Peaceful or Provoked?

By Patricia Hale, guest blogger
Author of In the Shadow of Revenge

At a conference I once attended, the speaker said,  “In writing mystery/suspense, you should always kill your most vulnerable character.” Even though I’ve forgotten who said it, I’ve never forgotten the words. They’re in my head, like knuckles tapping at my brain as I plot a story.

In my recent release from Carina Press, In the Shadow of Revenge, I used the speaker’s advice. And in my second book of the series, currently in the editing phase, another vulnerable character doesn’t see the end of the novel.  Even now, as I begin the third installment, I’m already wondering who it will be this time.

And yet, there’s another perspective niggling at me as I contemplate who will take their last breath and when.  It’s the reader. How does a reader feel when the weakest of the characters is killed? And does it matter when it happens? Should it be mid-way, so the reader has time to grieve with the rest of the characters? Or in the final pages, so the story goes out with a bang and the reader is left emotionally charged, good or bad?

The question calls to mind the old television show, "The Weakest Link." I remember truly loathing the ruthless M.C., every time I watched her cast off another player. So do readers see me in the same light when a character they love takes a final breath? Are they resentful? Angry? Sad? Will they read me again or see me as the story’s ultimate villain, a ruthless M.C.? For the most part, I think readers of mystery/suspense and/or crime novels expect bodies to pile up. But when it comes down to the final pages, do they want a Hollywood ending or a realistic finish, even when it isn’t pretty?

 To answer this, I have to consider myself, not only as a writer, but a reader. What are my own preferences? I was furious for days after watching the movie, The Departed, where Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are riddled with bullets when the elevator doors open on the very last scene. I felt cheated, even duped, that I’d followed them for two hours only to see them squashed in seconds and the screen go black. But, and this is a big but, years later, I still hold the image of DiCaprio and Damon in the elevator clearly in my head and I’ve never forgotten the name of that movie.  If their lives had been taken halfway through, would it have had the same impact and stayed with me for this long? The answer is a definite no. So for a suspense novel to stay with the reader beyond the last page, the question becomes as much when to kill as who to kill. 
 
Is there a “best moment” so to speak, to off the most vulnerable (and probably well-loved) character? Of course the story has to ring true, that’s a given. It has to convey an event or series of events that the reader can believe in their entirety. If I were to kill for the sake of an outline, I would be in the same league as my psychopathic serial killer. So while the speaker at the conference was on the right track, there does have to be some angst for the reader in order for the characters to linger beyond the last page. Do I want to devastate the reader halfway through the story or in the book’s last moment? Should they put the book down softly with a smile and forget about it soon after, or hurl it at the wall with a curse and remember it for a good long time?

As writers, no matter how much we love a character (And we do. After all, we gave them birth.), we know a good story mirrors life. And in life, there’s good and bad, joy and heartbreak. So if a beloved character needs to go, we have to let them take a last breath. The decision of who it will be depends on what’s necessary for the sake of the story. Deciding when it will be means taking the reader into consideration and how we want them to feel when they turn the last page. 

As a “Criminal Minds” junkie and a mystery/suspense addict, I’m okay with death, even multiple deaths throughout a story, but I like an ending that leaves me optimistic. I want the last scene to wash away any gelatinous blood, not create it. If it’s the final image that I’ll be left with and the character can be saved then by all means throw out the life jacket, let the gun misfire, let the rope break. As a reader, I want to put down the book with a smile.

As a writer, I can’t make any promises.

What’s your preference?
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Patricia Hale is a graduate of the MFA program at Goddard College in Vermont. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, NH Writer’s Project and Maine Writer’s and Publisher’s Alliance. Her essays and articles have appeared in New England literary magazines and the anthology, My Heart’s First Steps. When not writing, she enjoys hiking with her dogs and kayaking on the lakes near her home. Patricia lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two German shepherds.

Contact her at: http://patriciahale.org and www.facebook.com/patricia.hale.102

A Change for the Better?

Sharon Wildwind

The Stampede ended last night. The Folk Festival doesn’t kick off until July 25th. Oh, my, oh, my whatever shall I do for the next ten days? I mean, besides find my go-to-Folk-Festival pack; buy more sunscreen; and pre-listen to artists on the Internet so I can pick which ones I want to see in person?

Maybe I should check in to see if anything new happened in the writing world while I was enjoying corn dogs on the midway.

Oh, yeah, something happened. The cuckoo called. Have you been following this? Here it is in a nutshell: a detective novel was published in London. It got great reviews, and a ho-hum reception as far as a commercial success. It was so good that Richard Brooks, the Sunday Times’ art editor got suspicious that the author could not possibly be, as claimed on the book jacket, an ex-military police officer turned writer. How he went about finding the author’s real identity is described here.

The search involved a secretive tipster who disappeared afterwards from the Internet; computer analysis of text; and and about 24-hours of Internet sleuthing. On Thursday he had an idea and got a tip; on Friday he sent an e-mail to the suspected author asking her to fess up; on Saturday he had an affirmative answer; and on Sunday he published a piece in the Sunday Times.

The answer? Robert Galbraith is in fact J. K. Rowling. Sorry for the spoiler, but you were bound to find out sooner or later.

Thursday the book was doing ho-hum in the bookstores. Sunday, bookstores in London were sold out and The Cuckoo’s Calling had shot to #1 on the Amazon best-seller list in both the US and UK.

Why in the world is it almost required that, at some point, writers publish under pseudonyms?

It doesn’t happen to sports figures. Yes, both Cassius Clay and Wilt Chamberlain changed their names, but that was a matter of personal beliefs, not a requirement in the boxing or basketball worlds.

It doesn’t happen to musicians. Simon and Garfunkel are still Paul Simon and/or Art Garfunkle, even though their musical styles have taken several turns of the years.

It doesn’t happen to artists. Jackson Pollock’s first name was Paul, but his middle name really was Jackson, so I guess he was entitled to use it.

Okay, so maybe movie stars pick a new name—years ago the studios picked it for them— but once they make the change, they stick with it. John Wayne never went back to Marion Morrison; Cary Grant abandoned Archibald Leach; and Tallulah Bankhead stuck with her real name, one I’ve always thought was one of the sexiest names going.

Over the years here’s advice I’ve heard from other writers about not writing under your own name

• Change your last name so that your books will be shelved in book stores and libraries next to a best-selling author.
• Do an Internet search. If your real name is identical or very similar to another author, change it.
• The reason that many writers don’t become successes is that they don’t take advantage of name numerology. Pick a name that guarantees success because of it’s numerical qualities. Do not ask me what these are. I’d already concluded the author and I weren’t on the same planet, so I wasn’t paying attention.
• If you write children’s books and adult books you absolutely must write under pseudonyms, so that children won’t pick up one of your adult books by mistake.
• If you write in two genres, say science fiction and mystery, you must write each genre under a different name.
• If you write more than one series in the same genre, you must write each series under a different name.
• A woman writer has two choices: at least, write under initials only; at best, write under a man’s name. (Thank goodness this attitude has died out in some quarters.)

The two most irritating (and frequent) comments from my friends are, “You’re self-published, of course.” (No, I’m not.) and “What name are you writing under?” (My own, thank you very much.)

So here’s the question. What makes writers different? Why do people want us to write under fictitious names?
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Quote for the week:
The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.
Aldous Huxley, (1894 – 1963), English writer, editor, and pacifist

Memory Fun: Testing the Neurons

by Julia Buckley

This is a nice segue from Sheila's post about memory and reading. The other day, in discussing memory with the teenagers in my summer speech class,  I showed them some memory tests and games provided by Washington University.  Even though the page is called "Neuroscience for Kids," most of the tests go up to the senior level (or 18 years old) and therefore might be even MORE challenging for those of us whose brains are no longer springy and youthful.

Here's the link.

What I was pleased to note was that, depending on the test, there were some games in which I fared better than the fourteen-year-olds and vice versa, leading me to believe that you don't have to be young to have a good memory.

For example, in the first short-term memory test, even though the letter strings were random, most of us agreed that we could retain the information through a Mnemonic Device in which we turned the letter strings into words and then said those words in our minds.  I fared very well on this test, getting only three digits wrong the first time, and one wrong the second.

I did not fare as well when asked to list random objects remembered from pictures, because I had difficulty finding ways to sort them, and tried and discarded a few, thereby using up time and not getting a very substantial list.

But for the sound/rhythm memory test (which is very similar to the old SIMON game), I again fared very well, since I have good musical memory and also a good memory for rhythm.

If you're a woman, you'll probably do better on the facial recognition game than a man would, according to this study.  Try it with a spouse and see who fares better.

I'll keep reading and writing, as Sheila's post has assured me that this is a good plan for the future of my mind, but I think doing these tests now and again would be a good way to keep the mind spry. 

Guest Peg Cochran and Meg London

Please join the Daughters in welcoming Peg Cochran, who also writes as Meg London. Sheila Connolly had the fun of interviewing her for her post today.

Meg/Peg, let me ask the obvious first question: what's it like to write two different series at the same time? How do you keep your cast of characters for each straight in your mind? How do you give your two protagonists their own voice?

How do I keep my characters straight?  Sometimes I don’t.  I’ll be deep into a scene and suddenly think, “Wait.  Is this Emma or Gigi I’m writing about?”  Seriously though, in my mind, they are two very separate and distinct characters.  Characters take on a certain reality to the writer so confusing your two protagonists would be like confusing your best friend with your sister.  That goes for their voice as well—Gigi doesn’t use the same expressions or speak with the same rhythm as Emma and vice versa.   

I enjoy writing two different series because I enter a different world with each of them.  So far I haven’t tried to work on a manuscript for each series at the same time.  Therein would definitely lay confusion.

Did you start out as a plotter or a pantser? Now that you're writing two series, do you find that has changed?

Can I call myself a plotser?  I don’t make a detailed outline although I would probably have fewer revisions to make if I did, and I wouldn’t panic so much when I hit the dreaded middle. But if I’ve outlined in too much detail, I feel as if there are no surprises ahead and that makes it seem a little too much like work—something I’m not overly fond of!  I do need my plot points though—ending of Act 1, midpoint’s big reversal, end of Act 2, black moment and climax.  I also add in “pinch points”—an emotional turning point or upheaval for your character.  They are slotted in between the plot points and keep the momentum going.

Your series feature different hooks: one is based on food, the other is set in a shop selling vintage lingerie. Cozies focusing on food or small-town shops are very popular now. What appealed to you about each of these themes?

Well, I do love to eat so food just naturally appeals.  And if I can be said to have any sort of hobby other than writing, it’s definitely cooking.  (Clearly it’s not photography as evidenced by the pictures I put up on Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen!)   I had more time to spend in the kitchen before I started writing, but mastering puff pastry or pate feuillete is on my bucket list. 

The lingerie series was conceived of by my editor at Berkley, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed researching vintage lingerie.  I actually have a few pieces that were given to me by my grandmother including a gorgeous peach silk negligee and peignoir set.  

What was the first mystery you remember reading? Did you love it, or did you think, I can do better?

I don’t remember the title, but it was definitely a Nancy Drew.  That’s when I thought, “aha, when I grow up I’m going to become a mystery writer.”  Little did I know how long it was going to take me!

What contemporary writers (not necessarily cozy writers!) do you admire? How has their writing influenced yours?

I was blown away by Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.  Both the story and her writing.  I’m a real Anglophile and love many of the British writers (or Americans who write about England) like P.D. James, Peter Robinson, Deborah Crombie.  I’m sure reading their books has informed my writing although my style is very different. 

What kind of research do you have to do for your stories? Do you now have a collection of vintage lingerie? And do you test all your Gourmet De-Lite recipes?

I do test all my Gourmet De-Lite recipes.  Some are real family favorites and appear on the menu frequently like shepherd’s pie and chili.  I’ve tried to “deconstruct” fattier and/or more calorie laden dishes to make them more diet friendly.  I just can’t bring myself to use a lot of fat when cooking.  I used to—back in my 20s when I was learning to cook by going through Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child—but my metabolism has decided to lie down and die so I don’t dare consume that many calories anymore. 

As for the vintage lingerie, as I mentioned above, I do have some pieces from my grandmother, and I’ve learned a lot through research. Including the fact that lace workers from Nottingham, England, displaced by the Industrial Revolution, took English bulldogs to France, where the smaller of the dogs were prized.  They were bred and eventually the smaller French bulldog was created.  One of the protagonists in my Sweet Nothings series owns a French bulldog, but this fact emerged when I was researching lace used in vintage lingerie.  I must put it in a book one of these days!

Why do you believe cozy mysteries are so popular (even if they don't win big prizes and top best-seller lists)?

I think readers like knowing the book is going to be an interesting puzzle but won’t keep them up at night looking over their shoulder.  There’s little violence, the murder usually takes place off stage, no animals or children will be harmed and justice will be served—it’s possible for the faint of heart to enjoy a cozy mystery whereas a graphic tale about a psychotic serial killer might disturb them.

Peg grew up in a New Jersey suburb about 25 miles outside of New York City. After college, she moved to the City where she managed an art gallery owned by the son of the artist Henri Matisse.

After her husband died, Peg remarried and her new husband took a job in Grand Rapids, Michigan where they now live (on exile from NJ as she likes to joke). Somehow Peg managed to segue from the art world to marketing and is now the manager of marketing communications for a company that provides services to seniors.

She has two cozy mystery series out from Berkley Prime Crime — the Sweet Nothings Vintage Lingerie series, written as Meg London, set in Paris, Tennessee and the Gourmet De-Lite series, under her own name, set in Connecticut.  She also has three ebooks on Amazon, a mystery, Confession Is Murder and two young adult books—Oh, Brother! and Truth or Dare.

Peg's latest book is Steamed to Death (June 2013); Meg's is Laced with Poison (July 2013).

Peg has two daughters, a step-daughter and step-son, a beautiful granddaughter, a cat named Frazzle and a Westhighland white terrier named Reggie.  You can read more at www.pegcochran.com and www.meglondon.com.

Reading and Memory

by Sheila Connolly

As I read my newspaper at dawn this morning (I'm trying to avoid the heat—five a.m. can be very pleasant, I've found, and yes, I still read a paper made of paper), my eye was caught by a short article in the "Be Well" section, with the headline "Reading and writing preserves memory, researchers say."

Briefly: Researchers at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, where there is a Memory and Aging Project (per their website, still recruiting participants, if you're interested) announced this week that a multi-year study they have conducted strongly suggests that "participants who reported reading and writing throughout their life, especially in old age, were 32 percent less likely to show deterioration in brain regions involved in memory," and "those who reported infrequently reading and writing into old age experienced a 48 percent faster rate of memory loss."

I feel so much better.  Okay, the study involved only three hundred octogenarians and depended upon answers to a survey (and we all know they aren't always accurate) as well as physical observations upon autopsy, but it's encouraging nonetheless.  The old adage "use it or lose it" still applies.

I've been reading before I can remember, and I've never slowed down, as my overflowing bookshelves can attest.  I've been writing for over a decade now (longer if you want to count academic papers in my younger days, as well as grant proposals and reports a decade or two later).  But who knew that I was preserving brain cells all the while?

Carl Sagan is reported to have said, "The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous." How rare is it that something that feels good is also good for us?  And even better, we as writers are performing a valuable service to our readers, by providing them with books that will help sustain their brain function for years.

And now I have another justification for all those books in my To-Be-Read pile:  I'm stockpiling therapeutic tools.  I'm not sure how well that rationale (rationalization?) applies to the thousands of books I've saved over the years, but I might want to reread them.  Would it be a sign of aging if I can't remember whodunnit in some of them?

Memory is a tricky thing.  Sometimes we rewrite our own, or we selectively mask or erase certain parts.  I had an odd conversation with my husband this weekend, when I described in detail a wonderful O'Keefe and Merritt gas stove we had in the first house we owned, and he had no memory of it at all.  (For the record, he used it as much as I did.) Wiped from his databanks.

In return, he accuses me of blotting out the second car we bought together.  Maybe.  I think he drove it a lot more than I did, commuting to work. I had a different car at the same time, and I can tell you a lot more about that one.

Sometimes these days I feel the need to document everything in the house, particularly items I've inherited from four generations of my family, because I'm the only one who knows what they are and where and who they came from, and my daughter won't know what each piece means, when she comes to inherit it.  I haven't done it yet.  But this weekend I sorted through my t-shirt collection, and I can still tell you when I acquired each one, and where and why. Maybe I'm just practicing. (I have a lot of t-shirts.)

But reading is something else.  It seems to be using a different part of our brain.  I'll be happy to sacrifice my memories of my t-shirts if I can continue to enjoy reading and writing.

Still Alive and Well

Elizabeth Zelvin

How do I know my youth is all spent
My get-up and go has got up and went
But in spite of it all, I’m able to grin
When I think of the places my get-up has been.

I didn’t write that. It’s the chorus of a song the legendary Weavers sang in the Fifties. I used to think it was simply funny. But as I get older...and older...and older…it gets more and more relevant.

I wake up each morning and dust off my wits
Open the paper and read the obits
And if I’m not there, I know I’m not dead
So I eat a good breakfast and roll back in bed.

My father used to do that. Literally. If he spotted somebody he knew in the New York Times obituaries, he would read it out to my mother and whoever else was around at the time. He’d start by announcing, in a tone of unmistakable satisfaction: “So-and-so dropped dead yesterday.” He wasn’t heartless. If it was someone he liked who died, he would feel appropriate regret. But his first reaction was to feel reassured about knowing that he was still a survivor.

I’m currently sixty-nine, in my last year in the decade that some people nowadays call “the new thirties.” With my contemporaries, I find myself participating in “the organ recital” that inevitably forms part of every conversation. Sure, some of us have good genes and pay a lot of attention to staying fit. But to some extent, there’s no denying the machinery is wearing out. We lose friends more and more frequently, and the famous people we think of as ageless—writers and other creative artists, athletes, politicians—show up in the obits.

On the other hand, what I used to think of as “old” is not the same as it used to be. When I was a college English major in the Sixties, one of my favorite literary novelists (we just called them novelists back then) was Muriel Spark. In her novel Memento Mori, she wrote about a number of interrelated characters who, after they turned seventy, all began to get anonymous and untraceable phone calls. The callers—no two characters heard the same voice—would say simply, “Remember you must die,” the literal meaning of the Latin phrase memento mori. The idea from a literary and philosophical point of view was that the calls weren’t death threats or criminal in any way, but Death itself calling with a simple reminder.

Fifty years later, I’m kind of horrified at the idea that I might have to start considering my mortality at the age of seventy—unless illness or bad luck put me in a situation in which I do. Ninety would be more like it. I’m glad I’ve already done many of the things I’ve dreamed of doing, including publishing my novels, releasing an album of my music, and getting to enjoy my granddaughters. I don’t know what’s next, but in some ways, it feels like I’m just getting started.

Are you ashamed of what you read?

by Sandra Parshall

Sometimes I come across articles about writing, reading, and publishing that seem to be referring to an alternate book world that I’ve never experienced. My reaction is: Huh? Where did that idea come from?

Take, for example, a recent article on the Wired magazine website that examined the “surprising” popularity of genre fiction like sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and romance in e-book form. These forms of storytelling, according to the article, “have traditionally lagged behind literary fiction in terms of sales.”

Huh? Where did that idea come from?

A Publishers Weekly/Bowker study a couple years ago showed literary fiction had 20% of the digital market share, outselling any particular genre. But those sales included classics – the e-books that are dirt cheap (and sometimes free) for downloading. How many owners of new Kindles have bought War and Peace or every Jane Austen novel during an initial downloading spree, then never found time to read them as planned?

When it comes to traditional print publishing, can any of us recall a time when genre fiction didn’t dominate bestseller lists? When James Patterson, John Grisham, Nora Roberts and other genre stars didn’t regularly stomp all over literary fiction? The annual Publishers Weekly report on the bestselling books of the previous year confirm that genre rules. The surprising thing isn’t that genre sells well but that there’s any room at all for litfic.

The Wired article names some all-digital genre lines created recently by major publishers – Hydra (SF/fantasy), Alibi (mystery), Flirt (“new adult”), Loveswept (romance) from Random House and Witness (mystery) from Harper Collins – and says the focus on genre fiction “might seem counter-intuitive according to traditional print publishing sales.”

But it’s not at all counter-intuitive. Genre books, particularly romance and crime fiction in all their many varieties, are big sellers in print, so it makes sense to assume they’ll sell well as e-books. And they do. Some genre books sell more digital copies than print.

Why? Some sensible reasons are advanced in the article, but the first one mentioned is this: If it’s an e-book, you won’t be embarrassed by other people being able to see what you’re reading. That sounds an awful lot like: Nobody can see you’re reading trash.

Antonia Storer, a columnist for The Guardian, is quoted as saying she’s more comfortable reading “downmarket” fiction in secrecy on an e-reader and “keeping shelf space for books that proclaim my cleverness.” In a column last year Storer wrote, “The reading public in private is lazy and smutty. E-readers hide the material.” After you stop rolling your eyes, go read the rest of the column. It’s quite entertaining.

Put a cover on your e-reader to make sure nobody can see what kind of trash you're reading!

The Wired article does make some valid points. Liate Stehlik, senior vice president at HarperCollins, is quoted as saying that genre fans read a lot of books and “the audience that gravitated to e-books first really was that voracious reader, reading for entertainment, reading multiple books in a month across multiple genres.” She's not the first to point out that e-books are replacing mass market paperbacks. Anyone who follows market news is well aware of that.

Digital-first publishing allows publishers to take more chances on new authors and work that might not make a profit in print. Novellas, for example, have more chance of being published profitably (or published at all) as e-books. As Stehlik says, e-books have liberated publishers from the profit/loss limits of print – and they have freed writers and readers as well.

But it appears we still have a long way to go to free ourselves of prejudice against genre fiction. I’m not ashamed of what I read. I’m not ashamed of what I write. If you see me reading on my tablet, it’s not because I’m hiding something. It just happens to be a convenient way to carry around a ton of books so I always something to choose from.

Post-flood timing . . .

. . . or how we know it's not over yet.

Sharon Wildwind

Flood update

The state of emergency for Calgary was lifted at 10:16 AM, Thursday, July 4. It is estimated that 1,200 people will be out of their  homes for at least 6 months, while repairs are made. Between 550 and 900 people will be out of their homes for 12-18 months, possibly forever. We have no idea which category the elderly people in three downtown subsidized buildings fall.

Some buildings have already been demolished because they unsafe for human habitation and not able to be repaired. Engineering assessment teams are far from finished in determining how many more buildings will have to come down.

The city is building temporary neighborhoods, using trailers. Best guess is that this temporary housing will accommodate between 40% and 50% of the Calgarians who will be out of their houses for months or forever. The amount of rental accommodations available in the city was about 1% before the flood; for now and the foreseeable future, it is zero.

In animal news, firefighters rescued a cat from underneath an undermined sidewalk. The cat had been missing 5 days. 

One (or maybe two) female meerkats, rescued from flood waters at the Calgary zoo, have given birth to five pups. It’s hard to tell who the mothers are because meerkats tend the young communally.

In less-happy animal news the zoo laid off 287 seasonal, full-time, or part-time employees. They have retained 185 staff to rebuild the site and care for the animals. It will be November or December before the zoo is completely open, and repairs are expected to cost $50 million.

Saturday morning I did errands to do in three previously-flooded neighborhoods, including downtown. It was a weird experience. That weirdness wasn’t just the closed businesses, the constant sound of electric saws and power tools, and the sad spectacle of flood-damaged goods piled in yards, waiting to be hauled away.

People did normal things: catch busses, sell bus passes, sell coffee, walk down the street, but the timing was off. So was what constituted invading other people’s body space. People were over-friendly where they would normally be reserved and vice versa. It was as if we hadn’t quite regained Calgary timing.

I saw a lot of tired-looking people, a lot of unsure faces. More people than usual were taking public transit. Normally at stops people pretty much ignore one another. This time there were always lots of questions. “Is this the right stop for the 302?” “Is the fare three dollars?” “Do you know how far down 9th Avenue this bus goes?”

I thought, yeah, this is the difference between researching something and living where it’s happening. It’s important for a writer to realize that there are some details no amount of research will provide.

I came home Saturday in a quirky mood, and I think that contributed to finding this video stunning. Not that it’s not stunning in its own right. This week, instead of a quote, you get a video link.

The Soniferous Æther of The Land Beyond The Land Beyond is a 35mm film installation shot at the northernmost settlement on earth— ALERT Signals Intelligence Station— as part of a series of fieldworks looking at remote outpost architecture, military infrastructure and the embedded landscape. Shot using a computer controlled time‐lapse tracking camera during the winter months, the military spy outpost radiates within a shroud of continuous darkness under a star-pierced canopy harkening an abandoned space station.

The sound track (intentionally, I think) has crackles, pops, and part of it may be in Russian. I can’t hear it well enough to tell. If the sound bothers you, watch the visuals with the sound off.

At least on my computer, between 2:34 and 2:51 there is one stop for a few seconds and some jerky movements. I suspect both of those things are intentional as well.

http://www.stankievech.net/projects/aether/trailer/index.html

Will Your Book Become a Movie? Hollywood Trends Say No.

by Julia Buckley

Even cats like being entertained (in this case by a feather).

I saw MAN OF STEEL yesterday with my sons.  While they loved the movie for its endless action and explosions, I disliked it for the same reason.  It started out well enough, with some interesting back story and some human relationships I might have cared about--but then the movie blew it all away in special effects and never really returned to those stories.  In addition, they employed any number of cliches, perhaps because they knew that people had responded well to the same hackneyed visuals (see: line of people looking up at the sky in various stages of amazement; one of them slowly taking off a pair of glasses); or the same ridiculous lines (see: Jor-El's dragon creature wounded in a battle in outer space, and his response is "Easy, Boy").

I was thinking about the fact that Hollywood hasn't given me a summer of movie magic (in which I literally want to return to the theatre again and again, watching five or six movies in a two month span because there's SO much good stuff out there) in very long time.  But what they DO give me is the sense that they are out of ideas and that they believe the only way to make money is to re-make something or create big-budget sequels.  Don't agree with me?  Check out Andrew S. Allen's blog post from 2012, in which he shares a chart showing the top movies of 1981 compared with the top movies of 2011.  What an eye-opener.  Allen breaks down his chart into the categories of originals, adaptations, and sequels.  Guess which year had mostly original films?  Guess which year produced mainly sequels?

Allen suggests that it isn't Hollywood putting out good stuff these days, but television and other mediums that care about quality over profit.  And he suggests that artists who want to create good film might have to shift their paradigms away from warped Hollywood, whose myopia might be permanent.

It seems that at one point Hollywood was about dreams, talent and money.  Now it's about money.

There are writers out there who have written fantastic stories that I would LOVE to see on the big screen.  Some of the writers I've met have gotten movie deals--thank God, and good for them--but so many other writers have told terrific tales that would transfer well to the screen, and yet those stories will stay forever within the pages of their books.  That's fine; I love reading books.  But if I'm going to be faced with a movie theatre that is destined to play the same old junk--the same explosion movies, the same robot flicks, the same glorified gangster gore, the same constantly-swearing dialogue that they now call comedy--then I will retreat permanently into the books, and some carefully-selected television and Internet innovation.

I don't need you, Hollywood, and neither does anyone else. You might want step away from your profit machine for a moment and have a little foresight.  Your viewers aren't as dumb as you hope they are, and they're going to start leaving you for better, cheaper fare.  Oh, and here's the part you'll care about:
they'll take their money with them.

So why not shift the paradigm now, while you still have a chance?  Start mining for good, original material.  Find those treasures of books that no one else seems to have noticed.  Make them into terrific, original movies.

Only then can you become what you once were: the land of entertainment.

On Self-doubt

 
by Tammy Kaehler
Author of the Kate Reilly racing mysteries

A really amazing racing blogger I follow—someone I'd read if he was writing about toilet-seat manufacturing, because I enjoy his writing that much—recently posted a general sigh of self-doubt about his writing ability to social media. I, like many of his friends and admirers, jumped in to reassure him. The whole time I wrote my "of course you’re amazing!" note, I thought, "Please, please, please, be ready to say this to me."

Because he was right when he said we all go through this. All of us creative types. All the time.

Now, this post isn't meant as a plea for assurances that my writing is amazing, my plots are epic, or my concept is ground-breaking. I want to talk seriously about self-doubt for a minute. Because I think (and this won't be ground-breaking either, but it can't be repeated enough) that how we handle our inevitable self-doubt is what separates the pros from the amateurs—the women from the girls, if you will.
If you let that nasty inner critic stay in your head, it’ll keep whispering "maybe you're not very good" and "that sentence really sucked." If you allow that critic to keep seducing you with thoughts of the new book on your TBR pile or that episode of Dance Moms on the DVR, you're not going to reach your creative finish line. If you give in to that voice, you're not going to get it done.

I'm not telling you if you ignore that voice, all will be unicorns and rainbows. Just getting it done isn't a guarantee it'll be GOOD. But you're never going to have a shot at your work being good (or great) if you don't have any work in the first place. As they say in auto racing, "To finish first, first you have to finish."

And let me assure you, EVERYONE feels self-doubt. Sue Grafton has said she's never sure she'll be able to write another book (and she's closing in on the last letter of the alphabet). Danny Elfman (composer of music soundtracks and the Simpson’s theme) doubts himself at every project. My racing blogger friend worries about his marketing writing and his racing analyses.

So when I’m in the throes of self-doubt, mired what I call the “hot mess middle-muddle”—as I am now—I start by consoling myself with the thought that even successful artists doubt themselves. This only helps a little bit on the day I end up curled on the bed, crying and telling my husband, “I’ll never be able to write another book.” (He loves that part of the process, by the way—insert heavy sarcasm.)

But when the “even famous people feel this way” pep talk doesn’t get me past the tears and paralysis, I try a mantra I’ve developed in my fledgling fiction-writing career: Butt In Chair.

You see, I’m not someone who’s stumped by the blank page. After nearly 20 years spent as a technical or marketing writer in my day job, I have no fear of the blank page. If I sit down at the computer and open the Word document, I’ll write something. It’s the sitting down that is the problem. I tell people I don’t have writer’s block, I have butt-in-chair block.

Yes, my mantra has become “Butt In Chair.” I’m thinking of having it printed up on a mug or a sign—maybe a dozen signs to post all over my house and get my behind over to my desk. Because I’ve learned if I simply spend enough time at my computer in a day, I’ll write something. Enough days of enough time at my computer, and I’ll write a book (at least that crappy first draft).

But it’s hard, right? I mean, we know carrots and broccoli are better for us than doughnuts and chocolate. I know that future-me will be happier with myself if I go for a walk now instead of sitting in a chair and reading a book. But it takes willpower to put off the tasty—indulgent?—item now for future gain or happiness.

Even though I know I’ll be happier in a month if I sit down and write—if I work past the self-doubt right now, rather than avoid it—it’s still hard to put my butt in the chair.

So ultimately, how do I do it? I slap my inner critic quiet, look my self-doubt in the face, and banish both of them. I put my head down, ignore the mountain range ahead, and focus on the next steps in front of me. It always works.

Now if I can only remember that for the next time….

But hey, I’m always looking for more tips and strategies. How do you all cope with bouts of self-doubt?
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Tammy Kaehler’s career in marketing and technical writing landed her in the world of automobile racing, which inspired her with its blend of drama, competition, and welcoming people. Her debut, Dead Man’s Switch, was praised by mystery fans as well as racing insiders, and she takes readers back behind the wheel in Braking Points, the second Kate Reilly Racing Mystery. Tammy works as a technical writer in the Los Angeles area, where she lives with her husband and many cars. Find out more at http://www.tammykaehler.com/.