The LadyKillers

News and Next Week: Multitasking

News

• Camille Minichino’s story “The Magnesium Murder” (#12 in the periodic table) is included in the anthology Sleuthing Women II, released September 5. She’s now working on The Aluminum Murder, of course.
• Jean Rabe's novel, The Dead of Night, releases September 15th. It is the second in my Piper Blackwell series. ONE WEEK TO GO, then my second Piper book comes out.
• Ann Parker's next in the Silver Rush series, tentatively titled FALL ON A DYING NOTE, is making a ghostly appearance here and there on the web, such as here and and here, which she finds simultaneously thrilling and terrifying.
• Ellen Kirschman talks with San Mateo County Sheriff Carlos Bolanos about her latest mystery novel, The Fifth Reflection:  Wednesday, 9/13, 6:30 PM at the Downtown Redwood City Library. Put it on your calendar. It will be hot and she's not talking about the weather.
• Margaret Lucke will appear with authors J.J. Lamb and Bette Golden Lamb to celebrate the launch of Margaret's new mystery, Snow Angel, and the Lambs' new medical thriller, Bone Slice. When: Sunday, September 17 at 4 pm. Where: Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera, CA. All are invited.
• Michael A. Black is at the C3 (Crimes, Creatures, and Creativity) Conference in Columbus, Maryland this weekend.
• Priscilla Royal's brain is off in frolick mode. It has disappeared, and she can't be held responsible for anything until it returns. 
• Camille Minichino is plugging away at three classes with a total of 67 students. Anyone have an extra red pencil?

Next Week

Multitasking. First they said it was the only way to survive the information revolution, then they said it eats our brains and leads to poor work product. Which is it, People Who Know Things?  Join us next week as we discuss multitasking while drinking coffee and writing our todo lists. Kind of. Not really. What was I talking about?

Seriously, join us. Every writer knows the pain of multiple deadlines, or the penalty you pay when you sign up for a conference but forget to book the flight, or family and pets who can't QUITE remember what you look like. Join the conversation next week!

Fate or Free Will? A True Story

By Margaret Lucke

The other day a group of us was having a conversation about the way that a seemingly tiny incident or encounter can change your life forever. Suddenly you are spun in a whole new direction, and after that, nothing is ever the same.

I told them this tale about my friend Frank, a courtly gentleman a few decades older than me. Frank grew up in Prague and was launching a career as a lawyer there when World War Two disrupted his life and that of so many others. He spent several horrific years in concentration camps. After the war was over, he returned to Prague, but there was nothing left in that city for him. His family, his friends, his property, his career -- everything was gone.

Frank wanted to emigrate to the United States, where he would join an uncle who lived in California. But he met roadblock after roadblock in his efforts to obtain the proper permissions and documents. He was only one out of thousands of people who were displaced in Europe and were seeking refuge in the U.S. Months became years, and the future looked bleak. He was without money, prospects, or hope.

One day, feeling glum, Frank was sitting at a sidewalk table in front of a café, nursing a cup of coffee and gazing without much interest at the pedestrians passing by. One of them, a man who was well dressed and looked prosperous, did a double take and stopped.

"Frank? Is that you?" the man said.

Frank didn't recognize him, so the man identified himself -- I don't know his name, so let's call him Johan. He was a former classmate; they had gone to school together a decade earlier. Taking the empty seat at Frank's table, Johan ordered another cup of coffee for Frank and one for himself.

"What has been going on with you?" Johan asked, making note of Frank's too-thin frame and ragged clothes. It was obvious that they had spent the war in much different circumstances.

Frank told his old friend about his experiences and his futile attempts to start life anew in the U.S.

"Hmm. Perhaps I can help you," Johan said. It turned out that he had connections in the right government agencies to assist Frank in getting a visa, not to the U.S., but to Canada. Once he was in North America, he would be a much better position to take the next step and get to California.

And that's what happened. Johan eased Frank's way to obtaining the right paperwork, Frank went to Canada, and eventually made his way to his uncle in California. He lived for many years in Berkeley, where he had a long, happy marriage, raised a family, and ran a prosperous small business.

That encounter with Johan changed Frank's life profoundly. Was their meeting a matter of destiny, or was it random chance that put both men in that particular place at just the right moment for their paths to cross? What if Frank had drained his coffee cup and left the café a couple of minutes before Johan came striding down the street? What if Johan hadn't recognized him? This is the kind of story that could make someone believe in fate.

But I'd say free will was involved too. Johan might have recognized Frank but decided that he was in too much of a hurry to stop, or to say more than a simple hello before moving on. Frank could have chosen not to talk about his hardships or follow up on Johan's offer of help.

Philosophers may argue about whether it's fate or free will that determines the course of our lives. I think it's a debate that will never be won because our lives are sum of both factors. On the one hand, there are circumstances that we can't control; we are born into them or they are imposed upon us from outside. On the other hand, we get to decide, one large or small choice at a time, what we're going to do about those circumstances and how we're going to let them affect us. It's like we're given a blueprint and some building materials. The life that we construct from them is up to us.

And once in a while, we find ourselves in the right place at the right time for something to happen that will change our lives. Serendipity or a gift of providence. Or maybe fate.

A chance encounter leads to a cup of coffee with an old acquaintance -- and a new life on a different continent. Fate or free will? What do you think?

An Old Trend and a New Novel

By Margaret Lucke

If you’re a new parent and you’ve called your little one Noah or Emma, you’re following a trend. Those are currently the number-one names for babies in the U.S.

If you’ve bought a house with an open floor plan, you’re following a trend. Except for bedrooms and lavish en suite baths, today’s buyers don’t favor separate rooms for different functions. The days of the formal dining room and even the living room are over.

If the most recent movie you’ve seen starred one or more superheroes, you’re in line with a trend. Though this might not be a trend much longer. Summer is the superhero season, when Hollywood counts on high ticket sales. But this year’s box office take is down 12% from last year’s, despite hits like Wonder Women and Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Guessing the next trend is tricky and trying to capitalize on it is trickier still. That’s especially true in publishing. Almost any agent or editor will advise us authors not to let what’s currently hot on booksellers’ shelves dictate what their next book should be – in part because the process of writing and publishing a book takes so long that by the time our books reach the market, the trend we wrote in response to will be long over.

Nevertheless my new mystery novel, Snow Angel, which launches next week,* is in line with a trend -- just not a current one. A couple of decades ago the female private eye rose to prominence in crime fiction. She starred in any number of mysteries in the 1980s and 1990s before kind of fading away.

But on the theory that you can’t keep a good character down, my new mystery features Jess Randolph, an artist who works as an investigator to support her painting habit.

As Snow Angel opens, a seven-year-old girl disappears. She’s the daughter of the San Francisco cop who is the star witness in a high-profile murder trial. Was Amy kidnapped to derail the trial, or has one of her feuding parents hidden her away? Jess has been giving Amy art lessons and has come to think of her as a sister. Tense with worry, she joins the frantic search.

When a would-be rescuer dies violently, fears rise that Amy is in the hands of a killer. Jess must risk her life and confront her darkest fears as she races time to find the child before it’s too late. The hunt takes her from San Francisco to the snowbound Sierra, and deep into the hearts of two shattered families.

Jess isn’t trendy – she listens to jazz, not the Top 40; she lives in a Victorian flat (no open floor plan), and she’s not a superhero. But she’s creative and resourceful, and she’s someone I hope readers will enjoy spending time with.

_______

* The Kindle edition is currently available for preorder. The print edition is coming soon.

In Defense of Procrastination

By Margaret Lucke

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
~ Spanish Proverb

My name is Margaret, and I am a procrastinator.

It's 11:27 a.m. on Thursday, and right now I am typing the first sentence of my post on time management for The LadyKillers blog. The post is due to go live tonight at midnight. So I have twelve hours in which to get it written -- and to accomplish all of the other items on my long to-do list for today.

It could be worse. If I had really perfected procrastination to a fine art, I'd be typing this at 11:27 p.m. on Thursday instead of shortly before noon.

On the other hand, if I were any good at time management, I'd have written this post yesterday. Or last week. Or, hey, two months ago, like some of my fellow LadyKillers, who are much more on top of their time than I am.

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
~ Mark Twain

I used to feel bad about being a procrastinator. That's because procrastination is usually talked about as if it's a bad thing -- a sure road to missed opportunities, a certain sign of laziness and sloth. Those annoying people who are on top of all of their tasks sneer at the rest of us with disdain and disgust. Their intent is to make us feel guilty and anxious, and too often they succeed.

But I think that when I’m confronted with an important project, it's a good thing to take some time for mental preparation and to approach the work with judicious care. It saves me from slapdash results. And sometimes, if I procrastinate long enough, it saves me from having to do the work at all.

Calvin: "You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet.
You have to be in the right mood."
Hobbes: "What mood is that?"
Calvin: "Last-minute panic."
~ Bill Watterson

I was gratified the other day when I heard a radio interview with Berkeley psychologist Mary Lamia, about her new book What Motivates Getting Things Done: Procrastination, Emotions, and Success. Lamia explains that there are two types of people: task-driven types who feel uneasy and anxious when pending work is going undone, and deadline-driven folks who are not motivated to act until they "feel the heart-pounding terror of an imminent deadline." And she contends that both types are equally capable of doing quality work and achieving success.

So there.

"Procrastinate now. Don’t put it off."
~ Ellen DeGeneres

Idioms: A Play in One Act

By Margaret Lucke

Characters:  Two fellow students in an adult-ed writing course. JACK is all-American, and talks like one. MARIA speaks very good English but it's a second language for her and she doesn't know all of its nuances.

Place:  The classroom building of an adult education center.

Time:  Evening as the class is over.

     THE CURTAIN RISES.

     (Maria walks out of the classroom. Jack rushes after her.)

JACK:  Hold your horses, Maria.

MARIA:  What horses? Where?

     (She stops to look for the horses. He catches up to her. They fall into step together as they walk down the hall.)

MARIA:  I hope I do well with the essay the teacher wants us to write.

JACK:  Oh, don't worry. It'll be a piece of cake.

MARIA:  I'm not talking about food. I was referring to our homework.

JACK:  I mean, it's not a hard assignment. Just do it with your whole heart.

MARIA:  My heart? I was going to do it on my computer.

JACK:  Yes, well . . . of course. That would be easier.

MARIA:  I thought I might write about the upcoming election.

JACK:  I'm not sure that's a great topic. It's a real hot potato.

MARIA:  Cake, potato. Did the teacher say we had to write about recipes?

JACK:  She told us we could apply our unlimited talent to an unlimited array of subjects. But it's best to take what she says with a grain of salt.

MARIA:  Salt? That might be good on the potato, but it would make the cake taste terrible.

     (They reach the entrance of the building.)

JACK:  Well, goodnight. I've got to go home and hit the books.

MARIA:  Hit them? I'd rather read them.

JACK:  Hope I can stay awake long enough to get my essay written. I can barely keep my eyes open.

MARIA:  They look wide open to me. They are very handsome eyes.

     (Jack yawns.)

MARIA:  Are you tired?

JACK:  Lately I've been burning the candle at both ends.

MARIA:  Why? Is your electricity out at your house?

JACK:   No, I just meant I've run out of steam. Be careful driving home. It's raining cats and dogs out there.

MARIA:  It's a good thing I brought my umbrella. But I don't see any animals coming down from the sky. Well, I should go. Goodnight, Jack.

    (Jack puts his hand on her arm to stop her from going out the door.)

JACK:  Maria, I have something to tell you. I'm falling head over heels here.

MARIA:  I didn't know you were an acrobat. I love athletic men.

JACK:  I think we'd be a match made in heaven.

MARIA:  I don't know how to make matches. But you'll need some for those candles if your electricity is out.

JACK:  Maybe one day we'll tie the knot.

MARIA:  Oh, that's not necessary. You look very fine in that open-collared shirt. And when you do wear a necktie, I'm sure you can tie it by yourself.

JACK:  I'm not making myself clear. Maybe if we lock lips, you'll give me the key to your heart.

MARIA:  My heart again. You said it would be easier to use my computer.

JACK:  Here, let me explain myself this way.

     (He pulls her into a hug and gives her a big kiss.)

MARIA: Oh! I think I understand. Would you like to come with me to my house? My electricity is working.

     (They go out into the rain, but they feel like they're walking on sunshine.)

     THE CURTAIN DESCENDS.

Getting in Front of the Backstory

By Margaret Lucke

Every fictional character comes with a backstory. It's a big part of what makes that person interesting to both the writer and the reader.

Backstory consists of everything that's happened before page one to bring the character to the time and place where she enters the story. It also includes everything that has shaped her to be the kind of person who will respond to the story events in the way that she does.

That's a whole lot of details.

The challenge for us writers is to figure out how much of a character's backstory to include and where to put it. Because no matter how fascinating our character is, a lot of those details are boring and unnecessary.

As a writing instructor, editor, and writing coach, I've read a lot of manuscripts in which the writer has struggled with backstory. Here are a few of the problems I've encountered -- and hopefully, some solutions.

Too much too soon. Some writers frontload the backstory. We learn lots of details about the protagonist in the first scenes, while the real beginning of the story -- the initial point of conflict and decision -- gets pushed back to chapter three. I'm all for chronological narratives, but just because the backstory happens prior to when the actual story begins, that doesn't mean the writer has to present it first.

Let me think about that. I've read way too many scenes in which the character sinks onto the sofa, leans back in his desk chair, or lies awake in bed and … thinks. He thinks about loss -- lost love, lost dreams, lost money, lost opportunity. He recalls his winning touchdown in a college football game or the problems he's had with every boss in his career. Yes, we get the backstory, but the sits-and-thinks scene is an awkward device. There's no action for readers to visualize, and nothing is happening to move the story forward.

Hitting the pause button. This occurs at any point in the story when the author decides the reader needs more information in order to understand what's happening, and stops the story to insert an explanation. An example: the entrance of a new character is followed by a lump of exposition -- three pages detailing her background and biography. Now matter how interesting it is, it's a distraction, pulling the reader out of the story.

So how do you work in the backstory so that it's natural and unobtrusive? Some suggestions:

>>>  Start telling the story as close to its end as possible. Open with action and quickly establish the main dramatic question. Weave in the occasional detail of backstory on a need-to-know basis.

>>>  Work in a sentence or two about past events at a moment in the action when the character might naturally think about them. For instance, Jack gripes about all those bad bosses as he's storming out of his present boss's office after an argument.

>>>  Reveal elements of the backstory through the character's environment or attire. Show us the game-winning football that Jack keeps in a trophy case in his office, or the pearl pendant that Lucy always wears because it was a gift from her lost father.

>>>  Let the character talk over a problem with someone else, bringing elements of his backstory into the discussion. This technique can be tricky -- you don't want Jack to be giving Lucy information she already knows, and you don't want to him to make a speech or deliver a monologue. But dialogue more dynamic than inner monologue, and if carefully crafted this approach can work.

>>>  Remember that readers are bright, and that less is sometimes more. If you include the most relevant and insightful details, your readers can fill in many blanks for themselves.

For me, backstory works best when it's artfully interlaced with the action. My goal when I'm writing is to include just enough of those details, at just the right point in the narrative, to illuminate the characters, enrich the plot, and keep my reader involved the story I have to tell.

The Quintessential Writer's Gadget

By Margaret Lucke

Gadget: noun. A mechanical contrivance or device; any ingenious article.

Gizmo: noun. A gadget.

Quite possibly, the gadget that has made the most difference to writers over the years is the typewriter. That's the gizmo that first made it possible to produce a legible manuscript and spare the editor from having to decipher pages and pages of handwritten squiggles.

Nowadays we're all using computers with word processing programs. Really, though, what's a word processor but a typewriter all fancied up? It works in the same way -- the writer hits keys on a keyboard to put words on a page, whether that page is paper or electronic.

Here are a few fun facts about this ingenious mechanical contrivance called the typewriter.

But first, a trivia question: Who was the first author to give his publisher a manuscript that had been produced on a typewriter? (See answer below.)

*  Various people invented gadgets that were prototypes of the typewriter. An early patent was issued in England in 1714 to Henry Mill for "an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print."

*  What became the first commercially successful typewriter was patented in 1868 by a Milwaukee printer named Christopher Latham Sholes, along with Carlos Glidden and a couple of their friends. The gizmo was licensed to E. Remington and Sons, who began production in 1873 and marketed the device as Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer. That was the origin of typewriter as a word.

*  The keyboard's layout is called QWERTY after the first six keys in the top row of letters. The order of the letters in the three rows was intended to reduce the likelihood of the arms of the keys jamming together as words were typed, because jammed keys slowed down the work and annoyed the typist. Over the years QWERTY has been tweaked and adapted to accommodate computer commands and languages other than English, and alternative keyboard arrangements have been developed. But the basic QWERTY layout is still the standard in use today.

*  When typing on the standard QWERTY keyboard in the standard two-handed way, you can type 3,000 English words using only your left hand but just 300 words using only your right hand.

*  IBM revolutionized the typewriter market in 1961 when it introduced the IBM Selectric which replaced key arms with a golfball-like typeball. But in some ways the Selectric was a latecomer. Electric typewriters go back to 1902.

*  A tourist destination in New York City from the 1880s through the 1920s was an eight-block stretch of lower Broadway known as Typewriter Row. It was lined with typewriter shops and showrooms and people flocked there to see the most recent and most exciting developments in typewriter technology.

*  People typing on a computer keyboard average 35 words per minutes (wpm) if they're transcribing text and 19 wpm if they're composing something new. We're all slow compared to Stella Pajunas, who in 1946 achieved 216 words in one minute on an IBM Selectric.

*  Jack Kerouac was a fast typist, clocked at 100 words a minute. When he wrote On the Road he used a long roll of paper so he wouldn't have to waste time inserting new sheets. After two weeks of writing, his draft was one single-spaced paragraph, 120 feet long.

*  Though many typewriter factories have shut down, the gadget currently enjoying a resurgence of interest according to news reports. Typewriter repair shops are delighted by the increase in business.

*  If the clacking of a typewriter is music to your ears, you might want to check out the Boston Typewriter Orchestra, which "engages in rhythmic typewriter manipulation … to entertain the masses."

Oh yes, the trivia answer. The author was Mark Twain, and the book was Life on the Mississippi in 1883 (not Tom Sawyer as Twain claimed in his autobiography).

NEWS and Gadgets and Gizmos

NEWS

Priscilla Royal is in Portland OR for the Historical Novel Society Conference. When she gets back, next book goes to editor. A libation of choice to the editing gods gratefully accepted!

 

Margaret Lucke is putting the finishing touches on her mystery novel Snow Angel, with an eye to an August publication date. She is glad that the coming week is supposed to cooler than the past one.

 

Ellen Kirschman is putting the finishing touches on edits for the second edition of I Love a Cop. Good news is that her editors loved the changes, almost 100 pages of new material. When she’s not writing, she's reading and loving Laurie R. King’s new standalone, Lockdown.

 

Ann Parker is still plugging along on Book #6 of her Silver Rush series, which has a strong musical motif (cue dramatic background melody...).

 

GADGETS AND GIZMOS

This coming week, the LadyKillers will be dabbling in gadgets and gizmos. Gadget, as in "A small mechanical or electronic device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one." Novel, you say? We're on it!

Too Many Genres?

By Margaret Lucke

Some years ago I visited a charming and unusual bookstore in Boston. Two things made it different. First, it sold nothing but fiction. Second, it altogether ignored the idea of genre.

There was no mystery section. No science fiction department. No spot reserved for literary fiction. The books were shelved alphabetically by author, so a browser would find, say, Zane Grey next to John Grisham, or Isaac Asimov keeping company with Margaret Atwood.

The bookseller explained that the idea was to help readers expand their horizons. “When customers are looking for a particular author, their eye may be caught by an intriguing title or cover nearby. They open this other book, like what they find there, and become fans of a novel or a writer that otherwise they'd never have discovered.”

Labeling fiction according to genre, he told me, was too limiting. “There are really only two kinds of books, good ones and bad ones.”

I like his approach. Genres are about marketing, not stories. They are designed mainly for the convenience of publishers and booksellers, letting them know where in their catalog to slot a given book and where in the bookstore to shelve it. For readers and writers, though, having to conform to genre expectations can sometimes get in the way of a good story.

One problem is the proliferation of genres and subgenres. Back when I began dabbling in writing, there were just a few genres -- mystery, romance, science fiction/fantasy, western, and literary fiction (which I would argue is definitely a genre, although not everyone treats it as such). While there have always been a few subgenres within those larger groups, over the years these subgenres have been sliced and diced into ever smaller and narrower pieces, to the point where the distinctions are far more limiting and less helpful. The subgenre family tree that Ann Parker posted to The LadyKillers the other day shows nearly 80 branches and still manages to miss some of the common ones.

Another problem is that there is little general agreement on how to define various genres and subgenres. What are the rules and parameters of each? If you want to get a good discussion going among writers of crime fiction, ask them to describe what qualifies a book to fit in Subgenre A instead of Subgenre B.

For instance, what's the difference between a thriller and a suspense novel -- after all, aren't thrillers supposed to be suspenseful? If a mystery is light in tone and short on gore, but has a cop instead of an amateur sleuth as its hero, is it a cozy or a police procedural -- or both?

When the Mystery Writers of America was founded in 1945, the term mystery was assumed to encompass all sorts of crime fiction. Now, thrillers have emerged as a genre of their own, and many people insist that to qualify as a mystery, a book must be a traditional whodunit type of detective story. Others, equally passionate, disagree.

At a Bouchercon mystery conference awhile ago, there was a panel about writing hardboiled crime stories. The panelists, all authors detective stories at the darker end of the scale, looked at each other and said, “I don't write hardboiled. Do you write hardboiled?” They proceeded to discuss a topic in which none of them claimed to have experience -- though the conference organizers and most member of the audience considered them to be hardboiled writers.

Which brings up a problem that writers face -- how to categorize our own stories. It's a question we're often asked, especially by agents and publishers, and occasionally by readers. Answering it requires us to put our stories into boxes even though they may flop over the edges. My last novel, House of Whispers, is a paranormal romantic suspense, though I prefer to call it a tale of love, ghosts, and murder. My next novel, Snow Angel, which comes out in August, has a private investigator as the protagonist and falls somewhere in the middle of the continuum between light and dark, cozy and hardboiled. If anyone has a good one-word term for that kind of novel, please let me know.

What I really want is to have it fall into one of the categories that Boston bookseller told me are the only two that count.

I hope it's a good book.

NEWS and talking about public speaking

NEWS

Jean Rabe is up for a Silver Falchion Award! Her The Dead of Winter can be found under the "mystery" category. If you are inclined to spread the word (or to vote for it) go to: http://killernashville.com/ silver-falchion-readers- choice-awards/

Margaret Lucke will be at the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley on Sunday -- at the Sisters in Crime booth in the morning and the Romance Writers of America booth in the afternoon, while Ann Parker will be hanging out at the Mystery Writers of America booth in the early afternoon.

Public Speaking

So, how do you feel about public speaking? Love it? Hate it? Endure it? Join us this week when the LadyKillers discuss and offer tips on this task that many fear more than death (read this Psychology Today article for more insight).

 

 

And now, some photos from the Book Fest, Friday and Saturday:

Friday evening view from reception

Dale and Mysti Berry at the reception, by Ellen Kirschman

... And the Festival begins! Saturday morning

Signing books and plugging Sisters in Crime: Ann Parker, Gigi Pandian, Alec Peche

Northern California Sisters in Crime booth is hopping! With Mysti Berry, Ellen Kirschman, and two other local authors that the photographer is currently blanking out vis a vis names...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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