TITLE, TITLE, WHO'S GOT THE TITLE?

By Her Ladyship, Lonnie Cruse

How important are titles to you? They’re extremely important to me. Key, in fact. I’ve always wanted to be a duchess or maybe a Dame, meaning like Dame Agatha Christie, certainly not like one of Phillip Marlowe’s dames. Well, let me get back to you on that one, Bogart was awfully cute in that role. Hmmmm?

But, seriously, that’s not what this post is about, titles of royalty. And was that a sigh of relief I just heard? This post is about titles for your writing, your works in progress. How important are they to you? As I said, they are key to me. I simply can not start a novel, short story, newsletter article, blog post, or even my grocery list without a title at the top of the first page to hang it on. It’s like putting a dress on a hanger and hanging it on the closet door so I can stand back and admire it, see if it needs any mending, wrinkles smoothed, whatever. And often the title gives me the inspiration for the story. This one did.

But titles aren’t always easy to come by. Sometimes you come up with a killer idea only to discover somebody else already swiped it before you even thought of it. Bummer. Though novel titles aren’t copyrighted, so you can use the same title as someone else, risking the chance of yours getting lost in the shuffle if the other person is more well known.

When I began writing the Metropolis Mystery Series, the original idea was to use the name of the surrounding towns in Massac County, Illinois, the county where my sheriff would have jurisdiction. My friends and family were more than happy to help out with titles, and next thing I knew people were flinging ideas at me with great verve. “How about JAILED IN JOPPA, or PUNCHED IN PADUCAH?”

It got so I was afraid to go out in public or answer the phone. Then I found a publisher who liked the Metropolis idea, he and insisted we keep the name of the city where the stories are set (and where I live) in each and every succeeding title. Of course that meant I needed another “M” word in each title to play off of the word Metropolis. Sigh, so now people are shouting “M” words at me wherever I go, meaning I still can’t answer the phone or go out in public.

My current WIP is titled MUTINY IN METROPOLIS, thanks to my neighbor up the road, Patrick Mitchell. But I do have titles now, people, thank you very much! Titles R Us. You need a title, you call me. And, by the way, nobody’s using Drowned In Dongola so far as I know, and I no longer need it, in case you’re interested.

So, how important are titles to you when you write a piece? A hanger too keep your work all neat and smooth and out where you can see it? Or do you wait to get a title after you’ve written the work? And if so, how in the world do you manage without one? Doesn’t your story drop to the floor in a heap, suddenly requiring ironing, or at the very least, a good steam job? Just curious. And, do you take your titles from song lyrics, stories, television? The Story Title Store? C’mon, folks, give! Thank you.

Well, I believe we’re done here. You may now respectfully leave my presence, and no, it isn’t necessary to bow as you back toward the door, but I’d love it if you’d call me “Your Majesty” again. Sigh. Perhaps you’d be more comfy with “Queen Mum?”

And where is my tea cup, pray tell? I believe I need some Apple Cinnamon to loosen my tongue from my cheek.

Bill W. and Dr. Bob

Elizabeth Zelvin

I saw a terrific play the other day, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, about the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is tricky material for a general audience, as I know, since my own first mystery has a recovering alcoholic protagonist. In the course of selling it, I found the theme of alcoholism acted as a kind of litmus test for agents and editors who read it. And I’m still waiting with some apprehension to see how mystery lovers receive it when it comes out next year. So I was heartened by the enthusiastic reception the play got from a mixed audience. The New York Times called it “an insightful new play,” and the New Yorker said it “paints an endearing portrait of friendship and human weakness with warm humor.” I know the audience was mixed because when Robert Krakovski as Bill Wilson spoke the opening line, “My name is Bill, and I’m an alcoholic,” about half the audience chorused, “Hi, Bill,” immediately getting it that we were in an AA meeting.

For those who don’t know the story, Bill Wilson was a stockbroker with a big ego and a bigger alcohol problem whose last-ditch attempt to stop drinking before it killed him led to a meeting with Bob Smith, a surgeon and equally hopeless drunk, in Akron, Ohio in 1935. After having tried everything, including religion, the two men found that talking to another alcoholic—someone who’d been there too—made it possible to stay sober for just one day, and then another and another.

They made every mistake in the book, taking drunks into their homes, lending them money, and overselling their method instead of listening, while their long-suffering wives wondered if the remedy didn’t leave them as lonely and overburdened as the alcoholism had. But it worked. Two men in Akron in 1935 have become a fellowship of more than two million worldwide.

What was then deeply stigmatized as an incurable moral weakness has become understood as a chronic but treatable disease. The success of AA has led not only to additional self-help programs for those suffering from a variety of addictive disorders and those who love them but also to effective professional treatment: counseling, therapy, and addiction medicine.

It’s a small world. I know of playwright Janet Surrey as a fellow addiction professional and feminist psychologist. (Her coauthor and husband, Stephen Bergman, is a highly regarded novelist and playwright under the pseudonym Samuel Shem.) And I once shook Lois Wilson’s hand, when she was a frail but still feisty little old lady of 93. Dr. Bob, the older of the two men, went to medical school in 1898, to give an idea of the time span involved. I could have chosen a lot less risky theme for my mysteries, but I write about recovery from alcoholism because it’s a life-changing experience. I have seen this transformation many times, and it is always inspiring—awesome in the true sense of the word. At some point in the play, Bill and Dr. Bob are accused of calling everything a miracle. I don’t blame them. I’d say recovery is a miracle every time.

The First Time Comes Only Once

Sandra Parshall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things Found Round the House

Sharon Wildwind

I’m on a campaign to empty as many boxes as I can in my atelier. If you’re not familiar with the word “atelier,” it’s a fancy-schmancy word for workshop or studio. I consider it a better word than “those plastic boxes full of stuff I collected for years, and heaven knows what I was thinking at the time.”

Almost a decade ago, my aunt died. My brothers, who had been given the task of organizing the estate sale, phoned. “We think we found a few sewing things in Auntie’s house. Do you want them?”

I asked, “Did you find a round, green, plastic box full of thread and buttons?”

They had.

I’d never known a time when that box hadn’t sat on my aunt’s closed sewing machine, ready to mend a rip or sew on a button. Every time I saw her sew, that box was there at her elbow. “I want that box! If there’s anything else that looks usable, send it along.”

Since ill health prevented my aunt from sewing for many years, I wasn’t expecting much: cloth scraps, a few buttons, thread so brittle it would snap when I tried to sew with it.

A few weeks later, UPS arrived. The man in brown shorts left six boxes in my living room. Big boxes, the size air conditioners come in. Bulging boxes, their sides so distended that if I found a similar shape in, say, a can of green beans, I would immediately phone the health department. When I slit the packing tape, flaps flew open and “a few sewing things” cascaded over my living room floor.

Yards of fabric; hundreds of buttons; two unfinished quilt tops; packets of embroidery patterns—the seven-kittens-for-seven-days variety that cost 39¢ at Woolworth's—100% cotton rick-rack; German embroidery scissors, still in a velvet-flocked box; zip-lock bag after zip-lock bag of thread, the ends snarled into webs that would make spiders envious. And finally, in the middle of one box, swathed like a mummy in six yards of fabric, the treasured green plastic box.

It’s taken me a decade to go through it. The German scissors aren’t in pristine condition any more, but to compensate, they’ve snipped miles of embroidery thread. The fabric and sewing thread are mostly gone, a little bit of my aunt gracing project after project, the way that lace-makers wove strands of their own hair into lace destined to be used for wedding or christening gowns. I managed to finish the big quilt and give it to my mother before she died.

I kept the little quilt. It’s a mish-mash of cheap, bright fabrics. I suspect Auntie started it because she could see the bright colors and, even though she could no longer safely use a sewing machine, she could hand-piece by feel.

As a gift to my nieces and nephews, and now to my four great-nieces, I plan to use up as much of my stash as I can before I go. They can have the tools, which will still be in good shape, but the cloth, thread, cotton batting, buttons, zippers, embellishments, paper-crafting supplies, glues, paints, inks, color pencils, crayons, and stickers are, bit by bit, being used in the most fun projects I can think of. A lot of those projects end up at mystery conventions as tea cozies or book bags or decorated pencil tins, donated to auctions.

It’s not just cloth and paper I’m using up. I’m recycling old writing as well. A corner of my atelier is full of file boxes with partial novels; short stories; a stab or two at play-writing; one particular file of, um, well, that is to say—okay, it’s erotica, and I was young and naive when I wrote it. Enough said.

It’s a gift to be able to look at this old writing, and not cringe. To have the courage to revisit plots which, like those zip-lock bags of thread, contain tangles a spider would envy. To mine pages of “He said, . . . “She said,” or “He dropped his eyes to the floor.” for nuggets of dialog and description worth salvaging and reusing. To rediscover characters who, with a little rehabilitation and modernizing, fit nice-as-pie into the current work in progress.

One of the writing mantras we hear all the time is “Never throw anything away.” I think we need a second writer’s mantra. “Use the things found round your house.” Who would have through that recycling could be so much fun?
______
Writing quote for the week:
Adventure, ascension, decision, discovery, escape, forbidden love, love, maturation, metamorphosis, pursuit, quest, rescue, revenge, riddle, rivalry, sacrifice, temptation, transformation, underdog, and wretched excess.~ Ronald Tobias, Twenty Basic Plots

The Stories We Wish We Could Hear

by Julia Buckley
On our recent spring escape (a two day vacation during which we were caught in a snowstorm), we drove past this house. Of all the pieces of architecture that we saw during our journey, this one was my favorite. Yes, it's a decrepit, broken down structure, surrounded by swampy earth and dead trees--but it was fascinating to me. What had it been? Had someone lived there? The pillars suggest a certain grandeur, but then again it could have been a banquet hall or a hotel or something. All I knew was that sitting before me was something that, in times past, had been new and pretty; history had happened around it, and eventually it came to look like this.

I suppose this is the quality that makes me want to write. I'm always asking "What happened here? What could have happened? What would it have been like if THIS happened?" And then my brain starts working around the posed problem, and it comes up with its own answers. I don't necessarily think of this as a talent; I think it's simply the way my brain works, and a book ends up being one of the results.

It's weeks later now, and I still wonder about that building. I wonder if anyone has plans to buy it, renovate it, make it what it once was--or if it will continue to decay, abandoned, forgotten by the present. I wonder about the people who walked around inside it. Where are they now? Who are they? What did this building mean to their lives? This house is a story that I wish someone would tell me. That probably won't happen, though.

So, at some point, it may be the story that I have to tell for myself.

Do Blondes Have More Fans?

Darlene Ryan (Guest Blogger)

Once upon a time, in a past life, I was a late night disk jockey. Back in the early 80s, tuned in to the right place on the dial, you would have heard my semi-sexy voice in between songs from the Rolling Stones and Air Supply. I even had my own fan club of sorts. Yes, my fans were mostly guys. Yes, most of them had a thing for my voice and definite ideas about how I looked. And they were almost always disappointed when they finally saw me in person. You see, it seems that on the radio, I sounded like a tall blonde. That's right, blonde. And, apparently, I also sounded… endowed.

In reality I'm a short brunette and my best friend calls me “chest-ly challenged”. Still, it never failed. We'd be out doing a public appearance, and at least one man would come up to me and say, “But I thought you were blonde,” in a voice that was a mix of annoyance and disappointment. And he’d never be looking at my face when he said it.

I learned a lot of things working in radio. I learned an amazing number of swear words. I saw how men act and think when it comes to women. (I worked with seven guys.) I even learned a few things about music. I could give you a list of one-hit wonders. I could tell you more than you probably want to know about the Rolling Stones. And I learned that you're never going to make everyone happy. Some days you're not going to make anyone happy. (Not everyone likes Air Supply.)

The same thing applies to writing, I’ve discovered. You can't write a book that's going to make everyone happy. In fact, I don't think you should try. But there are a few things I think a writer does owe her readers--her fans:

1. A well constructed book. That means proper spelling, good punctuation, and a story that has a beginning, middle, and end.

2. A story that respects its genre. Romances have happy endings. Murder mysteries have bodies and killers. No, that doesn't mean Cinderella has to marry a prince. She can marry the stable boy as long as she's happy in the end. And that killer? Maybe he's performing a public service. He doesn’t have to end up dead or in prison.

3. No lame tricks to save the day. No “deus ex machina.” No what I like to call, “God in a helicopter.” The heroine can’t suddenly get her memory back, remember she was a contortionist in the circus and turn herself into a human pretzel to get out of the ropes. Thirty-two chapters later, the detective can't suddenly get the significance of the clue on page 15, but not tell anyone.

4. A story that makes sense. In real life people do things for stupid reasons or no reasons at all. But you’d better come up with credible motivation if you want someone to stick around for three hundred pages of your book. And it doesn't really matter if you tell your story from one point of view or six different points of view, as long as readers know whose head they're in.

On the other side, there are a few things we don't owe our fans:

1. A prequel, a sequel, or the next book in a series. (Yes, I know a lot of editors aren't going to agree with me. And by the way, if Tim Cockey is reading this, this doesn't apply to you. Come on, would it be that hard to write one more Hitchcock Sewell novel?)

2. Another mystery. (Or romance, or thriller, or what ever.) You do owe readers your best work, but you don't owe them the same work every time.

3. Another book at all. Yes, I know all about building a career and a reader base. But maybe you want to try a screenplay or poetry or a picture book.

Write the book that excites you. Tell the story you want to tell. Give your readers a good book, your best book. Blonde hair and big endowments are strictly optional.

Darlene Ryan is the author of Rules for Life and Saving Grace.

Women's Intuition

By Lonnie Cruse

“Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition. Me, I am very skilled in psychology. I know these things.”

He swelled his chest out importantly, looking so ridiculous that I found it difficult not to burst out laughing. Then he took a small sip of his chocolate and carefully wiped his mustache.

Recognize the above quote from a rather well known mystery? It’s from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and the first paragraph is a quote from the one and only Hercule Poirot, the second quotes the thoughts of Dr. Sheppard, Poirot’s temporary Watson.

I just finished re-reading The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd because it’s one of Dame Agatha Christie’s more controversial mysteries, some readers believing she didn’t play fair with them. But I remember the surprise I felt the first time I read it, at how she told the story. And my awe at her talent.

But, to get to the point of this post, the comments by Poirot which I read again recently, really hauled me up short. Who was Hercule Poirot to put women’s intuition down to nothing more than observation and gathering facts to mull over unconsciously when we’d been famous for our intuition for centuries? Harrumph. Then I remembered, Poirot was only mouthing the words his author had written for him, and a female author at that!

I pondered the possibility. Agatha Christie *might* have been right. We all do observe and file away in our “little grey cells” tons of information from things we hear and see every hour of every day. And we form opinions based on them. See a quick “I’m interested” look pass between two people, we wonder if there is a deeper relationship there, maybe even a hidden affair. See a dark look between lovers and we wonder if there is a break-up looming on the horizon. A guilty look on the face of a child and we go check the cookie jar. But often as not, we don’t realize we are taking in the information and drawing conclusions. So, if days or weeks later, we hear that Jane and John are having an affair and/or getting a divorce, we often chalk it up to "women’s intuition."

Makes me wonder if maybe I need to develop and enhance this “intuition” thing a bit more, no matter where it comes from. Observe others, their words, body language, behavior, and what it all might mean. Then use it in my writing to make my characters more real. Even Dame Agatha was accused of not making her characters real enough. True, she didn’t give a lot of description: color of hair, eyes, what each and every character was wearing, but her body language for them was dead on, if brief. For instance, later in this same mystery, she describes a card game between four players. She doesn’t really describe the new characters who appear at the card table, but through the dialogue we learn that one lady is a lousy card player and doesn’t pay attention to what she’s doing. Christie could have “told” us that. Instead, she shows it through what the characters say to each other. And it was a humorous scene.

I realize I need to stop relying on "intuition" and more consciously gather facts, paying close attention to what I'm seeing around me. See what I can learn about those around me from words and body language. Should be interesting. Of course, I’ll have to be discreet about it. No sense getting a punch in the nose for being nosey. What about you? Are your characters "real enough?"

Interview with Sandra Scoppettone

Interviewer: Elizabeth Zelvin

When and how did you become a writer?

My father wanted to be a writer. He wrote one novel and several short stories. He never sold anything, but when I was a child I thought he would. I think I was trying to emulate him when I wrote as a kid and then decided that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I was twenty-five when something I’d written was first published, a novelty book called Suzuki Beane. The illustrator was Louise Fitzhugh who went on to write Harriet the Spy. We sold Suzuki overnight and that’s what I thought the writing life was going to be like. The joke was on me.

I wrote three novels after that and none of them got published.

You wrote your 1984 book A Creative Kind of Killer, which won the Shamus award and was nominated for an Edgar, under the pseudonym Jack Early. What made you decide to use a masculine pen name? What prompted you to let it go and write under your own name? What kind of impact, if any, did name and gender issues have on your career?

The voice in the book came to me as a man. And in first person. I thought it might be distracting to have a woman’s name on it. And although I’d published quite a number of novels by then…let’s just say it was time for me to reinvent myself.

I let it go after two more Early books because another voice came to me. This was a woman’s voice, again in the first person. Also, the book was about a lesbian detective and I didn’t think a man’s name on it would be very politic.

The Early books got great reviews and I was compared to some of the best male crime writers. That hadn't happened to Scoppettone before and it hasn’t since. In 1984 there weren’t a lot of women being nominated for crime awards. Can’t prove a thing, but I’ll never be dissuaded that using a man’s name on the book at that time accounted for its reception.

You were one of the founding mothers of Sisters in Crime. What was that like for you?

It was strange because I was Jack Early then. I can see a group of us in Baltimore, sitting around a table in a hotel room, I think. Each said who she was and what she wrote. It was very exciting because I’d read some of these women. We had no idea what SinC would become. It didn’t have a name then.

How effective do you think SinC has been in changing things for women writers?

I have no statistics but there was a period in there when tons of women were getting published and winning the prizes. I think there are over 3000 members now. It has obviously helped a lot of women know they’re not alone. As for actual sales you’d have to ask someone else. Getting reviewed in certain newspapers is still a problem.

Your work includes series and stand-alones, adult and young adult books. What have been the high points in your long and varied career? How about low points, if you’re willing to share?

A high point was selling my first novel. Once again it gave me a false impression of the publishing business because it sold in a week. This was my first YA novel. Another high point was being reviewed for the first book in my detective series in the daily New York Times. That’s a lot harder and more prestigious than getting reviewed in the NYTBR. At least, I think it is.

Low points? Plenty. Certainly writing under the name Jack Early was a low point, despite how it turned out. As I said, I needed reinvent myself. I couldn’t get arrested as Scoppettone. Another low was not getting a contract to continue my Faye Quick series. And right now isn’t too hot. I spent the last year writing over two hundred pages (without a contract) only to put it away because I couldn’t make it work.

How much of you is there in your various protagonists? Do you have a favorite among the characters you’ve created?

There’s a lot of me in all my protagonists. But I can’t write about myself directly. No memoir or autobiographical novel for me. I guess my favorite character is Lauren Laurano in my five-book detective series.

Your latest work is the Faye Quick series, set during World War II. What drew you to the period and to the noir style? What have been the challenges?

The forties has always been a favorite decade of mine but I’d never set a book then. The idea of a woman taking over a detective agency because her boss had to go to war just popped into my mind one night.

I don’t see these books as being in the noir style. Not at all. Noir to me is dark. The Faye Quick books are light and funny. I hope. But some reviewers have called them noir. I don’t understand that.

What’s the difference for you in working on a series book or a stand-alone? What have you learned about writing a series that has helped you with the latest one?

I don’t really like writing a series because the excitement of creating new characters is not there. Yes, each book has some new characters, but your protagonist is your protagonist.

A stand-alone is exciting. Everything is new. What I learned about writing a series is never to write more than four. This time it was decided for me and there will only be two.

How about your young adult books? What drew you to that audience?

I directed a play with kids for a community theater project, Youth On Stage. I don’t have any children but I was around teens for an entire summer. They gave me the idea. And two friends of mine were writing YAs so I thought I’d give it a shot.

How different was it from writing for adults? What demands did the genre make?

It was writing a novel. I didn’t feel there was any difference. Only the cast of characters. I can’t think of any particular demands. In my YAs I was able to write about all the topics that interested me.

Not all of your YA books were mysteries, though the last, Playing Murder in 1985, got another Edgar nomination. Was there a unifying thread in your YA books? Would you ever write another?

I don’t know. I think that’s for someone else to see. As for writing another, I don’t ever want to say no.

The Jack Early book Donato & Daughter was made into a movie. What was that experience like?

There was no experience. Not for me. I got the check and saw the finished movie on TV with everyone else.

You lived in New York City for many years before moving out to the North Fork of Long Island in 1998. How do you like country living? Do you ever get into the city? Has it become the proverbial nice place to visit?

I’ve lived here twice. Seventeen years apart. I like the quiet. It’s somewhat annoying during the summer when it’s not so quiet as this is a resort area. A number of my friends from New York also live here.

I get into the city about three or four times a year. I’m not sure it’s a nice place to visit. I think I had the best years of NYC. It’s impossibly expensive and seems dirtier than I remember.

What’s next for Sandra Scoppettone?

I have a new idea but I never talk about what I’m going to do. It’s dangerous for me to do that. If I talk about it then I don’t want to write it.

After all this time, what keeps you writing?

I don’t know how to do anything else and I’m a writer. That’s what I do.

Psst! Want a Hot Deal on a Good Book?

Sandra Parshall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Willing to Marry

Sharon Wildwind

I’m a fan of historical mysteries, and an author of almost-historical ones. I say almost because my Vietnam veteran mysteries take place roughly 30 to 35 years ago, which doesn’t quite meet one common definition of a historical novel.

The Historical Novel Society (http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/main.htm) uses this working definition: “To be deemed historical (in our sense), a novel must have been written at least fifty years after the events described, or have been written by someone who was not alive at the time of those events (who therefore approaches them only by research).”

I’m also married to a military historian, so we spend a lot of time reading and talking about other times. Suzanne Adair’s wonderful post reminded me of another problem that historical writers face.

Suppose you suddenly had no money, no place to live, no job skills, and no family or friends to help you. Would you
a) Apply for social assistance?
b) Take any low-paying job you could find to tide you over?
c) Apply for a student loan so you could train for a job?
d) Advertise in the paper for a marriage partner?

Or suppose you needed help painting your bedroom. A stranger shows up at your door, looking for work.
a) You won’t hire him at all because you’re uncomfortable letting a strange man in your house.
b) You'd hire him if he had good references.
c) You ask him who his mother is and, if you know she’s a God-fearing woman, you hire him.
d) You hire or not hire him based on the shape of his head.

I’m guessing that you didn’t pick answer “d” as your first choice in either situation. In 2007, most of us don’t consider marriage the best way out of economic woes, and we don’t judge a person by the shape of his head.

However, thousands of unmarried British women placed ads in newspapers in the years immediately after the Great War. “Spinster, age 25. Father and brothers died in the war. Willing to marry disabled soldier, if not too disfigured. Respond Box 23.”

In the face of a rigid class system, lack of social assistance, prohibitions on a woman borrowing money or owning property, and a plethora of conventions about proper behavior, marriage to a total stranger was the only hope some women believed they had of avoiding either starvation or prostitution.

My own grandmother, who knew every family in her small town, would never hire a man unless she was familiar with, and approved of, his mother.

In the late 1800s, scientists, policemen, and judges believed that the shape of the head, or some facial feature were reliable guidelines to a person’s character. A person with eyes too close together couldn’t be trusted or a person with a generous mouth was kind. There was even an elaborate effort to measure the heads of all known criminals and classify those measurements to predict which criminals would re-offend.

Times and beliefs change. Nothing ruins a historical mystery for me faster than characters who think and respond as though they are living in 2007. Well, the argument runs, there must have been an occasional rebel, a person who had different ideas, who flouted conventions, and chartered her own course. I’ll just make my character one of those women. She can be a modern woman, way ahead of her time.

The trap here is to assume that an outward behavior—for example, campaigning for women’s rights or espousing a right to reproductive choice—were historically motivated by the same beliefs held today.

Between 1919 and 1929, Alberta Judge Emily Murphy and four other women—known collectively as The Alberta Five—appealed to courts in both Canada and Britain to declare women persons in their own right. This wasn’t done out of a desire for women to have full and active lives, or so that women could vote, or even to prevent farm wives from having their homes sold out from under them, but rather because, unless women were persons, no woman could be appointed to the Canadian Senate.

Debate still rages over Margaret Sanger’s motives. Did she want doctors to be able to disseminate birth control information because she wanted to save women’s lives? Or did she believe in eugenics and wanted only certain fit parents to reproduce the race?

I believe an author of historical fiction should read as many primary sources as possible before developing her characters. Obviously, the farther back the story is set, the harder for the author to find letters and diaries, but the search is well worth it. Getting inside the mind set and conventions of a chosen time period—and writing charcters bound by those conventions—adds marvelous things to a novel. Now and then were different. We do the reader a disservice when we try to mold "then" to fit into our current way of thinking.

Left: the author, less than fifty years ago, at an evacuation hospital in Viet Nam. Note the glasses. They were standard Army issue of the time. I can't think of a better visual examples of how some things just don't stand the test of time.