Stealing from the Headlines

Noreen Wald (Guest blogger)

Law and Order writers aren’t the only ones who can brag that they rip their stories straight from the headlines. I’ve been stealing plot twists from newspaper articles for years.

Truth, indeed, is stranger than fiction and with a few tweaks, truth, once properly twisted, can be even more intriguing in a murder mystery.

In my latest Kate Kennedy Senior Sleuth mystery, Death Rides the Surf, I used two real life newspaper stories to move the plot and muddy the clues.

One story, the disappearance of a pretty blonde co-ed in Aruba, was a sensational, extensively covered case, both in bold newspaper headlines and on MSNBC, Fox News, and the major TV networks for months – and ironically, once again, is back in the news.

The other was a quirky little tale about an entrepreneur and I might have missed it if I didn’t have a nose for odd human interest stories. The odder, the better.

Here’s how I twisted truth into fiction in Death Rides the Surf.
I’ll start with the elderly entrepreneur and her traveling psychic talking skull show. You can’t make this stuff up. That’s the beauty of stealing from the newspapers.

The woman’s photograph showed a well groomed, attractive grandmother from the southwest, which was exactly what she was. She’d become acquainted with a talking skull in the far reaches of Peru, paid $400 to the tribe’s medicine man, because she’d developed a relationship with the crystallized skull and had become dependent on his telepathic – and occasional verbal -- advice dispensed when the skull was rubbed. Then she’d taken the show on the road. Appointments for a private consultation could be arranged for $50 per half hour while the skull and his owner were appearing in the DC area. By the time I read the article, they’d moved on. I clipped and saved the story, sure that one day, I’d work that old lady and her talking skull into one of my books.

In Death Rides the Surf, set in the fictional town of Palmetto Beach, Kate Kennedy’s granddaughter, Katharine, becomes involved with a surfer who is part of unsavory group known as the Four Boardsmen of the Apocalypse. When the surfer is killed by a shark and later that death is deemed a homicide, Katharine becomes the prime suspect.

Kate questions the dead surfer’s grandmother, who runs the only Talking Skull and Tanning Salon operation in South Florida. Location is everything and, being in South Florida, it’s a very successful business. The attractive, shrewd old gal and her skull provide both real evidence and enough misinformation to keep the plot twists moving.

In the missing co-ed plot line, I set the surfers’ back story in Acapulco where Kate’s granddaughter, Katharine, on summer vacation, had met three of the surfers and a beautiful young blonde in a noisy, crowded Mexican bar. When the blonde had left with the surfers and then disappeared, they became prime suspects. With no real evidence to hold them, the Boardsmen had returned to Palmetto Beach. And Katharine had followed in their wake.

The missing girl’s mother turns up at Kate’s condo and, after providing more real clues and several red herrings, is murdered in her hotel room. Kate realizes the missing girl and the surfers were connected. And one or more of them might be responsible for her disappearance and maybe her death. But is covering up that secret the motive for the surfer’s murder?

Even when ripped from the headlines, in Death Rides the Surf, things are seldom as they seem.

Visit the author's web site at www.noreenwald.com

Interview with author Lori Devoti

By Lonnie Cruse

Today's post is an interview with author Lori Devoti. I first met Lori at a mystery writer's conference and was intrigued when I learned she'd been published in another genre. I asked her to chat with me about that here, and about her writing in general.

LC: Tell us about your books? And what was your inspiration?

LD: My dark paranormals are set in the modern world, but as if Norse mythology is real and operating in the background. My heroes so far have been shape shifters--hellhounds and garm. Both come from Norse myth, but I tweaked them. Neither were shape shifters. One was just a spectral hound and the other a massive wolf. My basic inspiration came from a book that had information on demon dogs, but each book has its own inspiration too. I start with a basic set up or conflict and things just build in my mind until I have a fairly complete idea of what is going to happen.

LC: You started out writing in the mystery genre and now write romance and nocturnes. Why the change? And which is easiest for you?

LD: I read all three of the big genres--romance, mystery and scifi/fantasy. I started with a mystery manuscript because that was what I was reading at the time. I moved to romance because I didn't want to get stuck trying one thing that might not work for me. I actually have romance, fantasy and mystery proposals out with editors right now.

LC: I know what romance is about, (married over 44 years, hehe) but what are nocturnes?

LD: It is a newish line at Harlequin/Silhouette. Two books are released each month in the line and most places if you don't get to the store in that month, the books will be sent back to the publisher. Some bookstores seem to be keeping the Nocturnes around longer though, and all of them are available to order either through some place like Amazon, or a local bookstore even months later. Nocturnes specifically are all dark paranormals with alpha heroes and sensual action-driven plots.

LC: Tell us a bit about Lori Devoti, what you read,what you write, where you hang out.

LD: As I said earlier, I read all the commercial genres. I'm not much on literary fiction though. I pretty much hang out at my house or the Y where I take spin class and a class called power pump--group weight lifting. On the Internet, I'm everywhere...MySpace, Bebo, Crimespace, Facebook, Linkedin, and Shelfari (my favorite).

LC: How did you find your publisher?

LD: My first publisher I sold to at a conference. My second, I had an agent, but it was my decision to try for a Nocturne. My first two books were light contemporaries and Nocturnes are dark paranormals--quite the change for me. However, I loved reading dark paranormals and really wanted to try and write one. To my surprise everyone took my proposal seriously.

LC: Do you work with an agent? If so, how did you connect?

LD: My current agent used to work for my previous agent. My previous agent and I had already parted ways, I was in the process of finding a new one, when Holly (Holly Root, Waxman Literary) left Trident (previous agency). I loved Holly when we worked together at Trident. I always said she was the person who would catch whatever you knew was wrong with your work, but hoped no one else noticed. I loved that. Anyway, when I heard she had started taking on her own clients, I contacted her.

LC: What sends you running to the computer to write? And what makes you bang your head on the keyboard in frustration?

LD: I don't think anything sends me running to the computer to write. That sounds horrible, but writing is hard, especially after you start getting paid for it and know other people are going to be judging it. My first manuscript was a breeze to write--it probably stank to high heaven, but it was darn easy to write. Now I know more and I want every book to be good--not just okay, good--the kind of book someone loves and is upset when it's over. What makes me frustrated is when I don't have the book (or more often the characters) thought out well enough and am just trying to force my way past that. It doesn't work. And it makes me sick to my stomach.

LC: How do you promote your books? What works best for you?

LD: Nothing works. :) (I say that and I'm an ex-advertising person) I honestly think the best thing an author can do for themselves is try and write the best books they can and then try to get as many out in a year as they can without compromising that quality. I do, however, probably do a lot more promotion than many authors. I have a web site and a blog. I'm on all those social networks. I have bookmarks, book plates, virtual bumper stickers and other things personalized for my books. I do a few group signings and I sign stock when I can. Basically, I do what I enjoy and what doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. I do not believe in spending a big chunk of your advance on promotion. I heard a NY Timesbest-selling author once say you'd be better off taking every penny of your advance and buying as many copies of your book as you can, than spending that advance on promotion. I haven't done that, but I believe her. Sales get publishers attention--not contest wins, or good reviews. And sales get you another contract and another chance to build your audience--until you have that base audience I think $2,000 spent buying your own books and maybe giving them away would be a lot more productive than buying a full color ad in some magazine.

LC: What else would you like our readers to know about Lori Devoti?

LD: My web site is http://www.loridevoti.com/ or readers can find me on one of the social networks I mentioned. If you are on Shelfari--find me! I love roaming people's bookshelves. :)

LC: Thanks for dropping by, Lori. See you at Love Is Murder next month.

Learning to Fly

Learning to Fly

Elizabeth Zelvin

I am a great admirer of Sharon McCone, the intrepid PI created by Marcia Muller. Sharon has learned a lot of new skills over the years. None impresses me more than how she’s taken to flying a plane since she hooked up with Hy Ripinsky, her husband in the most recent book, who’s a skilled pilot. When I say that learning to fly is not easy, I speak from experience.

Back in the 1970s, I was married to a guy with a burning desire to get a pilot’s license. He was my future ex, but of course I didn’t know that then. I thought we’d stay married for the rest of my life. I envisioned his getting a license…buying a plane…taking me up in it…getting a heart attack—and how the hell was I going to get back down? My first thought was to take a couple of lessons, ie learn just enough to land the plane in an emergency. As I found out, landing is the hardest part of flying. No way could I do it first and skip the rest. Anyhow, from the first lesson in a little Cessna 150 from the Westhampton airport, not far from where we had our little weekend house, I was hooked—in a terrified kind of way.

I still dream about taking off, which was my favorite part of flying: pulling the stick back, keeping my feet steady on the pedals (which are for steering on the ground, not for braking or accelerating), moving faster and faster down the runway until I see the nose come up and realize we’re in the air. On the other hand, I still look out at the sky on a particularly clear blue winter day and get a shiver of apprehension. The Cessna was so light that if the winds were too high—wind blows harder aloft than on the ground—we couldn’t have our lesson. A part of my mind still wants to make that—didn’t have to have our lesson.

There were two flight instructors: Barry, who looked a bit like Robert Redford in The Great Waldo Pepper and knew it, and Karl, who had less ego and more tact. I cherish the memory of how he handled some of my dumber moments. One time I got all excited about spotting another aircraft. You couldn’t get lost flying on Eastern Long Island. It was literally all spread out beneath you like a map. But you literally had to look out for low-flying planes. I wasn’t very quick at visual comprehension, so I was proud that this particular time I saw one coming.

“Look, Karl!” I exclaimed. “Is that aircraft at the same altitude as us?”

Karl said, perfectly deadpan, “That’s a sailboat.” I was looking at Long Island Sound.

I logged about thirty hours with the instructors, but I never got to solo. I had almost reached that point when I had a setback. I sent the plane into a 2 g bounce on a touch and go in a crosswind, if you must know. As my jaw settled back into its socket, Karl said with his usual calm, “Check if the landing gear are still on the aircraft.”

“You mean are the wheels still on the plane?” That’s what he meant, all right, and it took all my nerve to look out the window. (They were, luckily for us.)

Soon afterward, we decided the lessons were too expensive ($33 an hour—eat your hearts out, 21st-century student pilots) and gave up the dream of becoming pilots. I confess to relief that I’d never have to solo or do another stall. That’s when you let up on the gas and raise the nose so high the engine cuts out—on purpose. I’ve forgotten all the aerodynamics I studied, and I think my ex got the textbook in the divorce. I’d have to do an awful lot of research to create a Sharon in my own mystery. But I’m not one bit sorry I got to do it. When I add up the riches of my life experience—my tradeoff for publishing the first novel at 64 instead of 24—I remember that once upon a time, I could fly.

A New Voice: C.C. Harrison

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

C.C. Harrison’s first novel, The Charmstone, was published in 2007 to rave reviews. Set in the desert southwest, the book was praised by Tony Hillerman for its “insider’s view of the Navajo culture.” C.C. is the author of hundreds of articles and short stories but is now living her dream of being a published novelist. She makes her home in Arizona.

Q. Writers use pseudonyms for many reasons. Would you mind telling us why you chose not to use your real name for fiction writing?

A. I decided to use a pseudonym because I didn’t want my real name all over the Internet, and my reason for that would make a good plot for a suspense novel (which I will write some day). But it’s nearly impossible to remain anonymous in this day and age, and within a month of my book’s release, a writer friend mentioned me in her blog using my real name as well as my writing name. There were some consequences as a result of that which, so far, and happily, were minor and quickly resolved. But C. C. Harrison is a registered legal trade name and I think it looks great on a book cover.

The down side of using a pseudonym is that friends and family don’t know what to call you. My daughter now introduces me as C. C. Harrison.

Q. Romantic suspense is perennially popular, drawing readers of both mystery and romance. Did commercial prospects play a role in your choice to write in this subgenre, or are you simply writing what you love to read?

A. Basically, I’m writing what I love to read. When I was young, I loved the early romance novels full of mystery and intrigue by Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, Norah Lofts, Mary Stewart. By the time I began writing my first novel, that style of romance was long, long out of fashion. But I’m greatly influenced by them, and by Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Today, the female leads in those books are seen as weepy, wimpy and naïve, but I saw them as courageous. Courage is being afraid but doing it anyway. In every story, the heroine was thrown into unfamiliar circumstances to face mysterious and unpredictable events that were out of her control, but she always found a way to survive. And isn’t that what romantic suspense is today? Despite Scarlett O’Hara’s flaws and weaknesses in some areas of her life, I thought she was a kick-butt, take-charge survivor.

Q. You teach a workshop titled “Are You a Plotter or a Pantser?” Which are you? How did The Charmstone develop?

A. Oh, I’m a plotter, compulsively so! I need to know where I’m going. I don’t even leave my house without a map, and if I’m going over 100 miles, I need a Triptik!

Seriously, I’ve always been interested in the process of writing a book, how novelists actually did it. I’d been widely published in nonfiction, but that was easy. I just took information someone gave me, did a little more research, and wrote an article. Fiction was something else. I truly thought there was only ONE way to write a novel, and I needed to find out what that one way was. I’m embarrassed to admit that misperception blocked me for a long time. At the time, I didn’t have any writer friends, didn’t belong to any writers groups, so had no one to ask. Joining an RWA chapter opened up a whole new world when I learned that every author had a different way of putting a book together, and that they pretty much made up their own process.

My workshop on Plotters or Pantsers is geared to beginning and early career writers who may be struggling with finding a process that works for them. I talk about the many different ways published authors actually put a book together. It’s about process, not technique.

The Charmstone developed out of my experiences living in Monument Valley on the Navajo Indian Reservation as a VISTA (now called AmeriCorps) volunteer. That was truly a life-changing experience for me, and the characters and plot just sort of came together. I knew a week after I arrived on the reservation that I was going to write a book set there and pretty much what the main plot points would be. I didn’t begin the actual writing until some time later, when my assignment was over. After I left the reservation, I worked on an archaeological dig at an ancient Anasazi site (which gave me more plot ideas), bought a house in the Four Corners area and lived there for a few years. During that time I drafted three novels, one of which was The Charmstone.

Q. Was The Charmstone the first novel you attempted? How long did it take you to write it, from idea to finished book? Would you tell us about your road to publication, once you had a completed manuscript?

A. The Charmstone was my first novel. (Okay, I’ll admit I do have one in the closet that hasn’t seen the light of day, but I plan to resurrect it at some point.) The road to publication for The Charmstone was quite circuitous involving multiple lost or misplaced submissions, a change of acquiring editors, you know, the usual. But it all worked out for the best in the end because I used the time when nothing seemed to be happening to tweak it into a better book, and outline or draft two others. Life is what you make of it and things always happen in their own time.

Q. Will you continue to use Navajo characters in your books? How have your Navajo friends reacted to your portrayal of reservation life in The Charmstone?

A. My second book, Running from Strangers, due out in September 2008 from Five Star, doesn’t have Navajo characters, but the story is set in Durango, Colorado which is in the Four Corners area just off The Rez. It’s the story of a child advocate who finds herself on a run for her life with a child in her care.

My work in progress, working title Navajo Girl Gone, takes the reader back to the Navajo Reservation with heroine Keegan Thomas as she searches for people in a fifty-year-old photograph, one of them a child who she’s told was kidnapped by missionaries and never returned. In the book, she meets a lot of resistance from the Navajos for poking around in the past. They tell her that people who dig up the past end up digging their own grave.

However, in reality, the Navajos are at heart very hospitable people. When I first went to the reservation as a VISTA volunteer, I think they were a bit leery of me, because historically, the intent of some of the white people who came to the reservation was to exploit the Indians despite their promises of help. In the end, I made some wonderful friendships that have survived over time, and I go back to Monument Valley often. And, yes, my book has been very well received there; at least I haven’t heard any complaints so I guess I got it right. My biggest fear was not getting the culture and history correct.

Q. What advice would you offer to other authors who want to write about cultures not their own?

A. I think it’s very difficult for authors to write about a culture not their own, and the only way they can do it and get it right is to live it. I could never have written about life on the Navajo Reservation if I hadn’t actually lived there and interacted with people on a daily basis. Even so, I have to spend a lot of time on research.

Q. Your second book was inspired by your experiences as a CASA (court-appointed special advocate) in the child welfare system. To an onlooker, this kind of work looks emotionally draining. Is it also rewarding? What have you learned from working with underprivileged and abused children? Have you seen many positive results of your work?

A. For me, being a child advocate was extremely emotionally draining. I had to limit the kinds of cases I worked on. I wouldn’t take any case that involved child sexual abuse of any kind. What did I learn by working in the child welfare system? Nothing good. It’s shocking and unbelievable what people do to their children. Looking back, I guess I could say there were a few moments of joy and reward, but only a few. Lack of money, staff, and effective management are huge problems in most child welfare systems.

Q. Has being a published novelist changed your life? Did you know what to expect, or have you had some surprises (good and bad) along the way?

A. No surprises, not really. It’s pretty much what I expected. The biggest change it’s made in my life is I can’t go to the supermarket in sweats and grubbies anymore. I have to dress halfway decent because people in my community now know who I am and recognize me from signings and seeing my picture in the paper. Basically, I’m living the kind of life I’d always hoped to live -- a published author, living alone, secluded, surrounded by my books and papers, writing more novels.

Q. Do you think you’ll write a series in the future, or do you have more fun with stand-alone novels?

A. Every book I write I think I want to be part of a series because I fall in love with all my characters and don’t want to let them go. So far, instead of writing a true series, I try to bring a few characters from previous books into my new books. In the book I’m working on now, I brought in at least one character from Running from Strangers. The next book after that will be set on the Navajo Reservation and I plan to bring in several characters from The Charmstone.

Q. Do you plan to attend any mystery conferences in 2008 where readers can meet you?

A. I don’t have as much time for conferences anymore, but I will be at the Desert Rose RWA Desert Dreams Conference in Phoenix on April 4-6, 2008, and also RWA National in July. So please, everyone, I’m very approachable. It’s okay to stop me to say hello. Also, check out my website at www.ccharrison-author.com and read my blog for news and updates.

Resolution: One True Thing

by Julia Buckley
Well, the New Year is here, and I, like many humans, am ready to start afresh. I've been looking at a variety of websites to determine a list of the most popular resolutions. These seem to be the top ones that people make every year:


Lose Weight
Pay Off Debt
Save Money
Get a Better Job
Get Fit
Eat Right
Get a Better Education
Drink Less Alcohol
Quit Smoking Now
Reduce Stress Overall
Reduce Stress at Work
Take a Trip
Volunteer to Help Others

If you're like me, you have a few of those on your own list. But those of us who are writers also tend to make writing resolutions, and if we broke them down to one basic idea it would be this: write the best thing you've ever written.

Every year that must be the resolution, because every year we try to learn from what we've written before: the writing we feel we've outgrown or upon which we could now improve. We learn from the great books we read, and we learn--gasp--from the reviews of our own work.

All of those things lead us to a new place, a place where we will write something different from what we wrote last year or any year before that.

Hemingway spoke of writing "one true sentence" as a way of getting started. Here are his words, from A Moveable Feast:

"It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written."

So, inspired by Hemingway and the resolutions of others, I shall pursue the truth in my own writing.

What's your one true sentence?

Read All About It

by Darlene Ryan

When I was growing up we took the bus into the city every second Saturday to go to the library. The library was a beautiful old stone building with an imposing set of stairs up to the front doors, high ceilings and shelves of books that reached way over my head. It was funded, in part, by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. (Why he helped pay for a library in a small Canadian city I don't know.) Every visit I’d take home a stack of books that had to last for two weeks and somehow never did.

Now I’m taking the munchkin to the library--and still coming home with a stack of books for myself. She’s too old now for Robert Munsch, but I still sneak out with Love You Forever or The Paperbag Princess once in a while. A couple of weeks ago she came home from the school library with There’s An Alligator Under My Bed, not for herself—it’s another book she says she’s too old for now—she brought it for me, because it was always one of my favorites. At least that’s what she said.

I can’t imagine life without books. With books I’ve gone places I’ll never visit and done things I’ll never get to do. There’s almost no chance I’ll ever end up at the Arctic Circle. I don’t like cold. But I’ve been there in a book. And I’m certain none of my friends are going to let me try doing open heart surgery on them, but I’ve done that with a book too. A love of books usually begins in childhood. If there are children in your life, please read to them. Think of it as building your future audience.

In honour of Family Literacy Day, on January 27, here are some ideas to get everyone reading a little more.

Take the kids to the bookstore. Buy everyone a book, bring the books home and read them together. (Some not-so-enthusiastic readers can be enticed with a graphic novel.) If they aren’t your children, check with their parents to see if anything is off limits. Too scary, for instance.

When you’re out with kids read the street and store signs with them. If you’re looking for an address have a child watch for the street name and building number. Hey, let’s face it. Their eyes are sharper than ours.

Ask a child to read the recipe to you when you cook. This is actually very helpful if like me you need glasses to see the recipe, but find they tend to fall into the bowl when you’re mixing.

Stick a chalkboard or a white board in the kitchen and write notes to each other. When the munchkin was learning to read I’d spell out a couple of supper choices on the refrigerator with magnetic letters and she got to choose what we’d have—Rice or Potatoes, Corn or Beans, Fruit or Cookie. No surprise, cookie was the first word she figured out.

Read the newspaper together. Look for mentions of your child’s school on the sports pages. Follow their favorite baseball team or hockey player. Take turns reading the comic strips to each other.

Visit the library. And don’t limit yourself to the children’s department. Borrow a cookbook. Learn how to make authentic curry or sushi—at least on paper. Take home back issues of National Geographic—or Rolling Stone.

And check out up-coming activities. Thanks to the library we’ve made our own pretzels and ice cream, we’ve learned to weave and make paper maché, we’ve created some spectacular paper airplanes and exploded a volcano in the middle of the kitchen. And we’ve learned it’s better to explode a volcano outside.

Write to the children in your life. Exchange email or snail mail. The munchkin, for instance, loves “real” mail. Share funny stories from your own childhood or about their parents. Ask questions that can’t be answered with a yes or no.

Encourage kids to make up stories and poems and write them down. One night a week at dinner share them. Parents too. Give dollar store prizes for the funniest poem or the scariest story. Invite friends to join you with their stories.

Let your kids see you read. Adults who read are more likely to have kids who read. (At least in my experience.)

Fraidy-cat, fraidy-cat . . .

By Lonnie Cruse



My name is Lonnie and I'm a frady-cat. There, I've said it. Outloud.

What am I afraid of? Writing a mystery novel. Yes, I know, I have four books in print in the Metropolis Mystery series and one in the Kitty Bloodworth, '57 Chevy series. I've gotten good reviews. I have readers who e-mail me to demand I finish the next one right now so they can read it. Doesn't help.

Every time I start a book, I'm afraid I can't write another whole book. Afraid I can't get the story out of my head and into the computer. Afraid I'll overlook something important. Afraid I won't be able to come up with enough words to meet my publisher's minimum word requirement. Afraid my readers will show up on my doorstep and demand their money back. Sigh.

So what to do? Well, I know a lot of writers who say they don't read anything by other authors while writing a book for fear of absorbing that writer's style or theme into theirs. But I love to read, and since it takes me a year to write a rough draft, polish it several hundred times, run it through my friendly readers (non-writers who are terrific at catching errors) my critique group (writers who are terrific at catching errors) re-write again, and submit it to the publisher for edit, then start another book, if I didn't read while I wrote, I would, um, never get to read anything. So I read and learn from other mystery writers. What works for them, and what doesn't. But back to my problem.

After taking time off from writing over the holidays (okay, I was scared to start a new book, sigh) I finally decided to start typing in the idea that I'd been kicking around for months. And the fear came back. But as luck would have it, I was reading a mystery by Donna Andrews, CROUCHING BUZZARD, LEAPING LOON. And it is a hoot! Andrews knows how to turn a phrase. No information dumps or long descriptions that take the reader out of the story. Every page makes me want to keep going. And I love her humor. If only I could write that well.

So what did I learn from reading Donna Andrews? Well, one thing I generally shy away from is giving my favorite characters too tough a time in their private lives. Let the perp shoot at them? Run them off the road? Chase them with leathal weapons? No problem? But interfere with something my characters really want out of life? Frustrate them? Big problem. Maybe I'm afraid of my characters? Possibly.

But Andrews lets things happen to her characters that has me rolling in the floor, laughing myself sick. So, hey, maybe it's time my characters faced an obstacle or two not related to the murder? Yes, indeedy, it is. I'm now about ten chapters into the new book and a new character I've created is driving my regular characters nuts. My lead character is trying to think of a way to bump her off and not get caught. In the scene I'm writing this week the new character totally disrupted a very important family gathering. I can't wait to see what she gets into next.

I won't ever be able to write like Andrews because she has a unique voice, as do all writers. But I do enjoy writing a story with humor in it. I happened to read an interview with Andrews recently on a blog. So all this exposure to Donna Andrews and her writing got me thinking. She sits down every day (maybe weekends off, I can't remember what she said about that) and WRITES! And the job gets done. And I suddenly realized that the longer I stay away from a story, the harder it is for me to get back into it. To just write it. Because the fear builds by the day. But if I write each day, it's much easier. So that's what I'm doing. Writing each week day, no matter what else is going on. And I leave off in mid-chapter so I have somewhere to go, or somewhere to start the next day. And it seems to be working.

Is there a point to all of this? Possibly. If you are a first time writer, don't be a fraidy-cat. Just sit down and write it. If you are a twentyth time writer, don't be a fraidy-cat, just sit down and write it. You can do it, we can all do it. FDR is attributed with saying "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I think that pretty well sums it up.

Hmmm, I wonder if my new character has any experience with explosives. Excuse me, I have a scene to write.

Why I Don't Make New Year's Resolutions

Elizabeth Zelvin

The addictions field is probably the only area of mental health in which mainstream professionals as well as patients or clients routinely talk about the spiritual aspect of recovery. Spiritual, not religious, as treatment practitioners and members of 12-step programs will tell you. When I first entered the field 25 years ago, I didn’t get it. Now I get it, and I’ve discovered that certain spiritual principles provide a way to live my life with a lot less agita than I learned at my mother’s knee.

Either a book called Adult Children of Jewish Parents or one on marrying a nice Jewish boy whose title I can’t remember—I gave both to my daughter-in-law when she and my son got engaged—includes advice on “how to worry” (along with “how to interrupt”—I was happy to learn we do it because we’re interested). I was raised to worry, indeed to believe that if I failed to worry, I wasn’t doing my job. When I became a shrink, I learned that the clinical term is projection: looking down the tunnel of life ahead of you and seeing, not the light, but some disaster that makes you (if you’re Jewish) moan, “Oy vey!”

We can’t predict the future: not you, not me, not even my mother. Nor can we control it. So projection is futile. This may seem shocking, but in fact, it’s good news. The future can give you heartburn. Furthermore, the future is overwhelming. No wonder we stare at it and moan, “Oy vey.”

The solution? Forget the future. Sure, you’ve got to make plans sometimes. But there’s a big difference between planning and projecting. The 12-step programs have a slogan that simplifies life enormously: “One day at a time.” The King James version of the Bible expresses it a little differently: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Same thing, right?

Millions of Americans, to use an excellent example, start the New Year by resolving to go on a diet. They vow to lose the weight they gained over the holidays and keep it off this time. What happens to that resolution by the time New Year’s Eve rolls around again? For most, it has long since crumbled. Dieting means deprivation, and deprivation arouses craving. Some say the hell with it by the middle of January. Some hang on until bathing suit season, buy the bikini, and promptly reward themselves by turning back to ice cream and cookies and all things fried and beautiful. And at the year’s end, they make another resolution.

So I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. On January 1, 2008 I opened my eyes and asked myself, “What shall I do today?” On January 2, I did the same. And so it goes. Nobody does one day at a time perfectly, by the way. Coming anywhere near it takes a lifetime of spiritual practice. But as a way of biting off manageable chunks of life, it sure beats ending each once-promising year with a sense of failure. So what will I do tomorrow? I have no idea. It’s still today.

The Things We Keep

Sandra Parshall

On my desk sits a small brown pottery jar, crammed full of pens and pencils. It’s not much to look at, but it has been on every desk I’ve had for many years and unless it somehow gets broken into a million pieces, it will be on my desk for the rest of my life. On the bottom of the jar is the amateur potter’s name, scratched into the surface, the last three letters tiny and cramped because her name was long and she ran out of space. She was a dear friend of mine, and she died more than 30 years ago at the age of 28.

Most of us possess objects that mean far more than their physical properties would suggest. We hold them in our hands and remember someone who is no longer with us. We look at them and remember a moment that will never be equaled. They are talismans, symbols. The Agatha Award teapot assumed this magical aura the moment it was placed in my shaking hands. It represented the end of a long and painful struggle to get my work into print, to reach a point where I could truly call myself a writer. I will never part with it. But which means more to me, the teapot or the little brown jar made by my friend? I don’t think I could choose.


When a writer gives a character an object with special meaning, the reader understands and is drawn into the character’s emotional life. Think of all the soldiers in novels and war movies who carry mementos of loved ones into battle and bring tears to our eyes simply by taking these precious objects out of their pockets and looking at them. And who could ever forget Citizen Kane and his sled named Rosebud? In the novel I recently completed, the main character, a young woman named Erin, receives a necklace with a ladybug charm on it as a gift from her parents. The day she receives it, the day she stops wearing it, and the day she fastens it around her neck again are major turning points in her life.

What objects do you own that have special meaning? Can you recall a fictional character whose attachment to a memento helped you understand his or her emotional life?

Jump

Sharon Wildwind

I grew up in a hot climate, where skating rinks didn’t exist. Now I live in a cold climate and skating rinks, from my neighborhood association flooded pond to an Olympic-quality rink at the university, abound.

Several years ago, I decided to take skating lessons.

A group of us—all adults, all skating-rink-deprived as children—hobbled out onto that same university Olympic rink one Tuesday night. The instructor skated over to us, introductions went round the group, and the instructor said, “Jump.”

We all looked at him as though he were speaking some indigenous Canadian dialect to which we were not yet privy. “Jump,” he said again. “Like this.” He bent his knees and jumped flat-skated, clearing the ice by a good four inches. We politely stared at him. He jumped again. He glided around the circle while we turned our faces to follow him. “Every one of you is afraid of falling. The first lesson you need to learn is that you can not only get one skate off the ice, but both skates off the ice and nothing bad will happen to you. Now, jump.”

We jumped, but didn’t really jump, if you know what I mean. A sort of wiggly movement so that we appeared to be jumping, but I had NO intention of taking my skates off the ice. “Jump again.” “Again.” “Again.”

It began to dawn on me that the entire first lesson might be jumping, and that we weren’t going home until every one of us jumped. I tried my first real jump. My skates cleared the ice by a at least two millimeters. I landed, but I didn’t fall. Maybe I could try for three millimeters? At the end of half an hour we were all jumping, giggling, and having a wonderful time.

The instructor held out his arms in a beautiful, ballet-like pose, pushed off with one foot, and slid across the ice. “Now, glide.”

Heck, after jumping, gliding was a cinch. Stopping was another matter, but that might wait for another blog.

Those of us who are skating on the writers’ pond right now, face a situation where we are going to have to jump. I have been vaguely aware that questions—even lawsuits—about “digital rights” were out there somewhere, in a hazy future that I might get around to learning something about in, say, 2020. Then someone posted a blog link on one of the mystery lists that made me realize I had to jump now.

*****
What I’ve written between asterisks are strongly person-opinion. Take them with the usual grains of salt.

Personal Opinion #1:
You can’t put the genie back in the bottle (collective)

Whatever way you slice it—geographically, age groups, social strata, ethically, or a category of your choice—technology is global and the global players aren’t going to play by the old rules.

Writers had a foretaste of this in the last century in dealing with Russian publication. Russian publishers would publish books from other countries, and they would sometimes pay the writers royalties, but . . . they paid in Russian currency, through a Russian bank. The money had to be collected in person from that bank, and it had to be spent inside of Russian. One of the few writers to profit from this system was the science fiction writer, Robert Heinlien, who managed a rather extensive Russian tour in 1959-1960 while spending his accumulated Russian royalties.

As writers we can’t rely on the goodness of the other guy to protect our works.

Personal Opinion #2:
You can’t put the genie back in the bottle (individually)

I don’t want to malign any country, so I’m going to set my next example in the country of Ruritania. That’s the country featured in The Prisoner of Zenda, a work now in the public domain, so it can safely be used for hypothetical examples.

Suppose one of my books is floating around in an electronic format. A person in Ruritania downloads a copy and decides to improve it. He adds profanity, hot porn scenes featuring my characters, and a completely different ending.

Can I sue?

For downloading the book, no. For altering the book, yes, but . . . I have to bring the suit in Ruritania, and have it tried according to their laws. If Ruritania doesn't recognize international copyright, I have no case. The guy would be able to do what he wants with a digital copy and he would be able to rebroadcast that digital copy as often, and in as many formats, as he wants.

So the bottom line is, once any of our works go digital, the author has lost control of that work.

Personal Opinion #3:

One bottleneck in the spread of digital rights problems is that technology is slowing the system down. That won't be true for long. The technical future is coming at an exponential rate. In the beginning, there is 1 machine that can suck, zap, rip, or whatever active verb you want to choose to put our books into a digital format.

In the 2nd generation, there are 4 machines,
plus the original 1 = 5 machines
In the 3rd generation, there are 9 machines,
plus the previous 5 = 14 machines
In the 4th generation, there are 16 machines,
plus the previous 14 = 20 machines
In the 5th generation, there are 25 machines,
plus the previous 20 = 45 machines

An important factor is the length of time between generations. For humans, a generation is reckoned to be about 25 years. Not so for electronic gizmos.

Moore’s Law (Gordon E. Moore, Intel co-founder, 1965 paper) first described the trend that transistors double in capacity roughly every two years. That trend has continued for more than fifty years and if it changes, is likely to go faster, not slower. iPod technology doubles roughly every 9 months. Electronic readers are likely to do the same.

So, if the first generation of electronic readers is happening now–did you have a Kindle in your Christmas stocking?—the second generation of digital readers could be on the market as early as September of 2008, the third June 2009, the fourth March 2010, and the fifth December 2010. That’s ten years before I thought I’d even get around to worrying about the digital rights problem.

Yes, yes, I know the drill. Your old eyes will never read an entire book on a screen. You love the feel, the smell, the weight of a real book. They will pry the printed book from your cold, dead fingers. As readers we can treat ourselves to those luxuries. As writers, we can't. If we don't start right now positioning ourselves in the digital world, by December 2010 it might be too late to save any of our books, past, present, or future.

*****
That’s enough personal opinions. It’s not too early to do research, learn some terminology, so we can follow what’s going to happen in the digital rights universe, and so we can begin to ask our agents and publshers, "Where do you stand on digital rights?"

The two links below are lengthy. The second one, in particular, has other links to about 6-10 related articles, and they are all worth looking at. So you might want to set aside a whole day some time soon to bone up on digital rights.

Good old Wikipedia. This will give you some background terminology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

The blog listed below, and the linked articles contained in the blog, gives the most complete summary of the digital rights issues that I’ve seen in a long time.
http://anthonystevens.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/piracy-technology-and-the-publishing-business/
________________

Instead of a writers’ quote this week, let me wish you a wonderful 2008. All good things to you and yours.

See you on the flip side.