M.L. Doyle's Blog, page 13

A rare character but she lives

The black female amateur sleuth? Rare, but there are more stories about her coming out. Finally! Until the last couple of decades, the list of mysteries that featured a black female as the central sleuth was short.  Thankfully, the list is now growing. Authors of every stripe seem to be more willing and able to bring their […]

Zombie Apocalypse (Rerun)

I originally created this post just over a year ago. It occurred to me that one should annually check and recheck your preparations to ensure your plans are still up-to-date. It’s that time of year—summer time, a time to relax, to have fun—that we become complacent and forget that disaster could be just around the […]

The big “F” day approaches

We are now just about three weeks away from the first big “F” Day.  “F” can stand for a lot of things, many of which feel appropriate at this time. Today, the F stands for Furlough.

We’ve been hearing about it for months. First, with dread—how does one make ends meet after losing two days of pay in every pay period for several months? How do you plan for a sudden twenty percent cut in pay?

As soon as furloughs were announced the rumors started to fly. First 22 days of furlough, then 14 days of furlough, then some people would be exempted…maybe I will be one of them?  Then the final word and the dreaded letter  signed by my boss. Just removing the uncertainty, as ugly as it is, was a relief.

Eleven days of furlough. One day per week for eleven weeks. Still a twenty percent cut in pay. Still painful but for a shorter period of time and that time is almost upon us.

Through all the uncertainty, all the rumors, all the political talk, all the back and forth, the reality of furlough is I get an extra day a week to myself for eleven weeks. At this point I’m almost looking forward to it.

Sure, I’ll be broke. I’ll bring my lunch to work. I’ll be smarter about my grocery shopping. I might even stay home more often to use less gas, walk more, try to cure myself of my one-click-aholic problem and buy fewer books. It’s eleven weeks. I can live through it, right?

The frightening thing is, even after we get through the eleven weeks of furlough, congress seems no closer to figuring out what to do about the budget now than they did months ago. Come October, we’ll be faced with a new fiscal year, the possibility of more budget fights and the almost permanent uncertainty. More pay freezes, more hiring freezes, more furloughs, perhaps even RIFs or Reduction In Force, which is the fancy way of saying layoffs. In short, more of the same.

By this time, most of my coworkers are looking forward to the furlough days.  We need a rest.  Our offices have been operating with such short staffs we can barely function. My office, once authorized 14 people, was reduced to seven earlier this year due to budget reductions. Since some have left for greener pastures and because of the hiring freeze, we’ve been unable to fill those positions. We’re now down to five. Five people trying to do the work 14 did at one time. Five.

Sure, the leadership says we have to stop doing some things, we have to learn to say no, we have to do less with less. But nothing changes. Expectations stay the same and each day we go into the office knowing it is literally impossible to meet those expectations.

It should also be said, that while I and some people I know can take it on the chin, spend a little less and still get by, there are lots of furoughed employees who are already barely getting by. They don’t make much money.  They have families and responsibilities and eleven days of furlough will ruin them. Literally ruin them.  They deserve much better.

But for me, if I don’t get some furlough time, I just might go crazy. Not only will we get an extra day off each week, working overtime is prohibited during furlough. No more staying at the office ten or eleven hours a day attempting to do the impossible. No more hovering over the Crackberry all weekend. The reality is things will not get done and if congress is okay with that, what can I do about it?

A friend of mine is planning to hold a First Furlough Friday party. I’ll be there. We won’t have much to celebrate, but like a hurricane party, if the disaster is coming, you might as well surround yourself with good music, good food and friends to face it.

The Cover Experience

Working with a designer to have the cover of your book created is like watching a tightrope walker without a net. It is thrilling, edge of your seat stuff, but you feel as if, at any moment, things could go very wrong, very quickly.

While doing my research, I looked at scores of designer websites, was blown away by so many covers and  impressed with what could be done, that by the time I finally selected someone to work with, I had high expectations. There were so many different designers to choose from, that I finally had to make my selection largely based on price. I’ve got a lot of work that I’d like to publish this year which means I can’t afford to pay three hundred plus dollars for each cover.

I contacted Su at Earthly Charms, we settled on terms and I gave her a general description to get her started. I also sent her links to covers I liked.

A couple of weeks later, Su sent me my first set of proofs.  Here is where the tightrope walker began to sway in the wind, the feeling of impending disaster set my heart racing and for days I found it difficult to sleep.

My first impression was that she’d gotten them all wrong. We were working on two covers for the first two books in my mystery series. Neither of them worked for me. I considered looking for someone else. Looking at those covers made me sad. I felt as if my project was a failure. Were the books I’d written as bad as those covers? Was I crazy? What made me think I could self publish anyway? UGH!

Trying not to panic, I decided to treat them a bit like critiquing someone’s writing. I began by listing the things I liked and realized I not only liked those things, I loved them. Along with what I loved, like the font and the basic colors, I had a bunch of ideas for what could be improved and how to improve them. I listed those and didn’t hold back on exactly how I felt.

The next set of proofs were so much improved it felt as if that tightrope walker had made it to the other side and the crowd was standing in a raucous round of applause. They weren’t perfect, but we were very close. A few minor tweaks here and there and suddenly, I had the cover I dreamed of, the look I could be proud, to keep on my shelf and call my own. I love, love, LOVE them.

It was frightening at first, but like Su said, we had to start somewhere. I’ve decided that a great cover artist is someone who is not only creative and artistic but more important, someone who listens. I found that creative listener in Su.

I’d recommend her but she will be far too busy working on the rest of my work coming out this year.

I changed my mind

Sometime ago I asked the question, To agent or not to agent?

At the time, (was it that long ago?) my agent and I had been relatively successful. We’d made a bit of money and I was still hopeful that some smart editor would read my mysteries and fall in love with my characters, my premise and my prose. I even wrote a series of adult romance novellas that I was sure would finally get me back into a traditional publishing house. The novellas were smart and good, I thought, and in the serial format that so many people want these days. Surely, someone would snatch them up.

After a long list of rejections, multiple rewrites and more rejections we did find a publisher willing to give my mysteries a try. I felt excited about being accepted finally, by a publishing house even though they were a small startup. The editor was experienced and professional, the previous projects they’d launched looked classy and interesting, and it felt good to know that this publisher was willing to take a chance on me.

In the end, I guess I just wasn’t willing to take a chance on them. I’d worked too hard, and waited too long and had nursed my projects so diligently that the thought of my books languishing away somewhere, unnoticed and unappreciated kept me up at night. It had happened to my first book ever published. I didn’t want to see it happen again.

I was left with a tough decision. Do I tell this person, my agent, the one that had been by my side this entire journey that I was ready to go it alone? After knowing that she’d worked so hard to find a home for my stories and encouraged me every step of the way that it was time to part ways?

I’d been saying for months, to myself mostly and to others when I had the courage, that if something didn’t happen by some date in the future, I would indie publish.  I kept changing that date in the future, moving the goalpost, still hanging onto hope, still thinking something different would happen.

Well it never did.

So, like thousands of people before me, I’m finally doing it. The good news is, I have so much material ready for print that I’ll spend the next few months simply preparing things for publication while trying to fit writing in when there’s time. By August, two of my mysteries, The Peacekeeper’s Photograph and The Sapper’s Tomb, will be published.  Sometime after that, the adult romance series of four novellas called Genuine Date, will also reach the market. And shortly after that, the third book in the Master Sergeant Lauren Harper series will be ready for publication.

Am I sorry that I started this journey by writing query letters and finding an agent? Absolutely not. As I said, we’ve had some early success with ghost writing memoirs and I would never have had those opportunities if I hadn’t been represented by one of the most patient, knowledgeable and professional women in the business. I still LOVE my agent. But I had to finally realize that a traditional publisher wasn’t going to get my stories. They weren’t ever going to agree that people who love mysteries might be intrigued by a smart, tough and yet feminine professional soldier who gets herself into and out of all kinds of interesting scrapes. My agent got it. The publishers didn’t.

So, off I go on my own. So far, it’s been an interesting, challenging and fulfilling ride. I can hardly wait to see how it will end.

Should women be in combat?

That’s me on the left in basic training in July 1980. We’d just finished our first visit to the weapons range. I was feeling proud of myself. Notice the cigarette. So glad I quit smoking!

Should women be in combat?

No.But neither should men be in combat. I hate that any American has to put on a uniform, pick up a weapon, point it at someone and kill them. The idea that we kill people for a political reason is abhorrent.

As much as I hate the idea, sometimes we are called to do exactly that.

My mother and father both served during World War Two. My father served by driving a tank. My mother served in stateside hospitals as a medical technologist. She never had weapons training and never had any field training. If she had been married, should would have had to ask her husband’s permission to join. If she had had a child at the time, she would have been disqualified to be a WAC at least until her child was fourteen years old.

By the time I joined in 1979, my opportunities in the military were much greater. I served in the same units with men. I deployed with them, I went on field training exercises, fired weapons, threw grenades, ran obstacle courses, wore a gas mask and chemical suit and lots of other things my mother could never do.

Still, my path was much different than my brothers who joined shortly after me. He chose to serve as an officer. I was enlisted.  He was infantry, became airborne qualified and ended his career in Special Operations.

Despite the changes between when my mother was in uniform and when I served, there were still lots of military jobs I was unable to do by regulation. Be in the infantry, drive a tank, fly an attack helicopter, be a Ranger, a Green Beret and many more. Secretary Panetta, with the sweep of a pen, has changed that.

The services will go through a period to decide exactly what jobs will now be opened to women. While they do that, I’m sure those in the men-only military jobs will come up with long lists of reasons why women shouldn’t be allowed to do them.  Like, that a woman doesn’t have the strength it takes to put a track back on a tank when they are thrown. A woman is unable to meet the physical requirements necessary to be a Ranger or a Special Forces soldier. Or a woman’s monthly cycle and her emotional swings will get in the way of her doing the job properly. All reasons I’ve already heard and I’m sure there will be many more.

I wonder how many of those same reasons were used when the opportunities my mother was denied were made available to the women of my generation. I’d bet we could dig up newspaper commentaries from the early 70s and republish them and save ourselves the time of hearing the familiar arguments.

Just as the arguments failed before, they will fail this time. Women can and should be allowed to serve in whatever capacity they desire and are capable of.  Any woman who raises her hand and puts on the uniform knows what she’s up against. She knows how hard it will be. She knows the conditions will be horrible, the challenges tough, the action deadly. She knows all of that and yet she wants to serve in combat anyway.

When our citizens want to serve their country in that way, how can we do anything but support them?

If we must go to war, if we must take up arms to protect and defend, then we should accept all of the help we can get, even from our women.

 

Editor Edits

You write a book, you rewrite the book several times, you send it to a bunch of folks to read, you absorb their comments, you decide you’ve got your final product, you send it to your agent, your agent makes comments, you absorb those comments and finally it goes to your publisher.

Eventually, the manuscript lands in the hands of an editor who reads every word, analyses every phrase and comes back to you with more comments.

In my opinion, the pages and comments that come back from your editor are the pages that require the hardest work.

For every other set of comments, you as the writer can choose to accept or reject any of those comments. Some comments you will know immediately are spot on. You incorporate them with gratitude. Other comments aren’t so easy to hear. Some you accept, others you reject because they don’t fit your vision, perhaps you don’t trust the reviewer or perhaps you’ve decided as the writer, the comments are just wrong.

But comments from an editor are different. This is the voice of your publisher. These are changes direct from the person who will turn your chick into the bird ready to leave the nest for good. You’re not as free to ignore these comments and suggestions as you would any other. These comments, at the very least, should be strongly considered.

So you work with them, you wrestle with them perhaps. Rewrites should be fun. But to me, the rewrites that happen as the result of an editors comments have an extra added pressure to them, and aren’t quite as much fun as others.

The good news is, these rewrites could be the final rewrites before your book finally makes it to the shelves. So we wrestle with them, we dedicate ourselves to them and we try to answer every question the editor has. Hopefully, the comments, no matter how difficult they may be, will lead to a better book.

 

There may be something to this…

Most successful authors will tell you they write every day, and while I thought I understood why – they make their living with writing, therefore they must have to do it often enough – I didn’t really understand. After committing myself to the lunacy of NaNoWriMo, I’m beginning to see things differently.

Prior to November my writing had taken on a life of its own. I’d just started the third novel in my mystery series and the story was drawing me to the keyboard every day. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was having so much fun with it my evenings and weekends were filled with nothing but throwing down words to move the story along. Puking out the plot, I sometimes call it. Just get it down and worry about the consequences later. The best part about the plot puking is, often, it’s the characters who are doing all the work for you. I was simply along for the ride.

Not only was the novel going well, but I had this idea for a new series in a genre I’d never written before. Somehow, in between working on the novel, I managed to write a romance novella that grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go. In just a few days this thing gushed out. I literally couldn’t sleep until I had the thing done. Even before it was finished another novella idea started to nag me, an idea that would go along with the first one. And so, I have a new mini-series to work on. It’s a refreshing new thing, a totally new direction and so far, it’s a surprise and a joy to write.

Then I heard about National Novel Writing Month. I’d heard people talk about NaNoWriMo, but didn’t understand the commitment, to write 50k words in 30 days. Essentially, writing what could be the first draft of a novel in one month.

What the hell? I thought. Why not?

So I came up with another idea, in a genre I’d never written before, did some research, threw down some thoughts about what the story was, some character background and on November 1, I got started. Today, on day 12, I’m 24k words into the story. I’ll be well over half way to the goal by the end of today.

I don’t think I’d be anywhere near that 24K number if I hadn’t already been writing every day. If I’d been new to the practice, I’m sure I would have needed time to work up to that kind of output.

And that’s when I figured it out. Successful writers don’t write every day because they need to in order to earn a living. Sure, they need the output and the output puts food on the table.

Successful writers write everyday because they need to stay in shape, they have to flex the muscles, get the blood pumping and keep the engines tuned. Trying to write 50k words in a month without having done some of the preparation would have been like trying to run a marathon without having done a few 5ks first, without the daily workouts that are necessary to prepare yourself for the challenge.

Can you write 50k in a month without the prior workout? Sure. But you’d probably be huffing and puffing in the end and the finish might not be pretty. Untrained, it’s still possible to dash through the finish line knowing that you’ve accomplished something.

But don’t we all want to finish pretty? Don’t we want to be that person who finishes the marathon looking just as fresh as the moment we started?

So this writer will continue to exercise her writing muscle daily, if possible. And if the ideas keep coming to me, I’ll have to in order to get them all down on paper.

Running with words

Sometimes long hours at the keyboard, the act of writing, feels like you’ve somehow released endorphins, like the endorphins runners talk about, the hormone that gets activated when they’ve reached a physical peak that flips running from a chore to an addictive mood altering endeavor that can’t be ignored.  They say endorphins are the reason runners need to run every day. To feel that buzz, to get the jolt of goodness that makes you feel like there’s a reason for being. Sometimes writing can feel like that.

When the pistons are firing correctly, when the creative juices flow without obstacle, when you glance at the clock, then glance again only to learn most of your day has disappeared and you’re facing thousands of new words that have flowed from your fingers, that’s when it feels like I get a jolt of endorphins.  Writing days like that are frickin’ awesome.

It doesn’t happen every day. Sometimes writing is like a hot poker in the eye.  You see what you’ve just put to paper and you wince, recoil, wonder why you ever thought you could be a writer in the first place. I try to have a short memory about those kinds of days.

I’d rather run, be a runner, imagine my fingers are runners and they’re all grinding out mile after mile, releasing mini-endorphin jolts to my brain, dragging out the good words so that when I’m done, I’m breathless with how good the crap is that I’ve just written.  That would be kinda cool.

Men in uniform … and women

I have to be honest here. I’ve always had a weakness for men in uniform. My attraction to the uniformed man could have had something, maybe just the tiniest bit, to do with why I joined the Army in the first place. Of course I wanted to serve my country, to swear to protect and defend, to have experiences one could never have if you didn’t go through the rigorous training, learned the discipline, passed muster and graduated into the service.  But being surrounded by men who have earned the right to sport the various uniforms of the services and the bling that goes along with specialized training? Well, it’s hard to not admire them no matter what service or uniform they wear.

Women in uniform? Well, let’s just say I never felt cute, or sexy or attractive at all when I had my uniform on.  It didn’t matter if it was BDUs, Class As, Bs, PTs, none of it made me feel anything other than frumpy.

Lately, I’ve admired the royals in their finery. Couldn’t help but be wowed by William in his Irish Guards wedding attire. Then there’s the bad boy Harry. Last week, during the jubilee celebrations, Harry was looking very military in his blue beret.

I’m fairly certain that a woman in uniform does not have the same affect on those attracted to women as men in uniform do to those of us who are attracted to men.  Have I always been wrong about that?  Are women in uniform just as sexy as men in uniform?