Jenny's winners!

Here are Jenny Milchman's winners! Joanne Guidoccio wins the autographed copy of COVER OF SNOW. Nancy Adams wins the unpublished prologue.

Congratulations! Please e-mail Jenny directly at jenny@wedeskyull.com. She will need Joanne's snail mail address and Nancy's e-mail address.

The Soundtrack of your Life

by Julia Buckley

The next two days will provide my last moments with a very fun and talented creative writing class (who will be replaced by another creative writing class).  While we were pondering all that they've written in our eight weeks together, I noted some of the prompts that we found, in books and online, that were fun.

One of my favorites was this: If a movie were being made about your life, what music would provide the soundtrack?

This is a fun question for a lot of reasons. First, it tends to focus a person on her favorite music, but it also begs the question of WHY this is the preferred music. Second, it lets one hone in on her all-time favorite artists.  So I envision one movie of me having an all-Gordon Lightfoot soundtrack, but another having all Abba, or all Beatles, or all Linda Rondstadt.

Or, if I had more time, I suppose I would choose favorite individual songs by all of my favorite artists and make a true movie soundtrack.  There would have to be music from other cultures to represent scenes with my parents or grandparents--a German carol, perhaps, or a Hungarian violin solo.  At certain points it would be apropos to play James Taylor's You've Got a Friend (or maybe Carol King's original version). And at times, especially when I escape to the woods, I think only a John Denver tune could capture the right tone.

My husband always connected me with the song Brown-Eyed Girl by Van Morrison because (you guessed it) I have brown eyes.

The more you think about the question, the more complicated it can become, which is why it's a terrific prompt.

And, depending on the day that you answer it, the answer might always be different.  If you asked me today, the song playing under the opening credits of the story of my life would probably be this one:





 What would be the music for the soundtrack of your life?

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 An additional reader will be entered in a drawing to win the unpublished prologue of Cover of Snow after the book is released.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.

Why is Betty White Wearing My Clothes?

by Sheila Connolly

Earlier this week I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting for my appointment.  The ubiquitous large-screen television was on, tuned to a morning talk show.  Normally I don't watch these, because my brain works best in the morning so that's when I write.  But in this case I was a captive audience. 

Betty White was one of the guests.  I admire Betty White:  she's smart, she's funny, and she just keeps on going at 90 (her 91^st birthday is next week).  But what I realized was that she was wearing my clothes. My public uniform, my go-to outfit for conferences, dinners, public appearances, etc.  Black pants, black top, colorful tailored jacket, low-heeled black shoes.  Did I mention that she was 90?  I'm not.

So how did I get it stuck in my head that this was how to dress "nicely"?  I grew up in an era where there were clothing rules for everything.  Things had to match (shoes and purse, for instance).  Underwear was never supposed to show ("ahem, it's snowing down south"), except in some rather bizarre Maidenform ads.   

In my childhood, going to visit my grandmother in New York meant a frilly dress with petticoat, black patent leather shoes (always too small) and socks with lace trim, and white gloves (don't ask me why).  Ladies who lunched wore hats at the table, and applying lipstick in public was considered crude.

I also lived through the seventies when all those rules blew up, but we got past that. And then I lived through the professional "power suit" for women era—you remember, the ones with shoulder pads?  And the blouse with the bow at the neck?

I never saw my grandmother wearing a pair of pants.  She wore a girdle and stockings to take out her trash (down the hall within her residence hotel).  My mother wore pants:  double knit polyester with elastic waistbands.  I still have flashbacks when I walk into the Women's department at a big department store, because my mother is everywhere there. I wear blue jeans, often. It is beyond my imagination to picture either my grandmother or my mother in blue jeans.

What does this have to do with writing?  Well, for one thing, we're supposed to describe our characters, so we as writers have to make decisions:  would our protagonist wear blue jeans to this event?  If she's going out to a nice dinner, what does she wear?  How does she judge someone she sees, based on their clothing? And what do those choices tell us about the character?

Industry studies show that most genre readers are women forty or older.  I'm making a wild guess that most cozy protagonists are slightly younger, in their thirties.  My operating theory is that that age is ideal: old enough to have some life experience, young enough to have options for the future. And while the clothing rules may be more relaxed these days, I think I can still describe how a thirty-something woman would dress.

I'm going out on a limb with my new series, where my protagonist is in her mid-twenties.  And she's blue-collar.  She's been raised by an immigrant grandmother, and she's had to work most of her life, after school and now that she's graduated from high school.  She has no life plan beyond getting by.  When her grandmother dies, she's completely unmoored—no family, no home, no clue.  (Don't worry—her life improves quickly, I promise.) And so far, she wears mainly blue jeans, with one slightly better pair of pants for funerals and such.

Lena Dunham of Girls

But I'll admit it's a stretch for me to write about someone the age of my daughter (who has opted for a kind of classic retro style—button down shirts, cashmere cardigans, pencil skirts and the like).  But I look at something like the popular HBO series Girls and what the protagonist there is wearing, and I go, huh?  Is this fashionable, or is the young woman supposed to appear clueless?  I have no idea.

Are there consistent basic standards for appearance?  Is there some timeless dress code that transcends generations? 

And why are Betty White and I wearing the same clothes??

Big Brother Is Watching You

Elizabeth Zelvin

Isn’t it amazing how Amazon manages to find every book in existence and offer it for sale? You may not agree it does, but I’m convinced.

The first book I remember borrowing from the library, at the age of six, was a book called Sally and The White Horse, about a little girl who is captured by Barbary pirates. I had tried before to find it, but one day recently, it occurred to me to search for it on Amazon, and there it was: in trade paper, titled The White Horse, part of a series about Sally by Elizabeth Coatsworth, a beloved and prolific children’s author whose name I knew, though I hadn’t realized she wrote that particular book.

On the day my latest, Death Will Save Your Life, went online, I googled my name in the Amazon search box. On the first two pages, I found listings not only for anthologies including my short stories andfor my chapters in books on clinical work with substance abusers and online therapy, but a citation of my 1976 translation of a French biography of “romantic feminist” Flora Tristan, Gauguin’s grandmother, in a history of women “from prehistoric times to the present.” To cap it, the citation appeared only an inch or two away from a listing for a book on feminism in the Soviet Union, which had made a fleeting mention of Flora Tristan in a footnote, by a woman I’d never heard of whose name is the same as my very unusual maiden name. Small world.

Then there’s the Kindle, the device that Amazon used in its world-changing devaluation of books—the McGuffin in what might be considered a crime against writers, although a boon for readers. I can’t complain about my Kindle. Most recently, on Christmas Day, it kept me patient and happy as I stood in line at a movie theater with a sell-out crowd, waiting for a film whose starting time had changed mysteriously from 3 to 4 pm. So I have to set that against the fact that as an author, I can’t sell any of my hardcover mysteries for more than ten dollars each at book fairs or festivals. At $15, they’ll simply sit there—even if my publisher’s price to me for author copies is higher than I can sell them for.

If Amazon had stopped there, I might love it as a blessing of the new technology the way I love my GPS, my iPhone, and the EZ-Pass that lets me sail through toll booths on the highway. But no. I already had a taste of Amazon as dominatrix a couple of years ago, when she cracked the whip by pulling all of publishing giant Macmillan’s products offline (including my two books published with St. Martin’s/Minotaur and the corresponding Kindle editions) to win a tug-of-war about pricing. At the time, I wished a pox on both their houses, since the higher prices publishers want mean fewer willing customers for the books.

Now, we knew already—and thanks to an article in the New York Times, the whole world knows—Amazon is bullying both writers and consumers by selectively deleting the customer reviews they have made essential to an author’s success by pegging visibility to customers to the number of positive reviews. The closest to an explanation they’ve been willing to give the public is that an author can’t be allowed to review another author’s book because the two are competitors. If you can find a way that that makes sense, please comment and let us know. They also claim they’re purging reviews by authors’ family members, supposedly to stop the unfair practice of “sock puppets,” fake superlative reviews by biased readers.

And that’s where Big Brother Is Watching You comes in. How the hell does Amazon know who my relatives are? And how intrusive does it have to get before we turn around and find our privacy, maybe even our civil liberties, gone for good? Amazon isn’t even getting it right as they pick and choose among which readers are allowed to say they like my work. So far, they’ve barred two reviews: one by a work colleague of my husband’s who’s thrilled to know an author and adores my series, the other by an established online reviewer who’s always been a fan of my work and makes a point of being upfront about giving objective reviews.

My current e-publisher has made it clear my books will sell only if I “appease the Anaconda.” But what if the Anaconda stacks the deck by setting an impossible task and punishing attempts to give it what it wants? Where do we go from here?

Drowning in Books

by Sandra Parshall

Books on my desk.

Books on tables.

Books piled in front of other books on shelves. On virtually every shelf.

Boxes of books stacked in corners.

Books on chairs, books on the floor.

Help! 

I am drowning in books, and if I hope to ever have room for... well, more books... I have to get rid of some of these tomes that currently overwhelm me.

Rather than grabbing an armful at a time and tossing them into boxes, which might precipitate a total psychological breakdown, I thought a careful pruning, a selective weeding out of unwanted volumes would be painless. And maybe it would be, if I knew the meaning of "unwanted" in connection with books. I would like to keep all of them and perhaps build new additions to the house when we run out of space.

But I must be realistic. The selection process must begin.

Every room except one in our house has bookshelves, so I have a big job. I can, at least, ignore the books in my husband’s study, which are entirely his problem. Instead of going at the rest from a negative starting point – What can I toss? – I will first mark as off-limits the books that must stay, the ones that have earned a permanent home in the Parshall manse.

First, my reference collection, all my books on crime and crime-solving, are staying put. I’ll hang onto my how-to writing books, because every time I finish writing a novel I forget how to do it and become convinced I’ll never do it again. I wouldn’t part with Donald Maass’s inspiring Fire in Fiction, in particular. 

Family room

Family room

My gardening books, my cookbooks (which are mostly stashed in cabinets and not on view), my photography books, my birding books, my plant and animal reference books, most shelved in the family room: definitely keepers. We can probably throw away the older editions of movie references – except that they might contain entries that have been purged from later editions to save space. Best to check and make sure – some other time. (I don’t care if all that information is available online. I want to be able to grab a book and look it up, not go to my computer or iPad and launch an internet search.)

Living room nonfiction shelves

I really do need all the books on history,
especially those about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe, the kings and queens of England, the Borgias, the Tudors, et al. You would be amazed how often I look things up in them (such as when I want to refresh my memory of the facts after some TV drama has presented a fanciful version). I’m also reluctant to dispose of any biographies, even if I doubt I’ll ever open them again. I may doubt it, but I can’t know for sure, so best hold onto them. Again, online is no substitute. In any case, the nonfiction shelves in the living room, at least, always look reasonably tidy, probably because the bulk of our history and biography volumes are in my husband's study.

Poetry collections, books on literature – they stay.

And now we’ve arrived at the crux of my book population problem: fiction. Realistically, how many of these novels will I ever read again, or even dip into? I can name some with certainty: all of Isak Dinesen’s Gothic tales (as well as her marvelous memoirs of Africa); all of Flannery O’Connor; all of Carson McCullers; several of Thomas H. Cook’s novels, which refresh my pleasure in the crafting of evocative prose; and my old, worn hardcover copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Living room fiction shelves after a major purge

I also won’t part with any Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine novels, or my copy of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, and a few other works of crime fiction that soar above the ordinary. I love Louise Erdrich and Edna O’Brien too much to let go of anything of theirs. I used to feel that way about a few other writers, particularly southern authors, but those bonds have loosened and I haven’t glanced at their old work or read their new in years.

What you see in these pictures is a fraction of the books in our house. The worst problem is in my study, where I write and where the majority of books coming into the house end up. The bookcase at the top of this blog is one of several in my study. The picture is a tight shot because just beyond the camera's range is a mess of such proportions that I'm ashamed to let you see it. The other shelves in the room are equally crowded, and I have boxes of books and stacks of books that haven't found space on shelves. I have books in the closet and books on the floor. My study is a disaster area, but FEMA is busy elsewhere just now, and responsibility for the cleanup is mine alone.

Will I make serious progress in purging this overgrown collection? Or will I stop the minute I’ve cleared just enough space to get all the loose books neatly lined up on the shelves (without so much as an inch left for the next new book that makes it through the door)? Anybody want to lay bets, or this one too easy to call?

When was the last time you cleaned out your book collection? Have you ever tossed something you later wished you’d kept?

Does anyone understand social media?

Let’s start with a chart. David Mihm, the guy who researched and assembled this chart, politely asked that his graphic not be used without his permission, so I’m honoring that.

Take a moment, go to this address , and scroll a little ways down until you see a chart called The Local Search Ecosystem. There won’t be a test, so don’t try to memorize it. I think it’s the best graphical representation I’ve seen about how complex social media has become. And no, I don’t understand this chart either, but I’m sure that Mr. Mihm and others in his position do. That’s the point of this blog.

Cindy King (@CindyKing), the Director of Editorial at Social Media Examiner, asked a lot of people—who probably do understand that chart—for their 2013 social media predictions. If you want to read all of the predictions go here.

Not surprisingly, one of the top predictions was that, in the coming year, doing business by social media will become a necessity, not a nice to have. Whether we like it or not, whether we’re ready or not, social media for business is galloping over the hill towards us.

So what? Writers do social media already. We have e-mail accounts, web sites, and blogs. We make book trailers, digg, stumble, tweet, ping, skype and have Facebook pages. Social media holds no terror of us.

Except that the age of home-grown creators/posters may be coming to an end.

Do you know the story about the chess board? A chess board has 64 squares, 8 horizontally and 8 vertically. According to the story a man gave Sharim, an Indian King, a handmade chess board. Most pleased, the king asked the man what he wanted in return.

The man said all he wanted was 1 grain of rice on the first square, 2 grains on the second, 4 on the third and so on. This is called exponential growth. When the King agreed, he had no idea that, because of the way exponential numbers grow, square 21—not even half-way through the board—would take one million grains of rice; square 41 would take a trillion grains and there was not enough rice in the whole world for the final squares.

This is what’s happening with social media. The number of businesses and the number of social media sites are increasing like the grains of rice. Pretty soon the board will be so full that companies and sites start falling off the board.

Not to worry. I’ve got a small, but viable, group of fans, friends, followers, etc. so I’ll just tend to those people and not worry about all of those other businesses. After all, I never expected to compete with huge corporations. The nice thing about the Internet is that I can go head-to-head with the big boys.

Which would be a workable theory if social media was that proverbial level playing field. I make a book trailer; a big publisher makes a book trailer. The beauty of the Internet is that we both post to YouTube or Vimeo, and my readers can find me.

Not for long. This is how the Internet has already started to change:

Step 1: collect massive amounts of data and store it in unbelievably huge data storage facilities.

Step 2: write algorithms to rank that data.

Step 3: create services like Facebook’s EdgeRankChecker, Twitter’s personalized feeds, or the new kid on the block Google+ Author Markup. Incidentally, “Author” in Author Markup refers to a person who writes or makes what’s being posted, not to author as writer of books and short-stories.

Step 4: moneytize rankings.

Think of it like flying standby. If there are any seats vacant after all passengers with confirmed tickets have checked in, the airline will put you on the plane. Eventually either you get lucky, or you get frustrated, and plunk down money for a confirmed ticket.

A Google search for “mystery writer” produced 65,500,000 links. Am I going to look all 65+ million. Of course not. If a link doesn’t show up on the first three pages, I’ll do another search. If a business comes up on page 20 or 200 or 2,000 of a search engine result, chances are potential customers will never see it.

We’re all flying standby, waiting in line to show up on the first three pages of search engine results. What will get us there?

1) High rankings: great content, frequent postings, professional graphics (no home-made book trailers need apply), buzz, lots of followers, going viral, etc.

2) Paying money to improve ranking and position: hiring professional web designers, data analysts, or electronic marketing gurus.

While social media sites still provide free access—great for fun things like videos of dancing kittens—businesses are being steered toward buying services, with promises of top ranking for their niche markets. Want to reach the ideal demographic for traditional mysteries (women 45 to 65, who have at least a high school education, read for pleasure, and have some disposable income)? Pay us and we will customize a marketing package for you so that your book shows up on their searches.

Am I discouraged? Not really. I think we have a little bit of wiggle time left before money takes over completely. And who knows, this whole system may collapse in on itself, and reinvent the Internet. Some of the people who understand that chart think so, too.

My forecast for 2013 is based on my lousy predictions of years previous, and learning from that experience. My prediction? That we will be taken by surprise by a new social media service that hardly anyone will see coming! Just look over the last few years and see how we have been blindsided.

~ Chris Garrett (@chrisgarrett), author and Vice-President of Educational Content, Copyblogger Media

The important thing is to be in the game. Equally important is to be having fun while we’re playing. Aim for great content. Do the exact opposite of the Wizard of Oz. Instead of ignoring the woman behind the curtain, let that woman’s passion and true voice ring loud and clear.

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Quote for the week

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. … It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

~Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner. 

Taking Down the Tree--A Study in Revision

by Julia Buckley

I had to take down the Christmas tree yesterday, which was sad because it was one of the nicest trees we ever had.  It stayed fresh and fragrant for more than a month in our living room, not dropping a needle until a few days ago.  Our cats came to drink from its water base like little deer lapping at a fresh stream.  For once none of the light strands went out, and somehow we arranged the ornaments in a way that was almost perfect.  We found joy in the tree, and we enjoyed looking at it every night as it glowed in our midst like a beacon of happiness.

Naturally taking it down seemed like a sad endeavor (and a lonely one, since everyone disappears when I need it done), but I tried to link it to a new start, a clean sweep, and a chance to re-imagine the corner in which the tree had stood.

Then, being a writer, I likened it in my mind to the process of revision.  Removing the tree is analogous to Hemingway's advice to "kill your darlings."  There is no going back, after all; the tree cannot reclaim its old glory, just as the deadwood in my sentences will never bring those sentences to life in the way that removal will.

And what of the wonderful characters on the tree?  Every year I put up not just the Nativity scene, but Bob Cratchit with Tiny Tim, several whimsical Santas, various gnomes and elves, a reindeer wearing jeans, two smiling snowmen, baby pictures in "First Christmas" frames, lovely-faced angels, and more. Sometimes my books have a jumble of characters, too, and not all of them belong.  Recently an agent gave me some notes on my latest work, and among the comments was the notion that one of the characters had no real purpose in the story (other than the fact that I liked her).  I realized immediately that this was true, and I took her out. Sure, it was like sending away a friend (or taking a favorite ornament off the tree), but in the end it was for the best.

And what of the garlands and the strands of lights that made my tree so grand?  Ultimately when I stripped them all away, the tree was still beautiful--perhaps more so in its honest and dignified natural state--and I took comfort in knowing that it had a new function now, in my back yard,  as a home for birds keeping warm in its branches.  So does revision produce something new--a different text which will function differently for an audience--especially when one strips away all unnecessary garlands like adverbs and adjectives that don't really belong on the basic branches of the story.

Homes, Sweet Homes

by Timothy Hallinan


Back when I had a real job, I was bi-coastal in the sense that I had homes in both Los Angeles and New York. Now that I just sit around with my feet up, occasionally knocking off yet another effortless novel (this is a pathetic attempt at self-hypnosis), I'm more widely “bi” then ever.  I'm bi-continental.

My home towns, Los Angeles and Bangkok, are also the homes of the central characters in my two current series. Burglar-cum-private eye Junior Bender is an Angeleno, and American travel writer Poke Rafferty has taken root in Bangkok.

While I come by Los Angeles naturally (I was born there), Bangkok is one of life's little surprises.  In 1981, I was in Japan, working on a PBS series about the first multiple-city tour of Japan by a western symphony orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  I planned to spend a few weeks there after the shooting wrapped, but it was the coldest February in decades, so I decided to go someplace warm, someplace that didn't require a visa.  That pretty much narrowed it down to Thailand.

I fell in love with Bangkok within 24 hours. Part of it was how little like Los Angeles it seemed to be at first sight, but most of it was simply that it's the most cheerful big city on earth. Big Thai smiles everywhere—on the surface, at least, and at that point I was experiencing mainly the surface.

January 2013

It took me quite a while to realize that Bangkok and Los Angeles are a lot more alike than I initially thought.  That's one of the realizations that's dictated the way I write them.

All big cities are, on one level, ongoing collisions between dreams and concrete.  They're driven by aspiration and exploitation, need and greed.  It's probably not a coincidence that the traditional cozy is often set in a small, enclosed community while its hard-boiled cousin usually has a big-city ZIP code.  In both Bangkok and Los Angeles, achieved dreams are on ostentatious display and protected by the invisible walls of the power structure, and new, usually powerless people arrive daily to seek everything from regular meals to the key to Aladdin's cave.

In Bangkok, Thailand's financial elite, discontent with its lion's share of the income from the nation's major cash crop, is slowly taking ownership of the rice farms in the Northeast, breaking down the tight-knit community support that ensured that no one starved between crops.  Bangkok's population has grown by millions as impoverished, uprooted families poured in, ripe for exploitation.  It's not that different from the Los Angeles exploitation of Hispanic immigrants, powerless without a green card.

Most Americans would probably share my initial impression, that Bangkok is more “exotic” than, say, the San Fernando Valley, where Junior hangs out.  But I believe that exoticism, for writers, is a trap.  That's why I lived in Bangkok for more than twenty years before I tried to write about it.  To me, as a new arrival, the Thais seemed alien, otherworldly, graceful, dreamlike, venal, generous, other, but I came to see that for them, it's just Tuesday.  They think we're exotic, and I'm eternally grateful that I didn't attempt to write about them before I understood that.

The other thing that makes these two settings a bit more alike has to do with my idea of what a “setting” is.  I believe that setting is the interaction between character and place.  Place without character is, I think, just scenery.  “Bangkok” in the Poke Rafferty novels is actually several Bangkoks: it's Poke's, seen from the perspective of the foreigner who never quite breaks through the invisible film between him and this new world; it's Rose's, that of a northeastern village girl who was forced south into the sex trade and survived it; it's Miaow's, forged by her years as a homeless child being harried from one piece of sidewalk to the next.  And it's Arthit's, the perspective of a somewhat disillusioned cop who once thought he'd change the world but has learned to be grateful for the opportunity to do the occasional small good deed.

November 2012

In For the Dead, the sixth Poke book, which isn't yet finished, we see all those Bangkoks and several others as well, and I hope they provide their own kind of rhythm, the same way a series of camera placements can change the rhythm of a film.

The Junior Bender books are written primarily in the first person, which means they're set in a burglar's—Junior Bender's—Los Angeles.  A burglar sees a street lined with palatial houses very differently than does someone with a map to the stars' homes.  The real setting of the Junior novels is the shadow Los Angeles of crooks, with its own set of perils and opportunities.

But, of course, Los Angeles is also Show Business, and in all three Juniors thus far, we've entered the vast and often larcenous fringes of “the industry.”  In Little Elvises, coming out in January, it's the fringe occupied by a specific kind of music business hanger-on, someone who had a hit in the past and can't stop trying for redemption.

August 2012

One of the things Sandra Parshall asked me to think about, when she so generously invited me to blog, was (sort of) whether writing in the two cities felt different somehow.  Wherever I am, the writing life consists of a few friends, my wife (if I'm in Los Angeles), food, and a keyboard.  The keyboard doesn't vary because it goes with me.  My Bangkok friends are, arguably, more eccentric than my LA friends—Bangkok expats are a self-selecting group who really don't fit anywhere else.  Food is better in Bangkok than it is in the States.  Food is better in Bangkok than it is anywhere.  

But I write about Bangkok in Bangkok and LA in LA.  It's nice in either case to be able to look up and grab a face, an interaction, a phrase—some sort of snapshot of life in your setting.  (I steal faces from people in coffee shops all the time.)  It's such an invaluable resource, being able to write, surrounded by your setting.

It almost makes me feel sorry for science-fiction writers.

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Tim Hallinan authored the Simeon Grist mysteries and currently writes the Poke Rafferty thrillers and the Junior Bender mysteries (which have been optioned for film). A longtime writing teacher, he has also written a nonfiction book on Charles Dickens and recently edited the essay collection Making Story: Twenty-one Writers and How They Plot. In college Tim wrote songs and sang in a rock band, and many of his songs were recorded by well-known artists. He began writing books while enjoying a successful career in television. For more than 25 years he has divided his time, on and off, between Southeast Asia and his native California. He feels fortunate to be married to Munyin Choy-Hallinan. Visit his website at www.timothyhallinan.com for more information.

There and Back Again

by Sheila Connolly

Recently I found myself browsing in a used bookstore in Brooklyn.  I was with friends, and we were waiting for a table at the restaurant next door, and of course I spotted the bookstore before the car even stopped moving. And of course I bought something.

 

What I found and fell in love with was a thick and yellowed volume titled Scarborough's Official Tour Book for New York, New Jersey, Canada and the East, copyright 1917, issued under the aegis of the New York State Automobile Association.  Since I had great-grandparents and grandparents who lived in New York, New Jersey and New England about that time, and I grew up in New Jersey (and learned to drive there), I had to have it. 

 

Consider it the Google Maps or MapQuest of its day, because the book provides step by step directions from getting from here to there—when the world was a very different place.

 

The entries are arranged by trip.  Let us say we wish to travel from Atlantic City to Philadelphia in 1917, some 61 miles. The details appear on p. 138, and begin by informing us that there is a very good gravel road as far as Berlin, then macadam thereafter.  I won't give you the entire itinerary, but it includes such details as "go south on Atlantic Ave., following trolleys," followed by "bridge."  At 9.3 miles you pass a cemetery on the right; in Elm, at 34.9 miles, you go under a viaduct, then over two viaducts in short order.  At 41.1 miles, "Danger.  Turn left under viaduct, then curve right, and cross railroad."  When you arrive at the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Camden, you take a ferry across the Delaware River to arrive in Philadelphia.

 

Or say we wish to voyage from Morristown, New Jersey to New York City, a trip I made with my family countless times when I was young.  Start at the east corner of the park (what park? Where?) in Morristown.  Go under the railroad—Washington's Headquarters will be on the left (yes!).  Go straight at the four corners, then follow the stone road to a bridge.  At Florham Park (just down the road from my high school), go straight, "soon leaving macadam (for what?)." A school will be on the right.  Go over the bridge, and the macadam reappears.

 

Then we wend our way through South Orange, Newark (cross a couple of bridges there, then "turn sharp left at open space into park…bear right at fountain), Jersey City, and Weehauken, where you have to take the 42^nd St. ferry.  Apparently you arrive in New York only when you reach Columbus Circle.

 

These trips take place in fairly well settled areas (relatively speaking). How about taking a trip from New York to the Hamptons on Long Island?  When we arrive at Amagansett, after 109 miles, we are warned of a mile of "sandy dirt road" and then at 113.5 miles we find this:

 

From here … you will have very poor road of deep sand.  Follow directions of the occasional white pointed boards.  The red pointed boards point out the worst ways. (These board pointers are changed occasionally owing to the trails becoming cut too deep in sand.) After reaching mileage 18.9 you have mostly dirt road with occasional sandy places.

 

If you survive that, there's a large summer residence on the hill at the left at 113.6 miles.  There is also a saloon one block to the left at mile 115.1 (are the authors suggesting you may need one by then?).  And BTW, look out for the large rock on sharp curve at mile 127.9.

 

Travel must have been a real adventure in those days! No highways, no bridges over the big rivers; no guarantee you'd ever find a paved road where you were going. Most of the navigational benchmarks were viaducts, bridges, trolleys and cemeteries.  You'd better travel with a companion to read the directions out load, since if you stop, you might end up sinking into the sand or mired in mud on an unpaved road.

The book is also sprinkled with illustrated advertisements for hotels ($1.00 to $3.50 per day), plus ads for garages (some of which promise "NEVER CLOSED"—those unpaved roads must have been hard on cars, not to mention the people bouncing around in them. 

 

P.S. If anyone wants to know how to get from Point A to Point B in the eastern US in 1917, let me know.