Debra H. Goldstein's Blog, page 35

Guest Blogger Terry Shames: The One Thing That Defies Organization

Terry Shames

The One Thing That Defies Organization by Terry Shames

With the lead-up to publication of my debut novel, A KILLING AT COTTON HILL, came months of unaccustomed work preparing for marketing and promotion. I had heard how much time and effort it took, but I was unprepared for the fact that everything else pretty much came to a standstill. I plunged in with great enthusiasm—and with a wave “goodbye” to my usual, organized self.

The novel came out mid-July, and at some point I realized I had to tackle the chaos in my life. I bought a filing cabinet and instigated a filing system; read through several months of “I’ll get to it later” emails, flagging and filing them; and made a list of the blogs I’ve posted for the last year so I know who I blogged for, and when. So I have managed to whip my professional life into shape, but what about my home life?

I had managed to keep up pretty well, but recently I took on the big one: I dragged out all the picture albums, boxes of photos, and negatives (remember those?) from the cabinet where they seemed to have multiplied. I thought I would take everything to one of those places that scans pictures into digital format. Before that, though, I was determined to ruthlessly throw out all the duplicates and the photos that meant nothing to me. How many pictures of a hike my family took in Colorado when I was 16 did I really need?

Looking through the albums, my first thought was, “Who are these people?” There were pictures of people I haven’t seen in thirty years. I don’t remember where they went—or even their names! The best thing I can say is that they remind me of my past. Then there were countless photos of my son’s friends from childhood—kids I don’t remember or recognize. They are darling pictures, but I don’t know who they are!

And then I started wondering whom I was going to all this trouble for. My husband and I are busy and don’t sit around reminiscing over photo albums. My sister has plenty of pictures of her own to deal with. My son hasn’t a sentimental bone in his body. I can’t ever see him looking through these pictures and thinking fondly, “Oh, there’s my mom’s Aunt Lottie when she was in her 30s.” More likely, he’d say, “Who’s that?”

I have piles of pictures of me as a baby, and of my parents and their parents, taken when for some reason people thought it was better to take pictures of people standing far away. Half the time I can’t even see who is in the pictures. None of the people are famous, so it’s unlikely a future biographer will lament my profligate destruction of the pictures.

That’s not even to mention my husband’s family pictures. Removed from my mother-in-law’s apartment when she died a few years ago, the albums and loose pictures have stayed exactly where they were when they came into my house—in shopping bags in my husband’s study. Pictures of people I never knew.

So why do I keep all this stuff? All I know is that it makes me feel queasy to think of throwing them away. Do I worry that one of these days I’ll regret not having them? Do I imagine that one day I will want to pore over them? Who knows? I remember once going through a box of random photos with my grandmother. We ran across a photo of a man in a Civil War uniform. “Who is that?” I asked. My grandmother laughed, “I don’t know who it is. I don’t know why I have it.” And she tucked it back into the box.

I’d like to hear whether other people have the same impulse to keep all those pictures—and why?

Terry Shames grew up in Texas. She has abiding affection for the small town  where her grandparents lived,  the model for the fictional town of Jarrett Creek. A resident of Berkeley, California, Terry lives with her husband, two rowdy terriers and a semi-tolerant cat. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.

In A KILLING AT COTTON HILL: A Samuel Craddock Mystery, the chief of police of Jarrett Creek, Texas, doubles as the town drunk. So when Dora Lee Parjeter is murdered, her old friend and former police chief Samuel Craddock steps in to investigate. He discovers that a lot of people may have wanted Dora Lee dead—the conniving rascals on a neighboring farm, her estranged daughter and her surly live-in grandson. And then there’s the stranger Dora Lee claimed was spying on her. During the course of the investigation the human foibles of the small-town residents—their pettiness and generosity, their secret vices and true virtues—are revealed.

Her second Samuel Craddock novel, THE LAST DEATH OF JACK HARBIN will be out in January 2014. Find out more about Terry and her books at http://www.Terryshames.com.

Would We? Could We? by Debra H. Goldstein

Would We? Could We? by Debra H. Goldstein

Picture a group of women sitting around a fireplace celebrating a special event in their lives.  Good food, friends, sips of wine, and conversation that slips from the present into the past.  While most share memories of happy times, children’s antics, and first romances, at some point in the evening the stories begin to be tinged with sadness and frustration.

Patches of the group become silent – lost in individual thoughts of what might have been.  It doesn’t seem to matter if the thoughts center on marriage, children, friendship, or career.  The questions are the same.  “Would we?” “Could we?” “And why didn’t we?”

The answers are consistent, too.  Time pressures, immaturity, being pulled in too many directions, trying to please everyone, and ignorance that anything was amiss or could be better are all excuses offered.

Awareness comes slowly.  We realize we tried.  The thought that none of us may have done it perfectly but we acted in the only way we knew at those times warms us almost as much as the new bottle of wine we open and drink.  We raise our glasses in a toast:  “We would.  We could.  We did.”

 

Guest Blogger Judy Alter – Researching the Lowly Hot Dog

Judy Alter

Researching the Lowly Hot Dog by Judy Alter

We all do a lot of research on setting and other things to make our novels accurate. For the Kelly O’Connell series I studied Craftsman design and the Craftsman movement, because Kelly is a real estate agent who specializes in restoring the priceless Craftsman houses in her beloved Fairmount district in Fort Worth, Texas.

But one of the most fun pieces of research I did was for the fourth and most recent Kelly O’Connell Mystery, Danger Comes Home. I decided one of the characters as going to open an upscale hot dog café. Then I began to research the kinds of hot dogs available and the number of restaurants devoted solely or primarily to hot dogs. To my amazement, they are all over the country. The majority are clustered throughout the Midwest, from Wisconsin and Michigan clear down to the South and Texas, with just a smattering on the West Coast and more on the East Coast. You can see an overall map and search by state at http://www.hot-dog.org/ht/d/sp/i/51784/pid/51784. Click on any pin and you can read all about that restaurant, from location to menu.  So, reassured that the idea wasn’t bizarre, I proceeded.

Next came the toppings. I remember a walk-up stand in Santa Fe called, I think, The Chicago Dog. So I began there. A Chicago dog is all beef on a poppy seed bun and topped with yellow mustard, chopped white onion, sweet pickle relish, a dill pickle spear, tomato slices, and pickled pepper. A colorful mouthful of flavors. The traditional Coney Island dog is again all beef, topped with chili without beans, chopped white onions, and mustard. A plain old chili dog may have chili and cheddar (my preference). Don’t confuse the two and don’t associate the Coney dog with Coney Island—it began in Michigan.

But then there are hot dogs called frank and beans, the dog nestled in a bun with a slice of bacon and topped with warm baked beans (no, you Texans, not pintos but “northern beans”) , diced onion, and mustard (in hot dog lingo mustard is always yellow salad mustard, not the fancy stuff like whole grain or Dijon). And then there’s the Reuben dog—you guessed it! Sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and a Thousand Island-type dressing (I make my own Thousand Island and it’s so good—also easy). Somewhere I read about a Banh mi dog, with a topping of brown sugar dissolved in white vinegar with shredded carrots that have marinated in the mixture. Top the dog with mayo, thinly sliced cucumber and jalapeno, the carrots, and cilantro.

Want to give your hot dog a Mexican flair? Char some corn in a skillet, add vegetable oil and thinly sliced scallions (white part only), season with salt and pepper. Meanwhile mix mayonnaise with lime juice. Top the dog with the corn mixture, the lime mayonnaise, crumbled feta, and the sliced scallion greens Sprinkle with chili power. A Hawaiian dog has grilled pineapple wedges and red onion rounds, chopped and seasoned with sugar, salt and cayenne. What to call my café? I ran a contest, and some wonderful names were suggested: Hot Diggety Dog, Dogs of Distinction, Frankly Wienerful, Decadent Dog, Haute Dogs, The Finer Frank, and Hot Dog Heaven, among others. The winner, chosen by my daughter, is Bun Appetit!

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Judy Alter’s newest Kelly O’Connell Mystery, Danger Comes Home, launched July 22 in e-book form with print to follow. Others in the series are Skeleton in a Dead Space, No Neighborhood for Old Women, and Trouble in a Big Box. Her second mystery series, Blue Plate Café Mysteries, launched in February with Murder at the Blue Plate Café.

In Danger Comes Home, Kelly O’Connell can’t sit idly by while her world is shattering. Daughter Maggie is hiding a runaway classmate; protégé Joe Mendez seems to be hanging out again with his former gang friends and ignoring his lovely wife, Theresa; drug dealers have moved into her beloved Fairmount neighborhood. And amidst all this, reclusive former diva Lorna McDavid expects Kelly to do her grocery shopping. In spite of Mike’s warnings, Kelly is determined to save the runaway girl and her abused mother and find out what’s troubling Joe, even when those things lead back to the drug dealers. Before all the tangles in the neighborhood are untangled, Kelly finds herself wondering who to trust, facing drug dealers, and seeing more of death than she wants. But she also tests upscale hot dog recipes and finds a soft side to the imperious recluse, Lorna McDavid. It’s a wild ride, but she manages, always, to protect her daughters and keep Mike from worrying about her—at least not too much.

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An award-winning novelist, Judy Alter is the author of four books in the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries series: Skeleton in a Dead Space, No Neighborhood for Old Women, Trouble in a Big Box, and Danger Comes Home. She is also the author Murder at the Blue Plate Café, first in a new series.

Her work has been recognized with awards from the Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame. She has been honored with the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement by WWA and inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.

Judy is retired as director of TCU Press and the mother of four grown children and the grandmother of seven. She and her dog live in Fort Worth, Texas.

BSP AND BEING A WRITER by Debra H. Goldstein

BSP AND BEING A WRITER by Debra H. Goldstein

Creativity, diligence, networking, engaging in BSP, and a lot of luck characterize most successful writers.  Although a writer can’t predict luck, the other factors are all within a writer’s control.

Every story, poem, or novel begins with an idea.  The key is whether the writer has the work ethic to take imagination, produce a work product and then rewrite it until it is polished.  Many would-be writers talk a good game, but don’t follow through.  There are a million excuses to avoid writing.  Some of mine include: I’m preparing things for my daughter’s wedding; we’re traveling because of family events; I’m trying to add exercise into my life and the classes interrupt my writing schedule; I went to lunch at 11:30 and we had so much fun it was 2:30 before I left the restaurant to do my other errands; or I just don’t feel creative today.  (Other than the dog ate my notebook, what are some of your excuses???)

Although writing is a solitary activity, being known helps one’s writing be read.  J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series proved this adage with the dismal sales of her new crime novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling.  Although reviews were positive for the book, it only sold about 500 copies when people believed it to be written by a no name new author.  Once her true identity was revealed, the book became a best seller.  Most of us will never have the recognition of J.K. Rowling, but entering contests, networking with readers/fans, attending conferences, and being out there with social media is the only way to enhance sales and help a writer gain public credibility.  Many of us are comfortable networking with other people, but the big question is why is engaging in BSP (Blatant Self Promotion) so difficult?

Maybe the problem with BSP is that all of us are taught as children to be modest.  We are encouraged to achieve goals and win awards, but we are called out if we rub other people’s noses in our success.  For the past week, I have been flying high because the first chapter of my work in progress, Should Have Played Poker:  a Mah Jongg Murder Mystery, received a 2013 Alabama Writers Conclave First Chapter Award, but other than an “I’m dancing on the table” posting on Facebook the night of the award, I wasn’t initially able to bring myself to fully publicize it.  My friends thought me crazy.  It was only after one wanted to write a press release, another friend put it on her Facebook and twitter pages, and one sent it out as an e-mail to a group of our friends, that I finally got around to adding the news to my website, linked in information, and thought about addressing it in this week’s blog.  I’m working on being more out there but I’m curious how do you feel about broadcasting this type of information about yourselves? Does it come easy or as most writers, has BSP required you to re-educate yourself to behave in a manner that isn’t innate?

 

Guest Blogger Anne McGee: Writing Creepy Mysteries for Children – Anne McGee’s Backstory

Writing Creepy Mysteries for Children – Anne McGee’s Backstory by Anne  McGee

I felt so excited when Debra asked me to write an article for her blog. Then I went blank, and for a writer, that’s a really, really nasty feeling. Undaunted, I went for a walk, played some music, nibbled on some cashews, and stared out the window. Then it came to me! I would write the article tomorrow when my mind would be in a much more creative space. By then, ideas would come flowing in at jet speed, right? Wrong. SIGH . . . I had to put BIC (butt in chair) and get on with it.

So, let me tell you a little bit about myself, and how writing creepy, mystery stories for children began. I grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. As a young child I lived in a two-storied old house that had a kitchen and a living room downstairs, and six bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs. Only one of the bedrooms and the bathroom had electric light so candlesticks had to be used for the other five rooms. My fears of that gloomy old house grew as I did, and at night after going to bed I would pull the covers over my head so I could drown out the house’s creaks and groans, and whistle and moans of wind through the walls. Not to mention the strange shuffling sounds in the hallway that I just knew were ghosts coming to get me.

Somewhere around ten years of age, I started fantasizing that perhaps as the house settled down for the night, it was trying to tell me stories––stories of what it had seen and heard over the years. I was astounded at such an idea and immediately my imagination began to run wild. A thumping sound on the stairs became a tiger and his Prince escaping from an invading army; the whistle through the walls was a girl singing on a ship sailing off to a magical land. There was no end to the ideas triggered in my mind by believing that the house was telling me its stories. And from that time on, I not only stopped fearing where I lived, but also grew to be quite fascinated with other old houses, knowing that they, too, held stories in their walls just waiting to be heard.

My favorite writer as a child was the English author Enid Blyton. I loved her Secret Seven and Famous Five mystery books, and I became an avid follower of those characters. I do believe it was this English writer that influenced me to eventually pen my first children’s novel, The Mystery at Marlatt Manor. At the time it was only intended to be a stand-alone story. I had no idea it would become so popular that everyone would want to read more about the individuals who lived in the small Virginia town of Cedar Creek that I had created. Based on this feedback and encouraged by my publisher, I began a second book, The Mystery of the Missing Ming and found it a lot of fun taking those same characters on yet another adventure. The Ming story will be released in August, and then I will finish the third book in the series. When I wrote the first book, I indicated that my main protagonist was a young girl who reluctantly discovers she has psychic abilities, so I have continued this paranormal slant in each of the other books, showing how this gift helps her solve the mysteries she encounters.

Although I love to write mysteries, I also like to write in other genres. Last year my historical fictional YA novel, Anni’s Attic was released by Vendera Publishing. The story took me about 15 years to complete, but it was a definite labor of love. The idea first came about when my friend and I began remembering having lived as cousins during the Civil War. Even though my memories of that life seemed vivid and clear, I still did extensive research for that time period. I flew to Georgia where the story takes place, went on plantation tours, and visited many Civil War historical places, such as cemeteries, and old homes (how could I miss not seeing an old home?). As with my mystery story, everyone is now asking when the sequel to Anni’s Attic is coming out! Something I hadn’t planned on at all!

One thing I have come to understand from the response received from readers, is that the possibility for sequels to your stories always exists, and it is important right from the start to create a good Bible of all your characters, their traits, their likes and dislikes, what happens to them, etc. In fact it’s critical you get everything correct with continuing characters because your readers will catch you out on even the smallest detail. Trust me, they forget nothing.

Thank you for reading this article. It’s been fun spending time with Debra’s readers. Do visit me on my web site when you have time.

www.annemcgee.com     www.facebook.com/anne.l.mcgee.7

www.twitter.com/AnneMcGee              www.annemcgee.com/wordpress/

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Anne McGee

Anne Loader McGee is a Graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature, and is a long-standing member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI). She has studied writing at the American Film Institute and the University of California and Los Angeles (UCLA).  Anne has published numerous articles for both children and adults, and her stories have appeared in The Kids’ Reading Room of the Los Angeles Times. She is also the co-author of the Sing Out Loud series of singing books for children.

Her first novel, The Mystery at Marlatt Manor (http://amzn.to/K92Ir8    Trailer: http://bit.ly/K966Cz ), became a finalist in the 2009 Bloom Awards while her latest publication, Anni’s Attic (http://amzn.to/10agVmh), won the Young People’s Division of the International Peace Award.  Anne is originally from New Zealand and now makes her home in Southern California. You can visit her online at www.annemcgee.com for more information.

It’s Not Where You Start (It’s Where You Finish) by Debra H. Goldstein

It’s Not Where You Start (It’s Where You Finish) by Debra H. Goldstein

Recently, I listened to Barbara Cook’s rendition of the Cy Coleman and Dorthy Field’s signature song “It’s Not Where You Start, It’s Where You Finish” from 1973’s Broadway show, Seesaw. Forty years after the song debuted, the words remain true.

Whether one is writing a novel, short story, or poem, the process is the same. “It’s not how you go, it’s how you land.” Writing requires coming up with an idea, getting it down on paper, rewriting, possibly tossing out one’s original thoughts, and writing the piece again and again until the words flow. It often is a solitary process, but the sisterhood of writers have the ability to inspire and help each other.

The reality is “If you’re going to last, you can’t make it fast,…Nobody starts a winner, give me a slow beginner.” At Malice Domestic, I had the privilege of riding an elevator with Carolyn Hart. I’m a pretty confident person, but as the elevator went up, I stumbled over my words telling “Ms. Hart” how much I enjoy her books. During the conference, where she was honored with the Amelia Award, I heard how her writing career didn’t take off. Her first few books either were not published or failed to sell well, but she kept writing. When she became an overnight success, it had been a long night. Our paths crossed a number of times during the conference and at the Sisters in Crime breakfast. Ironically, we were in the elevator together again leaving the conference. This time, I congratulated “Carolyn” on her award and we actually laughed about spending the conference in the elevator.

Thinking back on the difference in my behavior during our elevator rides, I realize that the change in my attitude came from being impressed with her writing abilities and with her persistence and willingness to help other writers. Even during the hour interview tied to her award at Malice, she took the time to give a new writer a shout-out. She was the only one to do so. It takes a big person to share one’s limelight with others. Her work ethic and her generosity illustrate the premise that “Your final return will not diminish/And you can be the cream of the crop/It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish/And you’re gonna finish on top.”

Guest Blogger Michele Drier: The New? Maybe not.

The New? Maybe not.  by Michele Drier

Long ago, as the earth was cooling, people used odd machines called “typewriters” to compose notes to one another.

These machines were developed after the discovery of electricity, but they were powered by a different source, human fingers. And they were called “manual” because of this.

They were difficult to use, these first “manual” typewriters. They consisted of a series of letters at the end of long rods, attached to a board, also with letters. When a finger hit a letter on the “keyboard”, the rod that held that letter would move and imprint the letter on a piece of paper, using an inked ribbon.

This was a huge step up from clay tablets, stone carving or foul fowl feathers, and the new technology was embraced by most people.

Not by the folks who wrote the stories you found in your daily newspaper, though.

These guys were lazy, or just conserving energy, so when they typed something other than their story, they used shortcuts.

“Manual” typewriters took a lot of pressure to pound the “keys” on the “keyboard” for that the impression to show up on the paper, so the first thing those guys eliminated was capital letters. To print a capital took an extra “keystroke”. The next thing those guys eliminated was a lot of punctuation. Again, an extra stroke.

Instead, they’d sling the carriage return and just start another paragraph.

So for a time everybody wrote like e.e.cummings.

But that wasn’t enough. It still took extra time to write notes or instructions to the men who actually set the type, using a machine adapted from a typewriter called a “linotype.” This machine produced a line of type (letters) molded from the pot of hot, liquid lead at the side of the machine.

Not incidentally, the molten lead floated around in the air and coated everything, including the coffee we drank.

The number of keystrokes was getting trimmed, but it still took more time than was warranted on composing messages to friends or other useless drivel, like notes from your interview, so abbreviations evolved.

thnx

c u

u r a pal

luv

And it wasn’t enough to use abbrv., you could also cut whole words out. For instance, if you wanted to say, “I’d appreciate it if you would respond to my question,” you could say “gimme yes or no.”

Invariably, the pronouns were dropped also. “hope all is well,” “coming over?”

As things go, this technology went the way of swan feathers, until today lots of people correspond using only their thumbs and a string of seemingly miscellaneous letters. OMG, BFF, ROTHWL, LOL, IMHO.

Gibberish? I think not. Just the evolving result of those memos and notes we typed to each other. I seldom use caps even today when I correspond, now by email, with friends still in the business.

When you write email, do you write in complete sentences and use capitals?

I’m tickled to think that the texters believe they’ve discovered something new.

We got there first.

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When the earth was cooling, Michele Drier was a staff writer at the San Jose Mercury-News and caught the tail end of manual typewriters and hot lead. The lead is gone but the caps never came back.

Her first Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mystery, Edited for Death, set at a daily newspaper, was well-reviewed including the Midwest Book Review which called it “Riveting and much recommended.” The second mystery, Labeled for Death, due out in summer 2013, looks at the California wine industry.  Michele is also the author of the five-volume Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, paranormal romances set in the field of international celebrity gossip journalism.

Contact Michelle via her website: http://www.micheledrier.com or facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/AuthorMicheleDrier or her Amazon author page, http://www.amazon.com/Michele-Drier/e/B005D2YC8G/

Final Beginnings – How I Met Your Mother and My Life

Author Debra H. Goldstein

Final Beginnings – How I Met Your Mother and My Life

by Debra H. Goldstein

Last night, in the final minute of its eighth season, How I Met Your Mother’s audience met the mother. Ted, the main character, didn’t meet her, but in that moment, we knew that the stage was set for an entirely new ninth season for all of the characters — a season of exploration, change, happenstance, dismay and growth. In fact, the showrunners have said that when the show goes into syndication, one will always be able to immediately distinguish season one to eight reruns from ninth season episodes.

As a child of the television era (Little Ricky was born a few months before me), I often associate historical events or moments in my life with things I saw on television. I remember being ten and seeing the replay of John F. Kennedy’s assassination on television in my classroom and then going to chair a club meeting of a club that never met again because our associated memories of that day were too sad; I recall being involved in the writing and production of my first play in a children’s theater group when we stopped rehearsing long enough to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon; I understood how ravaging AIDS was going to be when I saw the physical contrast in the Rock Hudson who appeared in his last television appearance with Doris Day from the finely chiseled features that caught my eye in McMillan and Wife and reruns of one of my all time favorite movies, Giant.

Ted and his HIMYM friends are all entering new phases in their lives, as am I. Effective June 1, 2013, I will step down from the bench after twenty-three years. I will be wrapping up a legal career that has spanned more than thirty-five years. When I announced six months ago the date I would no longer schedule hearings so I could bring proper closure to my time on the bench, my colleagues were in shock. One doesn’t give up a lifetime position at my age. They pointed out that our last judges to retire were 88, 86 and 79. I countered with two facts – that because I was appointed when I was more than twenty years under the average age, I already have served more time on the bench than all but one of them and that if I am lucky, I can have a second career that rivals the longevity of my first.

In some ways, my legal career can be compared to the twists and turns of experiences I initially viewed on television. Music evolved for me from when I was first permitted by my parents to watch Dick Clark’s American Bandstand to when The Beatles made their American appearance on Ed Sullivan. My love for tight comical writing and timing can be traced to the impact shows featuring Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Saturday Night Live and most recently the casts of The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother have had on me. The remembrance of current events through stand-alone scripts or as worked into period pieces like MadMen have made me think of times and events I long thought forgotten.

I have been lucky as a lawyer to have experienced many firsts – coming through school at a time when there were few women, opting to practice international tax law and then labor law when those were not areas women went into (the interviews for those jobs are the stuff for another blog), being the first woman in the Birmingham, Alabama Office of the Solicitor for the Department of Labor, trying an equal pay case of first impression, Marshall vs. Georgia Southwestern, when I was twenty-five, receiving a merit appointment as a federal Administrative Law Judge when I was thirty-six and being sworn in at thirty-seven when the average age was fifty-eight (that was the year, when through the merit appointment system the presence of women in the 1400+ federal Administrative Law Judges was doubled from the thirteen originally grandmothered in when their jobs were elevated to the ALJ level). On a personal note, I am lucky to have grown up in a home that fell somewhere between Leave it to Beaver, Modern Family, The Middle, Family, Dick Van Dyke, The Cosby Show and The Jetsons. After almost thirty years as a wife, step-mother, mother of twins and associated community volunteer, Girl Scout leader, PTA and soccer mom, I leave it to my family to decide which TV shows each felt they lived in with me.

Like Ted, the coming season of my life will introduce me to new people and challenges. My goal is to give myself the opportunity to return to my first love fulltime. Whether a blog, the new book I just finished and am now shopping, short stories or essays, I am permitting myself to take the professional plunge as a writer. Spending time with friends and family, exercising, and doing a few crazy things like taking a quilting class also are on my bucket list. We know from the prologue of HIMYM shows, that Ted meets the right woman, falls in love, marries, and has two children – the success he dreamed of from the pilot episode. I don’t know if my show will have the same happy ending, but tune in and we’ll watch it together.

 

Guest Blogger – Victoria Weisfeld – Follow that Thread!

 

Victoria Weisfeld
Author

Follow That Thread!  

by Victoria Weisfeld

“Out the back door and under the big ash was a picnic table . . . I lay down on it for nearly two weeks, staring up into branches and leaves, fighting fear and panic, because I had no idea how to begin a piece of writing.” These first words from John McPhee’s essay on narrative structure, published in the January 14, 2013, issue of The New Yorker resonate with every writer who’s faced the bleak whiteness of a blank computer screen.

McPhee’s piece is about writing narrative non-fiction. Long-form non-fiction—the sort we see in high-quality magazines—bears striking similarities to fiction itself. It tells a story, it has a satisfying arc, it nails interesting characters, there’s theme and incident and power in the telling. John McPhee is a master of the form. His Coming into the Country was part of my preparation for writing a short story set in Alaska. And his long essays on places and people and happenings in New Jersey, where I live, add a richness to my home ground.

Almost as if he expects us fiction-writers to follow behind him, listening to his exploration of structure with our differently tuned ears, he says, “A compelling structure in nonfiction can have an attracting effect analogous to a story line in fiction.”

Where does your story line, your narrative thread, begin? It might not begin as far back as David Copperfield’s opening chapter, “I Am Born,” but its rightful beginning might be as the story’s forces are gathering and rumbling like distant thunderheads.

Or does it begin with the illuminating stroke that is the story’s precipitating event? I often start writing in the moment when the precipitating action is under way, a spot my writing coach calls “pot already boiling.” This is different from what I like to read. I enjoy easing into the action with “it was the best of times; it was the worst of times” like Dickens sets the stage for A Tale of Two Cities, which he follows up with an tremendously out-of-fashion discourse on roadway hazards encountered by the Dover mail. But, in writing, I plunge in. My first suspense novel opens with the heroine trying to escape from a stranger who she thinks is pursuing her and means to hurt her. He is, and he does. The one I’m working on now starts with the hero at a testimonial dinner, biding his time until he can slip away to visit his mistress. In paragraph two, he arrives at her apartment and finds her sprawled on a maroon velvet sofa, dead from a gunshot wound. Pot already boiling.

Or does it start at the very end so that the whole work is an extended reminiscence? This approach is perfectly captured by the title Elizabeth George uses for her harrowing novel about impoverished London immigrants: What Came Before He Shot Her. Right in the title, she gives you the punch line.

With respect to the essay that led McPhee to stare at the leaves, he says, “I had never tried to put so many different components—characters, descriptions, dialogue, narrative, set pieces, humor, history, science, and so forth—into a single package.” When we sit down to write or plan our next novel, we are in much the same position. We have the germ of an idea, possible plot points, a couple of characters who may be new or familiar, some loosely thought-out scenes. How do we assemble them? If we’re mystery writers, we also will eventually have to work in clues, red herrings, suspects, and more than a dram of well researched plausibility. We have enough “components,” as McPhee called them, to drive us crazy.

The easiest and most-often-chosen path for a story is strict chronology with a little backstory artfully thrown in to answer the question “what just happened?” Mysteries offer perfect opportunities for marshalling the evidence of the past: “At last Aunt Janet’s long-ago remark began to make sense . . .” Now there is context for Aunt Janet’s prescient observation. Dropping in backstory bits are little backward loops in our narrative thread that don’t divert it from its essential forward motion.

Sometime, though, we want a different, we hope more effective structure to highlight our themes, or even to create the more intense drama. McPhee describes a number of alternative paths. A key initial scene might be followed by a long flashback to the beginning that makes its way back to the first scene—“now I understand!”—passes it, and continues on to the end. An initial scene may be followed by a giant leap forward in time, and the unraveling of those future events finally illuminate the beginning.

More complex looping structures reinforce and build the resonance of the writer’s theme over time. This last approach might be adapted to the story of a woman who keeps meeting the same wrong kind of man, caught in a destructive emotional groove that keeps replaying in her life—Groundhog Day without the happy ending.

By visualizing your narrative thread as a continuous forward unreeling, despite such loops, scenes that don’t contribute become more apparent. In the structure you’re creating, you’ve lost the thread. People who write by tightly plotting their stories before they start out—essentially storyboarding them—probably find it easier to identify superfluous scenes and keep what stays in the best order. More organic writers, like me, need to examine retrospectively whether the thread of our story has frayed or become hopelessly tangled.

If starting and sequencing the elements in your writing are hard, so is making sure you end where you should. Originally, my suspense novel ended in a happy, romantic place. Moonlight, hand-holding, uncertainty. I liked it. But it wasn’t strong enough. Eventually I added a new last chapter that put my character firmly in charge of her own fate, the undisputed hero in her own story.

Adding a bit is sometimes necessary; subtracting can be just as necessary, but harder. McPhee advises, “If you have come to your planned ending and it doesn’t seem to be working, run your eye up the page and the page before that.” (Fiction writers should perhaps substitute “scene” for “page.”) He says you may find “you were finished before you thought you were.”

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Vicki Weisfeld writes mysteries and suspense and has several published short stories to her credit, including two published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. She’s currently in search of an agent for a completed suspense novel featuring an American travel writer whose assignments—and her own overactive curiosity—regularly lead her into trouble. She has a journalism degree from the University of Michigan, currently lives in Princeton, N.J., and is a member of Sisters in Crime. She works out her writing frustrations by dancing flamenco and simmers down with yoga. What she’s reading, writing, and thinking about, including news items that beg to be woven into stories, can be found on her website: http://www.vweisfeld.com.

Guest Blogger: Kaye George – Writing What I Know

 

Author Kaye George

Writing What I Know – by Kaye George

Writers are told to “write what we know,” right? This poses a problem for mystery writers because most of us haven’t killed anyone, or even been shot. My life contains so little violence, it’s practically G-rated. So mystery writers soldier on, imaging people shot, strangled, poisoned, and bludgeoned all over the place. Some of us enroll in Citizen Police Academies. I went through one in Austin, TX, and gained an enormous amount of knowledge from it.

But, as far as writing what I know, that’s how I came to create EINE KLEINE MURDER. I’ve played violin since I was 10. I’ll leave you to wonder how years that adds up to. I started piano at age 5 and still noodle away at that occasionally. I even pretend to sing. All that is to say that I have a background in music, mostly classical music. I love composing, which I started doing in high school. I didn’t get too far in taking music theory classes, though, since that wasn’t my major in college and, after freshman year, I dropped out of the Northwestern Orchestra due to time constraints. However, when I joined a string quartet in Dallas called Allegro Strings, we sometimes found ourselves wanting to play something that hadn’t been arranged for a string quartet. I seem to naturally think in four-part harmony, having played in quartets since junior high school, and also having sung in church choirs the same amount of time. I loved arranging for our quartet!

Fast forward a few years, after eons of frustrating short story submissions and rejections, to the point where I decided to take up novel writing. Since my favorite reading was mystery, I already knew the form and the conventions and I gravitated to the genre. The first mystery I wrote that isn’t forever shoved into the back of a drawer, was SONG OF DEATH. This is the novel that eventually became, after publication of several other mysteries, EINE KLEINE MURDER, and has been picked up by Barking Rain Press, much to my overflowing joy.

I have a passion for classical music and hope I can convey that to the reader. I think a lot of people are afraid of classical, but only because they don’t know much about it. But it’s like art: you know what you like. You don’t have to know sonata trio form, or what allargando means. You just have to listen, accept and reject. You’ll know what you like when you hear it.

One of my favorite symphony goers was a guy who worked with my husband a few years ago. He loved going to the symphony, but knew absolutely nothing about music. He asked me what those funny long wooden things were (bassoons), why we shouldn’t clap every time they stopped playing (because you don’t clap between movements, just at the end of the whole piece) and other questions that made me chuckle. But he loved hearing the orchestra because he lived for the moments when all the strings were playing loudly. That’s what he liked and he knew he liked it. And I liked that about him!

I’d sincerely like to know if anyone learns anything about music from reading my mystery, although learning about music isn’t required! I’d also like to know if anyone completely unfamiliar with classical music gets enjoyment from the book. After all, there are deaths–and mystery!

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Kaye George is a short story writer and novelist who has been nominated for Agatha awards twice. She is the author of four mystery series: the Imogene Duckworthy humorous Texas series, the Cressa Carraway musical mystery series, the FAT CAT cozy series, and The People of the Wind Neanderthal series. EINE KLEINE MURDER, the first Cressa Carraway novel debuts in April from Barking Rain Press. DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE, the first Neanderthal book, will be published later this year by Untreed Reads. The first FAT CAT book, from Berkley Prime Crime, will appear in 2014.

Her short stories can be found in her collection, A PATCHWORK OF STORIES, as well as in several anthologies, various online and print magazines. She reviews for “Suspense Magazine”, writes for several newsletters and blogs, and gives workshops on short story writing and promotion. Kaye is agented by Kim Lionetti at BookEnds Literary and lives in Knoxville, TN. Homepage: http://kayegeorge.com/

Kaye George, Guppy president, two-time Agatha Nominee/

Imogene Duckworthy Mystery series/

EINE KLEINE MURDER, April 2013/

FAT CAT cozy series, writing as Janet Cantrell, coming 2014/

DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE, coming soon from Untreed Reads/

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