Meg Perry's Blog, page 33

Ready for NaNo!

The sixth book in the Jamie Brodie mystery series will be called Psyched to Death. It will begin when a dead body is found in Pete’s department – the psychology department – at Santa Monica College. This will also be the book where Pete’s evil mother will make a reappearance of sorts. 

I wasn’t planning to write this book next, but I realized about a week ago that it needed to be next (after Researched to Death, which is in edits now and will be published by the end of January, and Encountered to Death, which is mostly written but going on the back burner until December). So I signed up for NaNoWriMo with the intention of writing Psyched to Death. 

And here we are, on Halloween and NaNo Eve! I’m psyched! (Psyched! Get it? )

You can follow my progress via the widget in the right column.

Meanwhile, Burdened to Death and Cited to Death are both in Amazon’s top 100 in gay mystery! (Hoarded to Death was there yesterday. Those numbers change fast!) Woo hoo!

 

Burdened to Death

Writing sex scenes

When one of my beta readers came back with her comments on Burdened to Death, she finished by saying, “And I want a sex scene.”

I asked her why; she said, “You keep leading up to the guys having sex, but then you never go all the way. I want to see them go all the way.”

I laughed and said I’d consider it. I went back through Burdened to Death and couldn’t find a place where I thought it would fit, so I didn’t add one. I kept in mind what she’d said, though. Right now I’m writing Encountered to Death, the fifth book in the series, and I found a place where I thought a sex scene wouldn’t be too disruptive, wrote it, and sent it to my critique partner. He came back the next day shaking his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t work. There’s no reason for it to be there.”

And he was right. I’ve read the advice of several writers on sex scenes, and there is general agreement that it needs to do one of two things: either move the story forward somehow, or reveal something about the characters. This scene didn’t do either of those things. I said, “You’re right,” and took it out.

We all know that Pete and Jamie are having sex. They’ve been together for over a year, at the beginning of Encountered to Death, and they’ve had lots of sex. But – because of Pete’s history of sexual abuse, the different ways in which they have sex are limited. Pete will only have anal sex face to face, in the missionary position. How many ways are there to describe that?

Of course they are doing other things too – oral sex, frottage. But then I get into a new dilemma. From what I’ve read in m/m fiction, there are only so many ways to describe oral sex. To be honest, I’ve stopped reading m/m romance for the most part (with a few exceptions, see below) because it got to be repetitive. If I read about someone tonguing someone else’s slit one more time, I might just throw my Kindle across the room.

There are a few authors – Josh Lanyon immediately comes to mind – who write so well that the sex scenes are almost lyrical. I wish I could write that well, but I can’t, so I’m not going to try. I’d rather fade to black and let the readers use their imaginations than write a sex scene that is a mediocre repetition of the sex scenes of all the other m/m writers out there who don’t have that level of skill.

I’ve said from the beginning that my books are not m/m. They’re gay mystery. And gay mystery they shall remain.

It’s a full time job

Right now I’m sitting in the lobby of the Melia Hotel in Atlanta, getting ready to order lunch. I’ve been here for a couple of hours. I’m attending GRL this week and it doesn’t really start until tomorrow, so today is a free day. I’ve seen groups of people going off to do things in town, but it’s hard for me to spend a lot of time on my feet. So I am using this time productively, to get some writing done, in an atmosphere that is practically throbbing with creativity, with all these m/m romance writers here.

I’d love to know how many of these writers can do it full-time, and how many of them have to work at other jobs. The vast majority of them are women, and I’d bet that most of them have husbands that work. I’m sure that’s not true for all of them, and I bet some of them do work, although maybe not full time. At least not the more prolific ones.

I have learned that writing can definitely be a full-time job. If I had a job where I couldn’t do anything to support my writing, it would be difficult to get it all done. I’m lucky that I can do my research at work, and meet with my writing group at work, and have lunch every day with my critique partner to talk about ideas and such. And, when I’m at the reeference desk, I can often work on a scene or two. I’m getting paid to sit there and wait for questions, so I don’t feel guilty at all about doing some of my own work while I’m waiting.

But the research can take hours, sometimes, especially when I’m looking for locations with Google Maps or one of the other sites I use for that. I don’t know how many times I’ve referred to UCLA’s website to make sure that I get some detail about the university right. All of that takes time. And then there’s the writing, and the editing. I can absolutely see that all adding up to eight hours a day or more, especially when you include the self-promotion that has to be done if you’re going to make your living as a writer.

Would I do it full-time if I had the chance? Sure, if I was independently wealthy. But on second thought, maybe not. Writing is fun for me. Making a few bucks at it is nice, but I think if I had the pressure of supporting myself doing it, it would cease to be fun. Then it would be a chore, not something that I look forward to.

But if I could do it without the financial pressure? I’d have to think about it. It’s a solitary existence. I don’t know if I’d get the ideas that I do if I didn’t work. And I certainly wouldn’t have the support from my writing group, because that comes along with my work.

I think, if I had the choice, I wouldn’t change a thing.

NaNoWriMo 2013

I said I wasn’t going to do it…

Earlier this week I decided to go ahead and sign up for NaNo again. It worked so well last year for Researched to Death (which I hope to have out by the end of the year), and I want to get ahead again in the writing. I have the plot for the sixth book pretty much laid out in my head, so I thought I’d go ahead and get it down on “paper.”

The sixth book will be called Psyched to Death, and it’ll be a doozy. I already have the introduction scene written. Here it is:

Psyched to Death

 

“What the hell are you doing here?” My ex, Scott Deering, was standing in front of me, brandishing the bow of his cello like a sword. “And what the hell are you wearing?”

I looked down. I was seated on a folding chair, and I was wearing pajama pants and a UCLA t-shirt. I looked around me. I was on the Santa Monica Pier. It was a beautiful, warm evening. There were a couple dozen other people around me, all sitting in folding chairs, all clad in evening wear. In front of me, the entire Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra was tuning up.

I looked back at Scott. “We came to hear the concert.” I glanced to my right, where my current boyfriend, Pete Ferguson, was perusing the concert program. He was wearing pajamas too. “No one told us it was dressy.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He strode back to his seat in the second row of the cello section. The concertmaster walked out to applause, the orchestra finished tuning, and the conductor appeared. He bowed to the audience, stepped onto the podium, and picked up his baton. The first notes of Ravel’s “Bolero” wafted into the night.

I closed my eyes and smiled. This was why we were here. Ever since I’d first heard Bolero as a teenager on a school field trip, performed by the San Diego Symphony, I’d thought it was the sexiest piece of music ever. Being here was definitely worth the price of running into Scott.

About halfway through, Pete leaned over and put his hand on my leg. “This is making me so hot.”

I whispered back. “Me, too.” And it was. The building intensity of the music was having a definite effect on my anatomy. Pete’s hand, sliding gradually higher on my thigh, was creating havoc as well. At this rate, I’d be lucky to make it to the end of the piece.

I barely did. Pete and I jumped to our feet to join in the standing ovation at the end then he grabbed my hand. “Let’s go.” We ran for the public restrooms, plunged in, and slammed into the last stall. Pete shoved the bolt closed on the door and turned to me. I grabbed him and we dove in, literally. Kissing, hands roaming, we were well on our way to overload when someone started pounding on the door.

Pete groaned and pulled away from me. I grabbed at him. “No! They can wait!”

Pete muttered, “Shit,” and turned on the light.

Wait…what?

I opened my eyes. I was at home, in bed, not wearing pajamas, but definitely sporting a raging erection. And someone was definitely pounding on our front door.

Pete rolled out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and grabbed a bathrobe. I croaked, “What time is it?”

“Quarter of six.” Pete opened the door of the bedroom and went downstairs. I tried to remember what day it was. Oh yeah – Saturday. That’s why we’d been sleeping in.

I figured I’d better go see what was up. I put on a pair of jeans – a better disguise than sweatpants for my flagging but still obvious erection. I couldn’t find one of my own t-shirts, so I grabbed one of Pete’s and followed him downstairs, tugging the shirt over my head as I went.

Pete was standing in the living room, talking to a cop. He was a plainclothes guy, but I knew cops. Pete was an ex-cop. My brother Kevin was a cop. This guy was a cop.

The cop turned to me as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and held out his hand. “Detective Dennis Herold, Santa Monica PD.”

I shook his hand. “Jamie Brodie. What’s going on?”

Pete answered. “They found one of our students dead in the office of the psychology department.”

 

Burdened to Death is here!

Whew! Now available through Amazon for Kindle: http://goo.gl/jzJ3Ne

 

A phone call in the middle of the night is never good news. When Pete Ferguson’s phone rings, he learns that one of his childhood friends, Mark Jones, has committed suicide. Mark’s family is shocked, and wonders if Mark was abused by the same priest at whose hands Pete suffered. Pete and Mark’s family want answers, and they ask Jamie to find them. Pete is convinced the priest is connected to his friend’s suicide. Jamie isn’t so sure. When the evidence starts pulling them in different directions, will it tear them apart?

Hoarded to Death free for Kindle today

Happy autumn! Just a reminder – you can get Hoarded to Death, Jamie Brodie Mystery #2, free until midnight EDT tonight.

Hoarded to Death: Free for 24 hours!

On Sunday, 9/22, to celebrate the autumnal equinox (first day of fall), Hoarded to Death, Jamie Brodie Mystery #2, will be free for 24 hours – midnight to midnight. Here’s the link: http://goo.gl/OS97Ld

Enjoy!

Sneak Preview: Burdened to Death

I’m still on pace for a mid-October publication date for Burdened to Death, Jamie Brodie Mystery #3. To whet your appetite, here’s a sneak preview. Enjoy!

 

Sunday March 17

A phone call in the middle of the night is never good news.

Technically, it wasn’t the middle of the night. It was 5:00 am. But it was Sunday. My boyfriend Pete and I had hiked all day Saturday in Topanga Canyon with my brother Kevin and his girlfriend Abby. We’d covered a lot of territory and we’d been bushed when we got home. So the plan had been to sleep in this morning.

So much for that.

It was Pete’s phone. He disentangled himself from me and the sheets and snagged it off the bedside table. “H’lo.” I could only hear his side of the conversation.

“Kev. What the hell.”

“What?” He sat up quickly, pulling the comforter off of me. I grunted and tugged at it.

“What’s the guy’s name?”

I heard Pete gasp. “Yeah, I know him. He was a friend of ours in Barstow.” Barstow. Pete’s hometown until he was fourteen. A place of excruciating memories.

“Um – yeah, I could do that. When?”

“Oh. Yeah, okay. Where are you?”

Whatever Kevin said made Pete turn and look at me. “Really. Okay. We’ll be there in a bit.” He said goodbye and hung up then just sat there, phone dangling from his hand, staring at the opposite wall.

I managed to roll over and switched on the bedside lamp. “What’s up?”

“Kevin got called out on a body and he needs me to identify it.”

“Why you?”

“The guy had one of my cards in his pocket. His name is Mark Jones.”

“Mmph. Where are we going?”

“Kevin said the building is where your old boyfriend Eric lived.”

“Ah.” Eric was an LA County paramedic that I’d dated nearly three years ago. He lived in an apartment complex in Westwood. “It’s on Midvale.”

“Okay.” Pete gave the comforter a final shove to the foot of the bed. “Gotta get dressed and get over there.”

At 5:30 am on Sunday, there was very little traffic between our townhouse in Santa Monica and the apartment complex. Once we were underway I asked, “So you knew this guy in Barstow?”

“Yeah. He was a year ahead of me in school, right between Steve and me. He lived down the street. He was the only person I stayed in touch with after we moved to my dad’s. Then we went to UCLA at the same time.”

“How’d he get one of your cards?”

“I ran into him about a year ago at Whole Foods. Hadn’t seen him for years. He said he’d like to catch up and I gave him one of my cards, wrote my cell number on the back. But I never heard from him and I kind of forgot about it.”

Uh oh. Pete was a psychologist. A friend who’d committed suicide was going to stir up significant guilt. I laid my hand on his thigh. “Did you have his number?”

“No.”

“Then it was up to him to call if he wanted to talk to you. You had no way of knowing.”

“I could have looked for him.”

“Did he seem suicidal a year ago?”

“No. He seemed fine.”

“Then don’t beat yourself up over this.”

“I won’t.” But I knew better.

We zipped right up Wilshire and pulled up to the front of the building. The street wasn’t blocked, but there were two patrol cars and a fire truck. My brother Kevin, one year older than me, was an LAPD homicide detective with the West LA division. He and Abby lived just a few hundred yards from here, in an apartment on Roebling. He’d arrived at the scene on foot and met us at the front of the building. “Hey. Sorry to drag you out like this.”

I said, “Where’s Tim?” Tim Garcia was Kevin’s partner.

“Since it was a probable suicide, I said I’d handle it. He didn’t need to come all this way.”

Pete asked, “You’re sure about the suicide?”

“Yeah. The coroner will have the final word, but there’s not much doubt. He hung himself from his own balcony. I just need to be sure it’s him before I notify the family.”

Pete looked grim. “Okay. Where is he?”

Kevin said to me, “Stay put.” He led Pete into the courtyard of the building. I waited. The firefighters came out, loaded up their equipment and left. Kevin and Pete returned shortly thereafter. Pete said, “It was him.”

We tried to avoid displays of affection in public, but I put my arm around his shoulders and gave him a quick half-hug. Kevin said, “I’ve got work to do. Talk to you all later.” He went back into the courtyard. Pete turned to me. “Want to go to Headlines?”

“It’s only 6:00. I doubt they’re open.”

“Oh. Any ideas?”

We ended up at Izzy’s Deli, not one of our usual haunts, but open 24 hours and close to home. We parked at the house and walked to the deli. Pete was quiet. I didn’t ask any questions – I figured he needed time to process.

We both ordered pancakes. I finally asked, tentatively, “Was it bad?”

“Not the worst I’ve seen.” Before earning his Ph.D., Pete was a cop. He and Kevin were partners during Kevin’s first five years as an LAPD patrol officer and had been close friends ever since. I knew Pete had seen bad stuff as a cop, but it had to be different when it was someone you knew. I said, “At least it wasn’t a gunshot.”

“Yeah. That would have been worse.” Pete rubbed his face again. “I don’t think he’d been there long.”

“Had you always known him?”

“Pretty much. He moved to our street when I was about six. His dad was at Edwards. They’d been living on base but finally bought a house.”

“He must have been a pretty good friend, if you stayed in touch after you left Barstow.”

“He was.” Pete didn’t say any more. He seemed lost in thought. I didn’t push it. I knew Barstow brought back a lot of awful memories for Pete. His parents had divorced when he was ten, and as a fourteen-year-old altar boy, he’d been sexually abused by a priest. When Pete’s dad had found out, he’d moved Pete and his older brother Steve to live with him in Lancaster. Pete had begun counseling almost immediately and had come a long way. But as you’d expect he still had issues because of the abuse.

Our pancakes came and we ate, talking about other things. When we finished we decided to go to Vons and get our groceries for the week. Pete was still preoccupied, though. When we got home I said, “Let’s get in the shower.”

In the shower, I worked on loosening the knots in Pete’s shoulders. Then I worked on another part of his anatomy. By the time we finished we were both clean and relaxed. We put on sweats and settled on the living room sofa with the newspaper. I was reading the comics when Pete laid down his section. “I don’t know why Mark would do this.”

“It could have been a lot of things. You really didn’t know much about his adult life, right?”

“Right. When I saw him a year ago we didn’t talk much. Just the standard ‘what are you doing now’ stuff. He told me he had a boyfriend and I told him I did too. That’s when he said he’d like to get together and I gave him my card. And that was it.”

“A year ago? We hadn’t started dating yet.”

He gave me a sly smile. “No. But I knew we were going to.”

I laughed. “Pretty confident, were you?”

“Yep.”

“Did you know he was gay?”

“No.”

“Pretty brave to come out to you like that, after not seeing you for so many years.”

“It was. He was like that. Always positive, always determined. It’s hard to imagine the kid I knew committing suicide.”

“People change.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Is Kevin sure it was suicide?”

“Yeah. The way it happened – there’d be no way someone else could stage that.”

“Kevin referred to a roommate – do you think that’s his boyfriend?”

“I guess so.”

“Was Kevin going to notify the right people?”

“The roommate was listed as first emergency contact. Kevin was going to call him first, to get the family’s phone numbers. If it was his boyfriend, then at least Kev was notifying him first.”

“Good. You know – if you wanted to know more about why he did this, I could look into it.”

“How? It’s a suicide. There’s no case.”

“You’re thinking like a cop. The police don’t have a case, true, but I could at least find out as much as I could about him. Maybe it would give you some – I hate this word, but I’ll use it for lack of a better one – closure.”

“How would you go about this?”

“Newspaper archives, to start with. We have every issue of the LA Times back to the first in 1881. And I’ll Google him, of course, see what comes up. Once I find out a little about him, I can research the company he worked for, organizations he was involved in. I can get into government records.” I poked him in the ribs. “I’m a librarian. Never underestimate my ability to find shit out.”

He laughed. “Yeah, but the first time you went on a quest to find shit out, someone tried to kill us. And the second time, someone tried to kill Jennifer.”

Jennifer was Kevin’s ex-wife.

“Details, details. Anyway, this time I’m not trying to uncover a killer. I’m just trying to get you some answers about your friend.”

Pete leaned over and kissed me. “You’re a good boyfriend.”

“Thank you. I try.”

He just laughed.

 

It was nice to banter with Pete. We hadn’t been doing much of that lately. We’d started dating – for the second time – about nine months ago. Less than a week later an arsonist had burned me out of the apartment I’d been sharing with Kevin and Abby. I’d moved in with Pete on what was supposed to be a temporary basis, and I never left. We’d been doing great until last Christmas, when Pete told me about his abuse.

Pete’s admission had impacted our sex life. I’d been frustrated at the lack of variety in our bedroom – Pete would only top, and I liked to take turns. I’d been ready to suggest that to him when he dropped the bombshell. I certainly understood why he’d only top. But Pete’s news didn’t help alleviate the physical frustration I felt – it made it worse, since it seemed that things were not likely to change. A couple of months ago I’d begun seeing a counselor, in hopes of learning to deal with the frustration without taking it out on Pete. It was definitely helping. Dr. Bibbins had made several behavioral suggestions that would help me deal with my emotions.

But things were a little strained between us. Pete had been upset by the news that I was seeing a counselor. He felt guilty, but he was having trouble understanding my emotional reaction to his news. He was also afraid that I’d eventually leave him. Ironic, since when we’d dated before, he was the one who left me.

Doctoral candidates in psychology are required to undergo psychotherapy as part of their training. Pete was still with the therapist that he’d begun seeing in his Ph.D. program. It had been six years now. I hadn’t seen any indication that this therapist was helping him. His behavior and emotions hadn’t changed much since – well, since I’d known him, which was also about six years. He said that he wanted to work on our relationship – but so far I seemed to be the only one doing any work.

Desperation is such an ugly emotion

I just had a short conversation with a coworker who is also an author on the side. He wrote a book that came out last year, a thriller/police procedural. He’s an ex-cop, so he knows whereof he speaks. The Kindle version of the book is doing very well – it was number one in its category a couple of weeks ago.

But he made one mistake – he paid a vanity publisher to have a bunch of paperback versions of the book printed. He hasn’t had as much success moving those. I don’t know how many he still has – but it’s quite a few. When I saw him a few minutes ago, he asked me who he should speak with to get his book displayed in the library’s front case.

I gave him the circulation librarian’s name. I don’t know if he’ll get displayed or not. We usually try to create a theme in our display cases, something education-related, something related to the books we have in our collection. Not something that would result in sales of an employee’s books.

He’s desperate to get rid of those print copies. And I don’t know that we’re going to be able to help him with that.

I read a lot of blogs and commentary about bad author behavior, and I wonder how much of that is related to desperation. Authors are desperate to sell books, so they do things they shouldn’t. They bombard writer listservs with announcements about their books. They tweet twenty or thirty times a day about their book. They never interact with anyone on social media unless they’re selling their book.

Of course, some of it just may be bad manners. It shouldn’t be due to ignorance of author etiquette, because there’s plenty of writing out there about how an author should behave.

Self-publishing is a culprit, too. When you’re the only one selling your books, you want to try everything you can think of to get people to buy them.

It’s easy to avoid the problem of having too many print books to sell: avoid the vanity publishers! I haven’t used CreateSpace, but it’s a terrific tool for self-published people who have always wanted to see themselves in print. I think that was my friend’s issue: he’d always wanted to write, and to hold a book he’d written in his hands. So he ordered a crateload of print books, and now he’s stuck trying to sell them by himself.

As for me, from an author standpoint I probably don’t do enough marketing. But I don’t want to get on anyone’s bad side by doing too much, either. I’d rather undershoot. As long as my books sell well enough to put me in the black (I have to pay my cover artist), I’m happy. And so far, both Cited to Death and Hoarded to Death have done that. Anything more than that is just icing on the cake.

It never ceases to amaze me that anyone wants to read what I’ve written!

Cited to Death is published at Smashwords

Once the formatting was done, the actual uploading was just as simple as for Kindle. Cited to Death is now available through Smashwords, and should be available to all the platforms that Smashwords supports. Here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/354549