KN Magazine: Articles
The First American Bestseller / Fedora Amis
It’s easy to lose track of our literary heritage in the mad scramble for the next big mystery/thriller genre hit. But if you’re running low on inspiration, and you’re exhausted from scouring Publisher’s Weekly for the latest market trends, then you might want to follow the advice of this week’s guest blogger, mystery author and aficionado Fedora Amis, and turn your attention to the greats of detective fiction past.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
The First American Bestseller
by Fedora Amis
I love to play dress up. I caught the costume bug when I was in first grade. I wore a cowboy hat and a toy gun when I sang “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” with the cutest little blond cowboy in my school. Naturally, when I heard that Sisters in Crime (I’m president of the Greater St. Louis Chapter) was holding a costume contest, I was all agog to don Victorian duds and play a pivotal character in the history of mystery.
Here’s a quiz for you. Who wrote the first American full-length detective novel?
Betcha don’t know its title—The Leavenworth Case. Betcha didn’t know this 1878 mystery was the first true American bestseller. Betcha didn’t know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame was a devotee of this writer. Betcha think it was a man. But no—the first American detective story novelist was a woman: Anna Katherine Green.
What a pity we’ve forgotten our roots! I took SinC’s costume contest as an opportunity to remind mystery lovers that we owe a debt to the mother of the detective novel. I wore a long black skirt and bodice with just a dollop of gold to appear as the well-to-do nosy spinster from Gramercy Park, Miss Amelia Butterworth.
Amelia is a keen observer who understands why humans do what they do. She can get more answers with tea and cakes than a whole police station full of detectives. She loves disguises and keeps snooping around until she can fit all clues into a satisfying solution. Of course, because she’s an old maid and a female, authorities dismiss her as a pest. In truth, her very lack of gravitas gives her the best kind of cover for undercover work. Does this description sound like Miss Jane Marple, and many others since?
Anna Katherine Green is seldom read today. After all, she had to follow the conventions of Victorian prose. Her writing is geared for an audience with superior education, money for books, and leisure time without the constant access to entertainment we have today. Even so, Green’s plots are clever and she knew how to write chilling dialogue. We can learn a lesson from this little sample from the mad villain in her 1898 novel Lost Man’s Lane.
“Well, my pretty one,”—his voice grown suddenly wheedling, his face a study of mingled passions,—“we will see about that. Come just a step nearer, Lucetta. I want to see if you are really the little girl I used to dandle on my knee.”
What could be creepier than honeyed words laid over a tone of menace?
Edgar Allen Poe wrote the first detective story, but honors for the first full-length detective novel go to a Frenchman, Emile Gaboriau (L’Affaire Lerouge, 1866). Just two years later, Englishman Wilkie Collins published The Moonstone, a work praised by T.S. Eliot as “the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels... in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe.” With her 1878 novel, Anna Katherine Green was not only the first American to write a detective novel; she was the first woman on planet earth.
As mystery writers, I hope we never lose sight of our literary heritage. I urge everyone to follow the example of those who have gone before. They were innovators. They boldly steered storytelling somewhere new. Besides the example they set, our mystery ancestors teach us how to write better.
A writer who spends a little time with Dorothy L. Sayers can’t help learning how to add humor to mystery. Reading Josephine Tey will surely sharpen a writer’s wits. An author inclined to tell too much too soon should study the way Agatha Christie unravels clues and reveals characters little by little. Time with the greats is time well spent.
George Santayana said, “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” That’s a great warning for mankind, and good advice to writers. Look to those who came before—read and learn.
Fedora Amis has won numerous awards including Outstanding Teacher of Speech in Missouri, membership in three halls of fame—state and national speech organizations and her own high school alma mater. Her non-fiction publications include books on speaking and logic, and articles for educational magazines. She won the Mayhaven Fiction Award for her Victorian whodunit, Jack the Ripper in St. Louis, and performs as real historical people and imagined characters from the 1800s. Fedora loves live theater, travel, plants, and cooking. She has one son, Skimmer, who partners Fedora in writing science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. “Why do I write? I love words—always have—reading them, writing them. I even like looking them up in the dictionary.”
Don’t miss her new historical mystery, Mayhem at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, coming from Five Star in February 2016. Visit Fedora’s website at www.Fedoraamis.com and follow her on Facebook at Fedoraamisauthor, and on Twitter @fedorandskimmer.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
The First American Bestseller / Fedora Amis
It’s easy to lose track of our literary heritage in the mad scramble for the next big mystery/thriller genre hit. But if you’re running low on inspiration, and you’re exhausted from scouring Publisher’s Weekly for the latest market trends, then you might want to follow the advice of this week’s guest blogger, mystery author and aficionado Fedora Amis, and turn your attention to the greats of detective fiction past.Happy reading!
Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
The First American Bestseller
by Fedora Amis
I love to play dress up. I caught the costume bug when I was in first grade. I wore a cowboy hat and a toy gun when I sang “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” with the cutest little blond cowboy in my school. Naturally, when I heard that Sisters in Crime (I’m president of the Greater St. Louis Chapter) was holding a costume contest, I was all agog to don Victorian duds and play a pivotal character in the history of mystery.
Here’s a quiz for you. Who wrote the first American full-length detective novel?
Betcha don’t know its title—The Leavenworth Case. Betcha didn’t know this 1878 mystery was the first true American bestseller. Betcha didn’t know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame was a devotee of this writer. Betcha think it was a man. But no—the first American detective story novelist was a woman: Anna Katherine Green.
What a pity we’ve forgotten our roots! I took SinC’s costume contest as an opportunity to remind mystery lovers that we owe a debt to the mother of the detective novel. I wore a long black skirt and bodice with just a dollop of gold to appear as the well-to-do nosy spinster from Gramercy Park, Miss Amelia Butterworth.
Amelia is a keen observer who understands why humans do what they do. She can get more answers with tea and cakes than a whole police station full of detectives. She loves disguises and keeps snooping around until she can fit all clues into a satisfying solution. Of course, because she’s an old maid and a female, authorities dismiss her as a pest. In truth, her very lack of gravitas gives her the best kind of cover for undercover work. Does this description sound like Miss Jane Marple, and many others since?
Anna Katherine Green is seldom read today. After all, she had to follow the conventions of Victorian prose. Her writing is geared for an audience with superior education, money for books, and leisure time without the constant access to entertainment we have today. Even so, Green’s plots are clever and she knew how to write chilling dialogue. We can learn a lesson from this little sample from the mad villain in her 1898 novel Lost Man’s Lane.
“Well, my pretty one,”—his voice grown suddenly wheedling, his face a study of mingled passions,—“we will see about that. Come just a step nearer, Lucetta. I want to see if you are really the little girl I used to dandle on my knee.”
What could be creepier than honeyed words laid over a tone of menace?
Edgar Allen Poe wrote the first detective story, but honors for the first full-length detective novel go to a Frenchman, Emile Gaboriau (L’Affaire Lerouge, 1866). Just two years later, Englishman Wilkie Collins published The Moonstone, a work praised by T.S. Eliot as “the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels... in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe.” With her 1878 novel, Anna Katherine Green was not only the first American to write a detective novel; she was the first woman on planet earth.
As mystery writers, I hope we never lose sight of our literary heritage. I urge everyone to follow the example of those who have gone before. They were innovators. They boldly steered storytelling somewhere new. Besides the example they set, our mystery ancestors teach us how to write better.
A writer who spends a little time with Dorothy L. Sayers can’t help learning how to add humor to mystery. Reading Josephine Tey will surely sharpen a writer’s wits. An author inclined to tell too much too soon should study the way Agatha Christie unravels clues and reveals characters little by little. Time with the greats is time well spent.
George Santayana said, “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” That’s a great warning for mankind, and good advice to writers. Look to those who came before—read and learn.
Fedora Amis has won numerous awards including Outstanding Teacher of Speech in Missouri, membership in three halls of fame—state and national speech organizations and her own high school alma mater. Her non-fiction publications include books on speaking and logic, and articles for educational magazines. She won the Mayhaven Fiction Award for her Victorian whodunit, Jack the Ripper in St. Louis, and performs as real historical people and imagined characters from the 1800s. Fedora loves live theater, travel, plants, and cooking. She has one son, Skimmer, who partners Fedora in writing science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. “Why do I write? I love words—always have—reading them, writing them. I even like looking them up in the dictionary.”
Don’t miss her new historical mystery, Mayhem at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, coming from Five Star in February 2016. Visit Fedora’s website at www.Fedoraamis.com and follow her on Facebook at Fedoraamisauthor, and on Twitter @fedorandskimmer.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
The First American Bestseller / Fedora Amis
It’s easy to lose track of our literary heritage in the mad scramble for the next big mystery/thriller genre hit. But if you’re running low on inspiration, and you’re exhausted from scouring Publisher’s Weekly for the latest market trends, then you might want to follow the advice of this week’s guest blogger, mystery author and aficionado Fedora Amis, and turn your attention to the greats of detective fiction past.Happy reading!
Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
The First American Bestseller
by Fedora Amis
I love to play dress up. I caught the costume bug when I was in first grade. I wore a cowboy hat and a toy gun when I sang “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” with the cutest little blond cowboy in my school. Naturally, when I heard that Sisters in Crime (I’m president of the Greater St. Louis Chapter) was holding a costume contest, I was all agog to don Victorian duds and play a pivotal character in the history of mystery.
Here’s a quiz for you. Who wrote the first American full-length detective novel?
Betcha don’t know its title—The Leavenworth Case. Betcha didn’t know this 1878 mystery was the first true American bestseller. Betcha didn’t know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame was a devotee of this writer. Betcha think it was a man. But no—the first American detective story novelist was a woman: Anna Katherine Green.
What a pity we’ve forgotten our roots! I took SinC’s costume contest as an opportunity to remind mystery lovers that we owe a debt to the mother of the detective novel. I wore a long black skirt and bodice with just a dollop of gold to appear as the well-to-do nosy spinster from Gramercy Park, Miss Amelia Butterworth.
Amelia is a keen observer who understands why humans do what they do. She can get more answers with tea and cakes than a whole police station full of detectives. She loves disguises and keeps snooping around until she can fit all clues into a satisfying solution. Of course, because she’s an old maid and a female, authorities dismiss her as a pest. In truth, her very lack of gravitas gives her the best kind of cover for undercover work. Does this description sound like Miss Jane Marple, and many others since?
Anna Katherine Green is seldom read today. After all, she had to follow the conventions of Victorian prose. Her writing is geared for an audience with superior education, money for books, and leisure time without the constant access to entertainment we have today. Even so, Green’s plots are clever and she knew how to write chilling dialogue. We can learn a lesson from this little sample from the mad villain in her 1898 novel Lost Man’s Lane.
“Well, my pretty one,”—his voice grown suddenly wheedling, his face a study of mingled passions,—“we will see about that. Come just a step nearer, Lucetta. I want to see if you are really the little girl I used to dandle on my knee.”
What could be creepier than honeyed words laid over a tone of menace?
Edgar Allen Poe wrote the first detective story, but honors for the first full-length detective novel go to a Frenchman, Emile Gaboriau (L’Affaire Lerouge, 1866). Just two years later, Englishman Wilkie Collins published The Moonstone, a work praised by T.S. Eliot as “the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels... in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe.” With her 1878 novel, Anna Katherine Green was not only the first American to write a detective novel; she was the first woman on planet earth.
As mystery writers, I hope we never lose sight of our literary heritage. I urge everyone to follow the example of those who have gone before. They were innovators. They boldly steered storytelling somewhere new. Besides the example they set, our mystery ancestors teach us how to write better.
A writer who spends a little time with Dorothy L. Sayers can’t help learning how to add humor to mystery. Reading Josephine Tey will surely sharpen a writer’s wits. An author inclined to tell too much too soon should study the way Agatha Christie unravels clues and reveals characters little by little. Time with the greats is time well spent.
George Santayana said, “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” That’s a great warning for mankind, and good advice to writers. Look to those who came before—read and learn.
Fedora Amis has won numerous awards including Outstanding Teacher of Speech in Missouri, membership in three halls of fame—state and national speech organizations and her own high school alma mater. Her non-fiction publications include books on speaking and logic, and articles for educational magazines. She won the Mayhaven Fiction Award for her Victorian whodunit, Jack the Ripper in St. Louis, and performs as real historical people and imagined characters from the 1800s. Fedora loves live theater, travel, plants, and cooking. She has one son, Skimmer, who partners Fedora in writing science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. “Why do I write? I love words—always have—reading them, writing them. I even like looking them up in the dictionary.”
Don’t miss her new historical mystery, Mayhem at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, coming from Five Star in February 2016. Visit Fedora’s website at www.Fedoraamis.com and follow her on Facebook at Fedoraamisauthor, and on Twitter @fedorandskimmer.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
See the Author? BE the Author / D. Alan Lewis
As much as we hate being judged by our covers, unfortunately that’s the name of the game in marketing. Book displays, business cards, and professional attire go a long way in gaining respect from potential customers at signing and selling events. This week’s guest blogger, fantasy author D. Alan Lewis, offers advice on the promotional power of looking the part.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
See the Author? BE the Author
By D. Alan Lewis
At a recent book signing/selling event, a gentleman approached my table and struck up a conversation. There were several authors including myself at the event, all of us lumped together in a section of the room with our wares on display. Each had a small table with a variety of books, running the gamut of genres.
The man walked down the row, looking but not stopping until he stepped up to the last table, mine. He started picking up bookmarks and cards, asking questions, and finally made a purchase. As I handed him his change, I mentioned a book by one of the other authors but he only shrugged, smiled, and informed me that my books were the only ones he’d consider purchasing.
Intrigued, I asked why only my books. His answer was simple but powerful.
“Because you look like a real author. You present your books and market them like a real author.” He went on to point out the bookmarks, cards, and other promotional items, and then added, “The other folks here didn’t think enough of their books to bother.”
At a loss, I looked at the other author’s displays and caught on to what he meant. An absence of basic marketing merchandise became very clear. Some of the authors didn’t have bookmarks, or even business cards. No one else had signage of any type. While I’d spent money early on in my book-selling adventures to purchase display racks and stands, no one else had.
After my first book went to print, I began paying attention to other authors and how they did things. I looked not only at what they were doing but also at the authors themselves.
So, here are a few basic tips that I’ve learned to promote sales at events.
Look professional: No matter where you are selling books, dress well for the occasion. I’m not saying you need a suit and tie, but shorts and a t-shirt shouldn’t be the go-to wardrobe choice.
Business cards: Seriously, invest some money in professionally printed cards. Homemade cards printed on your home computer will look like what they are, homemade and cheap. There are many sources online for inexpensive but good-looking cards. But do something different with your cards that’ll get people’s attention.
In my case, I write mainly science fiction and fantasy stories. I found a website (Zazzle) which has hundreds of styles. Instead of one box of cards, I purchased three. Zazzle offered several styles of sci-fi art that are on the card’s background, so I picked out three distinctly different images. It amazed me how folks will approach the table and look at the three different cards and comment on which one has the best art. If the customer likes the card, they’ll keep looking at, ingraining your name in their head along with the picture.
Bookmarks: Like business cards, there are many online sources for bookmarks. In my case, I found an inexpensive printer that makes double-sided bookmarks. Instead of using both sides to promote one book, I placed ads for different books on each side. This way, the person is exposed to more of my works after they leave the table.
Signs and banners: These can be an issue for some folks because of the expense. There is also an issue at times as to whether you’ll have space at an event for big, freestanding banners. The best advice is to start with what you can afford and go from there.
Tall banners are great for projecting your name and books titles across a room. If well designed, a good banner will generate interest and curiosity in you and your works. If your books are lying flat on a table, then a tabletop banners or signs are a great way to get passersby to notice the book covers.
Racks and stands: Too many authors feel that simply laying their books flat on a table will get them noticed. This is simply not true. Flat books are only seen by folks walking directly in front of your table. Inexpensive bookstands or wire racks will increase the visibility of your books from a distance and draw folks in to take a closer look.
While these are just a handful of suggestions, they are the most basic and usually, the most overlooked. Next time you’re at a book event, look around, see which authors grab your attention, and ask yourself what made you look.
Alan Lewis is an ‘alleged’ native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who now resides in Nashville with his children. He has been writing technical guides and manuals for various employers for over twenty years but only in recent years has branched out in to writing fiction. In 2006, Alan took the reins of the Nashville Writers Meetup’s Novelist Group, where he works with new and aspiring writers.
Alan’s debut novel, a fantasy murder mystery, The Blood in Snowflake Garden was a finalist for the 2010 Claymore Award and has been optioned for a possible TV series. He has three other books in print, Keely: A Steampunk Story, The Lightning Bolts of Zeus, and The Bishop of Port Victoria. He is the editor of four anthologies for Luna’s Children 1 & 2 and Capes & Clockwork 1 & 2. He also has short stories in a number of anthologies, including Black Pulp, Pulpology, and Midnight Movie Creature Feature Vol.2. And recently released The Celeste Affair, a steampunk adventure as an e-book short. Reach Alan at http://www.snowflakegarden.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
See the Author? BE the Author / D. Alan Lewis
As much as we hate being judged by our covers, unfortunately that’s the name of the game in marketing. Book displays, business cards, and professional attire go a long way in gaining respect from potential customers at signing and selling events. This week’s guest blogger, fantasy author D. Alan Lewis, offers advice on the promotional power of looking the part.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
See the Author? BE the Author
By D. Alan Lewis
At a recent book signing/selling event, a gentleman approached my table and struck up a conversation. There were several authors including myself at the event, all of us lumped together in a section of the room with our wares on display. Each had a small table with a variety of books, running the gamut of genres.
The man walked down the row, looking but not stopping until he stepped up to the last table, mine. He started picking up bookmarks and cards, asking questions, and finally made a purchase. As I handed him his change, I mentioned a book by one of the other authors but he only shrugged, smiled, and informed me that my books were the only ones he’d consider purchasing.
Intrigued, I asked why only my books. His answer was simple but powerful.
“Because you look like a real author. You present your books and market them like a real author.” He went on to point out the bookmarks, cards, and other promotional items, and then added, “The other folks here didn’t think enough of their books to bother.”
At a loss, I looked at the other author’s displays and caught on to what he meant. An absence of basic marketing merchandise became very clear. Some of the authors didn’t have bookmarks, or even business cards. No one else had signage of any type. While I’d spent money early on in my book-selling adventures to purchase display racks and stands, no one else had.
After my first book went to print, I began paying attention to other authors and how they did things. I looked not only at what they were doing but also at the authors themselves.
So, here are a few basic tips that I’ve learned to promote sales at events.
Look professional: No matter where you are selling books, dress well for the occasion. I’m not saying you need a suit and tie, but shorts and a t-shirt shouldn’t be the go-to wardrobe choice.
Business cards: Seriously, invest some money in professionally printed cards. Homemade cards printed on your home computer will look like what they are, homemade and cheap. There are many sources online for inexpensive but good-looking cards. But do something different with your cards that’ll get people’s attention.
In my case, I write mainly science fiction and fantasy stories. I found a website (Zazzle) which has hundreds of styles. Instead of one box of cards, I purchased three. Zazzle offered several styles of sci-fi art that are on the card’s background, so I picked out three distinctly different images. It amazed me how folks will approach the table and look at the three different cards and comment on which one has the best art. If the customer likes the card, they’ll keep looking at, ingraining your name in their head along with the picture.
Bookmarks: Like business cards, there are many online sources for bookmarks. In my case, I found an inexpensive printer that makes double-sided bookmarks. Instead of using both sides to promote one book, I placed ads for different books on each side. This way, the person is exposed to more of my works after they leave the table.
Signs and banners: These can be an issue for some folks because of the expense. There is also an issue at times as to whether you’ll have space at an event for big, freestanding banners. The best advice is to start with what you can afford and go from there.
Tall banners are great for projecting your name and books titles across a room. If well designed, a good banner will generate interest and curiosity in you and your works. If your books are lying flat on a table, then a tabletop banners or signs are a great way to get passersby to notice the book covers.
Racks and stands: Too many authors feel that simply laying their books flat on a table will get them noticed. This is simply not true. Flat books are only seen by folks walking directly in front of your table. Inexpensive bookstands or wire racks will increase the visibility of your books from a distance and draw folks in to take a closer look.
While these are just a handful of suggestions, they are the most basic and usually, the most overlooked. Next time you’re at a book event, look around, see which authors grab your attention, and ask yourself what made you look.
Alan Lewis is an ‘alleged’ native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who now resides in Nashville with his children. He has been writing technical guides and manuals for various employers for over twenty years but only in recent years has branched out in to writing fiction. In 2006, Alan took the reins of the Nashville Writers Meetup’s Novelist Group, where he works with new and aspiring writers.
Alan’s debut novel, a fantasy murder mystery, The Blood in Snowflake Garden was a finalist for the 2010 Claymore Award and has been optioned for a possible TV series. He has three other books in print, Keely: A Steampunk Story, The Lightning Bolts of Zeus, and The Bishop of Port Victoria. He is the editor of four anthologies for Luna’s Children 1 & 2 and Capes & Clockwork 1 & 2. He also has short stories in a number of anthologies, including Black Pulp, Pulpology, and Midnight Movie Creature Feature Vol.2. And recently released The Celeste Affair, a steampunk adventure as an e-book short. Reach Alan at http://www.snowflakegarden.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
See the Author? BE the Author / D. Alan Lewis
As much as we hate being judged by our covers, unfortunately that’s the name of the game in marketing. Book displays, business cards, and professional attire go a long way in gaining respect from potential customers at signing and selling events. This week’s guest blogger, fantasy author D. Alan Lewis, offers advice on the promotional power of looking the part.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
See the Author? BE the Author
By D. Alan Lewis
At a recent book signing/selling event, a gentleman approached my table and struck up a conversation. There were several authors including myself at the event, all of us lumped together in a section of the room with our wares on display. Each had a small table with a variety of books, running the gamut of genres.
The man walked down the row, looking but not stopping until he stepped up to the last table, mine. He started picking up bookmarks and cards, asking questions, and finally made a purchase. As I handed him his change, I mentioned a book by one of the other authors but he only shrugged, smiled, and informed me that my books were the only ones he’d consider purchasing.
Intrigued, I asked why only my books. His answer was simple but powerful.
“Because you look like a real author. You present your books and market them like a real author.” He went on to point out the bookmarks, cards, and other promotional items, and then added, “The other folks here didn’t think enough of their books to bother.”
At a loss, I looked at the other author’s displays and caught on to what he meant. An absence of basic marketing merchandise became very clear. Some of the authors didn’t have bookmarks, or even business cards. No one else had signage of any type. While I’d spent money early on in my book-selling adventures to purchase display racks and stands, no one else had.
After my first book went to print, I began paying attention to other authors and how they did things. I looked not only at what they were doing but also at the authors themselves.
So, here are a few basic tips that I’ve learned to promote sales at events.
Look professional: No matter where you are selling books, dress well for the occasion. I’m not saying you need a suit and tie, but shorts and a t-shirt shouldn’t be the go-to wardrobe choice.
Business cards: Seriously, invest some money in professionally printed cards. Homemade cards printed on your home computer will look like what they are, homemade and cheap. There are many sources online for inexpensive but good-looking cards. But do something different with your cards that’ll get people’s attention.
In my case, I write mainly science fiction and fantasy stories. I found a website (Zazzle) which has hundreds of styles. Instead of one box of cards, I purchased three. Zazzle offered several styles of sci-fi art that are on the card’s background, so I picked out three distinctly different images. It amazed me how folks will approach the table and look at the three different cards and comment on which one has the best art. If the customer likes the card, they’ll keep looking at, ingraining your name in their head along with the picture.
Bookmarks: Like business cards, there are many online sources for bookmarks. In my case, I found an inexpensive printer that makes double-sided bookmarks. Instead of using both sides to promote one book, I placed ads for different books on each side. This way, the person is exposed to more of my works after they leave the table.
Signs and banners: These can be an issue for some folks because of the expense. There is also an issue at times as to whether you’ll have space at an event for big, freestanding banners. The best advice is to start with what you can afford and go from there.
Tall banners are great for projecting your name and books titles across a room. If well designed, a good banner will generate interest and curiosity in you and your works. If your books are lying flat on a table, then a tabletop banners or signs are a great way to get passersby to notice the book covers.
Racks and stands: Too many authors feel that simply laying their books flat on a table will get them noticed. This is simply not true. Flat books are only seen by folks walking directly in front of your table. Inexpensive bookstands or wire racks will increase the visibility of your books from a distance and draw folks in to take a closer look.
While these are just a handful of suggestions, they are the most basic and usually, the most overlooked. Next time you’re at a book event, look around, see which authors grab your attention, and ask yourself what made you look.
Alan Lewis is an ‘alleged’ native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who now resides in Nashville with his children. He has been writing technical guides and manuals for various employers for over twenty years but only in recent years has branched out in to writing fiction. In 2006, Alan took the reins of the Nashville Writers Meetup’s Novelist Group, where he works with new and aspiring writers.
Alan’s debut novel, a fantasy murder mystery, The Blood in Snowflake Garden was a finalist for the 2010 Claymore Award and has been optioned for a possible TV series. He has three other books in print, Keely: A Steampunk Story, The Lightning Bolts of Zeus, and The Bishop of Port Victoria. He is the editor of four anthologies for Luna’s Children 1 & 2 and Capes & Clockwork 1 & 2. He also has short stories in a number of anthologies, including Black Pulp, Pulpology, and Midnight Movie Creature Feature Vol.2. And recently released The Celeste Affair, a steampunk adventure as an e-book short. Reach Alan at http://www.snowflakegarden.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Resourcefulness 101: Marketing Your Novelettes / Wayne Zurl
So you’re pretty sure the novelette you’ve got sitting on your hard drive is a phenomenon waiting to happen. Thanks to the Internet, there are more ways than ever to get your mini-masterpiece out there, but you could waste a lot of time wading through search results without a proper guide. That’s where this week’s guest blogger, former cop and successful novelette writer Wayne Zurl, comes in.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Resourcefulness 101: Marketing Your Novelettes
By Wayne Zurl
What the hell can you do with a novelette?
Practically speaking, not much—unless you get creative. Wikipedia and other Internet sources define novelette as a story ranging between 7,500 and 17,500 words. Try and sell one sometime. They’re too long for those who publish short stories, and too short for a publisher who’s looking for a novella or full-length novel.
After I finished my first Sam Jenkins mystery novel, A New Prospect, and while peddling it to agents and publishers, I wrote stories for practice. Each was based on an actual incident I encountered while working as a cop in New York. And each ended up longer than the accepted short story ceiling of 7,500 words. But while the memories were fresh and my creative juices were flowing, I ended up with a bunch. So, I tried to flog them, too.
I hit a few of the mainstream mystery magazines and walked away disappointed. Each got rejected, but one acquisitions editor was kind enough to explain why. Basically, he said, “The story is good, but it’s too long.”
I sighed.
“Look, everybody writes stuff this length,” he continued, “but we can only publish one a year. So, if James Patterson sends me one and you send one, who do you think I’m going to accept?”
Nuts, I thought, aced out by someone who didn’t need the exposure or the money. So, I began to scour the Internet for a publisher who might like longer, more detailed and developed stories—real cop fiction—a series featuring the same cast as in my novel.
I found a relatively new company whose sole mission was to produce one-hour audio books and simultaneously publish them as eBooks. Coincidentally, stories from between 8,000 and 11,000 words (those in the novelette range) translate to fifty-five to seventy minute audios—not unlike the old time one-hour radio dramas to which my mother used to listen while ironing or cooking.
I submitted what I thought was the pick of the litter and crossed my fingers. Then I received an email. I hadn’t opened a piece of correspondence with such trepidation since I found that letter from my local draft board back in 1967. But, ha, success! She (the publisher) wanted the novelette called A Labor Day Murder.
From there, we built a good relationship and she published eighteen more novelettes. I worked with her editors and a professional actor who read my work. I felt like I (almost) had my own TV series. Not exactly on one of the networks, or even on cable, but I had an audience, and they liked the adventures of the boys and girls of Prospect PD.
Then, years later, after she had accepted three more new pieces and I was waiting for the promised contracts, I received an unexpected email. “Sorry,” she said. “For personal reasons, I must stop publishing new material. I won’t be sending the contracts. I’m not going out of business, but just won’t be producing anything new.”
I was back to my old dilemma: What do I do with three really good novelettes (I liked those a lot) plus the two more I had sitting in the hopper ready to send in? Head to the Internet.
After an exhaustive search—for me, because when it comes to computers, I’m only a step above clueless—I found Melange Books, LLC. They would accept submissions of novelettes and consider them for publication as eBooks. Okay, my “show” had been cancelled, but eBooks would be better than nothing.
I sent Melange a serial killer story called Angel of the Lord. The publisher liked it and asked if I had any others. I thought: Wow, a match made in heaven.
“Sure,” said I. “I just happen to have four more that have never seen a publisher’s contract.”
“Great,” said she. “Send them and we’ll see about putting them into an anthology and publish it in print and eBook.”
“Yahoo,” I said.
Well, not really. But I did send them, and in April of 2015 they released From New York to the Smokies.
So, what’s my point? If Alfred Hitchcock, Ellery Queen, or The Strand aren’t interested in your very long stories, they can find a home. I did it the traditional way. But if you’re more computer savvy than I am, and you have the ambition to self-publish, you can create audio books, eBooks, and nifty anthologies from your novelette length stories and people will buy them… thousands of them.
Now, here’s a bit of logistical reality. With audio books, MP3 downloads sell MUCH better than compact discs. I never incurred the expense of producing the CDs, but know it was considerable. So, if you’re producing your own audio books, stick with a downloadable version. You’ll find more distributors to handle it/them.
And always back up your audio with a published eBook. They sell even more copies. You’ve already paid for the cover image, so use it on a second product. Then, after your series takes off, offer package deals or “bundles” of several episodes at a discount price.
Wayne Zurl grew up on Long Island and retired after twenty years with the Suffolk County Police Department, one of the largest municipal law enforcement agencies in New York and the nation. For thirteen of those years he served as a section commander supervising investigators.
He is a graduate of SUNY, Empire State College, and served on active duty in the US Army during the Vietnam War and later in the reserves. Zurl left New York to live in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with his wife, Barbara—not far from Prospect PD.
Learn more about Wayne at http://www.waynezurlbooks.net/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Resourcefulness 101: Marketing Your Novelettes / Wayne Zurl
So you’re pretty sure the novelette you’ve got sitting on your hard drive is a phenomenon waiting to happen. Thanks to the Internet, there are more ways than ever to get your mini-masterpiece out there, but you could waste a lot of time wading through search results without a proper guide. That’s where this week’s guest blogger, former cop and successful novelette writer Wayne Zurl, comes in.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Resourcefulness 101: Marketing Your Novelettes
By Wayne Zurl
What the hell can you do with a novelette?
Practically speaking, not much—unless you get creative. Wikipedia and other Internet sources define novelette as a story ranging between 7,500 and 17,500 words. Try and sell one sometime. They’re too long for those who publish short stories, and too short for a publisher who’s looking for a novella or full-length novel.
After I finished my first Sam Jenkins mystery novel, A New Prospect, and while peddling it to agents and publishers, I wrote stories for practice. Each was based on an actual incident I encountered while working as a cop in New York. And each ended up longer than the accepted short story ceiling of 7,500 words. But while the memories were fresh and my creative juices were flowing, I ended up with a bunch. So, I tried to flog them, too.
I hit a few of the mainstream mystery magazines and walked away disappointed. Each got rejected, but one acquisitions editor was kind enough to explain why. Basically, he said, “The story is good, but it’s too long.”
I sighed.
“Look, everybody writes stuff this length,” he continued, “but we can only publish one a year. So, if James Patterson sends me one and you send one, who do you think I’m going to accept?”
Nuts, I thought, aced out by someone who didn’t need the exposure or the money. So, I began to scour the Internet for a publisher who might like longer, more detailed and developed stories—real cop fiction—a series featuring the same cast as in my novel.
I found a relatively new company whose sole mission was to produce one-hour audio books and simultaneously publish them as eBooks. Coincidentally, stories from between 8,000 and 11,000 words (those in the novelette range) translate to fifty-five to seventy minute audios—not unlike the old time one-hour radio dramas to which my mother used to listen while ironing or cooking.
I submitted what I thought was the pick of the litter and crossed my fingers. Then I received an email. I hadn’t opened a piece of correspondence with such trepidation since I found that letter from my local draft board back in 1967. But, ha, success! She (the publisher) wanted the novelette called A Labor Day Murder.
From there, we built a good relationship and she published eighteen more novelettes. I worked with her editors and a professional actor who read my work. I felt like I (almost) had my own TV series. Not exactly on one of the networks, or even on cable, but I had an audience, and they liked the adventures of the boys and girls of Prospect PD.
Then, years later, after she had accepted three more new pieces and I was waiting for the promised contracts, I received an unexpected email. “Sorry,” she said. “For personal reasons, I must stop publishing new material. I won’t be sending the contracts. I’m not going out of business, but just won’t be producing anything new.”
I was back to my old dilemma: What do I do with three really good novelettes (I liked those a lot) plus the two more I had sitting in the hopper ready to send in? Head to the Internet.
After an exhaustive search—for me, because when it comes to computers, I’m only a step above clueless—I found Melange Books, LLC. They would accept submissions of novelettes and consider them for publication as eBooks. Okay, my “show” had been cancelled, but eBooks would be better than nothing.
I sent Melange a serial killer story called Angel of the Lord. The publisher liked it and asked if I had any others. I thought: Wow, a match made in heaven.
“Sure,” said I. “I just happen to have four more that have never seen a publisher’s contract.”
“Great,” said she. “Send them and we’ll see about putting them into an anthology and publish it in print and eBook.”
“Yahoo,” I said.
Well, not really. But I did send them, and in April of 2015 they released From New York to the Smokies.
So, what’s my point? If Alfred Hitchcock, Ellery Queen, or The Strand aren’t interested in your very long stories, they can find a home. I did it the traditional way. But if you’re more computer savvy than I am, and you have the ambition to self-publish, you can create audio books, eBooks, and nifty anthologies from your novelette length stories and people will buy them… thousands of them.
Now, here’s a bit of logistical reality. With audio books, MP3 downloads sell MUCH better than compact discs. I never incurred the expense of producing the CDs, but know it was considerable. So, if you’re producing your own audio books, stick with a downloadable version. You’ll find more distributors to handle it/them.
And always back up your audio with a published eBook. They sell even more copies. You’ve already paid for the cover image, so use it on a second product. Then, after your series takes off, offer package deals or “bundles” of several episodes at a discount price.
Wayne Zurl grew up on Long Island and retired after twenty years with the Suffolk County Police Department, one of the largest municipal law enforcement agencies in New York and the nation. For thirteen of those years he served as a section commander supervising investigators.
He is a graduate of SUNY, Empire State College, and served on active duty in the US Army during the Vietnam War and later in the reserves. Zurl left New York to live in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with his wife, Barbara—not far from Prospect PD.
Learn more about Wayne at http://www.waynezurlbooks.net/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Resourcefulness 101: Marketing Your Novelettes / Wayne Zurl
So you’re pretty sure the novelette you’ve got sitting on your hard drive is a phenomenon waiting to happen. Thanks to the Internet, there are more ways than ever to get your mini-masterpiece out there, but you could waste a lot of time wading through search results without a proper guide. That’s where this week’s guest blogger, former cop and successful novelette writer Wayne Zurl, comes in.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Resourcefulness 101: Marketing Your Novelettes
By Wayne Zurl
What the hell can you do with a novelette?
Practically speaking, not much—unless you get creative. Wikipedia and other Internet sources define novelette as a story ranging between 7,500 and 17,500 words. Try and sell one sometime. They’re too long for those who publish short stories, and too short for a publisher who’s looking for a novella or full-length novel.
After I finished my first Sam Jenkins mystery novel, A New Prospect, and while peddling it to agents and publishers, I wrote stories for practice. Each was based on an actual incident I encountered while working as a cop in New York. And each ended up longer than the accepted short story ceiling of 7,500 words. But while the memories were fresh and my creative juices were flowing, I ended up with a bunch. So, I tried to flog them, too.
I hit a few of the mainstream mystery magazines and walked away disappointed. Each got rejected, but one acquisitions editor was kind enough to explain why. Basically, he said, “The story is good, but it’s too long.”
I sighed.
“Look, everybody writes stuff this length,” he continued, “but we can only publish one a year. So, if James Patterson sends me one and you send one, who do you think I’m going to accept?”
Nuts, I thought, aced out by someone who didn’t need the exposure or the money. So, I began to scour the Internet for a publisher who might like longer, more detailed and developed stories—real cop fiction—a series featuring the same cast as in my novel.
I found a relatively new company whose sole mission was to produce one-hour audio books and simultaneously publish them as eBooks. Coincidentally, stories from between 8,000 and 11,000 words (those in the novelette range) translate to fifty-five to seventy minute audios—not unlike the old time one-hour radio dramas to which my mother used to listen while ironing or cooking.
I submitted what I thought was the pick of the litter and crossed my fingers. Then I received an email. I hadn’t opened a piece of correspondence with such trepidation since I found that letter from my local draft board back in 1967. But, ha, success! She (the publisher) wanted the novelette called A Labor Day Murder.
From there, we built a good relationship and she published eighteen more novelettes. I worked with her editors and a professional actor who read my work. I felt like I (almost) had my own TV series. Not exactly on one of the networks, or even on cable, but I had an audience, and they liked the adventures of the boys and girls of Prospect PD.
Then, years later, after she had accepted three more new pieces and I was waiting for the promised contracts, I received an unexpected email. “Sorry,” she said. “For personal reasons, I must stop publishing new material. I won’t be sending the contracts. I’m not going out of business, but just won’t be producing anything new.”
I was back to my old dilemma: What do I do with three really good novelettes (I liked those a lot) plus the two more I had sitting in the hopper ready to send in? Head to the Internet.
After an exhaustive search—for me, because when it comes to computers, I’m only a step above clueless—I found Melange Books, LLC. They would accept submissions of novelettes and consider them for publication as eBooks. Okay, my “show” had been cancelled, but eBooks would be better than nothing.
I sent Melange a serial killer story called Angel of the Lord. The publisher liked it and asked if I had any others. I thought: Wow, a match made in heaven.
“Sure,” said I. “I just happen to have four more that have never seen a publisher’s contract.”
“Great,” said she. “Send them and we’ll see about putting them into an anthology and publish it in print and eBook.”
“Yahoo,” I said.
Well, not really. But I did send them, and in April of 2015 they released From New York to the Smokies.
So, what’s my point? If Alfred Hitchcock, Ellery Queen, or The Strand aren’t interested in your very long stories, they can find a home. I did it the traditional way. But if you’re more computer savvy than I am, and you have the ambition to self-publish, you can create audio books, eBooks, and nifty anthologies from your novelette length stories and people will buy them… thousands of them.
Now, here’s a bit of logistical reality. With audio books, MP3 downloads sell MUCH better than compact discs. I never incurred the expense of producing the CDs, but know it was considerable. So, if you’re producing your own audio books, stick with a downloadable version. You’ll find more distributors to handle it/them.
And always back up your audio with a published eBook. They sell even more copies. You’ve already paid for the cover image, so use it on a second product. Then, after your series takes off, offer package deals or “bundles” of several episodes at a discount price.
Wayne Zurl grew up on Long Island and retired after twenty years with the Suffolk County Police Department, one of the largest municipal law enforcement agencies in New York and the nation. For thirteen of those years he served as a section commander supervising investigators.
He is a graduate of SUNY, Empire State College, and served on active duty in the US Army during the Vietnam War and later in the reserves. Zurl left New York to live in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with his wife, Barbara—not far from Prospect PD.
Learn more about Wayne at http://www.waynezurlbooks.net/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Finding Your Voice… As The Opposite Sex / Raymond Benson
How do you get inside your opposite gender protagonist’s head? Clearly, it’s not impossible to write across gender lines—the success of “Harry Potter” alone dismisses that idea. But it’s tricky. Isn’t it? Raymond Benson, of Bond novel fame, lets us in on his process of transforming his authorial voice from male to female.
And I’m with him: I love it when the woman wins.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Finding Your Voice… As The Opposite Sex
By Raymond Benson
Well, if that title doesn’t raise some eyebrows, I don’t know what will.
Seriously, we all do it—every writer at some point creates a protagonist who is one’s opposite gender. Even Ian Fleming did it for his 1962 Bond novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, in which the story is told in first person by a woman... and 007 doesn’t enter the novel until the last third. There are plenty of female authors who write male characters, but how many male authors follow the exploits of female characters? To be fair, there are definitely a few out there. I’m one.
Speaking of James Bond, I was fortunate enough to be hired by the Ian Fleming Estate to write continuation 007 books from 1996-2002. When that gig was finished, I set out to create my own brand of suspense novels, and they were a very different kettle of fish. My original novels tend to be Hitchcockian thrillers, mostly about everyday people in unusual circumstances. And more often than not, the protagonist is female.
Strangely enough, I think I found my elusive authorial “voice” by doing this. I’ve found that I’m pretty good at creating believable female heroines—they range from ordinary suburban housewives who must rise to the occasion to overcome a threat, to kick-ass women who put on masks and fight crime and injustice.
A case in point is my recent five-book serial featuring the character The Black Stiletto. It’s about a young woman in the 1950s who runs away from near-poverty and an abusive stepfather to New York City, where she becomes a legendary vigilante for five years, and then mysteriously disappears. But in the present day, a divorced dad approaching fifty is taking care of his elderly mother—she has Alzheimer’s and is dying—and he discovers that she was the infamous Black Stiletto. Thus, it’s two parallel stories—one in the present that deals with family and Alzheimer’s, and one in the past, which is about the Stiletto’s exploits.
The Stiletto’s portion of each book is in the form of a diary—that is, first person. How did I get the voice right? Good question! How did I get any of my female protagonists’ voices correct? I like to say, facetiously, that I used up all my testosterone writing James Bond, and now I’m forced to rely on whatever estrogen I have in my body.
But to examine this question seriously, I suppose the first answer could be that I really like women. Since they are from Mars, and we men are from Venus—oh, wait, is it the other way around?—it’s obvious they are a different species from my own. However, I have done my research, and that means living, relating, and empathizing with the wonderful creatures.
I have a mother and a sister with whom I’m close (my mother is 94 and still ass-kicking), a history of girlfriends, and one wife of twenty-eight years (and counting). I watch movies by Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, and any film buff will tell you that those guys create excellent roles for women. The best answer I can give is that I ultimately find women to be more interesting characters because, in my very male opinion, they’re more complex! Men only think about two things (and I’ll let the reader figure out what they are), but there’s a lot going on inside a woman’s brain. A woman can multi-task better than any man. I find that kind of cool... and sexy, too.
I also believe I’m a feminist; I’ve supported women’s political causes my entire life. I think I understand where a woman is coming from, regarding what is important to the female gender. In fact, when Library Journal described the first Black Stiletto book, they called it a “mashup of the work of Gloria Steinem, Ian Fleming, and Mario Puzo, all under the editorship of Stan Lee.” I was especially proud of the Gloria Steinem part. I want women to win.
The only thing left to master is learning how a woman dresses, applies makeup, and chooses what shoes to wear. For those kinds of things, I ask my wife. She is a reader and is extremely helpful with that stuff. “No, she would never wear that.” That kind of constructive criticism. And the Internet is great for researching period clothing, though thrift shops are also good resources.
My wife is also my first beta reader, so she’s the first to clobber me with, “A woman would never say that.” When I wrote the first Black Stiletto book in the form of a diary, I gave it to another (female) beta reader who told me that had she not known a man had written it, she would have been fooled. So I thought maybe I was on to something.
Now, years later, after over ten titles starring women characters, I’ve completed a new stand-alone literary chiller featuring yet another female protagonist—this one a sixty-year-old romance writer! So apparently I’m pretty comfortable in another gender’s skin.
Temporarily, that is. When I’m finished writing for the day, I do manly things like throwing burgers on the grill, bending lead pipes around my waist, and entering raw egg eating contests. It puts hair on the chest.
Raymond Benson is the author of over 30 published titles, including the first four entries in the Black Stiletto series: The Black Stiletto, The Black Stiletto: Black & White, The Black Stiletto: Stars & Stripes, and The Black Stiletto: Secrets & Lies. He is most well known for being the official James Bond 007 continuation author between 1996 and 2002. In total, he penned and published worldwide six original 007 novels, three film novelizations, and three short stories. An anthology of his 007 work, The Union Trilogy, and a second anthology, Choice of Weapons, followed. His book The James Bond Bedside Companion was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America. Benson has published several other bestsellers and award-winning books, and has authored the novelization of a number of popular video games. Benson lives in the Chicago area. Reach him at http://www.raymondbenson.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Finding Your Voice… As The Opposite Sex / Raymond Benson
How do you get inside your opposite gender protagonist’s head? Clearly, it’s not impossible to write across gender lines—the success of “Harry Potter” alone dismisses that idea. But it’s tricky. Isn’t it? Raymond Benson, of Bond novel fame, lets us in on his process of transforming his authorial voice from male to female.And I’m with him: I love it when the woman wins.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Finding Your Voice… As The Opposite Sex
By Raymond Benson
Well, if that title doesn’t raise some eyebrows, I don’t know what will.
Seriously, we all do it—every writer at some point creates a protagonist who is one’s opposite gender. Even Ian Fleming did it for his 1962 Bond novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, in which the story is told in first person by a woman... and 007 doesn’t enter the novel until the last third. There are plenty of female authors who write male characters, but how many male authors follow the exploits of female characters? To be fair, there are definitely a few out there. I’m one.
Speaking of James Bond, I was fortunate enough to be hired by the Ian Fleming Estate to write continuation 007 books from 1996-2002. When that gig was finished, I set out to create my own brand of suspense novels, and they were a very different kettle of fish. My original novels tend to be Hitchcockian thrillers, mostly about everyday people in unusual circumstances. And more often than not, the protagonist is female.
Strangely enough, I think I found my elusive authorial “voice” by doing this. I’ve found that I’m pretty good at creating believable female heroines—they range from ordinary suburban housewives who must rise to the occasion to overcome a threat, to kick-ass women who put on masks and fight crime and injustice.
A case in point is my recent five-book serial featuring the character The Black Stiletto. It’s about a young woman in the 1950s who runs away from near-poverty and an abusive stepfather to New York City, where she becomes a legendary vigilante for five years, and then mysteriously disappears. But in the present day, a divorced dad approaching fifty is taking care of his elderly mother—she has Alzheimer’s and is dying—and he discovers that she was the infamous Black Stiletto. Thus, it’s two parallel stories—one in the present that deals with family and Alzheimer’s, and one in the past, which is about the Stiletto’s exploits.
The Stiletto’s portion of each book is in the form of a diary—that is, first person. How did I get the voice right? Good question! How did I get any of my female protagonists’ voices correct? I like to say, facetiously, that I used up all my testosterone writing James Bond, and now I’m forced to rely on whatever estrogen I have in my body.
But to examine this question seriously, I suppose the first answer could be that I really like women. Since they are from Mars, and we men are from Venus—oh, wait, is it the other way around?—it’s obvious they are a different species from my own. However, I have done my research, and that means living, relating, and empathizing with the wonderful creatures.
I have a mother and a sister with whom I’m close (my mother is 94 and still ass-kicking), a history of girlfriends, and one wife of twenty-eight years (and counting). I watch movies by Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, and any film buff will tell you that those guys create excellent roles for women. The best answer I can give is that I ultimately find women to be more interesting characters because, in my very male opinion, they’re more complex! Men only think about two things (and I’ll let the reader figure out what they are), but there’s a lot going on inside a woman’s brain. A woman can multi-task better than any man. I find that kind of cool... and sexy, too.
I also believe I’m a feminist; I’ve supported women’s political causes my entire life. I think I understand where a woman is coming from, regarding what is important to the female gender. In fact, when Library Journal described the first Black Stiletto book, they called it a “mashup of the work of Gloria Steinem, Ian Fleming, and Mario Puzo, all under the editorship of Stan Lee.” I was especially proud of the Gloria Steinem part. I want women to win.
The only thing left to master is learning how a woman dresses, applies makeup, and chooses what shoes to wear. For those kinds of things, I ask my wife. She is a reader and is extremely helpful with that stuff. “No, she would never wear that.” That kind of constructive criticism. And the Internet is great for researching period clothing, though thrift shops are also good resources.
My wife is also my first beta reader, so she’s the first to clobber me with, “A woman would never say that.” When I wrote the first Black Stiletto book in the form of a diary, I gave it to another (female) beta reader who told me that had she not known a man had written it, she would have been fooled. So I thought maybe I was on to something.
Now, years later, after over ten titles starring women characters, I’ve completed a new stand-alone literary chiller featuring yet another female protagonist—this one a sixty-year-old romance writer! So apparently I’m pretty comfortable in another gender’s skin.
Temporarily, that is. When I’m finished writing for the day, I do manly things like throwing burgers on the grill, bending lead pipes around my waist, and entering raw egg eating contests. It puts hair on the chest.
Raymond Benson is the author of over 30 published titles, including the first four entries in the Black Stiletto series: The Black Stiletto, The Black Stiletto: Black & White, The Black Stiletto: Stars & Stripes, and The Black Stiletto: Secrets & Lies. He is most well known for being the official James Bond 007 continuation author between 1996 and 2002. In total, he penned and published worldwide six original 007 novels, three film novelizations, and three short stories. An anthology of his 007 work, The Union Trilogy, and a second anthology, Choice of Weapons, followed. His book The James Bond Bedside Companion was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America. Benson has published several other bestsellers and award-winning books, and has authored the novelization of a number of popular video games. Benson lives in the Chicago area. Reach him at http://www.raymondbenson.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Finding Your Voice… As The Opposite Sex / Raymond Benson
How do you get inside your opposite gender protagonist’s head? Clearly, it’s not impossible to write across gender lines—the success of “Harry Potter” alone dismisses that idea. But it’s tricky. Isn’t it? Raymond Benson, of Bond novel fame, lets us in on his process of transforming his authorial voice from male to female.And I’m with him: I love it when the woman wins.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Finding Your Voice… As The Opposite Sex
By Raymond Benson
Well, if that title doesn’t raise some eyebrows, I don’t know what will.
Seriously, we all do it—every writer at some point creates a protagonist who is one’s opposite gender. Even Ian Fleming did it for his 1962 Bond novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, in which the story is told in first person by a woman... and 007 doesn’t enter the novel until the last third. There are plenty of female authors who write male characters, but how many male authors follow the exploits of female characters? To be fair, there are definitely a few out there. I’m one.
Speaking of James Bond, I was fortunate enough to be hired by the Ian Fleming Estate to write continuation 007 books from 1996-2002. When that gig was finished, I set out to create my own brand of suspense novels, and they were a very different kettle of fish. My original novels tend to be Hitchcockian thrillers, mostly about everyday people in unusual circumstances. And more often than not, the protagonist is female.
Strangely enough, I think I found my elusive authorial “voice” by doing this. I’ve found that I’m pretty good at creating believable female heroines—they range from ordinary suburban housewives who must rise to the occasion to overcome a threat, to kick-ass women who put on masks and fight crime and injustice.
A case in point is my recent five-book serial featuring the character The Black Stiletto. It’s about a young woman in the 1950s who runs away from near-poverty and an abusive stepfather to New York City, where she becomes a legendary vigilante for five years, and then mysteriously disappears. But in the present day, a divorced dad approaching fifty is taking care of his elderly mother—she has Alzheimer’s and is dying—and he discovers that she was the infamous Black Stiletto. Thus, it’s two parallel stories—one in the present that deals with family and Alzheimer’s, and one in the past, which is about the Stiletto’s exploits.
The Stiletto’s portion of each book is in the form of a diary—that is, first person. How did I get the voice right? Good question! How did I get any of my female protagonists’ voices correct? I like to say, facetiously, that I used up all my testosterone writing James Bond, and now I’m forced to rely on whatever estrogen I have in my body.
But to examine this question seriously, I suppose the first answer could be that I really like women. Since they are from Mars, and we men are from Venus—oh, wait, is it the other way around?—it’s obvious they are a different species from my own. However, I have done my research, and that means living, relating, and empathizing with the wonderful creatures.
I have a mother and a sister with whom I’m close (my mother is 94 and still ass-kicking), a history of girlfriends, and one wife of twenty-eight years (and counting). I watch movies by Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, and any film buff will tell you that those guys create excellent roles for women. The best answer I can give is that I ultimately find women to be more interesting characters because, in my very male opinion, they’re more complex! Men only think about two things (and I’ll let the reader figure out what they are), but there’s a lot going on inside a woman’s brain. A woman can multi-task better than any man. I find that kind of cool... and sexy, too.
I also believe I’m a feminist; I’ve supported women’s political causes my entire life. I think I understand where a woman is coming from, regarding what is important to the female gender. In fact, when Library Journal described the first Black Stiletto book, they called it a “mashup of the work of Gloria Steinem, Ian Fleming, and Mario Puzo, all under the editorship of Stan Lee.” I was especially proud of the Gloria Steinem part. I want women to win.
The only thing left to master is learning how a woman dresses, applies makeup, and chooses what shoes to wear. For those kinds of things, I ask my wife. She is a reader and is extremely helpful with that stuff. “No, she would never wear that.” That kind of constructive criticism. And the Internet is great for researching period clothing, though thrift shops are also good resources.
My wife is also my first beta reader, so she’s the first to clobber me with, “A woman would never say that.” When I wrote the first Black Stiletto book in the form of a diary, I gave it to another (female) beta reader who told me that had she not known a man had written it, she would have been fooled. So I thought maybe I was on to something.
Now, years later, after over ten titles starring women characters, I’ve completed a new stand-alone literary chiller featuring yet another female protagonist—this one a sixty-year-old romance writer! So apparently I’m pretty comfortable in another gender’s skin.
Temporarily, that is. When I’m finished writing for the day, I do manly things like throwing burgers on the grill, bending lead pipes around my waist, and entering raw egg eating contests. It puts hair on the chest.
Raymond Benson is the author of over 30 published titles, including the first four entries in the Black Stiletto series: The Black Stiletto, The Black Stiletto: Black & White, The Black Stiletto: Stars & Stripes, and The Black Stiletto: Secrets & Lies. He is most well known for being the official James Bond 007 continuation author between 1996 and 2002. In total, he penned and published worldwide six original 007 novels, three film novelizations, and three short stories. An anthology of his 007 work, The Union Trilogy, and a second anthology, Choice of Weapons, followed. His book The James Bond Bedside Companion was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America. Benson has published several other bestsellers and award-winning books, and has authored the novelization of a number of popular video games. Benson lives in the Chicago area. Reach him at http://www.raymondbenson.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Fact into Fiction / Andrew Welsh-Huggins
You’ve come to that horrible moment in your writing journey when, just as you’re leaving the harbor, a dark and ominous cloud front rolls across the sky. Rain starts to fall, big cold plops of realization that you are totally unequipped for this story, that no matter how much you think you know about coal fracking off the top of your head, you have nowhere near the expertise you need, and that Wikipedia is going to exhaust its usefulness pretty quickly (if even reliable, at that).
It’s a common moment for all writers. But for journalist-turned-novelist Andrew Welsh-Huggins, it’s a moment he knows how to navigate, thanks to his years of experience doing research. In this week’s blog, learn from a professional fact-finder, so that the next time you come to an “I-have-no-idea” moment, you have the skills to help you sail straight through. And for me, the 10-minute rule he cited on research and writing long are pure diamonds.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Fact Into Fiction
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
“How much research do you do for your books?”
It’s one of the questions I’m asked most often at signings and talks, even more than the tried-and-true, “Where do you get your ideas?”
My usual response—“A lot”—should come as no surprise. By day, I’m a full-time reporter with The Associated Press, and my first two books were nonfiction on the death penalty and domestic terrorism, respectively. Both involved hundreds of hours of reporting, from poring over documents to conducting numerous interviews.
Despite all that, I’m the one sometimes surprised by my own answer. As a novelist, I figured, things would be different, a welcome break from my job as a fact-gathering journalist. You just make stuff up, right?
Wrong.
For starters, I found myself relying on my work experience more than I expected, whether setting scenes in courthouses or coffee shops, or loosely modeling characters after cops, lawyers, and politicians I’ve interviewed over the years. One of the subplots in my first mystery, Fourth Down And Out, involved a health-care financing company run like a Ponzi scheme. Incorporating that storyline was easy, based on weeks I’d spent covering the real-life $1.9 billon fraud case of suburban Columbus-based National Century Financial Enterprises.
Experiential writing only gets you so far, however, as I learned when it came time to write the book’s climactic scene, in which my hero, disgraced ex-Ohio State-quarterback-turned-private eye Andy Hayes, enters Ohio Stadium for the first time in twenty years to confront an old nemesis. Sure, I’d been in the famed stadium plenty of times, both as a reporter and as a civilian watching a game. But I quickly realized that neither casual knowledge nor Internet trolling was going to cut it. Trust me: when writing about the fanaticism of Buckeye fans, you don’t want to screw things up.
So I put my reporter’s hat back on and arranged a stadium tour. Thanks to that hour-long expedition, I timed Andy’s walk to a specific gate entrance, took pictures of the views he would see inside, and most importantly, counted the number of steps he’d have to climb to reach a particular luxury suite.
In a 2014 interview with The Daily Beast, Michael Connelly discussed researching his Mickey Haller books, “until I feel that the books feel of authority and have some realism to them.” When I left the stadium that day, I felt a similar sense of authority. Readers partial to the scarlet-and-gray might not appreciate my portrayal of rabid OSU supporters, but they can’t argue with that scene’s layout.
The reporting load was even heavier in my second book, Slow Burn, in which I combined a ripped-from-the-headlines arson fire near campus with another subplot, this time involving hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a drilling process used to free previously off-limits supplies of natural gas from deep underground.
I’d written a bit about the controversial extraction method as a reporter, since eastern Ohio, home to the Utica Shale formation, is a fracking hot bed. But I hardly knew enough even to be dangerous. Soon, I was trading emails with a retired state geologist who taught me everything I needed to know and more about permeability, magnetic resonance, and piggyback logs. My happy challenge became integrating all those facts into the story without interrupting the novel’s pace.
In mystery writing as in journalism, the one thing research shouldn’t do is slow down the creative process. “Make one quick effort to get the answer,” wrote Stuart Kaminsky, whose many novels include the Sarasota-based Lew Fonesca series. “If you can’t find it in ten minutes, keep writing and go back for the answer when you finish your manuscript.” I often write longer articles while I’m still reporting them, finding it easier to fill in gaps as I go than start from that awful blank page. Similarly, I plow through my mysteries’ first “vomit drafts” regardless of the facts. It’s good to be right; it’s also good to have something completed and in hand to be right about.
My life as a hybrid journalist-novelist shows no sign of abating. Despite years spent in and around the Ohio Statehouse, I turned to the building’s able historians, my notebook and pen at the ready, when writing Capitol Punishment, the third volume of Andy Hayes’s adventures, coming in spring 2016. After ten years in print journalism and another seventeen with a wire service, it’s the only approach to writing, fiction or otherwise, that I know how to do.
Andrew Welsh-Huggins, a legal affairs reporter for The Associated Press, is the author of the Andy Hayes mystery series, set in Columbus and featuring an ex-Ohio State quarterback turned private eye, including Slow Burn and Fourth Down And Out; and the nonfiction books No Winners HereTonight: Race, Politics and Geography in One of the Country’s Busiest Death Penalty States and Hatred at Home: Al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest. He enjoys running, reading, watching movies, spending time with family, and trying to remember why having a dog, two cats, and two parakeets seemed like a good idea at the time. He can be reached at https://andrewwelshhuggins.wordpress.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Fact into Fiction / Andrew Welsh-Huggins
You’ve come to that horrible moment in your writing journey when, just as you’re leaving the harbor, a dark and ominous cloud front rolls across the sky. Rain starts to fall, big cold plops of realization that you are totally unequipped for this story, that no matter how much you think you know about coal fracking off the top of your head, you have nowhere near the expertise you need, and that Wikipedia is going to exhaust its usefulness pretty quickly (if even reliable, at that).It’s a common moment for all writers. But for journalist-turned-novelist Andrew Welsh-Huggins, it’s a moment he knows how to navigate, thanks to his years of experience doing research. In this week’s blog, learn from a professional fact-finder, so that the next time you come to an “I-have-no-idea” moment, you have the skills to help you sail straight through. And for me, the 10-minute rule he cited on research and writing long are pure diamonds.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Fact Into Fiction
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
“How much research do you do for your books?”
It’s one of the questions I’m asked most often at signings and talks, even more than the tried-and-true, “Where do you get your ideas?”
My usual response—“A lot”—should come as no surprise. By day, I’m a full-time reporter with The Associated Press, and my first two books were nonfiction on the death penalty and domestic terrorism, respectively. Both involved hundreds of hours of reporting, from poring over documents to conducting numerous interviews.
Despite all that, I’m the one sometimes surprised by my own answer. As a novelist, I figured, things would be different, a welcome break from my job as a fact-gathering journalist. You just make stuff up, right?
Wrong.
For starters, I found myself relying on my work experience more than I expected, whether setting scenes in courthouses or coffee shops, or loosely modeling characters after cops, lawyers, and politicians I’ve interviewed over the years. One of the subplots in my first mystery, Fourth Down And Out, involved a health-care financing company run like a Ponzi scheme. Incorporating that storyline was easy, based on weeks I’d spent covering the real-life $1.9 billon fraud case of suburban Columbus-based National Century Financial Enterprises.
Experiential writing only gets you so far, however, as I learned when it came time to write the book’s climactic scene, in which my hero, disgraced ex-Ohio State-quarterback-turned-private eye Andy Hayes, enters Ohio Stadium for the first time in twenty years to confront an old nemesis. Sure, I’d been in the famed stadium plenty of times, both as a reporter and as a civilian watching a game. But I quickly realized that neither casual knowledge nor Internet trolling was going to cut it. Trust me: when writing about the fanaticism of Buckeye fans, you don’t want to screw things up.
So I put my reporter’s hat back on and arranged a stadium tour. Thanks to that hour-long expedition, I timed Andy’s walk to a specific gate entrance, took pictures of the views he would see inside, and most importantly, counted the number of steps he’d have to climb to reach a particular luxury suite.
In a 2014 interview with The Daily Beast, Michael Connelly discussed researching his Mickey Haller books, “until I feel that the books feel of authority and have some realism to them.” When I left the stadium that day, I felt a similar sense of authority. Readers partial to the scarlet-and-gray might not appreciate my portrayal of rabid OSU supporters, but they can’t argue with that scene’s layout.
The reporting load was even heavier in my second book, Slow Burn, in which I combined a ripped-from-the-headlines arson fire near campus with another subplot, this time involving hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a drilling process used to free previously off-limits supplies of natural gas from deep underground.
I’d written a bit about the controversial extraction method as a reporter, since eastern Ohio, home to the Utica Shale formation, is a fracking hot bed. But I hardly knew enough even to be dangerous. Soon, I was trading emails with a retired state geologist who taught me everything I needed to know and more about permeability, magnetic resonance, and piggyback logs. My happy challenge became integrating all those facts into the story without interrupting the novel’s pace.
In mystery writing as in journalism, the one thing research shouldn’t do is slow down the creative process. “Make one quick effort to get the answer,” wrote Stuart Kaminsky, whose many novels include the Sarasota-based Lew Fonesca series. “If you can’t find it in ten minutes, keep writing and go back for the answer when you finish your manuscript.” I often write longer articles while I’m still reporting them, finding it easier to fill in gaps as I go than start from that awful blank page. Similarly, I plow through my mysteries’ first “vomit drafts” regardless of the facts. It’s good to be right; it’s also good to have something completed and in hand to be right about.
My life as a hybrid journalist-novelist shows no sign of abating. Despite years spent in and around the Ohio Statehouse, I turned to the building’s able historians, my notebook and pen at the ready, when writing Capitol Punishment, the third volume of Andy Hayes’s adventures, coming in spring 2016. After ten years in print journalism and another seventeen with a wire service, it’s the only approach to writing, fiction or otherwise, that I know how to do.
Andrew Welsh-Huggins, a legal affairs reporter for The Associated Press, is the author of the Andy Hayes mystery series, set in Columbus and featuring an ex-Ohio State quarterback turned private eye, including Slow Burn and Fourth Down And Out; and the nonfiction books No Winners Here Tonight: Race, Politics and Geography in One of the Country’s Busiest Death Penalty States and Hatred at Home: Al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest. He enjoys running, reading, watching movies, spending time with family, and trying to remember why having a dog, two cats, and two parakeets seemed like a good idea at the time. He can be reached at https://andrewwelshhuggins.wordpress.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Fact into Fiction / Andrew Welsh-Huggins
You’ve come to that horrible moment in your writing journey when, just as you’re leaving the harbor, a dark and ominous cloud front rolls across the sky. Rain starts to fall, big cold plops of realization that you are totally unequipped for this story, that no matter how much you think you know about coal fracking off the top of your head, you have nowhere near the expertise you need, and that Wikipedia is going to exhaust its usefulness pretty quickly (if even reliable, at that).It’s a common moment for all writers. But for journalist-turned-novelist Andrew Welsh-Huggins, it’s a moment he knows how to navigate, thanks to his years of experience doing research. In this week’s blog, learn from a professional fact-finder, so that the next time you come to an “I-have-no-idea” moment, you have the skills to help you sail straight through. And for me, the 10-minute rule he cited on research and writing long are pure diamonds.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Fact Into Fiction
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
“How much research do you do for your books?”
It’s one of the questions I’m asked most often at signings and talks, even more than the tried-and-true, “Where do you get your ideas?”
My usual response—“A lot”—should come as no surprise. By day, I’m a full-time reporter with The Associated Press, and my first two books were nonfiction on the death penalty and domestic terrorism, respectively. Both involved hundreds of hours of reporting, from poring over documents to conducting numerous interviews.
Despite all that, I’m the one sometimes surprised by my own answer. As a novelist, I figured, things would be different, a welcome break from my job as a fact-gathering journalist. You just make stuff up, right?
Wrong.
For starters, I found myself relying on my work experience more than I expected, whether setting scenes in courthouses or coffee shops, or loosely modeling characters after cops, lawyers, and politicians I’ve interviewed over the years. One of the subplots in my first mystery, Fourth Down And Out, involved a health-care financing company run like a Ponzi scheme. Incorporating that storyline was easy, based on weeks I’d spent covering the real-life $1.9 billon fraud case of suburban Columbus-based National Century Financial Enterprises.
Experiential writing only gets you so far, however, as I learned when it came time to write the book’s climactic scene, in which my hero, disgraced ex-Ohio State-quarterback-turned-private eye Andy Hayes, enters Ohio Stadium for the first time in twenty years to confront an old nemesis. Sure, I’d been in the famed stadium plenty of times, both as a reporter and as a civilian watching a game. But I quickly realized that neither casual knowledge nor Internet trolling was going to cut it. Trust me: when writing about the fanaticism of Buckeye fans, you don’t want to screw things up.
So I put my reporter’s hat back on and arranged a stadium tour. Thanks to that hour-long expedition, I timed Andy’s walk to a specific gate entrance, took pictures of the views he would see inside, and most importantly, counted the number of steps he’d have to climb to reach a particular luxury suite.
In a 2014 interview with The Daily Beast, Michael Connelly discussed researching his Mickey Haller books, “until I feel that the books feel of authority and have some realism to them.” When I left the stadium that day, I felt a similar sense of authority. Readers partial to the scarlet-and-gray might not appreciate my portrayal of rabid OSU supporters, but they can’t argue with that scene’s layout.
The reporting load was even heavier in my second book, Slow Burn, in which I combined a ripped-from-the-headlines arson fire near campus with another subplot, this time involving hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a drilling process used to free previously off-limits supplies of natural gas from deep underground.
I’d written a bit about the controversial extraction method as a reporter, since eastern Ohio, home to the Utica Shale formation, is a fracking hot bed. But I hardly knew enough even to be dangerous. Soon, I was trading emails with a retired state geologist who taught me everything I needed to know and more about permeability, magnetic resonance, and piggyback logs. My happy challenge became integrating all those facts into the story without interrupting the novel’s pace.
In mystery writing as in journalism, the one thing research shouldn’t do is slow down the creative process. “Make one quick effort to get the answer,” wrote Stuart Kaminsky, whose many novels include the Sarasota-based Lew Fonesca series. “If you can’t find it in ten minutes, keep writing and go back for the answer when you finish your manuscript.” I often write longer articles while I’m still reporting them, finding it easier to fill in gaps as I go than start from that awful blank page. Similarly, I plow through my mysteries’ first “vomit drafts” regardless of the facts. It’s good to be right; it’s also good to have something completed and in hand to be right about.
My life as a hybrid journalist-novelist shows no sign of abating. Despite years spent in and around the Ohio Statehouse, I turned to the building’s able historians, my notebook and pen at the ready, when writing Capitol Punishment, the third volume of Andy Hayes’s adventures, coming in spring 2016. After ten years in print journalism and another seventeen with a wire service, it’s the only approach to writing, fiction or otherwise, that I know how to do.
Andrew Welsh-Huggins, a legal affairs reporter for The Associated Press, is the author of the Andy Hayes mystery series, set in Columbus and featuring an ex-Ohio State quarterback turned private eye, including Slow Burn and Fourth Down And Out; and the nonfiction books No Winners Here Tonight: Race, Politics and Geography in One of the Country’s Busiest Death Penalty States and Hatred at Home: Al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest. He enjoys running, reading, watching movies, spending time with family, and trying to remember why having a dog, two cats, and two parakeets seemed like a good idea at the time. He can be reached at https://andrewwelshhuggins.wordpress.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Filling the Well / Dana Chamblee Carpenter
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the process of writing. There are so many things to remember, so many different rules to keep straight. Find a distinctive voice. Write what you know. Show, don’t tell. If we’re not careful, we may get so lost in craft that we never actually get a chance to do what we love: create.
In this week’s guest blog, 2014 Claymore Award winner Dana Chamblee Carpenter draws upon her expertise as a creative writing teacher in reminding us all to take a step back. Not just away from the keyboard, but away from our sensible grown-up selves, back into a time where it was possible to just play.
Find the magic again. Isn’t that why we do this, anyway?
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Filling the Well
By Dana Chamblee Carpenter
Often, we writers talk and blog about the WORK of writing—the craft, the discipline, the marketing, and the industry. We all know that a relentless assault on mastering this work is what leads to success.
But PLAY is as vital to a writer as any work we do.
When I taught my first Introduction to Creative Writing course, I really hammered the idea of working on craft and discipline, and my students turned in pieces that were polished and on time—every teacher’s dream, right? Not really. Not for me anyway. None of the stories took risks; none of them took me anywhere I hadn’t already been.
I wanted my students to write with courage, not to play it safe. But they were coming to the writing process with empty wells and looking at the world in the way they had been taught to see it. I wanted them to see it the way a writer should—uniquely, imaginatively, playfully.
Despite the many cranky, old memes out there suggesting that “kids these days” don’t know how to work, I realized pretty quickly that my students didn’t know how to play. But play fills our wells, lets us look for the magic in the world, frees us to see and feel and learn in new ways.
A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin confesses this secret of childhood to Pooh when he says his favorite thing to do is “Nothing,” which he defines like so: “It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” Immediately after embracing this nothingness of play, Christopher Robin discovers an enchanted place that no one else has been to, that is not like the woods he and Pooh thought they were in, and in this new place “they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them.”
That’s where we want to be as writers.
But that kind of inspiration takes a certain kind of play—unstructured, aimless, without boundary or expectation—the play of “Nothing.” So I set about teaching my students how to play this way.
We discovered that we had to be intentional about setting aside time for play, just as we set aside time to write. Play won’t happen spontaneously as when we were children, because there are so many THINGS we do that there’s little unstructured time left (sadly this is true for many kids today, too). So we rearranged activities, pushed back against social demands, and took vows to constrain our tech time (email, texting, social media) until we had at least a couple of chunks of unclaimed hour-long periods each week just for play.
Ideally, playtime for writers should be solo time. Kids can play together and it stays play. Put a couple of grown-ups together and pretty quickly talk turns to serious matters of utmost importance that will scare away any playfulness.
My students were out of the practice of playing, and wrestled with the idea that they were wasting time when they could be doing SOMETHING. So I made them pretend at first—pretend to be kids full of wonderment at the world.
But soon, they were kids again. My students came to class talking about colors and coloring books, bubbles, silly string, playing on the playground, and making clover crowns. They talked about adventures at the zoo, the triumphs of eating a snow cone down to the syrupy good stuff at the bottom, of discovering some hidden path on a once-familiar walk.
They were alive, awake, and seeing the world like writers—beyond what was, imagining what might be; all the world over was with them.
And the stories they wrote—wow. Uniquely their own and most definitely inspired. (And we still worked on craft and discipline. They were still polished and on time.)
Too often I forget what I learned that semester. I let deadlines and word counts and worries over keeping up with all the social media and publication evolutions consume me. I give over solely to the WORK of writing, and my writing suffers. So do I.
When I was writing Bohemian Gospel, I sometimes worked myself into a frenzy, pushing life to the margins and focusing solely on crafting perfect sentences or burying myself in the historical research. At those times, I would get so frustrated because I felt like I wasn’t making any progress despite my frantic endeavors. And then one of my kids would come tug at my hand and ask me to play. We would go dance in the falling leaves, paint silly pictures, or build masterpieces with Legos.
When I went back to the work, I realized that what had seemed like stepping away from writing was actually stepping into creativity, into story. I had fresh ideas and new energy.
Even if you’ve never had kids or if the kids have grown up and moved away, you can still go play like a kid.
Remembering to PLAY is hard for most of us managing writing lives alongside all our other duties and distractions. But it is crucial that we fill our wells back up again, that we equip ourselves to see the world new every day.
Anyone up for a little bit of Nothing?
Dana Chamblee Carpenter's award-winning short fiction has appeared in The Arkansas Review, Jersey Devil Press, and Maypop. She has a short story in the new anthology, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded. Her debut novel, Bohemian Gospel, won Killer Nashville's 2014 Claymore Award, and Publisher’s Weekly called it a “deliciously creepy debut.” Bohemian Gospel, published by Pegasus Books, releases on November 15, 2015.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Filling the Well / Dana Chamblee Carpenter
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the process of writing. There are so many things to remember, so many different rules to keep straight. Find a distinctive voice. Write what you know. Show, don’t tell. If we’re not careful, we may get so lost in craft that we never actually get a chance to do what we love: create.In this week’s guest blog, 2014 Claymore Award winner Dana Chamblee Carpenter draws upon her expertise as a creative writing teacher in reminding us all to take a step back. Not just away from the keyboard, but away from our sensible grown-up selves, back into a time where it was possible to just play.Find the magic again. Isn’t that why we do this, anyway?Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Filling the Well
By Dana Chamblee Carpenter
Often, we writers talk and blog about the WORK of writing—the craft, the discipline, the marketing, and the industry. We all know that a relentless assault on mastering this work is what leads to success.
But PLAY is as vital to a writer as any work we do.
When I taught my first Introduction to Creative Writing course, I really hammered the idea of working on craft and discipline, and my students turned in pieces that were polished and on time—every teacher’s dream, right? Not really. Not for me anyway. None of the stories took risks; none of them took me anywhere I hadn’t already been.
I wanted my students to write with courage, not to play it safe. But they were coming to the writing process with empty wells and looking at the world in the way they had been taught to see it. I wanted them to see it the way a writer should—uniquely, imaginatively, playfully.
Despite the many cranky, old memes out there suggesting that “kids these days” don’t know how to work, I realized pretty quickly that my students didn’t know how to play. But play fills our wells, lets us look for the magic in the world, frees us to see and feel and learn in new ways.
A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin confesses this secret of childhood to Pooh when he says his favorite thing to do is “Nothing,” which he defines like so: “It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” Immediately after embracing this nothingness of play, Christopher Robin discovers an enchanted place that no one else has been to, that is not like the woods he and Pooh thought they were in, and in this new place “they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them.”
That’s where we want to be as writers.
But that kind of inspiration takes a certain kind of play—unstructured, aimless, without boundary or expectation—the play of “Nothing.” So I set about teaching my students how to play this way.
We discovered that we had to be intentional about setting aside time for play, just as we set aside time to write. Play won’t happen spontaneously as when we were children, because there are so many THINGS we do that there’s little unstructured time left (sadly this is true for many kids today, too). So we rearranged activities, pushed back against social demands, and took vows to constrain our tech time (email, texting, social media) until we had at least a couple of chunks of unclaimed hour-long periods each week just for play.
Ideally, playtime for writers should be solo time. Kids can play together and it stays play. Put a couple of grown-ups together and pretty quickly talk turns to serious matters of utmost importance that will scare away any playfulness.
My students were out of the practice of playing, and wrestled with the idea that they were wasting time when they could be doing SOMETHING. So I made them pretend at first—pretend to be kids full of wonderment at the world.
But soon, they were kids again. My students came to class talking about colors and coloring books, bubbles, silly string, playing on the playground, and making clover crowns. They talked about adventures at the zoo, the triumphs of eating a snow cone down to the syrupy good stuff at the bottom, of discovering some hidden path on a once-familiar walk.
They were alive, awake, and seeing the world like writers—beyond what was, imagining what might be; all the world over was with them.
And the stories they wrote—wow. Uniquely their own and most definitely inspired. (And we still worked on craft and discipline. They were still polished and on time.)
Too often I forget what I learned that semester. I let deadlines and word counts and worries over keeping up with all the social media and publication evolutions consume me. I give over solely to the WORK of writing, and my writing suffers. So do I.
When I was writing Bohemian Gospel, I sometimes worked myself into a frenzy, pushing life to the margins and focusing solely on crafting perfect sentences or burying myself in the historical research. At those times, I would get so frustrated because I felt like I wasn’t making any progress despite my frantic endeavors. And then one of my kids would come tug at my hand and ask me to play. We would go dance in the falling leaves, paint silly pictures, or build masterpieces with Legos.
When I went back to the work, I realized that what had seemed like stepping away from writing was actually stepping into creativity, into story. I had fresh ideas and new energy.
Even if you’ve never had kids or if the kids have grown up and moved away, you can still go play like a kid.
Remembering to PLAY is hard for most of us managing writing lives alongside all our other duties and distractions. But it is crucial that we fill our wells back up again, that we equip ourselves to see the world new every day.
Anyone up for a little bit of Nothing?
Dana Chamblee Carpenter's award-winning short fiction has appeared in The Arkansas Review, Jersey Devil Press, and Maypop. She has a short story in the new anthology, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded. Her debut novel, Bohemian Gospel, won Killer Nashville's 2014 Claymore Award, and Publisher’s Weekly called it a “deliciously creepy debut.” Bohemian Gospel, published by Pegasus Books, releases on November 15, 2015.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Filling the Well / Dana Chamblee Carpenter
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the process of writing. There are so many things to remember, so many different rules to keep straight. Find a distinctive voice. Write what you know. Show, don’t tell. If we’re not careful, we may get so lost in craft that we never actually get a chance to do what we love: create.In this week’s guest blog, 2014 Claymore Award winner Dana Chamblee Carpenter draws upon her expertise as a creative writing teacher in reminding us all to take a step back. Not just away from the keyboard, but away from our sensible grown-up selves, back into a time where it was possible to just play.Find the magic again. Isn’t that why we do this, anyway?Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Filling the Well
By Dana Chamblee Carpenter
Often, we writers talk and blog about the WORK of writing—the craft, the discipline, the marketing, and the industry. We all know that a relentless assault on mastering this work is what leads to success.
But PLAY is as vital to a writer as any work we do.
When I taught my first Introduction to Creative Writing course, I really hammered the idea of working on craft and discipline, and my students turned in pieces that were polished and on time—every teacher’s dream, right? Not really. Not for me anyway. None of the stories took risks; none of them took me anywhere I hadn’t already been.
I wanted my students to write with courage, not to play it safe. But they were coming to the writing process with empty wells and looking at the world in the way they had been taught to see it. I wanted them to see it the way a writer should—uniquely, imaginatively, playfully.
Despite the many cranky, old memes out there suggesting that “kids these days” don’t know how to work, I realized pretty quickly that my students didn’t know how to play. But play fills our wells, lets us look for the magic in the world, frees us to see and feel and learn in new ways.
A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin confesses this secret of childhood to Pooh when he says his favorite thing to do is “Nothing,” which he defines like so: “It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” Immediately after embracing this nothingness of play, Christopher Robin discovers an enchanted place that no one else has been to, that is not like the woods he and Pooh thought they were in, and in this new place “they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them.”
That’s where we want to be as writers.
But that kind of inspiration takes a certain kind of play—unstructured, aimless, without boundary or expectation—the play of “Nothing.” So I set about teaching my students how to play this way.
We discovered that we had to be intentional about setting aside time for play, just as we set aside time to write. Play won’t happen spontaneously as when we were children, because there are so many THINGS we do that there’s little unstructured time left (sadly this is true for many kids today, too). So we rearranged activities, pushed back against social demands, and took vows to constrain our tech time (email, texting, social media) until we had at least a couple of chunks of unclaimed hour-long periods each week just for play.
Ideally, playtime for writers should be solo time. Kids can play together and it stays play. Put a couple of grown-ups together and pretty quickly talk turns to serious matters of utmost importance that will scare away any playfulness.
My students were out of the practice of playing, and wrestled with the idea that they were wasting time when they could be doing SOMETHING. So I made them pretend at first—pretend to be kids full of wonderment at the world.
But soon, they were kids again. My students came to class talking about colors and coloring books, bubbles, silly string, playing on the playground, and making clover crowns. They talked about adventures at the zoo, the triumphs of eating a snow cone down to the syrupy good stuff at the bottom, of discovering some hidden path on a once-familiar walk.
They were alive, awake, and seeing the world like writers—beyond what was, imagining what might be; all the world over was with them.
And the stories they wrote—wow. Uniquely their own and most definitely inspired. (And we still worked on craft and discipline. They were still polished and on time.)
Too often I forget what I learned that semester. I let deadlines and word counts and worries over keeping up with all the social media and publication evolutions consume me. I give over solely to the WORK of writing, and my writing suffers. So do I.
When I was writing Bohemian Gospel, I sometimes worked myself into a frenzy, pushing life to the margins and focusing solely on crafting perfect sentences or burying myself in the historical research. At those times, I would get so frustrated because I felt like I wasn’t making any progress despite my frantic endeavors. And then one of my kids would come tug at my hand and ask me to play. We would go dance in the falling leaves, paint silly pictures, or build masterpieces with Legos.
When I went back to the work, I realized that what had seemed like stepping away from writing was actually stepping into creativity, into story. I had fresh ideas and new energy.
Even if you’ve never had kids or if the kids have grown up and moved away, you can still go play like a kid.
Remembering to PLAY is hard for most of us managing writing lives alongside all our other duties and distractions. But it is crucial that we fill our wells back up again, that we equip ourselves to see the world new every day.
Anyone up for a little bit of Nothing?
Dana Chamblee Carpenter's award-winning short fiction has appeared in The Arkansas Review, Jersey Devil Press, and Maypop. She has a short story in the new anthology, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded. Her debut novel, Bohemian Gospel, won Killer Nashville's 2014 Claymore Award, and Publisher’s Weekly called it a “deliciously creepy debut.” Bohemian Gospel, published by Pegasus Books, releases on November 15, 2015.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
The V8 of Legal Thriller Writing / John F. Dobbyn
All right, so thrillers and mystery novels don’t always get the best rap from the high-falutin’ literary crowd. Can’t say I’m all that bothered: I don’t think Stephen King is losing much sleep over the opinions of the so-called elite.
All the same, we want to do more than entertain, don’t we? We want to give readers a thrill-ride, but we also want to share with them something memorable, something that will linger long after the adrenaline rush fades. In this week’s blog, mystery novelist John F. Dobbyn shares his strategy for making a lasting impact on readers’ minds.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
The V8 of Legal Thriller Writing
By John F. Dobbyn
There’s a commercial on television that squarely hits the mark. A man or woman is just finishing a glass of sugary, flavored, carbonated soft drink. A slap on the forehead registers the realization that “I could have had a V8!”
This article is not a commercial for liquid vegetables, but the parallel to thriller or mystery fiction writing is on point. It is not difficult to find fiction in each of those genres that are the equivalent of a standard three-act drama. Act one is the set-up, with the introduction of a murder or threatening situation that one way or another sucks the protagonist into the plot. In act two, things go from bad to worse–or even seem hopeless. In act three, the mystery is solved, the killer is caught, the tension is defused, and the good guys win. The end.
In some ways, that’s the fictional equivalent of flavored soda water—not by any means to undermine the talent of the writer who has gripped the reader and provided absorbing entertainment for some three hundred pages plus. The reader’s thirst has been creatively quenched. But as with the soda in the ad, the story is missing something. There could have been so much more by way of nutrition, without sacrificing the taste. This will come, however, at the cost of sometimes-elaborate research.
There are three elements to a novel: setting, character, and plot. Each one has the potential to carry a cargo of education to the reader in an unobjectionable, unobtrusive, and even enjoyable way.
The setting, for example, could introduce the reader to the bizarre, the exotic, or even the familiar, seen in a new light. In each of my legal thriller novels, from Neon Dragon through Deadly Diamonds, the bars, back alleys, historic sites, and ethnic neighborhoods of Boston play prominent roles, as the action weaves in and out of them without slackening the pace. Readers have told me that they found themselves picking up “the feel” of Boston—one unlike any other city on earth.
The trick is what Spencer Tracy once advised Robert Wagner about acting: “Don’t let the audience catch you at it.” For a writer, this means that you should blend the sense of location into the action of the plot so seamlessly that the reader doesn’t realize he/she is being “taught.”
In each of my last three novels, as well as the next, Deadly Odds, I deliberately shift the action from Boston to areas of the world that could introduce the reader to previously unexplored countries or cities. I see the inclusion of local customs or peculiarities of art, or food, or wealth, or crime, or poverty, or any other kind of cultural insight as a gift to the reader. But it must be given invisibly as an integral part of the uninterrupted plot. It cannot sever the tension. If the book becomes a travelogue, setting has hindered the primary purpose of storytelling—don’t let the reader catch you at it.
The second element, character, can explore any aspect of human personality or psychology that the writer knows well enough to “demonstrate” through the words and actions of the fictional people. This can be tricky ground. Careful research here is essential; amateur psychology can be shaky if pushed too far. As Mark Twain said, “The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to be true.”
The third element, plot, has the most potential to carry disguised education. In my latest novel, Deadly Diamonds, a young native of Sierra Leone is abducted by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and forced to work in the diamond pits. Eventually, he escapes, and has to find his way through the world of West Africa, which is consumed with the blood diamond trade. Instead of facing the tedium of being “taught”, the reader simply lives through the fictional action of the novel, and comes out the other end with knowledge that will long outlast the experience of reading a thriller.
The cost of providing the reader with this bonus is additional research on your part—perhaps even travel—that must precede the writing. But this education can be a bonus, particularly if the writer has chosen a compelling subject: the work will become a pleasure, and it will show in the writing.
One last thought. I’ve found that when I give book-talks at libraries or book clubs, the audiences don’t want me to focus as much on plot or characters or setting per se, but rather on the elements that I was hoping to teach without “teaching” through the novel—subjects like the Chinese Tong (Neon Dragon), horse racing (Black Diamond), international art theft and forgery (Frame Up), and blood diamonds (Deadly Diamonds). That is always a joy, because the reader has taken the bait of disguised education in a way that could lead to discussion and interest far beyond the present moment. That is what lasts beyond the reading, like the nourishment of a glass of V8.
John F. Dobbyn was born and raised in Boston. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Boston College Law School. Prior to entering law school, Dobbyn served in the Air Force as a radio and radar director of aircraft in the Air Defense Command. After practicing law for several years as a trial lawyer, he obtained a Master of Law degree from Harvard Law School, and subsequently accepted a position as Professor of Law at Villanova Law School. Dobbyn’s short stories have been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and he is the author of two previous Knight and Devlin novels, Neon Dragon, and Frame-Up. “Jack” and his wife Lois live in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Reach him at @JohnDobbyn on Twitter.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
And for more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
“Murder, mayhem, and mystery! Every story in KILLER NASHVILLE: COLD-BLOODED is filled with suspense, sizzle and startling twists. I loved it!”
- Lisa Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
The V8 of Legal Thriller Writing / John F. Dobbyn
All right, so thrillers and mystery novels don’t always get the best rap from the high-falutin’ literary crowd. Can’t say I’m all that bothered: I don’t think Stephen King is losing much sleep over the opinions of the so-called elite.All the same, we want to do more than entertain, don’t we? We want to give readers a thrill-ride, but we also want to share with them something memorable, something that will linger long after the adrenaline rush fades. In this week’s blog, mystery novelist John F. Dobbyn shares his strategy for making a lasting impact on readers’ minds.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
The V8 of Legal Thriller Writing
By John F. Dobbyn
There’s a commercial on television that squarely hits the mark. A man or woman is just finishing a glass of sugary, flavored, carbonated soft drink. A slap on the forehead registers the realization that “I could have had a V8!”
This article is not a commercial for liquid vegetables, but the parallel to thriller or mystery fiction writing is on point. It is not difficult to find fiction in each of those genres that are the equivalent of a standard three-act drama. Act one is the set-up, with the introduction of a murder or threatening situation that one way or another sucks the protagonist into the plot. In act two, things go from bad to worse–or even seem hopeless. In act three, the mystery is solved, the killer is caught, the tension is defused, and the good guys win. The end.
In some ways, that’s the fictional equivalent of flavored soda water—not by any means to undermine the talent of the writer who has gripped the reader and provided absorbing entertainment for some three hundred pages plus. The reader’s thirst has been creatively quenched. But as with the soda in the ad, the story is missing something. There could have been so much more by way of nutrition, without sacrificing the taste. This will come, however, at the cost of sometimes-elaborate research.
There are three elements to a novel: setting, character, and plot. Each one has the potential to carry a cargo of education to the reader in an unobjectionable, unobtrusive, and even enjoyable way.
The setting, for example, could introduce the reader to the bizarre, the exotic, or even the familiar, seen in a new light. In each of my legal thriller novels, from Neon Dragon through Deadly Diamonds, the bars, back alleys, historic sites, and ethnic neighborhoods of Boston play prominent roles, as the action weaves in and out of them without slackening the pace. Readers have told me that they found themselves picking up “the feel” of Boston—one unlike any other city on earth.
The trick is what Spencer Tracy once advised Robert Wagner about acting: “Don’t let the audience catch you at it.” For a writer, this means that you should blend the sense of location into the action of the plot so seamlessly that the reader doesn’t realize he/she is being “taught.”
In each of my last three novels, as well as the next, Deadly Odds, I deliberately shift the action from Boston to areas of the world that could introduce the reader to previously unexplored countries or cities. I see the inclusion of local customs or peculiarities of art, or food, or wealth, or crime, or poverty, or any other kind of cultural insight as a gift to the reader. But it must be given invisibly as an integral part of the uninterrupted plot. It cannot sever the tension. If the book becomes a travelogue, setting has hindered the primary purpose of storytelling—don’t let the reader catch you at it.
The second element, character, can explore any aspect of human personality or psychology that the writer knows well enough to “demonstrate” through the words and actions of the fictional people. This can be tricky ground. Careful research here is essential; amateur psychology can be shaky if pushed too far. As Mark Twain said, “The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to be true.”
The third element, plot, has the most potential to carry disguised education. In my latest novel, Deadly Diamonds, a young native of Sierra Leone is abducted by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and forced to work in the diamond pits. Eventually, he escapes, and has to find his way through the world of West Africa, which is consumed with the blood diamond trade. Instead of facing the tedium of being “taught”, the reader simply lives through the fictional action of the novel, and comes out the other end with knowledge that will long outlast the experience of reading a thriller.
The cost of providing the reader with this bonus is additional research on your part—perhaps even travel—that must precede the writing. But this education can be a bonus, particularly if the writer has chosen a compelling subject: the work will become a pleasure, and it will show in the writing.
One last thought. I’ve found that when I give book-talks at libraries or book clubs, the audiences don’t want me to focus as much on plot or characters or setting per se, but rather on the elements that I was hoping to teach without “teaching” through the novel—subjects like the Chinese Tong (Neon Dragon), horse racing (Black Diamond), international art theft and forgery (Frame Up), and blood diamonds (Deadly Diamonds). That is always a joy, because the reader has taken the bait of disguised education in a way that could lead to discussion and interest far beyond the present moment. That is what lasts beyond the reading, like the nourishment of a glass of V8.
John F. Dobbyn was born and raised in Boston. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Boston College Law School. Prior to entering law school, Dobbyn served in the Air Force as a radio and radar director of aircraft in the Air Defense Command. After practicing law for several years as a trial lawyer, he obtained a Master of Law degree from Harvard Law School, and subsequently accepted a position as Professor of Law at Villanova Law School. Dobbyn’s short stories have been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and he is the author of two previous Knight and Devlin novels, Neon Dragon, and Frame-Up. “Jack” and his wife Lois live in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Reach him at @JohnDobbyn on Twitter.
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Thanks to Tom Wood, Emily Eytchison, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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