The Story Behind the Story: Finding the Shape of a Novel

by Sandra Parshall

This is one in a series of occasional posts about the mechanics of the novel-writing process.

I’ve always resisted crime fiction formulas – first plot point here, drop a second body on page XX, etc. – but my books all seem to take on the same shape naturally, without a lot of conscious thought. It’s not so much a formula as a design I find appealing as both a writer and reader.

It looks a lot like a snake that has recently downed a hefty meal. Apologies to all of you who just winced and exclaimed “Yuck!” But the comparison is apt.

The book I’m writing now, sixth in the Rachel Goddard series, is assuming that familiar shape. As always, I will find plenty of room within it for sharp turns in unexpected directions, but basically, it’s a stuffed snake.

As a reader, I want a crime story to get off to a fast start. For some writers, I may be willing to hang in there, but in most cases I’ll abandon a book rather than wait fifty pages for something to happen. With my own books, I try not to test readers’ patience with too much set-up material. I like to kill off the victim in the first chapter. My first book, The Heat of the Moon, isn’t a murder mystery, so this doesn’t apply, but I did throw readers into Rachel’s emotional turmoil as quickly as I could. In Disturbing the Dead, the first victim has been missing for ten years, but I open the first chapter in the middle of a search for her scattered bones on a mountaintop. In subsequent books, someone turns up dead in the first chapters.

That’s the big plot point, the inciting incident, the event that sets the plot in motion. After that swift, shocking bite at the beginning, I have to hold onto readers, make them care enough to stick around.

The second chapter opens out the story a bit, brings in additional characters, and begins to show the effect of the crime on people around the victim.

I’m always a bit baffled when writers moan about the “middle muddle” in their books, because I believe the middle is where all the best stuff should happen. That’s when the story balloons like a snake’s midsection after a large meal.

The middle of my books is where both Tom and Rachel dig around in the lives of other characters, uncovering nasty secrets that may or may not have a bearing on the plot, getting to know aspects of people they haven’t seen before, bringing motives into focus. A murder can have wide-reaching consequences. A murder changes the lives of those left behind, whether they’re connected to the victim or the killer. All of this comes to light in the middle of a book. It could turn into a muddle if revelations aren’t carefully controlled, but if information is carefully rationed, the result is suspense.

I someyimes find it necessary to kill off another character about three-quarters of the way through the book. If I choose to do this, the killing must be meaningful, it must increase suspense and tension, not merely add to the bulge of baffling information. It has to push the story toward its conclusion.

A snake devouring a meal might not be the most pleasant mental image, but that’s what I see when I visualize the shape of my story.

Can you see the underlying shapes of novels you’ve read (or written)? Name your favorite crime novel and tell me what you see when you consider its shape.

That looks...sounds..familiar

by Sandra Parshall

After seeing three current suspense novels with covers featuring what appears to be the same woman – wearing a red coat and boots, running away, dark hair flying – I began thinking about how hard it is to come up with original covers and, even more so, titles.

A few years ago, two books appeared simultaneously with identical covers, except for the titles and author names, of course. How does that happen? 

Lines like Obsidian and Berkley Prime Crime cozies have custom-painted covers, but they all have a similar style so they look very much alike. That’s deliberate branding of an entire line, rather than individual authors.
 
Many other publishers have covers built around images licensed from stock photo services. While the aim is originality, the probability is high that more than one designer will eventually use the same image. I suppose they’re more likely to do so simultaneously if the picture is new and striking.  Still, it’s not common for the covers to be identical in every respect, because designers combine images, imbedding one picture in another to get the desired effect. The covers with the running woman in the red coat all place her in different backgrounds.

Duplicate titles, on the other hand, are plentiful. The title Gone is a good example. A few years ago, Lisa Gardner and Jonathan Kellerman both had novels titled Gone on the bestseller lists at the same time. This year alone we’ve seen books called Gone by Mo Hayder, Cathi Hanauer, Randy Wayne White, and Jennifer Mills, along with books whose titles include the word: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Gone Missing by Linda Castillo, Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, Long Gone by Alastair Burke, Miss Me When I’m Gone by Emily Arsenault, Gone, Gone, Gone by Hannah Moskowitz, Little Girl Gone by Drusilla Campbell, Gone West by Carola Dunn, Tuesday’s Gone by Nicci French, and no doubt others I haven’t seen.

You might conclude, correctly, that Gone is a favorite of authors and publishers. But a handful of other words also appear over and over in mystery/thriller/suspense titles. Search Amazon for titles containing murder, dead, deadly, death, kill, secret/secrets, hidden, dangerous/danger, and you’ll get thousands of results in the crime fiction category alone. Murder is the most commonly used, but death and dead are included in a multitude of titles. 
 
We choose these words, of course, to clue in readers: This book is a crime novel. But is it any wonder that they have trouble recalling titles of specific books? I have this problem myself, and it’s not always during a senior moment. I can recall the plot and author, but the title may be so generic that it doesn’t stick in my mind. When I look at my notebook of books I’ve read (or listened to), I frequently can’t connect those similar-sounding titles to the stories they represent.
 
When I come up with what I believe is a great title, I don’t broadcast it until I’m getting close to actual production of the book. I don’t want to see it on another published book before I’ve had a chance to use it. The Heat of the Moon hasn’t been duplicated on a crime novel as far as I know, probably because it wouldn’t fit many books. I was amazed when I checked on Disturbing the Dead and discovered it hadn’t been used on a mystery before. Broken Places and variations on it have been used, though, and the same year my book was published Karin Slaughter published her international bestseller Broken. Although I didn’t like the title Under the Dog Star much (and still don’t), and it had appeared on a couple of other books some time ago, it was unique as a mystery title and I couldn’t come up with anything I liked better. Bleeding Through is similarly uncommon (although I keep getting Google alerts about a rock band with that name). The title of the book I’m writing now? I’m not telling, not yet.

I’m curious about how others view titles and cover design. Will you take a minute to answer a short poll?

Does the duplication of titles annoy you, or do you feel it doesn’t matter?

Are you attracted to books with words like dead, deadly, gone, secret, dangerous, etc., in the titles?

Are you attracted to crime novels with “literary” titles that don't sound like mysteries?

Are you attracted to novels with place names as titles?

Further reading: In this 2011 blog, six writers talk about covers they’ve loved and hated.
http://www.theawl.com/2011/04/six-writers-tell-all-about-covers-and-blurbs
   
A quote from Kate Christensen: “The cover for the hardback of Trouble made me unhappy, but no one would budge on it, so there it stayed. My mother thought it was a picture of me; I thought it was flat-out weird. I still dislike it.”

The Missing Book

 By Sandra Parshall

A free download promotion for The Heat of the Moon has gained a lot more readers for my first Rachel Goddard novel, some of whom have already moved on to my second, Disturbing the Dead. And I’ve started hearing That Question again.

“What happened to Rachel between the first book and the second?”


Some readers have asked whether there’s a “missing book” that never got published.

Not exactly. But sort of. It’s complicated, as the process of getting published often is. Let me give you a brief tour of my brilliant writing career.

Poisoned Pen Press published The Heat of the Moon in 2006, but I wrote the book several years earlier. An agent who loved it tried to sell it to the big New York publishers at a time when companies were being sold and consolidated and droves of editors were losing their jobs with little notice. They were all looking for blockbusters that would give them some job security, and my book was not blockbuster material. Even so, two editors loved The Heat of the Moon enough to want to publish it. Each time the possible deal fell through – in one case because the editor lost her job the same day she’d planned to pitch my book at an editorial conference.

A year went by. After twenty rejections, the agent gave up. By then I was writing other things. I still loved Rachel and thought The Heat of the Moon was a good book, but I didn’t believe it would ever be published.

After a couple of years, my friends Judy Clemens and Lorraine Bartlett (aka Lorna Barrett) read the manuscript of The Heat of the Moon and urged me to try to sell it to small presses. By then, Judy had published a book with Poisoned Pen Press and was happy with them. I submitted the book to PPP and it started its long winding way through their vetting process. So much time passed that I almost forgot they had it.

After sixteen months, PPP offered a contract. (I remember the date: August 29, 2005. So today is an anniversary of sorts.) They published the book the next spring without any changes, and a year later it won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel of 2006.

Between the time my agent gave up on The Heat of the Moon and the day PPP offered me a contract, I had written a couple more mysteries. I still wanted to write about Rachel, so I had changed her name, altered her backstory somewhat, and moved her to the mountains of southwestern Virginia. In the book that became Disturbing the Dead, Rachel-with-another-name had fled to the mountains to start over after a nasty incident with a client named Perry Nelson, who stole her prescription pad and used it to write narcotics scripts for himself. When she brought charges, he blamed her for ruining his life. While out on bail, he showed up at the animal hospital with a gun and tried to kill her. Instead of being found guilty of attempted murder, he was found to be mentally ill and sent to a hospital instead of a prison. From the hospital, he continued to harass his victim with threatening letters, and she feared what he would do to her if he was released.

When Poisoned Pen bought The Heat of the Moon, I was given the chance to continue writing about Rachel. I gave her back her name and reworked Disturbing the Dead to make it truly Rachel’s story. I kept the Perry Nelson incident as her reason for leaving Northern Virginia and beginning a new life in the mountains. But no, I have never written a book dealing directly with the three years that passed in Rachel’s life between the first and second books.

Rachel’s past, including both her crazy childhood and her fear of Perry Nelson, haunts her in Disturbing the Dead, Broken Places, and Under the Dog Star without dominating the mystery story. As she falls in love with Deputy Tom Bridger, she struggles with the question of how much to tell him about her family, but Tom knows everything about Perry Nelson.

Most mystery series have story threads that weave through all the books without ever being neatly tied up or even fully explained. So my books aren’t unusual in that respect. Many readers, though, have asked me to fill in the missing time in Rachel’s life. They’ve also asked me to revisit the events of The Heat of the Moon and resolve the question of Rachel’s relationship with her family. When I began writing my new novel, Bleeding Through, I felt the time had come to give readers at least some of what they wanted.

I won’t say too much here because I don’t want to spoil the story for you, but in Bleeding Through, Rachel’s sister Michelle steps onstage again for the first time since The Heat of the Moon. A stalker is hounding Michelle, but the police and her own husband doubt the threat is real. When she flees to Rachel for support and help, her disruptive presence in the home Rachel shares with Tom forces both sisters to face the past again after years of trying to ignore it. At the same time, Perry Nelson once more casts a malevolent shadow over Rachel’s life. Tom, meanwhile, is trying to solve a murder, and he can’t give Rachel’s troubles, or her sister’s, a lot of attention.

Kirkus Reviews calls Bleeding Through “a twisty mystery” filled with “nerve-wracking suspense.” I hope you’ll agree – and I hope you’ll be satisfied with the way things come together at the end of the book.

If you haven’t read The Heat of the Moon, you can download the e-book for free right now from Amazon and Apple iBooks and from B&N.com for the Nook for only 99 cents. Bleeding Through stands on its own, but it will be a richer experience if you’ve read the first book.

Let me know what you think!
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Elysabeth Eldering has an interview with me on her blog today at http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com/. I hope you’ll stop by.

I wish I'd been warned...

Sandra Parshall

Do you ever wish novels came with warning labels?

Something like: WARNING! This book could plant images in your mind that will disgust you and haunt you forever.

As a writer, I hate the very idea. I don’t want anyone passing up a book because of a label that might not apply to everyone. As a reader, I’ve sometimes wish I’d had a little warning about the content of a novel.

Ironically, this happens most often when I’m reading a book by a favorite author, and it’s usually my own fault. If I love an author’s work, I avoid most reviews of a new book so the story won’t be spoiled for me, but that also means I’m not prepared if it contains horrific scenes that I’ll find revolting. I’m talking about scenes in which the torture of women is described graphically and at length. I’m talking about similar scenes involving animals. And scenes in which children are abused or molested in any way.

Like all mystery readers, I have no problem with ordinary murder. People are murdered all the time. It’s part of the world we live in, and as a storytelling device that allows for the exploration of human motives and society, it is unsurpassed. As a writer, I try to make murder scenes realistic, and that may involve unpleasant details about the state of the body. I can usually read such things, and write them, then put them out of my mind.

Some images, though, won’t go away, and I’d rather not put them into my head in the first place. I avoided reading one Minette Walters novel – although I admire Walters enormously – because I was told it contained descriptions of animal abuse. When I came upon a scene about a cat being tortured in a Robert Crais novel, I had to skip it. The whole point of the scene was to show that Joe Pike had a compassionate heart underneath his silent, forbidding exterior, and I had already seen that demonstrated many times in previous Crais novels.

My most recent “I wish I hadn’t read that” experience was with Nevada Barr’s new book, Burn. (If you plan to read it and don’t appreciate spoilers, you may depart now.) I looked at one review in advance, but it didn’t raise any red flags for me. I listened to the unabridged audio of the book, and although the characters didn’t appeal to me I love Barr’s work and her protagonist, Anna Pigeon, and I never thought of abandoning the book.

I listened to most of Burn with no particular reaction one way or the other. I could tell it would turn out to be about the sexual enslavement of children, and I applauded Barr for tackling such an important and disturbing topic. Then, toward the end, I suddenly found myself listening to graphic descriptions of small children performing sex acts on men in a popular New Orleans establishment and being physically abused in other ways. I continued listening, or half-listening, thinking this part of the book was necessary to make the author’s point and would pass quickly. It continued for many pages, though, and I have only myself to blame for not quitting when I should have. Now the images vividly created by a gifted author are in my memory to stay, and I wish I had passed on that installment of the series.

After finishing the book, I read the reader reviews of Burn on Amazon and was shocked by the virulent tone of many of them. A lot of people seemed personally offended that Barr chose to write about children being used for sex by men. One person called the book “prurient” and implied that Barr was peddling pornography. As a writer, I have to be on Barr’s side (not that she will ever know or care about my opinion). I am opposed to official censorship. I hate the idea of any author being told what he or she may write about. Our constitution guarantees freedom of speech, and that’s a freedom we should all protect vigilantly – even when we don’t happen to like what’s being said or written.

As a reader, though, I have another right: to choose what I read and to pass up what doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe I’m a weakling, or oversensitive, but there are some things I don’t want to read about and plant in my mind forevermore. I don’t believe in censoring writers, but as a reader I practice a kind of self-censorship. And after my experience with Burn, I’ve decided that in the future I will have to read more reviews, and read them more carefully, before I read the actual books.

What about you? Are there certain topics that will always make you pass up a book? Do you ever wish you had clearer warnings about disturbing content in novels?

Characters Who Haunt Us

Sandra Parshall

I can’t get the girl out of my mind. I worry about her. I want to know what happened to her after the book ended.

Throughout most of Elizabeth George’s Missing Joseph, I found the 13-year-old character Maggie Spence exasperating in the way a lot of teens are. Lying to her mother, sneaking out to rendezvous with a boy she was forbidden to see, engaging in sex long before she was capable of dealing with it emotionally. I wanted to shake some sense into her.

As the story threads came together, though, and I saw the full horror of this girl’s situation, I began to fear for her. How on earth could she emerge whole and healthy from the tangle of deceit created by the adults in her life? She couldn’t. My last glimpse of her in the book was one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I’ve ever read. George made the girl so real, her predicament so disastrous and her emotional response so raw that I will never forget her.

I want Elizabeth George to bring her back in another book and tell me what has happened to her. I suspect the news wouldn’t be good, but I still want to know. This character will haunt me until I learn her ultimate fate.

It may be a form of torture, but I have to applaud writers who can make me care so much about their fictional characters that I worry about them after the books end or mourn the loss when they’re killed off. I can’t help contrasting my feelings for the girl with my reaction when Helen, wife of George’s detective Tommy Lynley, was shot and killed. For some reason, Helen never seemed quite real to me, and I never liked her. I was, frankly, glad to see her go. Helen’s ghost, in designer shoes, does not haunt me.

Another character who won’t let go of my imagination is also a teenager, but several years older than the girl in Missing Joseph. Her name is Reggie, she’s an orphan who pretends her mother is still alive so she can maintain her freedom and self-reliance, and she is the emotional center of Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? Reggie’s stoic perseverance in the face of catastrophe, and her determination to find out what has become of the woman doctor she’s been working for as a child-minder, drive the story, and Reggie all by herself kept me turning the pages. At the end, her fate is uncertain. I know what I want to see in her future, but even if I’m guessing wrong I hope Atkinson will bring Reggie back and let readers share her life.

I’ve wondered many times what became of Boo Radley after he broke out of his sad, self-imposed isolation to save Scout’s life in To Kill a Mockingbird, but I have no hope at all that Harper Lee will write another book.

I’ve created one character of my own who haunts me: Rachel’s mother, Judith Goddard, in The Heat of the Moon. I gave her a terrible background and more pain than anyone should have to bear. A lot of readers have told me they hated her, and my impulse every time has been to defend her. I’m grateful when someone says they felt sympathy for her and understood why she clung so fiercely to Rachel and her sister and tried so hard to remain in control. Her awful childhood, and the heartbreak she endured as an adult, are very real to me and so is her emotional distress. Although I wouldn’t have had a story without all those events, I find myself wishing I could have made life a little easier for her.

The legacy of a haunting character is something I take away from very few novels, but every book offers the possibility of encountering memorable characters. That’s the reason I read fiction. The characters, not the plot details and certainly not the blood and gore of murder, make a book memorable.

What characters have continued to haunt you long after you finished reading the books? Do you want the authors to produce sequels that will show you what has become of those characters -- even if the news is bad -- or would you rather go on wondering?

What would make you kill?

Sandra Parshall



I’m baffled by people like Scott Peterson, who think murdering a spouse is the easiest way to end a marriage.


I always look for more, thinking the simple desire to get out of the marriage can’t be all there is to it. Surely some dark and twisted story remains to be told, surely secrets will emerge that might make the murder understandable, if not justifiable. But no. In many cases, the husband – or the wife – just wants to be free and doesn’t want to bother with a divorce.


I couldn’t write about such a killer, because the motive makes no sense to me. The person who kills in a fit of rage is easier to understand than these bland people who plot and carry out murder for the flimsiest of reasons. There’s simply nothing there to explore.


Equally off-putting are psychopathic serial killers. Judging by the popularity of this type of book, I’d say mental illness makes good drama for a lot of people, but I can only stay interested in a serial killer novel if the people investigating the crimes are compelling, with their own fascinating stories. A mentally ill murderer’s motive is imaginary, unconnected to the real world, and for that reason, it bores me.


Strange as it may seem, I need a killer I can identify with. Someone I can understand. And that forces me to ask: What is worth killing for? What could make me take another person’s life?


Not an easy question for someone who is basically a pacifist and a physical coward. I seldom see any justification for war. I might get mad enough to say, “I could strangle her!” but I’d never do it. As a kid on a farm, I was always horrified by the casual way adults wrung the necks of chickens. When I find bugs in the house, I usually pick them up and put them outside. But... I kill spiders. I leave them alone if they’re in the yard, but any spider that’s in the house or even hanging around outside a door or window will be mercilessly dispatched. And I’m sure that in some circumstances I could kill another human being.


Self-defense – most of us probably take it for granted that we would kill rather than be killed. Even if the thought of taking a life repulses us, we know the instinct for self-preservation would kick in.


I would kill to save a child, any child. Could I do it to save an adult? I have to admit I’m not sure. The most honest answer: Depends on who it is and what he or she means to me. But I wouldn’t hesitate to inflict grievous bodily harm, at the very least, to stop the torture of an animal.


To create a killer I can write about convincingly, I have to find that dark place where my own murderous impulses hide. I have to pull them into the light, examine the forces that created them, and weave my character’s heart and soul around them. I have to understand my killer’s behavior, and at some level I have to empathize with it. I hope I can also make the reader feel a spark of pity for this person who has been pushed by life into the role of killer.


Writing with these goals isn’t easy, and it makes for some treacherously complex plotting, but working with a simplistic killer would be so boring that I would probably give up long before I could finish the book. Same goes for reading about killers with motives that seem ridiculous to me. If a character is going to commit murder, he’d better have a darned good reason.


How do you feel about this? Do you want fictional killers to have understandable motives that arise from their unique situations? Do you ever feel empathy or pity for a killer?


And what would make you kill?

Realism? Who needs it?

Sandra Parshall

“That one error ruined the whole book for me.”

“I was enjoying the book until the protagonist did that. It was so unrealistic.”

This kind of declaration is pretty common from mystery readers. They want realism, they want factual accuracy, they want to be able to believe the story.

Yet all crime fiction – including police procedurals – is inherently unrealistic. If we took it as a reflection of real life, we’d have to believe that legions of hairdressers, cooks, booksellers, and antique dealers are out there every day, solving murders the cops are too dumb to figure out. We’d have to believe that every homicide detective routinely has a life-or-death confrontation with a killer before he can make an arrest. We’d have to believe that private detectives spend virtually all their time on murder cases (again because the cops can’t solve them).

Let’s get real. My hairdresser is a smart lady, but I doubt she’ll ever bring in a killer. Private detectives spend most of their time on tasks that would read like drudgery if they were dramatized, and they’d be in plenty of trouble with the cops if they interfered in murder investigations. As for homicide detectives, theirs is a reasonably safe line of work – most will go through their entire careers without firing their guns in the line of duty or being attacked by a suspect.

Some of the most popular crime novels being published these days are praised for their gritty realism, which might give the impression that the events described could happen in real life. Michael Connolly’s Harry Bosch does things no real cop could get away with, but he’s still on the job and still having those perilous armed confrontations with crazed killers. Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon is the Jessica Fletcher of the national park system – if this woman shows up at your campsite, I’d strongly advise you to pack your gear and head home before it’s too late. John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport novels – I love them, but realistic? Please. Any crime novel that has the familiar, dramatically satisfying elements readers want will fail the plausibility test at some level.

So where does the insistence on “realism” come from? If readers can accept, say, a wedding planner as a crack detective, why do they scorn a book that has inaccurate forensic details? If a hairdresser can solve murders, why does it matter if the cops accept a piece of evidence from her with no proof of where it came from? Why is research even necessary for crime fiction writers? Why can’t we simply make it all up?

Maybe readers – and I include myself among them – want all the supporting details to be accurate so we can accept the central fallacy, which is the amateur sleuth’s involvement in a murder investigation or the pro’s flaunting of regulations or laws. Maybe if the story seems anchored in real life, suspension of disbelief will be easier.

I’m still not sure this is fair. I’m not sure fiction has to be anything more than an entertaining fantasy. But fair or not, readers demand the illusion of reality even when the basic premise of a crime novel is totally unbelievable. An author can push the unreality quite a distance, but beyond a certain point the reader refuses to follow – and that point may be different for every reader. The writer has to aim for a level of plausibility that will appeal to the largest number of readers.

I know what my breaking point is. Can you define yours? How much will you swallow before you refuse to take another bite? What books have disappointed you with unrealistic details?

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.

Genre Identity Confusion

Sandra Parshall

You’d think writers, of all people, would be able to define what it is they’re writing. In the crime fiction world, though, we have so many subgenres and offshoots and blendings that even the authors are confused at times.

Is it “traditional” or is it “cozy” – or are the two terms interchangeable? Is it woo woo, with a psychic sleuth? Or chick lit, with a man-crazy heroine? Is it a pet cozy with talking and crime-solving cats and dogs? Is it a culinary mystery, with recipes and entertaining tips thrown in among the bodies? A knitting cozy, a bookseller cozy, a scrapbooking cozy? The variations are endless. The traditional/cozy label usually applies to an amateur sleuth story, but even mysteries featuring police detectives may be called cozies if the tone and content are mild enough. M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series is a good example.

I was surprised when The Heat of the Moon was nominated for an Agatha Award, and even more startled when it won, because I had always thought the book was psychological suspense – and while it has plenty of domestic malice, there’s nothing “cozy” about it. I am told, though, that it meets the criteria for traditional mystery, so I tend to think traditional and cozy are different subgenres.

Procedural mysteries occupy their own category, and these days the label covers not only novels featuring police detectives and FBI agents but also investigative journalists and prosecuting attorneys. I was a little startled the first time I read a review that described a book as a “journalist procedural” but I’ve grown used to it.

The polar opposite of the cozy is noir mystery. As the name suggests, this kind of story is dark in every way and takes a bleak attitude toward humanity and the world. A happy ending should never be expected. But it’s still a mystery: a crime has been committed and a sleuth sets out to solve it.

If it’s not a straight mystery, is it “suspense” or is it a “thriller” – and once you’ve decided that, which sub-subgenre does it fall into? Romantic suspense? Psychological suspense? A psychic, political, international, medical, legal or eco thriller? The ever-popular gory-beyond-belief serial killer thriller? Or perhaps it’s a supernatural thriller, which until recently would have been labeled horror and given no space whatever under the crime fiction umbrella.

I’ve always believed that a mystery was a story driven by the effort to solve a crime, and a thriller was driven by danger and the effort to prevent something awful from happening. But the old definitions don’t hold up anymore. Many authors now borrow elements from two or three subgenres and combine them, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, in a single book.

Everyone seems to be clambering onto the suspense/thriller bandwagon. Look at the bestseller lists and you’ll see why: thrillers and suspense novels are the top sellers in crime fiction. Books that once would have been labeled police procedural mysteries now appear with “A Novel of Suspense” on the cover below the title – even if the stories are clearly mysteries, with detectives plodding through interviews and gathering clues and eventually catching the killer. That’s just false advertising and it probably irritates a lot of readers. What we see more often these days are traditional mysteries being amped up with additional murders (remember when one murder was enough to drive a whole book?), threats to the protagonists, crude language, and a dash of sex.

What’s happening here? Television and films are, undeniably, influencing the way novels are written. Some readers flee from the violent, fast-paced content of movies and TV shows and seek refuge in super-cozy books with cats that solve crimes and murders that rarely leave a bloodstain, much less a lingering nasty odor. But many more readers seem to want novels to keep up with filmed entertainment. More forensic evidence, please: we see it on CSI, and we’ve begun to believe no crime story is complete without a generous dose of it. More blood and agony: we’ve watched The Sopranos and we know people are seldom murdered gently.

I’m not complaining. I can enjoy a talking, crime-solving cat occasionally – although I am profoundly grateful that my own Emma and Gabriel can’t talk and have no interest in the activities of humans beyond our talent for opening cans -- but on the whole I think the trend toward realism is a good thing. The role of forensics in solving real killings is less important than TV would have us believe, but murder is a brutal, world-altering act and I appreciate writers who acknowledge that. Blood on the page serves as a reality check.

Cozies will probably always have a place on the bookshelf for readers seeking escape and relaxation, but people are so aware of crime these days, they see so much of it on the news and in entertainment, that non-cozy novelists will inevitably be forced to portray it realistically in fiction. At the same time, the fast pace of movies and TV pushes novelists to provide the same quick shocks and thrills to readers.

At some point we may have to drop most of the confusing labels on crime fiction and use only two: cozy mystery and... what? Suspense? Thriller? Some completely new term? What will we call our books when all the barriers between subgenres have come down?

POP QUIZ! Quickly – don’t stop to mull it over – how would you label these books?

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy

City of Bones by Michael Connelly

I'm Lost

Sandra Parshall

When I tell people that I can get lost in my own neighborhood, they laugh because they think I’m joking.

I’m not.

I have what is quite possibly the world’s worst sense of direction. What dyslexics suffer through with words on a page is similar to what I endure when trying to find my way through the physical world. When I’m in my own house or yard, I know which way is which – early morning sun hits the front of the house, so that must be east; the back of the house receives late-day sun, so that must be west; our screened porch gets sun for most of the day, so that’s south; and the side where nothing but hostas will grow in the yard – I’m willing to bet that’s north.

When I leave my own property, though, all bets are off. I become disoriented and I’m likely to get lost if I deviate from certain often-traveled routes.

If you’re giving me directions, please don’t say, “Drive southwest for 1.2 miles, then turn east.” This is gibberish to me. Instead, paint a three-dimensional picture. Tell me what businesses, schools, churches I’ll pass on the way. Describe what’s on the corner where I’m supposed to turn. And please tell me whether to take a left or a right.

While my sense of direction is especially bad, I believe most women see the world as a collection of landmarks and topographical features. Have you ever called a doctor’s office or a business and asked directions from the woman who answered the phone? She undoubtedly gave you directions that made sense – “Turn right at the Olive Garden restaurant” or “Go past the building with the arch that looks like a toilet bowl and take the first left” or “Drive past Fresh Fields and turn right at the Wachovia Bank.” In the wilderness, a woman might memorize her route not by tracking it on a mental compass but by noting the big oak tree that’s been scarred by lightning and the jagged boulder with lichen in the shape of Abraham Lincoln’s profile.

Men and women simply don’t see the world the same way. That statement might be heresy to Gloria Steinem, but its accuracy has been confirmed by several scientifically structured experiments. While some individuals of both genders will think like the opposite sex, the majority of women use landmarks to find their way around, while the majority of men use maps, compass points, and calculated distances.

These differences are believed to be evolutionary. For most of humankind’s history, men have been the hunters and women the gatherers. Prehistoric males ranged far afield in search of edible prey, and they had to develop a reliable way to find their way back to their caves. They learned to pay attention to the sun’s position in the sky, and to create a mental map of the landscape. Women stayed close to home, and they learned where the berry patches and fruit trees were. (Even now, according to one study, women learn their way around a food market much faster than men do.)

The differences in the way men and women navigate shows up even when they’re working – or playing -- in virtual environments. Female architects, designers, trainee pilots, and computer gamers all function more efficiently when they use 3D graphics that resemble the real world and view them on wider screens that improve spatial orientation. Tests conducted by a team of Carnegie Mellon scientists and Microsoft researchers showed that when women used wide screens and realistic 3D images, their performance equaled the men’s.

All of this makes me feel marginally better about my pathetic navigational skills and less guilty about the money I spent on a GPS unit. I wonder, though, whether political correctness will ever allow us to honestly depict such gender differences in fiction and make use of them to propel a plot forward. Writing about a woman who can’t follow a map invites accusations of sexism from women, although the men in their lives may think it’s a realistic portrayal. A male character who meticulously states exact mileage and compass orientation when giving directions would make many women roll their eyes in exasperation.

As with so many other aspects of human existence, the facts may be firmly established for decades before people will willingly acknowledge them in everyday life. Fictional heroes and heroines, whom writers tend to present as idealized versions of their own genders, might never catch up with reality. My heroines possess all the navigational skills I lack. They know where they’re going and how to get there. And if some researcher says this isn’t realistic, I have a ready reply: Hey, it’s fiction!

Designing a Sleuth

Sandra Parshall

Recently I took part in a writers’ workshop where my job was to talk about creating an appealing and believable sleuth. The assignment made me realize that I’d never given any concentrated thought to the subject. Like a lot of writers, I suspect, I’ve developed my main characters through my plots, and they’ve been whatever the story demanded. However, a writer hoping to create a long-running series would be smart to focus on the character and build stories around him or her.

Editors today are looking for character-driven crime novels. You might think this has always been the case – weren’t Agatha Christie’s books built around Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot? – but the reader is actually given little information about some of mystery’s most famous sleuths. Christie never plumbed the depths of Miss Marple’s soul. She didn’t include flashbacks to Poirot’s tortured past. Her characters remain static, the same from book to book. Dorothy L. Sayers’s treatment of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane probably comes closest to the modern presentation of characters in crime novels who "grow and change" throughout a series.

A novel must have a solid plot, but character is usually more important. Plot problems can be fixed, but if you’ve written an entire novel around a dull, shallow character, meaningful repairs may be impossible. Agents and editors will tell you they “couldn’t connect with” your character, she’s too bland or too cool or too negative, she’s not different enough. We often hear that an editor is looking for series characters “unlike anything I’ve seen before.” This can lead writers to some strange choices, as they try to deliberately construct a rejection-proof sleuth. How about a blind detective who solves crimes primarily with her sense of smell? How about a guy who was in a devastating accident and now has two bionic arms that are strong enough to slay an army of bad guys? How about a flock of sheep that solve a murder? Oh, wait – the sheep mystery is a real book, published not long ago.

If your taste doesn’t normally run to the bizarre, and you doubt that you can carry it off, you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to come up with something totally outside the norm. Try instead to create a character who will feel real and whose personality and abilities will win the readers’ affections and keep drawing them back to find out what’s happening in her life.

So what are in the ingredients for sleuth-making?

Above all, you should create a character you like and respect and want to spend a lot of time with – years of your life, if you’re lucky. The reader has to care about this person, but that won’t happen if the writer doesn’t care first. Sanity wears better than a collection of odd habits and extreme opinions. When a story world is populated by wildly colorful characters, the sleuth is often the sanest person in the book. A sense of humor is always endearing and can be used effectively to show the character's clear-eyed assessment of events.

It’s a given that your sleuth must be smart enough to solve crimes. If the character is an amateur, she must be smart enough to realistically succeed where the police fail. If your sleuth is a cop or P.I., she doesn’t have to be inhumanly brilliant, but she must be intelligent enough to make a living in one of those jobs. Do your research – don’t let your character make the sort of blunders that cause readers to groan aloud.

A sleuth should be savvy about people, able to read emotions and detect deception, attuned to the often subtle clues that give away clandestine relationships and unspoken animosity.

Stubbornness is essential. Major stubbornness. This is a person whose determination is fueled by obstacles, threats, and physical attacks. You can’t let your sleuth give up and go home to watch a favorite TV show in chapter 15, when any ordinary person would do exactly that.

A special skill or a fund of specialized knowledge will come in handy if you find a way for her to use it in solving crimes.

Today’s well-rounded and realistic sleuth needs a past, at least a few friends, and a family (even if it’s a single sibling or elderly aunt). Sidekicks abound in mysteries, and you can give a sidekick the colorful quirks that might seem over-the-top in a main character.

No real person is perfect, and a fictional character can’t be idealized either. Your sleuth needs flaws – balanced by virtues, of course. Coming up with something original isn’t easy, but the effort will pay off. The tough cop who’s battling a drinking problem has become a cliche. Drug and gambling problems are less common but no more appealing. Give this aspect of your character a lot of thought. You’ll be glad you did.

Above all, your sleuth needs a compelling reason to wade into a criminal investigation. These days, even the professionals must feel a personal stake in solving crimes. Curiosity isn’t enough for the amateur, and “it’s just my job” isn’t enough for a pro. Some readers still care most about the puzzle, the plot, but the majority want a novel to be an emotional experience for them. It won’t be if the sleuth is either too distant from the crime or is putting her life in danger out of simple curiosity.

That's my take on what makes a successful sleuth. I believe Ms. Christie would agree with me on some points -- but overall, she might be appalled at the lack of privacy afforded modern mystery sleuths!

The Mystery of Titles

Sandra Parshall


The new baby doesn’t have a name. Yet. I’m still thinking “it” and “the book” and sometimes “the albatross” when I should have a perfect name already typed onto the title page. Before too many more days have passed, I will place its fate in other hands, but it won’t leave me until it has a title.

The titles for The Heat of the Moon and Disturbing the Dead popped out of the text at me, screaming, “I’m the title, I’m the title!” The only screaming this time around has come from my end.

Part of the problem, of course, is that all the great titles have been snatched up by those greedy bestselling authors. A title can’t be copyrighted, but when it has graced a NY Times bestseller, it can’t be reused anytime soon, if ever. Otherwise, my new book might be called Tell No One.

For many mystery writers, titles don’t seem to be a major headache. If they write cozies that focus on cooking or crafts or some other specialized interest, titles are always drawn from those subjects. Puns abound, and they must be fun to come up with. Not too many dark suspense novels have funny puns for titles, though, so I won’t even look in that direction.

Should I go with something that screams THRILLER or SUSPENSE? The problem there is how to devise a title that won’t sound like everything else on the shelf and, possibly, lead to confusion with another book. Do a simple title check on Amazon and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of available books with titles containing Killer, Kill, Murder, Death, Blood, Dark/Darkness. Not all are crime novels, but a hefty percentage are.

Should I go literary? Everybody tells me The Heat of the Moon is a “literary” title, and some find fault with it because it doesn’t immediately bring to mind psychological suspense, which is what the book is. Yet they admit it is intriguing, and after reading the book they agree the title fits. A surprising number of crime novels do have so-called literary titles, and this makes no difference whatever to readers if the author is well-known. What James Lee Burke fan would pass over A Morning for Flamingos or A Stained White Radiance because they don’t have obvious mystery titles? (On the other hand, maybe In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead “sounds like a mystery” because it has dead in it.)

Poetry is usually a good source of titles, but so far my search through Eliot, Plath, Auden, Yeats, Roethke, Merwin and other favorites has turned up few possibilities – again, the best have already been used, often more than once. The Bible is also filled with the titles of other people’s books, and I have spent more than a little time lately cursing at holy scripture.

So I continue with the final tweaks as the day of decision approaches. I try to put aside frustration and trust that the book knows its name. One day soon, it will share that information with me.

Some Like It Hot

Sandra Parshall

Do you take the temperature of the books you read?

I can’t help classifying crime novels by the amount of emotional heat they generate. Some stories have clever plots but require a minimum of personal involvement on the reader’s part. Those are the cool books. Others plunge you deep into the characters’ trouble-filled lives, and “hot” is the only way to describe the experience.

Cozies are, by their very nature, warm to slightly cool. Humor, especially when it borders on farce, has a cooling effect because it distances the story from the real world, where the events surrounding murder are seldom funny. That’s not a knock on cozies and humorous mysteries but an acknowledgment of their purpose: to entertain and divert without leaving the reader feeling wrung-out.

You might think thrillers would all be at the opposite temperature extreme, but that’s not the case. In techno-thrillers, the fate of the entire world may be at stake, but the story often remains an intellectual exercise rather than an emotional experience. For me, political suspense usually feels just as cold as a techno-thriller, which is why I avoid crime novels with flags on the covers.

The kind of book I enjoy most gets to me at a visceral level and lives up to its hype as “riveting from start to finish.” I don’t want to merely read about the characters’ ride through hell; I want to go along on the trip.

Tess Gerritsen at her best pulls me into her stories and leaves me breathless. Thomas Cook’s novels are quieter but intense and spellbinding.

Lisa Gardner and Greg Iles both write hot but include patches of cool writing that provide a few minutes of relief and relaxation before they heat up again.

Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine’s books are variable, but some of her psychological suspense novels, such as Going Wrong, The Lake of Darkness, and The Bridesmaid, are intensely creepy and gripping. Definitely hot, even though her prose is spare and might look cool at first glance.

P.D. James is usually cool all the way, although she has written a few passages from victims’ viewpoints that can raise the temperature of a book as well as the reader’s pulse rate.

Stephen White is a cool writer whose main character, a psychologist like White himself, is always thinking and reasoning.

Elizabeth George’s writing is warm when she’s in Barbara Havers’s viewpoint or that of a victim, but when she switches to Tommy Lynley or Simon St. James, the writing goes cold and cerebral even when they’re agonizing over the women they love.

When a book has a strong impact on me, I don’t usually slow down to wonder how the writer achieved that effect, but I’ll go back later to analyze it and, I hope, learn something I can use to make my own writing powerful. “Hot” writing explores primal emotions: love, hate, fear, jealousy, longing. Sensory details abound – readers always know how a character’s body, not just her mind, is reacting to an experience, and we always know how her world looks, smells, tastes, feels, sounds. Hot writing isn’t necessarily more violent than a cool story, but menace lurks everywhere, and when violence does erupt it is gut-wrenching and real, with nothing left out or sanitized. This is the kind of writing that reminds you how unpleasant murder is.

The genre of crime fiction has something for everybody. Books written with cool semi-detachment are as popular as those that shake you and leave you drained. Some readers, myself included, welcome an occasional cool book after a steady diet of high-emotion tales, and reading a warm cozy now and then resets my concept of what is normal so I don’t begin believing that everybody in the world is sick and vengeful. I’m not sure that many devoted cozy readers cross over to the dark side, though.

To each his own. But when I open the cover of a new book, nothing pleases me more than a blast of heat from its pages.

Do you see a cool/warm/hot pattern in your own reading?

A New Voice: Sherry Scarpaci

Sandra Parshall

In Sherry Scarpaci’s debut mystery, Lullaby, Vicky Langford is raising her 18-month-old son, Josh, alone after her policeman husband was murdered on the job. A former police officer herself, Vicky is using her current position as an investigative reporter to gather evidence against the crime boss she blames for her husband’s death. Someone is stalking and threatening Vicky, but she refuses to let that stop her investigation. When Josh is kidnapped, though, the intimidation becomes pure terror for his mother. The author, a former magazine and newspaper writer, is the mother of two grown sons and lives in the Chicago area.

You’ve said it took you many years to write Lullaby. What slowed you down?

Pretty much life and the fact that I had no outline for Lullaby, just an idea. I sat down and started writing with no clear cut vision of where I wanted the story to go. That was just one problem. Along the way I detoured into non-fiction. I ended up writing for a local newspaper for a year and then Woman’s World magazine for about six years. During that time I also had to work outside of the home because of a divorce. Working full time and writing for the magazine left no time to pursue any other writing. Then when the magazine writing dried up, I had to take a second job in order to take care of my family. Again, there was virtually no time to write, or so I thought.

Ironically that was when I finished the first draft of Lullaby. I’ve always been an early riser, so I’d get up at 4 a.m. and work on the novel until I had to leave for work. I had a lap top I took to work with me, and I’d write during my lunch break. After getting home at 9:30 – 10 p.m. from my second job, I’d write till around midnight, go to bed, get up at 4 and start all over again.

When I finished the manuscript, I sent it to Harlequin, who expressed a strong interest in it. I really thought I had it sold. Harlequin had it for months, only to reject me with a very nice letter telling me that I had a strong plot and wrote well, but the romantic theme wasn’t strong enough and they thought the subject matter wouldn’t “sit well” with their readership. Then began the rounds of revisions and the search for an agent. Lullaby would be out there for months at a time and along the way I’d get great rejection letters, sometimes a page or page-and-a-half, suggesting ways to improve my story. I always wrote thank you notes to those people and rewrote Lullaby again.

Then about four years ago I joined a second writer’s group, this one a critique group, and it made a huge difference. They made suggestions, caught mistakes and inconsistencies. I did two more revisions and submitted it to Five Star at a writer’s conference in February of 2006. Two months later they accepted it.

Was it difficult to maintain enthusiasm for the story and characters over a long period? Did you ever consider dropping it and starting something new?

I never thought about not finishing it. The problem was that when I’d send it out, I’d start another project, then get the rejection with suggestions and decide to rewrite Lullaby. That meant putting aside the other projects. I must admit I did get a little sick -- no, make that a lot sick -- of Lullaby after a while. By the time I got it back from Five Star for final revisions I had had enough. There were other characters bothering me, wanting a voice.

Did the characters and story change a lot over the years you worked on it?

My heroine, Vicky Langford, pretty much stayed the same, but the finished manuscript bears no resemblance to what I started out with. That story is still in the back of my mind and maybe I’ll tell that one some day.

The story in Lullaby is about the abduction of a young child. You have children yourself -- was this a hard topic for you to deal with? What made you want to write this particular story?

The idea for Lullaby came about because I had a friend who was babysitting for a young woman who was being stalked by her baby’s father. I was telling my brother about it one day, thinking it was a good story idea. We started playing “what if,” and Lullaby was born.

To a degree it was a hard story to work on because my own kids were young at the time I started it. It was more difficult though, to write stories for the magazine about sick children. (I wrote a lot of those.) By far the worst story, and the one that impacted me the most, was a story I did on parents of murdered children. That was absolutely heart wrenching, and I can still recall every detail. I was on the phone with those mothers for hours, them crying, me crying. It was awful. I felt like I was picking at wounds that were still fresh, but they were eager to talk about their children. They told me other people shied away from talking about what happened because it made them uncomfortable. Talking to me served as a kind of outlet, I think. I became more paranoid about my kids after that, though. I was always a bit over-protective and I got much, much worse.

Where did Vicky come from? Is she based on you or on anyone you know?

I didn’t base Vicky’s character on anyone in particular. I just wanted to craft a strong character. I love kick-ass women in movies and books, and I wanted Vicky to be the same. No damsel in distress here. No knights charging in on horses to save the day. I wanted Vicky to be the one to do that.

What aspect of the writing craft have you worked hardest to improve?

Editing, by far. In the beginning everything I wrote seemed so important. I had to learn to be brutal and get rid of things even if I liked them. Someone once told me to think of editing like packing a suitcase. Only so much will fit and you have to leave some stuff out. That concept helps me, but I still struggle with it.

Once you had the book in its final form, how long did it take you to find a publisher?

Once I had rewritten the book for the umpteenth time, not long. I think I finished the rewrites in October of 2005 and pitched to Five Star at the writer’s conference in February of 2006. My acceptance came in April of the same year. This was after a lot of years of searching for an agent and suffering through enough rejections that I can paper an 8 X 10 room.

Now that you’re published, you’ll have to speed up the writing. Have you completed a second book yet? If so, was it easier to write than the first? Do you think you can handle the book-a-year schedule that most mystery writers are on?

I’m working on a new book that will definitely be a series. It’s called Resurrection, and I’m about two-thirds of the way through the first draft. I’m really enjoying writing this one. I think because I’m working smarter this time around. I worked on an outline first, and that really helps me keep on track. Doesn’t mean I stick to it strictly, but I at least have a sense of direction that I didn’t have with Lullaby. And yes, I will have to speed up my writing. I’m 51. If it takes me as long to finish this new book as it did Lullaby, I’ll probably be published posthumously. I wouldn’t say this story is easier to write, but I have a stronger sense of the story and the characters this time. I’m not sure about the book-a-year thing. Life gets in the way of writing Resurrection just as it did when I was writing Lullaby. Writing a book a year is something I would like to work toward. That’s one of my writing goals.

Did anything about the publication process come as a surprise to you?

How long it takes to actually get the book into print, and how hard it would be to get it onto shelves in book stores. I didn’t realize I’d have to contact booksellers and ask them to please carry my book.

Do you have a day job? How do you fit in writing and promotion?

I’ve been with the same company, Linear Electric, for the last 13 years. They have been very supportive of my writing since the day I started. I’m very blessed. I fit in the writing and the promotion where I can. I still get up early, 4–4:15, and try to fit in writing before leaving for work. I try to write on weekends, but it’s difficult at times. I’m very busy. Promoting Lullaby eats into the little time I have to write. I’d be interested to hear how other writers do it when they work full time. I’m constantly nagged by guilt, knowing I should be writing more, but not sure how to fit it in anymore than I do.

How much promotion are you planning for Lullaby? Will you attend any mystery conferences?

I know for sure I’ll be at Love Is Murder in 2008, beyond that I’m not sure. I’m trying to line up as many book signings as possible and take advantage of opportunities like the one you offered me, to be interviewed. I’ve also been fortunate enough to have some very nice press. I pass out postcards everywhere, the bank, the doctor’s office. My mom is hawking my book, too. She carries my postcards with her and hands them out wherever she goes.

Who are your favorite mystery and suspense authors? Have you learned writing techniques from studying other writers’ novels?

I love Agatha Christie. Ten Little Indians is one of my favorite stories. I’m also a huge fan of Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia McDonald, and Janet Evanovich. I do try to learn from what I read. See how other authors use dialogue to move the story along, for example.

Where would you like to be as writer five years from now?

Knocking out that book a year would be great. I would love to be home writing full time. That’s a dream. Who knows, maybe it will happen. So five years from now I would like to have three to five published novels under my belt. Guess that means I’d better get busy.

Visit the author's web site at www.sherryscarpaci.com.

The USDA and Papa's Pussycats

Sandra Parshall

(Photo by Amy Brigham)

Living in the Washington, DC area is a lot like residing at Comedy Central.

Local and state governments are capable of stunning acts of idiocy, but for pure surreal absurdity, you gotta go to the feds. Perfect illustration: the USDA’s enduring obsession with the Hemingway cats.

That’s “USDA” as in US Department of AGRICULTURE. The agency’s name conjures visions of pigs and cows and fields of grain. So... Hemingway’s cats?

The felines in question are descendants of the furry muses who served Ernest Hemingway when he lived on the Florida island of Key West. The writer’s property is now a privately owned museum, and the cats have the run of the place. They number in the dozens, about half are polydactyl – they have extra toes, as you can see in Amy's photo of one of them above – and they are fussed over by museum staff, volunteers and visitors. Five years ago, a volunteer (who probably wishes now that she’d kept quiet) complained about the cats being allowed to roam free in the surrounding neighborhood. This is not illegal on Key West, and the neighbors hadn’t complained. Yet somehow – I wonder if anyone remembers exactly why – the federal government became involved. The USDA was deemed responsible for overseeing the lives of a bunch of privately owned housecats.

I’ve been reading and hearing about this off and on for years, and each time the subject pops up I’m astonished that the controversy is still raging. The latest update aired on CBS Evening News. Reporters turn silly when they do stories involving animals, and the CBS reporter showed no restraint. She “scratched out” the facts by “sifting through the litter.” So far, she said, the federal government has invested more than 270 work hours in its investigation of the Hemingway cats’ circumstances, and used the services of three government lawyers, four inspectors, and six veterinarians. USDA agents have made at least 14 field trips to Key West – which has to be more fun than visiting a hog farm in Iowa – and have even gone undercover to make sure they don’t miss any abuse. The USDA’s own “cat expert” has described the animals as “well cared for, healthy and content.” But the investigation trudges on, funded by the taxpayers’ dollars. The cats have their own lawyer to fight the incessant orders and demands of the USDA.

Personally, I think some of the Hemingway cats should be adopted out to struggling writers in need of inspiration. They would be putting their inherited muse genes to work and joining a long list of feline companions to the literary set. Aldous Huxley once told an aspiring author, “If you want to write, keep cats.” A multitude of prominent writers have shared his opinion. Henry James wrote with a cat on his shoulders. Dickens worked with his cat sprawled across his writing table (when she tired of muse duties, she snuffed out his candle with her paw). Samuel Johnson searched the street markets of London for oysters that would please his cat. Mark Twain wrote about cats and was often pictured with them. Colette wrote, “Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”

Those four feet aren’t always feline, of course. Many an author has been photographed for a book jacket with a loyal dog by his side. Some of these canine muses will be celebrated in New York tonight at a Writers and Their Dogs event at Symphony Space in Manhattan. The writers’ dogs will appear onstage alongside their owners. The very idea of such an event would baffle a cat. No self-respecting feline would slavishly trail along behind its human and sit silently by while that human does all the talking and receives all the applause. Unlike dogs, cats know their worth. When a cat deigns to lend its talent as a muse, the wise writer responds with lavish appreciation, a soft pad under a lamp on the desk, and, if desired, the occasional oyster.


My own perfect companions (Emma, above, and Gabriel, below) are never far away when I’m writing. They haven’t quite made up for the loss of my beloved Simon, who died last year after 17 years of faithful service, but they’re doing their best.

The Hemingway cats could launch many new careers if they were carefully paired with needy writers, and the USDA would no
longer have to worry about their welfare. The chances are, though, that the cats would object to the move and go on strike. So perhaps they should be left in peace to enjoy their lives. And perhaps the USDA should find a better way to spend our taxes.

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