Mark L. Van Name (guest blogger)

Mark L. Van Name has worked in the high-tech industry for over thirty years and today runs a technology assessment company in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. He has published over a thousand computer-related articles and multiple science fiction stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including the Year's Best Science Fiction.

He spends far too much time thinking about obsessions, alienation, and the nature of evil, all topics dear to mystery writers’ hearts.

PDD:
What obsesses you?

Mark:
This question, for one. Seriously. I spent way too much time considering it and pondering the nature of obsession, how to draw the line between continual fascination and obsession, wondering when being interested or committed or curious morphs into being obsessed.

I never found the answer.

The world is endlessly, ceaselessly fascinating. The more I look into anything, the more interesting it becomes. Given enough time, almost anything could intrigue and, for at least a while, obsess me.

So it came down to this: Those things that repeatedly float to the top of my always simmering soup of interests and fascinations are what I’ll label as obsessions. They include, in no particular order:
• child abuse
• personal responsibility
• the moments when doing the right thing means doing a hard thing, sometimes even a wrong thing
• the nature of evil
• how context changes how we feel; torture is bad, but would you do it to save your kid?
• society’s need for people—soldiers, cops, firefighters, EMS workers, trauma nurses, and on and on—who do jobs that will leave them messed up forever and to varying degrees uncomfortable at fitting into any society other than the one of people like them
• the power of the ocean, particularly as a storm is rolling in
• how one look, one momentary glance at someone you love can take away your breath, raise your pulse, and for a split second steal your heart
• the awful tendency of humans throughout many lands and many times to create groups that are “other,” then to treat those others as less than human and thus be justified in doing whatever they want to them
• the nature of intimacy, how a single kiss with one person may be scarier and more intimate than a night of sex with another

Clearly, entirely too much obsesses me.

PDD:
Are there themes you keep coming back to in your writing?

Mark:
Yes, though not by conscious intent. Though I don’t believe in any hard and fast rules for fiction, in general I think theme is something we shouldn’t consider too closely when writing at least the first draft of a book. The reason is simple: The needs of the story should trump everything else. If our stories are good, our characters real, our plot compelling, then themes will emerge—whether we want them to be evident or not.

In my case, several of the obsessions I mentioned above appear as themes in multiple works. Almost all of them, in fact, occur in more than one of my books. If I had to pick one theme, though, that recurs more often than any other, it would have to be alienation.

PDD:
How does alienation affect you?

Mark:
Alienation is a natural consequence of living through experiences that most people cannot easily understand. When your background contains powerful elements far from the norm, it’s quite natural to feel a bit apart from those who don’t seem able to relate well to what you experienced. Protagonists who face difficult, often violent jobs inevitably pile up such experiences, so they are naturally alienated characters.

Growing up a bookish kid has also been a classic path to alienation for quite some time. I grew up such a kid, and my background includes many experiences powerfully different from the norm, so alienation is a natural topic for me.

PDD:
What do your books say about alienation?

It’s always dangerous for writers to explain what their books say, because that is a question better left, I believe, to readers. What the writers of my favorite novels meant to say is far less important to me than what I took away from those books—and that is how it should be for all readers.

What I hope my novels and stories say about alienation is that even when you feel alone, even when you are sure you are the only person like you, you can live a good life, do well by others, and ultimately find and connect with others who are, if not exactly like you, close enough that you can understand one another reasonably well. I suppose the short form of that is, you are not alone.

PDD:
What is the hardest thing for you to write?

Scenes in which very little physical action occurs. For example, some of the most emotion-packed moments in some of my stories, like some of the most emotion-packed moments in many of our lives, occur in meetings. When the doctor tells you that you’re going to have a child—or that your mother’s breast tumor is not benign. When you’re sitting around a table discussing lay-offs. When you’re planning a fight. When you’re negotiating for high stakes. In those meetings, frequently the only actions are small—nodding, slumping, sitting up straighter, leaning back, and so on—and yet emotions are running high. Such meetings can be vital to a story, and so I want to tell them, but I also, of course, want to make them compelling. Dialog has to carry the bulk of the load, but folding in just the right amount of physical business is vital and can be tricky.

PDD:
As a writer, how do you set up and carry through these scenes? Any writer's tips about how to fold in the physical business?

Mark
Maintaining imaginative concentration is the key in such scenes, as it is in so much of writing. If you’re there, really there in the story, then you can feel that the room is stuffy and sweat is soaking your armpits, that the person on the other side of the table leans back whenever you’re aggressive, and so on. Once you’re there, in the place and in the character, just write what your viewpoint character experiences.

PDD:
You said something World Fantasy convention in Calgary, which intrigued me, "Brilliance being encapsulated in evil equals primal fear." Do you have any further comments about that?

Mark:
We generally fear most the forces we can neither fully comprehend nor ever control—but only when those forces are in our faces. So, we don’t fear the weather most of the time—but let a tornado come roaring at our homes, and our lizard brains will spike with fear.

Similarly, people who do bad things but who seem understandable are far less scary than those who appear to be both brilliant beyond our comprehension and also evil. A true genius with evil intent is as unpredictable and potentially damaging a force as that tornado, and so we react with primal fear to both. Fortunately, as fun as those characters can be to try to write in fiction, they will not appear in most of our lives.

For more information about Mark and his books, visit his web site.

Writing Obsessions - Part 2

Elizabeth Spann Craig (Guest Blogger)

If you missed yesterday’s post, let me catch you up to speed. I’m confessing to being a fully-blown, obsessive mystery writer. Are you one, too? Do you find yourself taking pictures of odd-looking characters when you’re out in public? Does your mind wander off when talking to someone that might be a perfect character for your book? If this sounds like you, then join the club!

More obsessive behavior that I indulge in:

Writing at odd times. Writing all the time. Have you honked your horn at a 40ish woman lately who was busily scribbling and incognizant the red light had changed to green? Might have been me. I frequently get ideas when I’m out running errands and, as a stay-at-home mom, I’m the errand-runner for the entire family. I’ll write at a stoplight in a skinny second. I scribble things in the middle of the night, at church, at school open houses, grocery store deli lines, and in carwashes. I’ve written on my hand, on receipts, and on napkins with eyeliner, crayon, and dead-or-dying pens.

Bringing up murder with non-writers. Apparently, I think that everyone thinks about murder as much as I do. When I’m out having lunch with my mommy friends, inevitably someone will bring up a really annoying neighbor, coworker, or husband. I’ll listen carefully, then say, “That would be a really wonderful motive for murder! Let me jot that down. Did I tell you I just found out that nicotine in liquid form is extremely poisonous? And it’s so accessible!” They have to gently explain, “Elizabeth, we’re just blowing off steam.”

I change storylines when my characters won’t follow directions. I’ve discovered that my characters come to life; and, like willful teenagers, they don’t listen to me. This is a rather Frankenstein-esque turn of events. I am their creator, yet they have their own agenda. You have to wonder if you’re losing it a little when this happens. If I don’t want my character to become an animal rights activist, then I should be able to prevent it. Instead, my characters frequently breathe their first breath and take off giddily in new directions. I try to rein them in, but end up changing storylines to incorporate their hobbies and interests.

I can't stop myself from revising a manuscript--even after I've turned it in to my editor or agent. I keep emailing updated versions of the document, with my new additions and corrections: “Dear Ellen, Please read this version, instead. Thanks! Elizabeth” The next day: “Ellen? Sorry, but I made some additional changes. Could you read over this version, instead?” Thank goodness for Word’s Track Changes, or I’d probably be on my editors’ and agent’s hit list. Even when I should be starting on my new project (that I have a deadline for and am under contract to deliver, for heaven’s sake), I can’t seem to let the original project go. A little wisp of an idea will come to me while driving and I’m jotting it down at the next stoplight. “Ellen? Hey, could you read this version, instead?”

Thanks so much to Sharon and everyone here at Poe’s Deadly Daughters for hosting me the last couple of days. It’s been really fun and I’ve been excited about participating in such a great blog for mystery lovers.
Elizabeth Spann Craig
Visit her web site
Pretty is as Pretty Dies—Midnight Ink, August 2009
Memphis BBQ series—Berkley Prime Crime (as Riley Adams)—May 2010

Writing Obsessions - Part 1

Elizabeth Spann Craig (Guest Blogger)

This is a two-part blog. More coming tomorrow, so don't forget to check back.

Elizabeth Spann Craig is the author of the August Midnight Ink release Pretty is as Pretty Dies and the upcoming Memphis Barbeque mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime (written under her Riley Adams pen name.)

 She’s the mother of two and currently lives in Matthews, North Carolina. Between juggling room mom duties, refereeing play dates, and being dragged along as chaperone/hostage on field trips, she dreams of dark and stormy nights beside stacks of intriguing mysteries with excellent opening lines.

Writing, in many ways, has completely taken over my life. There aren’t many minutes in the day when I’m not mulling over a plot point, weaving random ideas and dialogue into my book, or scribbling crazy little notes to myself that only I understand.

Occasionally, like most obsessions, I carry things just a little too far. Sometimes my writing methods get me into some trouble:

I become enthralled by people who remind me of characters: to the point of not actually listening very closely to them.

People fascinate me. And too frequently now I size them up to see how they’d fit into my book. What a wonderful lisp! Or, “What a pompous bore. He’d be great to add a little conflict to that party scene of mine. He could even be killed at the party! He’d make the perfect victim.”

I’ve gotten in trouble with this habit of mine before. I was at my son’s soccer practice and a woman came up, introduced herself, and started launching into a longish monologue. I was struck by the fact that she looked exactly like Camilla (the Prince of Wales’ wife.) It was incredible! Her gruff voice (I had no idea what she was saying, but I loved the way she sounded), aristocratically thin and horsey appearance—it all combined to give her this amazing similarity to Camilla. She moved with a rough elegance that amazed me.

I learned a sad lesson later when I discovered she’d been talking to me about the soccer snack schedule and I didn’t have the snack the following week at practice.

I snap pictures of interesting people.

This has yet to get me in trouble, but I’m sure my day is coming. At first I took pictures of interesting places for my files. I love dark places, abandoned barns, old houses that are falling apart, tired-looking architecture from long ago. Then I graduated to people. I kept finding unusual people around. Sometimes I’ve got my camera out anyway and it’s not that noticeable (I don’t think, anyway) what I’m taking a picture of.

The elderly gentleman above was a very interesting man I saw at a large amusement park a few weeks ago. He had the requisite black socks pulled up too high, was eating a lollypop, and shared his table with an egret. He also had a purse. He had to have his picture taken!

Unfortunately, he was already quite suspicious of me because…well, because I was staring at him. My social skills since becoming a writing enthusiast have definitely gone out the window.

I carefully looked in completely the opposite direction, leaning my chin on my hand. I snapped the picture with the other hand. As you see, the picture didn’t turn out exactly as I planned. Since, of course, I wasn’t looking through the viewfinder. But my second picture turned out much better. I won’t share that one here. But he was a wonderful character. Too bad he ran away from me as fast as he could.

Your name? Your child’s name? Your funny turn of phrase? Your eccentric habit? Look out, they may become my material.

I’m particularly looking out for things that get under people’s skin on an everyday basis—it might be enough to commit murder under, in the right circumstances. Just the final straw to push someone over the edge. Or enough to add a bit of side-drama to my book—like the gnomes in my recent release, Pretty is as Pretty Dies.
They came about right after a friend complained bitterly about her neighbor’s yard art. I decided yard gnomes would be the perfect way for my sleuth to get back at her interfering son. The fractious book club in my novel? It was inspired by a club that actually did exist…until the members became so irritated with each other that the club folded.

Am I alone in this odd behavior? Do you have any writing obsessions or eccentricities you’d like to share? Be sure to check back in tomorrow for more ways I’ve complicated my life with my obsession.

Elizabeth Spann Craig's web site.