Women of Mystery

Two Sentence Tuesday

2008-05-12T18:55:00.004-04:00

What did I read this week? Well, I read the comments on my Daphne submissions. Unfortunately, there's not much I can say about them except that in the spots where they were specific they almost always contradicted each other. Comments like "I really loved the description of the setting" contrasting with "there are too many details about the setting." It's enough to make your head explode!

But, that's the way it goes...every reader is different, and the same 15 pages got scores (out of a possible 128) ranging from 92 to 128. What did I learn? Well, I knew the manuscript needed work...it will take some time to figure out how useful the comments are. A couple of things that were pointed out are things I already knew were issues but I didn't know how to fix. I was hoping I'd get some suggestions, but I suppose it's useful enough to know that I am not the only one who sees the problems. And at least one person loved it!

What did I write?

You have more to worry about than perverts watching you pee, she reminded herself. But still she pulled the hem of her shirt as low as she could, and huddled over, shielding herself from the view of any potential cameras.

How about you all? What did you read? What did you write? If you're posting your work on your own blog, just leave a note in the comments and I'll add a link at the bottom of this post.

My Town Monday: Rye Playland

2008-05-12T00:00:00.002-04:00

Nan handled our MT Novel Monday last week, so we're doing a regular-old one. While the park's ice rink and some arcades are open year-round, the first official day of Rye Playland's summer season was this Saturday. On Sunday, though there were a few attractions not yet in full swing, we finally got to see the whole park with people and music and leafy trees. Lovely.

Playland in Rye, New York is about 40 minutes north of Manhattan on Long Island Sound (10 minutes from my house) and is the only facility of this type owned and operated by the U.S. National Park Service. Being open since 1928, it is the prototypical amusement park. Fortunately, it's been well looked after. The buildings maintain their original art deco style with fresh coats of paint and lots of neat gardens. There's a treelined green midway between twin promenades of arcade games and rides as well as food vendors. My inaugural funnel cake of the year was delectable! (click any picture to enlarge. gray day, though, sorry.)

In addition to wonderful kiddie rides, there are full-thrill roller coasters, including The Dragon, which is also one of several rides dating from the inception of Playland. Its age also means certain things are as they are, like the car dimensions. More 18th century than 21st. Read the warning above. Awesome.

There's also a year-round ice rink and an outdoor mini golf course. But Playland isn't just carnival-style fun. There's a wide strolling boardwalk with telescopes and benches and an enormous outdoor pool, as well as a sandy beach for bathing. There's a lake at the park's north end for short rented cruises or paddle boat rentals. Another terrific thing: since this is a public park, admission is free. There's local bus and train shuttle service available, but you'll pay between $5 and $7 for car parking. Most rides require buying ticket cards, and you'll have to purchase your own food-on-a-stick (beer, too), but access is open to all locations and to he beach and pool. The prices for boat rentals are around $10 and mini golf is $4. The prices are very reasonable for such fun, and I was happily stuffing quarters into the SkeeBall and Galaga games next to the shooting gallery. We earned enough coupons for happy-face stickers, a Chinese finger trap, and a yellow plastic duck that clicks. Cool!

Bonus Trivia: This 1988 movie used an old fashioned fortune telling machine at Playland in an integral role.

See MTM innovator Travis Erwin for links to more towns, books, and Mondays.

Mother's Day

2008-05-10T15:09:00.016-04:00

Ladies and gentleman, may I present FARLEY, my newest namesake. She was born earlier this week on The Bag Lady's farm in northern Alberta, Canada.

The Bag Lady tells us Farley is strong and tenacious. I'm sure that means she'll be a writer some day.

Bag Lady, I am greatly honored and deeply appreciate this wonderful Mother's Day present.

The following message is for all those moms, aunts, girlfriends, daughters, grandmas, sisters, cousins and great-grandmas, including those who come to us in a blend of steps and halves, and those who come to us through marriage and other family arrangements.

You bring us love and laughter each and every day, we wish you a joyful Mother's Day.

Terrie

FRIDAY: Forgotten Book

2008-05-09T00:14:00.000-04:00

Our pal, and recent Derringer winner, Patti Abbott, has suggested that on Fridays some of her blog buddies post a reminder of a book that caught us when we read it, but now may be forgotten by the reading public.

Most of the participants in Forgotten Books have revisited novels, which makes sense since many of Patti’s blog buddies are fiction writers. You know I write fiction. I certainly read fiction, but I am also an enthusiastic non-fiction reader and a huge fan of oral histories. I want to read how people felt and what they thought as history swirled around them.

Today my forgotten book is The Great Divide, Second Thoughts on the American Dream, by Studs Terkel. Like many of Terkel’s books, this one is a series of oral histories, essays if you will, on conditions in the United States at the end of the Reagan Era. The stories point out the divides among us: social, racial, religious, political, and, most starkly, economic. In a time when unemployment hovered around ten percent, and when the national debt was far too large, when unions were busted and farmers abused, many Americans seemed not to understand how it happened or how it could be fixed.

The Great Divide was published in 1988. If you can find a copy, pick a few sections at random. Compare then and now. Could be interesting.

Patti would also like me to “tag” one of you to tell us about a Forgotten Book on your blog next Friday. Since I don’t generally “tag,” I am hoping that someone will volunteer in the comments of this blog. It’s a refined “tag.” Just think of a book you read and tell us why you liked it. And since this is not a school book report, there is no required number of sentences.

This link will bring you to Patti’s list of today’s Forgotten Book participants.

Terrie

A Writer's Brain

2008-05-08T09:15:00.005-04:00

I wrote the first draft of my first mystery in six weeks. When I tell people that, they are shocked and envious. But here's the rub: I'd spent the previous several years working on another writing and research project, a project I could not finish because medical issues got in the way. All that time, while I couldn't write, couldn't even really read, I suspect my brain was busy working on the murder mystery. I just wasn't physically able to write anything down, or even vocalize it, until I got all the weird electricity in my head under control.

I am an epileptic. Or, in modern, politically correct language, I have a seizure disorder. This puts me--at least according to epilepsy.com--in great literary company. Unlike Dostoevsky or Dickens, however, I've never had any desire to inflict my disorder on one of my characters. No one reading my fiction, at least to this point, would diagnose me as an epileptic writer.

Epilepsy is a pain in the tush. I probably had my first seizures in my teens, but they were "absence" seizures, "partial" seizures or dizzy spells, nothing that presented in a fashion recognizable to my friends and family. I didn't have my first grand mal seizure (or, again with the more politically correct label, "tonic-clonic seizure") until college. The first drug they put me on--Dilantin--I was massively allergic to. I have no recollection of the three weeks before they discovered the allergy but for brief flashes, most of which involve doctors.

But then they put me on another drug, Tegretol, which worked fabulously for fifteen years. Until it slowly began to fail, which caused the medical problems that prevented me from finishing my dissertation. In 2005, I went on Lamictal. That's when I wrote my academic mystery. Followed, in the space of about eighteen months, by a rough draft of my second academic mystery, and a first, second, and final draft of the beading mystery that eventually found a home with an agent. The rough drafts of each book took progressively longer. I believe that's because by the time I got to the beading mystery, I'd run out of all the stuff that had built up while the Tegretol was failing.

Then came the hives. Six months consumed with trying to find their source didn't leave a lot of time or physical or mental energy for writing. Eventually, they figured out that the Lamictal had caused the hives, and I had to go off of it. Then they put me on Keppra. Once the hives went away, I could write again, though not nearly at the level I'd been working at while functionally medicated.

In a couple of weeks I have to go get my brain recalibrated. I go into the hospital for five days, they hook me up to electrodes and videotape me while I sit around doing nothing. This is because the brain noise is now too loud for me to write, too loud even to allow me to read more than a few sentences at a time. It has taken me hours to write this post--a far cry from a whole mystery in six weeks!

So when I read about Tolstoy, and Carroll, and Dante being epileptics, I wonder whether they would have been as prolific, and whether they'd have written such interesting things, if they'd lived in the era of EEGs, anti-convulsants, and videotaped hospital stays. Maybe I'd be a better writer if I stopped taking medications for a while and went off somewhere where all the walls were padded and I couldn't hurt myself if I had a seizure.

Or maybe I'd just be out of my mind with boredom, and unable to write at all.

Malice (Way After) Thoughts

2008-05-07T10:51:00.002-04:00

I had intended to post these thoughts last Wednesday, just a few days after coming home from Malice, but I was deluged with client work and chores.

Attendance

This was my first Malice. In fact, except for some Edgar Week panels I attended in 2000, this was my first conference. I loved it! There were lots of panels, lots of attendees, and lots of inspiring talk about writing and reading and mysteries.

But despite my first-timer’s impression, attendance was apparently down from previous years. What does this mean? Does it reflect the reduced interest in cozies and traditionals that we keep hearing about? A reduced interest in reading in general? Or was it perhaps just due to a tightened economy? If the first, should I put my amateur-sleuth mystery in a drawer and start writing a thriller?

No. After more years as a book publishing professional that I care to admit to, I know that trends come and go. Like plots, there are only so many, and like miniskirts, each one always comes back into style. I’ll continue to work on my book, and when I finish it, I’ll start another—perhaps in the same subgenre, perhaps in a different one. If it doesn’t sell now, I’ll have something ready to go when the publishers are interested again.

Renewed Determination

Malice is a readers’ conference, not a writers’ conference. The panels are slanted toward readers, there are no agent pitch sessions, there are no editors prowling the hallways. But I accomplished my purposes: (1) to support my friends who were up for awards, (2) to meet in person some of the people I’ve become friendly with online over the past several years, and (3) to chase away the last shreds of doubt and guilt over my decision to devote substantially more of my work time to my own book and less to client projects. Perhaps next year, when I’ll have two books ready to circulate, I’ll go to Sleuthfest or Bouchercon, but this year I’m extremely happy I chose Malice.

David Skibbins Wants You

One of the panels I attended, “Devious Devices: What Makes Their Sleuthing Unique,” included David Skibbins, author of the Tarot Card Mystery Series, featuring amateur sleuth Warren Ritter. Skibbins’s first book about Ritter, Eight of Swords, won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin’s Press Best First Mystery Competition in 2004. The second book in the series, High Priestess, is currently available in paperback; the third book, The Star, is out in hardcover; and the fourth, Hanged Man, is coming out in August. A pretty standard publishing history. Until now.

Skibbins is inviting his fans to help write book five. After he posts a chapter on the blog on his website, fans can leave comments with suggestions about where the book should go next. The suggestions can be about anything—characters, plot twists, red herrings, whatever. Sound intriguing? To join the fun, just hop on over to Skibbins’s website.

Reality Check

The weekend of Malice Domestic, Washington, D.C. recorded the highest number of murders in one weekend in many years. On Saturday alone, four people were shot within a period of four hours. According to yesterday’s Washington Post, 18 people were murdered in the month of April. If you’re writing a light-hearted or humorous murder mystery, this really makes you stop and think.

Are We There Yet?

A major topic of conversation among the people who drove to Malice was how utterly horrible the last leg of the trip was. With all the money we’ve been spending on the conflict in the Mideast and toilet seats for Air Force One, why can’t we afford to put up a few highway markers in our nation’s capital? I ended up in bumper-to-bumper traffic halfway back to Baltimore because I didn’t realize the highway I was on was the wrong one. I had to pull off the road and look back over my shoulder at the sign marking the highway’s entrance to figure out what route it was. Later on, after having trouble finding the correct exit, I ended up in the Pentagon parking lot, stopping a very kind man in a uniform that had lots of stars and stripes and bling. His directions were perfect.

Perhaps this is why attendance at Malice was down this year? Perhaps some no-shows are still wandering, lost and hopeless, up and down and around Washington.

Women of Mystery Meet Ellery Queen

2008-05-06T10:25:00.005-04:00

Welcome to Two Sentence Tuesday.

We are proud to announce that Women of Mystery contributor Meredith Anthony has a story “Murder on the Main Line” in the July issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

This is the second month in a row that a member of Sisters in Crime New York Tri-State Chapter has been represented in Ellery Queen. As you may recall, Meredith Cole had the honor in June with her story “Exercise is Murder.” Do I see a trend?

Here are two lines from “Murder on the Main Line,” which I read on Sunday.

Bitsy’s hyperaware senses, as tuned as a cat’s, were on full alert. But even so, she almost missed the arrival of Luke and presumably Aaron late that night.

And here are two lines I wrote this week.

“Someone mentioned to me that it was far more likely that Vi’s extracurricular activities were the cause of her death." So much for my despising gossip, here I was quoting Calysta as if she was the Guttenberg bible.

So let’s have it, ladies and gentlemen. What did you read? What did you write?

Terrie

Home in the Rockies – My Town Monday with a Mystery Twist

2008-05-05T00:12:00.010-04:00

"New" mystery novelist, Beth Groundwater lives where I’d like to: Colorado Springs. What a breath-taking place! (Not just because of the high altitude.) That area of Colorado looks like God’s creative laboratory – filled with massive swaths of experimental mountains – some are sky-high murderous slices of stone split apart; others are gigantic boulders strewn about the land; and still others look like dribble castles where titans hide. One location after another, each appearing totally alien to the next. Travel a few miles and you’re in the Garden of the Gods. Then head for Manitou Springs. Estes Park, anyone? What a setting for a mystery!

Beth’s Colorado based mystery, A REAL BASKET CASE, won broad attention as an Agatha Award Finalist for Best First Novel. In this up-and-coming series, the amateur sleuth makes baskets and fills them with native-based elements: turkey feathers, wildflower honey, blue cornbread and a teasingly dangerous “Scorned Woman” salsa/hot sauce mouth-burner. Can you taste the setting? Need a glug of beer or some of Colorado’s carrot-apple juice with protein powder to restore your lost electrolytes? Beth’s got them all close at hand.

The sleuth’s home is nestled among scrub oak and ponderosa pine. Beth uses that setting to capture examine her protagonist’s mood. “A squirrel scampered along the rail of the redwood deck. The creature seemed to know what direction to take – unlike herself.”

After the sleuth witnesses a climber falling to his death in the Garden of the Gods, the vision haunts her like a foreshadowing of her fate. Cruel and absurdly cool.

I plan to revisit Colorado Springs often, with Beth’s help. Care to join me?

(Thanks to Travis Erwin for inventing this opportunity to wallow in settings. To read more, link to Travis’s blog: http://www.traviserwin.blogspot.com/.)

Free Comic Book Day!

2008-05-03T11:25:00.003-04:00

Tying all the strands together with this macabre playing card by a comic publisher? Priceless.

I know this might not be your cuppa Frappachailatte, but there are free comics being given out across the nation today in the thousands. There are usually tons of titles available, both new and established. And you don't even have to be deserving! Tell your immature (or graphic-appreciative) friends and kids you like today.

Here's the FCBD website with a store locator. I will be toodling out to The Phoenix in Scarsdale to see what choice morsels are available.

In other odd news, playing cards with the faces of missing and murdered New Yorkers are being distributed in jails as a new way to collect leads. Per Fark, "Oh yeah, I killed the 8 of clubs. You can stop searching now."

A Note on Networking at Malice

2008-05-02T15:27:00.007-04:00

This is a tidbit on getting some publication momentum by scoring a review from a famous mystery writer. If I can do it, so can you!

I'm just back to earth from the Malice Domestic Conference in D.C. As an Agatha Award nominee for Best Short Story, I found myself for a brief moment in the company of Peter Lovesey, the Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. This was planned on my part, devious gal that I am... We swapped email messages prior to Malice. Putting on my cheeky alter-ego persona, I had asked if he would care to read my short story. He was, as I suspected, a gentleman. Yes, came the answer. I sent him my story in a WORD attachment, post haste.

He replied with a comment that I'd like to tattoo on my chest - maybe my forearm for easier reading. At any rate, this is what he wrote:

"Delicious story, Nan. Sharp, witty dialogue, sparky characters and a neatly turned plot. In fairness I must see the others before casting my vote, but yours sets a high standard. Thanks for letting me have this preview. And good luck with it!
~ Peter"

Can you hear me dancing now? Tapping away! I am the proud owner of a credible endorsement of my ability to write. From his lips to an editor or agent's ears! Now to use it in my query letters. (Tee, hee, hee!)

My point? You can make connections for yourself. You don't have to be born under the right stars or happen to save some editor's cat from becoming road kill. Go to conferences. Do your homework and find a Significant Writer who will be at the conference - someone with whom you share some common ground. Have a short story or a few pages that you can offer to send via email, or establish a pitch that works in a crowded gathering. Just be polite. Accomplished writers can turn out to be very approachable. They remember the pain of finding a publisher and/or an agent. And, they can always say "Sorry" if they're not interested.

In the spirit of fair play, I said I would keep Peter's appraisal secret until after the Malice voting. I didn't want to turn the competition into a political-style campaign. Had no desire to sway any votes, except by the merits of my story. I hoped to hear if the story worked for him. And, boy were his comments ever welcomed!

Hope this helps you make some connections and leads to some quotable gold!

Sorry Darling, Must Dash. Ta Ta....

2008-05-02T08:11:00.027-04:00

Maybe it's a leap, but this water-skiing squirrel reminds me of the busy mobile professional I used to be, assisted by bluetooth, wireless, cable, and cellular. I'm not quite a technophobe now, but I did figure out that spending all day juggling twelve things simultaneously keeps me from sleeping at night.

I'm sure I'm not the first. Oprah's bound to have had guest speakers on the subject. But...duh...it's only just occurred to me that bedtime is the only time my brain isn't otherwise occupied. So - because I haven't yet entirely fried them - my brain cells work double time to squeeze out a couple of epiphanies before I succumb to slumber. Which I never do, of course, because epiphanies are way too exciting. (I should have known it was Colonel Mustard. The candlestick's in his camera bag....)

To wean myself off Ambien, I've resolved to do one thing at a time and keep head-noise to a minimum. No more turning pages while eating lunch. I've tossed the headphones. Shut off the phone. Walk right past my silent PC on the way to bed. On my hour-long commutes by car, I no longer listen to Mozart's Requiem. Nor to audio books and Garrison Keillor. Instead I let my mind wander, and wander it does.

The only problem - a significant one - is that my memory's shot. How to record stunning revelations doing 75 on the Thruway?

While I confess to having written the occasional note on the back of an envelope (I now welcome traffic jams) I've been trying to figure out a safer way to recall brainstorms. Which brings me right back to technology. Get a recorder, friends enthuse. With Dragon Naturally Speaking you can digitize your musings. Voice-write entire manuscripts.

Forget that. Characters continue to live in my keyboard. But since plot twists come at desperately inconvenient moments - in the wee hours and on wheels - I've done two things. For those middle-of-the-night ponderings, I put a notebook and pen under the bed. For the car, I use Jott with my cell phone (yes, with headset) to send myself text emails of my own, spoken, ideas. Yeah, yeah, I'm still an egghead.

Jott's free. Conversion to text is spookily accurate. I can speed-dial Jott's toll-free number, discuss my inspirations, and get a near-perfect text version by email. (See The Washington Post or Network World.)

I suppose that talking to myself while driving - even with the headset, officer - makes two things I'm doing at once. But then, I never could keep a resolution.

- Lois

The Long Haul

2008-05-01T19:12:00.000-04:00

The other night, I was talking to someone about my frustration with my current WIP. It's now just about 68k long. Plenty long enough for a mystery (especially since there are a good 4k worth of spots where my manuscript currently says things like "TRANSITION" or "DESCRIPTION"), but nowhere near the 85k it needs to be as standalone romantic suspense. And yet, it's not finished, and it's too long to be category-length even if it were.

Here's the problem: I'm tired of writing this story. I like the characters, I'm still excited by them and their predicaments, but I'm ready to be working on something else. Usually, I can control my ADD, but at this point every word is a fight. The thing is, I'm too close to the end to give up now and go work on something else. I have to finish it, then put it away for a bit while I work on something else, then come back to it. I know that's the only way I can make this work.

What do you do when the story stalls? When your characters rebel and tell you they don't feel like coming out to play? When turning on the computer irritates you?

Criminally Brief

2008-05-01T08:35:00.007-04:00

Just a short note to tell you about last night. I went to the Mystery Writers of America Agents and Editor’s Cocktail Party. I was planning to meet my pal and fellow Sister in Crime, Anne Marie Sutton. Even before I found Anne Marie, I ran smack dab into Cheryl Solimini, an old friend from Sleuthfest 2006. Cheryl’s mystery novel, Across the River, won Deadly Ink’s Best Mystery Award and will be released by DI Press on June 24th. I can’t wait to read it since I am so familiar with the New Jersey geography that is central to the story. You know I’ll be telling you more as soon as I get my hands on a copy.

The Women of Mystery blog was well represented. It’s always super terrific to see Laura, Clare and Catherine in person and not just on the blog.

I turned away from a serving tray and there he was, the inimitable James Lincoln Warren from the Criminal Brief blog. James introduced me to Angela Zeman, a former Criminal Briefer, whose blog entries I much enjoyed. If you love reading or writing short stories, you should visit Criminal Brief. The eclectic mix of writers talking about the craft frequently sets my mind a-whirling. And that's always a good thing.

And yes, I did manage to pitch and collect a few business cards, but for me, talking with these friends made the evening a grand and glorious time.

Terrie

Two Sentence Tuesday

2008-04-29T11:23:00.003-04:00

These two sentences are from a book I am currently reading, Drop Shot by Harlan Coben. If you haven’t read any of his work you should take a look. Coben combines humor and mystery in a very unique style, and with sports thrown in, how can the reader lose?

“What’s-her-name was Jessica, which Esperanza knew very well. Esperanza did not care much for the love of Myron’s life.”

This week I wrote these two sentences in a short story:

“But time has its way of adjusting your take on things. After a couple of years inside, I picked up a routine.”

We have a brand new blogger participating in Two Sentence Tuesday, stop on over and say hi to Huddlekay.

Anyone out there got some great lines to share? We wanna see 'em!

Terrie

MTM: City Island, The Bronx, New York

2008-04-28T00:26:00.007-04:00

I often boast that I was born and raised in The Bronx, the only one of New York City’s five boroughs to actually be part of the mainland of the United States of America. To a kid in the 1950s that was very important because when The Bomb was dropped on New York City, we wouldn’t have to cross any bridges to reach the safety of Middle America. I was sure that my cousins in Brooklyn would be goners, while we Bronxites would just walk until we reached a cornfield somewhere. We kids knew all about The Bomb because in those days families watched the evening news together and world events were common dinner table conversation.

My beloved Bronx is home to the New York Yankees, home to the oldest Municipal Golf Course in the United States, located in Van Cortlandt Park , and home to tiny City Island, only a mile and a half long, and barely a half mile wide. The Island is surrounded by the waters of the Long Island Sound and Eastchester Bay and is connected to the rest of the Bronx by the one road out, one road in, City Island Bridge.

Originally inhabited by the Siwanoy Indians, City Island was first established as an English settlement in 1685. Since it was in a perfect location on the route schooners traveled between Manhattan and New England, the Island became an important ship building and yachting center.

World Wars One and Two brought about a necessary switch to the construction of submarine chasers, P. T. Boats, landing crafts, tugs, and mine sweepers.

Following World War Two, the Island shipyards began constructing pleasure craft once again, including 12-meter sloops that became increasingly popular, especially in yacht racing. Several America’s Cup entrants were built on City Island, including the 1977 contenders the Independence, the Enterprise, and the 1977 winner, the Courageous skippered by Ted Turner.

Today, the presence of yacht clubs, sailing schools, sail makers, marinas, fishing boats, and marine supply and repair shops reflect City Island's historic role as a nautical community. City Island Avenue is lined with antique shops and sea food restaurants. There are no hotels or motels but Le Refuge Inn is a very elegant French Inn and Restaurant located in a nineteenth century sea captain’s house.

I am always surprised at how many New Yorkers have never been to City Island. When I can, I drag them on the grand tour and usually wind up at the Lobster House . To see some of the wonderful views that bring diners back time and again, click here.

My personal favorite place to eat is an old coffee house turned restaurant called the Black Whale where I brunch with my old friends from high school a few times a year. We talk about the past, as in “Why did we get detention for that?” the future, as in “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you retire?” Someone always remarks how terrific it is that the City Islanders continue to fight against development, struggling to keep the village atmosphere for generations to come.

Sometime this Spring, my oldest grand daughter will be going to City Island with her first digital camera and will probably take pictures in the same niches where I took them when I got my first Brownie camera fifty-three years ago. Hopefully, she won’t cut off nearly as many heads as I did.

For a quick trip around the world via My Town Monday links, please visit Travis Erwin’s blog, where it all began.

Terrie

What's Not To Love?

2008-04-26T11:08:00.005-04:00

Clare's post yesterday on the various kerfluffles around the writing world got me thinking about two strains of chatter I have seen in the past week.

First, there are numerous blogs participating in a project started by Patti Abbott wherein blog authors use Fridays to recommend books. Says Patti, "I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next."

On the other hand, there seems to be quite a bit of chatter about what turns readers off. On one reader forum I belong to, the moderator posted a poll asking about bad editing in published books [membership in Delphi forums required]. Here are the options:
• It makes me mad, but what can you do?
• It makes me mad, and I'm going to write to the publishers.
• It makes me so mad, it's putting me off buying books from the worst offenders.
• Other (specify).

At the moment, there's a 60-40 split between "what can you do" and "not buying books from the worst offenders." (If you feel like answering this yourself in the comments, I'll be happy to pass along your comments.)

At the same time, a conversation began in a romance readers forum at LibraryThing about "wallbangers", i.e., books so bad you throw them against the wall. These appalling books range from books with horrendous plots or dialogue, to those with factual errors, to...well, you name it.

In both of these discussions, a good number of people have been turned off entire bodies of work--either they won't read anything written by an author or anything published by a certain publisher. As a writer, I find this both encouraging and frightening.

On the scary side, what if I accidentally publish with one of those publishers people refuse to read? What if I make a mistake and am shunned forever for it? But I can control those things. I research publishers, and the list of those who publish my kind of work who I'd work with is comparatively short. (Compared to what, you ask? Compared to the list of publishers of genre fiction overall.)

As it happens, the ever-helpful Victoria Strauss has a post today on researching small presses. One thing she mentions only in passing, but I would emphasize, is actually reading books published by the press in question. That's usually the first thing I do. And I evaluate every aspect of a small press book if I am considering them as a viable publishing option-- not just the contents, but the price, the design, the paper quality. I am a consumer of books in both the literal and figurative sense and I don't want to put my own work out in a way that doesn't please other readers.

As for the factual stuff turning off readers, well, luckily, research is something I enjoy (witness all the years I spent in school getting useless advanced degrees). Some things I will, inevitably, get wrong, especially in the law enforcement arena, but I hope I won't make the glaring kind of errors people are talking about in these threads.

But I find all these discussions--not just "don't forget about these great books," but also "these books are so awful they left dents in my wall on the way to the trash"--encouraging. They mean that readers are still passionate. Some people, at least, are involved enough in what they read to be both enthusiastic about books they love and angry about books that aren't what they should be.

All that, I think, bodes well for the future of genre fiction, in whatever form it may come to be distributed.

While the Kittens are at Malice...

2008-04-25T13:47:00.006-04:00

Sproing! If all's gone according to plan, two of our WoM, Nan and Elaine, will soon be arriving in the D.C. metro area. There, they'll be feted with malice aforethought for three days, and we expect succulent morsels of still-steaming dish served promptly upon their return. We also wish them a wonderful time, and to Nan, fingers crossed for the Agatha award! Since our ranks have been thinner as of late, I've been taking the mouse's chance to post, boing, post. It can't last.

All the recent conference activity (mystery, comic-sff, romantic) in turn spins off lots of spirited blogtalk about the states of the industry from various angles. Combine that with recent kerfuffles, first spawned online, re: plagiarism and reviews, and lots of questions have been raised recently about civility and collegiality across genres and cyberspace itself. I don't claim to have the answers, but there are more raw and funny opinions you may enjoy reading while coming to your own conclusions.

Nancy Martin of The Lipstick Chronicles enjoyed the recently-held Romantic Times in Pittsburgh, but behavior from attendees and exhibitors got beyond some folks's comfort range. As a prime example, some of the gentlemen models promoting an erotica line seem to have become 'handsy' in old parlance, creating consternation and issues of accountability. Where's the line between appreciating playful, edgy marketing and needing to get yourself steam-cleaned? Aside from her notes about hand sanitizer, Nancy makes fascinating observations about the different ways she saw readers connecting with books (the news ain't all bad!) and the way romance is growing its new generation of fans. Interesting stuff with wider application, I think.

Richard K. Morgan wrote a commissioned piece about the vitriol in the speculative fiction community that was so negative, he says, the man paying didn't want to run it. So he posted "Sound and Fury, Signifying...?" on his blog. If you don't know or care about the difference between mundane scifi and space opera, for example, feel free to insert any other warring sub-genres of your choice as you read. Now, I think Morgan would disagree with this last suggestion, as he claims that the world of mystery is eminently more civil than sff. Well maybe, and maybe it is the average age of the writers and readership at work. However, I think he grants the crime fiction crowd too many laurels when he writes:

...you don't get this gnawing, mutilative thread of self-hatred, this bulemic purging of whole sub-genres or readership sub-sections as somehow unworthy. A quick trawl through a couple of dozen crime writer websites and messageboards reveals no agendas or dogme-style utterances, no towering rages or griping about how the genre's going to shit these days, how there's all this generic pap being published, how this strain of crime writing is so much more valid than this other strain...

I quickly found this interview with legendary publisher/agent/bookseller Otto Penzler on Evil E, where he does take shots, as is his wont, at the so-called cat mysteries. He's known for it, but he's not alone. The books involving animals centrally, especially as crimefighters their furry selves, are extremely beloved and also widely mocked and reviled. Noir versus Meow- you can easily locate that snarking once your own antenna's hoisted. Perhaps this dispute is milder than ones in sff, but there are plenty of writers of "gritty, dark" fiction (and I've written some myself) who hold what's "cozy" in contempt. Lots of the cozy readers and writers feel disaffected and unwanted, and resent being pushed into ever darker stories as if it weren't okay to like what they like.

I'm a jukebox that plays all the songs from time to time, and believe more graphic violence and less-redeeming characters do not necessarily equate to elevated quality in the writing or storytelling. Careless writers toss in expletives and savagery without humanity, assuming their blue-streaked dialogue sings like Leonard's can and that readers intrinsically care for any thug or thugette they meet. Well, no. Even other thugs cross the street from certain crazies and death-bound baddies. Fans of the grimmest stuff are mostly quite nice, but getting readers over instinctive urges to cut bait with these losers is part of what makes the great writers of bleakness so satisfying to read. When they're not as good, repulsion and fatigue win for me. But, aside from that aside, I think this kind of internecine fragmentation happens any time someone likes mild versus hot salsa, for example, and doesn't much feel like they need improving simply because of their preferences.

The online world of free opinion sometimes seems less like a great party and more like an arena. There are times you want to change conversations or even grab your coat, preferably of rhinoceros hide. How you respond isn't really anyone else's purview, and depends on how you yourself are wired. You may decide finally to walk away, concentrate on your writing as best you can, and stay out of the scrum. Fair enough. You might also decide to join in with gusto and glee, irony as your Kevlar. For myself, I still find it all more exciting and amusing than awful, and as long as I do, I'm glad to have a front-row seat for whatever's Next.
Boing!

Something New for Writers and Readers

2008-04-23T12:16:00.005-04:00

Do you like audio books? Do you like short stories? Hello, have I got something for you!

Head on over to Sniplits. Subtitled Audio Shorts 2 Go, Sniplits offers audio short stories in a variety of genres and lengths. As described on the website’s About page:

Unlike audiobooks that can take hours to finish, these stories take just a snip of time. They are the perfect pack-and-go entertainment for just about any pause in your day. A 10-minute story might be just what you need for a coffee break, while a two-minute story might make that wait in line at the bank’s drive through a little easier to take. How about a 20-minute story for your lunch break, or a 40-minute story to get you through your dental appointment.

After joining Sniplits (which is easy, quick, and free), you can search for stories by author, length, or genre. The stories are inexpensive, costing 48 cents for pieces less than five minutes long and 88 cents for anything over five minutes, including stories over an hour long. Once you purchase a story, you can save it in your library or download it to any device capable of playing digital music. Compatibility shouldn’t be an issue because the stories are all published DRM-free. Even better, each story can be downloaded to 10 different devices—and they don’t all have to be yours. So if you really love a certain story (for example, something you wrote yourself), you can share it with friends.

The website is new—in fact, it’s still in a beta version―but a fair number of stories are already available. They’re divided into the following genres:

Literary, mainstream
Adventure, travel, sports
Humor
Horror, spinetinglers
Period pieces, historical fiction
Mystery, crime, PI
Romance
Speculative, sci fi, fantasy, myth
Suspense, thriller
Western
Tweens2teens

If you’re a writer, Sniplits is an interesting new market well worth considering. If you hate your voice, don’t fear—stories are submitted in written form and Sniplits hires professionals to read them.

Sniplits is currently looking for “beach reads” of between 100 and 8,000 words. For the details and submission guidelines, see the website’s Authors Room page.

KHAN!!!!!! A 2-sentence Postscript.

2008-04-22T11:19:00.008-04:00

I forgot to include this great picture which shows (again) how widely graphics are being used, but I couldn't stand thinking about hashing around the original long and mangled post. So, here's a rack of philosophical, historical works in graphic form from the For Beginners book series.

P.P.S. Faked you out with that 2-sentence stuff, didn't I?

P.P.P.S. We shall see...

UPDATE: What the heck? Here they are. I read:
She was her Staten Island cottage, the shining bay, the sailing ships, a sanctuary from the sense-numbing city. Imagine unlacing her every night. - The Midnight Band of Mercy by Michael Blaine.

I wrote: There wasn’t a flexible-enough cover identity, except possibly as an especially naive journalist or NGO staffer, which each had limitations. No one but a minister would drag his wife to these places, which left Franklyn the role of someone’s girlfriend, a status too often translated in locals’ minds to being the Westerners' whore.

Please share any two you read and wrote in the comments, or let us know where they're posted so we can provide the link.

Travis Erwin's inspirational and whitewashed twos.

Britta Coleman likes to post her 2x2s on Thursdays. A sweet one.

KHAN!!!!!! Wait, I mean Con

2008-04-21T23:59:00.004-04:00

Star Trek Inspirational Posters found here.

Sure I don't live in Manhattan anymore, even if I'm darned close, and sure it's really Tuesday at this moment, but I've always been broad-minded about My Town Mondays.

This weekend was the 3rd Annual NY Comic-Con (vention). I've been to all three and it's ballooned in size and scope every year. While things keep improving, other problems of scale arise and need tweaking. After such a short run, that this is already the second largest event after Comic Con Int'l in San Diego shows that the East Coast was hungry for its own local venue. Sensible, too, since so much of the publishing is in NYC.

Sorry for the delay in posting, but Blogger's been more evil and obstreperous handling pictures than usual, which is really saying something. The order and shape will have to stay what it is (click to enlarge) and I'll notate around the edges. Yuck.

Above- The Javitz Center indeed has a soaring atrium and many kinds of other merchandise, like this case of figurines, are on display besides comics books and graphic novels. There's statuary; toys in both vinyl and plush; clothing and thematic accessories; non-picture books; lots of original artwork; games on boards, cards, and video; and exhibits from not only from 2-D producers but studios like Disney and Nickelodeon and SciFi who screened piles of related previews and trailers. Don't forget the funnel cakes.

The 2 top pics in the group above show the main problem in this year's show. The mob scene between cement walls is not the exhibition hall, which was, for the first time, a room large enough to walk in wide aisles without getting poked by horns and light sabers all the time. (Yay!) However, the downstairs hall where the panels were presented, including popular media previews, had no flow and inadequate capacity. A set of escalators leads to and from it from above, and the pic with the shiny tile floor is THE LINE FOR THE ESCALATOR simply to get into the mob! I didn't see a single panel, because of the schooling crowds that blockaded every inch of floor space. The media shows should be in a large, open access amphitheater set-up. On the biggest day, Saturday, it was disappointing not to get to attend any of the discussions or presentations. However, last year the capacity was lean enough they sold out of tickets, and lots of traveling attendeed couldn't even get in. So this is improvement. Also above is the quintessential comic dealer set-up, boxes with issues in plastic sleeves for browsing. There are fewer of these type of booths than you'd imagine, fewer than the first years. I think. It's more about the splashy spectacle now.

The last of this chunk above is a truly sad sight to educate any writer. WARNING: RANT FOLLOWS. See that tiny table on the blue carpet in the image's center? The one with a few books that's slapped against the back of another, much grander booth? Whoever the publisher, they set up a space with signing slots in this lousy spot, and the dispirited author was spending his hour just sitting there, slouched so far back you can't see him in my picture. I almost went back at least to examine his book out of pity, but frankly, there was plenty of traffic (as you can see) walking that row if he'd come out from behind the table! Stopped waiting for people to approach him! The place incites sensory overload, but... Meet the other exhibitors in your row. Most people working in the field are also fans. They may buy a book, send people your way, or at least help you pass the time in bonhomie. Meet attendees! Ask them how the day's going, what they've seen so far that's cool, whether it's their first con, etc. Regular people like having interest shown in them, just like authors do : ) And they may even buy your book or tell a friend who will. It takes energy to be outgoing, but at an event like this (especially if your slot's only a hour or so), enthusiasm teems in the candy-colored oxygen supply. Don't just mope and liquify, feeling bad about your admittedly horrible placement and pathetic display. Time's a wastin' while potential readers flit by. If you wrote the book, you're part of the product and more potentially compelling than any long table, pleated draping, banner, or vertical shelving unit!

The scene has echoes of Mardi Gras and elaborate tailgating parties. You'll notice lots and lots of costumed people and become inured to them. This year (also a yay), security was way less draconian about the 'weapons' people had with them. How you gonna make Gandalf give up his staff? Some of the outfits are very professional, some are more home-grown, but cosplayers and civvies are all cavorting together. Even the non-costumed tend to wear gear that proclaims their superheroic or thematic allegiances. It's a colorful, good-natured scene, polite and pleasant despite the apparently horrible and martial characters that populate it. Most of the costumed are not only happy, but positively eager, to have their pictures taken. Above left, the X-Men Women had just finished taking pictures with the excited girl CatWoman, if that's how to phrase it. Bad news for all the scantily costumed: Next year's con is in early Feb. again, and the coat check issues were myriad during the last winter event.

Of course, no convention's complete without Stormtroopers. Trust me on this. Half of this pair, once the helmet was off, was revealed to be a 30-ish woman with a chestnut bob and granny glasses who would've looked right at home behind any circulation desk. Cons Rock!

Update: Signet Fires Cassie Edwards Over Plagiarism Scandal

2008-04-21T11:31:00.006-04:00

We didn't spend a lot of time on the Cassie Edwards scandal here, although Elaine did have a very timely post on the subject of plagiarism in novels. But this is just a quick update for those of you who might be interested. Signet let Cassie Edwards go, reverting all the rights they owned back to her. (You can find the whole, pathetic story in the right sidebar of the Smart Bitches blog.)

And tune in later today for a wonderfully bizarre My Town Monday from Clare, who spent the weekend at the Comic convention.

The Politics of Reviews

2008-04-18T20:30:00.006-04:00

I never think twice about reviewing a product. Want to know what I think of my Honda Hybrid? I love it. Want to know what how the pistol-grip Dremel works? It doesn't. But books are something else entirely. Reviewing a book is hard for me because I really hate to hurt people's feelings and I know that even people who write really, really bad books work hard at them and send them off into the world believing they are wonderful.

On the other hand, if a book is chock full of ghastly grammar, plodding plotlines or atrocious alliteration, shouldn't other readers be warned before plunking down their money?

You may (or may not, depending on what loops you are on) have heard the bruhaha about a certain author who went so far as to track down the personal information (name, address, family names, etc) of a woman who gave her book a mere three star review on Amazon. That's after chastising the reviewer in the comments section of the review and recruiting people to vote that the review (three stars, remember, not one) be removed as abusive. And there are other authors, rather famous ones, in fact, who are also known to "game the system" by having friends go in and post 5-star reviews whenever negative reviews pop up.

I rarely read Amazon reviews because for the most part I find them utterly useless. Unless I am trying to get a plot summary, of course, in which case, there's always back matter masquerading as a review by "Harriet Klausner." I do read Janice Harayda's One Minute Book Reviews, though she mostly doesn't review genre fiction, so I rarely read the books she examines. She does, however, do wonderful children's book reviews on Saturdays, where I collect present ideas for my various nieces and nephews.

John Connolly said something about reviews that's stuck with me now for over two years:

I can’t remember the good things that were said about my books because, in some deep, dark place inside of me, I didn’t quite believe them and so they didn’t stick in my memory. I can, by contrast, probably recite sections of the bad reviews verbatim. They stung because in another deep, dark place inside of me, I believed that they might be true.
(March, 2006--as with most things he writes, the whole post is worth reading, especially the chunk on bland reviews and internet reviewing)

So today, as I was about to add a book to my LibraryThing library and give it a mere three stars, which--for this author--would be a decidedly low mark from me, I started to wonder about whether that author had a LT account, and whether she'd be upset. I still think the book deserves three stars because it's part of a series, and there's far too much focus on stuff that happened earlier in the series, but now I feel a bit awkward. After all, I read Tess Gerritsen's posts about how upsetting she finds bad reviews.

What about you guys? Do you read reviews? Write them? Would getting a negative review upset you more if it were "this book sucks" or if it went into detail about the problems? Is "what a fab book" sufficient praise, or would you prefer more specific compliments?

UPDATE: People asked about the original story for of the Amazon fight, and Dear Author has conveniently posted a timeline.

Speaking of Poetry

2008-04-17T08:34:00.004-04:00

Remainder image from here.

As we've recently been discussing poetry, haikus specifically, I was inspired to post this to which I was recently introduced via John Scalzi's blog. The poet is the prolific and witty Clive James, and more of his poetry's here. If you're not familiar with the concept of remaindered books, a definition of these publisher's sad clowns is here. If you are familiar, just sit back in the ample schadenfreude he casts and enjoy.

The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys
The sinker, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of moveable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.

Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the blare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyart with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretense,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots--
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
"My boobs will give everyone hours of fun".

Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error--
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.

Clive James

The Haiku of Discipline

2008-04-16T00:16:00.003-04:00

*Thanks for the title, Claire2e.

I’ve been having fun with my writing lately. I’ve been testing out different genres plus playing around with different forms. No question, the umbrella category of mystery/thriller/suspense will always be my favorite, and I seem to derive the most satisfaction from novels, both in reading and writing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like anything else. In addition to preventing burnout, taking occasional breaks from spending all my writing time on my mystery novel reinforces my decisions to write a novel and to write a mystery. It also allows me to learn new things or practice skills that benefit my regular writing.

One of the formats I’ve been playing with is micro fiction. A type of short story, micro fiction has 100 words or less. It sounds easy. After all, who can’t write a story of just 100 words? Well, it’s not easy; it’s dang hard. Plus, I’ve been entering my creations in a weekly contest that requires exactly 99 words―no more, no less. That’s even harder.

But the results have been worth the hair I’ve pulled out. I’ve always been able to write newspaper, magazine, and newsletter articles to fill a certain amount of space. I majored in journalism in college and spent my first several post-graduation years as a newspaper reporter. But fiction has been different. Compared to my nonfiction writing, my fiction writing has been extremely undisciplined. I always just . . . wrote.

Practicing writing toward a specific low word goal can help tame undisciplined writing. Try it. Think of a story, write the first draft, and then trim it down and fill it out to your desired low word count, correcting any typos and grammatical problems. At the same time, keep a good balance of dialogue, action, and description, plus—and even more important―convey a complete story. For some good examples of micro fiction, see here.

Poetry is also good for learning or practicing discipline. Some forms have very specific requirements. For instance, haiku generally consists of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Traditionally, the first line should establish the situation, the second should convey the action, and the third should describe the result, but most people just aim to hit the syllable count. For some classic funny examples, see here.

Micro fiction and haiku are just two types of writing that can help develop discipline. Many others also exist. See what strikes your fancy. You can learn new types of writing, hone your skills, and have fun all at the same time.

Two Sentence Tuesday

2008-04-15T10:47:00.006-04:00

Tuesday is here again and once again I have very little written. But here are two sentences I wrote this week:

"F.I.T.--the Fashion Institute--is just a few blocks down from here, and there are manufacturers and designers as well as students, professors, shopkeepers…all people who don’t keep nine-to-five schedules. And they all smoke, so they have to stand out on the street for at least ten minutes every couple hours."

I rarely--really rarely--review books, but LibraryThing has an "early reviewers" program, so I signed up to see whether I could get a copy of A Dog Among Diplomats by J.F. Englert a while back. The book intrigued me, but it's so far from the kind of thing I would normally read that I wasn't sure I'd buy it. I got my copy yesterday, and here are the first two lines:

It's not every day that a young man clad only in boxer shorts embossed with red hearts dies beneath an opened parachute in a small third-floor room in one of New York's last boardinghouses. It's even rarer that a visual artist, the owner of a Labrador retriever equipped with a generous belly, a fine mind and and admirable temperament, is called to the scene by the local police department before the body is even cold.

Looks like fun, eh?

If you want to post two sentences on your own blog, just put a comment here and we'll update the post with links!

This week, check out:

Travis Erwin's two sentences
Britta Coleman's two sentences