Meg Perry's Blog, page 32

Stolen medieval manuscripts lead to murder

Researched to Death is available! http://goo.gl/BMAz8T

“Was it National Old Boyfriends Week, and I’d missed the memo?” 

Librarian Jamie Brodie is looking forward to a week of vacation in Oxford, England, his first trip back in seven years. Before he’s even packed, though, a couple of complications arise. 

The first complication is Jamie’s ex, Ethan Williams, who shows up at Jamie’s office with his new boyfriend and a request. Ethan’s going to Oxford too, and he needs Jamie’s help to find a rare 15th century book in the Bodleian Library. When Jamie tells his boyfriend Pete that he and Ethan will be in Oxford at the same time, Pete doesn’t react well. To say the least. 

The second complication is Pete’s ex, Luke Brenner, who shows up at Pete and Jamie’s house. He lets Jamie know that he’s in town to get Pete back – but Pete doesn’t think Luke will try anything. 

He’s proven spectacularly wrong, in one horrible moment. 

Jamie leaves for Oxford, not sure where he stands with Pete, not looking forward to seeing Ethan. When he requests the book that Ethan needs, he learns that it’s been missing for three weeks – and the man who likely stole it is dead. 

Then two more men die, and Ethan goes missing as well. Is he in danger? Or is he a killer? And what could be in an obscure medieval manuscript that’s worth killing for?

Editing

I’ve been doing the final edits on Researched to Death, which will be published by the end of the week. Editing is tedious! It takes as much time as writing does.
I’m lucky to have a good editor. My writing partner is a writing specialist in our college writing center, and he catches all the misplaced and missing commas that I never would. I tend to use commas as I would in speaking, wherever there’s a natural break in the sentence. For writing purposes that placement isn’t always correct. I need to brush up on the rules but that will have to wait until summer when I have more leisure time.
Another thing I do is use the words “really” and “just” waaaaaay too often. I spent a chunk of time yesterday and this morning using the “Find” tool in Word to check all my uses of “really” and “just.” I was able to remove a lot of them. Sometimes there’s no substitute, sometimes (especially with “just”) it expresses exactly what I wanted it to. But most of the time, the sentence stands just fine (ha! see what I did there?) without it.
Editing is one of the tasks that makes me realize how easily writing could be a full-time job.

The cover for Researched to Death

Here ’tis! Once again, Stephanie from October Design Co. has done a great job.

Coming by January 31.

What’s Jamie Brodie up to?

I didn’t blog over the holidays, but I have been writing and editing! Every day. My daily writing has (mostly) been scenes for Stacked to Death, and I’ve been editing Researched to Death and Encountered to Death. Researched to Death is very close to being ready for publication. I’m contacting my cover artist today.

One of my friends gave me a very useful Christmas gift – a Thesaurus of Worn-Out Words and Phrases. It’s great. So many of the metaphors that we use in our daily conversations are worn-out. I went all the way back through Researched to Death, all 59,000 words, and found and took out as many as I could. I don’t know if anyone will notice, but I hope it makes my writing better.

Here’s the current sequence/schedule:

Researched to Death: Jamie’s ex Ethan and Pete’s ex Luke both show up and complicate the relationship, while Jamie goes back to Oxford, England for a week and gets embroiled in an investigation involving a murder and a missing medieval book. Will be out by the end of January.

Encountered to Death: Jamie and Pete take a much-deserved vacation to see Pete’s brother in Alamogordo, New Mexico – where a body crashes through the skylight of Pete’s brother’s workplace. Who is he and where did he come from? And who wanted him dead? Should be out by the end of April, maybe sooner.

Psyched to Death: The assistant chair of Pete’s department, Elliott Conklin, is accused in the stabbing death of his boyfriend, Matt Bendel. Elliott swears his innocence but doesn’t have an alibi. The investigation goes nowhere until it suddenly collides with someone from Jamie’s past. Pete can’t concentrate on clearing Elliott because he’s taking over Elliott’s class – and he’s distracted by the arrival of his sister, whom he hasn’t seen in 24 years. Their mother is dying – and Pete has a decision to make. Will be out in the summer.

Stacked to Death: Someone is killing work-study students in the library stacks. At first Kevin is on the case, but after the third death, Homicide Special – LAPD’s special robbery-homicide unit from downtown – takes over. The papers call the killer the Stacks Strangler, and work-study students are fleeing UCLA’s libraries by the dozens. All three of the victims were from the same hometown, and the downtown detectives think there’s a connection – but Jamie isn’t so sure. Can he figure out what’s going on before another student gets killed? Will be out by the end of the year.

Filmed to Death: There’s a murder on set at the studio where Abby works, and her ex-husband is the main suspect. Abby doesn’t think he’s capable of murder, and there were plenty of people who had it in for the victim, an actor with a history of bad behavior. Tentatively scheduled for spring 2015.

Stoned to Death: Jamie and Pete take a dream vacation, four weeks in England and Scotland. While there they try to unravel the mystery of Pete’s great-great-grandfather, an archaeologist who disappeared with a priceless Stone Age artifact in the late 1800s. Tentatively scheduled for fall 2015.

I have my work cut out for me! But I’m still having so much fun writing these books.

It’s official!

It’s December 1st, NaNo is over, and I’m a winner again. Whew! I feel good about what I wrote. Psyched to Death is a strong book, I think. Of course, there will be edits and revisions, but I don’t think it will have to change enormously.

When will it be published? I’m not sure, but my best estimate is by next fall. Researched to Death is with the beta-readers now; I still intend for it to be out by the end of January. Encountered to Death is nearly finished, and should be out by the end of the spring. (I interpret time in terms of the academic year – so the end of spring means late April to early May.) Then Psyched to Death should be ready by the end of summer/beginning of fall (mid-August).

I’m starting to get ideas for Stacked to Death, which is the book that will follow Psyched to Death. It’s going to be a doozy.

Binge reading Robert Crais

Everyone once in a while, I’ll discover a new author, and love the first couple of books so much that I have to have them all. My most recent “discovery” is Robert Crais, a mystery writer recommended by my friend Marilyn. He’s a bestseller, and I’d seen his name before, but never read anything by him.

And now I can’t stop.

Most of his books revolve around a private investigator, Elvis Cole, and his partner and best friend, ex-cop Joe Pike. The books are tightly plotted and beautifully written. Elvis is funny, softhearted when he needs to be, and screws up sometimes. Joe is big, silent, and dangerous. Together they’re a great team.

Best of all, the books take place in LA. I’ll be referring back to them again and again, I’m sure, for atmosphere and street names for Jamie Brodie’s adventures.

If you like mysteries, and you haven’t tried Robert Crais yet, do. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

NaNo update

Whew! I was too busy writing to blog for the past three weeks. But, as you can see from the NaNo widget, I reached the 50,000 mark, and the first draft of the novel is done. It actually came in at about 46,000 words, but rather than try to stretch it, I decided to write a Christmas story that wraps up one of the threads in the novel. It won’t come out this Christmas, because it happens after Psyched to Death, so it can’t be published until after Psyched to Death is published. Probably next fall – then the Christmas story will be right on time.

Researched to Death will be the next book published, and I just sent it to the beta readers yesterday. We have nearly three weeks off over Christmas (the joys of working in academia) and they’ll have time to read it then. I hope to have it published by mid-January. I started looking at images for the cover today and think I found a couple of good ones – but I want to get some other opinions before I decide for certain.

Now that NaNo is over (for me), I’ll take a break for the rest of November and just READ. Other than, you know, maybe writing a short scene here or there for upcoming stories, if they come to me. This morning I wrote a scene which will appear in a much later book – a couple of Jamie’s old boyfriends meet, with interesting consequences. And no, I’m not going to say which two.

Once I get back from Thanksgiving vacation, I’ll pick up Encountered to Death and start working on it again.

Plotting on the fly

As you can see from the icon to the right, I’m chugging right along with my NaNoWriMo novel, Psyched to Death…in spite of changing the dead guy AND the killer along the way. Sometimes these things just have to be done. Today at lunch, talking with my writing partner, I worked out the ending. It’s always good to know how it’s going to wrap up.

We had a discussion in our writing group yesterday about plot vs. character, and how writing each of those works for each of us. We all write such different things – one writes superhero novels, one writes sci-fi screenplays, one writes literary fiction, one writes (and produces) short films that are slice-of-life stories, one writes erotic romance, one writes vampire stories – and then there’s me and my Jamie stories. Because we were talking about the subject, I did some thinking about the way I plot my stories.

I start with a concept. What would happen if Jamie stumbled across a case of murder connected with academic plagiarism? What would happen if a medieval book was stolen and a blackmailer was murdered? What would happen if the body of a dead student was found in Pete’s department? I usually write the first few scenes first. After that, I may jump around some. Sometimes I know that a particular thing has to happen at some point, and I’ll write that scene, but I’m not sure yet what happens just before that. I don’t always write in order, although I try to maintain some semblance of it.

I need to know pretty early on who the murderer is (or, in the case of Burdened to Death, why Mark killed himself), and what the motive is. That makes it much easier to figure out how to catch the murderer, and before that, how Jamie is going to figure out who the murderer is. It also makes it easier to choose red herrings.

I also need to know what aspect of Pete and Jamie’s relationship I’m going to explore. I don’t need to know how that will unfold, because – this may sound crazy – but Pete and Jamie will tell me that along the way.

I don’t outline. I do sometimes use timelines to figure out on which day something has to happen, especially if the action has to all take place in a week or some other short period of time. I’ve tried to outline, though, and the books usually change so much as I go that I don’t find an outline useful.

For the book I’m writing now, the victim has changed (not a student, but a professor’s boyfriend), the crime scene has changed (not the psych department, but the professor’s home), and the killer has changed (not saying any more about that!). Each time that happens it means that I have to go back through and make sure what I’ve already written matches the new victim/location/killer. Sometimes I’ve thrown out whole scenes. Fortunately I haven’t had to do that during Nano. That’s not good for the word count.

So that’s how I do it. But what works for me doesn’t work for everyone. Each of us sitting around our discussion table yesterday handles plot differently. I expect that there are as many ways to plot as there are writers.

Guest Post at Whitley Gray’s blog!

Whitley Gray is the very talented writer of the latest m/m book I read, High Concept, and she’ll be doing an author interview here before long. In the meantime, she has graciously allowed me to take over her blog for a day! Here’s the link: http://whitleygray.blogspot.com/2013/11/burdened-to-death-with-meg-perry.html

It’s an interview with Jamie. Enjoy!

Role playing a scene

I have a great writing partner. His name is Chris and he’s a writing specialist and the coordinator of our college writing center, which is conveniently downstairs from my office. We try to meet every day at lunch (schedules permitting) to talk about what we’re currently working on. Chris writes screenplays in the Star Trek universe, and since I’m a Trekker of sorts, I know enough about the species and backstory to help him. He’s read every word I’ve written so far, and knows Pete and Jamie as well as I do.

In Psyched to Death, the book I’m writing during NaNoWriMo (i.e. the book I’m writing NOW), Jamie’s boyfriend Pete has to make a decision. His evil mother has contacted his sister, asking all three children to come to her deathbed. She won’t say why. I knew I wanted this to happen, but I wasn’t sure whether I would have Pete go to see his mother or not. He has every reason not to – but I wasn’t sure what he would decide to do.

Until the other day.

We were talking about planning and plot for Psyched to Death, and I told Chris about Pete’s dilemma. He said, “Why don’t we role play it?” So we did. He played Pete, and I played the sister and then Jamie. We recorded it with his iPad, so I wouldn’t have to take notes while we were doing it or try to remember it to write down afterward.

And now I know what Pete will do. Because Jamie (me) asked Pete (Chris), and Pete answered. And it was the right answer.

It was so cool. And all I have to do is transcribe the recording, and I’ve got my scene.

So cool.