I'm Lost

Sandra Parshall

When I tell people that I can get lost in my own neighborhood, they laugh because they think I’m joking.

I’m not.

I have what is quite possibly the world’s worst sense of direction. What dyslexics suffer through with words on a page is similar to what I endure when trying to find my way through the physical world. When I’m in my own house or yard, I know which way is which – early morning sun hits the front of the house, so that must be east; the back of the house receives late-day sun, so that must be west; our screened porch gets sun for most of the day, so that’s south; and the side where nothing but hostas will grow in the yard – I’m willing to bet that’s north.

When I leave my own property, though, all bets are off. I become disoriented and I’m likely to get lost if I deviate from certain often-traveled routes.

If you’re giving me directions, please don’t say, “Drive southwest for 1.2 miles, then turn east.” This is gibberish to me. Instead, paint a three-dimensional picture. Tell me what businesses, schools, churches I’ll pass on the way. Describe what’s on the corner where I’m supposed to turn. And please tell me whether to take a left or a right.

While my sense of direction is especially bad, I believe most women see the world as a collection of landmarks and topographical features. Have you ever called a doctor’s office or a business and asked directions from the woman who answered the phone? She undoubtedly gave you directions that made sense – “Turn right at the Olive Garden restaurant” or “Go past the building with the arch that looks like a toilet bowl and take the first left” or “Drive past Fresh Fields and turn right at the Wachovia Bank.” In the wilderness, a woman might memorize her route not by tracking it on a mental compass but by noting the big oak tree that’s been scarred by lightning and the jagged boulder with lichen in the shape of Abraham Lincoln’s profile.

Men and women simply don’t see the world the same way. That statement might be heresy to Gloria Steinem, but its accuracy has been confirmed by several scientifically structured experiments. While some individuals of both genders will think like the opposite sex, the majority of women use landmarks to find their way around, while the majority of men use maps, compass points, and calculated distances.

These differences are believed to be evolutionary. For most of humankind’s history, men have been the hunters and women the gatherers. Prehistoric males ranged far afield in search of edible prey, and they had to develop a reliable way to find their way back to their caves. They learned to pay attention to the sun’s position in the sky, and to create a mental map of the landscape. Women stayed close to home, and they learned where the berry patches and fruit trees were. (Even now, according to one study, women learn their way around a food market much faster than men do.)

The differences in the way men and women navigate shows up even when they’re working – or playing -- in virtual environments. Female architects, designers, trainee pilots, and computer gamers all function more efficiently when they use 3D graphics that resemble the real world and view them on wider screens that improve spatial orientation. Tests conducted by a team of Carnegie Mellon scientists and Microsoft researchers showed that when women used wide screens and realistic 3D images, their performance equaled the men’s.

All of this makes me feel marginally better about my pathetic navigational skills and less guilty about the money I spent on a GPS unit. I wonder, though, whether political correctness will ever allow us to honestly depict such gender differences in fiction and make use of them to propel a plot forward. Writing about a woman who can’t follow a map invites accusations of sexism from women, although the men in their lives may think it’s a realistic portrayal. A male character who meticulously states exact mileage and compass orientation when giving directions would make many women roll their eyes in exasperation.

As with so many other aspects of human existence, the facts may be firmly established for decades before people will willingly acknowledge them in everyday life. Fictional heroes and heroines, whom writers tend to present as idealized versions of their own genders, might never catch up with reality. My heroines possess all the navigational skills I lack. They know where they’re going and how to get there. And if some researcher says this isn’t realistic, I have a ready reply: Hey, it’s fiction!

Wagging Our Tales Behind Them

Sharon Wildwind

This morning I want to talk about bravery.

Not bravery that makes headlines, or earn medals, or is commemorated on a plaque, but a simply brave, everyday act.

A lot of us who write mysteries were born before the personal computer, iPod, picture cell phone, or Blackberries. Heck, some of us were born before the fax machine or cable television. A few of us might even have been born before television itself.

In a shrinking publishing market with changing and uncertain promotional venues, writers who are by no means technologically-savvy or even technologically-comfortable, step up to take chances. We develop and maintain web sites. We blog. We send book trailers out into the world, wagging our tales behind them.

This past week my husband and I did a brief survey of book trailers on YouTube. We wanted to see what two viewers—one who knew more about mysteries than computers and the other vice versa—would find coming to mystery book trailers cold. Let me stress that what follows is strictly personal opinion.

My husband and I each spend several hours, almost every day, on computers, and a fair bit of that time is spent connected to the Internet. My husband had spent a lot of time on YouTube in the past four months; I’d spent none. In fact, I wasn’t sure how to get to YouTube until he showed me. Yet, neither one of us had ever seen a computerized mystery book trailer. So the first thing that we learned was that unless we went looking for them, we weren’t going to trip over a trailer on our way to other things.

That, in itself, says something about who sees trailers. The viewer has to know they are out there and go looking for them.

We watched roughly 100 book trailers chosen at random. Approximately 45% had 100 hits or less in the past year. A few of them had hits in the thousands and the one that had the most hits by far, about 25,000, had the words “toilet humor” in the search words. It was also filmed in a public toilet.

So I did a comparison between search words and number of hits. Trailers got more hits when their search words were likely to be popular terms, which had absolutely nothing to do with mysteries. Will a wine-lover, looking for a information on a really good bordeaux, care about a mystery trailer in which the main character brings a bottle of really good bordeaux to a party? The number of times viewed suggested, yes, maybe. But cross-checking the book advertised with the sales on amazon.com didn’t show anything spectacular. Lots of hits on the trailer, no way of knowing if the viewer watched the trailer all the way through once they got to the site, and not a lot of book sales.

Some of the trailers were mini-dramas, scripted and professionally or semi-professionally videotaped. These tended to fare better in the bean counting than the ones that were slides backed by music. Production values for all of them, no matter what format, ranged from barely acceptable to really, really awful. Many of them were far too long, with the best ones for holding our interest all the way through being 50 to 60 seconds in length.

Many of them lacked information such as publisher, publication year, where to buy the book, or ISBN number, all of which would have been extremely helpful to know if I had wanted to go looking for the book.

There seems to be a perception out there that if I’m really entranced by the trailer, I will Google the author, go to his or her site or go to amazon or a similar site, and get that additional information. The answer to that is, no I won’t. If it’s not in the trailer, I’m not going looking for it.

After a week of watching trailers, I have sad news for all of us. None of the authors’ names stuck with me. None of the trailers convinced me to buy a single book or even check one out from the library.

This is where the bravery comes in. We’re the ones in the vanguard. Ain’t no one out there going to tell us how to be successful with book trailers, because no one knows—yet. But like that well-worn example of the bumblebee who doesn’t know he can’t fly so he goes ahead and does it, we’ll keep making book trailers. And I hope, no I expect, that we’ll get better and better at them. And the fortunate thing is that computer-technology is such a fast medium, we’re going to see better results soon, or sooner, or even soonest.

For what they are worth, here are some things I learned last week about mystery book trailers:
~Keep them short. 50 to 60 seconds is a good length with which to begin experimenting.
~Work with a stop watch. Time out the flow. You certainly don’t want every image on the screen the exact same length of time, but images that contain words, like your book cover, should be on the screen slightly longer than non-word images.
~Be still when words are involved. It’s hard enough to read words on a screen without having them moving across the screen or vibrating in and out at the same time.
~As Joe Friday once said, “The fact, ma’am. The facts.” Title, author, publisher, publication year, where to buy the book, ISBN number, and contact information for the author.
~Don’t attempt to raise the viewer to an unbridled pitch of unrequited excitement in 60 seconds. Don’t leave the viewer with more questions than answers. Use the journalistic who, what, when, where, and why. Think in terms of that one-line elevator pitch that we frequently discuss on the mystery lists.
~Experiment with ways to change images all you want, but in the finish product use one or two per trailer. Yes, I know your computer may be able to do twenty-seven different kinds of screen wipes, but I really don’t want to see all of them in the next minute.
~Use moving pictures whenever you can. Show the viewer something that will augment the book, like the small town in which you set the book.
~Think of trailers as disposable items. Make two, they’re small. Make them often. Aim for a dozen or two dozen that you can mix-and-match, depending on your venue.
~Forget YouTube. Forget catching a viewer on the fly with search words. If you build it that way, they will not come. Tie your videos into your web site or your blog or some place that people are already coming to look for you.
~Give the viewer a choice: a button on your web site that says “View my latest book trailer here,” rather than making them sit through a download every time they come to your site. Believe it or not, we have crossed over the 50/50 mark. More than 50% of computer owners in North America are now on broadband and less than 50% are still using dial-up modems. However, many, many users are using older equipment or have bare-minimum computer skills. Aim for the least-technological viewer or make different trailers to reach different populations.
~The question of copyright could take an entire book. Bottom line is if you use any visual or sound not in the public domain you’ve cheated another artist out of money.

-----
Writing quote for the week:

You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
~Annie Dillard, writer and journal keeper

Sartre's Notion of Otherness and Acceptable Polar Bear Attacks

By Julia Buckley

Dear PDD Readers, I have to keep this short today because I am still finishing a paper for my graduate class. It is entitled "Adoption and Sartre's Notion of Otherness." In it I explore my relationship with my adopted sister and toy with the idea that society always wanted our family to "explain" her, even though she is just as American as anyone else, being a naturalized citizen of Chinese descent. In researching the paper I have immersed myself in the writings of sociologists, psychologists, and literary critics so that I might develop a most educated opinion.

So my brain is just about fried. :)

However, in honor of our mystery blog, I'll tell you a funny story. My dad sent me an e-mail entitled "Polar Bear Attack in North Manitoba." Now, my father has been known to send me some rather shocking e-mails, some of which are traffic fatalities captured by security cameras (which he sends as a way of telling me to be careful at the wheel. Scared straight, and all that).

Needless to say, I was very fearful about the Polar Bear e-mail; yet, being a mystery SOLVER, I wanted to open it. I did, and saw this:


















Sorry, but I can't attribute these photos to anything but an unsigned e-mail that is getting passed around. Cute though, aren't they?

Okay, back to the books. :)

Writing in the Spaces

by Darlene Ryan

When I wrote my first book—A Mother’s Adoption Journey—the munchkin was a baby, just over a year old. Her father was away five days out of every nine working in another city. There wasn’t a lot of time to write. One of the things I learned back then was if I waited for inspiration to hit I’d never write. And the other was that I had to take advantage of whatever bits of time I could find. I call it writing in the spaces—taking advantage of all those chunks of lost time in a day—time waiting for someone or something else. Five minutes here, fifteen there can very quickly add up to a page a day. And in a year a page a day becomes a book.

Take time where you find it.

I carry a notebook with me most of the time. Several of my writing friends never go out the door without their Alphasmarts. I’ve spent time writing in the doctor’s waiting room, at the orthodontist’s office, at the Diabetic Clinic, and at the back of the school gym during a speech by the principal—she was a little long-winded that day.

Inspire yourself.

I’ve been hit by the boom on a sailboat, by a soccer ball, a two-by-four, a car door and a sewer pipe—which is partly why I’ve spent so much time writing in my doctor’s waiting room. I’ve rarely been hit by inspiration. But I’m often writing something in my head while I’m doing something else—which might explain all those “non-inspirational” whacks to the head I have suffered.

When I’m scrubbing the kitchen floor I’m also writing a scene in my mind. Waiting at the express checkout in Wal-mart I’m trying to fix a plot-hole in my outline. And if you notice me mumbling to myself when I’m out on my daily walk that’s because I’m working on dialogue—or practicing to sing back-up for Rascal Flatts.

Don’t finish that thought.

Whether you’ve been writing for ten minutes or two hours, when you stop, set up your next starting point. Scribble a few notes about what happens next. Read the next paragraph in your outline. Some writers swear by stopping in the middle of a scene or even the middle of a sentence.

Just do it.

Don’t waste time staring at an empty page or blank monitor. (Which you won’t have if you’ve already set up your starting point.) No checking emails just one more time or warming up your fingers with a quick game of Solitaire. When you have time to write, write. Don’t worry about exact grammar or finding the perfect adjective. Get the words down on paper. Churning out words without obsessing about every one may feel weird at first. The more you do it, the easier it gets. I swear.

Maybe you’ll end up with a scene you’re certain is badly constructed, poorly written drivel. Maybe next month when you’re looking at the same scene in rewrites you’ll be surprised at how good it was.

Don’t write.

Yep. That wasn’t a typo. Spending every spare minute writing or thinking about writing will turn you into a twitching, stressed out drudge. Make sure some of those free minutes in the day go to your family, your friends and you. Have coffee with a friend instead of your notebook sometime. Once in a while spend those few minutes standing in line imagining yourself chatting up Matt Lauer on the Today Show. (Love you, Matt!)

So how about giving it a try for the next month? Five minutes here, twenty there. At the end of the month see if you’ve written more than you usually do. That’s it. Let me know how it works. You can email me through my website: www.darleneryan.com I promise to take five minutes to answer.

Reviewers/Readers . . . what do they mean to this writer?

By Lonnie Cruse



Reviews...What do they mean? Readers, how important are they?


Fifty-Seven Heaven is getting great reviews, which will certainly help promote my book when Five Star releases it on December 12th for readers to buy. (Shriek, am I ready? Have I covered all my bases? Deep breath, deep breath.) The book recently got positive reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, which was a huge thrill. The latest review on Books N Bytes is at:



http://www.booksnbytes.com/authors/cruse_lonnie.html



Scroll down to Pat Reid's name and click for the great review. Another great review is due out December 10th at: http://www.romrevtoday.com/



So, aside from me bragging and blatently self promoting (BSPing), what does this mean to an author? Well, for me, I sit in my home office most days, by myself, and plunk out my story, wondering if anyone will ever want to read it. Then I do the first revision, and often I'm surprised to read something I don't remember writing. Sometimes I'm even surprised at how much I love it. Then more revision.



Then I send it to my critique group. Sometimes they're devided on an issue, which means I have to choose which of their suggestions to follow. Of course, I'm prone to take the suggestion closest to my thoughts. Hehe. But if all of them are puzzled by something I've written, (which was perfectly clear to me, so what's the problem???) I obviously have to clarrify that issue for the reader. If all of my critiquers hate something, I have to change it. Sigh. And if all of them love it, I take a bow before my moniter. Ego, don'tcha know.



Then comes more revision. Then I send it to friends who aren't writers or critiquers but who catch errors the group missed, and I missed. And I fix those. And take more suggestions. By this time I'm becoming thoroughly sick of the story. Who would ever want to buy it? Or read it? OR reivew it? And there is likely another story floating around in my head that I want to write because, did I mention, by now I'm sick of the story?



Then I send it to the editor who finds errors the other dozens of readers--not to mention me--missed. Then the publisher makes advanced reader copies and sends them out to reviewers. Now the REAL fun begins. Will they love it? Hate it? I chew my nails and wait.



The reviews come in and I'm (a) shocked that they like it and (b) wondering if anyone will review/buy/read/like the next book I'm working on. Circles within circles. Around and around.



Beyond all that there are times like right now, at the busy holiday season, when I'm trying to find the right gifts, spend time with family, host a party or two, wrap, bake, cook, get some sleep, and writing time is scarce. Think hen's teeth. Family time is hard to come by, with everyone inviting everyone else over. So we're all busy, scrambling to get it all done. Sigh. And I'm wondering if I should go back to the simpler time when my time was my own, not my computer's.



Why do I write mysteries? Who will want to read them? Sitting alone at the computer, day after day, is tough. Time away from family life is tough. Getting critiques is tough. Revising is tough. Then I get a positive review, and I'm back at the computer, writing and wondering. Is it all worth it?



Ummm, yeah, it is. It's worth it when reviewers tell others they liked it. Or even when they don't. Because chances are, others will still be curious enough to read it. And then they write me to say they loved it. Which means they understood what I was struggling to say. They entered my world and spent time there with me. So I wasn't really alone. Thanks, reviewers AND readers. And please, keep reading!

Peak Experiences and Moments of Radiance

Elizabeth Zelvin

If you look up “peak experiences” in Wikipedia, you’ll read that psychologist Abraham Maslow, the same guy who gave us the concept “hierarchy of needs,” used the term in a 1970 work to describe transcendent moments of intense happiness and wellbeing. I heard the term a lot earlier than that, as an undergraduate at Brandeis in the early 1960s. Maslow taught there at the time. I never took a course with the great man, who was reputed to be rather dismissive of his female students. But the phrase was already in circulation. And of course, we all wanted one.

A few years later, any college kid who wanted a peak experience would go for sex, drugs, or rock ’n’ roll. In my day, those who tried the first two did so behind closed doors and kept their mouths shut about it for the most part. And as for music, a lot of us were still sitting on the grass with our acoustic guitars and singing folk music. I remember sitting in the Brandeis gym listening to a scrawny little guy named Bob Dylan singing off key in a hoarse voice. The kids around me were yelling, “More! more!” and I remember being baffled. I thought, “More?”

I have had one or two musical peak experiences, though not at rock concerts. When I was in seventh grade, I got to play my cello on the stage at Carnegie Hall as part of a student orchestra. I remember having the illusion that the tiered horseshoe of balconies was so embracing that its sides leaned together, almost touching. And I remember that someone, I’ve forgotten who, said afterward that I looked radiant. That’s how you get when you’re having a peak experience: radiant. I had another transcendent moment a few years back, performing my song about September 11 to the perfect audience—about a hundred veterans of the Sixties who live in Woodstock—and singing better than I ever have before or since after a day spent warming up with a supportive group of “vocal visionaries.” A sense of connection distinguishes some peak experiences for me. I’d include the four or five times in my life when I’ve managed to get an audience roaring with laughter. At Carnegie Hall, it was the sense of awe at finding myself in that particular place. Great art does it for some people, religious or spiritual experience for others.

As a writer, I have probably had a few radiant moments when a poem or a character’s voice came through me without effort or volition. I gave my protagonist Bruce a peak experience at the end of Death Will Get You Sober. It has nothing to do with the solving of the mystery. It’s just a moment of transcendent joy on a perfect day in a beautiful spot among friends who love each other. That sounds simple, but it’s remarkable considering that Bruce starts the book waking up in detox on the Bowery, cynical, sick, alone, and hopeless.

I don’t think you can engineer a peak experience, regardless of what, say, disciples of Timothy Leary might have thought about it. It creeps up on you. An old friend of mine was visiting from France recently. We caught up on 15 years’ worth of news, including the fact that my mystery is finally getting published. She said, “This is a good time for you. You look—épanouie.” I said, “I know that word, but I can never remember what it means.” We discussed it—she taught English in Paris for many years—and finally agreed on the best translation. She meant I look radiant.

Clea Simon: Cat Mysteries with a Difference

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


Clea Simon is the author of the Theda Krakow mystery series as well as three nonfiction books: Mad House: Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings, Fatherless Women: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads, and The Feline Mystique: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Cats. She is also a journalist, writing for the Boston Globe and other publications, and a member of the Cat Writers’ Association. Her third mystery, Cries and Whiskers, will be released December 15, and her first two, Mew Is for Murder and Cattery Row, are available in trade paperback. Clea and her husband, writer Jon S. Garelick, live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with their cat, Musetta, who appears in the mysteries as Theda’s pet.

SP: Let's get to the most important question first: Is that your cat, Musetta, on your new book cover?

CS: It is! The designer asked for a photo of her, just for inspiration. Then he ended up doing some computer manipulation and – voila – she's a cover girl! The others are stock photos, alas. Pretty cats, but no real character.

SP: Your books can be called "cat mysteries" because they're mysteries involving cats, but they're far more serious than other novels in that subgenre and deal with some difficult topics. Has this brought you any interesting feedback from readers?

CS: Every now and then I get a gratifying "You go, girl!" from a reader, or a group like Animal Rescue League up here in Boston. Some feedback comes in the form of silence: My first mystery, Mew is for Murder, won some very nice awards from the Cat Writers Association, including their annual President's Award, which among our small crowd is quite a big deal. But my second mystery, Cattery Row, which dealt with breeders, was shut out. Now, maybe the judges just didn't think the writing or the plotting was that good. But I wonder.

SP: Why did you make Theda a music critic/reporter instead of giving her an animal-related job?

CS: I wanted her to be a real character, like a lot of single women I knew when I was younger. We all had pets, which we loved and which sustained us, but we had other aspects of our lives as well. And in the spirit of traditional mysteries, I wanted to set my books in a village-like subculture, which the rock world is. So, I guess I wanted to combine a bunch of elements. Focusing only on the animals would have seemed a little lopsided to me.

SP: You have a two-writer household with only one cat. This sounds like a recipe for ugly rivalry. Who does Musetta hang out with when the writing's being done?

CS: This made me laugh out loud! I'm lucky. My husband spends most of his days at his office; he works at the Boston Phoenix, an alternative arts weekly here in Boston. So I get all Musetta's attention during the day. But today is Sunday, we're both at work – and she's under his desk purring. I'm a little hurt, frankly. But I figure I'm old hat. I'm always at my computer. Jon only works at home on the occasional night or weekend, so she probably figures he needs more help.

SP: The very thought of one of our cats going missing is enough to give me nightmares. Was writing about Theda's missing cat in Cries and Whiskers difficult for you?

CS: Yes, it was. I kept checking to make sure Musetta was on her usual perch behind me. When she wasn't, I'd go around the house looking for her at various points. But my agent told me she thought I should up the suspense for this third book, and I thought: What am I most afraid of? So I had to have my heroine face death, alienation from her friends and ... the loss of her cat.

SP: You've written honestly about growing up with mentally ill siblings. Have you used any of your childhood/teen experiences in your fiction, or do you plan to?

CS: Well, you know, what you learn about human nature always comes into play when you create characters and you start thinking about motivation, blind spots, etc. Specifically, in terms of using my family history and my research, it's a catch as catch can (or catch as cat can) situation. I did have a character in Mew is for Murder who had schizophrenia. He was the adult son of the murdered "cat lady," and, of course, a suspect, and I tried to be true to his situation.

SP: Did journalism help you develop any skills that are useful in fiction writing?

CS: Oh, definitely: Writing on a deadline is great discipline. You can't have writer's block when you're paid to produce for a daily paper! Other than that, it introduced me to a lot of characters. I also worked as a copy editor for about a decade, and that was great in terms of learning to cut out the fat. As we used to joke, we could get the Ten Commandments down to six.

SP: Was the first novel you published also the first one you wrote, or do you have some unsold "closet manuscripts" like a lot of writers?

CS: I have half a closet manuscript. I was in love with it, and in retrospect I wish I'd at least finished it. But I showed it to a man I was dating at the time, and he read it and then said, "Honestly, it's not very good." I was crushed. It was years before I attempted fiction again -- and not until I was in a much more supportive relationship!

SP: How do you divide your time between fiction and nonfiction writing?

CS: Nonfiction can take over, largely because I have more immediate deadlines -- and more immediate paydays. So I have to make an effort every day to put aside some time for the fiction. I'm pretty good at this by now, but at times it is only an hour or two. On my best days, I wander around the house and work on the fun stuff until around 1 or 2. Then I go outside (this is important - especially as the days get shorter), do some errands, get some air, and come back and do the nonfiction until dinner.

SP: Do you have any other mystery series or standalones in mind, or would you prefer to stick with Theda for a long series?

CS: I do have another book I'm working on, which could be a standalone or the beginning of a new series. It features an English lit graduate student named Dulcie Schwartz. She's doing her thesis on the original Gothic novelists -- the pop fiction writers of the late 1700s. Of course, she ends up with a ghost and some other fun complications. I'm not sure what will happen with that, though. I certainly don't want to give up on Theda! I don't know how long she'll be around, but certainly for at least one more book.

SP: What advice do you have for aspiring writers who are still struggling to find an agent and/or a publisher?

CS: Persist. Sometimes I think perseverance more than talent wins out. At least, that's what I tell myself, because we don't have control over talent or inspiration. But we can decide to give up -- or not. At any rate, you'll never get published if you give up!

SP: What’s next for Theda and Musetta?

CS: Well, I don't want to give away too much – but Theda's connection to the cops is gone, so she's certainly more vulnerable now, isn't she?

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

Story Fatigue

Sharon Wildwind

Last week, I was Absent Without Leave from this blog. It wasn’t intentional, I just slipped quietly through Tuesday into Wednesday without noticing. The problem was spending five long days stuck in Saturday, June 8, 1974—rather like Bill Murray spending day after day in February 2 in the movie Ground Hog Day. During those five days 2007 melted away.

I had reached the climax chapter in my current work in progress. As always, standing on the threshold of actually finishing the book felt icky. Part of that icky feeling comes from story fatigue, which is a lot like combat fatigue. After months of living with this particular story, I no longer cared who killed whom and why. I just wanted all of the characters to go home and leave me in peace, so I could have my own life back.

I’ve never been much of a horsewoman and certainly never jumped a horse, but the image that haunts me in every book—starting around chapter 28 or 29—is that I’m not going to jump this hurdle. It’s down there, at the end of the arena, ten feet tall, red-and-white stripes, and I’m riding a skittish, 16-hands tall jumper, who is going to take a run at that barrier, stop cold at the last moment, and both of us are going to stand there quivering forever.

This is past the point of sorting my buttons by size and color, past tidying my desk, past scrubbing the kitchen floor, past suggesting to my husband that we chuck everything and go out for lunch. Getting through that murderer-revealed, character-in-jeopardy, resolved-by-violence chapter absolutely stumps me. None of the clues make sense. None of the characters have any more goals or motivations. There is no way—absolutely none—that I am going to tie this story together. Plainly, writing it was a mistake, which I should never have started, and never mind that I’ve written 29 chapters before this one and know of a certainty what happens in the 3 chapters after this one, this time I will be completely incapable of finishing this book.

The way through this is to mentally and emotionally chain myself to my word processor for several days in a row, usually 12 to 14 hours a day. I start with one word after another, rather like very bad abstract poetry.

Saturday.
June 8, 1974.
Just.
After.
Dawn.
Lovely.
Day.

Eventually I work up to short sentences. Sky is Carolina blue. It’s breakfast time. No before breakfast time. Dawn. What happened at dawn?

“Shortly after dawn Saturday morning, Avivah rolled out of bed the sound of invading caterers. She considered a quick kitchen raid to liberate their coffee maker and a box of Pop-Tarts. As it turned out, an insert-and-extract mission wasn’t needed. . . .”

Eventually, I force my characters and myself to face real physical danger. Not describing it as an outsider, but being inside the character, looking at the weapon the killer holds, facing fear, living in a moment that demands raw courage, and somehow finding that courage. In one blinding, clarifying moment the book comes together, and when that moment passes, the book is essentially over for me. It’s out of my head, and now, a week later, I’m a little fuzzy on some of the story details.

Of course, I still have a few things left to do: write a couple more drafts, sell the book, do the editorial changes, proof-read the galleys, wait for the advanced reading copies, market the book, etc. but all of that is no big deal. That’s just stuff to get through. I survived!

So I’m sorry I wasn’t here last week. At least both of us won’t have to go through this again. Until next time . . . .

Mysteries for Christmas

by Julia Buckley
I have a big family, and years ago we decided to pick names out of a hat before Christmas so that each of us is only responsible for one person's Christmas wishes when we meet at the big December gathering.

Because of this, my parents and siblings have instructed me to send my Christmas list pronto, because some people like to shop early. Ironically, even though I spend the entire year being wistful about things I wish I had, I can never think of anything to put on my wish list when I am actually required to make one. :)

One year there were several great mysteries debuting at the same time; I put them all on my list and my brother, who had picked my name, bought them all and put them in an attractive basket wrapped up in red ribbon. It was one of the best presents I've gotten in recent memory.

So of course I'd like to choose more mysteries this year, but I've kind of lost track of what's out there right now, aside from a couple of neat ARCS I've been reading. Here's my question: What are the books you think I should put on the list? Which mysteries would make me the happiest this Christmas? I'm open to any mystery type except extreme violence (although I don't mind some grisly crime scene descriptions). I like cozies, noir, thrillers, suspense, romantic suspense, hard-boiled, procedurals. Thanks to my reading of Peter Rozovsky's blog, I'm also open to foreign mysteries; I've greatly enjoyed Henning Mankell, and I am ready to branch out.

So, mystery lovers, let me have it! I'll take your suggestions and forward them to my Kris Kringle. Thanks!

The Art and Craft of Critiques

Marta Stephens (Guest blogger)

Marta Stephens is the author of Silenced Cry, first in the Sam Harper series.

The first time I submitted one of my manuscripts for critique, I did so knowing I had taken the story as far as I could. I also felt that it was in good shape and close to completion. But when I read the comments, I realized I was mistaken. My fellow authors found scads of errors and inconsistencies that resulted in cutting and adding chapters and several months of rewrites.

A solid critique provides the author an honest review with constructive feedback, offers valid suggestions to improve the work, provides examples, and offers a good dose of encouragement.

So when asked if I allow others to read my work in progress I respond with an emphatic, “Yes.” I rely on the experienced fresh pair of eyes to tell me if I have adequately developed my characters and the plot. Are the scenes and dialogue believable? Does the opening paragraph pull the reader in, or does it read like a bad diary entry? Does my narrative drag? Are the chapter endings page-turners or turn offs?

On occasion, I may disagree with a suggested change, but I consider each comment to understand what really bothered the reader. Someone else’s observation often reveals an amazing new perspective. An example of this was when a fellow author read the first few chapters of my work in progress. I intended for my female character to be a strong-willed individual. She is driven, spunky, and the perfect counter balance to my male protagonist. Yet my critique partner interpreted the character’s actions as those of someone who is somewhat of a scatterbrain. Shock! To make matters worse, she couldn’t understand the character’s motivation. A double whammy!

My first reaction was to balk; I knew she was wrong. After reading through her comments several times, however, I decided to walk away from that scene for a few days and study it later from a reader’s point of view. Of course, she was right on target. The problem wasn’t the character though; it was me. I knew the character well. She is key to the plot and can’t be anything less than strong and assertive. I assumed the reader would pick up on her traits. But I had been so wrapped up in recording my thoughts that my mind raced ahead of the typing without taking time to develop the character as I should. Once I understood the problem, it was an easy fix, but I doubt I would have seen the omission without someone pointing it out. Whether it’s a matter of changing a few words or several paragraphs, the tweaking always strengthens the prose and occasionally spins the scene in an unexpected direction.

Be cautious of the reader who tends to rewrite your story or tries to change your writing style. That’s not the intent of a critique. No one knows the characters or the plot better than the author, therefore, the secret to accepting someone’s suggestions is to selectively listen and use only the valid information.

I keep the following in mind when I edit my work:

Don’t describe every detail about a character in the first paragraph. Allow the reader to engage his or her imagination and get to know the character a little bit at a time. When we meet people, we don’t learn everything about them in the first hour. Similarly, characters should come to life gradually through dialogue, actions, reactions, and through the eyes and words of the other characters.

For a tense scene that needs to show urgency, use short, abrupt sentences. Don’t kill the suspense with flowery prose, exposition, or excessive internal dialogue.

Pace it. Dialogue speeds the prose. After a fast-paced section, slow things down and give the reader a breather through some carefully written narrative. Narration can be used as a transitional tool to get the reader from one scene to the next or when the prose needs to slow down. However, if not done correctly, the writer will risk turning the narration into information dump sites in which the he or she tells the readers all they need to know. If the narration describes an important turn of events, convert it into a scene between characters. Remember that dialogue is far more interesting and engages the reader’s emotions rather than the intellect.

Show, don’t tell. Two of my favorite quotes to drive this home are:

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." --Chekhov

"Don't tell me about the tragedies of war; show me the child's shoe discarded by the side of the road." --author unknown

Need I say more?

Don’t let dialogue turn into exposition, when a character speaks for the sake of informing the reader.

Separate one character’s words and actions from another character through paragraph breaks. No exceptions.

Dialogue attribution—stick to “said” written after the proper noun or pronoun. If the character is excited, show it through his or her words and actions, not the attribution.

Replace tags with beats as an alternate way to vary the dialogue and show action. “Tom, where’s Hank?” Her gaze dropped to the dark red stain sprayed across the front of his shirt. She met his eyes and shook her head. “How could you?”

Look for repetition of words or information to avoid redundancy. If you’ve communicated the information well, once should be enough. When the reader needs to be reminded of an event that happened several chapters before, find a fresh way to relay the information.

Get rid of attribute adverbs, “ly” words, that tell the reader how the character said something and replace them with action verbs. Instead of “He angrily punched the pillow,” try “He slammed a fist into the pillow.”

Avoid “ing” words. Make it active. Instead of: “He was walking to the store.” Try: “He walked to the store.”

Know when to end your chapter. You’ve written a great chapter, you’ve come up with a fantastic twist for a page-turning ending. You’re certain it will shove the reader to the edge of the chair while he turns the page. Don’t ruin the suspense by writing two or three more paragraphs explaining how the character feels. The reader doesn’t need, or care at this point, what the character does next. If you have to explain it, rewrite it.

Writing is an on-going learning process and the critique is an excellent way for an author to know if he or she is on track. Don’t accept rude or cruel comments, but to expect anything less than an honest, straightforward, and constructive critique, is a waste of everyone’s time.

Experience has changed my attitude toward and expectations of a critique. Initially, I looked to others for encouragement. Now I question the light critique that doesn’t catch inconsistencies, point out technical problems, or question a character’s motives. I’m no less sensitive or thicker-skinned than I was before. A harsh critique can still be as painful as a swift kick in the shins, but my focus is on pushing my writing to the next level. Although the occasional pat on the back feels great, an honest critique is the only way to advance the skill.

Visit Marta’s web site at www.martastephens-author.com