It Only Took 13 Years

by Laura Alden
Agatha Award nominee, Best First Novel

After almost 13 years of writing, I’m now a published writer. An author. Hard to believe, but true. Which means that, to some people, after 13 years of spending much of my free time writing and reading about writing, and studying other writers and kinda-but-not-really telling friends and family that I was working on manuscripts, I’m suddenly an authority on All Things Writing.

Hah. As if. Some days I think I know less than I did ten years ago.

People ask me about e-books and sales figures and what the market is for memoirs and what’s the best way to sell a non-fiction manuscript? They ask me about selling poetry and children’s books and how do I think a novel about a young boy who learns he was adopted by a family of vampires would sell?

Um, no clue. Honest. I really have no idea.

“But you’ve written a book,” they say, looking at me sideways, letting their words rise at the end of the sentence, adding just a dash of doubt.

Sorry, I tell them. Wish I could help you, but I really don’t know. I just don’t know that much about writing.

And I don’t. How can I? See, for me the hardest thing about writing is knowing if what I’ve scribbled down is any good. If I don’t even know that, how can I pretend to know anything about writing?

When I’m writing, I have no idea if any of it is worth keeping. Even when I’m rereading, I really don’t know if it’s crap or if it’s decent. The really weird thing is that sometimes, on rereads, any given scene will scan like a champ. (Yes! I can write! I’m not a complete imposter!) A week later I’ll read the same scene and want to delete the whole thing for being such an insipid and pointless piece
of drivel.

My only comfort is that this feeling of I-have-no-clue-what-I’m-doing seems to run rampant in authors, even very successful ones. (Yes! I am not alone!) Of course, this comfort is completely overshadowed by the hollow realization that very successful authors can feel that they have no clue what they’re doing.

Uh-oh. If they feel that way, what chance do I have of getting a clue?

Well, none, actually.

But you know what? I don’t care. I love to write. I love to create stories and people and places. If I can keep on doing that, I can live with muddling my way through this business of writing, putzing along, doing my best. And with any luck, every once in awhile, I’ll be able to make someone smile, way deep down inside. If I can do that…well, then everything turned out just fine.


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Laura Alden grew up in Michigan and graduated from Eastern Michigan University in the 80’s with a (mostly unused) Bachelor of Science degree in geology. Currently, Laura and her husband share their house with two very strange cats. When Laura isn’t writing her next book, she’s working at her day job, reading, singing in her church choir, or doing some variety of skiing. Laura’s debut novel, Murder at the PTA was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Her second book, Foul Play at the PTA, will be released in July.

Classic Approach to Mystery: An Interview with G.M. Malliet

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

G.M. Malliet’s Death of a Cozy Writer, first in a series featuring Detective Chief Inspector St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, has been described as "wicked, witty, and full of treats" by Peter Lovesey and hailed as "a delightful homage to the great novels of Britian's Golden Age of mysteries" by Nancy Pearl on NPR. It has been nominated for the Agatha Award for best first novel (winners will be announced at Malice Domestic on May 2) and the Left Coast Crime/Hawaii Five-O Award for best police procedural. It was selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best books of 2008. Her recently released second novel, Death and the Lit Chick, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

An American, G.M. attended Oxford University and holds a graduate degree from the University of Cambridge. She is a former journalist and copywriter and lives with her husband in Virginia.

[Note: The other four Agatha nominees in the best first novel category have also been featured on Poe’s Deadly Daughters in recent months. If you’d like to learn more about Sheila Connolly, Krista Davis, Rosemary Harris, and Joanna Campbell Slan, enter their names in the blog search box to bring up their interviews or guest blogs.]

Q. Congratulations on your Agatha and Hawaii Five-O award nominations for Death of a Cozy Writer! How does it feel to be honored this way for your first book?

A. It feels incredible—like winning the lottery, only better. In the case of awards and nominations—as you know, Sandra!—you first have to work incredibly hard before you get lucky. It is extremely satisfying to have the effort acknowledged.

Q. What inspired you to write a series modeled after the classic British cozies? Do you reread any of your favorites while you’re writing?

A. I wrote the type of book I love to read. I’d read all the “Golden Agers,” some of them several times over, and while I didn’t think I could match them, I did think I might have fun sending up some of the conventions of the genre.

When I’m writing, I read a lot of non-fiction. The third book in the St. Just series has a sculling and rowing theme, so I had the excuse to indulge my love of the sport with so-called research. I also try to read The New Yorker religiously, hoping the magnificent writing therein will wear off on me. I just discovered the “Eminent Lives” series—Bill Bryson’s contribution on Shakespeare’s life is wonderfully funny. All the writers in this series are masters.

Q. You take some chances in Death of a Cozy Writer – using omniscient viewpoint and a Golden Age tone for a modern story. Did you encounter resistance from agents or editors when you were marketing it? Were there some who just didn't get what you were doing?

A. I didn’t set out to mystify anyone with Death of a Cozy Writer, but that is what frequently happened, yes. The funny thing is, I really had no idea I was doing anything unusual. As a writer, I love omniscient viewpoint, because it allows you to get inside the heads of all the characters. That is much more entertaining, I think, for both writer and reader. The challenge for the writer comes, of course, in not getting too far inside the killer’s head and giving the game away.

Q. You’re obviously very fond of Britain. What draws you to that setting? Do you travel there often?

A. I’m not sure where the anglophilia came from: It may have started with early exposure to National Velvet or Black Beauty. I try to get back to Great Britain once a year. This year I’m hoping for an extended stay to include a pilgrimage to Wallingford, where Agatha Christie lived many years with her husband Max, and Greenway, her home in Devon. Added bonus: I just read somewhere that Wallingford is frequently used as a setting for the Midsomer Murders TV series.

Q. Death of a Cozy Writer is written in a distinctive, wryly humorous voice. Does that style came naturally to you, or do you have to consciously work at maintaining it throughout a book?

A. I have tried to “write serious” and I find I can’t maintain the tone for long. Some bit of nonsense always wants to creep in, so I let it.

Q. What do you see as the differences between the classic British mysteries and the crafts, cooking, and cats cozies being published today in the U.S.? Any thoughts on why Britain, where cozies were born, produces so few cozy writers these days?

A. I don’t know what’s going on in Britain with all the gloomy books. But I have the idea Agatha Christie—despite the humorous mannerisms she gave Poirot and Marple—felt she was accurately depicting a world fraught with evil. Perhaps nothing has changed, except that the depictions of violence have become more graphic.

Q. Was this the first book you'd written, or do you – like most of us – have a few manuscripts you weren't able to sell?

A. I have a romantic suspense novel that I didn’t try very hard to sell (I think I knew without the need of formal rejection that it was middling at best). I also have in my possession many mysteries that were abandoned at the fifty-page mark. The first fifty or so pages of Death of a Cozy Writer won the Malice Domestic grant and I wonder if, without that encouragement, I would have finished the book. It’s a scary thought.

Q. Did you, like so many authors, spend a long time writing, rewriting, and polishing your first published book before it sold? How long, altogether, did you work on it? By comparison, how long have you spent writing your second and third books? Do you plan to be a book-a-year author, and if so, how difficult has the adjustment to that schedule been?

A. A book a year seems to be the norm but I would much rather have eighteen months: I’m a stupendously slow writer and, like Oscar Wilde, I can spend a day deciding whether a comma should go or stay.

I guess it took me over a year to finish Death of a Cozy Writer once I’d won the Malice grant, and I spent a lot of time trying to sell the completed manuscript. Then for some reason I decided that even though the first book hadn’t sold, I’d start work on the second book in the series. I have no idea why I didn’t immediately register this effort as futile. But, it was a lucky thing I did something so quixotic, because when Cozy Writer finally sold the acquiring editor asked me if I had a second book planned. Well, yes, I did, as a matter of fact, so she offered a two-book contract. The third book took me a little longer than a year, and that’s because so much of the responsibility for promotion at every publishing house has fallen onto authors’ shoulders. Authors quickly find themselves on a rolling tumbrel, promoting one book or another, to the point of forgetting which book we’re supposed to be talking about. Authors need, I think, that eighteen months to do it all—especially authors with fulltime jobs and kids to raise—but I also don’t think it’s going to happen.

Q. What aspect of fiction writing gives you the most pleasure and satisfaction? Which has been most difficult for you to master?

A. Looking back and seeing that from the first tentative swipes, a manuscript is emerging—a book that has come from nowhere, and from everywhere. That process is fascinating.

What is difficult is keeping all the characters straight and even remembering what room I left them sitting in. Especially in a traditional British-type story, there tend to be a lot of suspects, and it’s easy to leave one in the bedroom dozing on a window seat only to find he’s somehow moved over to the drawing room and furthermore he’s now perched on an ottoman. Plus, he’s grown a goatee. I use schematics, sketches, lists, charts, and diagrams galore and still spend a lot of time looking for the inconsistencies that creep in.

Q. How is your life different now that you’re a published author? Is everything working out the way you expected, or have you been surprised by some aspects of publishing?

A. I now write fulltime, seven or eight hours a day once I settle into a story, and I try to take the weekends off. That is good advice from Nora Roberts I read somewhere—to treat writing as any other job and not let it consume you. When I moved to fulltime writing, I was afraid I’d develop weird, loner tics and walk around all day in my bathrobe (Louise Penny describes this as the tendency to sit around watching Oprah whilst eating gummy bears). It hasn’t happened yet (knock wood). I am living my dream and extremely grateful for it, although I do wish someone would invent a chair that is comfortable to sit in eight hours a day.

Q. Have you found writers’ organizations helpful? Would you advise aspiring writers to become active in mystery writers’ groups even before they’re published?

A. Absolutely. If you don’t join Sisters in Crime, you are probably only prolonging the agony of being unpublished. The networking, the good advice, the camaraderie—priceless.

Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers who are still struggling to break into print?

A. I’m not sure I’ve been around book publishing long enough to be dispensing advice. But the “trite” and true advice holds: Write every day, if only for an hour. A manuscript will emerge, or a short story. Enter reputable contests; submit to anthologies—this gives you a deadline, which focuses the mind wonderfully.

Most of all, develop a Zen-like patience. If you love what you’ve written, rest assured someone else will love it, too—eventually.

Late Bloomer

Sandra Parshall

I’m sure the man in the bookstore didn’t mean to hurt my feelings.

I was doing my thing, standing by a table near the door and inviting customers to stop and look at/hear about my books. I gave this particular man my spiel, including the information that The Heat of the Moon won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel of 2006. He picked up a copy, studied it, looked back at me and said, “This was your first novel?” Yes, I said with a smile. He scrutinized my face with narrowed eyes and finally remarked, “So I guess you took up writing very late in life.”

I wanted to grab the guy by his polo shirt and scream into his face, “Do you have ANY IDEA how many books I’ve written? Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to sell a book to a publisher? I'd like to see YOU try it. And I don’t look THAT danged old.” I could have simply hit him, of course, but striking the customers probably wouldn’t go down well with the bookstore manager. What I did was smile – by now, my smile felt fixed in concrete – and say, pleasantly, “Getting a book published is wonderful, at any time of life. I’m really enjoying it.”

And that’s true. Except...

Many writers have unsold manuscripts stacked in a closet, and although we may claim to be glad those earlier, imperfect efforts were never foisted on the public, a sense of regret is inevitable. Regret that books we labored over and loved at the time were deemed unworthy. Regret for the years of rejection that left permanent bruises on our egos. Regret that we had to wait so long to enjoy the satisfaction of sharing our work with readers.

I’ve been writing since I was a child. I started trying to get my fiction (short stories back then) published when I was in my teens. I started working as a newspaper reporter in my twenties and also began writing novels. I wrote and wrote and wrote and got absolutely nowhere. One agent after another took me on and failed to sell my work. One manuscript after another went into the closet. I never seemed to be writing whatever it was that editors were looking for at any particular time.

I didn’t even start reading mysteries and suspense until I was around 30, and it was years after that before I decided to write them. The Heat of the Moon was my first attempts at suspense. It didn’t do any better with New York publishers than my previous literary efforts had. One editor wanted to buy it, but shortly after she informed my agent she intended to make an offer, she lost her job in one of the corporate takeovers that were rampant at the time. My book deal went down with her. Another editor – my dream editor, in fact – loved the book. Wanted to publish it, but didn’t have room for it on her list. She asked my agent to resubmit it in three months if it hadn’t sold. My agent resubmitted, the editor read it again, decided she didn’t like the ending, and rejected it. All the other editors – 20, I believe – turned it down because they thought it lacked suspense and readers wouldn’t stick with it. I put it away and would never have submitted it anywhere again if a couple of friends hadn’t read the manuscript and urged me to keep trying. An editor named Barbara Peters eventually bought it, and Poisoned Pen Press published the book exactly as it was originally written. A year later, it won the Agatha Award. At last, I had bloomed – but late, very late, by comparison to my youthful hopes for a writing career.

So now I’ve arrived, right? I’m secure, no longer a wannabe. Well, one thing I’ve learned since becoming a published writer and getting to know others is that only the mega-bestselling authors are secure. In the past several years, a lot of wonderful writers with solid followings have been dropped by their publishers because they haven’t “broken out” of the midlist to major sales. I’m sure James Patterson sleeps well at night, but I imagine quite a few less prominent writers are having nightmares about being dumped in the near future.

It’s a hard world out there. Every aspiring writer should be aware of how difficult it can be to sell your work. But if you’re a true writer, the knowledge of disappointments ahead won’t stop you – it will only make you more determined. If you're a reader and you meet a middle-aged author selling his or her first novel, recognize that this probably isn’t someone who “started late.” In all likelihood, what you see before you is a survivor. Offer your congratulations, buy a copy of the book, and please keep your thoughts about the writer’s age to yourself!

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For another look at life as a middle-aged beginner, be sure to read this weekend’s guest blog by June Shaw. June is one of the most charming, vivacious people I’ve ever met, and she’s thoroughly enjoying her new career as a mystery author.

The Things We Keep

Sandra Parshall

On my desk sits a small brown pottery jar, crammed full of pens and pencils. It’s not much to look at, but it has been on every desk I’ve had for many years and unless it somehow gets broken into a million pieces, it will be on my desk for the rest of my life. On the bottom of the jar is the amateur potter’s name, scratched into the surface, the last three letters tiny and cramped because her name was long and she ran out of space. She was a dear friend of mine, and she died more than 30 years ago at the age of 28.

Most of us possess objects that mean far more than their physical properties would suggest. We hold them in our hands and remember someone who is no longer with us. We look at them and remember a moment that will never be equaled. They are talismans, symbols. The Agatha Award teapot assumed this magical aura the moment it was placed in my shaking hands. It represented the end of a long and painful struggle to get my work into print, to reach a point where I could truly call myself a writer. I will never part with it. But which means more to me, the teapot or the little brown jar made by my friend? I don’t think I could choose.


When a writer gives a character an object with special meaning, the reader understands and is drawn into the character’s emotional life. Think of all the soldiers in novels and war movies who carry mementos of loved ones into battle and bring tears to our eyes simply by taking these precious objects out of their pockets and looking at them. And who could ever forget Citizen Kane and his sled named Rosebud? In the novel I recently completed, the main character, a young woman named Erin, receives a necklace with a ladybug charm on it as a gift from her parents. The day she receives it, the day she stops wearing it, and the day she fastens it around her neck again are major turning points in her life.

What objects do you own that have special meaning? Can you recall a fictional character whose attachment to a memento helped you understand his or her emotional life?