My Weblog

Does this backpack make me look like a geek?

by Toni L.P. Kelner

I didn't do a whole lot of writing this past week. Instead, I was planning and plotting the massive undertaking that it is to get two daughters ready to go back to school. And like most writers, my favorite part of the process is shopping for school supplies. Who could possibly resist all those rows of pens, which have to be tested to see how they write; spiral notebooks, waiting to be filled with ideas and story outlines; and the never-ending variety of yellow stickies, which can only help to solve the ills of mankind. Even those lovely boxes of crayons draw me in--har!

As I left my happy place, meaning the office supplies store, I realized that we'd bought more than just backpacks and lunch boxes and college ruled notebook paper. We'd bought characterizations. The girls had just defined themselves for the year.

The most visible sign for any kid is the backpack, and the choices are nearly endless. Does she pick a celebrity like Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers? Did she proclaim a love of High School Musical or Camp Rock? A character like Speed Racer or Barbie? A solid color, with or without initials? Camouflage? Sports figures? Is it a rolling bag, and does it have space for an iPod? Is Pokemon still in, out, or retro? Would Dora the Explorer skew too young? Any of these choices tell you something about the kid.

For the record, my girls went for the following, with cute, happy skull and poodle motifs. Maggie's is on the left, Valerie's on the right.

The next big choice is the folders and notebooks. My newly turned teenager Maggie continued with skull patterns, but nearly ten-year-old Valerie went with shiny purple hearts and cute puppies. We ended up with a spare cute kitten notebook, and Maggie did indeed need a notebook, but the look she gave me when I suggested she take the kittens was remarkably eloquent.

On a lesser scale, there are the colors of pencils and lunchboxes to blend with the backpacks and even the book covers. But when you put all those pieces together, you end up with a picture of who Maggie and Valerie are, just as when a writer puts an outfit on a character or equip him with computers and/or weapons, the reader ends up with a picture of that character.

This thought led me to a couple of characters I've recently created. First there's Tilda, the protagonist of Without Mercy. In the first chapter of the book, I mention her Jack Skellington watch, the black messenger bag she uses as a purse, and her Addams Family theme ringtone. I'm expecting the reader to take all that and see her as a fan of quirky popular culture, and maybe just a bit on the goth side. And that's who she is. I could have used those same character bits, and then gone against expectations to describe her as blonde and perky or ultra-businesslike. Either way, the character is defined.

Then there's William Cunningham Ward, the lawyer protagonist in my pirate mystery short story "The Pirate's Debt." A big part of the story revolves around a plain, brown coat that William was given by his father. William despises the thing, which reveals a lot about him, his father, and the man who ends up with that coat.

I don't always use belongings to define a character. In my Laura Fleming books, I rarely write about clothes, accessories, and such. Her clothes and pocketbook weren't a big deal to her. Of course, now that I think of it, making that kind of information unimportant to Laura says quite a bit about her.

One last thought occurred to me as I made sure all the notebooks and pencils were packed in the girls' backpacks. Kids redefine their characters every year, as they grow. Sure, Maggie went in for skulls this year, but I remember the Spy Kids and Pokemon backpacks from a few years back. (It wasn't that long ago that she wanted cute kittens on her notebook.) Those changes make life interesting for a parent. Characters can change, too, and that's a good way to keep their lives interesting for readers.

Faking it

Note:   This month's guest blogger is Barbara Parker.  Barbara says she gave up practicing law to create fictional attorneys, who are much more glamorous, successful, and smart than she ever was. Best known for her “Suspicion” series set in Miami, she has penned non-series novels as well, earning a place on the New York Times best-seller list. In her latest mystery, The Dark of Day, celebrity lawyer C. J. Dunn takes on a Miami Beach murder case. With paparazzi on the prowl, C.J. is desperate to clear the case before they uncover her darkest secret. Parker, who sadly has no dark secrets, lives with her pug dog, Max, a short walk from the ocean in South Florida. 

I gotta say, this latest book was one of the easiest to research. Usually the process involves some head-busting exercises in running down obscure facts, reading piles of non-fiction, and spending hours on the Internet, plus interviews with people who know a helluva lot more than I do about the subject in question. But as hard as you try, you can’t get it all right. Do you ever get letters like this: “I was enjoying your book until I got to the part about Jackie taking the safety off her Glock. There is no safety on a Glock, you stupid writer!”

Aside from police procedure (the starting point for any mystery writer), I’ve learned about opera, ballet, boat-building, appealing a capital case, antique maps, and Greek Orthodox Epiphany Day. I’ve spent imaginary time in the Italian Alps, the jungles of Nicaragua, a resort in the Florida Keys, and fa-aaabulous houses way out of my price range. I’ve actually seen Havana, Death Row, and a brothel in Nevada. Honest! (The music is better in Havana than in the brothel.)

And the party scene on South Beach. Oh, yeah. You know how it is: the shifting cliques of people on the make, the clawing for status, the constant drumbeat of sex. A reviewer in the Miami Herald said I nailed it. Thanks, Miami Herald, but it's been years since I've set foot in a SoBe night club, and I do not know anyone in that life. I faked it.

Don’t we all? My God, if we writers had to go to every place we wrote about, and interview everyone, we’d never make a deadline. My secret, and I bet it’s yours, is the Internet. Like this: For my novel The Perfect Fake, I had to set a scene in a certain piazza in Florence, Italy, but I’d never been there. Would Flickr or Photobucket have some shots? No, better than that! Somebody had stood in the middle of the piazza and had done a 360-degree turn with a video cam!

Some things you can’t fake. They fall from a provident universe. Like the brothel in Nevada. I have a friend in Vegas, and she has a friend who’s a working girl. My friend asked me if I’d like to tour a brothel. Well, duh. (You can see some of the exterior photos on my website gallery.) As I peered into the S&M room and the bubble room, and heard stories of encounters with celebrities, I wasn’t thinking of a book, but when The Dark of Day came along, I used some of what I’d seen and heard.

Another way to fake it: listening to your friends who have gone through hell and back. You’ll want to ask first before using details of their lives, and even then, filter it through a couple layers of authorial obfuscation. C. J. Dunn is an alcoholic, trying very hard to stay sober. I’ve never been there, but someone I know has. He told me all about it.

While researching The Dark of Day might not have been as intense as for, say, the book about capital punishment (Suspicion of Vengeance), it required attention to simple things, like consulting a map. I am still waiting for that letter: “Dear Ms. Parker, You put Cocoplum Circle on Red Road. It’s on LeJeune, dummy!”

The War of Art

Isn't it great to have book friends? I don't know what I'd do without them. One of my local writer buds, Michael Salisbury, is also my reading advisor and book guru. He knows what I like and often passes along good books for me to try.

Not long ago, he gave me The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It's the best book I've read on how creative people meet and conquer the resistance to create. We know about procrastination and writers block. Pressfield's ideas also apply to other types of resistance, like knowing we should go on a diet and exercise but never quite getting around to it. It's a short book, about 160 pages, with a lot of white space, but the author packs a lot of punch into each section. I recommend it for anyone who, like me, needs help sometimes in facing the blank page.

I was reminded of the book by the previous two Femmes posts from Charlaine and Dana. Dana talked about set-backs in both her exercise and writing routines. This happens to me all the time. When I get thrown off schedule, I find it very hard to return to it. With exercise, I've found Yoga DVDs are a good way to sneak back into the habit. They must have good Indian music as accompaniment, or it doesn't work. It's those bongos and twangy sitars that turn me on.

Charlaine talked about listening to movie soundtracks sometimes when she writes. Again, the Indian music is what works for me. As I type this, I'm remembering a record I loved as a child that may explain why I like exotic music so much. It was one of those Living Strings albums from the 60s, with lush orchestrations of movie themes. The track I played over and over was the theme from Lawrence of Arabia. Whoa, talk about atmosphere. You could see the belly dancers and smell the horses. So, like Charlaine, soundtracks and music either with no vocals or in a different language work better for me if I'm listening while writing.

Sitars, opera recordings, books that kick me in the pants, chocolate, whatever it takes, I'm willing to try it. War against our own resistance is tough. That resistant part of us 'knows' our more sensible inner selves too well. If you have a special way of dealing with all this, I hope you'll share it.

Meanwhile, I think I'll fortify my reserves for battle with a few Hershey's dark chocolate kisses.

Music Hath Charms

In my twenty-plus years on the booksigning circuit, I've come to expect a number of questions. In fact, I could almost tell you ahead of time which person in the audience will ask each question.

Among the standards are:

Where do you get your inspiration?

Where do you get your ideas?

How long do you write each day?

Do you write directly on a computer?

How did you get started in your career?

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

How did you come up with the name 'Sookie'?

There are some other queries I get frequently, but these are the constant ones. One of the "often asked" questions has always puzzled me, and I wonder if you will share my astonishment. In about every third audience, someone will ask me what music I listen to while I'm writing.

The first time I heard that one, I think my mouth fell open. Frankly, my first reaction was, "Why on earth do you care?" Fortunately, I thought twice before that response left my mouth. Since I was asked that question, I've become aware that other writers do listen to very specific music when they're working. That music even varies if they switch series. I searched my soul to see if there was any rhyme or pattern to my musical selections, and this is what I came up with:

For years, I couldn't listen to any music at all while I worked. It was too much of a distraction. After a decade or two, I could listen to music as long as it didn't have vocals. Orchestra music, bagpipe music, string quartets . . . all of those were fine, as long as no one sang. Now, I can listen to music with vocals, but only when I'm revising, not when I'm doing my first draft. (I seem to be easily distracted.) When I'm writing the Sookie books, I do listen to zydeco music quite a bit. I hope all of you sample some. It's really bouncy and fun. I still listen to bagpipe music no matter what I'm working on, but I notice I listen to Yo-Yo Ma a bit more often when I'm writing the Harper Connelly books.

My favorite musical accompaniment, by far, is movie soundtracks. Soundtracks are written to be evocative, colorful, emotional, and I find that's a great complement to writing. My favorites include "The Last of the Mohicans," "Braveheart," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and "Alexander." These are not necessarily my favorite films, or even films I think are good, but they are my favorite soundtracks. (Though I have to admit, "The Last of the Mohicans" pretty much IS my favorite film.)

I have friends who make special cds to go along with their work, an activity I find interesting and admirable, but one that seems almost totally alien. One of my friends was kind enough to send me her favorite compilation of songs, and I worked away with it in the background. When I thought about it afterward, it seemed to me as though I were working on borrowed energy, but what can I say? Dana picks out good music.

There you have it. I have no musical coherence, no common theme, and probably extremely bad taste. But being asked about music is better than being asked about (and I'm not making this up) what I wear.

Charlaine Harris

Work-around

By Dana

I took a bad fall Saturday.  Hit a slick patch on the deck and went into an involuntary split.  Banged up my knees, got a good bruise on my wrist, made a lot of little muscles in my lower back very angry.  But yesterday, after repeated icing, an easy stint on the treadmill, and some careful stretching, I was able to go to a wedding.  In modest heels.  Today, I’m fine.

To quote the last line from Buckaroo Banzai (I only quote the classics):  “So what.  Big deal.”  But it’s a good lesson for me, who is always spouting nonsense like “go big or stay home.”  That is good encouragement to push myself or dare to do new things, but in the long haul, it’s the incremental work that gets the job done.  When I’m injured, I get angry because I can’t run full-bore or have to find work-around exercises while I recover.  I may even have to--gasp--ask for help, from a PT, from my husband.  When I can’t live up to my iPod soundtrack, petulance and pride would keep me from working out at all.  But that would be a mistake, because every little bit of what I can do, as un-macho as it may be, keeps the rest of me strong, keeps me in the habit.

The house was torn apart for almost two months, including my office.  The end results were great, but it really tore up my work schedule as well.  I didn’t get a lot of writing done.  Every day, though, I sat at the computer, and tried to do something, a little research, jotting down an idea, one line of dialogue.   I hated not having my schedule, hated not being able to get out four or five decent pages every day.  Much more tempting to avoid it altogether, if I can’t go full-tilt.

Except right now, I’d be in much worse shape.  My page count is still low, but it’s consistent and getting better.  Most of the stuff I jotted down is dreck, but dreck can be edited.  And some of the ideas are worth following up on.  There are wet edges from which to begin new work.

So if you can’t do a lot, do a little.  If you’ve only got bandwidth for your go-to moves, write them down and promise yourself you will turn them into something more innovative later.  If you know the word you've written is the wrong word, but can't find the right one, leave it.  You’ll see it later and fix it.  Just, for the love of Pete, keep at it.  Don't let your ego and what you imagine you should be able do keep you from what you can do. 

Yes, this is a sermon I’ve preached before, but it’s one I still need to hear myself.  What are your strategies for when you can’t work at writing as you'd like to?

When reviewers get it

by Donna

For a brief period, about ten years ago, I did some online reviewing. I gave it up rather quickly. I loved it when I got to enthuse about books I enjoyed, but I hated having to do bad reviews. Even if the book was a real stinker, I could identify all too easily with the author, and had to fight the temptation to pull my punches. And I can think of one author I’ve been avoiding ever since. I kind of resent that, because I didn’t really do anything wrong—I just said what I thought of the book and why. Clearly I do not have the makings of a wickedly witty reviewer like Dorothy Parker.

But however unsuited I was for the life of a reviewer, I’m glad I spent a little time on that side of the process. I’ve learned something about the etiquette involved. For example, how important it is not to feel entitled. Publications that review books may get dozens, even hundreds of books a week, and will only review a minuscule percentage of those books. Sending a book to a publication and then nagging its editor to ask when—not if, but when—the review will appear is bad form and more likely to decrease than increase the chances that the book will be reviewed.

I also realized that complaining to the editor or the reviewer about the review is probably not something you want to do unless you can prove that the reviewer made some major error, like revealing the identity of the murderer, getting some critical fact wrong, or possibly reviewing the wrong book.  Authors who complained about the negative tone of a review, claimed the reviewer didn’t understand the book, or cited glowing reviews they’d received from other publications—well, they weren’t doing themselves a favor. Equally clueless were the half-empty glass folks, the writers who would receive a largely or completely positive review and would complain about some tiny quibble or mistake. In short, I realized that most of the time, saying anything other than "thank you" for a review was at best useless and at worst self-defeating.

So I sigh and move on when someone writes a positive review of one of my books and gets something wrong—most often the spelling of my heroine’s name. For the record, it’s Meg Langslow: L-A-N-G-S-L-O-W. Seems like a perfectly reasonable name to me, possibly because it’s my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, and I grew up spelling it.  But I don’t care if you call her Moggy Lansdowne, as long as you love the books and get all your friends to buy them.

And I’m not going to badger reviewers if they don’t like the books—there’s a reason ice cream makers manufacture such a bewildering variety of flavors. 

But every once in a while, I am going to do what Aaron Elkins did to me during my brief reviewing career. I read, loved, and positively reviewed his 1999 book Loot. A few weeks later, I received an email of appreciation from him. I still have it somewhere, though at the moment I’d be hard pressed to find it, so instead of quoting it I'll summarize. He said that he didn’t usually contact reviewers, but very rarely he read a review that showed the reviewer had gotten out of the book so exactly what he had tried to do that he had to say something. He’d only done this twice before, and the other reviewers were with major publications—a large metropolitan newspaper and a national magazine, if memory serves.

I was bowled over. I never forgot that email. Though I hadn’t thought about it in a while, until recently when I saw a review of Cockatiels at Seven. Cindy Chow, Young Adult Librarian at Oahu's Kaneohe Public Library, reviewed the book at the No Name Café, and says, in part:

Andrews keeps the ninth Meg Langslow mystery fresh by introducing the added element/hindrance of a toddler, yet she avoids the pitfalls common when bringing kids into the mix — namely, (1) the child is saccharinely sweet, (2) he's a precocious thirty-five-year-old in a child's body, or (3) manipulating the reader by placing the child in jeopardy. Instead, Timmy is an uncontrollable, unpredictable responsibility for Meg; in other words, a two-year-old boy. (Full review here.)

I was, as my British friends say, chuffed. Timmy is based on my twin four-year-old nephews, back when they were Timmy’s age. I adore my nephews, and given half a chance, I will bore you to tears with stories about them and photos of them. And yet I can admit that there are moments when they’re cranky or difficult, and however bright and precocious I may find them, they are still four. They are profoundly real and immediate. In creating Timmy, I was trying for a realistic depiction of the chaos even a beloved small child can create in the lives of the adults around him. And maybe there was a time when I might have wanted to use for fictional purposes the angst we all feel at the thought of danger to a child. But it doesn’t take too many experiences of grabbing a toddler before he darts out into the path of a passing car to realize that no, putting small people in jeopardy is not fun.  And that’s what I’m aiming for in the Meg series—not only a good mystery, but a fun one.

So my hat’s off to Cindy for divining what I was trying to do with Timmy—and my thanks, as well, for saying that I’d avoided those all-too-typical pitfalls.

And now I’m off to upload the latest photos of the adorable duo so I can send a link to the relatives.

 

 

When I Wasn't on Saturn

by Kris

When I was in elementary school, I always hated writing that obligatory, first-day-of-school essay, "What I Did on My Summer Vacation." Teachers never seemed to appreciate the creativity I brought to the exercise when I described how I explored the rings of Saturn that July, rather than the mundane truth, that I sizzled to lobster-red on the Jersey shore.

This time I'll happily share a glimpse into my recent anniversary getaway because we returned to a real place that I imagine to be nearly as magical as Saturn or Mars or any of the other places they said we'd all be traveling to by now (the Jetsons got it so wrong): the Grand Canyon. I love the Grand Canyon. The sight of it never fails to stir my soul, and makes me wish I were a better painter or a poet.

We snagged a room in the elegant old El Tovar Hotel, where I've wanted to stay for years. Since the rooms are in such great demand, we've never managed to find a vacancy waiting for us, and have always had to stay somewhere outside the park until this time. But I've always wanted to wake up within the gates of Grand Canyon National Park and enjoy the solitude there before the public is admit. Well, before more of the public is admitted — with every lodge room booked, the place was hardly empty at sunup. But sipping our morning coffee at the rim, even though a few others meandered past, was still the attainment of a long held dream.

Most geologists believe that the Canyon was carved during a period of extreme tectonic upheaval, when the Colorado River reserved its course. The consensus seems to be that the river alone could not have completely carved what we see today, but they do believe that the Canyon was mostly shaped by the movement of water, since there isn't enough sediment at the bottom for it to have been carved by wind. While there is a generally accepted consensus about its formation, there is no agreement among geologists about its age. Estimates of when it might have been carved range from 5 million years ago to more than 80.

My favorite building at the Canyon is Hopi House, which was opened in 1905, designed by a rare and successful female architect for her time, Mary Jane Coulter. Hopi House was her rendition of the pueblo housing early peoples built throughout the Southwest. Coulter was said to be such a perfectionist, she would stand behind the workmen as they erected the structure, choosing the placement of each stone herself. Hopi House was built to house Native American artists and provide them with a place to sell their crafts. Today, of course, it's operated by a giant corporation, licensed by the National Park Service, but it still offers mostly Native artworks among its pricy offerings.

For those of you who'd like a book connection…if you're interested in the origin of the Canyon, consider Carving Grand Canyon by Wayne Ranney. For visuals of the Canyon (better than mine), Images: Jack Dykinga's Grand Canyon. Or if you prefer painted imagery, then consider Bruce Aiken's Grand Canyon: An Intimate Affair by Susan Hallsten McGarry. And for the more ghoulish among you, Over the Edge: Death at Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri and Thomas M. Myers, which relates the circumstances of every known fatality that has occurred there. (Here's a hint: Many of them got too close to the edge, or didn't pay attention to warnings; some surprise.)

Of course, not everyone finds the Canyon as moving as I do. Author, anthropologist and former Grand Canyon river guide, Scott Thybony tells a story about an angry-looking woman who stomped her way next to where he stood at the rim, followed by her apparently dejected and beaten-down husband. She paused a moment, scowling. Then she whirled around and barked at her husband, "There! I looked at it. You dragged me across the country for this?"

For me, though, it's something more. But then, Saturn is probably great, too.

Anybody can write a mystery!

by Toni L.P. Kelner

Okay, I'm exaggerating. There are plenty of people who probably can't write a mystery. Maybe I should change that title to something like Mysteries Are Everywhere because I love the way authors craft mysteries around such a wide variety of settings and backgrounds.

Just look at the Femmes and their work. Hank uses her experiences as an investigative TV reporter, just as Dana writes about archeology from the inside. Donna has used extreme croquet and zoo management, while Elaine writes about mystery shoppers and temps. Charlaine ranges from vampires to librarians, Kris goes between actors and athletes, and Mary has moved from Nashville to a magical forest. I've set mysteries amongst carnivals, pirates, science fiction conventions, and circuses.

Among other authors I read, I've read about murders creeping around horse tracks (Dick Francis), jewelry designers (Barbara Michaels), historical Egyptology (Elizabeth Peters), Republican Rome (Steven Saylor and John Maddox Roberts), the theater (Barbara Paul and Jane Denntinger), and strip clubs (Nancy Bartholonew). That's in addition to the traditional mystery venues: police stations, PI offices, and lawyers' firms. And I'm sure any mystery fan could name dozens of other examples.

Okay, I admit there are realms I've never seen successfully mined for a mystery. For instance, I spent ten years as a technical writer, but haven't quite managed to squeeze in a software documentation mystery or seen anybody else try. Then again, maybe it would be redundant--an awful lot of software is already a mystery!

So tell me... What's the most unexpected setting you've seen used for a mystery? What setting would you like to see? And what setting do you think would be impossible to have any fun with?