Jenny Milchman's "Made It" Year

by Sandra Parshall

Everyone who leaves a comment Saturday or Sunday will be entered in a drawing for a signed copy of Jenny's book. An additional reader will be entered in a drawing to win the unpublished prologue of Cover of Snow after the book is released.


For years Jenny Milchman has been known and loved in the mystery community for her contributions to the DorothyL discussion group and the “Made It Moment” feature of her blog. Now, after persuading a legion of other writers to describe the time when they knew they had made it and were real writers, Jenny has arrived at her own made it moment: publication of her suspense novel, Cover of Snow. 

Like a lot of writers, Jenny traveled a long and twisting road through a wasteland strewn with rejection letters before achieving success. In this interview Jenny talks about the eleven years she struggled to sell a book and how her life is changing as her first published novel reaches readers at last.

Was Cover of Snow the first novel you wrote? You didn’t spend eleven years trying to sell one book, did you? How many times did you “come close” to making a sale, and how did you finally get that magic door to open for you?

Actually, this may be a part of the story I haven’t made clear enough, so I’m glad you asked this question. Cover of Snow is actually my eighth novel, although it will be the first one published.

While I was trying to get published, I kept getting close. I had three different agents represent five different novels and we had a total of fifteen “almost offers”—editors presenting a book to their editorial boards without getting the okay to make a deal. The last time before It Finally Happened, the novel in question had made it all the way up the ladder, and was turned down by the publisher herself. That was…crushing. (But in hindsight, the best thing that could’ve happened, in the same way that once you meet your husband, you’re awfully glad that last guy before him dumped you.)

Anyway, at a certain point during this process, I thought, Well, I’m hoping to get to do this for my career, so let me just act as if I already have a career. (That was a hard feat of pretend at times.) And I began writing something like a book a year, slowing down when my kids were born. Most of those are in a cyber drawer—probably forever—although there’s one I hope does see the light of day.

In terms of how the door magically opened…it did feel like magic, you’re right. I think it was a combination of me getting better, improving my craft, and also the intervention of a person who feels like a good fairy in my life. An author whose work I loved agreed to read my unpublished manuscript, and she wound up putting it into her own editor’s hands. A few weeks later, that editor became my own.

How much rewriting did you put into Cover of Snow before it sold? How different is the published book from the first version you began marketing?

This question too points me to something a lot of people may not know. (You Deadly Daughters are good.) So…Cover of Snow, my eighth novel, began life as my second novel. Let me clarify.

The idea behind Cover of Snow was a question that grabbed me around the throat and just wouldn’t let go. What would make a good man do the worst thing he possibly could to his wife? Of course, first I had to figure out what that worst thing would be, but once I did, I had a premise and an opening scene that was hard to get out of my mind. The problem was that I didn’t have a whole lot else. No coherent idea of how to structure a plot or communicate the mystery to readers. Though that novel earned me an offer of representation, my agent got lots of rejections talking about “the pace flagging,” and not, as she put it, “one nibble” from editors. I drawered that novel and went on to write another. And another. And another. See above. Oy.

But the throat-grabbing question was still…grabby. And one day I sat down and reread the manuscript—whose title I will probably never reveal—and saw how I had gotten it all wrong. A decade and six novels had passed. I thought I could turn this premise into a new book, and I did. That turned out to be Cover of Snow. In terms of how different it is from the original… the premise and several of the characters are the same. But I would call the version that readers will (hopefully) read the 22nd draft. And of 103,000 words that were in the first version, only 250 remain.

Would you say you learned from the rejections, or were they mostly form letters? Have you kept all of them?
 
I would go so far as to say that the rejections I received taught me how to write a novel. I was lucky enough to get very few form letters. When I began querying, email still wasn’t in wide use, not ubiquitous anyway, and I snail-mailed my packages. I got back pages of typed feedback, used those criticisms to revise, and in some cases, sent back the reworked pages to the agents who were taking time to school me. In one case, this led to an offer of representation—my first. It arrived electronically. I actually had to open an email account just to receive it. Yes, it was a long time ago.

I’ve kept my rejections, and in case there is anybody reading this who feels like they’ve been rejected a lot, and should they go on, I offer this photo to say: You should go on. Please. I want to read your book one day. If rejections surround you higher than a drift of snow, don’t despair. This only means you haven’t made it…yet.

When you sold Cover of Snow did you have a second book ready to go?

I did have other books—at least one—ready to go. However, my editor felt that my follow-up book should contain certain elements, which I couldn’t have predicted before we began working together. She took me to a long, lovely lunch that still counts as one of the more enjoyable events on this pre-publication ride, and we talked about what I might want to go for in a second novel. None of it would I have thought of on my own, but as soon as I heard her perspective, it hit me how spot-on right she was. 

This has been my experience of working with my editor from the moment we met—and it’s one of the things I’m most grateful for. Anyway, as I write these responses, I am just approaching the climax of that next book, which is always such a fun point to be: when you feel all the threads you’ve knotted finally start to unwind.

Is Cover of Snow a standalone or the beginning of a series? 

Cover of Snow is set in a fictional Adirondack town called Wedeskyull, and I think of the novels set there as the Wedeskyull stories. The recurring ‘character’ is the place. So in subsequent books, you might see cameos or walk-ons by characters who played a big role in another book, while minor characters might go on to have lead parts. I’m fascinated by life in a small town, the ‘heart of darkness’ there, and I hope that I can get to know my town through the prism of many different stories.

What kind of person is your protagonist, Nora Hamilton? What is her greatest strength? Her greatest weakness?

Nora’s greatest weakness makes her singularly unequipped to deal with the situation she faces on page five of the book. She tends to turn away from hard truths, to be willing to accept a smooth skin on things rather than look below the surface. And at the start of the story, she’s about to be faced with the worst truth there is.

Her greatest strength is probably that she can own up to this trait…and try to change it in herself.

Does it make you sad to let go of Nora after living with her for so long?

Nora, if she does reappear in subsequent books, will never do as much as she did in Cover of Snow. I’ll never get to spend as much time with her again. And yes, I miss her very much. I wonder how she’s adapting to all the changes in her life. I wonder if she’s healed as much as I hope she has.

Are the events of the book completely imaginary or inspired by something in real life? Did your original concept morph into something else as you were writing (and rewriting and rewriting)?

You know, I would’ve said that the events were completely fictional. And they are. Nothing like this ever happened to me or anyone I know. But…one day someone was asking me this question, and this memory came back to me.

When I was 8 years old, my babysitter came to me after bedtime one night, sat down on the edge of the bed, and said that he planned to commit suicide when he got home. He told me not to tell anyone. And I lay awake, until late, late, late, when my parents arrived, and I wrestled with what to do. My mom came into say goodnight, and I tattled. I couldn’t keep the secret. My mother called my babysitter’s mother, who entered her son’s room and found him with a bottle of pills.

If you read the book, you’ll see that this situation isn’t in it. But did it cast a shadow—over me, and my life? A ‘what could’ve have happened on that other side of the line’, where things don’t turn out right? I think it must have.

What draws you to psychological suspense? What can you do in this form that you might not be able to do in a different subgenre of crime fiction? 
 
When I’m standing on a subway, I imagine being pushed. If I’m in a movie theater, I look for the exit. I imagine danger everywhere. There’s something about the moment when the main character’s life crosses a line, and nothing is the same…what writer Rosellen Brown calls the before and after. But it’s really the psychological that engages me—how one person copes with crossing that line whereas another person would have an entirely different response. Before I turned to writing—or turned back to it, I should say, since I always, always wanted to write—I practiced as a psychotherapist. I think I was doing the same thing, except that I was helping other people tell their stories. Now I’m making up my own.

A question from Deadly Daughter Liz Zelvin: On DorothyL, they have a lot to say in praise of “our Jenny Milchman”. Having watched you blossom from an enthusiastic mystery fan to a published author, they're kvelling like proud grandparents about your success. How do you feel about that?
From Sandy: I’ve been wondering about the same thing. Do you ever experience a twinge of worry that you might disappoint them?
 
Without DL, I wouldn’t be getting published, at least not now and in this way. That’s not an exaggeration, and I’ve promised to tell the whole story over a drink one day, maybe at a conference, hopefully with some of you. But for now let me just say that I love the people of DL. It’s the extended family every reader and writer must wish for. I am grateful to the community for their wisdom and support and encouragement, and the sheer joy in mystery they provided during the years when I wondered if I ever would be a writer in addition to a fan. I dearly hope I won’t disappoint anybody. They may not like my book, of course, but I hope I live up to the kind of mystery lover they have been to me.

From Julia Buckley: Do you like your cover? I think it’s cool. (No pun intended.)
From Sandy: Did you have any input on the cover design? Did you offer suggestions before the artist began working on it? (And yes, it is cool. Eerie and intriguing.)
 
Cool, ha. It is, right? Those chilling blues.

So…my agent got me what’s called “cover input,” which basically means I got to see the cover and weigh in. Now I truly don’t know what would’ve been the response at my publisher if I had said, “You know, I realize this has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but I always envisioned a snake…and some blood…and a measuring cup…” or what have you. But luckily I didn’t. One of the things about me is that I know what I can do—a few choice things—and I know the many, many things I can’t. Art and design are two of them. I would’ve added nothing to the cover process. Plus, when I saw what the art department came up with, I was so blown away that all I could do was tingle. To take 93,000 words and distill them into one single scene strikes me as a sort of genius that I will never possess.

From Julia: How do you do all the things you’ve taken on? How do you divide your time among different projects?
From Sandy: After publication, most writers discover that they aren’t super-authors with unlimited time and something has to give. As you begin promoting your book, with your publisher expecting you to deliver more regularly, what other activities in your life will you have to cut back on?

Well, I’ve been cooking a lot less! My friend, the fabulous family thriller—to use Oline Cogdill’s term—author, Carla Buckley, calls this “the year I stopped making dinner”. I worry that my kids won’t have warm, cozy memories of mom by the hearth. Periodically I remind them that I make a mean meatball…or used to.

I don’t really know the answer to this question. As of now, I write first draft material in the mornings and devote the afternoons to fun things like a post such as this. I write novels on a machine that is not internet enabled—it’s running Windows 98, and I have to backup on floppies. (I’m running low, and believe it or not, they don’t seem to make them anymore, so if you have any, please send ’em my way.) That way I can really be in the story with no distractions—I’ve noticed that my muscles are often sore after I write, as if I’ve been the one running or fighting, and heating up. (Yay—an excuse not to go to the gym. Another thing I don’t have time for.) Then in the afternoon, I email and Facebook and Twitter.

The kids get home from school around 3 and I try to be largely done until after bedtime so that I can help with homework or activities—of which we have few due to time constraints, another thing I suppose they’ll blame me for one day, along with the missing meatballs.

How is your family reacting to your success? Are they astonished, relieved, proud of your persistence, or a mixture of all three?

Well, first you have to understand that when you use the words “your” and “success” in the same sentence, I have to look around to see who you’re talking about. Or about whom you’re talking. See? I couldn’t possibly be a successful writer. My image of myself is as a struggling writer. I don’t know if that will ever change. I don’t know how people will react to this book once it’s out. I hear the criticisms, and I shiver. Success seems to be an optimistic prediction—and I thank you for having it.

But in terms of my family’s level of support, it’s another factor that enabled me to reach this point, whatever we call it. My husband worked for years so I could stay home with the kids and write while they were napping—and tolerating missing meatballs; thanks, kids, I really can cook, you know—and most of all, convincing me that I should go on because it was all going to work out one day.

A long, long time ago, my mother said something that I scoffed at.

“I think you’re going to make it,” she said. “You have talent. But I think it’s going to take a long time. You’re coming at this completely cold, and you’re learning it all from scratch. Ten years is not a long time to build everything a person needs.”

What was my response? Something shame-worthy, like: “Ten years? Ten years! That’s crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom. I could never do this for ten years without getting where I wanted to go.”

It took me eleven.

Thanks, Mom. And thank you to the Deadly Daughters, for being some of the people who propped me up and inspired me along the way.

********************************
Jenny Milchman is a suspense novelist from New Jersey whose short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Adirondack Mysteries II, and in an e-published volume called Lunch Reads. Jenny is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the chair of International Thriller Writers’ Debut Authors Program. Her first novel, Cover of Snow, is published by Ballantine. Jenny can be reached at http://jennymilchman.com and she blogs at http://suspenseyourdisbelief.com.

Everyone who leaves a comment Saturday or Sunday will be entered in a drawing for a signed copy of Jenny's book. One additional reader will win the unpublished prologue of Cover of Snow after the book is released.

Sophie Hannah: New Mistress of Suspense

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


Sophie Hannah does suspense the way Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine does it: by using the mundane routines of everyday life to construct a nightmarish trap for her vulnerable characters.

Sophie is a bestselling crime fiction writer in Britain and is rapidly winning readers all over the world with her beautifully written and cleverly plotted psychological thrillers. Little Face, Hurting Distance and The Wrong Mother (titled The Point of Rescue in Britain) have been published in the U.S., and The Dead Lie Down (titled The Other Half Lives in Britain) is slated for American publication.

Before she turned to crime fiction, Sophie was already the celebrated author of three mainstream novels, a children’s book, and several poetry collections. Her poetry is studied at schools across the UK. From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and between 1999 and 2001 she was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She lives in West Yorkshire with her husband and two children.

Sophie will appear at Bouchercon in Indianapolis this month and afterward will speak and sign at several bookstores before returning home.

Q. You wrote several non-genre novels before turning to suspense. What lured you over to the dark side?

A. I've always been obsessed with mystery fiction, since I was a kid. My parents bought me one of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven mysteries when I was
about five or six, and I remember reading it and thinking, “Stories with mysteries in them are so much better than those without -- why don't all books have mysteries in them?” I've never really changed my mind on that point. I read all of Enid Blyton, then discovered Agatha Christie and read all her books, then Ruth Rendell... I'm a mystery addict, really! I think it's because I'm quite nosy. In real life, I'm always desperate to know something -- what someone's thinking, what's going on behind the scenes in people's lives that they don't talk about -- and the great thing about suspense fiction is that you know your nosiness is going to be satisfied at the end of the book.

Q. Why did you choose to write suspense rather than traditional whodunnits told primarily from the sleuth’s or police detective’s POV? What is it about the suspense form that you find rewarding as a writer?

A. Well, each of my books combines two narrative perspectives. I always have a female protagonist in some kind of nightmarish situation, and half of each book is narrated in the first person by the heroine of that particular book. But then the other half is in the third person from the main detectives' points of view. I decided, when I set out to write my first crime novel, that I would do it this way and it worked so well for me that I've stuck to it. It enables me to look at whatever's going on from two very distinct angles and I think it helps to portray the events of each novel “in the round”, as it were. For the heroine, whatever's going on is liable to ruin her life (if not end it!) unless she can sort it out. For the police, it's their job to solve the mystery and sort out whatever crime might have been committed, so not as much is at stake for them, or rather a lot might be at stake but its usually professional stuff -- their reputation, their career prospects. I like, in my novels, to show what the same crime means to different people.

So, that's my literary explanation, but from a personal point of view -- bearing in mind that I write the books I'd love to read but that don't exist yet -- my two favourite sub-genres within the crime genre are the first-person-narrated woman-in-peril psychological thriller and the third-person-narrated police procedural, so I thought: “Why not have the best of both worlds and combine the two?”

Q. You feature the same police detectives from book to book. Do you plan to develop them more fully and focus on them more in future books?

A. Yes, I do plan to develop my cop protagonists further and keep them in my novels for the foreseeable future. As a reader of series detective novels, I always look forward to the new Inspector Wexford, or the new Inspector Morse, and I think there can be real pleasure gained from having a recurring detective character or characters -- it's like meeting an old friend again after not seeing them for a while! Also, now I'm very attached to my police characters. I'd really miss them, I think, if I stopped putting them in my books. My readers also are attached to them, and regularly email me to check I'm planning to continue their story.

Q. In The Wrong Mother, your portrayal of mothers and their feelings toward their children is brutally honest. How have your female readers reacted? Do they identify with characters who love their kids but sometimes feel burdened by them, or do they consider your fictional mothers abnormal?

A. The funny thing is that I thought some people might disapprove of the negative attitudes towards motherhood in the book, but I've had an overwhelmingly positive reaction -- loads of emails from women saying, “I thought I was the only one who'd ever felt that way, and I'm so pleased you had the courage to write a no-holds-barred account of it.” Even my friends who have loved being full-time mums and are, in my view, perfect mothers said that they loved reading about nasty, selfish mothers resenting their children. I think, even if you are someone who behaves well, it's always fun to read about someone else behaving really badly!

And the nasty-mother scenes were very cathartic to write, I must say! I found it very hard when my kids were little, and I always struggled to do my best for them, and wouldn't have wanted to do otherwise, but I thoroughly enjoyed inventing a character who shamelessly prioritizes herself over her daughter every time and wishes she'd never bothered having a child. In my darkest moments, I did have some thoughts along those lines. Luckily, extensive child-care provision from nannies, nurseries and babysitters enabled me to get through those difficult early years. Otherwise, I might well have become as deranged as the worst mothers in my novel!

Q. Two recurring themes in your books are mother/child relationships and false identities. What draws you to these subjects?

A. I don't have mother-child relationships in all my books. They're prominent in both Little Face and The Wrong Mother, but I've written two other suspense novels that are child-free. I need regular breaks from the company of children, in writing as in life! But, yes, I suppose mother-child relationships and, more generally, family relationships are a particular interest of mine. There's so much drama in families, so many secrets and undercurrents and hidden resentments. I find them fascinating.

I am also fascinated by the idea of people turning out to be not who they're supposed to be -- I think because, to me, the scariest thing I can imagine would be finding out that things are not at all how they seem. If the version of your life that you believe in one hundred per cent turns out to be false, how terrifying is that?

I'm also fascinated by the apparently impossible in a mystery plot -- yet it must be possible because it's happened. Like that moment in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, when one character me mentions to another that Norman Bates lives with his mother and the other character says, “But his mother's dead. If she's living in that house, who is it that's been buried in such-and-such cemetery for twenty-five years?” There's a real thrill in realizing that the seemingly impossible is actually happening. Also, mysteries that seem impossible are harder to solve, and that's an added interest of mine as a writer -- I like the challenge of finding the perfect solution to an apparently impossible mystery!

Q. In a review of Hurting Distance in the Independent, the reviewer wrote, “This is a far better-written book than any genre label might suggest.” American crime fiction writers are accustomed to that kind of snobbery, but does it surprise you? Do you think mystery and suspense novelists (who, in my own opinion, are producing some of the best writing being published these days) are less respected than they should be?

A. Yes, there's that same snobbery about crime fiction in the UK. I just totally ignore it. Having read A Dark-adapted Eye by Barbara Vine, and Half-broken Things by Morag Joss, and In the Woods by Tana French, and countless other brilliant crime novels, I am in no doubt that mystery and suspense fiction can be every bit as worthwhile, memorable, deep and full of literary merit as literary fiction. My theory about the snobs (some of whom even love reading mystery fiction themselves, but still dismiss it as disposable) is that they're insecure about their own cleverness. They want to prove their intellectual and literary credentials, and use their choice of reading matter as a way of doing this. Whereas I know I'm clever and don't feel the need to prove it, so I allow myself to read and write the most enjoyable kind of fiction there is: mystery fiction.

Q. How has your life changed since you became a bestselling writer? What is the best aspect of this kind of success, and what are the drawbacks?

A. The best thing about being a bestselling writer is that so many readers write to me to say they love my books, and that's fantastic. It really boosts my confidence, and helps me to trust my creative instincts, because I can think to myself, “I must be doing something right, or all those people wouldn't write me those nice letters.” So now when I have a new idea that seems a bit scary and risky, I tell myself, “You've got to do it, however scary it seems -- if you hadn't taken those risks before, you wouldn't have written all those other books that readers loved enough to make the effort of writing to you.”

Also, I now have much more money than I had before, which is great. People say that money doesn't buy happiness, but it certainly buys you a lot more freedom, and you can't be properly happy if you aren't free. The drawback of my situation is that with every book I become more worried about letting readers down -- is this book as good as the last? You've got more to live up to, and you have a sense of constantly competing against yourself, which can be exhausting.

Q. How do you manage to write while keeping up a busy promotion schedule and managing a household with children? What is your writing routine like?

A. When I'm working on a first draft, I write every weekday, between about 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. When I'm not working on a novel, I'm touring, or sorting out my house/children. The answer is that I manage by running myself into the ground and being exhausted all the time. I ought to take better care of myself, but I'm too busy to work out how to do that (like the heroine of The Wrong Mother!)

Q. I hope you’ll enjoy this year’s Bouchercon in Indianapolis and your bookstore appearances in the US afterward. Have you been to the US before to promote your books?

A. I was in the US last year promoting Little Face. So this is my second US tour.

In the third week of October, Sophie will appear at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ, Houston's Murder by the Book, and Oakland's A Great Good Place for Books. Check the stores’ web sites for dates and times. Visit Sophie’s web site at www.sophiehannah.com for more information about her and her books.

Hallie Ephron Flies Solo

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


Hallie Ephron is an award-winning book reviewer for The Boston Globe, a writing teacher, and the co-author with Dr. Donald Davidoff of five Peter Zak mysteries, published under the pseudonym G.H. Ephron. Never Tell a Lie, her first stand-alone suspense novel, was published yesterday.

Hallie grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of screenwriters Henry and Phoebe Ephron (The Desk Set and Carousel are among their credits) and the third of four sisters. Although her siblings – Nora, Delia, and Amy Ephron – became writers, Hallie worked as a teacher, educational consultant, and high tech marketing copywriter before launching her own career as a fiction writer.

Never Tell a Lie has already received rave reviews. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it “stunning” and “a deliciously creepy tale of obsession.”

Q. Tell us about your new book.

A. It's about a couple, Ivy and David Rose, who have what looks like the perfect life. Once high school sweethearts, they're happily married, live in a big beautiful Victorian house, and are expecting their first child. On a late pregnancy cleaning binge, Ivy clears out the attic and holds a yard sale. A former classmate, a woman named Melinda whom neither Ivy nor David have seen since high school, shows up.

Melinda, who was an outcast in high school, is about to have a baby, too. She talks to Ivy as though they were close friends, asking intimate details about Ivy's pregnancy. David, realizing how uncomfortable Melinda is making Ivy, offers to show Melinda around inside the house. The last Ivy sees of Melinda is David ushering her into their house. In fact, that's the last anyone sees of Melinda.

Q. What was the inspiration for this story?

A. The idea for the novel came to me when I was at a yard sale at a beautiful Victorian house that had been recently renovated. I was talking with the woman throwing the yard sale, peppering her with questions about the renovations, when she invited me to have a look around inside. I let myself in. Being a mystery writer, as I'm wandering around this knock-down-dead gorgeous interior I'm thinking: What if a woman goes to a yard sale. Somehow she manages to talk her way into the house. She goes inside. And she never comes out. The idea made me so creeped out that I had to get out of that house. Really fast.

Q. Some suspense/thriller writers would yawn at the thought of setting a novel in the suburbs. What is it about the suburban setting that appeals to you?

A. I wanted to write about exactly that--an ordinary suburban life that gets thrown right off its pedestrian rails. Ivy and David are the couple who, to the outside world, seem to have everything--a great house, a happy marriage, a baby on the way--and with this woman's disappearance they now have everything to lose.

Q. In exploring the destructive effects of teenage experiences that can linger into adulthood, did you draw on your own memories of high school?

A. I drifted through high school like most kids, not a popular kid but not a pariah, either. I did a lot of watching from the sidelines. In every school, as in mine, some kids are victimized and ostracized by their peers. Some of us escape the box that our peers put us in; I wanted to write about a character who didn't.

Q. After writing five novels with Donald Davidoff, why did you decide to strike out on your own? Was it difficult to adjust to working without a partner to share the plotting and writing? Did you have to motivate yourself in a different way?

A. I was eager to fly solo. The series novels had been set in my co-author's world--psychiatric hospitals and courtrooms and prisons. This would be set in my world. I'd write about what I know. I knew I could do the writing because I wrote all the Peter Zak books. But Don and I brainstormed and plotted together. That part is a lot harder to do alone. So I relied on my writing group and fellow writers to bounce ideas off.

Q. With your family background, you seem like a natural for a career writing fiction. So why did you wait so long to try it?

A. I was always the sister who said "I don't write." I'm not a natural writer. I've never been big on diaries or letters. But knowing I had the same genes as they did gave me the courage to try. And by the time I'd gotten into my 40s I no longer cared if people compared me to my sisters. I decided it would be okay to try and fail, not okay to fail to try.

Q. How do you divide your time among writing, reviewing, and teaching?

A. It's about 1/2 writing, 1/3 reviewing, and the rest teaching gigs. I like the variety...

Q. Tell us about your writing process. Do you outline before you start a book? Do the story and characters develop and change during the writing?

A. The last few novels I've written as a synopsis, first. Usually it goes like this. I write a 5-page synopsis and send it to my agent. She sends back 10 pages of questions. I revise and send her a 10-page synopsis. She shoots back 7 pages of questions. And so on, her list of questions getting shorter and my synopsis longer. A 30-plus-page synopsis is a great starting point for a novel. Of course, the story changes, especially when a character won't do something that sounded perfectly reasonable when I was planning but seems preposterous when I go to write it.

Q. What do you believe are your greatest strengths as a writer? What aspects of craft are you still trying to master?

A. I think I understand the overall structure of a suspense novel—what you have to do to keep the reader reading. Plotting is still hard for me. I have to force myself to think 'outside the box.'

Q. What's harder for you to write, the beginning of a book or the ending?

A. Neither. It's the mushy middle that kills.

Q. Do you ever have writer's block? How do you get through it and start writing again?

A. Usually when I get blocked it's because I get stuck—I know what's supposed to happen next but I just can't make it work. I have a million tricks for getting unstuck and sometimes one of them works. Brainstorming. Reworking my outline. Forcing out pages. Backing up and revising. Transferring my outline to colored index cards. Creating mind maps. Torturing fellow writers, friends, and my long-suffering husband. But it's usually something completely tangential that gets me unstuck—an AHA! that comes to me while I'm in the shower or cooking or driving and couldn't write anything down even if I wanted to.

Q. What writers have inspired you and taught you by example? Whose books are must-reads for you?

A. I'm inspired by my writing group and by fellow writers--by their generosity and lucid thinking and honesty. I confess, I'm a sucker for books written for kids. Harry Potter. Peter Abraham’s Echo Falls series. I love re-reading favorites like Charlotte's Web and The Little Princess and Rootabaga Stories.

Q. Do you have any thoughts about the current state of crime fiction? As a reviewer, do you see any new trends developing?

A. I'm not a great trend spotter. Crime fiction is still full of cozies, private detective stories, police procedurals, legal thrillers, political thrillers, Da Vinci clones, ghosts and vampires. There's books for every taste. I'm always looking for that felicitous book where a great story and great writing come together.

Q. What's in the future for you? Will you continue writing stand-alones, or can you see yourself trying another mystery series at some point?

A. If I had an idea that lent itself to a series, I'd write it. Right now I'm working on another standalone. Also set in the suburbs.

Q. In parting, what advice do you have for aspiring writers?

A. Besides "Don't quit your day job"?

Seriously. Make it the journey that counts. Take pleasure in the people you meet. In the strengths that you didn't expect to find in yourself. Write for the pleasure of rereading your own words. Because it's really hard. And because you can.

Visit Hallie's website at www.hallieephron.com. Visit her blog at www.jungleredwriters.com.

All the Same in the End

Sandra Parshall

“The first chapter sells the book. And the last chapter sells the next book.” --Mickey Spillane

The End.

No other part of the crime novels I read disappoints me as often as the ending. No other part of the books I write makes me crazy the way the ending does. You can have a great plot, wonderful characters, atmospheric setting, graceful writing, but if the ending is lame or over-the-top or seems grafted on from some other subgenre, that’s what readers will remember. If they hate the ending of your current book, they might not bother reading the next.

Does any other genre place such a heavy burden on the poor writers who are just trying to find a good way to wrap it all up? Both critics and readers complain about “formulaic” crime fiction, but at the end, the formula is what they want. They want a confrontation between villain and protagonist. The motive behind the crime must be explained, which often leads to ludicrous scenes in which a killer blathers on and on about his actions, while holding the protagonist’s life in his hands. Once the full confession is out, the hero or heroine calls on inner reserves of strength and ingenuity, good triumphs over evil, and the world is set right again. Never mind that this sort of thing almost never happens in real life. In crime fiction, it’s expected, and if the writer doesn’t deliver it, the majority of readers will feel cheated.

And it all has to be suspenseful, exciting, scary, even though the reader knows how it will turn out.

In trying to lend originality to the formulaic ending, some writers have gone in for ever-bigger and more spectacular concluding action. Reading these over-the-top endings, I’m never sure whether the writers were desperately reaching for something new to excite fans or simply trying to keep themselves from falling asleep out of sheer boredom with the formula.

When I was struggling recently with the ending of my own work in progress, I asked some writing friends, published and unpublished, what they want to read -- and write -- at the end of a crime novel. Most of them have the same complaint I do about weak or preposterous climaxes.

Sheila Connolly, aka Sarah Atwell, who has two mysteries coming out from Berkley Prime Crime next year, said, “I know more than one book that I’ve enjoyed thoroughly -- up until the end, when it read as though the writer had simply run out steam and wanted nothing more than to finish the bleeping story. I’ve also read too many where the killer came out of left field at the end. Readers want closure, but we also want it to be believable, not contrived.”

The ending must answer what Lori Lake, author of Snow Moon Rising, calls “The Big Question” -- the central conflict that drives the entire story. “Your opening promises something, and in order for your ending to work, you must fulfill that promise.”

Darlene Ryan, author of Saving Grace and Rules for Life, admits to enjoying climactic scenes where the protagonist is in physical danger -- although “I know it can get preposterous in long-running series.”

K.B. Inglee, on the other hand, doesn’t require that the protagonist be endangered, and if he or she is, “I have a tendency to skip over that part.” Still, she adds, “the wisdom is...gotta have a threat, even do damage to your protag.”

Nobody wants to return to the style of mystery writing that has the sleuth explaining everything in great detail at the end. “I hate endings where the detective explains what happened," says Leslie Budewitz of LawAndFiction.com. "I want to figure it out with the protagonist.”

What about epilogues that take the characters beyond the climax? “I usually stop reading once the murderer is uncovered,” K.B. says. But others want more. “After the killer is caught,” Leslie says, “I like a short chapter -- two to three pages -- that gives a bit of wrapup that shows me how the protagonist and the victims or other characters are doing in the next few hours or days.” Sheila has “mixed feelings” about epilogues but believes they can be “intellectually satisfying.” Janet Koch, however, loves them. “I typically enjoy epilogues tremendously, especially when I’ve grown to love the book. Feels like a little treat at the end, or maybe an extended goodbye.”

Not everyone in my mini-survey demanded that the villain be brought to justice. “Sometimes,” Jaye Stock said, “the villain can carry over to another book. Even if the villain is carried over, there [must] be a sense of completion and closure to the story -- a stopping place for the current work.”

Everyone agreed on these points:

The ending must be logical, flowing from the events of the story. It can’t depend on a previously unknown fact or character.

The ending must be appropriate in tone to the story as a whole. The writer can’t turn a cozy into a thriller in the final pages and expect readers to be happy.

The plot and the ending must be plausible. “It ruins the story for me,” Bobbie Gosnell said, “if my final thought on the book is, Give me a break.”

Oh, and one more thing: Modern crime novel protagonists, in contrast to Miss Marple, Poirot, and Holmes, must show “growth and change” by the end of every book. But that’s another topic.

What do you want in an ending? Do you care whether the protagonist is endangered? Do you mind if the villain gets away? How far can a writer go without making you throw the book against the wall in disgust?

A Chat with Vicki Delany

Sandra Parshall

Vicki Delany is the author of two psychological suspense novels and the upcoming first book in a police procedural series. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and raised mostly in Ontario, she traveled to South Africa in her twenties, married a man she met there and had three daughters. After eleven years, Vicki returned to Canada, where she still lives. Her stay in Africa, she says, gave her “an insight into to the politics of power and oppression that few Canadians get to experience.”

Would you tell us about your path to publication? How long were writing before you published your first book?

Several years at least. When I look back now, I can see that my first efforts weren't really good enough, so I'm not surprised that they were rejected. But then I began taking advice, and criticism, and got Scare the Light Away to the point where Poisoned Pen Press were kind enough to accept it.

Have you found readers in the U.S. receptive to your Canadian settings and characters?

Generally when I meet American readers they seem to enjoy the Canadian elements. Either because they like reading about people in different countries, or because they have some sort of link with Canada and love to read books that reinforce that link.

What attracted you to the World War II era as a background and setting for fiction?

My books Scare the Light Away and Burden of Memory are both contemporary stories with flashbacks to World War II. I think that the war years were so tramautic for almost everyone who lived through them, particularly, of course, in places where the bombs were actually falling and shots being fired, that it is easy to imagine that some of the drama, the consequences, of that time can effect families and individuals all these years later. And old secrets are the life-blood of suspense novels. My new novel, In the Shadow of the Glacier, due out in September, is strictly a contemporary setting - some of the drama in that book is influenced by things that happened during the Vietnam War, but there are no flashbacks or remembrances. Glacier, incidently, is the first in a series featuring Constable Molly Smith and Seargant John Winters of the (fictional) Trafalgar City Police.

You lived in South Africa for a number of years. Do you plan to use your experiences there in your fiction?

I would like to, very much. For one thing, I haven't been back to South Africa for more than twenty years, and I'd love to. I thought a bit about having a back story during the Boer War (in which Canadians were involved), but that seems to have been abandoned. Perhaps some day I'll resurrect the idea.

What attracts you to psychological suspense, as opposed to straight mystery?

I like family dynamics - families are a gold mine for crime writers! Although I hasten to add that there is nothing in my own family that might cause me to think so! I like books that are character driven as much as, or more than, plot driven. For In the Shadow of the Glacier I wanted to write a traditional police procedural, but it has some elements of psychological suspense as well. The setting is a very small town and the police have to deal with their own families, and their own relationships, which may (or may not) have some involvement with the crime they are investigating.

Do you work full-time? How do you fit writing and promotion into your life?

I was fortunate enough to reitre at the end of March. Up until then I had been working full time as a systems analyst at a major bank. And it was tough finding the time for my writing. What suffered was the promotion end of the business. But this year I'm planning to really get out there any promote the books. I'm going to Murder in the Grove in June, to Bouchercon in September, and plan to take In the Shadow of the Glacier on a book tour down the west coast in October/November. I'm spending the summer in the interior of British Columbia, close to where the Constable Molly Smith books are set, and I'll really enjoy writing the next book when I'm right there. I even have a lunch date coming up with the police detective kind enough to help me with In the Shadow of the Glacer.

What aspects of your writing have you consciously tried to improve?

Plot!
Characters and setting have always been inportant to me, more than plot.
But now that I'm doing a police procedural series, the plot has to be tight and focused. I'm working very hard on that

What writers have influenced you? What qualities attract you in another author's work?

The book about writing that I enjoyed the most was On Writing, by Stephen King. The books I most like to read are the standard British police procedurals -- Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson, the (sadly) late Jill McGown. Books with real depth of character combined with an intricate plot.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

In On Writing, Stephen King says that if you want to be a writer you have to do two things - you have to write and you have to read. Sounds simple but that's about it. There's no point in thinking about how one day you'll start that book. You have to sit down and write it. And if you want to know what people want to read, then you have to read as well.

Learn more about the author and her work at www.vickidelany.com.