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Are you a good copyeditor?

by Donna Andrews

I'm not, so thank goodness for people who are.

Last week, the copyedited manuscript of The Good, the Bad, and the Emus landed on my doorstep.  The copyedit is the next-to-last time the writer sees the book before it goes to print--there's still the typeset galley to come--and for most of us, opening the fat envelope containing the marked up manuscript is one of the most stressful moments of the publication process.  (These days, sometimes the writer opens up an electronic copy of the manuscript, in which the copyeditor has marked his or her corrections using the track changes feature, but for the time being Minotaur is still sending hard copy, and I'm happy they do.)

Sometimes you hold your breath as you flip through the pages, wondering what the publishing gods have given you this time.  A stern but wise copyeditor who methodically corrects your mistakes and firmly but gently queries you about the improbabilities and inconsistencies? A do-nothing copyeditor who marks all the M-dashes and doesn't even catch typos that leap off the page at you? An overzealous copyeditor who tries to change colloquial dialogue into stilted, formal academic English? Or, worst of all, a copyeditor who seems to be a frustrated writer, interested not in perfecting your book but in rewriting it in his or her own style.  I've had all of those.  I've had the copyedit so bad I seriously thought of having a rubber stamp made that set simply, in tiny letters, "stet." Which is Latin for "let it stand," and is the word we writers use when we want to indicate that no, we don't agree with that particular change. (Some of us have been known to write "stet!!" or even "stet, dammit!" when confronted with particularly egregious changes.)

To my relief, this copyeditor seems sane and meticulous.  As I leaf through the pages, it appears that my biggest sin as a writer is not knowing which compound terms should be spelled solid, as a single word; which should be hyphenated; and which should be two separate words. 

I also carelessly confuse commas and periods more often than I'd expect.  Some of it arises from the fact that their keys are adjacent on the keyboard.  And others, I can tell, happened when I add or delete a dialogue tag.  Changing "Yes," he said to simply "Yes," without also changing the comma to a period.

I love learning things from my copyedits.  For example, that there is an accent on the second a in Galapagos, though I have no idea how to make it show up here.

I'm pretty happy with this copyedit. I won't get any new copyediting horror stories out of it to share with writer friends around the virtual campfire.  I'll have to stick to the old ones.

Like the the copyeditor who, in Murder with Peacocks, made an editorial note in the margin saying something like "Why are all these brides having outdoor weddings in the south?  And wearing velvet?"

The copyeditor who changed a line of dialogue in which Michael, my heroine's husband, said something like "Not something I'd ever thought of."  She changed it to "Not something of which I'd ever thought." And wrote in the margin, something like "Michael is a professor! Surely he would say this!" I wrote "stet" beside her change, and wrote, beneath her comment, "Yes, but he's not a pedant.  Colloquial usage."

I've had a copyeditor who read a passage that said "I must have told him that at least a million times" and told me how unlikely it was that Meg could really have done so.  Hello? Hyperbole, anyone?  A copyeditor who had never heard of--and couldn't be bothered to look up--News of the Weird.

The worst copyedit I've ever survived was for You've Got Murder, the first of my Turing Hopper books with Berkley Prime Crime.  In the Turing books, Turing's first person narration sometimes uses present tense, as if we were reading entries in an electronic journal that she is writing as the action happens.  The copyeditor did not seem to like this stylistic decision, and attempted to change every single one of these sections to past tense.  A passage reading something like "Tim and Maude are in danger!  I'm trying to signal them, and they're not answering.  What can I do?" would be changed to "Tim and Maude were in danger.  I was trying to signal them, and they were not answering.  What could I do?" Which completely undermined the effect I was trying, quite deliberately, to achieve.  And to add insult to injury, the copyeditor missed about one in five verbs, resulting in hideously ungrammatical passages. I stetted vigorously.  I probably tore holes in the paper with some of those stets.

I hope I complained to my editor about that copyeditor.  Most copyeditors are freelancers, and sometimes the editors may not realize how good or bad their work is unless the writers make it clear.

Thinking back over the Ghosts of Copyeditors Past, I'm appreciating this one.  Maybe I should have known that it's Allegheny County, Pennsylvania but Alleghany County, Virginia. Or that it's spessartite or spessartine garnets, not spessertine.  But I didn't, and thank goodness he did.  Or knew enough to look them up. When it comes to copyediting, knowing you need to look something up is just as good as knowing it to begin with.

I'll be sending this manuscript back tomorrow just a little cleaner and tighter.  And without any places where I was tempted to say "stet, dammit!" And that makes me happy.

And for all you aspiring copyeditors out there, here's a quiz.  Which is correct--using Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary, The Chicago Manual of Style 16, and The Bedford Handbook for Writers.

1. Race car, race-car, or racecar?

2. Back yard, back-yard, or backyard?

3. Semi retired, semi-retired, or semiretired?

4. Hmph or humph?

5. Back to the states or back to the States?

6. Bird feeders, bird-feeders, or birdfeeders?

7. Wrought iron brackets, wrought-iron brackets, or wroughtiron brackets?

8. Love seat, love-seat, or loveseat?

9. Home made ice cream, home-made ice cream, or homemade ice cream?

10. Non lethal toads, non-lethal toads, or nonlethal toads?

 

 

Femmes Fatales at Boskone

by Dana

Last weekend was Boskone 51; Boskone is the longest-running convention in New England devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and horror.  I've attended a bunch so far, but this was my busiest weekend yet.  Seven panels, a kaffeeklatsch, an autographing, and a reading.  That's a lot to pack into one weekend, and the variety of panel topics (and the discussions among the panelists and the audience) make for a stimulating con.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Above, the "Exploring the Whedonverse" panel.  L-R: Stephen P. Kelner (M), Gillian Daniels, me, Nancy Holder, and Erin Underwood.) 

While it is organized by the New England Science Fiction Association, there's a wide range of topics on genre fiction.  For example, I was on panels about "Doctor Who," Joss Whedon, New England as a setting for weird fiction, and examining what our culture says about comic book characters with disabilities, but I was also on panels about writing mysteries, Sherlock Holmes, and short story writing.  It's one of the coolest things going, crossing genres and taking subjects apart with writers (and readers) from all across the board.  (Below, the short story panel, with Fellow Femmes Fatales Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner (m); Paul Tremblay and I are in back.)

Another great thing about this con is the spirit of creativity.  There's an art show, and even the treats at the receptions are gorgeous and geeky (as well as being very tasty).  For example, here's some of the pastry from the reception:  below, you may recognize the One Ring (complete with high Elvish inscription) on this cupcake.  Most of us steered away from that one...  There were also ravens with skulls, Elvish leaf brooches, and more (from the Jostess Bakery in Medford, MA).

There were a few panels I would have enjoyed attending as an audience member.  The session on Doctor Who and gender sounded wonderful and I would have liked to see the panelists reenacting the scenes from cover art in SF/F and horror books.  I also missed Toni Kelner's (Leigh Perry's) interview with Special Guest Ginjer Buchanan, but since I had the privilege of being on panels with both of them, and Charlaine, I count myself well ahead of the game!

As seems to be traditional with Boskone, there was a blizzard.  Here's a view from the panel-room floor.  In keeping with the SF theme, I decided to call it “Hothkone.”  Here's looking forward to next year, and hoping we cheat the winter again!

 

 

 

Dead Wrong

Today, the Femmes Fatales welcome Alan Bradley, author of the enormously popular Flavia de Luce mystery series that began with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  Who's not in love with Flavia, the irrepressible 11-year-old in 1950s England with a passion for chemistry and murder?  A femme fatale if there ever was one!

I first met Alan when we shared the podium at the famous St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Weekend in Oxford, U.K. The topic that year was "Stop, You're Killing Me: Humor in Crime Fiction."  Alan gave a hysterical talk entitled "The Undertaker's Jest Book; or, I Want Some Red Roses for a Blue Lady," which had the audience in stitches even as it examined the close relationship between tragedy and humor.  I've been an Alan Bradley (and Flavia de Luce) fan ever since. -- Marcia

photo by Jeff Bassett, the National Post

If you’re anything like me, you spend your days and nights digging through ancient volumes and trolling the Internet to find out whether the ancient Greeks used trumpets (those of us who are old enough know, because of Cecil B. DeMille, that the Romans did, but did the Greeks? The answer is ‘yes,’ and it was called the salpinx); or whether early Eskimos used eye-liner, as did the dynastic Egyptians (yes, but only in the form of soot smeared inside sun goggles made of ivory, bone or elk antler); or whether poison ivy was ever grown in England.

Having ferreted out the facts, there will always come a day of reckoning by that chorus of critics whose sole function in life is to tell you that you are dead wrong, and you will discover that, as Plato said—or should have said—‘No trumpeter plays louder or more persistently than he who plays the false note.’

They will also demand that you confess your error without delay and incorporate their corrections in any and all subsequent editions.

Although there are several schools of thought about how to deal with these communications, they boil down to two: should you attempt to set them straight? Or ignore them?

Like all Libras, I’m a perfectly balanced person: indeed so much so that there are times that I’m completely immobilized, caught on the cusp of decision.

Or indecision.

And so I’ve worked out a way of pleasing everyone, as we Libras spend our entire lives doing.

Nowadays, when I receive one of these accusatory fingers, I’m likely to reply with a prepared response: ‘Thanks for your fascinating communication. Your opinion is valuable to me.’

I do not, however, ask them to stay on the line. There’s little point in arguing outside the pages of a book.

Oh, and about that poison ivy: it was first imported in England from North America in the late 16^th century as an ornamental shrub, but soon (and for obvious reasons) fell into disfavor. However, after a lapse of about 100 years, it began to be grown there again, this time for commercial purposes, such as in the manufacture of boot-blacking and indelible laundry-marking ink.

So there.

I might add that I’m both honored and proud to be asked by Femmes Fatales to make this guest appearance. Since a considerable number of Flavia’s readers are female—and, I should note, to be fair, a considerable number are male—it is as humbling to be offered a brief soapbox here in the same way as it was humbling to win an Agatha Award for the first Flavia novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a femme fatale, and now I know.

Good cheer to everyone here!

Alan

The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches, the sixth of ten projected Flavia de Luce books, was published on January 14^th by Delacorte Books/Random House. The Flavia mysteries have been optioned by producer/director Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions as a TV series for BBC Television, with an air-date of 2015.

How Can You Tell?

HANK:  Sometimes people ask me—did you always know you wanted to be a writer? Well, no, I always knew I wanted to be a—depending on when: cowboy, airline stewardess (this was the 50’s and that’s what they were called) waitress (they got to handle money, have whatever food they wanted and make people happy,) a geneticist, a rock star, a disc jockey, an actress, an English teacher, the lawyer for the mine workers...well, writer and author were never on the list.

However. You know those preference tests we all had to take in high school? When you had to fill in the little ovals and decide—would you rather twirl a fire baton or be a forest ranger?

 

When my scores came back, the guidance counselor told me-“according to this, you scored highest in literature and persuasion.”

She paused, then said “Perhaps you could work in a bookstore. " 

I am not kidding!

And all these years later, I kind of...do.

But Elizabeth Heiter—Femmes, meet Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Femmes, (her debut suspense novel HUNTED is brand new)—says she didn’t have to take no stinkin’ test.

She always knew. And here’s how she still knows.

 

How to Spot a Writer

Elizabeth Heiter

I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer.  And so did everyone else.

The Early Years

Like most kids, I climbed trees, played bike tag, took extracurricular activities after school.  Only I always had a notebook and pen with me.  I’d climb up into a high branch of a tree and write a story.  I’d bike as far and as fast as I could, find a good hiding spot and lay my bike down in the ditch and jot story ideas while the other kids searched for me.  During ski club, when it was too icy or too cold, I’d sit in the lodge and work on my latest novel.

Everyone Is a Potential Character

It quickly became a regular pastime for me to write stories featuring my friends.  Stories with aliens from made-up planets, stories with a friend’s latest crush, stories with side characters featuring truly ridiculous names (the stranger, the better – Bulldozer was one odd favorite of mine).  And, of course, every story needed a good mystery.

Guess Who

Pretty soon, I was getting regular requests for stories, and I realized I should start bringing these characters together.  So, I began writing short murder mysteries, featuring groups of my friends.  It became tradition to read them aloud at the beginning of our Odyssey of the Mind meetings.

Each week, I’d bring a new story, starring a group of friends, and a brand new murder mystery.  Much like my love of odd character names, I liked to find really bizarre ways to kill off a character (for example, being pushed off the roof into a pool of Jell-o, where the character drowned).  I’d read these stories, complete with red herrings and clues, and then I’d have pre-determined spots where I’d pause and make everyone guess who the killer was.

Yep, even back in middle and high school, I was tricking people into giving me beta reads and critiques.  To this day, I ask my early readers to tell me who they suspect at certain points in the story, and why.

It’s No Mystery

It didn’t come as a surprise to anyone I knew growing up that I’d become a novelist.  I use fewer strange character names and I no longer feature people I know in my stories, but I’m still fond of the odd method of murder (the serial killer in my debut buries his victims up to their heads deep in the woods).  I still read my books aloud – these days, to critique groups and to myself, as I’m polishing.  And I still carry a pen and notebook everywhere I go.

These days, you might catch me standing in the middle of a grocery isle, frantically jotting notes for a new book, or at the coffee shop, typing like mad and looking like I’m having way too much fun to be working.

And I probably am!  Writing HUNTED, my suspense about an FBI profiler who learns just how deadly it can be to get inside the heads of killers, was challenging and time-consuming.  It required loads of research and rewrites and restless nights.  But it was also fun, and like the stories before and those to come, it was something I always knew I wanted to do.

How about you?  Were there early signs of the profession you chose?

 ****************************

 ELIZABETH HEITER likes her suspense to feature strong heroines, chilling villains, psychological twists, and a little bit (or a lot!) of romance. Her research has taken her into the minds of serial killers, through murder investigations, and onto the FBI Academy’s shooting range.  She graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English Literature, and she’s a member of International Thriller Writers and Romance Writers of America.   You can visit her at http://www.elizabethheiter.com

HUNTED, Book 1 in the Profiler Series from MIRA Books:

Terror stalks a small Virginia town…

FBI rising star, criminal profiler Evelyn Baine, knows how to think like a serial killer.  But she’s never chased anyone like the Bakersville Burier, who hunts young women and displays them, half-buried, deep in the woods.  As the body count climbs, Evelyn’s relentless pursuit of the killer puts her career – and her life – at risk.  And the evil lurking in the Burier’s mind may be more than even she can unravel.

Terror is closer than she thinks…

The Bakersville Burier knows he’s got an FBI profiler on his trail.  He knows who she is and where to find her.  And he’s biding his time, because he’s planned a special punishment for Evelyn.  She may have tracked other killers, but he vows to make this her last chase. This time it’s her turn to be hunted!


Facebook: [www.facebook.com/elizabeth.heiter.author]www.facebook.com/elizabeth.heiter.author
Twitter: [www.twitter.com/ElizabethHeiter]www.twitter.com/ElizabethHeiter
Hunted Book Trailer:http://www.elizabethheiter.com/video/huntedtrailer.mp4

MUSHY OR NON-MUSHY?

 

from Mary

 

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

Today we celebrate all the reasons we love our Special Ones. Could be because they're especially warm and snuggly ...

 

  

 

or they enjoy the great outdoors, just like you do ...

 

 

or maybe you celebrate that rapturous magic moment of love at first sight, when you knew without a doubt he was The One, just because he had great hair ...

 

 

I planned to review some mysteries with great lovey-dovey romantic story lines. So I'm going through the titles of recent reads, and I'm scrolling ...

... and I'm scrolling .... hmm ...... scroll ... Dang, what is wrong with me ... 

 

But then I realized that, when it comes to romance in books, it's not the overt lovey-dovey I want. What I like is a REAL romance, that is, the interesting relationship that goes through a fire or two and becomes love. The wind-swept loosely-corseted maid who, upon meeting the young Duke, says, "A pleasure to ...," then jumps in his arms and puts her lips to his and says, "... meet you," just doesn't do anything for me.

 

A few examples of favorites:

 

 

 

Odd choice? Not at all. Odd's love for his girlfriend, Stormy, is central to everything in this book and the whole series. What makes it so compelling to me is that they are so very young, but both certain they have found their soul-mates.

 

 

One of my favorites series, the solid relationship between Holmes and Russell is what keeps me coming back. And the writing. And the great adventures. As I've probably said before, this is Sherlock Holmes as he really is.

 

Now, when it comes to movies, I like the mushier stuff.

 

 

Love LOVE ACTUALLY! What great romantic scenes. Could there be anything better than the guy in love with Keira Knightley, pretending to be a Christmas caroler and confessing his undying devotion with handwritten signs?

 

Or Colin Firth watching his maid strip to her undies and dive into the water to save his manuscript? Going to the restaurant and proposing so beautifully in despicable Italian? Ahhhhh .... great stuff. And Hugh Grant is so funny.

 

And then there's NOTTING HILL and Julia Roberts' teary mushy semi-proposal to Hugh Grant. <boo-hoo-hoo sniff> Which reminds me of TWO WEEKS NOTICE, where Sandra Bullock and her boss, Hugh Grant have a rocky but hilarious relationship. Uh-oh, I'm sensing a pattern here.

 

With books, there's one kind of romance category that I do love, the kinda magical romantic fantasy. More specifically, those in which the romance is fated. I'm thinking of Sarah Addison Allen's books and others where the protagonist and her soul mate are brought together through some kind of magical force.

 

 

My current read is one of those, a new book by Kathryn Magendie called THE LIGHTNING CHARMER, and boy is it a good one.

 

 

Oh my goodness, this book has everything I love. It's about a young woman who grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. Laura has been living in New York City for years, is in a relationship, and though her life seems to be going well outwardly, inside something is calling her back to the mountains.

Laura's voice is beautifully, quirkily written. Her joy of the woods is so real and expressive. And the other biggie for me - Cherokee legend is central to the story and the magical woo-woo stuff. Which, if you've read my THISTLE & TWIGG books, you know I love deeply.

This is the first book by Magendie I've read so I'm still high on discovering this new favorite author. Will definitely read her other books.

 

So what are your favorite romantic books or movies? Do you like all kinds or do you have specific types like me that you particularly like? Oh gosh, I've just remembered Olivier/Heathcliff.

 

 

Sighhhhhhh. 

 

 

The Femme Fatales Welcome Ann Cleeves

I met Ann Cleeves last May, and she kept a carful of writers entertained on a long road trip to Oakmont, Pennsylvania. Ann is funny, generous and witty.
 She’s also modest. You have to go to her Website to learn Ann's books have been translated into 20 languages. She’s the first winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet. “Shetland” will be a six-part TV series with Douglas Henshall as Detective Jimmy Perez.  
  In October 2012, Ann was inducted into the Crime Thriller Awards’ Hall of Fame. "Vera," the TV adaptation of her Vera Stanhope novels, stars Brenda Blethyn and David Leon. There’s much more at www.anncleeves.com.
 Welcome to the Femmes Fatales, Ann. -- Elaine Viets

 

I’m probably the luckiest writer in the world.  This year I’ll have two of my series on mainstream UK television: VERA starring double Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn on ITV (the channel that first broadcast Downton Abbey) and SHETLAND on the BBC. While I’d love to believe that this recent success is down to my own innate genius, really it only happened by chance.  Someone wandered into a charity shop in North London to buy a book for her holiday.  She came across a copy of The Crow Trap, the first of the Vera books.  It hadn’t sold very well on publication, so there were lots of copies knocking around. This wouldn’t be unusual at all, but the holiday-maker was Elaine Collins, the books executive for ITV Studios, and she was looking for a series with a strong female lead to turn into a Sunday night drama.  Later she optioned the Shetland books and they were commissioned by the BBC.  She is my fairy godmother and friend.

My relationship with Shetland came about completely by chance too.  I’d dropped out of university and needed a temporary job.  In a pub I got chatting to a friend who was leaving town to be assistant warden in the bird observatory in Fair Isle.  I didn’t even know where Fair Isle was but said that it sounded like a fun way to spend the summer.  Later that week I got a phone call: Was I serious about spending the summer on Fair Isle because the observatory was desperate for an assistant cook?  I couldn’t cook and knew nothing about birds, but it seemed like an adventure and I headed north.  I fell in love with the bleak and beautiful islands, which are closer to Norway than they are to Edinburgh, and have visited regularly ever since.  I met my husband there!  However, it was thirty years later that Raven Black, my first Shetland novel, was published.

Raven Black was a very lucky novel for me.  It won the CWA Gold Dagger – sponsored that year by a private bank so for the first time in my publishing career I could give up the day job – and it attracted a large number of overseas publishers.  It was planned as a stand-alone book.  How many murders could there be in a community with a population of just over twenty thousand?  But when the good reviews came in, and the sales increased, my editor decided that perhaps the setting would sustain more stories.  We decided on a quartet.  One novel set in each season.  Shetland is so far north that the seasons are dramatically different and it would be like writing about a different place each time.

The quartet ended with Blue Lightning, which took me back to Fair Isle where my love affair with the islands began.  So how come I have a new Shetland book – Dead Water - out in the US this month, with another – Thin Air – planned for publication in the UK for September?  Because I can’t leave the islands alone.  Because I’m fascinated by Jimmy Perez, the series central character.  And I still have stories to tell and things to say about these special communities.

VERA series 3 is currently showing on PBS is many states and Dead Water will be published by Minotaur on February 16^th.  I’ll be at Left Coast Crime in Monterey in March and look forward to talking luck, books and murder in wild places with friends there.

Standing up (and not falling down)

Catriona writes: "In a particularly fine episode of that particularly fine cultural flowering Buffy The Vampire Slayerthe scooby gang find their worst nightmares coming true. Buffy's father rejects her and tells her she's the reason her parents divorced; Xander is chased by a circus clown; and Cordelia has bad hair and a membership of the chess club. It's the usual effortless mix of slapstick, horror and real emotional heft - Joss Whedon does it so well.

But's it's Willow's nightmare that resonated most with me:

She found herself backstage, in full make-up, about to go on and perform an unknown duet with a notable opera singer. To a full house.  ARRRGGGHHHHH.  I don't know about you , but that's pretty much the basic plot of most of my worst dreams.

But not today's guest, Clare O'Donohue.  Oh my goodness me, no.  Because Clare is here to tell us that she deliberately sought out just that kind of terrifying ordeal - deliberately! - and honed her writing craft that way.

Ladies and gentlemen, please - a warm Femmes Fatales welcome for tv-producer, quiltmaker and crimewriter, Chicago's own . . . Clare O'Donohue."

Years ago I performed improv in a club in Chicago. (For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s getting up on stage with a group of people and making it up as you go along. And usually trying to be funny.)

I’d been urged to take classes by a friend of mine (the dangers of peer pressure) and once I started, I found I liked both the approach and the lifestyle. There’s lots of funny people who perform improv (not surprisingly) and a huge percentage are men. So for a single girl in her 20s it wasn’t a bad way to spend my time.

One of the things I learned early on when I was studying and performing improvisation, is that, surprisingly, there is structure – there are rules. They are designed to help performers get out of their own way, and actually create something amazing out of thin air. It’s been years since I set foot on a stage, but I still carry the rules with me, and I think in a lot of ways they are the biggest influence in how I write.

First and foremost, I make it up as I go along.

Catriona interrupts: I first knew Clare as the writer of the Someday Quilts cozy mysteries and - being a literal kind of mind, I assumed that a quilter would be all about structure and patterns when it came to plotting a mystery.  Show what I (don't) know.

(Back to Clare) I don’t start a novel with a strong idea of where it’s going or who the killer will be. I just write the first draft and see what happens. The worst improvisers I knew were the ones who got on stage with a joke in their heads, or a direction for the scene. Their scenes felt forced and their jokes didn’t match the rest of the action. In a novel, you can either let plot lead the story or you can let character lead. When plot leads, as far as I’m concerned, it’s like the guy coming on stage with a joke in his head - things feel artificial, as if no one would ever say or do what’s written. When character leads, you may have to change story lines here and there, but it always feels true.

Another big rule of improv is “yes and.” Basically it means that if I say, “Wow it’s cold.” Then you, as the other person in the scene, agree with and add to what I’ve started. You say, “You were the one who wanted to vacation in Alaska in February.” You’ve agreed that it’s cold, and you’ve added a location and given us a reason for being there. Nicely done. However, if you had said, “Are you crazy? It’s 90 degrees in the shade,” we’re at an impasse. I can either abandon my initial statement or I can argue with you. Whichever I choose, we’re confusing the audience and not building a scene together.

In writing, I try to “yes and” whenever possible. In Missing Persons, my main character Kate doesn’t feel well at breakfast, which leads to her late husband’s girlfriend, Vera, offering her a ride to a shoot location, which leads to Vera meeting the crew, which leads to a friendship with Kate’s camera crew… and more. Having Vera invade Kate’s work life is some of my favorite stuff in that book and it came unplanned by simply “yes and-ing.”

And finally, improvisers focus on the here and now. What people are doing in this moment is more interesting for an audience than watching two people discuss an issue from the past, or plans for the future. It’s more interesting for a reader, too. There are lots of ways to get information about the past, the future, and the character’s inner life into a scene without that becoming the focus of the scene. While there’s some leeway in a novel, and room for reflection, it should still move the character and/or story forward. It should pay off at some point.

These are the tools I carry with me into every novel, and struggle with sometimes. At the moment I’m finding them very helpful in the early stages of a new book. I’m just writing and seeing what happens, adding to each moment as I go, and trusting . . . always trusting.

Catriona again: how scary does that sound?! I'm brave enough to jump off the cliff when I'm writing, but standing up in a club in Chicago . . . gives me the collywobbles just thinking about it. How about you?

 

 

FALSE ASSUMPTIONS

No, I’m not going to rant again about Isabel Allende’s assertion that she understood mysteries after reading some bestsellers, understood them well enough to write her own with a heroine she was sure was one-of-a-kind – though any mystery reader would know she was wrong. Nope, not going down that road again.

Today I’m indignant about something else. And lest you think I spend my life waving my fist in the air, I don’t believe I do. I warn you, this is Olympic related, so if you’ve had your fill of Sochi already, don’t read further.

Last night, I watched Paul Bonifacio Parkinson, born a Canadian, compete for Italy in the team ice skating competition. He performed in the Men’s Free Skate division of the competition, in which Russian star Victor Plushenko was also competing.

Plushenko had the performance of his life, and since he apparently plans to retire after the Olympics, who can not be glad for him?
Then Parkinson took the ice. He fell. Twice. His first Olympics. But he kept smiling.

The female commentator for NBC (Sandra Bezic, I believe) said, during his performance, “Well, he came in thirty-third in the Internationals.” Pretty condescending, huh? And after Parkinson’s second fall, she went on (this is not verbatim, but close): “But he’s got to be thrilled with sharing the spotlight with Victor Plushenko.”

HUH? Oh, sure, that’ll make up for the low scores.

And then she went on, “At least he can get a picture and an autograph.”

REALLY?

Are you kidding me?

Because of course, that’s why Paul Bonifacio Parkinson left his birth country to get on the team of his mother’s country. That’s why he trained for hour after hour. That’s why he endured the physical hardship of being an ice skater, and the mental preparation to be a successful performer, good enough to qualify to skate internationally and to represent a country in the Olympics. So he can get a picture and an autograph from a much more famous and successful skater.

In the indignation of the moment, I told my husband that if I were Parkinson, I would track Bezic down and do something terrible. (I may have mentioned taking her head, though I’m embarrassed by that now.) Maybe Parkinson is a much nicer person than I am, and maybe he’s mature enough to take such comments with a shrug and a smile. I hope so.

Please, don’t ever tell me that if I lose something I’ve spent my life preparing to attain, that at least I got to brush shoulders with the person who actually achieved it.

Or is that just me?

But wait!

by Kris

The DVR, in my opinion, is one of the greatest inventions. I’m not a such a techno-lover that I glom onto any new technology automatically as a great idea — it really has to work for me. And the DVR does. Given the hours I work, I often can’t watch TV shows when they’re on. I’m also an occasional insomniac, sometimes going weeks when I don’t sleep much, followed by periods when I sleep well for a time.

A well-stocked DVR allows me to enjoy my sleepless hours by having personal mini-marathons of Castle, Elementary, NCIS, and others of my favorite shows that I’ve been neglecting. And nobody catching up on TV by watching in the middle of the night should be forced to watch commercials, which DVRs allow us to skip.

Unless they want to watch them, that is. And strangely, sometimes I do.

Getting back to clever inventions…I actually enjoy some of those commercials for the products mostly sold on TV. You know the ones, those for Pajama Jeans or Bacon Bowls and other such products. The ones discount stores also seem to sell in displays labeled, “Products Sold on TV” or “As Seen on TV.”

I always admire the ingenuity their inventors bring to those products. So much so, I always want to ask them the question authors also get, but can rarely answer: “Where do you get your ideas?”

I’ve even bought a couple of those products myself. Once, when I tried to eliminate fabric softener from our lives, which I regard as a chemical I’d like us to do without, someone told me there were a pair of dimpled balls you can buy in one of those “TV Products” sections, which worked as well as fabric softener, without the toxicity.

Turns out they didn’t work as well for me. The way they function is to beat up the fabric of your laundry items, knocking all the stiffness out of them so they feel softer. Unfortunately, in the process, they also knock a lot of newness out of them. Now I’m back to using fabric softener, toxicity and all.

I also learned later that any ball will work as well as the specially designed balls, even tennis balls. Though I’m not a tennis player, I have a bag of them, which was given to me by a friend for a dog we used to have before she went on to doggie heaven. At the time, we had a wolf-dog who thought fetch was the best game ever. But she preferred to fetch objects of her own choosing, which she usually found in the yard, so we didn’t use many of the balls. Now I have a dog who, when I throw one of those balls or anything else, gives me a look as if to say, “If you throw it, you have to pick it up.” We still aren’t using many of those tennis balls, so I could have beaten up loads of laundry with them without paying a penny.

I also bought a gadget that you stick on the end of a vacuum hose to better clean out the lint filter from your dryer. Now that one I have to give high marks to. See what I mean by ingenuity. Millions of people try to stick their fingers and other objects down into the dryer lint filter, but only one thought of adapting the vacuum hose that everyone has to do the job. I have a couple of issues even with that, and I don’t use it often — I mean, who has so much time that they clean out a lint filter regularly — but every time I do, I thank its inventor.

Those commercials also make me laugh. Their sales approach is so outrageously over the top. They always say, “But wait! There’s more!” to better their offer, offering us two or more items for the same price as one. Is there anyone who doesn’t know that means the first item was priced at double what it should be?

Those commercials must work, though, or they wouldn’t spend millions in advertising dollars continually replaying them. Now, why can’t we sell books like that?

As for me, no matter how much I admire the ingenuity brought to those products or laugh at the over-the-top commercials, few of them would actually benefit me. I once considered buying a skillet that they demonstrated as indestructible by having trucks drive over them. Since we seem particularly hard on skillets, I considered it. But given that we don’t wreck our pots by driving over them, but by cooking with them, I really didn’t know how much longer those pots would last for us than what we have. As for some of the other products, if I sank to wearing the same clothes for my sleep and wakeful hours, that level of casualness would represent a new low even for me. And I’m pretty casual. It’s changing our night gear for daytime wear that separates us from the animals.

So, I watch ‘em, I just don’t buy what they’re selling.

How about you? Which are your favorite and your least favorite type of commercials?

Welcome snorers!

by Marcia Talley

Like most of our readers, I’ve been stuck at home in the icy grip of a series of brutal winter storms.  As I write this, I know that some of you won’t even be able to read it because your power is out, and may be out for days.

I’m nestled in an armchair in front of the gas logs with a mug of coffee, working on the revisions to Hannah’s next adventure, Tomorrow’s Vengeance, but I find my mind drifting to the Bahamas where my husband and I have been spending at least a part of the winter.  Usually we’re bobbing about the Abacos on Troubadour, our elderly Tartan37 sailboat, but occasionally we come to land and rent a place for a few months.  When that happens, everyone we know suddenly wants to come visit!

Can you blame them?

Bahamian houses are not your south Florida-style mega mansions.  Most evolved out of summer cottages – two bedrooms, a bathroom, an “open concept” living/dining/kitchen area, and long, wide porches that catch the tradewinds year round.  So, what do you do when you need another bedroom?  Build an addition onto your house?  Nope.  You build a “snore box.”

Opinions differ on the origin of the word “snore box.”  Some say it evolved from the simple 8 by 8 waterfront shacks where fisherman slept so as not to disturb their families when leaving at the crack of dawn for a day’s fishing on the Atlantic beyond the reef.  Others say it’s where the exiled husband would be sent when he … well, snored.

Snore boxes can be purpose-built, or converted from a tool shed, boat house or even an old chapel.  They can be a simple one-room cottage with a bed; a bunkhouse for the kids; or even a kind of “master bedroom” with ensuite bathroom.  At “Tradewinds” where we’ve rented before, the snore box is “Lookout,” a well-appointed cottage cantilevered out over the Sea of Abaco.

Sometimes what starts out as a snore box gradually turns into a house, like this house on Pelican Cays that opens up like a jewel box to the fine Bahamian breezes.

Can you think of a more delightful place to be exiled when you snore?

Hold that thought, dear friends, and stay warm out there!