The All-Important Cover

Elizabeth Zelvin

The cover of my new mystery, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, due out in April, is a collaboration between me and my publisher’s book designer.

When the book was accepted for publication, I was about to set off for Malice Domestic, which is one of the best places for an author of traditional mysteries to hand out bookmarks. Since it would be months until my manuscript reached the cover design stage, I did my own provisional cover and slapped it on a thousand bookmarks. Later, when I found this publisher invited authors to submit a possible image, I sent it along and was pleased when they used it. Not being a professional graphic designer, I never would have thought of using the fonts and colors of the text that they added to my photograph. Appropriately, it gives the impression of an old-fashioned postcard that you might buy at some beach boardwalk.


I’ve been creating images to represent my books and stories since the first time I needed a provisional bookmark. They’ve also come in handy to circulate an anthologized story in standalone chapbook form. I’ve given out hundreds at library conventions (ALA and PLA) and many more at fan conventions where I’ve had a story nominated for an award. When the advent of e-books created an ongoing need for covers supplied by the author, I already had a running head start.


Let’s talk about that severed hand on the cover of Death Will Extend Your Vacation. (You did notice it, I hope.) This is not the hand’s first starring role.

When I needed a cover for my short story, “Death Will Trim Your Tree,” I had a bright idea that sent me to my desktop to google “bloody hand.” You can buy anything on the Internet. I would have been happy with a whole arm, but I chose this severed hand because it looked realistic and the price was right. (The severed end is kind of disgusting, but I omit it from my photos. However, if I ever take to writing horror....)

It also works with my newest story, “Death Will Tank Your Fish.” I couldn’t work it into “Death Will Tie Your Kangaroo Down,” but for that I googled “kangaroo on couch” and found the perfect photo on the website of an animal refuge center in Australia, from which I received emailed permission to use it within an hour or two.

When I first started sending out my work and hobnobbing with published writers, I heard a lot about how important a good cover was to sales of a book and therefore to an author’s career. I also heard about publishers who changed book titles and provided hideous covers over the author’s dead bodies. The most memorable of these was a woman whose publisher threw a Halloween reference into the title—no Halloween in the book—and smacked a grinning orange pumpkin on the front, to the author’s horror when she saw the book in print. I heard a senior editor at the same publisher’s describe their cozy line as books of which “you can put a puppy or kitten on the cover, even if there are no puppies or kittens in the book.”


I was lucky to have my first publisher assign its top art director to my first two books.

David Rotstein (look at the back flap of any hardcover from Minotaur and you’ll probably see his name) had resources I don’t, as I learned when he told me he achieved the effect of a whiskey glass shattered by a bullet not through CGI, but by shooting an actual bullet at the glass and recording the impact with high-speed film. His cover for Death Will Get You Sober was nominated for an Anthony award, though it lost out to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as most award nominees did that year.


Now I have the rights back, I can’t use the original cover if I want to offer the book for e-readers. I don’t have a gun, so can’t shoot myself up a glass—and don’t really want to find out the hard way whether an imitating another image violates copyright. But I could lay a glass on its side with whiskey spilling out of it. Not real whiskey, since I couldn’t make it puddle. But maybe honey....

Manor House Lust

Sandra Parshall
 
No, the title of this blog entry doesn’t refer to Lady Mary’s unfortunate interlude at Downton Abbey with the handsome foreign diplomat. What I lust for is the house where the encounter took place.

Other viewers may devour Downton Abbey for its upstairs/downstairs intrigue. I just want to see the house where the series is filmed. I love every part of the upstairs (the downstairs, not so much), from the extraordinary library to the lavish saloon (below) to the cozy morning room and bedrooms. The real name of the house is Highclere Castle, and it is infinitely larger than the TV program makes it seem. The fictional Earl and Countess have fewer than a dozen servants, and some of those are personal maids, footmen, drivers, and the like, who have little to do with the running of the household. They seem to leave all the cleaning to a couple of young maids. Yet everything always looks gorgeously spic ‘n’ span.

The real house, Highclere, has roughly 60 bedrooms, plus all the general use rooms, such as a state dining room, a men’s smoking room, a morning room, a drawing room, that fabulous library, and so on. It’s kind of a big place. Although the Downton Abbey program frequently shows exterior shots, the story never acknowledges the sheer size of the house. When the Countess of Carnarvon turned Highclere into a hospital for wounded soldiers in 1914, I doubt she had the conflicts over allotment of space that we see in the TV drama. The whole family could have moved into one wing and carried on their lives quite comfortably without ever tripping over a soldier's crutch.

Highclere has a website with an array of pictures and a history of the house and its owners. If you love it as much as I do, you’ll want to peruse http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/.

I have books filled with photos of the chateaux of France and the manor houses and castles and palaces of Great Britain. I love almost all of them, whatever the architectural style or the era in which they were built. My favorite, though, outranking even Highclere, is the Chateau de Thoiry en Yvelines, 40 km west of Paris. 

The chateau, with its 370 acres of land, is remarkable in two ways: the architectural style of the house is Renaissance, with a lavishly decorated exterior on a solid foundation of symmetry and proportion; and 240 acres of the grounds are given over to a wildlife reserve. Many animals, from the big cats to elephants to little red pandas, roam the wildlife park, and visitors can ride 
through to observe them from the safety of vehicles. 

Thoiry’s website is at http://www.thoiry.net/.


Why do I swoon over places like these? I love their elegance and the echoes of history in their rooms. Imagine the labor and talent that went into creating so much beauty, the number of people required to make the wallpaper, the draperies, the carpets and furniture, as well as the ornate stone ornaments and woodwork. Unless I were fabulously wealthy, I wouldn’t care to live in such a house, although I might be happy in one little section with visiting privileges (but no responsibility) for the rest. I watch all British costume dramas eagerly in the hope of seeing a magnificent house. Films of Jane Austen books leave me cranky. Who wants to look at a vicarage? I’m a total snob when it comes to my vicarious house-hunting.

How do you feel about the house that subs as Downton Abbey? Would you like to live in it?

Dark and Stormy Nights

Sharon Wildwind

It has not been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Without going into the mucky details, let’s just say that the Wildwind establishment started last week with three long-term, expensive, emotionally-draining family issues barreling towards resolution all at once. During the week we picked up two shorter-term, slightly less expensive, and a whole lot more emotionally-draining mini-crises.

Let me assure you that things are going as well as can be expected. There is a good possibility we will clear away the muck by the end of February, and, for now, I grateful for a whole lot of things.

I’m grateful we had cooked food in the freezer because we sure don’t have the energy or time to do a lot of meal planning right now.

I’m grateful that I keep a journal because it is such a relief to pour observations into in throughout the day.

I’m grateful that all of these issues are self-limiting and we will find our way through them.

I’m grateful for the group of writers that I spent last Wednesday evening with in a coffee shop because they not only got me out of myself but gave me some goals to aim for after the dust settles.

I’m grateful that I actually remembered that this morning was Tuesday, and I apologize for the slight delay in posting this blog.

------

Quote for the week:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

A Room With a View

by Julia Buckley

My writer friend recently made herself an office in her home. She chose one of the smallest rooms available, but the view out of its window allows one to see into the house where Ernest Hemingway grew up. From her creative space, she can see into his.

Sure, a writer can write anywhere. It shouldn't matter where she does it. Yet I found myself feeling envious of her writer's space--clean and white, with book-lined walls and creative little writery toys on the desk--and a view of Hemingway's house!

A writer needs a lot of things: talent, determination, a work ethic, and a willingness to spend time alone. But it never hurts to have an extra little something: classical music, maybe, or a burning candle, or--just maybe--the knowledge that you live next door to the home of one of the greatest American writers.

What else sparks a writer's creativity? In my case, it's playing Lexulous or Words with Friends (on Facebook). Something about that scrabble-like game really stimulates my brain.

I have another friend who says a little prayer to her muse before she begins writing.

How about you, writers of all sorts? What makes you feel creative?

(pictured: Hemingway's childhood home).

Guest Blogger Nancy Bilyeau

I'd like to introduce guest blogger Nancy Bilyeau. Nancy is a longtime magazine editor and writer who has worked on the staffs of "Rolling Stone," "Entertainment Weekly," "Ladies' Home Journal" and "InStyle." Born in Chicago, she earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and has lived in Canada as well as the United States. "The Crown," her first novel, took five years to research and write. It was sold in auction to Touchstone/Simon & Schuster and seven foreign publishers. She now lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

Why I Love to Write Genre Fiction

by Nancy Bilyeau

In 2006, in my first online fiction workshop, I submitted two chapters from the historical thriller I’d begun writing. My fellow students critiqued my work; I critiqued theirs. The instructor, “T,” weighed in as well.

At the very end of the workshop, “T” sent me this email: “I'd love to see you produce some more material that seems a little ‘closer’ to you personally, closer to the bone. I mean, you're writing crime thrillers and historical novels, but how about trying to write a story that was closer in spirit to your own time, your own place, your own experience? I'm just saying, Please don't be afraid to write your fiction out of your own sense of character and personal concerns: these genres feel a little uncomfortable to me, and perhaps you haven't really discovered what your subject matter as a fiction writer is. All Best, T.”

This is not the sort of email a budding novelist wants to get.

I kept working on my historical thriller. This was what I wanted to do. I took more classes, determined to improve my craft. “T” had made genre sound like a dirty word but if I belonged in the genre sandbox, so be it. I enrolled in the mystery-writing workshop run by Gotham Writer’s Workshop and taught by a terrific guy named Gregory Fallis. Greg had been a medic in the military, a counselor in a women’s prison, and a private detective. Yes, the man had lived. To my tremendous relief, he didn’t look down on my Tudor England mystery thriller, set mostly in a Dominican priory outside London. In fact, he liked it. A lot. I worked on my chapters and read Greg’s assignments, novelists ranging from Dorothy Sayers to Walter Mosley.

I was working fulltime as a magazine editor and raising two young children, and when things got particularly crazy for a stretch my novel went into the proverbial drawer. Home sick with a fever in the autumn of 2009, I was seized by a sudden desire to go back to my thriller, only half written. Perhaps it was the 102-degree temperature talking, but I staggered to the computer and enrolled in the very next Gotham Writer’s Workshop course. It was “Advanced Fiction,” taught by a man named Russell Rowland. After I’d put through payment, I looked him up—Russell had a MA in creative writing and had written two highly respected modern novels, In Open Spaces and The Watershed Years.

“Oh, no,” I moaned, my head sinking into clammy hands. “He’s going to hate me.”

He didn’t. Russell was a supportive teacher from the start: astute and no-nonsense but never, ever patronizing. What’s more, in this class I found a group of fellow writers who gave me valuable feedback. This was when my book truly came together. I pushed through the middle and then, exhilarated, raced to the end. I finished the novel on my birthday, June 16^th, 2010, and signed with a literary agent the July 4^th weekend. My debut novel was sold in an auction at the end of the month to Touchstone/Simon&Schuster and through the next year to seven foreign countries.

And yet recently I thought of “T” once more.

The memory was triggered by a Wall Street Journal article written by screenwriter and novelist Derek Haas, who has crafted the scripts for “2 Fast 2 Furious,” “Wanted,” and “3:10 to Yuma.”

The article began this way: “I'm sometimes asked to speak to a class of film or literature students at a university. Inevitably, a 22-year-old hipster with designer-chic black glasses and a permanent pout will raise his hand and ask, ‘What does it feel like to sell out?’ I smile. I tell the students, ‘Sell out? Are you kidding me? I sold in!’ "

Haas’s story resonated with me—of always wanting to write thrillers but facing “an upturned nose and haughty eye,” as he put it. “Write what you know,” he was told over and over. Come up with stories of “deep, dark emotional conflict.”

What my teacher—and the “write what you know” proponents Derek Haas faced—could never accept is that crafting a thriller is not a default mechanism for those of stunted gifts. Some of us want to write those sorts of books and scripts. I have always been enthralled by works of psychological suspense: Henry James’ The Innocents, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. One of the oddest aspects of “T’s” criticism was that only in modern stories could I infuse my work with “personal concerns.” I think Robert Graves, Mary Renault, Margaret Atwood, Caleb Carr, Ken Follett, and Patrick O’Brian have found ways to create complex and relatable characters—people churning with concerns--in historical settings!

Less than three weeks ago, my novel went on sale. I received good reviews in “O: The Oprah Magazine,” “Parade,” and “Entertainment Weekly.” As of today, “The Crown” is number one on amazon’s list of “hot historical mystery/thrillers.”

You know what, “T”? This writer has found her subject matter.

IRISH CRIME

by Sheila Connolly

I'm in the throes of completing the first (unnamed) book in my new (unnamed) Irish series, coming in just over a year. I've been to Ireland more than once—four times, in fact. The last trip, with my husband, was supposed to be a research trip, but the research was somewhat sidetracked by a broken ankle (it won't surprise you that I managed to include a visit to the emergency room in the new book, but it's justified because that's where the autopsies for County Cork are performed).

But no tourist can investigate crime in a foreign country (although I did once visit a local station of the Garda Siochána (the Irish police, called "guards" rather than police, in Avoca, which is where the PBS series Ballykissangel was filmed, if anyone remembers that). For an understanding about how crime is regarded, and how the police/gardaí and courts actually operate, I have to rely on public reports.

In the past year or so I have become a news junkie, checking CNN headlines frequently through the day. News is condensed to current shorts bits, and I have the option of learning more or passing by. I shouldn't have been surprised to find that RTE (Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the public service broadcaster for Ireland) offers a similar website, which provides news (both international and local), business reports, sports info and more for Ireland. Now I'm hooked on that too. It's interesting to see which headlines they pick up and how their coverage compares to that of CNN.

Since I'm writing a book that includes more than one murder, naturally I gravitate toward reports of murders in Ireland, and how they are investigated and prosecuted; I'm trying to understand the terminology so I can get it right. (Which is probably absurd, since as far as I can tell, no one in Ireland reads cozies, so no one is likely to write to me and complain that I got the chain of command or who investigates which aspect of a crime wrong.)

It's interesting reading. Bear in mind that Ireland is physically about the size of New Jersey, and the total population of the country in 2011 was 4.7 million. The US national crime rate for 2010 was 4.8 per 100,000 people; the Irish crime rate for that year was 1.25 per 100,000, roughly one-quarter that of the US.

So I think it's safe to say that there's a difference in attitude toward homicide, and I think it's reflected in the language used in news releases. There is a kind of innocence about the individual reports, a courtesy of language. It's sometimes possible to follow a case over time, although a surprising number of cases reported took place well in the past. Just this month, a man already serving a sentence for the attempted murder of a friend was given a life sentence when the friend died, two years after the attack. The report on that one closes with "this case has made legal history and this is the first conviction of its kind."

A number of "political" murders continue to occur, or at least reach the final stages of prosecution. A member of one or another dissident group (yes, the IRA lives on, in various splinter groups) may be told to bring a target to a site for a "punishment shooting." One such suspect who confessed,"named the others involved and his life is now in danger."

The gardaí are persistent about following up on unsolved cased, and there are often reports of an arrest being made years after the crime. Often someone who had disappeared years earlier is found. In both old and new cases, a pathologist "attends the scene" and a post mortem is conducted. The scene is "technically examined" or "forensically examined" (presumably by their equivalent of Crime Scene Investigators). The gardaí often "appeal for information" from the public.

Charges of murder are not brought lightly in Ireland: in the case of one murder (which I'm saving for a book!), over a thousand people in the (rural) area of the murder were interviewed, and it took five years to declare the death suspicious—and they still haven't made an arrest.

I'm not saying that Ireland is crime-free. There are gangs, there are drug dealers, and criminals are not all confined to the big cities. I don't want to paint a picture of a bucolic place where everyone loves everyone else, because that would be false. But I want to believe that in a small country, where most people could play the "six degrees of separation" with almost anyone else, murder is a crime taken more seriously than we do here. So if I have murders in my book, I'd better have a good reason—and make sure they're solved.

The Literary Thong

Elizabeth Zelvin

My short story, “Death Will Tank Your Fish,” appears along with twenty-one others in the anthology, Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices. The contributors are all members of the New York/Tristate chapter of Sisters in Crime (one of them, Ken Wishnia, a Mister Sister). Quite a few of us were present at a chapter meeting at which the speaker was a highly motivated PR person who encouraged us to come up with fresh ideas for promoting our work. She was pleased to hear that the anthology’s publisher, L&L Dreamspell, had linked the book to Café Press, which sells promotional materials with any logo or slogan you like. But her face didn’t really light up until she heard about the thong with the row of pizzas across the minuscule front that the site was offering along with more conventional items such as mugs and T-shirts. Then she started talking big. “Contact The New Yorker!” she said. “It’s exactly the kind of story they’d like for Talk of the Town.” In fact, she offered to pitch it for us.


The thong with the row of pizzas seems to have disappeared—sold out, perhaps?—but an equally skimpy thong that displays the book cover (including the pizzas) is still available.

It has a little less pizzazz, but maybe it will still sell books. The product blurb enthuses:


Panty-minimalists love our casual thong that covers sweet spots without covering your assets; putting an end to panty-lines. This under-goodie is "outta sight" in low-rise pants. Toss these message panties onstage at your favorite rock star or share a surprise message with someone special ... later.

What does this have to do with mysteries? Not much. Few of this anthology’s authors, if any, are of an age or figure to be seen or photographed in such a garment. But evidently, little as it has to do with writing, this is what you have to do to get attention for your book in twenty-two-dozen, as a friend of mine calls the new year.


Seems like the way to sell a book these days has to do with anything but writing or being a writer. The week I’m writing this, the top ten New York Times bestsellers in fiction include two by Stieg Larsson (the guy whose untimely demise worked PR miracles, selling better than ever since the movies are coming out), one by James Patterson, known for what he calls “team writing,” one by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney (evidently another veteran bestseller who doesn’t write his own books any more), Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, a fine first novel that deserves its success, but I suspect this spurt is due to the movie...and the top ten nonfiction authors include a TV anchor (with co-author), “a father [who] recounts his 3-year-old son’s encounter with Jesus and the angels” (with co-author), a star quarterback (with co-author), a, hmm, conservative radio host (with co-author), a Nobel Prize winning economist, and a comic actress (no co-author acknowledged, but do you really think Tina Fey wrote her own book?).


So what I want to know is this: If I bring the pizza panties to, oh, let’s say a Keith Urban concert (country, not rock, but I do think he’s sexy) and lob them at the stage...do you think he’ll buy the book?

How do you spell "change"?

Sandra Parshall

I think Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster would approve of Twitterese and online language in general. Both were enthusiastic proponents of a flexible language and believed that words, when written, should look the way they sound. I doubt that either man would be moaning about internet-fostered illiteracy and young people who prefer phonetics (ur) to standard words (your).

The greatest strength of the English language, especially the variety spoken in the U.S., has always been its elasticity. English readily absorbs useful foreign words, sometimes changing the pronunciation and spelling. Old words acquire new meanings, and every year we create and rapidly begin to use words that never existed before. At the same time, English is a hodgepodge of archaic spellings, some with more than one definition and a different pronunciation for each definition.

When a language contains such spellings and pronunciations as borough, cough, tough, slough, through, and dough, it’s amazing that any child learns to speak, read, and write it fluently, and even more astounding that anyone can learn it as a second language. We have words with different spellings and meanings but identical pronunciations, such as borough and burrow, through and threw. We have words like ghost and aghast, with inexplicable silent letters. And can you tell me the difference between learned and learned? You can speak English all your life and still trip up when writing it.

Benjamin Franklin recognized the problem as early as 1768, when he published “A Scheme for a New Alphabet and Reformed Mode of Spelling.” He proposed several new vowels and wanted to abolish some troublesome consonants. His views didn’t have much impact on practices, though.

Noah Webster shared Franklin’s views, and he was in an ideal position to take direct action: he

That wild and crazy guy, Noah Webster

compiled the English-speaking world’s most widely used spelling guides and dictionary, and if he thought a spelling should be changed, he changed it. He created American versions of such words as centre, theatre, honour, colour and programme. His ideas about the language scandalized social conservatives, who called him radical and mad. But you will notice that center, theater, honor, color and program are today’s standard spellings in American usage.

Standardized spelling, however, is an obstacle to innovation. Since the printing press was invented in the 1440s, language conservatives have been trying to make us toe the line and ignore the allure of simplification and clarity in spelling. Even as we continually add new words to the language, many of them spawned by the technology industry and communications media, publishers demand standardized spelling and adherence to “house style” and writers run spell-check and comb through their manuscripts for slip-ups. Nothing, we’re told, will make a worse impression on an editor or agent than a misspelled word. Use “threw” when you should have used “through” and you’re toast.

But the people are the ones who shape their language, and in this time of rapid change English can't remain static. In the current issue of Wired magazine, writer and Oberlin College associate professor Anne Trubek states, “Consistent spelling was a great way to ensure clarity in the print era. But with new technologies, the way that we write and read (and search and data-mine) is changing, and so must spelling.” Note that she uses past tense in referring to the print era.

I’m all for letting the language evolve on the street and the internet, in everyday use. Why should we let scholars who are heavily invested in the past and staid tradition restrict the flexibility that has always been the hallmark, the inherent value, and the greatest charm of English?

What do you think?

Blog Break

Sharon Wildwind

Sorry, guys and gals. I am in the middle of planning a funeral for a family member. Sometimes the writing world just has to give way to real life.

See you next week.

Mistaken Identity: The Police and Me

by Julia Buckley

I have nothing but admiration for police officers, and I had a recent encounter with one which encouraged that respect. While driving home from work about two months ago, I waited in a school zone for some kiddies to get through the crosswalk. The driver in front of me waited, too, but she didn't see the police officer strolling from her spot at the school back to her car across the street.

The driver began moving, nearly colliding with the officer, and naturally the officer looked displeased. The driver kept moving, oblivious, because she was TEXTING. All of this I witnessed, including the fact that the police officer tried to get a look at the license plate before the car disappeared.

A few blocks later, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw flashing red and blue lights. It took me a moment to realize that I was being pulled over; this hadn't happened since I was in my twenties and was detained for a non-working brake light.

I pulled to the side and opened my window, curious, trying to figure out what law I had broken (I tend to drive, if anything, too slowly).

The woman who appeared at my window was the officer who had almost been hit. "Hello, Officer," I said.

"Hello. May I see your license and proof of insurance, please?"

I wanted to make sure I followed protocol. "My license is in the back seat. May I reach back there for it?" I asked.

"Sure." She didn't tell me why she'd pulled me over, which had me nervous. I reached into the back and found that, when I had tossed my things into the back seat and slammed the door, I had caught the handle of my purse in it. I tugged away, my face growing red, trying to get that darn driver's license. I thought the officer smiled a little.

When I finally managed to provide it, as well as my insurance card, she looked at them and asked, "And do you have your cell phone with you?"

"No. I don't have a cell phone," I said. This is the truth; I am one of the last of the phone-free people.

She nodded. "Okay, it's not you, then. Someone almost hit me a few blocks back, she had a blue minivan and the first three license numbers were the same as yours."

"I saw her," I said. "I was right behind her."

She returned my things and told me to have a good day, then returned to her car, made a U-turn, and sped away. And I really hope she caught that careless driver.

When my son and his friend were struck by a car two years ago, the woman at the wheel was texting. She had no driver's license with her and no insurance, and, according to some student witnesses, even tried to drive away while the boys still sat dazed in the street (one of the students chased her down--he is now in the military, and America is lucky to have him).

One of my greatest regrets is that I did not attend her traffic court hearing; my younger son was sick with a fever, and I counted on the fact that the family of the other boy would attend and fill me in on the results--except that they didn't go, either, since there was a terrible blizzard that day.

My son and his friend, miraculously, had walked away with only scrapes and bruises, and one lost shoe. I called the courthouse months later and found that the woman had been given a 200-dollar fine, which she did not pay. She still had her license, although they were considering taking that away from her.

It infuriates me when people text and drive, but I am grateful for diligent police officers and watchful young people who try to do the right thing in bad situations.

Picture: Wikipedia