Lea Wait's Blog, page 62

Shadow and Boris

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here with a tip: when at a loss for a blog topic, go with the cat. Lacking a cat, write about your dog, your hamster, your parrot, or your whatever.

I’ve actually been contemplating writing another post about Shadow, the cat we inherited from Lea Wait, for some time now, but I was having trouble thinking of something new to say about her. I considered focusing on her ninth birthday, which was March 26, and reminding readers that she was just six months old when Lea and Bob got her from the shelter.

 

Cute, wasn’t she? She’s grown some since.

Still, I’ve written previous blogs about how we got Shadow and how she’s been adjusting to living with us and I’ve posted a ton of photos of her on Facebook. If I wanted to repeat myself, I could just repost one of those old blogs. I didn’t want to do that, although if you’re interested, you can find one of them here: https://mainecrimewriters.com/2021/03/01/another-update-on-shadow/. Previous posts about her had to be deleted when I published I Kill People for a Living because I included them in that collection of essays and Amazon won’t publish a Kindle edition if any part of a book is available online for free. Don’t get me started on what I think of that policy!

I did come up with one potential Shadow-blog when we acquired an iRobot to replace the vacuum cleaner neither of us can use anymore without serious lower back consequences. The set-up instructions offered Sandy a chance to give it a name. He picked Boris.

You’ve probably seen cute photos online of cats and cleaning robots. Cats running away from them. Cats chasing them. Even (small) cats riding on them as they vacuum. We waited, camera-ready, to see how Shadow would react.

And that was it. Total disinterest, even boredom.

Talk about a non-starter.

Then again, you’ve just read a cat-blog. Any stories to share? I promise to read all comments to both Shadow and Boris.

 

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others, including several children’s books. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Her most recent publications are The Valentine Veilleux Mysteries (a collection of three short stories and a novella, written as Kaitlyn) and I Kill People for a Living: A Collection of Essays by a Writer of Cozy Mysteries (written as Kathy). She maintains websites at www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

Weekend Update: April 1-2, 2023

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Thursday), and Jule Selbo (Friday).

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

Matt Cost: As quirks with Amazon occur, my audiobook of Velma Gone Awry has become available prior to street date. Colin Martin does a fantastic job creating the diverse voices of Brooklyn in the 1920s. Check it out HERE!

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, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

The Books that REALLY Helped

Today, we’re doing a group post in which we share books that have helped us, inspired us, coached us, or whatever else it has taken to get us to the published writers stage or beyond. Perhaps some of them will help you, as well.

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: I’m not sure how much help this will be to others, since my pick is long out of print (I’m OLD!!!) but I since I’ve never been much of a one for how-to books (yes, even though I wrote one), there’s only one that springs quickly to mind. Back around 1983, before I was published, I was working as a library assistant at UM Farmington when a Young Authors Conference was held on campus with Jane Yolen as guest of honor. I took a longish lunch break and zipped across the street to the student center to hear her speak and ended up buying a copy of her how-to book, Writing Books for Children. The book itself was very helpful (and I did end up having four books published for middle-grade readers during the early years of my career) but the greatest inspiration was Jane herself. Two things have stuck with me. First, that she signed the book “one writer to another,” a line I’ve used myself with many autographs since. Second was the encouragement I found in something she said during her keynote (and doubtless repeated in her book, although I haven’t tried to find the quote there): “You don’t have to have children to write for them. You don’t even have to like children. You just have to remember what it was like to be a child.” Words to live by.

Matt Cost: I’m not a big believer on writer manuals. I think that writing is an extremely individual and personal subject. What works for one writer does not necessarily work for another writer sort of thing. I have perused Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, but thought, sheesh, what does this yahoo know about writing. Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird has had only one thing that made a whole lot of sense to me. The title. When her brother confesses at the dinner table that he has a huge project due the next day labeling over 2,000 birds, and is lamenting how he will ever accomplish that, and their father tells him, ‘son, bird by bird. Bird by bird’. That is writing in a nutshell. Step by step. Brick by brick. Bird by bird. So, not being a fan of writing books, Im going to share an author who has helped, inspired, and coached me to become the writer that I am.

Louis L’Amour. The great western writer who wrote over a hundred novels, almost all exclusively based on a very simple premise. A flawed protagonist gains an appreciation of life while falling in love with a strong woman who is also being pursued by the greedy and dastardly villain. Rising tension, a bare-knuckled fight scene, and a big shootout at the end. The baddie is vanquished. Sometimes the hero ended up with the lady. Sometimes he rode off into the sunset. Thats it.

Maggie Robinson: As into writing books as we all are, it’s interesting some of us are still very resistant to “writing books.” People (and I include writers in this category) don’t like to be told what to do. I took a persuasive writing class in college, and must have had a textbook. But it’s long been consigned to the dustbin of my history, and I’m not sure I ever persuaded anyone about anything.

As an adult, I have studiously avoided most craft classes, probably to the dire detriment of my work, but oh well. I did read King’s On Writing, which was really pretty good. However, he failed to persuade me to ditch all those adverbs. My bad.

But I need to follow the theme. One of my treasured possessions is the leather-bound Roget’s Thesaurus that belonged to my second cousin Marion Miller, who wrote for the New Yorker. I like to think of it sitting on her desk as all those literary greats tramped up and down the hallways. Nowadays I usually use the Internet to look up synonyms, but Marion’s book tells me that persuasive can mean convincing, convictive, suasive, cogent, conclusive, stringent, unctuous, seductive, subornative, propagandistic, and missionary. That’s plenty of adjectives to add an ‘ly’ so I can remain persuasively rebellious.

Dick Cass: Not strictly speaking a writing book, but an encouragement to think about how and why we create. Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland explores how all types of art get made, what gets in the way of it being made, and how to work through the difficulties that impede us. I know many of us shy from the words art and artist to describe what we do, but if we define it as creating, making something from nothing out of our selves and our lives, the words fit. This book gave me a great appreciation of all the ways we make it harder on ourselves to do our work than it needs to be.

 

Shelley Burbank: Though I have purchased many books (possibly too many) about the craft of writing, when I’m in need of inspiration, I often turn to WRITING 21st CENTURY FICTION by Donald Maas. I like his take on the blurred lines between genre and literary fiction, the idea that we can write books that adhere to genre conventions while using beautiful language. Plot written artfully. Art with a plot. (Peanut butter in my chocolate or vice versa?) Maas writes, “The death of genre will come for you on the day that you cut yourself loose from your fears. When you stop writing like you think you are supposed to and start writing in the way that only you can, then you will discover the impact you can have.”

Shelley Burbank, author of FINAL DRAFT: An Olivia Lively Mystery (Encircle Publications, 2023)

Sandra Neily here: (ditto on Donald Maas and most likely disagreeing with Matt Cost) I often write down a dirt road in the north woods and have found, as an author, it can get lonely for company who are inspirational as well as practical about writing stuff. Here is my fav dirt road companion: Anne Lamott. (Don’t miss the “Shitty First Drafts” chapter.)

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life 

Kate Flora: Usually, when this topic comes up, I refer to some of the writing books I’ve consulted over the years, including The Art of Fiction and the very wonderful Stein on Writing by Sol Stein, which is very practical and down-to-earth. Then there are the books specifically on mystery writing, some of which I’ve gone back to many times over the years and still consult when I’m teaching or writing about a specific area of mystery writing or when I get stuck. These include Barbara Norville’s Writing the Modern Mystery (modern in 1986), the late, wonderful William Tapply’s books, The Elements of Mystery Fiction, and my friend Hallie Ephron’s book, Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel. In confess that How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America edited by Lee Child has been on my shelf for two years, waiting for me to have time for.

But moving beyond books on craft and editing (though I commend Elizabeth Lyon’s Manuscript Makeover  and to your attention), writers are always also readers, and reading deeply in one’s chosen genre or genres is always valuable. Good books can spark ideas and revision, bad ones can illuminate our bad habits and steer us away from careless writing. If a writer does so much POV head jumping it makes a reader dizzy, this is something to be avoided.

This is not a book you read but a book you create: the notebook of great quotes you’ve read and want to remember because they speak to you with truths about writing or reading or character or something about a scene. I used to do this and let the habit fall away, but writing this reminds me. There are so many brilliant lines, and ways he uses objects to create persons and story, in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. One sentence which had stayed with me for decades, and which seems to true both for writing true crime and for writing fiction that reflects the real world comes from Philip Gourevitch’s book about the Rwandan massacre, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will be Killed with our Families. In it, Gourevitch writes: This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.

In order to get more deeply into my characters and into the mood of my books, I often divert from how-to to poetry and find poems that resonate with the work I’m trying to do. I will sometimes have several college textbooks, along with Yeats and Mary Oliver, as well as my college Shakespeare, spread out on the floor around my desk as I work to deepen the mood.

Maureen Milliken: The absolute number one best book I can recommend for writers is Don’t Murder Your Mystery, by Chris Roerden. I wish that every writer whose books I read would read it. Roerden, a former book editor, offers 24 tips of what NOT to do when you’re writing. You don’t have to be a mystery writer to benefit. The tips apply to any genre. As anyone who writes knows, it’s easy to fall into bad habits and not catch them, because there’s so much to juggle. I always re-read this book when I’m done with my first draft so I can remind myself what issues to keep an eye out for and tweak.

Short on story ideas? Become a bartender.

From time to time, we like to introduce our readers to new Maine mystery writers. Today we’re pleased to share a post from newly published author Albert  Waitt.

Albert Waitt: As I was becoming a writer, I paid my bills by working as a bartender. I found that people had some funny ideas about those who sling drinks for a living, and they often laid at opposing ends of the spectrum. Many folks assumed that a casual relationship with morality and a more-than-professional familiarity with alcohol were job requirements. Others, however, swore by bartenders for their psychoanalytic powers, crisis management skills, and priest-in-a-confessional levels of discretion. There was one assumption shared by just about everyone, however: That bartenders heard a lot of good  stories. That, I can assure you, is true. And it’s a story that I heard while working the bar at Hurricane Restaurant in Kennebunkport that became the impetus for The Ruins of Woodman’s Village, my crime novel released this month.

A couple of my Monday night regulars, who any journalist would verify as reliable sources, told me about a friend of theirs whose mother was a psychic. It seemed that whenever this woman drove through Kennbunk, she became anxious and uneasy on one particular section of road. Even in quiet York County there are unsolved murders, and it turned out that a main suspect in one of them lived at the spot where their friend’s mother never failed to become unsettled. Upon hearing this, my “writer’s brain” kicked  into action.

I was sure a great crime novel could spring from the story.  But my “writer’s brain” only sent me down wrong turns and dead ends as I tried to make it about a son who discovers his psychic mother’s old journals and tries to solve a disappearance thirty years in the past.  After throwing out hundreds of pages, I found a way into my version of the story by focusing on a crime as it happened in 1986. When the main character became an easy-going police chief who fears he may be in over his head investigating the disappearance of two missing sisters in his postcard-worthy town–that’s when the narrative came together and suspense flooded the pages.

While the story I heard did not become the story I told, it did start me on the road to The Ruins of Woodman’s Village. That it wasn’t a direct route is no surprise. As every mystery reader and writer knows, things never go anywhere without a certain number of twists and turns.

Albert Waitt’s mystery, The Ruins of Woodman’s Village, was published in March 2023 by Level Best Books. Set on the Maine coast in 1986, it is the first in a series featuring Police Chief LT Nichols. When two teenage sisters go missing from a backwoods shantytown, the easy-going Nichols’ summer of patrolling beaches and leading parades is over. His desperate search for the girls takes him from seaside bars and million dollar estates to abandoned farms and run-down shacks. As Nichols races to piece together the girls’ disappearance, he realizes that doing so may tear the façade off his postcard perfect town.

Albert Waitt is a writer based in Kennebunkport, Maine.  His mystery, The Ruins of Woodman’s Village, was published in March 2023 by Level Best Books. Waitt’s first novel, Summer to Fall, was published in 2013 by Barrel Fire Press. His short fiction has appeared in The Literary Review, Third Coast, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Words and Images, Stymie: A journal of sport and literature, and other publications. Waitt is a graduate of Bates College and the Creative Writing Program at Boston University. Experiences ranging from tending bar, teaching writing, playing guitar for the Syphlloids, and frying clams can be found bleeding through his work.

Writer, whatever you do, get a real editor

I’m reading a book about a topic that really interests me, but it’s a tough read because the book is so poorly edited.

There are punctuation errors, particularly missing or unncessary commas, on every page. There are word use issues (weary instead of wary, for instance). There are things like “l” instead if “i” in the name Diana (which appears on almost every page).

The author wrote that someone fought in World War II, and after he returned home, he began working at a company “in 1941, the year [the company] opened.” It’s hard to know what the problem is there. Is the year a typo? Does the author not know when World War II ended? Maybe the guy he’s writing about wasn’t in the war at all? Maybe it’s a poorly constructed sentence, so it’s not saying what he meant it to say.

There’s really no good art to go with a post like this, but everyone loves a good cat, so this is Penny lying next to my book outline whiteboard. She’s very helpful when I’m writing!

A good editor would catch that and ask about it.

I don’t mean to pick on this one author. His is just the latest in a series of horrifically edited books I’ve read lately.

I know I’ve said it before, but the retired English teacher next door or your brother-in-law who’s “good with spelling” may come cheap, but they are not editors. A good editor will know publishing style, as well as recognize point of view issues, too much exposition, weak characters, bad dialogue, clauses that don’t match the subject, and all the zillons of other things that can drag down a book.

I’m not going to go into a long list of every single thing that needs to be looked at when a book is edited, but any book, no matter how awesome a writer you are, will have some of those things.

At author talks, when people ask about getting books edited, I get a lot of pushback when I say every single person who wants their book to land somewhere besides their mother’s bedside table needs an editor. It seems like a lot of people who write want to be told it’s OK to not pay for an editor. I’m not going to do that. [By the way, I haven’t edited books in years and don’t plan to, so this isn’t a sales pitch.]

I don’t care if you’re submitting to agents or self-publishing. Pay for a good editor. If you don’t have the money, save it up or find it.

The most frequent excuses I hear for not getting an editor are:

With texting and email, readers are a lot more tolerant about bad puncutation, usage, etc.Even books published by big publishers are poorly edited, so it doesn’t matter if mine is.It’s too expensive.I’m an editor, so I don’t need one.Not everyone’s an English major who obsesses about every little comma. Get off my back.

My answer is that those “reasons” don’t matter. A reader may not realize they’re slogging through an unedited minefield, but their understanding and enjoyment of your book will still suffer.

If you care about your work and want other people to care too, present it in the best way possible. Get an editor.

Agatha Christie and The Guilty Party

Charlene D’Avanzo: Agatha Christie is called the “Queen Of Crime” for very good reason. She wrote an astounding 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, many that feature fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Her murder mystery The Mousetrap is the world’s longest running play. The Guinness World Records calls her the best-selling fiction writer ever – her novels exceed two billion copies. In 1955 she was the first recipient of Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award. More than 30 feature films are based on her work.

So what accounts for Christie’s absolutely astonishing record?

There were hints early on. As a child Christie was a voracious reader. She wrote her first poem when she was ten. Later, during World War II, she worked a London hospital. This accounts for her knowledge of poisons, which she put to excellent use. For example, a thallium poisoning case was solved by British medical workers who had read her novel A Pale Horse and recognized the symptoms she described.

Christie wrote her first detective novel The Mysterious Affair At Styles in 1916. The book featured Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian police officer with “magnificent moustaches” and a head “exactly the shape of an egg” who went to Britain after Germany invaded Belgium. Christie’s inspiration came from Belgian refugees and soldiers she helped to treat as a volunteer nurse during the First World War.

Christie eventually grew tired of Poirot, much as Conan Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes. By the end of the 1930s, she wrote in her diary that Poirot was “insufferable”, and by the 1960s she felt he was “an egocentric creep. Poirot became the first fictional character to have an obituary in The New York Times, which was printed on page one on 6 August 1975.

After her marriage to an archeologist in 1930 Christie spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East, and those travels informed her novels set in the Middle East (e.g. Death On The Nile). She used her experience of international train travel in her 1934 novel Murder On The Orient Express.

In her books Christie often made the unlikeliest character the guilty party. Christie said she wrote her books up to the last chapter and only then decided who the most unlikely suspect was. After that she’d go back and make the necessary changes to “frame” that person.

I’ll end with a quote Joan Acocella writing in The New Yorker: With Christie … we are dealing not so much with a literary figure as with a broad cultural phenomenon, like Barbie or the Beatles.

 

 

Quotes from the ‘20s Stolen by Matt Cost

As my historical PI mystery, Velma Gone Awry, is coming out on April 12th, I’m going to continue with my 1920’s theme. This time it is brilliant quotes from legendary characters. And the kicker is, these fabled women and men are all in the novel, and some of the quotes are also there, spoken by them.

Let’s start with none other than one of the most quotable people of all time, Dorothy Parker. Her writing was only rivaled by her wit, and to have actually known her must’ve been a gift from the heavens.

What does Dorothy Parker say about the writing business?

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

She was a woman who seemingly struggled with and enjoyed life simultaneously. Much of her best wisecracking involves drinking and sex, two topics that were largely taboo in the US before the Roaring ’20’s before the flappers crushed that old fashioned convention.

This quote makes it into Velma Gone Awry straight from her lips. As does another one less blog appropriate about telling somebody that she’s $%# busy, or vice versa.

“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”

And while this next one did not make the pages of Velma Gone Awry, I’m fairly certain it will before the series ends. Spoiler, it did not make it into the second one, City Gone Askew, either. Maybe the third time is the charm.

“It’s a small apartment, I’ve barely enough room to lay my hat and a few friends.”

Right after initially meeting Dorothy Parker, my PI, 8 Ballo, meets up with the writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his wife, Zelda, who steals the limelight from her famed husband on the pages of Velma Gone Awry.

In her high school year book, Zelda lays out what she wants from life, and then proceeds to try and achieve that. She has a brilliant mind laced with a wild side and is the quintessential flapper of the 1920’s.

“All I want to be is very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own-to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself.”

Of course, we can’t totally bypass Scott, as he is one of the most fabulous writers of all time, even if there were a few duds layered in there. I particularly like what he has to say about the marketing end of the business, a notion that I can certainly abide. Well, maybe not the movies being a racket, but certainly the advertising.

“Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.”

Coleman Hawkins did most of his speaking with the tenor saxophone, but he was early on credited with this sublime quote that knows no boundaries in its truth.

“If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.”

You can’t set a book in New York City without giving a nod to Babe Ruth, even if 8 Ballo is a Dodger’s fan. Spoiler, he is not much of an admirer of the Babe, who lived life larger than life and baseball combined, but did have a bombastic side. This quote sums up his character in Velma Gone Awry scene, minus the giving up alcohol and going to bed early.

“I’ll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They’re too much fun.”

And of course, the 1920’s was rife with colorful gangsters. A very flawed character in Velma Gone Awry is Ben “Bugsy” Siegel, who is a young Jewish gangster with his own code of ethics while at the same time starting up a business that became known as ‘Murder Incorporated’.

“My friends call me Ben, strangers call me Mr. Siegel, and guys I don’t like call me Bugsy, but not to my face.”

With that concluding thought, feel free to leave your positive comments below and keep your criticism behind my back.

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published four books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, Mainely Wicked, due out in August of 2023. He has also published four books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, with the fifth, Pirate Trap, due out in December of 2023.

For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. In April of 2023, Cost will combine his love of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

Weekend Update: March 25-26, 2023

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Matt Cost (Monday), Charlene D’Avanzo (Tuesday), a guest post Flora (Thursday), and a group post (Friday).

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

Matt Cost had his third Clay Wolfe/Trap book, Mouse Trap, come out on audio. It can be ordered HERE. The final publisher edits for his fifth Mainely Mystery novel, Mainely Wicked, have been completed and the book will be out in August. He has quite a few events planned for April for the release of Velma Gone Awry; A Brooklyn 8 Ballo mystery, which also be available for audio on street date. Stay tuned for presentation, podcast, article, interview, and review dates.

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, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Confronting the Horrors of Book Promotion

Kate Flora here, sitting in  gorgeous Sedona, Arizona, surrounded by red rock cliffs I cannot see because of so much rain and fog. I am at my borrowed desk, thinking about what to write this week. Some of this post is recycled because I’m suffering from a mild case of blogging block. Yes, you heard it—this is yet another ailment to strike writers, and something else we have to worry about.

A bit of background: When I sold my first book, back in the early 1990’s, shortly after the Mayflower landed, my far more businesslike husband Ken smiled and said, “Congratulations, dear. Now you have a new job.” That new job, of course, was moving from the long, silent, thoughtful time spent writing my books (and my ten years in the unpublished writer’s corner) to the arena of publicity and promotion.

Had I but known! That was the pre-social media era. The pre-webpage era. It was a time when a writer wasn’t expected to be always on. On tour. On Facebook. On twitter. On message. Taking cute photos for her Pinterest page and generally studying with a bunch of experts about how to perfect the “Buy My Book” dance. Back then, talking about the book was much more about writing and storytelling and not the cult of personality. Back then, I would write for nine months and then spend three promoting the book

Me at a bookstore in earlier times

Flash forward a couple of decades. I still can’t dance. I still hate having my picture taken. I still cling to the Flaubertian idea that the work should speak for itself and the author should disappear into the woodwork. But now I clash with everything that pundits, experts, friends, neighbors, strangers, and the checkout clerk at the grocery store would say: Authors must have a platform. They must be branded. They must find ways to use publicity, in particular social media, to connect with readers because this where readers, especially younger ones, are finding and buying their books. They should have a tik tok presence, a book trailer, clever materials printed and ready to handout, a chatty newsletter for which they collect subscribers at every book event. They should have a street team ready to help promote the book.

It will no longer suffice to say: But I have a book due on July 1st and I’m way behind. Blogs must be written. Promotion must go on. But when I sat down to write today’s post, I found myself staring at a blank page. Thus turning to one from the past and giving it some tweaks.

How to overcome blogging block or the more general promotion block? There are the

and at a library, back when I let people take my picture

obvious things to do. Take a walk. Take another walk. Take a shower. Great ideas always arrive in the shower, don’t they? Perhaps there is that never fail solution—take a drink. But the invisible sun is not over any yardarm (if such there were in Arizona) and I am not Hemingway. Eat chocolate? Drift over to ebay and buy a pair of shoes? Ah, but some of you are guys, and perhaps this won’t work for you. Then there is surfing the net.

Yup. This is the solution. Lacking clever ideas of my own, and hating self-promotion more than having a root canal, I look back through my old emails to see what clever promo ideas my friends have sent me. Today’s fishing expedition yields up some great food for thought.

My good friend Dale T. Phillips, author of many great mysteries and “How to be an Indie Author” frequently reminds me that I need to be sure all my books are available as audio books, so I’m not leaving money on the table. Along these lines, recently my publisher notified me that many of my Joe Burgess books are now available as audio books. Here are some links:

Redemption https://apple.co/3Z6nhBO“Redemption was right up there with those by my favorite mystery writers (Ian Rankin, Carolyn Rose, Felix and Dick Francis).” ~David Edgar Cournoyer, 

And Grant You Peace https://apple.co/40nzEuv“…nailed the culture of a Portland cop…beautifully written, and suspensefully told.”

Led Astray https://apple.co/42wXw0E“If you’re a fan of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, Kate Flora’s Joe Burgess ranks right up there. Keeps you on the edge of your seat…”

I check for a reply to my email to the student who is crafting my book trailer, but so far, crickets in return. Before I go back and hunt down that email suggesting a platform other than mail chimp for crafting a new mailing list (mail chimp having lost my last one, and yes, I promise there will be one) I return that earlier blog about blogging block and find this.

Because controversy is good for all of us first thing in the morning (remember that 8:00 a.m. philosophy class in college?) my friend Barbara Ross posted this deliciously controversial piece at Maine Crime Writers some years back, about publicists and fiction. It is still absolutely true.

Four Lies that Publicists Will Tell You http://wp.me/p1GTyX-45A

Maybe you, faced with the task for book promotion via blogs or otherwise will be more inspired to brand yourself, develop a brilliant marketing strategy, challenge commonly held beliefs, or just crawl under a chair and moan. And then, get back to writing. Because if you haven’t written anything, you won’t have stuff to brag about, promote, and agonize over. And you won’t have to wonder what is the best way to brand you. And writing, in the end, is what we’re all about.

p.s. If you’d like to be a beta reader for the next Joe Burgess, Such a Good Man, let me know.

Opinions and Elbows

Brief Commercial Message

Kate Flora, Julia Spencer-Fleming, and I are presenting Make Your Own Mystery in Room 102 of Wishcamper Hall at USM on Saturday April 1, 2023 from 1 to 3 PM. It is a free presentation and parking in the USM garage is free on Saturdays. Books will also be on sale. Would love to see you there. If you’re unfamiliar with Make Your Own Mystery, here’s a description:

Using suggestions from the audience, three mystery writers (who write very different types of books) build a mystery novel on the fly, demonstrating some of the ideas and techniques that go into plotting and creating the stories. Audience members suggest character names, weapons, motives, geographic locations, and other pertinent information for the writers to build from. It’s an interactive event and generally results in hilarity, at the same giving readers a view into how writers work.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

When I first started writing, I was hungry for advice. Until I saw how much of it there was. There were so many people with the one key to success, whether you wanted to write a novel to compete with Dostoevsky or with Stephen King. It was tough to filter through all of it, even if your intentions were clear and you knew what kind of writer you were. The books and programs and workshops could be opaque, contradictory, overly didactic, and sometimes just plain wrong.

I got to the point where, while I read for advice avidly, I only believed something I heard three or four times from separate sources, preferably (but not necessarily) reputable ones.

In that spirit, here are three bits of advice that have stayed with me through writing seven books.

E. L. Doctorow—“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

This probably applies only if you’re the kind of writer who prefers not to work from an outline or other detailed plan. As I am. When I’m tearing my hair out, sure that I’m never going to get to the end of a book, flailing in the words, I take a small comfort in this.

Of course, one key to this advice is not to get distracted by what’s going on outside the beam of your headlights, what dangers lie, what distractions might dislodge you from the road. Because, yes, you can follow your headlights right into the ditch if you’re not paying enough attention.

Ursula K. Le Guin—I once heard Ursula Le Guin in a workshop delicately chastise a young writer who was glorying in the twists and turns of her plot to the extent that none of us could quite follow what story she was telling. With the faintest gleam in her eye and the experience of sixty or more years writing serious fiction, she said “You must be able to explain your story to your dumb cousin Bunko.” I think of that every time I am tempted by a multisyllabic word or attributing a polymorphous perverse motive to a simple action. If Bunko doesn’t get it . .

Annie Dillard—I can’t locate the actual quote at the moment, but I recall a story in which a student wrote to her to ask if she thought he could be a writer. Her reply: “I don’t know—do you like sentences?”

Because as much as we are captivated by the stories we want to tell, the characters we want to bring into the world, this is what the writing comes down to: the sentences. The first sentence of a story starts to close off the possibilities and the last sentence is, in a great story, inevitable. In between, each sentence must work on its own, and with its siblings, toward the ultimate expression of the entire story. If you don’t like sentences, you’re going to have many bad days as a writer.

Of course, opinions are like elbows—everybody has a couple. Embrace or ignore, but also understand that for all the advice out there, no one can teach you to write but yourself. Do you have a particular bit of advice that has helped you, either to write or to live?