Lea Wait's Blog, page 323

Weekend Update: March 1-2, 2014

Next week at Maine Crime Writers we’ll be featuring posts from John Clark (Monday) Kate Flora (Tuesday), Gerry Boyle (Wednesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett (Thursday), and Vicki Doudera (Friday). 

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

Don’t forget about the upcoming Maine Crime Wave. The link below takes you to the information page. Check it out. Participating from Maine Crime Writers blog, current and alums, are Gerry Boyle, Paul Doiron, Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kate Flora, and Julia Spencer-Fleming.

http://mainewriters.org/2014-maine-crime-wave/

Lea Wait:  Excited that my Uncertain Glory, to be published April 4, got a wonderful Kirkus review …”Wait … captures the infrequently depicted Northern homefront effects of the Civil War … Joe’s homespun voice captures the full flavor of a smart and determined kid with his eyes firmly on the future, richly evoking time and place.” Hurrah!  Taking a few deep breaths after completed Twisted Threads, my first needlepoint mystery, and editing Pizza To Die For … a middle grade contemporary mystery. Definitely not bored!

Kaitlyn Dunnett: Just got my first look at the cover for my October book, Ho-Ho-Homicide. It will probably be tweaked a little before publication. They usually insert quotes and such, but this will give you the idea. My editor sent it with the comment “feel free to share” so I figure that means I can post it here. Enjoy!

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: kateflora@gmail.com

 

Goodreads for Writers

Hi. Barb here. Talking about Goodreads.

Goodreads is the well-know social media site for readers, purchased by Amazon in March of 2013. It’s a great way to shelve and rate books as you read them, to keep track of books you’ve read and what you thought of them.

It’s also a social place where you can recommend books to friends and strangers and talk about books endlessly in discussion forums.

For authors, Goodreads is a great way to connect with readers. In many cases very devoted readers who read multiple books per week and tell others about them.

What can authors do on Goodreads–

You can create a welcoming profile: In many cases if you’re a well-published author, Goodreads will already have a profile for you, but you can improve it with a recent photo and updated bio. You can add your blog and make sure all the books listed are yours and all your books are listed.

You can use the author dashboard: The author dashboard is your home as an author on Goodreads. You can use it to see who’s marked your book “to read” and even who’s reading it right now and track all sorts of statistics about your book.

You can do a Goodreads giveaway: You can offer copies of your book to garner ratings and text reviews. 40,000 readers enter a Goodreads giveaway everyday and the average giveaway attracts 825 entries. Many of those entering put the book on their “to read” shelf, which means they are notified when the book is published. 60% of Goodreads giveaway winners review a book.

You can run and ad: Goodreads ads are relatively inexpensive and highly targeted. You can not only target a particular genre, you can supply a list of authors and the system will show your ad only to readers who have rated a book by one of those authors at least a “3″. The ads can support a giveaway or can be for general awareness. The object is to get people to add your book to their “to read” shelf.

You can participate in discussions: This January I was the featured author in one cozy discussion group and this week I will be featured in another. This is great fun and motivates dozens of people to buy your book or get it from the library.

You will find among writers a certain amount of trepidation about vicious, negative reviews on Goodreads, but I always tell people this:

1) I’ve been really lucky. Even the people who hate my book have obviously read it. I think mysteries generally draw a crowd that is less prone to this sort of thing than say, fantasy or romance.

2) But here’s the thing, all this is going on on Goodreads whether you are there or not. You have nothing to gain by not being there.

3) The key is don’t engage about your work unless you’re invited to. The authors who’ve gotten in the biggest trouble are those who have responded to negative reviews or even worse, have asked people who are shown as “currently reading” their book when they are going to finish and write a review. Crazy, stupid stuff. So if someone asks a question, answer, but don’t butt in if you’re not asked.

If anyone has a specific question about Goodreads, post it in the comments. I’m happy to help.

Can a Writer Retire?

Philip Roth, long one of my favorite writers, recently announced his retirement. In his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side there’s reportedly a post-it note stuck on his computer screen that says, “The struggle with writing is over.”

But how does a writer retire?  Particularly one as single-mindedly devoted to his craft as Roth.

Philip Roth

For more than fifty years Roth wrote constantly, turning out book after book from the novella Goodbye Columbus in his early twenties in 1959 to his last, Nemesis published in 2010.  More than thirty books, some better than others, but all with legitimate literary merit.

According to a piece by David Remnick in the New Yorker, “Roth’s writing days were spent in long silence-no distractions, no invitations entertained, no calls, no e-mails. After I wrote a Profile of Roth, around the time of the publication of “The Human Stain,” we would meet every so often, and he told me the story of how a friend had asked him to take care of his kitten. “For a day or two, I played with the cat, but, in the end, it demanded too much attention,” he said. “It consumed me, you see. So I had to ask my friend to take it back.” Four years ago, he told me that he was interested in trying to break the “fanatical habit” of writing, if only as an experiment in alternative living. “So I went to the Met and saw a big show they had. It was wonderful. Astonishing paintings. I went back the next day. I saw it again. Great. But what was I supposed to do next, go a third time? So I started writing again.”

My question is what will he do this time?  Go back to the Met over and over and over?

Nevertheless Roth claims he has already said what he had to say.   In Remnick’s piece, Roth quotes the boxer Joe Louis  “‘I did the best I could with what I had.’ It’s exactly what I would say of my work: I did the best I could with what I had… I don’t think a new book will change what I’ve already done, and if I write a new book it will probably be a failure. Who needs to read one more mediocre book?”

I repeat my question, what will he do this time.  Keep returning to the Met?  He’s not young.  He turns eighty this year. But his mind is still sharp. His skills have barely diminished, if at all.  And writing a book is not an effort that demands physical strength like mining for coal or loading heavy furniture onto a moving van to help a still-active crime writer move from his island home to Portland.  Most writers, with some obvious exceptions, are not people who worked simply to make money, to amass a fortune and, having amassed it, now want to spend the rest of their days doing something more fun like chasing potential trophy wives. Or doing something more noble like helping hungry children in Africa or starting a foundation.

Philip Roth is and I believe always will be a writer. Being a writer requires a certain turn of mind. To sit (or in Roth’s case stand) at a desk and dream what it is like to live someone else’s life.  Whether you’re Roth who, no doubt, will be long remembered for his best works or James Hayman who almost certainly won’t, a writer writes. And both Roth and I are writers.

Somebody once asked Mel Brooks who is 87, when, if ever, he planned to retire.  He reportedly responded “Retire? Retire from what? I sit in a chair with a pencil and pad and when I think of something that makes me laugh, I write it down.”

I’m considerably younger than either Roth or Brooks. I’ve still got most of my hair, though now it’s mostly silver instead of its original black. And I’m certainly not as obsessive or disciplined about my writing as Roth.  I do go to parties. I do go to movies and museums. I do have lunch with friends. But at the end of the day, or more accurately, at the beginning of the next day, I go back to my writing.  I feel pretty much the way Brooks does. There’s never any reason to retire from a writing career other than Alzheimers , the horrible disease that felled British writer Iris Murdoch.

Harper Lee wrote one book. She published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1961. And, as far as anyone knows, has written little, if anything since.  Like Mel Brooks she’s now 87.  I don’t know how she did it or how she spends her days. But I think she’s an anomaly.

Some retirees play golf.  Others do good works. Or take care of their grandchildren. Or travel. I’m not a golfer and at this point I have no grandchildren. I have enough money not to be forced to put on a blue jacket and welcome people to Walmart. While I’ve served on a few boards, I’m not very good at it. I’d like to be able to travel but nobody ever said you can’t travel and still write. In fact, writers have the unique luxury of legitimately being able to deduct the cost of travel from their taxes as research or reading tours. Even Amtrak is reportedly offering writers free train rides as “fellowships,” to write and I for one love writing on trains.

Having recently completed and survived a move from our island home to a house in Portland, I’ve started, after an enforced hiatus, to get back to writing my fourth McCabe/Savage thriller.  I’m 17,000 words in and I like what I’ve got so far and, more importantly, I’m enjoying the days I get to spend inside my characters’ heads.  It’s where I want to be.

I hope, like Elmore Leonard or Mel Brooks, I’ll still be at it when (and if) I hit 87. I just hope that if I am, someone will want to read about the people I bring to life inside my head and on my computer.

Rambling Musings on the Mistakes I’ve Made Along the Way to Being Published.

Al Lamanda:  You’ve sweated, stressed over, lost sleep because of, skipped meals, stood up friends and family, wrote, rewrote, gave up on, went back to, drank a bathtub amount of coffee over, and finally finished the book you started out to write.

And then you went back and did it all over again.

Finally, it’s finished. Your book. Now what?

You can consider it a labor of love and put it in a bottom desk drawer as so many unpublished authors I know have done because they’re afraid to let anyone read it, or …

You can pursue your dream of getting your masterpiece published, which by the way is the only real reason to write a book in the first place because bottom desk drawers can’t read.

When I first started writing, there weren’t the choices there are today. My choices were traditional publishers and that was it. Today, if you so choose, you can self-publish on a dozen different eBook publishing sites.

Before you try the eBook route, you want to take your best shot at getting you book scooped up by an agent, who will then in turn sell it for the best deal possible to a publisher.

Where do you start?

Why, at the beginning, of course, because very little has changed in the world of traditional publishing. Your best chance of selling your work to a publisher is to get an agent who believes in you, and that isn’t easy. In fact, it’s very difficult. Not as difficult as say performing a root canal on yourself, but it’s up there.

So, with that in mind, here are some of the things I did wrong and what I did to correct them along the way.

First, assuming you’ve finished your book, you must write a perfect query letter to an agent. One page or less, preferably less. An agent may receive hundreds of query letters in a week, how much time do you think will be spent on your six page rambler? My first query letter was almost seven pages. I included everything but my height and weight and what my favorite breakfast foods are in it, and guess how many responses I got in return? Here’s a hint. It begins with goose and ends with egg.

So what’s in a perfect query letter? Who you are, what your book is about, your contact information and a short bio of your work, if you have one. You can find many good examples of query letters on the sites I will list below. Note that they are all one page or less. Practice yours until it’s the best query letter you can make it. Remember your query letter is your face, your introduction and your first impression. Make it a great one.

Now you have a query letter, so what do you do with it? Send it to an agent, of course. I mean, how could they not love it? After all, it’s your book you’re talking about. Right? So what I did was send my query to about five hundred agents. I figured volume query lettering would have to work if you send out enough of them. Of course, that proved to be the exact wrong thing to do.

Here’s why. If you do your homework, you’ll find that most agents represent the type of books they are interested in reading. So why query an agent looking for women’s fiction and tell them about you great mystery/thriller for men? Why query an agent looking for action/suspense with you great new western or romance novel? Do you homework and find the agents interested in your genre and query them. If you check the websites I’ve listed below, you can locate the agents interested in your genre. Those are the ones to target.

So you written the perfect query and sent them to your targeted agents and yikes, an agent wants to read your work. What now?

Simple, you do what the agent asks. Some will want to see a synopsis and first three chapters. Others will want a synopsis and the entire manuscript. Most, if not all will request a synopsis. The first time an agent asked me for a synopsis, I sent one nearly the size of my book. I never heard back. A synopsis should be two to six pages and no more. An agent doesn’t have the time to read a twenty page outline. If you had to read twenty or thirty of them a day, would you? Check the websites I’ve listed below for samples of some good synopsis writing. Practice writing yours and make sure it’s the best it can be before sending it out.

You’ve gotten this far, but you’re not there yet. When the agent asks to see your manuscript, what is expected is a manuscript formatted to industry standards. Nothing fancy in the least. Just 12 font, double spaced and as mistake free as possible. They don’t expect perfect, but they do expect industry standards and good. If the book is sold, a professional editor will take it from there. Check the websites below for samples of industry standards.

After that, it’s a waiting game. Don’t bug the agent. Normal response time is three months to get back to you, some as much as six months. After all, yours is not the only manuscript they have on their desk.

One final note on a doozy of a mistake I made early on. I took rejection personally. It isn’t.

Resist the temptation to let that agent know what you think of their rejection notice. Rejection is just part of the business. Every reader won’t love your book and neither will every agent. Keep in mind that the agent who rejected your first book just might love your second one, but they will never read it if you make them an enemy.

Remember, when it comes to agents, it only takes one. If you don’t make the mistakes I did and your book is good enough, you will find that one.

Thanks for letting me share some of my mistakes with you and I hope they help you along your way.

www.agentquery.com

Editing … Killing Weasels and other Tweaks

I’m Lea Wait, and my mystery Tangled Threads is due March 1.

Am I panicked? No, thank goodness. Am I finished writing? Well, the first ten or twenty drafts are done. The plot is as the plot will be, at least until my editor has other ideas. So what am I doing?

I’m tightening, checking timelines, and re-reading and re-reading to make sure I’ve used as few words as I need to tell my characters story.

I read and edit on my computer’s screen. I read and edit a printed copy. I read out loud and edit.

I make a list of characters and check that they all have names starting with different letters. That I haven’t changed a character’s name or hair color or age from edit to edit. I check the red herrings to make sure they’re the right shade of crimson. I check the real clues to make sure they’re there … but not too obvious. I draw a map of the town where my characters live, and make sure all directions in the book are correct. (Tangled Threads is the first in a new series. Many of these exercises will also help me when it comes time to write book two, a month from now.)

Then I check for “weasel words” and overused words. Weasel words are the kind I use when I’m really describing a thing, and should just be naming it. Words like “kind” and “really” and “thing” and “just”. I enter them in my “find” function and I double check (or triple or quadruple) to make sure I’ve eliminated as many as I can, and that I haven’t repeated words on a page. (My thesaurus is open on my desk.)

Most writers have words they find themselves using too often. (“Too” is one.) “Just” is one of mine. Some others you may use? Some. Quite. Probably. Very. Usually. So. Generally. I guess. I think. Possibly. And more.

Other checks? replacing passive verbs with active ones. Killing “There is” or “There are” or “It is” sentences, or rewriting them. Getting rid of adverbs and replacing them with stronger verbs.

Making sure sentences make sense. “I know who the killer is,” Jody smiled. I don’t think so. Try “I know who the killer is,” Jody said, smiling.

It’s amazing how many times those errors creep in no matter how many times I read my manuscript.

So I check all those word usages and facts and plot progressions. I tweak.

And then I read the manuscript over again, one more time. And edit out all the mistakes I put in while tweaking.

And, finally, I press the Send button. And I open champagne.

MYSTERY AUTHOR GONE TO THE DOGS

Susan Vaughan here. It’s not yours truly gone to the dogs. I’ve never had more than one dog at a time, the current pup being a medium-size long-haired rescue named Sasha.

I’m referring to David Rosenfelt, author of thrillers and the Andy Carpenter mystery series. It’s no accident that New Jersey attorney Andy Carpenter owns a golden retriever named Tara and that every book in that series features a golden on the cover as well as dog-centric titles like Leader of the Pack and Unleashed. I haven’t read his thrillers, but David’s Andy Carpenter books are juicy legal mysteries, laced with laugh-out-loud humor, suspense, and doggy love.

 

At last count, David and his wife Debbie had 21 rescue dogs, but that could change at any time. David appeared earlier this month at the Rockland Strand Theater in a benefit for the capital campaign of the Pope Memorial Humane Society of Knox County in Thomaston. The shelter is very grateful for his participation.

After signing copies of his new book Dogtripping, he spoke to a large audience. Dogtripping is a nonfiction account of his and Debbie’s dog rescue foundation and their five-day drive from California to Damariscotta, Maine, with “25 rescues, 11 volunteers, and 3 RVs.” Yes, you read that correctly.

No legal mystery in this one, but the author laces Dogtripping with his trademark humor, suspense, and doggy love. During the PMHSKC presentation, David kept the audience enthralled recounting tales—some humorous and some touching—about his writing and the “dog lunacy.”  Their saga began with the loss to cancer of their beloved golden, Tara, which led them to volunteering in their local California shelter and eventually to creating the Tara Foundation, which has rescued 4000 dogs from “death row” and placed them in loving homes.

In describing the odyssey to Maine, David kept saying it was awful, horrible torture. Finally his wife stood up from the front row and told us not to believe that. The trip was “wonderful, magical.” The rescues are for the most part larger, older dogs, some with complicated health issues.

When asked if the house was chaos with so many dogs, David replied that mostly the dogs “hang out” all day. Anyone entering his house would find them lying all over the place, a scene like “a Civil War Battlefield.” Dogs are on all the furniture—yes, shedding—including the bed. David said he “had to get there early” before Wanda the mastiff took his place. Who picks up the, um, you know? Said David, “You’re looking at him.” All pet lovers know how hard it is to lose a furry family member, so how is it to lose one of these rescues? At this question, his expression and voice changed from curmudgeonly droll to soberly affectionate. He and Debbie take comfort in knowing “for the time you have them, they’re safe and happy and loved.”

David shared so much more than I can include here about life with all the dogs and about his writing. The presentation was wonderful and I’m now alternately laughing and crying my way through Dogtripping.

*** My newest release is Primal Obsession. You can find an excerpt and buy links at www.susanvaughan.com.