KN Magazine: Articles
Researching Nashville / Caroline Fardig
As writers we get a lot of advice. A phrase that we are all too familiar with is, of course, “write what you know.” We hear it often enough that it can become something we don’t think critically about. In this week’s guest blog, author Caroline Fardig offers us her insight on how to familiarize yourself with a location that you would like to be a focal point of your writing. If you paint the picture of the world around you well enough, it can become as integral to the story as the characters themselves.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Researching Nashville
By Caroline Fardig
Write what you know.
As writers, we hear that advice over and over again. It’s good advice, because if you’re well versed in your subject matter, you’re less likely to provide incorrect facts, or worse, be compelled to make things up. However, even when we’re firmly inside our comfort zone, we still need to do some research. I find it’s especially important to research and get to know the setting of your story. (That is, unless your story is set on the planet Nebular, in which case you CAN in fact make up ridiculous things.) If written well, the setting can come to life and become as much a part of your story as your characters.
In preparing to write my latest series, the Java Jive Mysteries (Death Before Decaf, Mug Shot, and the upcoming A Whole Latte Murder), I’ve had to do some pretty intense research on my setting. And by intense, I mean serious hands-on, in the trenches, in depth VACATIONING in Nashville, Tennessee. A writer’s life can be tough sometimes.
My Java Jive series is a cozy mystery series following failed musician turned coffeehouse manager Juliet Langley. It’s set in a fictional coffeehouse in the Midtown area of Nashville. Midtown is just southwest of downtown, in and around the lovely Vanderbilt and Belmont University campuses. Whereas downtown can be glittery and rowdy at one end of Broadway, the campus/residential area at the other end is anything but. The area boasts dozens of mom and pop shops, from bars to boutiques, many of which are run out of restored old houses. That’s where I got the idea for the Java Jive coffeehouse.
I love coffee, so of course I had to visit every coffeehouse in the area—for the sake of research, of course. All coffeehouses have their own signature concoctions, my favorite being The Frothy Monkey’s White Monkey Mocha, an espresso drink flavored with white chocolate and banana syrups, which I recreate every morning at home. (In trying to learn about the life of a barista I also bought an espresso machine and learned to craft drinks and pour latte art.) At the coffeehouses, I researched their food and bakery offerings and their processes of serving and delivering the food to their customers. Again, a rough job. I paid attention to their hours of operation and employee work schedules. I drank in the atmosphere. Ultimately, I was able to glean a wealth of ideas to make Java Jive believable enough as a functioning coffeehouse.
Like Café Coco, Java Jive offers an open mic night for area musicians to perform. That was the only actual serious research I did. Each book in the series includes an original song I wrote, and I decided the best way to fully be immersed in the open mic experience was to perform myself. Talk about nerve-wracking! A forty-something mom of two getting up and performing in front of a bunch of young, talented Nashville musicians was almost more than I could handle. (I do have a music degree, so I’m not a total hack.) I never felt more empathy for my heroine, Juliet, and her crippling stage fright than in those few minutes I was up on that little stage.
Speaking of music, you can’t set your series in Nashville and ignore the unending supply of live music pouring out of the many bars and clubs downtown. My friend Karen (a Nashville area resident) was the perfect tour guide and partner in crime for a couple of unforgettable visits to the heart of Music City. Tin Roof is my favorite bar, and it made its way into A Whole Latte Murder. And speaking of “writing what you know,” the scene in A Whole Latte Murder where a bird defecates on Juliet on Second Avenue really happened to me the last time I was there. True story.
For outdoor locales, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with Centennial Park. It became the setting for the death scene in Mug Shot. To research for the scene, I walked the beautiful grounds of the park, scouting out where everything would take place, from where actual benches are to what my characters would see when they sat on the steps of the Parthenon facing Lake Watauga. As for other outdoor landmarks, in one particular scene in Death Before Decaf, my heroine follows someone from the Vanderbilt Library lawn past sorority row to the Office Depot on West End. I dragged my husband along on the exact route my characters took, making sure I had all the details right. I also found the perfect semi-secluded area behind the library to have my heroine narrowly escape being kidnapped.
Thanks to the Killer Nashville Conference, I was introduced to the Omni Hotel downtown. The whole place is gorgeous, especially the library in the lobby, a reader’s dream full of books, overstuffed chairs, and a fireplace to die for. In Mug Shot, Juliet ends up at the Omni while spying on one of her suspects. She hides in the library, pretending to read. Of course I had to recreate the scene when I was there for last year’s conference.
Research doesn’t always have to happen in front of a computer or at the library. Venture out. Look at the world around you, even if you’re simply people-watching. And if you come for August’s Killer Nashville conference (which is moving to suburban Cool Springs/Franklin, about 20 minutes south), make sure to take advantage of what Music City has to offer. You might find Nashville becoming your new favorite vacation spot or the setting for your next novel.
Caroline Fardig is the author of the Java Jive Mysteries seriesand the Lizzie Hart Mysteries series. Suspense Magazine recently named Fardig’s Bad Medicine as one of the Best Books of 2015. She worked as a schoolteacher, church organist, insurance agent, funeral parlor associate, and stay-at-home mom before she realized that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Born and raised in a small town in Indiana, Fardig still lives in that same town with an understanding husband, two sweet kids, two energetic dogs, and one malevolent cat. Find Caroline on the web at www.carolinefardig.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, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Researching Nashville / Caroline Fardig
As writers we get a lot of advice. A phrase that we are all too familiar with is, of course, “write what you know." We hear it often enough that it can become something we don’t think critically about. In this week’s guest blog, author Caroline Fardig offers us her insight on how to familiarize yourself with a location that you would like to be a focal point of your writing. If you paint the picture of the world around you well enough, it can become as integral to the story as the characters themselves.Happy reading!
Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Researching Nashville
By Caroline Fardig
Write what you know.
As writers, we hear that advice over and over again. It’s good advice, because if you’re well versed in your subject matter, you’re less likely to provide incorrect facts, or worse, be compelled to make things up. However, even when we’re firmly inside our comfort zone, we still need to do some research. I find it’s especially important to research and get to know the setting of your story. (That is, unless your story is set on the planet Nebular, in which case you CAN in fact make up ridiculous things.) If written well, the setting can come to life and become as much a part of your story as your characters.
In preparing to write my latest series, the Java Jive Mysteries (Death Before Decaf, Mug Shot, and the upcoming A Whole Latte Murder), I’ve had to do some pretty intense research on my setting. And by intense, I mean serious hands-on, in the trenches, in depth VACATIONING in Nashville, Tennessee. A writer’s life can be tough sometimes.
My Java Jive series is a cozy mystery series following failed musician turned coffeehouse manager Juliet Langley. It’s set in a fictional coffeehouse in the Midtown area of Nashville. Midtown is just southwest of downtown, in and around the lovely Vanderbilt and Belmont University campuses. Whereas downtown can be glittery and rowdy at one end of Broadway, the campus/residential area at the other end is anything but. The area boasts dozens of mom and pop shops, from bars to boutiques, many of which are run out of restored old houses. That’s where I got the idea for the Java Jive coffeehouse.
I love coffee, so of course I had to visit every coffeehouse in the area—for the sake of research, of course. All coffeehouses have their own signature concoctions, my favorite being The Frothy Monkey’s White Monkey Mocha, an espresso drink flavored with white chocolate and banana syrups, which I recreate every morning at home. (In trying to learn about the life of a barista I also bought an espresso machine and learned to craft drinks and pour latte art.) At the coffeehouses, I researched their food and bakery offerings and their processes of serving and delivering the food to their customers. Again, a rough job. I paid attention to their hours of operation and employee work schedules. I drank in the atmosphere. Ultimately, I was able to glean a wealth of ideas to make Java Jive believable enough as a functioning coffeehouse.
Like Café Coco, Java Jive offers an open mic night for area musicians to perform. That was the only actual serious research I did. Each book in the series includes an original song I wrote, and I decided the best way to fully be immersed in the open mic experience was to perform myself. Talk about nerve-wracking! A forty-something mom of two getting up and performing in front of a bunch of young, talented Nashville musicians was almost more than I could handle. (I do have a music degree, so I’m not a total hack.) I never felt more empathy for my heroine, Juliet, and her crippling stage fright than in those few minutes I was up on that little stage.
Speaking of music, you can’t set your series in Nashville and ignore the unending supply of live music pouring out of the many bars and clubs downtown. My friend Karen (a Nashville area resident) was the perfect tour guide and partner in crime for a couple of unforgettable visits to the heart of Music City. Tin Roof is my favorite bar, and it made its way into A Whole Latte Murder. And speaking of “writing what you know,” the scene in A Whole Latte Murder where a bird defecates on Juliet on Second Avenue really happened to me the last time I was there. True story.
For outdoor locales, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with Centennial Park. It became the setting for the death scene in Mug Shot. To research for the scene, I walked the beautiful grounds of the park, scouting out where everything would take place, from where actual benches are to what my characters would see when they sat on the steps of the Parthenon facing Lake Watauga. As for other outdoor landmarks, in one particular scene in Death Before Decaf, my heroine follows someone from the Vanderbilt Library lawn past sorority row to the Office Depot on West End. I dragged my husband along on the exact route my characters took, making sure I had all the details right. I also found the perfect semi-secluded area behind the library to have my heroine narrowly escape being kidnapped.
Thanks to the Killer Nashville Conference, I was introduced to the Omni Hotel downtown. The whole place is gorgeous, especially the library in the lobby, a reader’s dream full of books, overstuffed chairs, and a fireplace to die for. In Mug Shot, Juliet ends up at the Omni while spying on one of her suspects. She hides in the library, pretending to read. Of course I had to recreate the scene when I was there for last year’s conference.
Research doesn’t always have to happen in front of a computer or at the library. Venture out. Look at the world around you, even if you’re simply people-watching. And if you come for August’s Killer Nashville conference (which is moving to suburban Cool Springs/Franklin, about 20 minutes south), make sure to take advantage of what Music City has to offer. You might find Nashville becoming your new favorite vacation spot or the setting for your next novel.
Caroline Fardig is the author of the Java Jive Mysteries series and the Lizzie Hart Mysteries series. Suspense Magazine recently named Fardig’s Bad Medicine as one of the Best Books of 2015. She worked as a schoolteacher, church organist, insurance agent, funeral parlor associate, and stay-at-home mom before she realized that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Born and raised in a small town in Indiana, Fardig still lives in that same town with an understanding husband, two sweet kids, two energetic dogs, and one malevolent cat. Find Caroline on the web at www.carolinefardig.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, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Researching Nashville / Caroline Fardig
As writers we get a lot of advice. A phrase that we are all too familiar with is, of course, “write what you know." We hear it often enough that it can become something we don’t think critically about. In this week’s guest blog, author Caroline Fardig offers us her insight on how to familiarize yourself with a location that you would like to be a focal point of your writing. If you paint the picture of the world around you well enough, it can become as integral to the story as the characters themselves.Happy reading!
Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Researching Nashville
By Caroline Fardig
Write what you know.
As writers, we hear that advice over and over again. It’s good advice, because if you’re well versed in your subject matter, you’re less likely to provide incorrect facts, or worse, be compelled to make things up. However, even when we’re firmly inside our comfort zone, we still need to do some research. I find it’s especially important to research and get to know the setting of your story. (That is, unless your story is set on the planet Nebular, in which case you CAN in fact make up ridiculous things.) If written well, the setting can come to life and become as much a part of your story as your characters.
In preparing to write my latest series, the Java Jive Mysteries (Death Before Decaf, Mug Shot, and the upcoming A Whole Latte Murder), I’ve had to do some pretty intense research on my setting. And by intense, I mean serious hands-on, in the trenches, in depth VACATIONING in Nashville, Tennessee. A writer’s life can be tough sometimes.
My Java Jive series is a cozy mystery series following failed musician turned coffeehouse manager Juliet Langley. It’s set in a fictional coffeehouse in the Midtown area of Nashville. Midtown is just southwest of downtown, in and around the lovely Vanderbilt and Belmont University campuses. Whereas downtown can be glittery and rowdy at one end of Broadway, the campus/residential area at the other end is anything but. The area boasts dozens of mom and pop shops, from bars to boutiques, many of which are run out of restored old houses. That’s where I got the idea for the Java Jive coffeehouse.
I love coffee, so of course I had to visit every coffeehouse in the area—for the sake of research, of course. All coffeehouses have their own signature concoctions, my favorite being The Frothy Monkey’s White Monkey Mocha, an espresso drink flavored with white chocolate and banana syrups, which I recreate every morning at home. (In trying to learn about the life of a barista I also bought an espresso machine and learned to craft drinks and pour latte art.) At the coffeehouses, I researched their food and bakery offerings and their processes of serving and delivering the food to their customers. Again, a rough job. I paid attention to their hours of operation and employee work schedules. I drank in the atmosphere. Ultimately, I was able to glean a wealth of ideas to make Java Jive believable enough as a functioning coffeehouse.
Like Café Coco, Java Jive offers an open mic night for area musicians to perform. That was the only actual serious research I did. Each book in the series includes an original song I wrote, and I decided the best way to fully be immersed in the open mic experience was to perform myself. Talk about nerve-wracking! A forty-something mom of two getting up and performing in front of a bunch of young, talented Nashville musicians was almost more than I could handle. (I do have a music degree, so I’m not a total hack.) I never felt more empathy for my heroine, Juliet, and her crippling stage fright than in those few minutes I was up on that little stage.
Speaking of music, you can’t set your series in Nashville and ignore the unending supply of live music pouring out of the many bars and clubs downtown. My friend Karen (a Nashville area resident) was the perfect tour guide and partner in crime for a couple of unforgettable visits to the heart of Music City. Tin Roof is my favorite bar, and it made its way into A Whole Latte Murder. And speaking of “writing what you know,” the scene in A Whole Latte Murder where a bird defecates on Juliet on Second Avenue really happened to me the last time I was there. True story.
For outdoor locales, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with Centennial Park. It became the setting for the death scene in Mug Shot. To research for the scene, I walked the beautiful grounds of the park, scouting out where everything would take place, from where actual benches are to what my characters would see when they sat on the steps of the Parthenon facing Lake Watauga. As for other outdoor landmarks, in one particular scene in Death Before Decaf, my heroine follows someone from the Vanderbilt Library lawn past sorority row to the Office Depot on West End. I dragged my husband along on the exact route my characters took, making sure I had all the details right. I also found the perfect semi-secluded area behind the library to have my heroine narrowly escape being kidnapped.
Thanks to the Killer Nashville Conference, I was introduced to the Omni Hotel downtown. The whole place is gorgeous, especially the library in the lobby, a reader’s dream full of books, overstuffed chairs, and a fireplace to die for. In Mug Shot, Juliet ends up at the Omni while spying on one of her suspects. She hides in the library, pretending to read. Of course I had to recreate the scene when I was there for last year’s conference.
Research doesn’t always have to happen in front of a computer or at the library. Venture out. Look at the world around you, even if you’re simply people-watching. And if you come for August’s Killer Nashville conference (which is moving to suburban Cool Springs/Franklin, about 20 minutes south), make sure to take advantage of what Music City has to offer. You might find Nashville becoming your new favorite vacation spot or the setting for your next novel.
Caroline Fardig is the author of the Java Jive Mysteries series and the Lizzie Hart Mysteries series. Suspense Magazine recently named Fardig’s Bad Medicine as one of the Best Books of 2015. She worked as a schoolteacher, church organist, insurance agent, funeral parlor associate, and stay-at-home mom before she realized that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Born and raised in a small town in Indiana, Fardig still lives in that same town with an understanding husband, two sweet kids, two energetic dogs, and one malevolent cat. Find Caroline on the web at www.carolinefardig.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, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Do the Research Right, but Don't Write All the Research / Maggie Toussaint
Research is an essential part of writing. Your research contributes to the overall feel of the book, and it’s important to make sure your facts and information are up to date. It’s very easy for readers to get distracted from the plot if they notice something that’s incorrect. However, just because you research a lot of information doesn’t mean it all has to go in your book; overloading it with unnecessary facts or information can also be distracting. Maggie Toussaint talks about how important it is to research before you start writing, but also to keep some of the irrelevant details left out.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Do the Research Right, but Don't Write All the Research
By Maggie Toussaint
Did you know loggerhead turtles return to the same beach for nesting? They are out there swimming around in the great big ocean, and yet they return to the exact beach (or very close) to lay their eggs. Scientists proved this by tracking nesting turtles with radio transmitters.
Not only that, but turtles spend most of their life submerged but must surface every four to five minutes to breathe air. They can sleep underwater without drowning because their level of activity is less.
More fun facts: Male sea turtles almost never leave the water while females nest every two to three years on beaches. That nesting—depositing about 100 golf ball sized eggs in a pit the turtle digs with her flippers and then covers up—takes about three hours.
Fascinating, right? The babies hatch at night two months later, crawl to the water, and swim away, lickety-split. These turtles don’t reach sexual maturity until somewhere around 12-30 years, when their outer shell grows larger than 90 cm.
Further, the gender of the hatching turtles is determined by the incubation temperature. Hot temps and you get gals, cooler temps and you get guys.
Your eyes may be crossing with turtle facts by now, but my eyes are alight with enthusiasm, even months after I’ve turned in my Turtle Tribbles novella. I knew this would happen when I began researching, so I created a folder of all the fun facts about these endangered turtles. I could go on and on about this topic, but I’ll spare you the biology lesson.
The reason I researched turtles is because down here on the Georgia Coast, college interns get assigned various barrier islands to monitor turtle nests. The plan is to get a better idea of the population and to do our part in protecting the nests so this species doesn’t go extinct.
Anyway, there’s also a serious problem of turtle eggs getting poached, which is a federal crime. A man who turned right around and poached turtle eggs right after getting out of federal prison for the crime sparked my interest in writing a murder mystery around this occurrence.
With a fat folder of turtle facts in hand, I was ready to write my novella. The first draft of chapter one drowned in details. I wanted to use all the cool facts I’d unearthed because they were so interesting.
But … did they advance the plot?
Sadly, the answer wasn’t to my liking. The loggerhead’s life cycle information is the reason there’s a Turtle Girl, but 90 cool facts about turtles don’t belong in a mystery about the death of a Turtle Girl.
So, how could I work in some of this information without the story feeling like science class? I open the story with the Turtle Girl visiting my newspaper editor sleuth, Lindsey McKay, in her office because turtle eggs are being poached. The editor is no biologist, so the Turtle Girl has to explain why people would steal turtle eggs.
The editor feels around the edges of what’s being said, realizing that the chance of catching a poacher on an island are slim in an area with lots of speedboats, decides to use the opportunity to run a feature about the turtles due to their endangered status.
Each time Lindsey and the Turtle Girl meet, a few more turtle facts work their way into the story. I also kept the tone light, as is shown in this brief snip from the story:
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but could you have missed the hatch?” Lindsey said.
“Nope. I hit the beach first thing every morning and monitor the nests. If turtle eggs hatched, I would see the signs. Eggshells would be cracked and left behind. The sand from the nest to the sea would be full of turtle tracks. The nests would look disturbed. I didn’t see any of that at those locations. It’s like the eggs got beamed into outer space.”
As you can see from the tone of that dialogue, I kept the facts light, used nonscientific words, and even added in an element of humor. By not flooding the story with facts, the reader is drawn into the story and cares about the turtles because the Turtle Girl cares about them. And when the Turtle Girl is found dead on the beach, we care a lot about what happened to her.
Making the Turtle Girl passionate about her amphibian charges upped the stakes for readers caring about why she was murdered.
Bottom line? A little research goes a long way. Do the research, but keep the bulk of it out of your story.
Southern author Maggie Toussaint writes mystery, suspense, and dystopian fiction. Her work won the Silver Falchion Award for best mystery, the Readers’ Choice Award, and the EPIC Award. She’s published fifteen novels as well as several short stories and novellas, including the upcoming Happy Homicides 3. The next book in her paranormal mystery series, Doggone It, releases October 2016. Maggie serves on the board for Southeast Mystery Writers of America and Low Country Sisters in Crime. Visit her at www.maggietoussaint.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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Do the Research Right, but Don't Write All the Research / Maggie Toussaint
Research is an essential part of writing. Your research contributes to the overall feel of the book, and it's important to make sure your facts and information are up to date. It's very easy for readers to get distracted from the plot if they notice something that's incorrect. However, just because you research a lot of information doesn't mean it all has to go in your book; overloading it with unnecessary facts or information can also be distracting. Maggie Toussaint talks about how important it is to research before you start writing, but also to keep some of the irrelevant details left out.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Do the Research Right, but Don't Write All the Research
By Maggie Toussaint
Did you know loggerhead turtles return to the same beach for nesting? They are out there swimming around in the great big ocean, and yet they return to the exact beach (or very close) to lay their eggs. Scientists proved this by tracking nesting turtles with radio transmitters.
Not only that, but turtles spend most of their life submerged but must surface every four to five minutes to breathe air. They can sleep underwater without drowning because their level of activity is less.
More fun facts: Male sea turtles almost never leave the water while females nest every two to three years on beaches. That nesting—depositing about 100 golf ball sized eggs in a pit the turtle digs with her flippers and then covers up—takes about three hours.
Fascinating, right? The babies hatch at night two months later, crawl to the water, and swim away, lickety-split. These turtles don’t reach sexual maturity until somewhere around 12-30 years, when their outer shell grows larger than 90 cm.
Further, the gender of the hatching turtles is determined by the incubation temperature. Hot temps and you get gals, cooler temps and you get guys.
Your eyes may be crossing with turtle facts by now, but my eyes are alight with enthusiasm, even months after I’ve turned in my Turtle Tribbles novella. I knew this would happen when I began researching, so I created a folder of all the fun facts about these endangered turtles. I could go on and on about this topic, but I’ll spare you the biology lesson.
The reason I researched turtles is because down here on the Georgia Coast, college interns get assigned various barrier islands to monitor turtle nests. The plan is to get a better idea of the population and to do our part in protecting the nests so this species doesn’t go extinct.
Anyway, there’s also a serious problem of turtle eggs getting poached, which is a federal crime. A man who turned right around and poached turtle eggs right after getting out of federal prison for the crime sparked my interest in writing a murder mystery around this occurrence.
With a fat folder of turtle facts in hand, I was ready to write my novella. The first draft of chapter one drowned in details. I wanted to use all the cool facts I’d unearthed because they were so interesting.
But … did they advance the plot?
Sadly, the answer wasn’t to my liking. The loggerhead’s life cycle information is the reason there’s a Turtle Girl, but 90 cool facts about turtles don’t belong in a mystery about the death of a Turtle Girl.
So, how could I work in some of this information without the story feeling like science class? I open the story with the Turtle Girl visiting my newspaper editor sleuth, Lindsey McKay, in her office because turtle eggs are being poached. The editor is no biologist, so the Turtle Girl has to explain why people would steal turtle eggs.
The editor feels around the edges of what’s being said, realizing that the chance of catching a poacher on an island are slim in an area with lots of speedboats, decides to use the opportunity to run a feature about the turtles due to their endangered status.
Each time Lindsey and the Turtle Girl meet, a few more turtle facts work their way into the story. I also kept the tone light, as is shown in this brief snip from the story:
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but could you have missed the hatch?” Lindsey said.
“Nope. I hit the beach first thing every morning and monitor the nests. If turtle eggs hatched, I would see the signs. Eggshells would be cracked and left behind. The sand from the nest to the sea would be full of turtle tracks. The nests would look disturbed. I didn’t see any of that at those locations. It’s like the eggs got beamed into outer space.”
As you can see from the tone of that dialogue, I kept the facts light, used nonscientific words, and even added in an element of humor. By not flooding the story with facts, the reader is drawn into the story and cares about the turtles because the Turtle Girl cares about them. And when the Turtle Girl is found dead on the beach, we care a lot about what happened to her.
Making the Turtle Girl passionate about her amphibian charges upped the stakes for readers caring about why she was murdered.
Bottom line? A little research goes a long way. Do the research, but keep the bulk of it out of your story.
Southern author Maggie Toussaint writes mystery, suspense, and dystopian fiction. Her work won the Silver Falchion Award for best mystery, the Readers’ Choice Award, and the EPIC Award. She’s published fifteen novels as well as several short stories and novellas, including the upcoming Happy Homicides 3. The next book in her paranormal mystery series, Doggone It, releases October 2016. Maggie serves on the board for Southeast Mystery Writers of America and Low Country Sisters in Crime. Visit her at www.maggietoussaint.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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Do the Research Right, but Don't Write All the Research / Maggie Toussaint
Research is an essential part of writing. Your research contributes to the overall feel of the book, and it's important to make sure your facts and information are up to date. It's very easy for readers to get distracted from the plot if they notice something that's incorrect. However, just because you research a lot of information doesn't mean it all has to go in your book; overloading it with unnecessary facts or information can also be distracting. Maggie Toussaint talks about how important it is to research before you start writing, but also to keep some of the irrelevant details left out.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Do the Research Right, but Don't Write All the Research
By Maggie Toussaint
Did you know loggerhead turtles return to the same beach for nesting? They are out there swimming around in the great big ocean, and yet they return to the exact beach (or very close) to lay their eggs. Scientists proved this by tracking nesting turtles with radio transmitters.
Not only that, but turtles spend most of their life submerged but must surface every four to five minutes to breathe air. They can sleep underwater without drowning because their level of activity is less.
More fun facts: Male sea turtles almost never leave the water while females nest every two to three years on beaches. That nesting—depositing about 100 golf ball sized eggs in a pit the turtle digs with her flippers and then covers up—takes about three hours.
Fascinating, right? The babies hatch at night two months later, crawl to the water, and swim away, lickety-split. These turtles don’t reach sexual maturity until somewhere around 12-30 years, when their outer shell grows larger than 90 cm.
Further, the gender of the hatching turtles is determined by the incubation temperature. Hot temps and you get gals, cooler temps and you get guys.
Your eyes may be crossing with turtle facts by now, but my eyes are alight with enthusiasm, even months after I’ve turned in my Turtle Tribbles novella. I knew this would happen when I began researching, so I created a folder of all the fun facts about these endangered turtles. I could go on and on about this topic, but I’ll spare you the biology lesson.
The reason I researched turtles is because down here on the Georgia Coast, college interns get assigned various barrier islands to monitor turtle nests. The plan is to get a better idea of the population and to do our part in protecting the nests so this species doesn’t go extinct.
Anyway, there’s also a serious problem of turtle eggs getting poached, which is a federal crime. A man who turned right around and poached turtle eggs right after getting out of federal prison for the crime sparked my interest in writing a murder mystery around this occurrence.
With a fat folder of turtle facts in hand, I was ready to write my novella. The first draft of chapter one drowned in details. I wanted to use all the cool facts I’d unearthed because they were so interesting.
But … did they advance the plot?
Sadly, the answer wasn’t to my liking. The loggerhead’s life cycle information is the reason there’s a Turtle Girl, but 90 cool facts about turtles don’t belong in a mystery about the death of a Turtle Girl.
So, how could I work in some of this information without the story feeling like science class? I open the story with the Turtle Girl visiting my newspaper editor sleuth, Lindsey McKay, in her office because turtle eggs are being poached. The editor is no biologist, so the Turtle Girl has to explain why people would steal turtle eggs.
The editor feels around the edges of what’s being said, realizing that the chance of catching a poacher on an island are slim in an area with lots of speedboats, decides to use the opportunity to run a feature about the turtles due to their endangered status.
Each time Lindsey and the Turtle Girl meet, a few more turtle facts work their way into the story. I also kept the tone light, as is shown in this brief snip from the story:
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but could you have missed the hatch?” Lindsey said.
“Nope. I hit the beach first thing every morning and monitor the nests. If turtle eggs hatched, I would see the signs. Eggshells would be cracked and left behind. The sand from the nest to the sea would be full of turtle tracks. The nests would look disturbed. I didn’t see any of that at those locations. It’s like the eggs got beamed into outer space.”
As you can see from the tone of that dialogue, I kept the facts light, used nonscientific words, and even added in an element of humor. By not flooding the story with facts, the reader is drawn into the story and cares about the turtles because the Turtle Girl cares about them. And when the Turtle Girl is found dead on the beach, we care a lot about what happened to her.
Making the Turtle Girl passionate about her amphibian charges upped the stakes for readers caring about why she was murdered.
Bottom line? A little research goes a long way. Do the research, but keep the bulk of it out of your story.
Southern author Maggie Toussaint writes mystery, suspense, and dystopian fiction. Her work won the Silver Falchion Award for best mystery, the Readers’ Choice Award, and the EPIC Award. She’s published fifteen novels as well as several short stories and novellas, including the upcoming Happy Homicides 3. The next book in her paranormal mystery series, Doggone It, releases October 2016. Maggie serves on the board for Southeast Mystery Writers of America and Low Country Sisters in Crime. Visit her at www.maggietoussaint.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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Cover Story: Heart of Stone / James W. Ziskin
Picking a final book cover is one of the hardest things an author can do. We have so many ideas running through our brain, and we want to fill every bit of space without it looking clunky. Every decision matters. The color isn’t the right shade of white or the font needs to be a little smaller. Those decisions can prolong a book being published because we have a tendency to want to perfect everything, and if the cover we have isn’t a flawless vision of what we want, we keep going until we’re satisfied. In this week’s blog post, James W. Ziskin details the process of picking his newest book cover and how satisfying the whole journey can be.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
In the waning days of a lazy August holiday, Ellie Stone is enjoying a bright Adirondack-lake morning. Nearby, two men plummet to their deaths just a few feet short of the water of a dangerous diving pool. A tragic accident, it seems. But the state police quickly establish that the two victims—one, a stranger to the lake and, the other, a teenaged boy from a nearby music camp—surely didn't know each other. That anomaly is strange enough, but what really perplexes Ellie is the out-of-place station wagon parked twenty yards from the edge of the cliff.
Wading into a slippery morass of fellow travelers, free-love intellectuals, rabid John Birchers, and charismatic evangelicals, Ellie must navigate old grudges and Cold War passions, lost ideals and betrayed loves. She sticks her nose where it's unwanted, rattling nerves and putting herself in jeopardy. But this time, it's her heart that's at risk.
Today, I'm discussing the cover of my latest Ellie Stone mystery, Heart of Stone (Seventh Street Books, June 16, 2016). Readers judge books by their covers. They may not choose the book after skimming it, but they certainly pick it up in the first place because of the cover.
Covers attract attention in a variety of ways. The artwork creates mood through images, colors, fonts, and other elements of design. These are the covers of the first three Ellie Stone novels. The amazing Jackie Nasso Cooke of Prometheus/Seventh Street Book designed them all.
What do we see? First of all, there is a consistency in the layout: a clean font, and similar placement of the text. There's also the thematic repetition of women's clothing: shoes and gloves. Jackie strives to maintain the same design basics for each cover to build a look, a branding that readers have come to associate with the Ellie Stone mysteries.
One of many advantages of being published by a press like Prometheus/Seventh Street is that they are willing to discuss cover ideas with their authors. That doesn't happen at every publishing house. Since the Ellie Stone mysteries are set in 1960-61, the marketing folks told me they wanted a stronger nostalgic look for the Heart of Stone cover. They wanted readers to recognize the era instantly.
From the moment I plotted out Heart of Stone, I knew what kind of cover I would like to see. A summer lake with mountains in the background. Ideally, there would be a wooden dock and perhaps an Adirondack chair. And the item I wanted more than anything else was a discarded women's one-piece bathing suit that matched the early sixties era. But the perfect image proved to be elusive. The art department considered thousands of photographs, looking for just the right one.
They found lots of docks with lakes, mountains, and Adirondack chairs. But they didn't look anything like 1961. And there were no bathing suits, except those filled with women.
We tried other ideas. I liked this one, but it wasn't quite right. No lake, mountains, or bathing suit. And no nostalgia.
This one was perfect to illustrate the nude bathing that runs through the book, but the title would have been lost against the text in the image.
Jackie explored several other themes that might fit, but no one was satisfied.
This one is beautiful, but it looks more like a young-adult novel cover. A little too wholesome.
Here's an idyllic Adirondack lake, and it has a nostalgic look. Nice, but still no bathing suit, no mystery, no fun. And the orientation is landscape, which in this case wouldn't have worked for a cover.
Time was running short. We were in danger of having to send out the reviewer copies with no cover art at all.
And then, eureka! I stumbled across the photo below on a stock photography site. It took some imagination to picture the final cover, but I knew Jackie could turn this into a gem. First, we'd need to cut it down to fit a portrait orientation. Then we had to get rid of the hat and flip-flops. They didn't fit the period. But the rest of the photo ticked all the boxes: the dock, the lake, mountains, and bathing suit. The splash in the water was gravy.
Using Photoshop, I made a crappy mock-up and e-mailed it to Jackie to get her thoughts. She responded almost immediately with the comment, "This one is a contender." I was thrilled.
But my version was far from acceptable. Jackie went to work, removing the hat and shoes, and correcting the color. We wanted a faded Kodachrome look to give it more of a retro mood. Here's the concept she came up with.
I loved it. Everyone else seemed to be on board as well. But my brilliant agent, William Reiss of John Hawkins and Associates, thought the dock looked a little empty. He said he'd like to see something else there to set the period. He suggested a transistor radio. Jackie worked her magic, found the perfect radio, and slipped it in. It was a home run.
And so the Heart of Stone cover was born. It's sexy without being sexist. It's fun and consistent in style with the covers of the previous books in the series. It even features an article of women's clothing. And it evokes the appropriate time and suggests the nude bathing I wanted. If Heart of Stone fails to set the world on fire, it won't be the fault of the cover.
Heart of Stone: An Ellie Stone Mystery arrives in stores and online June 7, 2016. (Seventh Street Books
James W. Ziskin is the Anthony-, Barry-, and Lefty-nominated author of the Ellie Stone mysteries Styx & Stone, No Stone Unturned, Stone Cold Dead, and Heart of Stone. Look for Cast the First Stone in summer of 2017.
(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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Cover Story: Heart of Stone / James W. Ziskin
Picking a final book cover is one of the hardest things an author can do. We have so many ideas running through our brain, and we want to fill every bit of space without it looking clunky. Every decision matters. The color isn't the right shade of white or the font needs to be a little smaller. Those decisions can prolong a book being published because we have a tendency to want to perfect everything, and if the cover we have isn't a flawless vision of what we want, we keep going until we’re satisfied. In this week’s blog post, James W. Ziskin details the process of picking his newest book cover and how satisfying the whole journey can be. Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
In the waning days of a lazy August holiday, Ellie Stone is enjoying a bright Adirondack-lake morning. Nearby, two men plummet to their deaths just a few feet short of the water of a dangerous diving pool. A tragic accident, it seems. But the state police quickly establish that the two victims—one, a stranger to the lake and, the other, a teenaged boy from a nearby music camp—surely didn't know each other. That anomaly is strange enough, but what really perplexes Ellie is the out-of-place station wagon parked twenty yards from the edge of the cliff.
Wading into a slippery morass of fellow travelers, free-love intellectuals, rabid John Birchers, and charismatic evangelicals, Ellie must navigate old grudges and Cold War passions, lost ideals and betrayed loves. She sticks her nose where it's unwanted, rattling nerves and putting herself in jeopardy. But this time, it's her heart that's at risk.
Today, I'm discussing the cover of my latest Ellie Stone mystery, Heart of Stone (Seventh Street Books, June 16, 2016). Readers judge books by their covers. They may not choose the book after skimming it, but they certainly pick it up in the first place because of the cover.
Covers attract attention in a variety of ways. The artwork creates mood through images, colors, fonts, and other elements of design. These are the covers of the first three Ellie Stone novels. The amazing Jackie Nasso Cooke of Prometheus/Seventh Street Book designed them all.
What do we see? First of all, there is a consistency in the layout: a clean font, and similar placement of the text. There's also the thematic repetition of women's clothing: shoes and gloves. Jackie strives to maintain the same design basics for each cover to build a look, a branding that readers have come to associate with the Ellie Stone mysteries.
One of many advantages of being published by a press like Prometheus/Seventh Street is that they are willing to discuss cover ideas with their authors. That doesn't happen at every publishing house. Since the Ellie Stone mysteries are set in 1960-61, the marketing folks told me they wanted a stronger nostalgic look for the Heart of Stone cover. They wanted readers to recognize the era instantly.
From the moment I plotted out Heart of Stone, I knew what kind of cover I would like to see. A summer lake with mountains in the background. Ideally, there would be a wooden dock and perhaps an Adirondack chair. And the item I wanted more than anything else was a discarded women's one-piece bathing suit that matched the early sixties era. But the perfect image proved to be elusive. The art department considered thousands of photographs, looking for just the right one.
They found lots of docks with lakes, mountains, and Adirondack chairs. But they didn't look anything like 1961. And there were no bathing suits, except those filled with women.
We tried other ideas. I liked this one, but it wasn't quite right. No lake, mountains, or bathing suit. And no nostalgia.
This one was perfect to illustrate the nude bathing that runs through the book, but the title would have been lost against the text in the image.
Jackie explored several other themes that might fit, but no one was satisfied.
This one is beautiful, but it looks more like a young-adult novel cover. A little too wholesome.
Here's an idyllic Adirondack lake, and it has a nostalgic look. Nice, but still no bathing suit, no mystery, no fun. And the orientation is landscape, which in this case wouldn't have worked for a cover.
Time was running short. We were in danger of having to send out the reviewer copies with no cover art at all.
And then, eureka! I stumbled across the photo below on a stock photography site. It took some imagination to picture the final cover, but I knew Jackie could turn this into a gem. First, we'd need to cut it down to fit a portrait orientation. Then we had to get rid of the hat and flip-flops. They didn't fit the period. But the rest of the photo ticked all the boxes: the dock, the lake, mountains, and bathing suit. The splash in the water was gravy.
Using Photoshop, I made a crappy mock-up and e-mailed it to Jackie to get her thoughts. She responded almost immediately with the comment, "This one is a contender." I was thrilled.
But my version was far from acceptable. Jackie went to work, removing the hat and shoes, and correcting the color. We wanted a faded Kodachrome look to give it more of a retro mood. Here's the concept she came up with.
I loved it. Everyone else seemed to be on board as well. But my brilliant agent, William Reiss of John Hawkins and Associates, thought the dock looked a little empty. He said he'd like to see something else there to set the period. He suggested a transistor radio. Jackie worked her magic, found the perfect radio, and slipped it in. It was a home run.
And so the Heart of Stone cover was born. It's sexy without being sexist. It's fun and consistent in style with the covers of the previous books in the series. It even features an article of women's clothing. And it evokes the appropriate time and suggests the nude bathing I wanted. If Heart of Stone fails to set the world on fire, it won't be the fault of the cover.
Heart of Stone: An Ellie Stone Mystery arrives in stores and online June 7, 2016. (Seventh Street Books
James W. Ziskin is the Anthony-, Barry-, and Lefty-nominated author of the Ellie Stone mysteries Styx & Stone, No Stone Unturned, Stone Cold Dead, and Heart of Stone. Look for Cast the First Stone in summer of 2017.
(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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Cover Story: Heart of Stone / James W. Ziskin
Picking a final book cover is one of the hardest things an author can do. We have so many ideas running through our brain, and we want to fill every bit of space without it looking clunky. Every decision matters. The color isn't the right shade of white or the font needs to be a little smaller. Those decisions can prolong a book being published because we have a tendency to want to perfect everything, and if the cover we have isn't a flawless vision of what we want, we keep going until we’re satisfied. In this week’s blog post, James W. Ziskin details the process of picking his newest book cover and how satisfying the whole journey can be. Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
In the waning days of a lazy August holiday, Ellie Stone is enjoying a bright Adirondack-lake morning. Nearby, two men plummet to their deaths just a few feet short of the water of a dangerous diving pool. A tragic accident, it seems. But the state police quickly establish that the two victims—one, a stranger to the lake and, the other, a teenaged boy from a nearby music camp—surely didn't know each other. That anomaly is strange enough, but what really perplexes Ellie is the out-of-place station wagon parked twenty yards from the edge of the cliff.
Wading into a slippery morass of fellow travelers, free-love intellectuals, rabid John Birchers, and charismatic evangelicals, Ellie must navigate old grudges and Cold War passions, lost ideals and betrayed loves. She sticks her nose where it's unwanted, rattling nerves and putting herself in jeopardy. But this time, it's her heart that's at risk.
Today, I'm discussing the cover of my latest Ellie Stone mystery, Heart of Stone (Seventh Street Books, June 16, 2016). Readers judge books by their covers. They may not choose the book after skimming it, but they certainly pick it up in the first place because of the cover.
Covers attract attention in a variety of ways. The artwork creates mood through images, colors, fonts, and other elements of design. These are the covers of the first three Ellie Stone novels. The amazing Jackie Nasso Cooke of Prometheus/Seventh Street Book designed them all.
What do we see? First of all, there is a consistency in the layout: a clean font, and similar placement of the text. There's also the thematic repetition of women's clothing: shoes and gloves. Jackie strives to maintain the same design basics for each cover to build a look, a branding that readers have come to associate with the Ellie Stone mysteries.
One of many advantages of being published by a press like Prometheus/Seventh Street is that they are willing to discuss cover ideas with their authors. That doesn't happen at every publishing house. Since the Ellie Stone mysteries are set in 1960-61, the marketing folks told me they wanted a stronger nostalgic look for the Heart of Stone cover. They wanted readers to recognize the era instantly.
From the moment I plotted out Heart of Stone, I knew what kind of cover I would like to see. A summer lake with mountains in the background. Ideally, there would be a wooden dock and perhaps an Adirondack chair. And the item I wanted more than anything else was a discarded women's one-piece bathing suit that matched the early sixties era. But the perfect image proved to be elusive. The art department considered thousands of photographs, looking for just the right one.
They found lots of docks with lakes, mountains, and Adirondack chairs. But they didn't look anything like 1961. And there were no bathing suits, except those filled with women.
We tried other ideas. I liked this one, but it wasn't quite right. No lake, mountains, or bathing suit. And no nostalgia.
This one was perfect to illustrate the nude bathing that runs through the book, but the title would have been lost against the text in the image.
Jackie explored several other themes that might fit, but no one was satisfied.
This one is beautiful, but it looks more like a young-adult novel cover. A little too wholesome.
Here's an idyllic Adirondack lake, and it has a nostalgic look. Nice, but still no bathing suit, no mystery, no fun. And the orientation is landscape, which in this case wouldn't have worked for a cover.
Time was running short. We were in danger of having to send out the reviewer copies with no cover art at all.
And then, eureka! I stumbled across the photo below on a stock photography site. It took some imagination to picture the final cover, but I knew Jackie could turn this into a gem. First, we'd need to cut it down to fit a portrait orientation. Then we had to get rid of the hat and flip-flops. They didn't fit the period. But the rest of the photo ticked all the boxes: the dock, the lake, mountains, and bathing suit. The splash in the water was gravy.
Using Photoshop, I made a crappy mock-up and e-mailed it to Jackie to get her thoughts. She responded almost immediately with the comment, "This one is a contender." I was thrilled.
But my version was far from acceptable. Jackie went to work, removing the hat and shoes, and correcting the color. We wanted a faded Kodachrome look to give it more of a retro mood. Here's the concept she came up with.
I loved it. Everyone else seemed to be on board as well. But my brilliant agent, William Reiss of John Hawkins and Associates, thought the dock looked a little empty. He said he'd like to see something else there to set the period. He suggested a transistor radio. Jackie worked her magic, found the perfect radio, and slipped it in. It was a home run.
And so the Heart of Stone cover was born. It's sexy without being sexist. It's fun and consistent in style with the covers of the previous books in the series. It even features an article of women's clothing. And it evokes the appropriate time and suggests the nude bathing I wanted. If Heart of Stone fails to set the world on fire, it won't be the fault of the cover.
Heart of Stone: An Ellie Stone Mystery arrives in stores and online June 7, 2016. (Seventh Street Books
James W. Ziskin is the Anthony-, Barry-, and Lefty-nominated author of the Ellie Stone mysteries Styx & Stone, No Stone Unturned, Stone Cold Dead, and Heart of Stone. Look for Cast the First Stone in summer of 2017.
(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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Adding Sizzle to Dialogue / Susan Mills Wilson
We read thrillers because of the way they make us feel. Our hearts pound. Our blood races. We itch to turn each page. Sometimes, though, it’s hard for us to enjoy a good thriller without stimulating dialogue.
Susan Mills Wilson understands how hard it can be for authors to thread tension through their story from beginning to end. In this week’s blog post, Susan Mills Wilson details how she creates tension through dialogue.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Adding Sizzle to Dialogue
By Susan Mills Wilson
I love the recent Geico commercial where a Jason Bourne-like character receives a call on his cell phone. He thinks it is his partner coming to rescue him from the bad guys who are chasing him on top of a high-rise building. While his mother is talking about squirrels in the attic, the spy-guy single-handedly fends off the “muscle” sent to kill him. He tells Mom it’s a bad time and asks if he can call her back later. The conversation between the two is routine and ordinary. It is the action that piques our interest. This can be true in writing stories.
A writer can’t have car chases, explosions, fistfights, or murder in every scene, but it is important to have tension on every page. Imagine a man and a woman having a conversation in a restaurant. Their dialogue might be important to advance the storyline, but suppose their discussion is amicable, and even worse, there is no chemistry between them. Boring, huh? A writer can turn up the heat to make the scene more interesting by adding simple things. For instance, picture this scenario: Their server is the man’s ex-girlfriend. To make matters worse, she is still angry about their break-up and has been waiting for the opportunity to seek revenge. Do you think he is going to get the pasta he ordered set down on the table, or dumped in his lap?
If you’ve ever sat through a meeting, you know it can be dull. Your mind wanders and you hope you’re not asked a question because once the boss starts talking about unrealistic goals for next
year, you’ve already tuned him out. I don’t like to write dialogue between characters in an office unless it is a heated exchange or I can add something interesting like the distraction of a window washer hanging precariously on his platform.
In my latest novel, Meltdown , I have written about a conversation between two homicide detectives as they drive through traffic on their way to question someone about a shooting. There is nothing earth-shaking about their dialogue. My purpose is to reveal one of the detectives’ attraction to a beautiful female suspect. While his partner drives, he presses him about unflattering, sexist remarks made about the woman. However, his partner is determined to get off the subject by complaining about the driver ahead of him. He rants because the woman has plenty of time to make her left turn but waits to make her move in front of an approaching tractor-trailer just in the nick of time. He shouts at the lady, even though she can’t hear him. It is nothing more than simplistic nonsense to add a little punch to the scene.
Of course, dialogue itself can add tension. Because I write romantic suspense, I try to keep the sexual tension present not only in body language, but in spoken words. Even the tone makes a difference in setting the scene and the emotion. Sometimes there is a hidden meaning or double meaning in what the character says. In Meltdown, Detective Chris Lagoni is frustrated with Megan Moore, a beautiful young woman who has impeded his murder investigation at every turn. After he blows up at her for withholding information, she walks away in protest. He finds her meditating on her living room floor. He says to her, “Maybe it will help your inner peace if you just come clean.”
Dialogue also can be deceptive and throw us off scent. In another novel of mine, Her Lying Eyes, a Southern belle socialite makes sweet naïve remarks, looking more like Melanie Hamilton than the manipulative Scarlet O’Hara. She is never considered to be dangerous. In a twist near the end of the story, her claws come out.
Think about the impact of dialogue in movies. Everyone likes to recall favorite memorable lines. It is not only what is said, but what is happening at the time the actor gives the line. My favorite is from Jaws when Police Chief Brody says, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” The line is simple but says a lot. What makes the line so effective is the look on Brody’s face when he first gets a glimpse at the massive size of the great white shark.
It is a challenge for a writer to keep the tension going throughout the story, but as an author of gritty suspense, I feel an obligation to do so or end up disappointing my readers. I hope I always listen to my own advice: Turn up the heat to make the story sizzle, or risk having it sit on the back burner (or shelf, collecting dust).
Susan Mills Wilson is a native of North Carolina where she lives with her husband and pampered golden retriever. An avid football fan, she pulls for the Carolina Panthers as long as they’re winning. She cannot function or be approached by another human being until she has her morning coffee. In addition to writing gritty novels and short stories, she enjoys writing a blog on a range of topics. She is the leader of the Charlotte Writers Club Mystery Critique Group.
She has published three romantic suspense novels: Good Gone Bad, Her Lying Eyes, and Meltdown . Much of her research on law enforcement came from attending Killer Nashville and participating in three citizen police academies where she was given a certificate of completion, but thankfully no gun or shield. She is currently working on her fourth novel, Hunt for Redemption, which is due out later this year.
She can be found on Facebook, on Twitter @smillswilson, and on her website at http://susanmillswilson.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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Adding Sizzle to Dialogue / Susan Mills Wilson
We read thrillers because of the way they make us feel. Our hearts pound. Our blood races. We itch to turn each page. Sometimes, though, it’s hard for us to enjoy a good thriller without stimulating dialogue.Susan Mills Wilson understands how hard it can be for authors to thread tension through their story from beginning to end. In this week’s blog post, Susan Mills Wilson details how she creates tension through dialogue.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Adding Sizzle to Dialogue
By Susan Mills Wilson
I love the recent Geico commercial where a Jason Bourne-like character receives a call on his cell phone. He thinks it is his partner coming to rescue him from the bad guys who are chasing him on top of a high-rise building. While his mother is talking about squirrels in the attic, the spy-guy single-handedly fends off the “muscle” sent to kill him. He tells Mom it’s a bad time and asks if he can call her back later. The conversation between the two is routine and ordinary. It is the action that piques our interest. This can be true in writing stories.
A writer can’t have car chases, explosions, fistfights, or murder in every scene, but it is important to have tension on every page. Imagine a man and a woman having a conversation in a restaurant. Their dialogue might be important to advance the storyline, but suppose their discussion is amicable, and even worse, there is no chemistry between them. Boring, huh? A writer can turn up the heat to make the scene more interesting by adding simple things. For instance, picture this scenario: Their server is the man’s ex-girlfriend. To make matters worse, she is still angry about their break-up and has been waiting for the opportunity to seek revenge. Do you think he is going to get the pasta he ordered set down on the table, or dumped in his lap?
If you’ve ever sat through a meeting, you know it can be dull. Your mind wanders and you hope you’re not asked a question because once the boss starts talking about unrealistic goals for next
year, you’ve already tuned him out. I don’t like to write dialogue between characters in an office unless it is a heated exchange or I can add something interesting like the distraction of a window washer hanging precariously on his platform.
In my latest novel, Meltdown , I have written about a conversation between two homicide detectives as they drive through traffic on their way to question someone about a shooting. There is nothing earth-shaking about their dialogue. My purpose is to reveal one of the detectives’ attraction to a beautiful female suspect. While his partner drives, he presses him about unflattering, sexist remarks made about the woman. However, his partner is determined to get off the subject by complaining about the driver ahead of him. He rants because the woman has plenty of time to make her left turn but waits to make her move in front of an approaching tractor-trailer just in the nick of time. He shouts at the lady, even though she can’t hear him. It is nothing more than simplistic nonsense to add a little punch to the scene.
Of course, dialogue itself can add tension. Because I write romantic suspense, I try to keep the sexual tension present not only in body language, but in spoken words. Even the tone makes a difference in setting the scene and the emotion. Sometimes there is a hidden meaning or double meaning in what the character says. In Meltdown, Detective Chris Lagoni is frustrated with Megan Moore, a beautiful young woman who has impeded his murder investigation at every turn. After he blows up at her for withholding information, she walks away in protest. He finds her meditating on her living room floor. He says to her, “Maybe it will help your inner peace if you just come clean.”
Dialogue also can be deceptive and throw us off scent. In another novel of mine, Her Lying Eyes, a Southern belle socialite makes sweet naïve remarks, looking more like Melanie Hamilton than the manipulative Scarlet O’Hara. She is never considered to be dangerous. In a twist near the end of the story, her claws come out.
Think about the impact of dialogue in movies. Everyone likes to recall favorite memorable lines. It is not only what is said, but what is happening at the time the actor gives the line. My favorite is from Jaws when Police Chief Brody says, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” The line is simple but says a lot. What makes the line so effective is the look on Brody’s face when he first gets a glimpse at the massive size of the great white shark.
It is a challenge for a writer to keep the tension going throughout the story, but as an author of gritty suspense, I feel an obligation to do so or end up disappointing my readers. I hope I always listen to my own advice: Turn up the heat to make the story sizzle, or risk having it sit on the back burner (or shelf, collecting dust).
Susan Mills Wilson is a native of North Carolina where she lives with her husband and pampered golden retriever. An avid football fan, she pulls for the Carolina Panthers as long as they’re winning. She cannot function or be approached by another human being until she has her morning coffee. In addition to writing gritty novels and short stories, she enjoys writing a blog on a range of topics. She is the leader of the Charlotte Writers Club Mystery Critique Group.
She has published three romantic suspense novels: Good Gone Bad, Her Lying Eyes, and Meltdown . Much of her research on law enforcement came from attending Killer Nashville and participating in three citizen police academies where she was given a certificate of completion, but thankfully no gun or shield. She is currently working on her fourth novel, Hunt for Redemption, which is due out later this year.
She can be found on Facebook, on Twitter @smillswilson, and on her website at http://susanmillswilson.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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Adding Sizzle to Dialogue / Susan Mills Wilson
We read thrillers because of the way they make us feel. Our hearts pound. Our blood races. We itch to turn each page. Sometimes, though, it’s hard for us to enjoy a good thriller without stimulating dialogue.Susan Mills Wilson understands how hard it can be for authors to thread tension through their story from beginning to end. In this week’s blog post, Susan Mills Wilson details how she creates tension through dialogue.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Adding Sizzle to Dialogue
By Susan Mills Wilson
I love the recent Geico commercial where a Jason Bourne-like character receives a call on his cell phone. He thinks it is his partner coming to rescue him from the bad guys who are chasing him on top of a high-rise building. While his mother is talking about squirrels in the attic, the spy-guy single-handedly fends off the “muscle” sent to kill him. He tells Mom it’s a bad time and asks if he can call her back later. The conversation between the two is routine and ordinary. It is the action that piques our interest. This can be true in writing stories.
A writer can’t have car chases, explosions, fistfights, or murder in every scene, but it is important to have tension on every page. Imagine a man and a woman having a conversation in a restaurant. Their dialogue might be important to advance the storyline, but suppose their discussion is amicable, and even worse, there is no chemistry between them. Boring, huh? A writer can turn up the heat to make the scene more interesting by adding simple things. For instance, picture this scenario: Their server is the man’s ex-girlfriend. To make matters worse, she is still angry about their break-up and has been waiting for the opportunity to seek revenge. Do you think he is going to get the pasta he ordered set down on the table, or dumped in his lap?
If you’ve ever sat through a meeting, you know it can be dull. Your mind wanders and you hope you’re not asked a question because once the boss starts talking about unrealistic goals for next
year, you’ve already tuned him out. I don’t like to write dialogue between characters in an office unless it is a heated exchange or I can add something interesting like the distraction of a window washer hanging precariously on his platform.
In my latest novel, Meltdown , I have written about a conversation between two homicide detectives as they drive through traffic on their way to question someone about a shooting. There is nothing earth-shaking about their dialogue. My purpose is to reveal one of the detectives’ attraction to a beautiful female suspect. While his partner drives, he presses him about unflattering, sexist remarks made about the woman. However, his partner is determined to get off the subject by complaining about the driver ahead of him. He rants because the woman has plenty of time to make her left turn but waits to make her move in front of an approaching tractor-trailer just in the nick of time. He shouts at the lady, even though she can’t hear him. It is nothing more than simplistic nonsense to add a little punch to the scene.
Of course, dialogue itself can add tension. Because I write romantic suspense, I try to keep the sexual tension present not only in body language, but in spoken words. Even the tone makes a difference in setting the scene and the emotion. Sometimes there is a hidden meaning or double meaning in what the character says. In Meltdown, Detective Chris Lagoni is frustrated with Megan Moore, a beautiful young woman who has impeded his murder investigation at every turn. After he blows up at her for withholding information, she walks away in protest. He finds her meditating on her living room floor. He says to her, “Maybe it will help your inner peace if you just come clean.”
Dialogue also can be deceptive and throw us off scent. In another novel of mine, Her Lying Eyes, a Southern belle socialite makes sweet naïve remarks, looking more like Melanie Hamilton than the manipulative Scarlet O’Hara. She is never considered to be dangerous. In a twist near the end of the story, her claws come out.
Think about the impact of dialogue in movies. Everyone likes to recall favorite memorable lines. It is not only what is said, but what is happening at the time the actor gives the line. My favorite is from Jaws when Police Chief Brody says, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” The line is simple but says a lot. What makes the line so effective is the look on Brody’s face when he first gets a glimpse at the massive size of the great white shark.
It is a challenge for a writer to keep the tension going throughout the story, but as an author of gritty suspense, I feel an obligation to do so or end up disappointing my readers. I hope I always listen to my own advice: Turn up the heat to make the story sizzle, or risk having it sit on the back burner (or shelf, collecting dust).
Susan Mills Wilson is a native of North Carolina where she lives with her husband and pampered golden retriever. An avid football fan, she pulls for the Carolina Panthers as long as they’re winning. She cannot function or be approached by another human being until she has her morning coffee. In addition to writing gritty novels and short stories, she enjoys writing a blog on a range of topics. She is the leader of the Charlotte Writers Club Mystery Critique Group.
She has published three romantic suspense novels: Good Gone Bad, Her Lying Eyes, and Meltdown . Much of her research on law enforcement came from attending Killer Nashville and participating in three citizen police academies where she was given a certificate of completion, but thankfully no gun or shield. She is currently working on her fourth novel, Hunt for Redemption, which is due out later this year.
She can be found on Facebook, on Twitter @smillswilson, and on her website at http://susanmillswilson.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, Bailey Harris, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
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.
Using the Enneagram to Develop Characters / Margaret Mizushima
We all have different methods of analysis to make sense of the human mind—both the one we live in, and the ones we create when writing. When writing her new series, author Margaret Mizushima turned to the inside-out character development of the Enneagram personality types for her leads. Whether you’re an armchair psychologist or a personology neophyte, you’ll find Margaret’s thought process full of valuable character creation techniques for your own work.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Using the Enneagram to Develop Characters
By Margaret Mizushima
When preparing to write Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery, I used a familiar tool to develop my two protagonists, Deputy Mattie Lu Cobb and Cole Walker, DVM. This tool is a character profile that starts out like a job application with identification, educational, and historical background, and a wide variety of physical characteristics, including gestural and speech habits. Most writers have seen this type of profile before. I also include a section for internal and external goals, conflict, and motivation.
But before writing my first Timber Creek K-9 mystery, I knew I wanted to create a series, and I knew I wanted to be with these characters for several years. So I tried something that was new for me: I decided to assign a personality type from the Enneagram to my two protagonists, so that I could really get inside them and recognize how they interpreted their worlds. This would help me identify how the two would react in given situations.
Personality typing wasn’t new to me, since I’d participated in team-building exercises where the Myers-Briggs personality inventory had been used. But I discovered the Enneagram on my own by reading Helen Palmer’s book, The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life. Palmer describes nine basic personality types and labels them the Perfectionist, the Giver, the Performer, the Tragic Romantic, the Observer, the Devil’s Advocate, the Epicure, the Boss, and the Mediator. (Other authors have written about the Enneagram and have labeled the points differently.) Palmer adds the caveat, “The Enneagram, however, is not a fixed system. It is a model interconnecting lines that indicate a dynamic movement, in which each of us has the potentials of all nine types, or points, although we identify most strongly with the issues of our own.”
Purposely avoiding my own type, I assigned Mattie and Cole different points on the Enneagram. Mattie became a One, which Palmer calls the Perfectionist, and Cole became an Eight, the Boss. Then I researched Palmer’s chapters on these two types and created four to five page lists of characteristics for each.
Here are a few examples of characteristics that make up Mattie’s type: “Ones learned to behave properly, to take on responsibility, and be correct in the eyes of others.” “Ones are convinced life is hard and ease must be earned, that virtue is its own reward, and that pleasure should be postponed until everything else gets done.” “Preoccupied with what ‘should be’ and what ‘must be done’.”
Thus, when Mattie is presented with an invitation to a party, it holds no interest for her. She’s a loner with a stiff set of expectations for herself and others. She knows right vs. wrong and doesn’t trust others to make decisions for her—a downfall in her partnership with a patrol dog, but a characteristic that she learns to come to grips with. Something I found most interesting is that many Ones choose careers in law enforcement, which came in handy for creating this deputy.
On the other hand, as a point Eight, Cole Walker comes into situations with a different mindset. A few characteristics of his type are: “Eights feel secure when they can control a situation by calling the shots and making other people obey.” “Love is more often expressed through protection than through demonstrations of tender feelings. Commitment means taking the beloved under their wing and making the way safe.” “Their central issue is control. Who has the power and will that person be fair? The preferred position is to take charge.”
Eights have often grown up in an environment where others, such as siblings and parents, exert power and authority in a way that forces them to learn how to stand up for themselves at an early age. They are focused on justice, being fair, and protecting those they love. Think of the alpha wolf in the pack, the dealer of tough love. When Cole is faced with raising his two daughters on his own—daughters he’s not spent much quality time with, since he views himself as provider of food, shelter, and material comforts—he finds himself at a loss for how to express love and tenderness.
Palmer gives a detailed description of this complex system of personality types, as well as illustrations of how each type reacts in times of stress or comfort. I found reading the entire book and typing myself helpful before trying to apply the information to characters. There are many other books on this subject, but this is the one I’ve found most useful for this purpose. I’m by no means an expert in this field of study, but when applying it to character development, a writer doesn’t have to be. The system can become another tool to provide depth.
Margaret Mizushima is the author of Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery, which was named Debut Mystery of the Month for December 2015 by Library Journal, and has been nominated for an RT Reviewer’s Choice award for Best First Mystery. She lives in Colorado where she assists her husband with their veterinary practice and Angus cattle. She can be found on Facebook, on Twitter @margmizu, and on her website at www.margaretmizushima.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.
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.
Using the Enneagram to Develop Characters / Margaret Mizushima
We all have different methods of analysis to make sense of the human mind—both the one we live in, and the ones we create when writing. When writing her new series, author Margaret Mizushima turned to the inside-out character development of the Enneagram personality types for her leads. Whether you’re an armchair psychologist or a personology neophyte, you’ll find Margaret’s thought process full of valuable character creation techniques for your own work.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Using the Enneagram to Develop Characters
By Margaret Mizushima
When preparing to write Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery, I used a familiar tool to develop my two protagonists, Deputy Mattie Lu Cobb and Cole Walker, DVM. This tool is a character profile that starts out like a job application with identification, educational, and historical background, and a wide variety of physical characteristics, including gestural and speech habits. Most writers have seen this type of profile before. I also include a section for internal and external goals, conflict, and motivation.
But before writing my first Timber Creek K-9 mystery, I knew I wanted to create a series, and I knew I wanted to be with these characters for several years. So I tried something that was new for me: I decided to assign a personality type from the Enneagram to my two protagonists, so that I could really get inside them and recognize how they interpreted their worlds. This would help me identify how the two would react in given situations.
Personality typing wasn’t new to me, since I’d participated in team-building exercises where the Myers-Briggs personality inventory had been used. But I discovered the Enneagram on my own by reading Helen Palmer’s book, The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life. Palmer describes nine basic personality types and labels them the Perfectionist, the Giver, the Performer, the Tragic Romantic, the Observer, the Devil’s Advocate, the Epicure, the Boss, and the Mediator. (Other authors have written about the Enneagram and have labeled the points differently.) Palmer adds the caveat, “The Enneagram, however, is not a fixed system. It is a model interconnecting lines that indicate a dynamic movement, in which each of us has the potentials of all nine types, or points, although we identify most strongly with the issues of our own.”
Purposely avoiding my own type, I assigned Mattie and Cole different points on the Enneagram. Mattie became a One, which Palmer calls the Perfectionist, and Cole became an Eight, the Boss. Then I researched Palmer’s chapters on these two types and created four to five page lists of characteristics for each.
Here are a few examples of characteristics that make up Mattie’s type: “Ones learned to behave properly, to take on responsibility, and be correct in the eyes of others.” “Ones are convinced life is hard and ease must be earned, that virtue is its own reward, and that pleasure should be postponed until everything else gets done.” “Preoccupied with what ‘should be’ and what ‘must be done’.”
Thus, when Mattie is presented with an invitation to a party, it holds no interest for her. She’s a loner with a stiff set of expectations for herself and others. She knows right vs. wrong and doesn’t trust others to make decisions for her—a downfall in her partnership with a patrol dog, but a characteristic that she learns to come to grips with. Something I found most interesting is that many Ones choose careers in law enforcement, which came in handy for creating this deputy.
On the other hand, as a point Eight, Cole Walker comes into situations with a different mindset. A few characteristics of his type are: “Eights feel secure when they can control a situation by calling the shots and making other people obey.” “Love is more often expressed through protection than through demonstrations of tender feelings. Commitment means taking the beloved under their wing and making the way safe.” “Their central issue is control. Who has the power and will that person be fair? The preferred position is to take charge.”
Eights have often grown up in an environment where others, such as siblings and parents, exert power and authority in a way that forces them to learn how to stand up for themselves at an early age. They are focused on justice, being fair, and protecting those they love. Think of the alpha wolf in the pack, the dealer of tough love. When Cole is faced with raising his two daughters on his own—daughters he’s not spent much quality time with, since he views himself as provider of food, shelter, and material comforts—he finds himself at a loss for how to express love and tenderness.
Palmer gives a detailed description of this complex system of personality types, as well as illustrations of how each type reacts in times of stress or comfort. I found reading the entire book and typing myself helpful before trying to apply the information to characters. There are many other books on this subject, but this is the one I’ve found most useful for this purpose. I’m by no means an expert in this field of study, but when applying it to character development, a writer doesn’t have to be. The system can become another tool to provide depth.
Margaret Mizushima is the author of Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery, which was named Debut Mystery of the Month for December 2015 by Library Journal, and has been nominated for an RT Reviewer’s Choice award for Best First Mystery. She lives in Colorado where she assists her husband with their veterinary practice and Angus cattle. She can be found on Facebook, on Twitter @margmizu, and on her website at www.margaretmizushima.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.
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.
Using the Enneagram to Develop Characters / Margaret Mizushima
We all have different methods of analysis to make sense of the human mind—both the one we live in, and the ones we create when writing. When writing her new series, author Margaret Mizushima turned to the inside-out character development of the Enneagram personality types for her leads. Whether you’re an armchair psychologist or a personology neophyte, you’ll find Margaret’s thought process full of valuable character creation techniques for your own work.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Using the Enneagram to Develop Characters
By Margaret Mizushima
When preparing to write Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery, I used a familiar tool to develop my two protagonists, Deputy Mattie Lu Cobb and Cole Walker, DVM. This tool is a character profile that starts out like a job application with identification, educational, and historical background, and a wide variety of physical characteristics, including gestural and speech habits. Most writers have seen this type of profile before. I also include a section for internal and external goals, conflict, and motivation.
But before writing my first Timber Creek K-9 mystery, I knew I wanted to create a series, and I knew I wanted to be with these characters for several years. So I tried something that was new for me: I decided to assign a personality type from the Enneagram to my two protagonists, so that I could really get inside them and recognize how they interpreted their worlds. This would help me identify how the two would react in given situations.
Personality typing wasn’t new to me, since I’d participated in team-building exercises where the Myers-Briggs personality inventory had been used. But I discovered the Enneagram on my own by reading Helen Palmer’s book, The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life. Palmer describes nine basic personality types and labels them the Perfectionist, the Giver, the Performer, the Tragic Romantic, the Observer, the Devil’s Advocate, the Epicure, the Boss, and the Mediator. (Other authors have written about the Enneagram and have labeled the points differently.) Palmer adds the caveat, “The Enneagram, however, is not a fixed system. It is a model interconnecting lines that indicate a dynamic movement, in which each of us has the potentials of all nine types, or points, although we identify most strongly with the issues of our own.”
Purposely avoiding my own type, I assigned Mattie and Cole different points on the Enneagram. Mattie became a One, which Palmer calls the Perfectionist, and Cole became an Eight, the Boss. Then I researched Palmer’s chapters on these two types and created four to five page lists of characteristics for each.
Here are a few examples of characteristics that make up Mattie’s type: “Ones learned to behave properly, to take on responsibility, and be correct in the eyes of others.” “Ones are convinced life is hard and ease must be earned, that virtue is its own reward, and that pleasure should be postponed until everything else gets done.” “Preoccupied with what ‘should be’ and what ‘must be done’.”
Thus, when Mattie is presented with an invitation to a party, it holds no interest for her. She’s a loner with a stiff set of expectations for herself and others. She knows right vs. wrong and doesn’t trust others to make decisions for her—a downfall in her partnership with a patrol dog, but a characteristic that she learns to come to grips with. Something I found most interesting is that many Ones choose careers in law enforcement, which came in handy for creating this deputy.
On the other hand, as a point Eight, Cole Walker comes into situations with a different mindset. A few characteristics of his type are: “Eights feel secure when they can control a situation by calling the shots and making other people obey.” “Love is more often expressed through protection than through demonstrations of tender feelings. Commitment means taking the beloved under their wing and making the way safe.” “Their central issue is control. Who has the power and will that person be fair? The preferred position is to take charge.”
Eights have often grown up in an environment where others, such as siblings and parents, exert power and authority in a way that forces them to learn how to stand up for themselves at an early age. They are focused on justice, being fair, and protecting those they love. Think of the alpha wolf in the pack, the dealer of tough love. When Cole is faced with raising his two daughters on his own—daughters he’s not spent much quality time with, since he views himself as provider of food, shelter, and material comforts—he finds himself at a loss for how to express love and tenderness.
Palmer gives a detailed description of this complex system of personality types, as well as illustrations of how each type reacts in times of stress or comfort. I found reading the entire book and typing myself helpful before trying to apply the information to characters. There are many other books on this subject, but this is the one I’ve found most useful for this purpose. I’m by no means an expert in this field of study, but when applying it to character development, a writer doesn’t have to be. The system can become another tool to provide depth.
Margaret Mizushima is the author of Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery, which was named Debut Mystery of the Month for December 2015 by Library Journal, and has been nominated for an RT Reviewer’s Choice award for Best First Mystery. She lives in Colorado where she assists her husband with their veterinary practice and Angus cattle. She can be found on Facebook, on Twitter @margmizu, and on her website at www.margaretmizushima.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.
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.
Old Days, New Ways: Self-Publishing / Robert J. Randisi
Killer Nashville 2016’s John Seigenthaler Legends Award recipient Robert J. Randisi has seen his fair share of rejection letters. After all, the road to publishing is never easy, and you don’t publish over 650 books without walking off all kinds of early disappointments. The industry at present, however, makes it seem possible to avoid that painful process through self-publishing. In this week’s guest blog, Randisi takes a hard look at this shortcut, and shares his advice.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Old Days, New Ways
By Robert J. Randisi
Back in the late 1970s, when I was trying to break into the publishing business with private eye fiction, editors were telling me that the Private Eye was dead. But I persevered, and my first novel, The Disappearance of Penny (1980), was a private eye novel. Not long after its publication, I founded the Private Eye Writers of America. Our aim was to honor and further the private eye genre, elevating it to more than just a mystery subgenre, and now that PWA and the Shamus Award are starting their 35th year, I think we managed to succeed. And one of my recent books, The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie (Perfect Crime, 2013) was the first in a new private eye series set in Nashville. The second book, The Last Sweet Song of Hammer Dylan (Perfect Crime), will follow later this year. And on we go…
But reminiscing about the days when I broke into the business makes me think of writers asking me today how to break in. Wow, how things have changed. Back then, I had to mail the manuscripts to editors and wait months for a reply—often a “No,” or “Does not suit our present needs.” I know writers who have collected 400, 500, 600 such rejection slips from publishers, and yet never lost their enthusiasm. Rather, those slips were merit badges, showing that they were paying their dues. Eventually, many of us got that first acceptance letter, and went on to a career.
But there are now countless outlets for authors who don’t want to wait for that acceptance letter: not when they can simply put the books out themselves. Ebook publishing and self-publishing have replaced all those rejection slips. Is this a good thing? Some say yes, some say no. Just look at the proliferation of self-published books on Amazon. Try to read some of them. A good portion are badly written and poorly edited, if they’re edited at all. There are books out there that, after years of rejection, have been published by authors who had the time and excess income to publish the books themselves. (Many of them were not published previously for good reason!)
Now, I’m not making any kind of sweeping statement that self-publishing is bad, or that all self-published books are bad. I’m saying that some writers’ impatience to be published has resulted in badly written, badly edited books making it to the marketplace. And there are books out there by published writers who are finding it difficult to stay published in the current environment, which have also been too hastily rushed to market.
So while I make no sweeping allegation that all self-published books are bad, I do offer these words of advice: BEFORE you send that manuscript out to be formatted and published by Smashwords or Kindle or Createspace, READ it over again and again; BEFORE you publish the book, invest some disposable income in a good editor, to be sure the grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation are correct.
As much as you may feel sure that the book is “fine”, there are many, many good writers out there who are BAD editors. To paraphrase the legal industry, “The author who edits his own book has a fool for an editor.”
Robert J. Randisi is the author of the Miles Jacoby, Nick Delvecchio, Gil & Claire Hunt, Dennis McQueen, Joe Keough, and The Rat Pack mystery series. The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie (Perfect Crime Books), the first book in the Auggie Velez Nashville P.I. series, appeared in 2013. Upon My Soul(Down & Out Books, 2013) is the first book in the “Hitman with a Soul” Trilogy. The second book is Souls of the Dead(2015, Down & Out Books). His recent novel McKenna’s House (Crossroad Press) has been called his best book yet by several reviewers. The 10th book in his Rat Pack series, When Somebody Kills You, was published in Sept. 2015 by Severn House. He is the editor of over 30 anthologies. All told, he is the author of more than 650 novels, many of which have been Westerns.
His Housesitting Detective series appeared from Dagger Books in 2015, with the first book, Dry Stone Walls.
He is the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America, the creator of the Shamus Award, the co-founder of Mystery Scene Magazine and the American Crime Writers League with Ed Gorman, and one of the founders of Western Fictioneers and the Peacemaker Award. He is also the editor of How to Write a P.I. Novel for Writer’s Digest.
(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.
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.
Old Days, New Ways: Self-Publishing / Robert J. Randisi
Killer Nashville 2016’s John Seigenthaler Legends Award recipient Robert J. Randisi has seen his fair share of rejection letters. After all, the road to publishing is never easy, and you don’t publish over 650 books without walking off all kinds of early disappointments. The industry at present, however, makes it seem possible to avoid that painful process through self-publishing. In this week’s guest blog, Randisi takes a hard look at this shortcut, and shares his advice.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Old Days, New Ways
By Robert J. Randisi
Back in the late 1970s, when I was trying to break into the publishing business with private eye fiction, editors were telling me that the Private Eye was dead. But I persevered, and my first novel, The Disappearance of Penny (1980), was a private eye novel. Not long after its publication, I founded the Private Eye Writers of America. Our aim was to honor and further the private eye genre, elevating it to more than just a mystery subgenre, and now that PWA and the Shamus Award are starting their 35th year, I think we managed to succeed. And one of my recent books, The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie (Perfect Crime, 2013) was the first in a new private eye series set in Nashville. The second book, The Last Sweet Song of Hammer Dylan (Perfect Crime), will follow later this year. And on we go…
But reminiscing about the days when I broke into the business makes me think of writers asking me today how to break in. Wow, how things have changed. Back then, I had to mail the manuscripts to editors and wait months for a reply—often a “No,” or “Does not suit our present needs.” I know writers who have collected 400, 500, 600 such rejection slips from publishers, and yet never lost their enthusiasm. Rather, those slips were merit badges, showing that they were paying their dues. Eventually, many of us got that first acceptance letter, and went on to a career.
But there are now countless outlets for authors who don’t want to wait for that acceptance letter: not when they can simply put the books out themselves. Ebook publishing and self-publishing have replaced all those rejection slips. Is this a good thing? Some say yes, some say no. Just look at the proliferation of self-published books on Amazon. Try to read some of them. A good portion are badly written and poorly edited, if they’re edited at all. There are books out there that, after years of rejection, have been published by authors who had the time and excess income to publish the books themselves. (Many of them were not published previously for good reason!)
Now, I’m not making any kind of sweeping statement that self-publishing is bad, or that all self-published books are bad. I’m saying that some writers’ impatience to be published has resulted in badly written, badly edited books making it to the marketplace. And there are books out there by published writers who are finding it difficult to stay published in the current environment, which have also been too hastily rushed to market.
So while I make no sweeping allegation that all self-published books are bad, I do offer these words of advice: BEFORE you send that manuscript out to be formatted and published by Smashwords or Kindle or Createspace, READ it over again and again; BEFORE you publish the book, invest some disposable income in a good editor, to be sure the grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation are correct.
As much as you may feel sure that the book is “fine”, there are many, many good writers out there who are BAD editors. To paraphrase the legal industry, “The author who edits his own book has a fool for an editor.”
Robert J. Randisi is the author of the Miles Jacoby, Nick Delvecchio, Gil & Claire Hunt, Dennis McQueen, Joe Keough, and The Rat Pack mystery series. The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie (Perfect Crime Books), the first book in the Auggie Velez Nashville P.I. series, appeared in 2013. Upon My Soul (Down & Out Books, 2013) is the first book in the “Hitman with a Soul” Trilogy. The second book is Souls of the Dead (2015, Down & Out Books). His recent novel McKenna’s House (Crossroad Press) has been called his best book yet by several reviewers. The 10th book in his Rat Pack series, When Somebody Kills You, was published in Sept. 2015 by Severn House. He is the editor of over 30 anthologies. All told, he is the author of more than 650 novels, many of which have been Westerns.
His Housesitting Detective series appeared from Dagger Books in 2015, with the first book, Dry Stone Walls.
He is the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America, the creator of the Shamus Award, the co-founder of Mystery Scene Magazine and the American Crime Writers League with Ed Gorman, and one of the founders of Western Fictioneers and the Peacemaker Award. He is also the editor of How to Write a P.I. Novel for Writer’s Digest.
(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.
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.
Old Days, New Ways: Self-Publishing / Robert J. Randisi
Killer Nashville 2016’s John Seigenthaler Legends Award recipient Robert J. Randisi has seen his fair share of rejection letters. After all, the road to publishing is never easy, and you don’t publish over 650 books without walking off all kinds of early disappointments. The industry at present, however, makes it seem possible to avoid that painful process through self-publishing. In this week’s guest blog, Randisi takes a hard look at this shortcut, and shares his advice.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Old Days, New Ways
By Robert J. Randisi
Back in the late 1970s, when I was trying to break into the publishing business with private eye fiction, editors were telling me that the Private Eye was dead. But I persevered, and my first novel, The Disappearance of Penny (1980), was a private eye novel. Not long after its publication, I founded the Private Eye Writers of America. Our aim was to honor and further the private eye genre, elevating it to more than just a mystery subgenre, and now that PWA and the Shamus Award are starting their 35th year, I think we managed to succeed. And one of my recent books, The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie (Perfect Crime, 2013) was the first in a new private eye series set in Nashville. The second book, The Last Sweet Song of Hammer Dylan (Perfect Crime), will follow later this year. And on we go…
But reminiscing about the days when I broke into the business makes me think of writers asking me today how to break in. Wow, how things have changed. Back then, I had to mail the manuscripts to editors and wait months for a reply—often a “No,” or “Does not suit our present needs.” I know writers who have collected 400, 500, 600 such rejection slips from publishers, and yet never lost their enthusiasm. Rather, those slips were merit badges, showing that they were paying their dues. Eventually, many of us got that first acceptance letter, and went on to a career.
But there are now countless outlets for authors who don’t want to wait for that acceptance letter: not when they can simply put the books out themselves. Ebook publishing and self-publishing have replaced all those rejection slips. Is this a good thing? Some say yes, some say no. Just look at the proliferation of self-published books on Amazon. Try to read some of them. A good portion are badly written and poorly edited, if they’re edited at all. There are books out there that, after years of rejection, have been published by authors who had the time and excess income to publish the books themselves. (Many of them were not published previously for good reason!)
Now, I’m not making any kind of sweeping statement that self-publishing is bad, or that all self-published books are bad. I’m saying that some writers’ impatience to be published has resulted in badly written, badly edited books making it to the marketplace. And there are books out there by published writers who are finding it difficult to stay published in the current environment, which have also been too hastily rushed to market.
So while I make no sweeping allegation that all self-published books are bad, I do offer these words of advice: BEFORE you send that manuscript out to be formatted and published by Smashwords or Kindle or Createspace, READ it over again and again; BEFORE you publish the book, invest some disposable income in a good editor, to be sure the grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation are correct.
As much as you may feel sure that the book is “fine”, there are many, many good writers out there who are BAD editors. To paraphrase the legal industry, “The author who edits his own book has a fool for an editor.”
Robert J. Randisi is the author of the Miles Jacoby, Nick Delvecchio, Gil & Claire Hunt, Dennis McQueen, Joe Keough, and The Rat Pack mystery series. The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie (Perfect Crime Books), the first book in the Auggie Velez Nashville P.I. series, appeared in 2013. Upon My Soul (Down & Out Books, 2013) is the first book in the “Hitman with a Soul” Trilogy. The second book is Souls of the Dead (2015, Down & Out Books). His recent novel McKenna’s House (Crossroad Press) has been called his best book yet by several reviewers. The 10th book in his Rat Pack series, When Somebody Kills You, was published in Sept. 2015 by Severn House. He is the editor of over 30 anthologies. All told, he is the author of more than 650 novels, many of which have been Westerns.
His Housesitting Detective series appeared from Dagger Books in 2015, with the first book, Dry Stone Walls.
He is the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America, the creator of the Shamus Award, the co-founder of Mystery Scene Magazine and the American Crime Writers League with Ed Gorman, and one of the founders of Western Fictioneers and the Peacemaker Award. He is also the editor of How to Write a P.I. Novel for Writer’s Digest.
(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.
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.
Make Crime Pay—Mining Memories and Other Scar Tissue / Jeffrey B. Burton
Repression’s a pretty useful technique, as far as traumatic memories are concerned. It’d be hard to function if we carried all our baggage around on a daily basis. But those ugly moments do resurface, and it’s difficult to resist the desire to redeem them. Luckily, we writers have one of the most convenient and effective means of repurposing suffering through our power to create. In this week’s guest blog, author Jeffrey B. Burton offers advice on turning pain into gain, by transforming it into the emotional architecture supporting your story.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Make Crime Pay—Mining Memories and Other Scar Tissue
By Jeffrey B. Burton
“Write what you know,” they say. Really? Has Michael Connelly ever captured a serial killer? Has Lee Child ever clobbered five guys in a bar fight? Did Harlan Coben’s college flame disappear for decades only to resurface with earth-shattering revelations?
Not likely.
However, you can develop a riff on that old writers’ adage and mine your real-life experiences—those painful memories—for unique perspectives, some great dialogue, and a rich cataract of emotions.
One example—junior high was the equivalent of gen pop in the Attica prison yard, but I had the system figured out. By loudly insulting a bully, you alert the teacher that trouble was brewing, so said teacher could rush in and separate combatants before any blood was spilled.
Alas, the system failed me in ninth grade when Mr. Hendricks, my algebra teacher, took his time meandering across the classroom to break up a verbal scuffle that morphed instantaneously into my new status as human punching bag. Hendricks stopped to answer a question or two along the way, perhaps clap a few erasers, and possibly plan a trip to Greece before yanking Dave Morton off me.
Two lessons were learned that day. First, getting punched in the face is something to be avoided and, second, I think that devious Hendricks bastard took his own sweet time on purpose. Sure, I may have bruised Morton’s knuckles and gotten blood on his T-shirt; sure, I walked around like an extra from Fight Club that week, but still… not one of my finer moments.
However, it serves as great writing fodder for the maelstrom of mixed sentiments—the overlapping pangs of fear, panic, and terror—involved in any type of physical conflict. I stirred a few of these feelings into The Chessman, where a character reflects back on his challenging adolescence. Of course, my fictional doppelganger equated himself in fisticuffs much better than factual Jeff.
Another example—an eye-catching cook where I washed dishes took a shine to sixteen-year-old me, and in my bumbling amateurish manner I was ginning up the courage to ask her out. I was in that young-dopey-flirty stage and my little heart went pitter-pat as I waltzed out to my car at the end of a late evening shift only to discover that—HOLY SHIT!—there was no car.
So it’s one a.m., and my soon-to-be girlfriend chauffeurs me around the mall’s enormous parking lot, slowly, as though I suffered from Alzheimer’s and had forgotten parking four hundred yards away from the restaurant. From there she drove me to the police station, where I was left with the task of calling my father, waking him, and letting him know that his days of griping about the mileage on his station wagon were over.
As for my budding paramour… Well, she never spoke to me again. I’m hazy to this day about what was actually mentioned in her car that night as she carted me about town, but evidently I muttered every four-letter word in the book, and then some.
Not one iota of fun at the time, but the episode did provide an interesting twist on the three-act structure: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy also loses the family car. Plus, I’ve placed lost love under the microscope in several of my short stories (High Score, The Mourning, The Reuniting).
A final example—my university-assigned roommate knew a 300-pound Samoan named Clete. Clete carried a lock-knife on his belt and may or may not have been attending college (I’m going to say not). One afternoon after class, I returned to my dorm room to find Clete selling full-length leather jackets to a parade of female students. His inventory of overcoats stacked high atop my bed.
“Where’d you get all these jackets?” I asked.
Clete looked like he wanted to rip my head off. “They fell off a truck.”
I pulled my university-assigned roommate aside for a moment and whispered, “You can’t sell these here. If the cops find out, we’re screwed.”
“You can’t tell anyone,” my university-assigned roommate replied, eyes wide, deadly serious. “Clete will kill us.”
My initial reaction was to check the Greyhound schedule for points south. Instead, I spent that month believing at any moment I would be arrested as part of the notorious Lake Street Leather Gang, or get my throat slashed when Clete inevitably got around to tying up loose ends. Decades later and I’ve yet to place Clete directly in any of my writing, as I’d sure hate to answer the door chime one evening only to find him on the front stoop, lock-knife at the ready. But I’ve certainly utilized that gut-wrenching sense of flight with characters in both The Chessman and The Lynchpin.
So the next time you’re stumped and in search of realistic emotions or character motivations or pithy dialogue, make crime pay by scouring through some of the less-than-pleasant situations you’ve found yourself embroiled in; you know, your memories from hell and other such scar tissue.
As for me, whenever I begin kicking about ideas for a villain, all I need do is sit back and ask… WWCD?
What would Clete do?
Jeffrey B. Burton’s mystery/thriller, The Chessman, came out to some excellent reviews, including a starred one in Publishers Weekly, and went on to sell to publishers in Germany, The Netherlands, Turkey, and the U.K. It comes out in mass media paperback in April of 2016. Jeff’s follow-up thriller, The Lynchpin, came out in 2015. Jeff was born in Long Beach, California, but grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received a BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota. Burton is an active member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, and the Horror Writers Association.
Find more of his work at www.jeffreybburton.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.
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.
Make Crime Pay—Mining Memories and Other Scar Tissue / Jeffrey B. Burton
Repression’s a pretty useful technique, as far as traumatic memories are concerned. It’d be hard to function if we carried all our baggage around on a daily basis. But those ugly moments do resurface, and it’s difficult to resist the desire to redeem them. Luckily, we writers have one of the most convenient and effective means of repurposing suffering through our power to create. In this week’s guest blog, author Jeffrey B. Burton offers advice on turning pain into gain, by transforming it into the emotional architecture supporting your story.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Make Crime Pay—Mining Memories and Other Scar Tissue
By Jeffrey B. Burton
“Write what you know,” they say. Really? Has Michael Connelly ever captured a serial killer? Has Lee Child ever clobbered five guys in a bar fight? Did Harlan Coben’s college flame disappear for decades only to resurface with earth-shattering revelations?
Not likely.
However, you can develop a riff on that old writers’ adage and mine your real-life experiences—those painful memories—for unique perspectives, some great dialogue, and a rich cataract of emotions.
One example—junior high was the equivalent of gen pop in the Attica prison yard, but I had the system figured out. By loudly insulting a bully, you alert the teacher that trouble was brewing, so said teacher could rush in and separate combatants before any blood was spilled.
Alas, the system failed me in ninth grade when Mr. Hendricks, my algebra teacher, took his time meandering across the classroom to break up a verbal scuffle that morphed instantaneously into my new status as human punching bag. Hendricks stopped to answer a question or two along the way, perhaps clap a few erasers, and possibly plan a trip to Greece before yanking Dave Morton off me.
Two lessons were learned that day. First, getting punched in the face is something to be avoided and, second, I think that devious Hendricks bastard took his own sweet time on purpose. Sure, I may have bruised Morton’s knuckles and gotten blood on his T-shirt; sure, I walked around like an extra from Fight Club that week, but still… not one of my finer moments.
However, it serves as great writing fodder for the maelstrom of mixed sentiments—the overlapping pangs of fear, panic, and terror—involved in any type of physical conflict. I stirred a few of these feelings into The Chessman, where a character reflects back on his challenging adolescence. Of course, my fictional doppelganger equated himself in fisticuffs much better than factual Jeff.
Another example—an eye-catching cook where I washed dishes took a shine to sixteen-year-old me, and in my bumbling amateurish manner I was ginning up the courage to ask her out. I was in that young-dopey-flirty stage and my little heart went pitter-pat as I waltzed out to my car at the end of a late evening shift only to discover that—HOLY SHIT!—there was no car.
So it’s one a.m., and my soon-to-be girlfriend chauffeurs me around the mall’s enormous parking lot, slowly, as though I suffered from Alzheimer’s and had forgotten parking four hundred yards away from the restaurant. From there she drove me to the police station, where I was left with the task of calling my father, waking him, and letting him know that his days of griping about the mileage on his station wagon were over.
As for my budding paramour… Well, she never spoke to me again. I’m hazy to this day about what was actually mentioned in her car that night as she carted me about town, but evidently I muttered every four-letter word in the book, and then some.
Not one iota of fun at the time, but the episode did provide an interesting twist on the three-act structure: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy also loses the family car. Plus, I’ve placed lost love under the microscope in several of my short stories (High Score, The Mourning, The Reuniting).
A final example—my university-assigned roommate knew a 300-pound Samoan named Clete. Clete carried a lock-knife on his belt and may or may not have been attending college (I’m going to say not). One afternoon after class, I returned to my dorm room to find Clete selling full-length leather jackets to a parade of female students. His inventory of overcoats stacked high atop my bed.
“Where’d you get all these jackets?” I asked.
Clete looked like he wanted to rip my head off. “They fell off a truck.”
I pulled my university-assigned roommate aside for a moment and whispered, “You can’t sell these here. If the cops find out, we’re screwed.”
“You can’t tell anyone,” my university-assigned roommate replied, eyes wide, deadly serious. “Clete will kill us.”
My initial reaction was to check the Greyhound schedule for points south. Instead, I spent that month believing at any moment I would be arrested as part of the notorious Lake Street Leather Gang, or get my throat slashed when Clete inevitably got around to tying up loose ends. Decades later and I’ve yet to place Clete directly in any of my writing, as I’d sure hate to answer the door chime one evening only to find him on the front stoop, lock-knife at the ready. But I’ve certainly utilized that gut-wrenching sense of flight with characters in both The Chessman and The Lynchpin.
So the next time you’re stumped and in search of realistic emotions or character motivations or pithy dialogue, make crime pay by scouring through some of the less-than-pleasant situations you’ve found yourself embroiled in; you know, your memories from hell and other such scar tissue.
As for me, whenever I begin kicking about ideas for a villain, all I need do is sit back and ask… WWCD?
What would Clete do?
Jeffrey B. Burton’s mystery/thriller, The Chessman, came out to some excellent reviews, including a starred one in Publishers Weekly, and went on to sell to publishers in Germany, The Netherlands, Turkey, and the U.K. It comes out in mass media paperback in April of 2016. Jeff’s follow-up thriller, The Lynchpin, came out in 2015. Jeff was born in Long Beach, California, but grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received a BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota. Burton is an active member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, and the Horror Writers Association.
Find more of his work at www.jeffreybburton.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.
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.
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