarian.

And I didn't have to shush a soul.

I kept that job all through junior college. When I was accepted to UC Berkeley, the head librarian tried to convince me that I could somehow manage a commute between Berkeley and the library so I could keep my job. I was tempted, but I was moving to Berkeley and figured my studies would not allow (at least at first) for me to hold down a job as well. So, with great reluctance and sadness, I said good-bye to the best job ever.

I tell you... I think if someone offered me that job today (in today's dollars), I'd be very very very tempted.

So, that's it. My library stories. I still love libraries, and when I need a little peace and quiet, a little salve for the soul, the libary is where I go. Libraries are miracles of civilization. When I give thanks this season, libraries will definitely be on my list!

Passing the Book

Camille here, confessing that I once killed a librarian. Well, I didn't do it, but I set it up in the second Professor Sophie Knowles mystery, "The Probability of Murder," due for release on March 6, 2012. (You can read the first chapter here.)

Other than that, I've behaved myself in libraries.

Since mine was not a reading household, I was in high school before I discovered our local library and learned that books other than school books even existed. It would be at least another four years, in my college library, before I figured out that people actually read books other than for homework.

(I've tried to make up for those lost reading years. See photo at the end for a sample.)

Of all the great library events in my life, one that stands out is the opening of our new library in 2009. I don't know whose idea it was, or if it's very common, but the town's readers lined the 0.7-mile route between the old library and the new one and passed the books from hand to hand.

 

About 1500 people showed up. Two of us volunteers were assigned to each registration station to distribute T-shirts and  make sure everyone signed a waiver, in case a particularly heavy book caused litigation-size back pain.

Five hundred books were passed down the stretch, covering many city blocks. You can see from the photo that people of all ages showed up for the exciting symbolic passing. (The full collection had been moved by professionals during the weeks before.)

Once registration was over, I joined the line passing books. The hardest part: we weren't allowed to stop and read the books as they passed though our hands. Some children disobeyed, a heartening sight.

Back to the Social Networking topic of last week—I wonder if I could get 1500 of my Facebook Friends to do this with my books the next time I move. 

 

Libraries

What would we do without libraries? 

I admit that I shunned them for decades after being shooed out of the adult history section when I had escaped the children’s books in my quest for something interesting to read. But even I do not hold a grudge until death do us part. Not only have I returned to the fold, I’ve fallen in love with the institution. 

Why?  Libraries are full of readers! 

I have been troubled for a bit, not just by the closing of bookstores, but by the reduced number of events and the current move toward charging fees to hear the writer talk. This might be fine for the still-welcomed known and big publisher authors, or those dealing with popular subjects, but it hurts the new or adventurous writer, the increasing number published by the independent presses, the self-published, and those who go to e-reader format alone. As much as I sympathize with the plight of brick and mortars, I fear this approach only adds to the ominously increasing, homogeneous nature of the literature we are offered to read.  

So what is the “unconventional writer” supposed to do, besides leap into the Internet world? There are still readers out there who are eager for new ideas, want stunning craft and unusual subjects, or long for eras outside the popular ones. I know because I’m one of them.

The library is an excellent place to meet just those people. As writers, we need to take advantage of this free advertising. 

Many libraries have book clubs and would love to have the author join them for discussion. Arrange some form of event at the local branch. Sometimes you can sell your books after a talk. If nothing else, you can donate a copy. If there is enough reader interest in that first, the library will buy the next. The more reader enthusiasm, the more copies of the book the library will buy. That first “freebie” gift or talk can pay off. If a single author event doesn’t interest your local branch, go with a group. If the library doesn’t have a “mystery week/month”, ask how to organize one and offer speakers. Many organizations, like Sisters In Crime or Romance Writers of America, have speaker bureaus. Join and tell them you are eager to visit libraries. On rare occasions, you may get a small check for your efforts but just remember that this is advertising and you get face time with readers. 

In this brave new world of cyber-space and shrinking access to traditional methods of catching the reader’s eye, it’s wonderful that one of our oldest democratic institutions, the public library, remains a harbor for exciting ideas and new fans.

From Mary Anna--Libraries...how I love them...

I realize that when I write here, I am writing for people who love books and reading.  Therefore, I assume that I am writing for people who have spent a lot of time in libraries.

I relate deeply to the famous Jorge Luis Borges quote that says “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."  What could be more heavenly than the ability to pursue anything that interests me at will, by merely roaming the heavenly stacks?  The notion puts me in awe, which I guess means that roaming those heavenly stacks would, for someone like me, be akin to being close to God.

I feel this way about the Internet, since seconds after a random question crosses my mind, I can type it into this computer in my lap and get the answer.  How cool is that?  In the few short years that we've been able to do this, I think the wonder of it is already starting to wear off, but really.  Doesn't it still give you pause to realize that you have (or could have) friends in Italy or Brazil or Malaysia who are only a keystroke away?

Still, there's no substitute for a physical library, where I can commune with books--their physical mass, their quiet certainty, their reliable presence.  The next time I'm feeling besieged by the world, I must remember to go take a stroll through a library.

Mary Anna