Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 113

Working Wednesday, October 7, 2020

I am slowly cleaning up the front and side yards, not really so much cleaning as clearing up the edges. Blowing leaves and cutting back long grass is bad for things that need to winter over, but by making nice, clean, mulched edges, I can give the illusion of a plan. Also, baking things this week. It’s baking season.

What are you doing this week?

You Gotta Have Friends, Part Two

My other penpal is, of course, Bob Mayer, with whom I wrote for five years. If there’s one thing Bob and I can do, it’s communicate, often in short pithy phrases. Bob was career military, so he’s great at giving me paramenters on that, plus we wrote together for so long that we speak the same fiction language. And, like Toni, he points out the places that tripped him up and gives me possibilities the story evoked in him. So below are some of the exchanges we had; as with Toni, there’s a lot more in my e-mail folder.

(He was particularly helpful with the strangling stuff.)

To begin with, I described my idea of Nate’s back story and got this:

BOB:

Hmm. I think the military or jail thing is kind of cliche. Do you need him to be former military?

How about he had a rough childhood, did the crimes you say, but never got caught. But he watched all the guys he hung around eventually get caught. He’s not stupid. He knows his luck is going to run out, but doesn’t see many options.

Also, how does he end up in Art Crimes with no background in art? I also think FBI requires college. degree to be an agent.

(Then he gave me a much better back story I could tweak and make work.)

ME:

You are a genius.

(I told him I was worried about Anna’s mother being too much.)

BOB:

I don’t think Angelina is over the top

she’s a mob princess– especially if she never married

you could have fun with all the beau's she had who proposed

ME:

From Part Four, which is a mess:

“Well, it isn’t a joke now,” Angelina said. “My baby gets engaged, I throw a party. Otherwise people will think something is wrong with me.”

Anna tried again. “We’re not engaged. He didn’t propose. There is no ring.”

“You can have one of my rings.” Angelina moved toward the door. “Do you think it’s too late to plan for Saturday?”

“Yes,” Anna said, but Angelina was gone.

“One of her rings?” Nate said.

“My mother was engaged several times when I was very young. I don’t remember any of them, she stopped saying yes when she realized she liked being single.”

Nate nodded and cracked open one of the beers he’d been stashing away. “Don’t people usually give back engagement rings?”

Anna looked at him. “Have you met my mother?”

“Right,” Nate said. “I wouldn’t ask for the ring back, either. Just back away slowly and head for the next time zone.”

BOB:

Great minds think alike

I’ve never been big on critiquing mss in progress because it’s a living thing. Also, rewrites layer things. But feedback is always good since it can be ignored.

I do lots of loop rewriting now. Something occurs to me later and I go back and layer it in. I also start over every so often from the beginning before I get the first draft done.

ME:

Well, great minds wrote together for years. That’s gotta have an impact.

I look at some things and think, “That’s all wrong,” and then remember that it’s discovery draft and I can change anything. Lotta freedom in that.

The things I’m getting most from you and Toni are detail work. Like that back story I needed for Nate, so I sent you the idea because it was a throwaway, and you said, “That’s a cliche, try this,” and that opened up a much bigger and more interesting past for him. It’s not the story I’m discovering as I write, it was background I needed to set him up with a criminal past and still get him into the FBI, and your suggestion was more original and richer in possibility.

Toni’s stuff is more setting up guardrails, aka “The FBI wouldn’t do that,” and again, that’s not story or discovery, it’s more giving me parameters so I can keep this within the bounds of improbability instead of impossibility.

Basically, it’s good to have friends who know things. Thank you for that Army career, it’s coming in very handy for me.

BOB

My garrote thing will probably confused readers as they don’t see that in films or movies probably better the way you had it– simpler and straightforward–

If Angelina is a lot smaller than the guy it wouldn’t work anyway– I could see her dropping the garrote around the guys neck and then jumping on his back holding on to the toggles with all her might. And he’s trying to get her off, which only serves to cause the wire to dig in farther.

ME:

I like that.

Thank you for info on garroting people. You are, as always, invaluable.

You Gotta Have Friends, Part One

I have the great good fortune of having Friends Who Know Stuff, in my current case, two who are invaluable, Toni McGee Causey and Bob Mayer. I’ve been e-mailing like crazy with them about Anna.

Toni and I have been pals forever, and we think a lot alike, plus she knows a lot about the FBI from her Bobbie Fay books and from real life (like she me, she benefitted professionally from giving birth to somebody who grew up to be an expert) and she has background in the mob because Toni knows everybody, so she’s been reading and giving me feedback, talking through the back story basics with me. It’s not invasive, more like setting up guardrails, aka “The FBI wouldn’t do that,” and again, that’s not messing with story or discovery, it’s more giving me parameters so I can keep this within the bounds of improbability instead of impossibility.

So, on the theory that everything I do is fascinating, (sorry, Argh), here are some of things Toni and I talked about.

(I’ll put together some of Bob’s and my e-mails tomorrow if he gives me permission to post, and then on Saturday, HWSWA will be Bob and I talking about his idea and about getting story ideas in general. I think. We always have a plan, and we always end up somewhere else.)

TONI:

Question — why do you think Nate is mad at Anna for drawing a gun when she was defending herself and shooting the guy? Most cops / agents I know would not be angry or even slightly miffed if she was smart enough to get out of that situation without killing the guy (and he’s not dead at the end of that scene). She’s got a gun pointed at her, a guy emphatically telling her to get in his car (or making moves to kidnap her) and she very smartly reacts. Nate’s anger there isn’t a logical progression in the scene. (I would never have sent this note, but then I saw the discussion with Bob and if you’re predicating all of the anger between the two of them on that moment—she shoots a guy, so she’s not what he expected, then he seems very weak as an agent, because she didn’t ask for a guy to be in the garage aiming a gun at her, so why would Nate be angry? If that falls apart, your reasons for them being miffed at each other / having conflict, falls apart. So I thought maybe I should mention this now before you get too far on that line of thinking.)

Now, if she killed the guy and Nate can no longer question him and get a lead as to who the guy is and why he was trying to kidnap her, then yes, he’d be aggravated, but not to an extreme. If she *knew* that she was being followed / stalked and had failed to mention that in the previous scene, then he could be really aggravated with her because she withheld something important and it could look to him like she was playing him. (So maybe just not have that revelation in the previous scene and save it for after the kidnapping scene.) Then he could really wonder if it was all a set-up to take him off the case, or screw the case they have thus far, and if she’s that clever, what else could she be up to?

My son (cop) would rather I shot someone than be kidnapped. It’s not clear to me in the scene that Anna knows they’re there and could potentially rescue her (and really, if she has a solution, why would she wait, all damsel in distress? A good agent wouldn’t expect her to.)

okay, shutting up now.

-t

ME:

Never shut up. This is all good stuff.

I think I need to dial Nate’s anger back to annoyed. What I was going for there is that she is not what he thought, and he feels stupid at having told Carter she’s just a mild-mannered librarian. I’m not sure she’s a librarian, this is all discovery draft. Later that night she says, “That’s why you’re mad,” and he admits it. Truth be told, I don’t know why she’s so mad, and her mother at this point is a stereotype, but that’s discovery draft for you. Now that you’ve said this, though, I think I have to hit the mild-mannered librarian bit with Carter harder before they get to Jersey, so there’s more of a gap between his assumptions and how far he’s gone out on a limb with Carter.

I don’t want her killing anybody. Her grandfather was a monster, her mother is lethal but not professionally so, Anna just shoots in self-defense. I need that family arc that is increasingly sane. Also death is not funny (the guy lives).

I figure the reader will say, “Go, Anna,” but Nate will feel like a fool for having said, “She’s harmless.” So I really need to go back and set that up as his motivation.

Thank you VERY much for telling me this stuff. I really need to get the feedback, especially from you, since I know nothing about the FBI. Also you’re a very good writer (g).

TONI:

I really REALLY should have added — these two characters are pretty fantastic. Seriously, I could have kept reading ALL DAY. I loved their banter, I especially loved the random-seeming tangents that Anna goes on and how Nate can follow. I love his way with her. So excellent, all the banter.

I only mentioned the motive thing because it fell under the FBI sort of umbrella, and how that sort of guy would act. Paper pusher guys might be aggravated (because it causes them a lot more paperwork). but that’s not Nate, so I hope you don’t mind I mentioned it.

ME:

Oh, I’m delighted. Truly. The more you talk about this, the less I have to research. You’re a gold mine.

Bob said to ignore the crime subplot and get the romance arc down first and he’s right. But I also need to need to get that dynamic down where they’re recalibrating their assumptions. She was nervous in Vegas and he got to be all patriarchal and take charge. Back on her home turf, she’s tough and in charge, and he has to adapt, which he doesn’t see until she shoots the guy, so I just have to dial back on the anger and get across that he’s trying to figure out who she is on the fly because all this other stuff is happening at the same time. Your point about his anger being unmotivated is crucial, I think.

Anyway, thank you. This is great.

TONI:

I like that a lot. That resonates, because he (from Carter’s response) isn’t the kind of guy who gets made a fool of, so for him to be so off-base as to who she really is would bother the hell out of him, and he’d be embarrassed that he missed such a big clue (her walking out of the office and then being a suspect because of her delivery). That’s both professional embarrassment and personal-judgment embarrassment.

ME:

I’m going back in and layering in the “she’s just a nice woman” stuff, and that makes how patriarchal he is in the first part not just “nice guy” but an assumption that he knows more than she does. I think he’s likable in that first part because he’s so decent, but he’s also not treating her as an equal, so that can feed into the rewrite of the scene with Carter where he insists that she’s a complete innocent,. Which Carter does not believe because Carter suspects everybody, and then when it turns out Carter is right and she shoots the guy, he’s really annoyed, not because she shot somebody but because he’s so wrong, everything he thought about her was wrong. That’s SO MUCH BETTER than what I had.

You’re a genius.

Happiness is Fat Bear Week

Some days, you just need a fat bear.

That’s why this week is so happy at Brooks River in Katmai National Park as the annual Fat Bear Tournament has kicked off. From September 30 to October 6, you can vote on who is the fattest bear. It’s prime fat bear season because the fuzzies are bulking up for winter. Matchups will be open for voting from 12 – 10 p.m. Eastern (9 a.m. – 7 p.m. Pacific).

Last year’s winner:

See also the NYT article.

Also a good shirt for anybody who lives in northwestern New Jersey (I have one, of course):

Have a beary nice week. (Yes, I can go that low.)

And if bears aren’t enough, here’s Alexandra Petri speaking for many of us, certainly me, about the news: “I’ve Had Enough News Now, Thank You” in the Washington Post.

HWSWA: Talking About Starting Anna

Here’s the latest HWSWA post on starting Anna’s story.

We talk about the new book I’m working on as I try to explain the basic idea using some really bad conflict boxes and the a too-long sentence idea to focus in the fog of discovery. Bob asks good questions and makes me think about things and justify my decisions, exactly what a critique partner should do.

Next week, Bob’s one-sentence idea and conflict lock for his new book, where I will try to make him justify things and he will answer, “Because.”

Anna Part Two

Tomorrow the HWSWA post about starting Anna goes up, so I thought somebody might want to read Anna Part Two. It’s up on the Works in Progress Page now. Anna Part One has been revised over thirty times (mostly very small stuff) and that’s still up, too. And remember, Discovery Draft. Lots of changes ahead.

This is a Good Book Thursday, October 1, 2020

I’m reading research: books and websites about art crime and mob princesses.

What are you reading?

Working Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Well, my favorite month just flew by, and I didn’t get much done, but I have revised the Anna Part One post more than thirty times, so I did have a surge of activity there at the end. It’s 6,500 words. Part Two is 5500 words. Part Three isn’t finished, but it’s 3500 words so far. Plus Bob and I did the next HWSWA talking about Anna (his new book is next week) so I did a lot of thinking about the story for Saturday. I have been working.

What did you work on this week?

So How Did You Get Published?

Moira asked about getting published and I’ve been out of the loop for a decade, so I thought I’d ask the published writers here–traditional, self, fan fiction, whoever’s putting story out there for public consumption,ption–when and how you got published.

I entered a novella contest in 1992 and won (along with Merline Lovelace) and that hooked me up with my first, excellent editor, and then a single title editor read one of books (I think it was Bradley) and wanted to publish me, but I knew I needed an agent to negotiate, so I went on author list I was on at the time, and asked for agent recommendations, and Anne Stuart and Susan Wiggs told me to try Meg Ruley, and Meg and I were clearly separated at birth, and she ran by career for the next twenty years. She’s a wonderful agent. My current agent, Jodi Reamer, is also a wonderful agent.

That’s how I got published.

Next?

Argh Author: Brenda Margriet’s After Words

Brenda Margriet has a new book out today (!), and if you act fast, you can get a great deal on Leeza’s journey.

AFTER WORDS: A TIMELESS Seasoned Romance

A mystifying diary ignites a shared quest…and an unexpected romance.

July 21st, 1941

“The journey starts here. I don’t know if I’ll be able to record everything about it but I’ll try. My mother made me promise that I write in this journal as often as possible.”

The moment Leeza Boychuk reads these words, painstakingly penned in a battered, time-stained diary by a young Canadian soldier, she knows her life will change. With a failing business, a philandering ex-husband and an ocean between her and her son, she has her own battles. Yet the infantryman’s innocent yet brutal story haunts her.

Determined to return the journal to the soldier’s family, she enlists the help of Gavin Fletcher, an enigmatic widower. His calm steadfastness is soothing to Leeza’s tattered soul—until an unexpected kiss ignites a longing she isn’t ready to explore.

But Leeza can’t abandon her quest…even if it means confronting her feelings for this increasingly intriguing man.

***

And here’s your deal from Brenda:

AFTER WORDS is available for $2.99 for a limited time only. This link provides access to all retailers, including Amazon, B&N, Apple and Kobo.

https://books2read.com/u/mBG92A

(For those unfamiliar with the term, “seasoned romance” features main characters who have some living under their belts. After all, love isn’t restricted to twenty-year-olds!)