Recycling--the Literary Version

Sandra Parshall

I was happy to hear Ian McEwan on the radio last week, describing his habit of saving deleted passages from his novels because they might contain “nuggets” he can use in later work. I don’t have much in common with this renowned writer, but we’re alike in one way: we both practice a literary version of recycling.

I don’t reuse only the nuggets, though. I recycle characters, subplots, whole scenes. Like one of my cloth tote bags, many elements of my books used to be something else.

When Disturbing the Dead was published, I wrote about the transformation of a character who first appeared in a manuscript titled Outside Agitators, a story about young antipoverty workers and the Appalachian people they tried to help during the War on Poverty. I worked on that novel for years and never turned it into a coherent story with a proper ending. But I’ve been carving away chunks ever since and using them in other books.

One of those chunks was a teenage mountain girl with red hair and freckles and the unlikely name of Lana Turner. She longed to leave the poverty-stricken hollow where she grew up and move on to a better life. When I wrote Disturbing the Dead, I kept Lana’s dreams but made her a little older and gave her a Melungeon – mixed race – heritage, which meant changing her coloring to olive skin, black hair, and bright blue eyes. My agent told me I would also have to change her name, because some editors disliked characters with famous people’s names. Lana became Holly Turner.

I wasn’t finished cannibalizing my old unfinished manuscript. In the original, I wrote about antipoverty workers as young idealists, well-intentioned but naive about their power to effect change in a region where gigantic energy corporations control the economy and politics. When I began working on Broken Places (released in February), I asked myself what some of these people would be like decades later, if they had stayed on after their government service ended and tried to continue their activism on behalf of the poor. Maybe they would have had some small successes over the years. Most likely, they would have experienced far more failures and been forced to swallow a bitter dose of disillusionment.

I plucked Cameron and Meredith Taylor from the pages of Outside Agitators, fast-forwarded to the present, and made these two disappointed idealists my murder victims. Meredith, I learned for the first time, had a secret ambition to be a writer, and her final – unfinished – manuscript was titled (ta da!) Outside Agitators. In its pages, Captain Tom Bridger of the Mason County (VA) Sheriff’s Department discovers clues to the motive behind the murders.

Mrs. Lily Barker, the self-educated woman from Disturbing the Dead who believes she has “the sight” (that’s what Appalachian natives call the ability to see beyond the tangible world), wasn’t lifted from any earlier work of mine, but she was inspired by a minor character in Outside Agitators who was too colorful to discard. Mrs. Barker proved popular with readers, and a woman who attended one of my library events made me promise to bring her back, so she returns in Broken Places and also shows up in the book I’m currently writing.

Mason County, my invention, is similar to the mountain community in the original Outside Agitators, but it’s in southwestern Virginia rather than West Virginia, and even the coal companies have largely deserted it by now. In my work in progress, though, Tom will pay a visit to a mountaintop mining operation. Other writers may favor idyllic small communities, but I’d rather write about places where sudden gashes of ugliness mar the natural beauty and decades of lies and rivalries and betrayals simmer just under the surface, ready to erupt and bleed all over the present.

All those years I poured into Outside Agitators, with no end in sight and little hope of ever seeing it published, have paid off richly, and I suspect I’ll use still more chunks of it before I’ve exhausted its possibilities.

When I delete a passage from a work in progress, I’m careful to stash it in a file rather than throwing it out. There must be some reason I wrote it in the first place, and if it doesn’t seem to fit now, it might be just what I need to fill a hole in a future story.

What's my subgenre?

Sandra Parshall

I’ve heard that some editors no longer want to label a certain type of mystery as a “cozy” because they think it’s limiting.

Publishing is a label-loving business, though – everything must be categorized for marketing purposes – so if “cozy” goes, something must take its place. “Traditional mystery” seems to be the preferred substitute. It’s a broad term that covers everything from talking animal puzzles to Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache tales.

At first I thought it was okay to apply the traditional mystery label so freely, but I’ve changed my mind. The trouble with lumping diverse books together is that readers won’t know what to expect. A true cozy is a far cry from the darker traditional mysteries I write. I wouldn’t want a dedicated cozy reader to pick up my books expecting to find recipes or knitting patterns in the back. I don’t want readers who enjoy darker mysteries to avoid my books because of the “traditional” label.

Maybe we need more categories, not fewer. Cozy is a time-honored label and shouldn’t be abandoned, and readers are directed toward their favorite type of cozy with the kind of taglines Berkley uses: a coffee shop mystery, a cheese shop mystery, etc. Sensitive readers won’t get any unpleasant surprises when they sit down with one of these books. It’s trickier to label the darker mysteries, the stories with an edge that lean toward suspense but don’t have the degree of violence and gore found in thrillers. I place my second and third books in that category.

I still consider my first published novel, The Heat of the Moon, psychological suspense. I was surprised when it was nominated for an Agatha Award, and shocked when it won, but I wasn’t about to refuse the honor on the grounds that my book wasn’t a traditional mystery. For that matter, it isn’t a murder mystery either, but Rachel, my protagonist, does solve a mystery, so I don’t feel guilty about that teapot sitting on a nearby shelf as I write this.

When my second book, Disturbing the Dead, came out, some reviewers called it suspense, others called it a thriller. I was interviewed about it by the International Thriller Writers newsletter (fantastic free publicity for which I am grateful). But I thought of DTD, and still do, as a traditional mystery.

MY third book, Broken Places, out next month, is also a traditional mystery. But like DTD, it has little in common with cozies. The small community where my characters live may be in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, but it’s not the quaint, picture-postcard setting found in so many cozies. My fictional county has its wealthy citizens and its middle-class, but it also has poverty, ignorance, meth addicts, and racism. Everybody knows everybody else, but that familiarity is as likely to breed hostility as goodwill. Relationships are complex, with more hidden threads than you’re likely to find in cozies.

If editors are claiming the term “traditional mystery” for books-formerly-known-as-cozies, how do I label my novels to set them apart?

After my editor read the manuscript of Disturbing the Dead, she called it a gothic. That startled me at the time. However, when a Publishers Weekly reviewer described it as “a lethal gothic drama” I began to see that the label fit. Now, with Broken Places, I’m comfortable with the idea that I write gothic mysteries.

And what elements distinguish a gothic mystery? This type of book has often been set in the past, with a female protagonist who is in danger, but in its modern form neither element is required. John Hart and Thomas H. Cook write gothic mysteries, set in the present or near past and featuring male lead characters. What’s always required is a sense of dread and growing menace. In this respect, The Heat of the Moon could be labeled gothic too — it has a lot in common with Du Maurier’s Rebecca, a classic gothic (yes, I thought of Mrs. Danvers when I created Rachel’s mother) that is labeled these days as romantic suspense.

Tangled relationships and dysfunctional families, long-buried secrets, lots of twists and surprises — you’ll find all of these in gothic mysteries. That’s the kind of book I enjoy reading and the kind I enjoy writing. It may well be the only kind I’m capable of writing. I suspect that if I set out to create a light, humorous mystery, it would go dark on me by page 10 despite my best efforts. I can’t help it. Broken Places includes a scene with Rachel and a goat that would be hilarious if Donna Andrews had written it, and I intended it to be comic relief, but I think it feels more threatening than anything else.

So: I am an author of modern gothic mysteries. I can live with that label.

Solitary writers? I don't know any

Sandra Parshall

Mystery writers, as much as any other authors, like to play up the image of the solitary wordsmith pecking away (preferably in an unheated attic), writing about imaginary people but shunning contact with the real kind.

Attend a mystery conference and you’ll see how absurd that notion is. Mystery writers are the friendliest people I’ve ever met, and many are likely to give you a big hug even if your previous acquaintance has been limited to online exchanges. (I’ve gotten used to people I’ve never met throwing their arms around me, but I'll admit it was startling at first.) In between conferences, those online chats keep everybody in touch, but there’s nothing like a mystery con to make a writer feel like part of a huge community of authors.

I’m only going to two conferences this year, and the first, Malice Domestic, is now past, leaving behind a lingering nostalgia for the energy and enthusiasm of a big crowd of writers and fans. Okay, I’ll admit Malice Domestic was more exciting last year, when I was an Agatha nominee (and winner). But this year was great in its own way because four friends from the Guppies Chapter of Sisters in Crime were nominated.

Liz Zelvin, my blog sister, was nominated for Best Short Story, as was Nan Higginson. Beth Groundwater was nominated for Best First Novel for A Real Basket Case. Hank Phillippi Ryan won the prize for her first novel, Prime Time. Here they are: Liz, Beth, Hank, and Nan.


They’re all terrific writers, and you’ll be hearing a lot more from and about them in the future.

The personal highlight of Malice this year came when a woman in the audience at my panel (“After the Agatha: You’ve won! What’s next?”) revealed that she is one of Poisoned Pen Press’s manuscript screeners and was delighted to have played a part in getting my first book, The Heat of the Moon, published. I wanted to find her and thank her afterward, but she had vanished. I hope she knows her words gave me a warm glow that's going to last a while.

So far everything I’ve done at Malice has been tied to The Heat of the Moon. In 2006, the book had just been published and my only goal was to make people aware of it. In 2007, I was on the Best First Novel nominees panel and feeling a little anxious that THOTM would overshadow the newly-released Disturbing the Dead. This year, I was on a panel of past Agatha winners, having fun but regretting that I didn't have another brand-new book in hand to talk about.

What’s in store for me next spring? Even I’m not sure yet. But I know I’ll be at Malice, getting and giving hugs, exhausting my cheek muscles with nonstop smiling, and enjoying the great company.

More of my Malice Domestic photos are posted at: www.flickr.com/photos/guppies/

The Mysterious Uses of Weather

Sandra Parshall


It was a dark and stormy night.

Laugh, if you must, at this classic example of bad writing, but I sort of like it. For me, nothing creates atmosphere as effectively as weather. I always appreciate a writer who knows how to use the natural world to enhance a novel, and I’m disappointed when a writer’s story seems to take place in a hermetically sealed chamber, with no mention of what might be going on outside. Characters who never experience weather are not living in a world I recognize.

The first question I ask myself when I begin planning a book is, What season is it? I need to know the temperature, the appearance, the feel of the world my characters will move through. When I say that I want to make my characters sweat or shiver, I mean it literally.

Maybe I’m hyper-aware of weather because I’ve lived for many years in the Washington, DC, area, where residents seem absolutely obsessed with what Mother Nature is up to at all times. In summer it’s the tropical heat, the humidity, the violent thunderstorms that leave tens of thousands without electricity -- or, alternatively, the drought that leaves dead lawns and gardens in its wake. In winter, we're terrified that it might start snowing at any moment. If a single flake wafts from the heavens, all the schools close and half a million federal workers claim liberal leave and head for home. Everybody knows that once our streets are covered with snow, they’re going to stay that way for a while. A few inches of white stuff can trap people in their homes for days as they wait in vain for a plow to rescue them. People who spent the first thirty years of their lives in Maine somehow forget how to deal with snow when they move to Washington, and everyone is endlessly amazed by the inability of the District and surrounding counties to clear the streets in a timely manner.

Having grown up in the south, I’ve never seen the necessity for winter, and I despise snow only slightly less than ice storms. (That's my garden in the photo above.) When I wanted to create a menacing atmosphere in my second book, Disturbing the Dead, snow was the obvious weather choice. The book begins in a snowstorm, as Deputy Tom Bridger and his men are collecting the scattered bones of a missing woman on a southwestern Virginia mountaintop. Snow is ever-present in the book, cold on the skin and slippery underfoot, wrapping this little world in a veil of white. But my characters are not wimpy Washingtonians. They’re mountain people, and for them life goes on despite the weather -- until it’s brought to an end by a bullet or knife.

My first published novel, The Heat of the Moon, takes place in the Washington area during a typically blistering summer. The story begins with a thunderstorm, and a long-ago storm plays a key role in the plot, but as the story goes on drought sets in. Although I don’t make a big point of the weather in that book, the increasingly parched landscape, the shriveling vegetation along the roads, mirror my character Rachel’s desperation and the absence of emotional nourishment in the home she shares with her sister and her manipulative mother.

Some writers are brilliant in their use of weather to create atmosphere. Edna Buchanan can always make me feel the stifling heat and humidity of Miami. Giles Blunt’s Ontario in winter chills me to the bone. Julia Spencer-Fleming is also adept at building tension and a sense of danger with the use of weather, and I would read Dana Stabenow’s Alaska mysteries and James Lee Burke’s Louisiana mysteries for the weather alone. In Breathtaker, Alice Blanchard created a serial killer who struck only during tornados and used the storms to cover his crimes.

Often, when a book has good characters and a good plot but still seems to lack something, I realize that the missing ingredient is sensory perception of the natural world. So bring on the dark and stormy night, the raging wind and the withering heat. I want to know whether the characters are sunburned or frostbitten, drenched or parched, I want to hear autumn leaves crunching under their feet and see the summer butterflies flitting from flower to flower nearby. Only then will the characters, and the world they inhabit, come alive for me.

The Teapot and the Orphan

Sandra Parshall

Of course I’m thrilled that my 2006 book, The Heat of the Moon, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel at the Malice Domestic conference on May 5. I waited a long time to see it published, I feel both happy and relieved that reviewers and readers have received it well, and I’ll cherish the award (which comes in the shape of a teapot) forever.

I’m a little torn, though. While my first book is getting so much attention a year after publication, my second, Disturbing the Dead, is waiting on the sidelines like a neglected orphan. It’s had good reviews, for which I’m grateful, and readers who have already read The Heat of the Moon and liked it have bought the second book. The Agatha nomination and now the award have made a whole new set of readers aware of the first, though, and I feel almost as if I’m launching it again. I thought I would spend this year talking about and promoting DTD, and I was geared up for that, but lately I’ve talked mostly about THOTM.

Terrible problem to have, right? I’m not complaining! I’m just remarking on a situation I’d never imagined, much less planned for. When someone buys a copy of the first book, I thrust a copy of the second forward. “This is the sequel. It’s new! It’s a great story! You’ll love it!” (Maybe I don’t sound desperate, but that’s the way I feel.) If they smile and say they’ll read the first before considering the second, I make sure they have a bookmark or promotional card with quotes from the reviews of Disturbing the Dead. Don’t forget my new baby, I plead silently. I have a feeling that if DTD were getting all the attention, I’d be begging people not to forget the book that came first.

I’m still relatively new to book promotion and perhaps too attached to my books to be businesslike about selling them. I want everybody to love them equally. I don’t want anyone to favor one over the other. If I have the good fortune to publish a dozen novels, will I drive myself nuts trying to nurture all of them at once? Or will I eventually learn to promote one at a time and let the rest wait in the shadows? I’ve asked more experienced writers a million questions about every other aspect of the business -- okay, I’m a pest, I admit it -- but this is one subject that’s never come up. I’d like to hear how other writers feel about it.

I have to find a place for the Agatha teapot, where it will be safe from the paws and tails of our two curious cats. I’ll give THOTM a kiss on the cover and say, Well done, kid. But I’ll give DTD a reassuring pat and whisper, Hang in there, I haven’t forgotten you.

The First Time Comes Only Once

Sandra Parshall

Attending Malice Domestic last spring as a first novelist was just about the most nerve-wracking experience of my life up to that point. I had been warned that if I did or said anything foolish, the other writers present would never forgive or forget. I was too terrified to approach anyone and hardly dared to open my mouth. I wanted to find a big potted palm and hide behind it all weekend.

Why, then, do I feel nostalgic about that conference? Why do I wish I could do it all over again?

Because it was incredibly exciting, and because now I know that I didn't have to be so scared. I've learned that most mystery writers are generous souls who will forgive a beginner almost anything short of arrogance and deliberate insults. They were beginners once too, and they understand that newbies are frantic and need a helping hand.

Despite the fear factor, I did pretty well at my first conference — I didn’t embarrass myself or anyone else, I met a lot of online friends in person for the first time, I moderated a panel that all present seemed to enjoy (the panelists get the credit for that; I was just the verbal traffic cop), and by the end of it I felt like A Real Writer at last.

Malice Domestic 2007 starts Friday, May 4 and runs through Sunday. I don’t have to travel, thank heaven, because it’s held in Northern Virginia, where I live. This time around, I’ll be a veteran, with my second book, Disturbing the Dead, already out. And I’ll be watching with a mixture of pride and envy as several friends make their Malice debuts as published, or about to be published, mystery novelists and short story writers: Terry Hoover, Deb Baker, June Shaw, Beth Groundwater, Elizabeth Zelvin, Kaye George (aka Judy Egner). During the wild and crazy literary equivalent of speed-dating called Malice-Go-Round, I get to sit at a table and listen as the first-timers race about the room, giving their pitches over and over and talking themselves hoarse. I know I’ll be itching to get up and run around with them, but at the same time I’m grateful that I don’t ever have to do that again.

I’m not completely finished with firsts, though. The Heat of the Moon is a nominee for Best First Novel, and I’ll attend the Agatha Awards banquet on Saturday for the first time. A year ago, I could not have imagined this happening. To tell the truth, I’m still more than a little amazed by the nomination, so I doubt I’ll be crushed if I don’t win. Hey, it’s enough that I get to be on the New Kids on the Block panel, which is fantastic for two reasons: Margaret Maron will moderate, and I’ll be called a kid again for the first time in numerous decades.

The journey from pure terror last spring to relative ease this year hasn’t always been smooth. I’ve stumbled here and there, but I’ve learned a lot (such as: only your dearest friends will want ballpoint pens with your title and name on them), and gained more confidence as a speaker than I ever thought possible. Being an old hand has its rewards.

I still envy the first-timers, though. The experience feels like jumping off a tall building with no safety net below, but that first major conference as a published writer is also one of the most exhilarating events of a mystery writer’s life. My friends are going to shine, and I’ll be grinning like a proud sister in crime all weekend.

One sad note to this year’s Malice will be the absence of the talented and charming Elaine Viets, who was scheduled to act as toastmaster. As most in the mystery community know, Elaine suffered a stroke several weeks ago and has been forced to cancel all appearances for the foreseeable future. She’s doing remarkably well, though, and there’s reason to hope for a full recovery. Murder With Reservations, her new entry in the Dead-End Job series, is out now and available at any mystery or general bookstore, and a number of writers on tour this spring will be talking about her book as well as their own. Elaine will be missed at Malice this weekend, but we all believe she’ll be back among us soon.

Psst! Want a Hot Deal on a Good Book?

Sandra Parshall

You know those sidewalk peddlers who try to make you believe they're selling you a real Rolex for twenty bucks? Sometimes I think a little-known writer selling books is the literary equivalent.

Sure, you’re offering people something in exchange for their money, and you think it’s something valuable, but you have to persuade the customer to see it that way. They’ve never heard of you or your book, and some will wonder out loud whether you’re self-published. Worst case scenario is that you end up feeling as if you should be paying them to read what you’ve written.

Before I published my first novel, The Heat of the Moon, last year, I had no idea how much emotional and physical stamina a simple two-hour booksigning required. Try smiling nonstop for two hours and see if you’re not exhausted afterward. Try giving the same pitch two dozen times in two hours and see if you don’t feel like retiring to a nice quiet padded cell.

You go to every signing with high hopes, and the first thing you want to see is your table set up in a good location. Bookstore managers are busy people, and they don’t have time to totally rearrange their merchandise to create an optimal space for a visiting writer. (Why aren’t such spaces built into the store design? An unanswerable question.) So you have to count yourself lucky if you don’t end up at a table in the storeroom. Count yourself positively blessed if you’re somewhere near the front door, in the line of foot traffic. Of course, you’ll get exasperated looks from customers who see you as a hindrance on their path to the coffee bar, but if you smile and persist some people will stop, listen to your pitch, maybe ask questions, and, in the best of all possible outcomes, even buy a book.

Those who have never done a booksigning and have only attended signings by bestselling authors may wonder what I’m talking about. What pitch? Stephen King doesn’t pitch his book to every customer at signings. People come in droves and line up out the door for the privilege of buying a signed book. And if he smiles at you, wow, but he’s probably not sitting there for hours with a grin plastered on his face. He doesn’t have to. I do. Most writers do. We don’t bring in crowds, so we have to work hard at attracting the attention of passing customers and making our books sound like something they absolutely must own.

I’ve even given my pitch to a ten-year-old girl, who confessed that she loves reading about crime and watching shows like CSI (I like this kid), but her mother places onerous restrictions on her viewing and reading. I sent her to the children’s mystery section. She came back a few minutes later with a book in hand and asked if I thought it would be good. I saw that it was a Newberry winner and assured her she would enjoy it. Maybe in another ten years she’ll come to a signing and buy one of my books. I’ve also pitched my novels to people who seemed captivated and vowed to get the books from the library and read them asap. (They only came in the bookstore to buy a computer software manual. Hardcover novels are too expensive.)

Multiply all this effort three or four times and you have an idea of what it’s like for a relatively unknown writer at a big book festival. Envision a huge room filled with long rows of tables, a dozen or more writers at each. Customers drift down the aisles, sliding their gaze over the stacks of books and carefully avoiding eye contact with the smiling, hopeful writers. You can try to lure them closer by speaking to them, but the place will be so noisy that they can easily pretend not to hear. Dozens of people may pass before anyone thinks your books are worth stopping to examine. Some customers will want to talk to you, but many will ignore you as they pick up a book and read the jacket copy. If you see “the look” forming, you can forget about a sale. (“The look” resembles that open-mouthed, curled-lip thing cats do when they smell something revolting.) Your precious novel, the one you spent a year or more of your life bleeding onto the page, is hastily dropped back on the stack and the non-customer breaks a speed record in distancing herself from it.

When you first start doing booksignings, you feel the urge to be all things to all readers. Does someone want romance? Yes, yes, my book has romance! Does someone else want a lot of action? I swear my characters never have time to breathe! Whatever the customer wants, you rashly promise.

Then one day you find before you a woman in a plain cotton dress that covers her legs to the ankles, her arms to the wrists, and her torso to just below the ears. Her hair is pulled back into a tight little knot, and her face has never been altered by makeup. She sternly inquires whether your book has any “bad words” in it. Well, uh... You frantically run through your cast of characters, reviewing their language, wondering if damn and hell count, and wondering just how many times you used the more offensive four-letter words. Looking into the woman’s unforgiving face, you realize that everything will count to her, and even once will be too much. “Yes,” you admit, “my book has bad words in it.”

As you watch her turn on her heel and walk away, you feel redeemed. No sale, but you told the truth and you didn’t even smile when you did it. This feels good.

But wait, here comes another prospect. Smile! Make eye contact! Prepare to pitch!

Is It a Series or... What?

Sandra Parshall


Humans are downright compulsive about labels. Everything has to be clearly identified, quantified, categorized. How else are we to know what “it” is? If we don’t know what “it” is, we become insecure, unsure how to feel about “it”.

Nowhere is this compulsion more evident than in the field of crime fiction. The labeling often starts before the writer has concocted a single sentence of a book. We hear from every side that we must have a clear idea of exactly what subgenre we’re writing in, so we can follow the rules for that type of book. Crossing subgenres, inadvertently or intentionally, is considered risky. And we are doomed if we approach agents with the news that we’ve written “a novel that combines elements of traditional mystery, suspense, romance, chick lit and paranormal.” It could be a terrific book. It could be a groundbreaking book. But just call it a mystery and pray they won’t notice it’s more than that.

We also face another question: Is it part of a series or is it a standalone? I’m getting that question a lot now, with my second published book, and I have to admit I don’t know how to answer. My first book, The Heat of the Moon, is psychological suspense, told in first person by veterinarian Rachel Goddard. Rachel also appears in the second book, a mystery called Disturbing the Dead. But DTD is told in third person from the viewpoints of both Rachel and Deputy Sheriff Tom Bridger. The story takes place in the mountains of southwestern Virginia rather than the DC area, the primary setting for THOTM.

Am I writing a series? If so, I’ve been asked by librarians and booksellers, what am I calling it?

I’m not calling these two books anything collectively. Some people have labeled them “The Rachel Goddard Series” and I haven’t objected. At least one bookseller has labeled DTD “First in the Tom Bridger Series” and I haven’t objected to that either. Maybe both labels are accurate.

Some writers would want to keep such matters private, but I don’t mind admitting that I wrote Disturbing the Dead at a time when I believed The Heat of the Moon might never be published. I didn’t conceive DTD as a direct sequel to THOTM. I wrote it as the possible beginning of a new series. I gave Rachel a different name in the original version. Later, I changed her name again, but neither of these alternate names felt right to me. She was Rachel and always would be. When Poisoned Pen Press bought THOTM (bless them) and expressed interest in DTD, I was relieved that I could let Rachel be herself again. I didn’t put the book into first person, though, and I didn’t downplay Tom Bridger’s role. The two books are certainly related, but maybe someday I’ll write a Tom book that doesn’t have Rachel in it, or another Tom-less Rachel book. Who knows?

There’s a lot to be said for placing emphasis on different characters throughout a series. In her last few books, Elizabeth George has rotated her continuing characters as the focus of the stories. In one book, Barbara Havers (my favorite) stars and Tommy (not my favorite) is barely mentioned or seen. In another novel, George gives center stage to my least favorite of her people, Deborah and Simon. In most of her books, George gives Tommy the most time onstage and varies the importance of the other characters. Doing this can keep a series fresh for the readers. P.D. James, in recent books, has given Dalgliesh a smaller role while introducing younger cops. (A good idea, since Dalgliesh must be, what, about 125 years old by now?)

One drawback of writing continuing characters is that readers feel they have a personal relationship with these fictional people and do not hesitate to tell writers what to do with them. More of him, please, and less of her. Don’t let those two get together; he’s not good enough for her. And God forbid the writer should kill off a popular character. Ask Dana Stabenow about the consequences of doing that. In the long run, bumping off someone who is loved by readers might not hurt a writer’s sales, but she’s going to get plenty of grief about it in the short term. (For the record, I was terribly upset about Stabenow’s Jack, but I was delighted to see George’s Helen go, heartless creature that I am.)

Despite the drawbacks, the readers’ intense involvement with characters is a good thing because it means the writer has done her job well and it brings readers back for future books. I can only hope that someday readers will care enough about my characters to jump all over me when I do something awful to them. (And if that happens, I hope I’ll be able to remember that I asked for it.)

In the meantime, I’ll let readers decide what to call The Heat of the Moon and Disturbing the Dead. Series books? Related but non-series books? Standalones? I don’t care. All I care about is whether you read them. If you like them, let me know. If you don’t like them, I’ll probably be happier if I don’t hear from you. You may label them any way you like.

Riding the Review Rollercoaster

Sandra Parshall

Now, at last, I understand my urge to publish novels.

It’s not a deep-seated desire to communicate. It’s not a need to purge my imagination of all those crazy made-up people who keep running around in their made-up world, doing shocking things. It’s not, heaven knows, a belief that publication will make me rich and famous. (I was never naive enough to believe that.)

No, it’s masochism.

I just love putting myself at the mercy of strangers. I take a perverse pleasure in releasing my creative children into the world and waiting, wide-eyed and eager, for the world to shatter my fragile writerly ego with those awful-and-wonderful things called reviews.

As my husband and friends never tire of pointing out, I can ignore reams of praise if I find a single disapproving sentence buried within. So what if the reviewer loved the characters, found the setting evocative, enjoyed the plot right to the end? None of that counts. What counts is that she thought some of my phrasing was... gulp... clunky.

Despair! I will never write again. I will toss the computer out with the trash because I am clearly unworthy to be called an author.

But the Library Journal gave my second book, Disturbing the Dead, a starred review. That means something, doesn’t it? Certainly it does. I am worthy after all! I am an author.

But... but... A reviewer said DTD has too many characters. Omigod. Here is a person who believes that some of the characters I love so much shouldn’t even exist. How can I go on writing now that I know this? Where did I put the razor blades?

Okay, calm down, Sandy, and go reread the advance reviews. Oh, look, Kirkus -- Kirkus, so difficult to please! -- declared DTD “fast-paced, chilling, and compulsively readable.” Whew. My life and sanity saved again.

But... but... Yet another reviewer (they’re multiplying like wire hangers in a closet) thinks DTD has too many Melungeon characters and, furthermore, I made too many of them poor. Now I feel like an insensitive wretch who traffics in stereotypes. Forget the razor blades. Bullets are faster.

What one reviewer praises, another will criticize. And it’s the criticism, seldom the praise, that sticks in my mind. Every review is a source of nail-biting worry before I read it and possible agony afterward. “Don’t take it personally,” everybody says. Impossible advice for someone like me to follow. Everything is personal.

I would not dream of challenging reviewers, because they’re supposed to give their honest opinions and I’m grateful to them for telling readers about my books. In my rare lucid moments, I realize that my reviews have been mostly positive and I have nothing to complain about. I try not to care that at least two reviewers think Disturbing the Dead takes place in North Carolina, even though the characters never venture outside Virginia. (True to form, I’m convinced that misapprehension is somehow my fault.)

But I keep wondering exactly which characters I should have left out of the book and which phrases were clunky. Is it too late to recall every copy and rewrite?

I regard my work-in-progress with a cold eye. Maybe I should kill off Greg right now. Heck, maybe Greg should never have been born in the first place. And clunky writing? Oh, good grief, the book is filled with it. No one will ever want to read the thing. It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless. Getting two books published was a fluke. It will never happen again.

But if, through some miracle, I do publish a third book, I’m not going to read the reviews. Not a one. Zip.

I am finished with this particular form of masochism.

Really.