KN Magazine: Articles
First Page Punch / Lynette Eason
When writing a mystery or a thriller, writers strive to have the reader on the edge of their seat, eager to turn the page and learn more. According to this week's Killer Nashville guest blog author Lynette Eason, it's crucial to have that engagement with the reader from page one. Eason immediately drops the reader into nail-biting action, as shown in her most recent work, A Killer Among Us, When A Heart Stops, and Without Warning. With these tips and tricks, learn how to engage your reader from the opening page and have them struggling to put your book down.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
First Page Punch
By Lynette Eason
As a writer, I’m deathly afraid of writing a book that a reader is going to pick up, read the first page, and be bored to death. Keeping that fear in mind as I write, my first goal is to immediately engage the reader in the story. That’s where the First Page Punch comes in. (Yes, I made that up.) What I mean by this is, my first scene starts off with action. And I don’t mean boring action.
You don’t necessarily have to have a car chase with bullets flying and bodies dropping, although that’s great if you do, but you do need to have something happening. Save the backstory and introspection for later.
For example, in my books, nobody is driving into town thinking what a wonderful family reunion she’s going to have and no one is sitting on the front porch pondering life and drinking sweet tea—unless he’s a serial killer and he’s just worked up a thirst, you know what I mean?
Here’s one of my first page openings. In A Killer Among Us, I open the story with a hostage situation. Detective Kit Kenyon is trained in hostage negotiation and is trying to talk the hostage taker into giving up. Here’s how the story opens:
Detective Kit Kenyon stared past the barrel of the gun and fixed her eyes on the man before her.
The forty-four-year-old blinked against the sweat dripping into his hazy green eyes. A thick tongue swept out against dry lips, and his gaze darted from her to the door to his wife, who sat on the floor under the window weeping softly.
Melanie, his twelve-year-old daughter, winced at the harsh hand ensnaring her long brown ponytail and never took her terrified gaze from Kit.
“Virgil?” Kit pushed gently. “Right now you haven’t hurt anyone. In fact, you’ve cooperated nicely.” Except for the part where she’d asked him to end this peacefully.
But they were getting there.
“I’ve got a clean shot.” The voice whispered in her earpiece.
Another example of a First Page Punch would be in my book, When A Heart Stops:
If she moved, would she die? Serena Hopkins kept her eyes shut and lay as still as possible in the king-size bed, doing her best to keep her breathing even.
Which was becoming more impossible by the second.
As her fear increased, so did the rate of her heartbeat and respirations.
Was he still there?
A slight rustle to her left answered that question.
I’ve given you two examples. Do you think if you picked up either book in your local bookstore and scanned the first page, you’d want to read more? If you said no, I’m not writing this post for you. If you said yes, why? Because I’ve dropped you right into the danger, right? I’ve given you someone to care about, someone who’s in trouble and needs help.
These two opening pages set the tone for the story. The reader doesn’t know the characters yet, but usually if someone innocent such as the twelve-year-old girl in example one is in danger, we’re rooting for her and the people trying to help her, right?
In example two, we have a woman who is in danger from an intruder. Our first instinct is to hope the intruder doesn’t discover that she’s awake and if he does, we hope that she’ll be unharmed. At least I hope that’s your first instinct!
All that to say, as an avid reader, I remember picking up books, reading the first page and going, “meh” and tossing the book aside.
Some authors may argue that their story gets better as you get into it. My response to them is that they should start the story where it starts to get better. Seriously. Ditch all the other stuff before it. The reader who picks up the book then tosses it aside because she can’t get past the first chapter isn’t going to know she should keep reading because things get interesting in chapter eight. Things have to be interesting on page one.
When I decided to write, I studied the craft, I attended writer’s conferences and I knew that I wanted to write stories that kept readers on the edge of their seats. In order to that, I had to keep them turning the pages. The best way to do this is to grab those readers on the first page and keep it going from there.
All the best with your writing as you deliver a powerful punch right on the first page!
Without Warning is the second book in the Elite Guardians Series. If you read it, I hope you’re immediately hooked and lose lots of sleep because you can’t put the book down!
Lynette Eason is the bestselling author of the WOMEN OF JUSTICE series, the DEADLY REUNIONS series, and the HIDDEN IDENTITY series, as well as Always Watching in the ELITE GUARDIANS series. She is the winner of an ACFW Carol Award, a Selah Award, and an Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. She has a master’s degree in education from Converse College, and she lives in South Carolina. To learn more about Eason and her work, visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
First Page Punch / Lynette Eason
When writing a mystery or a thriller, writers strive to have the reader on the edge of their seat, eager to turn the page and learn more. According to this week's Killer Nashville guest blog author Lynette Eason, it's crucial to have that engagement with the reader from page one. Eason immediately drops the reader into nail-biting action, as shown in her most recent work, A Killer Among Us, When A Heart Stops, and Without Warning. With these tips and tricks, learn how to engage your reader from the opening page and have them struggling to put your book down.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
First Page Punch
By Lynette Eason
As a writer, I’m deathly afraid of writing a book that a reader is going to pick up, read the first page, and be bored to death. Keeping that fear in mind as I write, my first goal is to immediately engage the reader in the story. That’s where the First Page Punch comes in. (Yes, I made that up.) What I mean by this is, my first scene starts off with action. And I don’t mean boring action.
You don’t necessarily have to have a car chase with bullets flying and bodies dropping, although that’s great if you do, but you do need to have something happening. Save the backstory and introspection for later.
For example, in my books, nobody is driving into town thinking what a wonderful family reunion she’s going to have and no one is sitting on the front porch pondering life and drinking sweet tea—unless he’s a serial killer and he’s just worked up a thirst, you know what I mean?
Here’s one of my first page openings. In A Killer Among Us, I open the story with a hostage situation. Detective Kit Kenyon is trained in hostage negotiation and is trying to talk the hostage taker into giving up. Here’s how the story opens:
Detective Kit Kenyon stared past the barrel of the gun and fixed her eyes on the man before her.
The forty-four-year-old blinked against the sweat dripping into his hazy green eyes. A thick tongue swept out against dry lips, and his gaze darted from her to the door to his wife, who sat on the floor under the window weeping softly.
Melanie, his twelve-year-old daughter, winced at the harsh hand ensnaring her long brown ponytail and never took her terrified gaze from Kit.
“Virgil?” Kit pushed gently. “Right now you haven’t hurt anyone. In fact, you’ve cooperated nicely.” Except for the part where she’d asked him to end this peacefully.
But they were getting there.
“I’ve got a clean shot.” The voice whispered in her earpiece.
Another example of a First Page Punch would be in my book, When A Heart Stops:
If she moved, would she die? Serena Hopkins kept her eyes shut and lay as still as possible in the king-size bed, doing her best to keep her breathing even.
Which was becoming more impossible by the second.
As her fear increased, so did the rate of her heartbeat and respirations.
Was he still there?
A slight rustle to her left answered that question.
I’ve given you two examples. Do you think if you picked up either book in your local bookstore and scanned the first page, you’d want to read more? If you said no, I’m not writing this post for you. If you said yes, why? Because I’ve dropped you right into the danger, right? I’ve given you someone to care about, someone who’s in trouble and needs help.
These two opening pages set the tone for the story. The reader doesn’t know the characters yet, but usually if someone innocent such as the twelve-year-old girl in example one is in danger, we’re rooting for her and the people trying to help her, right?
In example two, we have a woman who is in danger from an intruder. Our first instinct is to hope the intruder doesn’t discover that she’s awake and if he does, we hope that she’ll be unharmed. At least I hope that’s your first instinct!
All that to say, as an avid reader, I remember picking up books, reading the first page and going, “meh” and tossing the book aside.
Some authors may argue that their story gets better as you get into it. My response to them is that they should start the story where it starts to get better. Seriously. Ditch all the other stuff before it. The reader who picks up the book then tosses it aside because she can’t get past the first chapter isn’t going to know she should keep reading because things get interesting in chapter eight. Things have to be interesting on page one.
When I decided to write, I studied the craft, I 
attended writer’s conferences and I knew that I wanted to write stories that kept readers on the edge of their seats. In order to that, I had to keep them turning the pages. The best way to do this is to grab those readers on the first page and keep it going from there.
All the best with your writing as you deliver a powerful punch right on the first page!
Without Warning is the second book in the Elite Guardians Series. If you read it, I hope you’re immediately hooked and lose lots of sleep because you can’t put the book down!
Lynette Eason is the bestselling author of the WOMEN OF JUSTICE series, the DEADLY REUNIONS series, and the HIDDEN IDENTITY series, as well as Always Watching in the ELITE GUARDIANS series. She is the winner of an ACFW Carol Award, a Selah Award, and an Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. She has a master’s degree in education from Converse College, and she lives in South Carolina. To learn more about Eason and her work, visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
First Page Punch / Lynette Eason
When writing a mystery or a thriller, writers strive to have the reader on the edge of their seat, eager to turn the page and learn more. According to this week's Killer Nashville guest blog author Lynette Eason, it's crucial to have that engagement with the reader from page one. Eason immediately drops the reader into nail-biting action, as shown in her most recent work, A Killer Among Us, When A Heart Stops, and Without Warning. With these tips and tricks, learn how to engage your reader from the opening page and have them struggling to put your book down.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
First Page Punch
By Lynette Eason
As a writer, I’m deathly afraid of writing a book that a reader is going to pick up, read the first page, and be bored to death. Keeping that fear in mind as I write, my first goal is to immediately engage the reader in the story. That’s where the First Page Punch comes in. (Yes, I made that up.) What I mean by this is, my first scene starts off with action. And I don’t mean boring action.
You don’t necessarily have to have a car chase with bullets flying and bodies dropping, although that’s great if you do, but you do need to have something happening. Save the backstory and introspection for later.
For example, in my books, nobody is driving into town thinking what a wonderful family reunion she’s going to have and no one is sitting on the front porch pondering life and drinking sweet tea—unless he’s a serial killer and he’s just worked up a thirst, you know what I mean?
Here’s one of my first page openings. In A Killer Among Us, I open the story with a hostage situation. Detective Kit Kenyon is trained in hostage negotiation and is trying to talk the hostage taker into giving up. Here’s how the story opens:
Detective Kit Kenyon stared past the barrel of the gun and fixed her eyes on the man before her.
The forty-four-year-old blinked against the sweat dripping into his hazy green eyes. A thick tongue swept out against dry lips, and his gaze darted from her to the door to his wife, who sat on the floor under the window weeping softly.
Melanie, his twelve-year-old daughter, winced at the harsh hand ensnaring her long brown ponytail and never took her terrified gaze from Kit.
“Virgil?” Kit pushed gently. “Right now you haven’t hurt anyone. In fact, you’ve cooperated nicely.” Except for the part where she’d asked him to end this peacefully.
But they were getting there.
“I’ve got a clean shot.” The voice whispered in her earpiece.
Another example of a First Page Punch would be in my book, When A Heart Stops:
If she moved, would she die? Serena Hopkins kept her eyes shut and lay as still as possible in the king-size bed, doing her best to keep her breathing even.
Which was becoming more impossible by the second.
As her fear increased, so did the rate of her heartbeat and respirations.
Was he still there?
A slight rustle to her left answered that question.
I’ve given you two examples. Do you think if you picked up either book in your local bookstore and scanned the first page, you’d want to read more? If you said no, I’m not writing this post for you. If you said yes, why? Because I’ve dropped you right into the danger, right? I’ve given you someone to care about, someone who’s in trouble and needs help.
These two opening pages set the tone for the story. The reader doesn’t know the characters yet, but usually if someone innocent such as the twelve-year-old girl in example one is in danger, we’re rooting for her and the people trying to help her, right?
In example two, we have a woman who is in danger from an intruder. Our first instinct is to hope the intruder doesn’t discover that she’s awake and if he does, we hope that she’ll be unharmed. At least I hope that’s your first instinct!
All that to say, as an avid reader, I remember picking up books, reading the first page and going, “meh” and tossing the book aside.
Some authors may argue that their story gets better as you get into it. My response to them is that they should start the story where it starts to get better. Seriously. Ditch all the other stuff before it. The reader who picks up the book then tosses it aside because she can’t get past the first chapter isn’t going to know she should keep reading because things get interesting in chapter eight. Things have to be interesting on page one.
When I decided to write, I studied the craft, I 
attended writer’s conferences and I knew that I wanted to write stories that kept readers on the edge of their seats. In order to that, I had to keep them turning the pages. The best way to do this is to grab those readers on the first page and keep it going from there.
All the best with your writing as you deliver a powerful punch right on the first page!
Without Warning is the second book in the Elite Guardians Series. If you read it, I hope you’re immediately hooked and lose lots of sleep because you can’t put the book down!
Lynette Eason is the bestselling author of the WOMEN OF JUSTICE series, the DEADLY REUNIONS series, and the HIDDEN IDENTITY series, as well as Always Watching in the ELITE GUARDIANS series. She is the winner of an ACFW Carol Award, a Selah Award, and an Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. She has a master’s degree in education from Converse College, and she lives in South Carolina. To learn more about Eason and her work, visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Opposites DO Attract: Writing the Faith-Based Thriller / Catherine Finger
Both in real life and on the page, a characters faith can be tested during difficult times. This can be especially the case for characters set in the thriller genre. This week's Killer Nashville guest blogger, Catherine Finger, masterfully incorporates faith-based characters into a dark, gritty setting in her Jo Oliver Thriller series. Finger personifies emotions such as betrayal, guilt, and shame to bring her characters beliefs to a breaking point in Cleansed by Death and Shattered By Death.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Opposites DO Attract: Writing the Faith-Based Thriller
By Catherine Finger
What do Stephen King, Lee Child, Kevin O’Brien, and Jude—author of his own little New Testament Epistle—have in common? Everything, as it turns out. In addition to recounting blood-chilling events in true thriller style, their stories are packed full of the human failures and hopes of the heart that keep us hungry and thirsting for more.
My goal as an author is to paint a picture of a real God, who offers us a future and a hope, in the midst of calamitous times. Writing faith-based thrillers challenges me as I strive to write compelling novels chock full of grit, while keeping the gratuitous gore to a minimum. Oh, and skipping the monkey sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with either— rather, I know myself and what makes my mind, body, and spirit happiest on any given day. My mind is my best feature, and I work to keep it free from imagery that has the capacity to chip away at my sense of personal safety or otherwise hurt my heart. Add to that my belief that a solid character arc comes only accompanied by a side dish of a genuine faith experience, and you get a sense of my essential story ingredients.
Are you snoozing yet? I hope not. I strive to find creative ways to tie these two big ideas together — faith and thrillers — and come up with one fantastic story. Weaving these pieces into a tapestry of intrigue led me to create the Jo Oliver Thriller series.
I’ve been accused of trying to destroy my own protagonist — Police Chief Jo Oliver — by throwing a series of overwhelming circumstances at her from every possible direction in each book. And while I do enjoy creating messed-up lives for my characters, my secret goal is to stir up as much trouble as I possibly can, and then see how my characters respond. I want my readers to feel the tension of wondering whether tough circumstances will serve to make my characters better — or bitter.
I delight in watching my characters experience some of the heaviest human emotions as they face escalating personal and professional catastrophes. Betrayal, guilt, and shame are The Big Three in my mind as I write and I want my reader to feel their presence, almost as if they were a character in their own right. What will these powerful forces drive my characters to choose? How will guilt and shame impact their current relationships? Who will they ultimately become after tangling with The Big Three?
Playing with key questions designed to help me frame the spiritual element in my books as I write helps keep me focused and fresh. Authors interested in adding their own unique brand of faith to their stories might find this practice beneficial. Questions I return to as I continue with my Jo Oliver Thriller series include the following:
How does a hardened police chief find faith in the midst of a gritty murder investigation? And how is that faith manifested in a real way that resonates with my readers?
What difference does faith make in the lives of my chief and others having faith experiences along the way?
What does her growing faith look like, and how does it inform her choices and impact her behavior as the novels progress?
In Cleansed by Death, book one of the Jo Oliver Thriller Series, our heroine faces private battles at the hands of an abusive husband in her personal life—while hunting a serial killer. Escalating conflicts incite a personal crisis forcing her first encounter with ‘my Magnificent Being’—God, as she then understands Him—during an intense moment of spiritual warfare. This unexpected encounter shifts her inner landscape, and while her external circumstances don’t improve, she discovers within herself a renewed sense of life, hope, and peace.
In book two of the series, Shattered By Death, Chief Josie’s fledgling life of faith is severely tested as her world is threatened by The Big Three—especially betrayal. In addition to dealing with her inner demons, she faces a cunning foe that might just be strong enough, and smart enough to outwit her as the kill list mounts. Circumstantial evidence causes her once stalwart companions to doubt Josie’s innocence and she is forced to defend herself within her own department while pursuing a killer. The story begins with betrayal of another stripe as her philandering, soon to be ex-husband is found brutally slain alongside his mistress.
Where could God be in that complex mess? Isn’t that the question many of us face in our own daily lives? I delight in illustrating that question against the backdrop of impossible circumstances, and then watching Chief Josie walk through them, hand-in-hand with her Magnificent Being.
In addition to these internal struggles, let’s not forget that there’s a world of hurt going on externally as my Police Chief fights crime and hunts killers in a race against time in every novel. And — spoiler alert — people die! In creative ways! One of the things I love about this genre is that it lets me play with the notions of Good and Evil. I find it great fun telling stories about doing the right thing — or not — through an extreme medium with inherently high stakes. Writing faith-based thrillers allows me to take readers to the edge of their seats, while examining their hearts—hopefully while keeping them up at night.
Like Police Chief Jo Oliver, Dr. Catherine Finger is committed to protect and serve. But instead of handcuffs and handguns, she uses her wit and wisdom as a high school superintendent and church and community volunteer in northern Illinois. Shattered by Death is her second novel. For more information about Catherine, visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Opposites DO Attract: Writing the Faith-Based Thriller / Catherine Finger
Both in real life and on the page, a characters faith can be tested during difficult times. This can be especially the case for characters set in the thriller genre. This week's Killer Nashville guest blogger, Catherine Finger, masterfully incorporates faith-based characters into a dark, gritty setting in her Jo Oliver Thriller series. Finger personifies emotions such as betrayal, guilt, and shame to bring her characters beliefs to a breaking point in Cleansed by Death and Shattered By Death.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Opposites DO Attract: Writing the Faith-Based Thriller
By Catherine Finger
What do Stephen King, Lee Child, Kevin O’Brien, and Jude—author of his own little New Testament Epistle—have in common? Everything, as it turns out. In addition to recounting blood-chilling events in true thriller style, their stories are packed full of the human failures and hopes of the heart that keep us hungry and thirsting for more.
My goal as an author is to paint a picture of a real God, who offers us a future and a hope, in the midst of calamitous times. Writing faith-based thrillers challenges me as I strive to write compelling novels chock full of grit, while keeping the gratuitous gore to a minimum. Oh, and skipping the monkey sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with either— rather, I know myself and what makes my mind, body, and spirit happiest on any given day. My mind is my best feature, and I work to keep it free from imagery that has the capacity to chip away at my sense of personal safety or otherwise hurt my heart. Add to that my belief that a solid character arc comes only accompanied by a side dish of a genuine faith experience, and you get a sense of my essential story ingredients.
Are you snoozing yet? I hope not. I strive to find creative ways to tie these two big ideas together — faith and thrillers — and come up with one fantastic story. Weaving these pieces into a tapestry of intrigue led me to create the Jo Oliver Thriller series.
I’ve been accused of trying to destroy my own protagonist — Police Chief Jo Oliver — by throwing a series of overwhelming circumstances at her from every possible direction in each book. And while I do enjoy creating messed-up lives for my characters, my secret goal is to stir up as much trouble as I possibly can, and then see how my characters respond. I want my readers to feel the tension of wondering whether tough circumstances will serve to make my characters better — or bitter.
I delight in watching my characters experience some of the heaviest human emotions as they face escalating personal and professional catastrophes. Betrayal, guilt, and shame are The Big Three in my mind as I write and I want my reader to feel their presence, almost as if they were a character in their own right. What will these powerful forces drive my characters to choose? How will guilt and shame impact their current relationships? Who will they ultimately become after tangling with The Big Three?
Playing with key questions designed to help me frame the spiritual element in my books as I write helps keep me focused and fresh. Authors interested in adding their own unique brand of faith to their stories might find this practice beneficial. Questions I return to as I continue with my Jo Oliver Thriller series include the following:
- How does a hardened police chief find faith in the midst of a gritty murder investigation? And how is that faith manifested in a real way that resonates with my readers?
- What difference does faith make in the lives of my chief and others having faith experiences along the way?
- What does her growing faith look like, and how does it inform her choices and impact her behavior as the novels progress?
In Cleansed by Death, book one of the Jo Oliver Thriller Series, our heroine faces private battles at the hands of an abusive husband in her personal life—while hunting a serial killer. Escalating conflicts incite a personal crisis forcing her first encounter with ‘my Magnificent Being’—God, as she then understands Him—during an intense moment of spiritual warfare. This unexpected encounter shifts her inner landscape, and while her external circumstances don’t improve, she discovers within herself a renewed sense of life, hope, and peace.
In book two of the series, Shattered By Death, Chief Josie’s fledgling life of faith is severely tested as her world is threatened by The Big Three—especially betrayal. In addition to dealing with her inner demons, she faces a cunning foe that might just be strong enough, and smart enough to outwit her as the kill list mounts. Circumstantial evidence causes her once stalwart companions to doubt Josie’s innocence and she is forced to defend herself within her own department while pursuing a killer. The story begins with betrayal of another stripe as her philandering, soon to be ex-husband is found brutally slain alongside his mistress.
Where could God be in that complex mess? Isn’t that the question many of us face in our own daily lives? I delight in illustrating that question against the backdrop of impossible circumstances, and then watching Chief Josie walk through them, hand-in-hand with her Magnificent Being.
In addition to these internal struggles, let’s not forget that there’s a world of hurt going on externally as my Police Chief fights crime and hunts killers in a race against time in every novel. And — spoiler alert — people die! In creative ways! One of the things I love about this genre is that it lets me play with the notions of Good and Evil. I find it great fun telling stories about doing the right thing — or not — through an extreme medium with inherently high stakes. Writing faith-based thrillers allows me to take readers to the edge of their seats, while examining their hearts—hopefully while keeping them up at night.
Like Police Chief Jo Oliver, Dr. Catherine Finger is committed to protect and serve. But instead of handcuffs and handguns, she uses her wit and wisdom as a high school superintendent and church and community volunteer in northern Illinois. Shattered by Death is her second novel. For more information about Catherine, visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Opposites DO Attract: Writing the Faith-Based Thriller / Catherine Finger
Both in real life and on the page, a characters faith can be tested during difficult times. This can be especially the case for characters set in the thriller genre. This week's Killer Nashville guest blogger, Catherine Finger, masterfully incorporates faith-based characters into a dark, gritty setting in her Jo Oliver Thriller series. Finger personifies emotions such as betrayal, guilt, and shame to bring her characters beliefs to a breaking point in Cleansed by Death and Shattered By Death.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Opposites DO Attract: Writing the Faith-Based Thriller
By Catherine Finger
What do Stephen King, Lee Child, Kevin O’Brien, and Jude—author of his own little New Testament Epistle—have in common? Everything, as it turns out. In addition to recounting blood-chilling events in true thriller style, their stories are packed full of the human failures and hopes of the heart that keep us hungry and thirsting for more.
My goal as an author is to paint a picture of a real God, who offers us a future and a hope, in the midst of calamitous times. Writing faith-based thrillers challenges me as I strive to write compelling novels chock full of grit, while keeping the gratuitous gore to a minimum. Oh, and skipping the monkey sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with either— rather, I know myself and what makes my mind, body, and spirit happiest on any given day. My mind is my best feature, and I work to keep it free from imagery that has the capacity to chip away at my sense of personal safety or otherwise hurt my heart. Add to that my belief that a solid character arc comes only accompanied by a side dish of a genuine faith experience, and you get a sense of my essential story ingredients.
Are you snoozing yet? I hope not. I strive to find creative ways to tie these two big ideas together — faith and thrillers — and come up with one fantastic story. Weaving these pieces into a tapestry of intrigue led me to create the Jo Oliver Thriller series.
I’ve been accused of trying to destroy my own protagonist — Police Chief Jo Oliver — by throwing a series of overwhelming circumstances at her from every possible direction in each book. And while I do enjoy creating messed-up lives for my characters, my secret goal is to stir up as much trouble as I possibly can, and then see how my characters respond. I want my readers to feel the tension of wondering whether tough circumstances will serve to make my characters better — or bitter.
I delight in watching my characters experience some of the heaviest human emotions as they face escalating personal and professional catastrophes. Betrayal, guilt, and shame are The Big Three in my mind as I write and I want my reader to feel their presence, almost as if they were a character in their own right. What will these powerful forces drive my characters to choose? How will guilt and shame impact their current relationships? Who will they ultimately become after tangling with The Big Three?
Playing with key questions designed to help me frame the spiritual element in my books as I write helps keep me focused and fresh. Authors interested in adding their own unique brand of faith to their stories might find this practice beneficial. Questions I return to as I continue with my Jo Oliver Thriller series include the following:
- How does a hardened police chief find faith in the midst of a gritty murder investigation? And how is that faith manifested in a real way that resonates with my readers?
- What difference does faith make in the lives of my chief and others having faith experiences along the way?
- What does her growing faith look like, and how does it inform her choices and impact her behavior as the novels progress?
In Cleansed by Death, book one of the Jo Oliver Thriller Series, our heroine faces private battles at the hands of an abusive husband in her personal life—while hunting a serial killer. Escalating conflicts incite a personal crisis forcing her first encounter with ‘my Magnificent Being’—God, as she then understands Him—during an intense moment of spiritual warfare. This unexpected encounter shifts her inner landscape, and while her external circumstances don’t improve, she discovers within herself a renewed sense of life, hope, and peace.
In book two of the series, Shattered By Death, Chief Josie’s fledgling life of faith is severely tested as her world is threatened by The Big Three—especially betrayal. In addition to dealing with her inner demons, she faces a cunning foe that might just be strong enough, and smart enough to outwit her as the kill list mounts. Circumstantial evidence causes her once stalwart companions to doubt Josie’s innocence and she is forced to defend herself within her own department while pursuing a killer. The story begins with betrayal of another stripe as her philandering, soon to be ex-husband is found brutally slain alongside his mistress.
Where could God be in that complex mess? Isn’t that the question many of us face in our own daily lives? I delight in illustrating that question against the backdrop of impossible circumstances, and then watching Chief Josie walk through them, hand-in-hand with her Magnificent Being.
In addition to these internal struggles, let’s not forget that there’s a world of hurt going on externally as my Police Chief fights crime and hunts killers in a race against time in every novel. And — spoiler alert — people die! In creative ways! One of the things I love about this genre is that it lets me play with the notions of Good and Evil. I find it great fun telling stories about doing the right thing — or not — through an extreme medium with inherently high stakes. Writing faith-based thrillers allows me to take readers to the edge of their seats, while examining their hearts—hopefully while keeping them up at night.
Like Police Chief Jo Oliver, Dr. Catherine Finger is committed to protect and serve. But instead of handcuffs and handguns, she uses her wit and wisdom as a high school superintendent and church and community volunteer in northern Illinois. Shattered by Death is her second novel. For more information about Catherine, visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Cozying up to Mystery / Ann H. Gabhart
There are specific elements of a story that delineate a standard mystery from a cozy mystery. When writing in the mystery genre, its important to understand your target audience, and create a world that is enjoyable to the reader. This week's Killer Nashville guest blog by Ann H. Gabhart explores the world of the cozy mystery and gives advice of how to make your cozy stand out. Take an inside look at her fictional town of Hidden Springs and see how her novels Murder at the Courthouse and Murder Comes by Mail take cozy mysteries to the next level.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Cozying up to Mystery
By Ann H. Gabhart
I cut my reading teeth on The Hardy Boys mysteries. Those stories made me want to be a detective too. So, at age ten when anything seems possible, I grabbed a pencil and started writing my first book starring me as a mystery-solving sleuth. Even then, I knew writing fiction meant you could make things up. That let me make my fictional self smarter, cuter and much less shy than my real self.
Since I still enjoy reading mysteries, it’s a little mysterious that I had twenty-eight novels published before one was actually labeled a mystery. Over the years, I slipped plenty of mystery threads into my stories, but Murder at the Courthouse was my first full-fledged, let’s put murder in that title, mystery.
You’ve probably heard the writing advice “to write what you know.” I’m not sure exactly how that’s supposed to work with mystery writers. Personal experience with murder can be deadly! I’m relieved to say I don’t know about murder, but I do live in a world where the baser human emotions of greed, anger, envy, hate and fear are often on display and can sneak into all our thoughts at times. Those feelings magnified can push a person down some wrong paths toward crime, even murder. When that happens with your fictional bad guys, then a writer can come up with a good guy character to solve the mystery.
I didn’t totally ignore the write-what-you-know advice with my mystery. Most of my books have small-town settings. That’s because I’m a country girl. Take me to a big city like Chicago or New York and I’m lost. But drop me down in a Main Street, two stoplight town and I’m right at home. That’s why, when I stepped onto the mystery writing trail, I created the small town of Hidden Springs where murder isn’t supposed to happen but does. That small town setting put my Hidden Spring mysteries into the cozy mystery genre.
Online I discovered at least fifteen varieties of mysteries from cozies to noir which were labeled as gritty mysteries as far from cozies as you can get. So what makes a cozy cozy? First and especially true with my Hidden Springs books is that small town setting with the kind of colorful characters a reader expects to find on those Main Streets. In a cozy mystery, the murder takes place off page. Bodies are found, but generally the victim is either a character nobody liked anyway or someone the reader barely knows.
That is true in my stories even though my hero does land in some dangerous situations. It’s not all only a puzzle for my hero, Michael Keane. In the first Hidden Springs mystery, Murder at the Courthouse, Michael uncovers some disturbing secrets from the past to solve the mystery. Then in Murder Comes by Mail, evil comes to call on his small town bringing more suspense and perhaps more bodies too than are usually found in cozy mysteries.
Normally a cozy sleuth is an amateur who stumbles into mystery, perhaps a middle-aged woman running some small business like a book shop. But sometimes a writer doesn’t read the rules until after she’s written the books. That must have happened with me because Michael is a good-looking deputy sheriff in my little town of Hidden Springs. Also, romance rarely plays a big part in cozies, but Michael is carrying a torch for a woman he thinks will never marry him. While the mystery is the main thrust of the Hidden Spring books, Michael and Alex’s seemingly impossible romance is a continuing storyline for readers.
But perhaps cats are why my mysteries ended up on the cozy mystery shelf. If you check out any bookstore’s mystery section, you can pick out the cozy mysteries by the great covers that often feature a cat or dog. My covers have a different cat for each story – Two Bits, the barber’s cat in Murder at the Courthouse, and Grimalkin, the cat on the mailbox in Murder Comes by Mail.
So if you happen to take a fictional visit to a small town where murder and mayhem happen, it’s likely you have stepped into a cozy mystery. A few smiles and thrills later, the killer will be unmasked and you can feel safe in that little town once again. At least, until the next cozy episode of murder.
Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of many novels, including the 2015 Selah Book of Year,Love Comes Home, her Shaker novels and The Heart of Hollyhill series. As A.H. Gabhart, she writes the Hidden Springs Mysteries set in a small town much like her hometown. Ann and her husband enjoy country life on a farm in Kentucky. Learn more about Ann here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Cozying up to Mystery / Ann H. Gabhart
There are specific elements of a story that delineate a standard mystery from a cozy mystery. When writing in the mystery genre, its important to understand your target audience, and create a world that is enjoyable to the reader. This week's Killer Nashville guest blog by Ann H. Gabhart explores the world of the cozy mystery and gives advice of how to make your cozy stand out. Take an inside look at her fictional town of Hidden Springs and see how her novels Murder at the Courthouse and Murder Comes by Mail take cozy mysteries to the next level.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Cozying up to Mystery
By Ann H. Gabhart
I cut my reading teeth on The Hardy Boys mysteries. Those stories made me want to be a detective too. So, at age ten when anything seems possible, I grabbed a pencil and started writing my first book starring me as a mystery-solving sleuth. Even then, I knew writing fiction meant you could make things up. That let me make my fictional self smarter, cuter and much less shy than my real self.
Since I still enjoy reading mysteries, it’s a little mysterious that I had twenty-eight novels published before one was actually labeled a mystery. Over the years, I slipped plenty of mystery threads into my stories, but Murder at the Courthouse was my first full-fledged, let’s put murder in that title, mystery.
You’ve probably heard the writing advice “to write what you know.” I’m not sure exactly how that’s supposed to work with mystery writers. Personal experience with murder can be deadly! I’m relieved to say I don’t know about murder, but I do live in a world where the baser human emotions of greed, anger, envy, hate and fear are often on display and can sneak into all our thoughts at times. Those feelings magnified can push a person down some wrong paths toward crime, even murder. When that happens with your fictional bad guys, then a writer can come up with a good guy character to solve the mystery.
I didn’t totally ignore the write-what-you-know advice with my mystery. Most of my books have small-town settings. That’s because I’m a country girl. Take me to a big city like Chicago or New York and I’m lost. But drop me down in a Main Street, two stoplight town and I’m right at home. That’s why, when I stepped onto the mystery writing trail, I created the small town of Hidden Springs where murder isn’t supposed to happen but does. That small town setting put my Hidden Spring mysteries into the cozy mystery genre.
Online I discovered at least fifteen varieties of mysteries from cozies to noir which were labeled as gritty mysteries as far from cozies as you can get. So what makes a cozy cozy? First and especially true with my Hidden Springs books is that small town setting with the kind of colorful characters a reader expects to find on those Main Streets. In a cozy mystery, the murder takes place off page. Bodies are found, but generally the victim is either a character nobody liked anyway or someone the reader barely knows.
That is true in my stories even though my hero does land in some dangerous situations. It’s not all only a puzzle for my hero, Michael Keane. In the first Hidden Springs mystery, Murder at the Courthouse, Michael uncovers some disturbing secrets from the past to solve the mystery. Then in Murder Comes by Mail, evil comes to call on his small town bringing more suspense and perhaps more bodies too than are usually found in cozy mysteries.
Normally a cozy sleuth is an amateur who stumbles into mystery, perhaps a middle-aged woman running some small business like a book shop. But sometimes a writer doesn’t read the rules until after she’s written the books. That must have happened with me because Michael is a good-looking deputy sheriff in my little town of Hidden Springs. Also, romance rarely plays a big part in cozies, but Michael is carrying a torch for a woman he thinks will never marry him. While the mystery is the main thrust of the Hidden Spring books, Michael and Alex’s seemingly impossible romance is a continuing storyline for readers.
But perhaps cats are why my mysteries ended up on the cozy mystery shelf. If you check out any bookstore’s mystery section, you can pick out the cozy mysteries by the great covers that often feature a cat or dog. My covers have a different cat for each story – Two Bits, the barber’s cat in Murder at the Courthouse, and Grimalkin, the cat on the mailbox in Murder Comes by Mail.
So if you happen to take a fictional visit to a small town where murder and mayhem happen, it’s likely you have stepped into a cozy mystery. A few smiles and thrills later, the killer will be unmasked and you can feel safe in that little town once again. At least, until the next cozy episode of murder.
Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of many novels, including the 2015 Selah Book of Year, Love Comes Home, her Shaker novels and The Heart of Hollyhill series. As A.H. Gabhart, she writes the Hidden Springs Mysteries set in a small town much like her hometown. Ann and her husband enjoy country life on a farm in Kentucky. Learn more about Ann here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Cozying up to Mystery / Ann H. Gabhart
There are specific elements of a story that delineate a standard mystery from a cozy mystery. When writing in the mystery genre, its important to understand your target audience, and create a world that is enjoyable to the reader. This week's Killer Nashville guest blog by Ann H. Gabhart explores the world of the cozy mystery and gives advice of how to make your cozy stand out. Take an inside look at her fictional town of Hidden Springs and see how her novels Murder at the Courthouse and Murder Comes by Mail take cozy mysteries to the next level.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Cozying up to Mystery
By Ann H. Gabhart
I cut my reading teeth on The Hardy Boys mysteries. Those stories made me want to be a detective too. So, at age ten when anything seems possible, I grabbed a pencil and started writing my first book starring me as a mystery-solving sleuth. Even then, I knew writing fiction meant you could make things up. That let me make my fictional self smarter, cuter and much less shy than my real self.
Since I still enjoy reading mysteries, it’s a little mysterious that I had twenty-eight novels published before one was actually labeled a mystery. Over the years, I slipped plenty of mystery threads into my stories, but Murder at the Courthouse was my first full-fledged, let’s put murder in that title, mystery.
You’ve probably heard the writing advice “to write what you know.” I’m not sure exactly how that’s supposed to work with mystery writers. Personal experience with murder can be deadly! I’m relieved to say I don’t know about murder, but I do live in a world where the baser human emotions of greed, anger, envy, hate and fear are often on display and can sneak into all our thoughts at times. Those feelings magnified can push a person down some wrong paths toward crime, even murder. When that happens with your fictional bad guys, then a writer can come up with a good guy character to solve the mystery.
I didn’t totally ignore the write-what-you-know advice with my mystery. Most of my books have small-town settings. That’s because I’m a country girl. Take me to a big city like Chicago or New York and I’m lost. But drop me down in a Main Street, two stoplight town and I’m right at home. That’s why, when I stepped onto the mystery writing trail, I created the small town of Hidden Springs where murder isn’t supposed to happen but does. That small town setting put my Hidden Spring mysteries into the cozy mystery genre.
Online I discovered at least fifteen varieties of mysteries from cozies to noir which were labeled as gritty mysteries as far from cozies as you can get. So what makes a cozy cozy? First and especially true with my Hidden Springs books is that small town setting with the kind of colorful characters a reader expects to find on those Main Streets. In a cozy mystery, the murder takes place off page. Bodies are found, but generally the victim is either a character nobody liked anyway or someone the reader barely knows.
That is true in my stories even though my hero does land in some dangerous situations. It’s not all only a puzzle for my hero, Michael Keane. In the first Hidden Springs mystery, Murder at the Courthouse, Michael uncovers some disturbing secrets from the past to solve the mystery. Then in Murder Comes by Mail, evil comes to call on his small town bringing more suspense and perhaps more bodies too than are usually found in cozy mysteries.
Normally a cozy sleuth is an amateur who stumbles into mystery, perhaps a middle-aged woman running some small business like a book shop. But sometimes a writer doesn’t read the rules until after she’s written the books. That must have happened with me because Michael is a good-looking deputy sheriff in my little town of Hidden Springs. Also, romance rarely plays a big part in cozies, but Michael is carrying a torch for a woman he thinks will never marry him. While the mystery is the main thrust of the Hidden Spring books, Michael and Alex’s seemingly impossible romance is a continuing storyline for readers.
But perhaps cats are why my mysteries ended up on the cozy mystery shelf. If you check out any bookstore’s mystery section, you can pick out the cozy mysteries by the great covers that often feature a cat or dog. My covers have a different cat for each story – Two Bits, the barber’s cat in Murder at the Courthouse, and Grimalkin, the cat on the mailbox in Murder Comes by Mail.
So if you happen to take a fictional visit to a small town where murder and mayhem happen, it’s likely you have stepped into a cozy mystery. A few smiles and thrills later, the killer will be unmasked and you can feel safe in that little town once again. At least, until the next cozy episode of murder.
Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of many novels, including the 2015 Selah Book of Year, Love Comes Home, her Shaker novels and The Heart of Hollyhill series. As A.H. Gabhart, she writes the Hidden Springs Mysteries set in a small town much like her hometown. Ann and her husband enjoy country life on a farm in Kentucky. Learn more about Ann here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Location as a Character / Lisa Harris
When creating a story, it’s vital to connect with your readers on as many levels as possible. One way to strengthen that connection is to spend an ample amount of time on your setting. Attention to detail for your location choice can be as important as what your characters are doing in it. In this week’s Killer Nashville guest blog, Lisa Harris provides insight of how to take your setting beyond description and how to make it an essential part of your story. Harris details the craft in books one and two of The Nikki Boyd Files series, Vendetta and Missing.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Location as a Character
By Lisa Harris
Try to imagine Frodo’s journey in The Lord of the Rings set not among the rolling hills of the Shire and the eerie volcanic region of Mordor, but instead the flat plains of Kansas. Or imagine if Anne of Green had taken place in the bustling city of modern New York instead of a farm on Prince Edward Island. The novels simply wouldn’t be the same, because the settings in both are an integral part of those series.
When I first started writing nearly two decades ago, a story’s setting was simply a necessity. I thought all I needed was a generic town in Anywhere, USA with a few descriptions sprinkled throughout, because the location didn’t fit into my focus on the story line. What I didn’t understand was how a well-planned and well-developed setting can suck your reader even deeper into the story. Which is exactly what a writer wants.
But how does a writer take a setting beyond a few paragraphs of descriptions and create a location that becomes an essential part of the story?
When I started writing my Nikki Boyd Files series, I began thinking through different locations that would not only be interesting to the reader, but that would also help set the tone for the series. I soon decided to set the books in the beautiful state of Tennessee where I once lived, but that wasn’t enough. I needed to narrow down the setting even further and find the perfect backdrop for an intense missing person case.
I started looking at the area around the Smoky Mountains. I read stories by people who’d walked the Appalachian Trail and told how the mountains themselves could be deadly with unexpected storms popping up. They were a place where one could disappear if they wanted to, and where others—including small planes—had somehow managed to vanish unintentionally without a trace. Thick canopies in the mountains were described by those lost in them as laurel hells, a terrifying place to discover you were lost. So not only did I find the Smoky Mountains beautiful and mysterious, but they became the perfect backdrop for when Nikki finds her own life in danger.
With my setting chosen, I decided to open my first book in The Nikki Boyd Files series, Vendetta, with a tense scene in Northeast Tennessee near the Obed River. Nikki is repelling off a sandstone cliff into a ravine, when her rope catches and threatens to snap above her. It doesn’t take long, though, for the tension to shift from the narrow ledge of the sheer cliff to the Smoky Mountains when a call comes through from her boss about a missing teen. As she and her team investigate the disappearance of the young woman, Nikki finds herself forced to relive her past when clues from her sister’s kidnapping a decade ago emerge, and Nikki discovers that her sister’s abductor is back. As she follows the clues deeper into the vast, mountainous landscape, the danger Nikki faces simultaneously intensifies.
For book two, Missing, I decided to switch the setting to the Nashville area, which gave the book a completely different feel from the sometimes sinister woods of the Smoky Mountains. Setting the book in the city allowed me to write very different scenes, including a confrontation with a sniper, a frantic boat chase after a possible murderer, and a tense hostage scene on the roof of an apartment building.
Right around the time of the book’s release last fall, I had the opportunity to return to Tennessee and visit the Smoky Mountains, a part of the state I’d never seen before. After spending hours and hours of research online, it was uncanny how it felt as if I was stepping back into a familiar place. I became my family’s tour guide to a place I might have never visited in person, but I felt like I knew. The craziest part, though, was that I kept expecting to run into Nikki!
Lisa Harris is a Christy Award finalist for Blood Ransom (2010) and Vendetta (2016), Christy Award winner for Dangerous Passage, and the winner of the Best Inspirational Suspense Novel for Blood Covenant (2011) and Vendetta (2016) from Romantic Times. She has over thirty novels and novella collections in print. She and her family have spent over twelve years working as missionaries in Africa. When she's not working she loves hanging out with her family, cooking different ethnic dishes, photography, and heading into the African bush on safari. For more information about her books and life in Africa visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Location as a Character / Lisa Harris
When creating a story, it's vital to connect with your readers on as many levels as possible. One way to strengthen that connection is to spend an ample amount of time on your setting. Attention to detail for your location choice can be as important as what your characters are doing in it. In this week's Killer Nashville guest blog, Lisa Harris provides insight of how to take your setting beyond description and how to make it an essential part of your story. Harris details the craft in books one and two of The Nikki Boyd Files series, Vendetta and Missing.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Location as a Character
By Lisa Harris
Try to imagine Frodo’s journey in The Lord of the Rings set not among the rolling hills of the Shire and the eerie volcanic region of Mordor, but instead the flat plains of Kansas. Or imagine if Anne of Green had taken place in the bustling city of modern New York instead of a farm on Prince Edward Island. The novels simply wouldn’t be the same, because the settings in both are an integral part of those series.
When I first started writing nearly two decades ago, a story’s setting was simply a necessity. I thought all I needed was a generic town in Anywhere, USA with a few descriptions sprinkled throughout, because the location didn’t fit into my focus on the story line. What I didn’t understand was how a well-planned and well-developed setting can suck your reader even deeper into the story. Which is exactly what a writer wants.
But how does a writer take a setting beyond a few paragraphs of descriptions and create a location that becomes an essential part of the story?
When I started writing my Nikki Boyd Files series, I began thinking through different locations that would not only be interesting to the reader, but that would also help set the tone for the series. I soon decided to set the books in the beautiful state of Tennessee where I once lived, but that wasn’t enough. I needed to narrow down the setting even further and find the perfect backdrop for an intense missing person case.
I started looking at the area around the Smoky Mountains. I read stories by people who’d walked the Appalachian Trail and told how the mountains themselves could be deadly with unexpected storms popping up. They were a place where one could disappear if they wanted to, and where others—including small planes—had somehow managed to vanish unintentionally without a trace. Thick canopies in the mountains were described by those lost in them as laurel hells, a terrifying place to discover you were lost. So not only did I find the Smoky Mountains beautiful and mysterious, but they became the perfect backdrop for when Nikki finds her own life in danger.
With my setting chosen, I decided to open my first book in The Nikki Boyd Files series, Vendetta, with a tense scene in Northeast Tennessee near the Obed River. Nikki is repelling off a sandstone cliff into a ravine, when her rope catches and threatens to snap above her. It doesn’t take long, though, for the tension to shift from the narrow ledge of the sheer cliff to the Smoky Mountains when a call comes through from her boss about a missing teen. As she and her team investigate the disappearance of the young woman, Nikki finds herself forced to relive her past when clues from her sister’s kidnapping a decade ago emerge, and Nikki discovers that her sister’s abductor is back. As she follows the clues deeper into the vast, mountainous landscape, the danger Nikki faces simultaneously intensifies.
For book two, Missing, I decided to switch the setting to the Nashville area, which gave the book a completely different feel from the sometimes sinister woods of the Smoky Mountains. Setting the book in the city allowed me to write very different scenes, including a confrontation with a sniper, a frantic boat chase after a possible murderer, and a tense hostage scene on the roof of an apartment building.
Right around the time of the book’s release last fall, I had the opportunity to return to Tennessee and visit the Smoky Mountains, a part of the state I’d never seen before. After spending hours and hours of research online, it was uncanny how it felt as if I was stepping back into a familiar place. I became my family’s tour guide to a place I might have never visited in person, but I felt like I knew. The craziest part, though, was that I kept expecting to run into Nikki!
Lisa Harris is a Christy Award finalist for Blood Ransom (2010) and Vendetta (2016), Christy Award winner for Dangerous Passage, and the winner of the Best Inspirational Suspense Novel for Blood Covenant (2011) and Vendetta (2016) from Romantic Times. She has over thirty novels and novella collections in print. She and her family have spent over twelve years working as missionaries in Africa. When she's not working she loves hanging out with her family, cooking different ethnic dishes, photography, and heading into the African bush on safari. For more information about her books and life in Africa visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Location as a Character / Lisa Harris
When creating a story, it's vital to connect with your readers on as many levels as possible. One way to strengthen that connection is to spend an ample amount of time on your setting. Attention to detail for your location choice can be as important as what your characters are doing in it. In this week's Killer Nashville guest blog, Lisa Harris provides insight of how to take your setting beyond description and how to make it an essential part of your story. Harris details the craft in books one and two of The Nikki Boyd Files series, Vendetta and Missing.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Location as a Character
By Lisa Harris
Try to imagine Frodo’s journey in The Lord of the Rings set not among the rolling hills of the Shire and the eerie volcanic region of Mordor, but instead the flat plains of Kansas. Or imagine if Anne of Green had taken place in the bustling city of modern New York instead of a farm on Prince Edward Island. The novels simply wouldn’t be the same, because the settings in both are an integral part of those series.
When I first started writing nearly two decades ago, a story’s setting was simply a necessity. I thought all I needed was a generic town in Anywhere, USA with a few descriptions sprinkled throughout, because the location didn’t fit into my focus on the story line. What I didn’t understand was how a well-planned and well-developed setting can suck your reader even deeper into the story. Which is exactly what a writer wants.
But how does a writer take a setting beyond a few paragraphs of descriptions and create a location that becomes an essential part of the story?
When I started writing my Nikki Boyd Files series, I began thinking through different locations that would not only be interesting to the reader, but that would also help set the tone for the series. I soon decided to set the books in the beautiful state of Tennessee where I once lived, but that wasn’t enough. I needed to narrow down the setting even further and find the perfect backdrop for an intense missing person case.
I started looking at the area around the Smoky Mountains. I read stories by people who’d walked the Appalachian Trail and told how the mountains themselves could be deadly with unexpected storms popping up. They were a place where one could disappear if they wanted to, and where others—including small planes—had somehow managed to vanish unintentionally without a trace. Thick canopies in the mountains were described by those lost in them as laurel hells, a terrifying place to discover you were lost. So not only did I find the Smoky Mountains beautiful and mysterious, but they became the perfect backdrop for when Nikki finds her own life in danger.
With my setting chosen, I decided to open my first book in The Nikki Boyd Files series, Vendetta, with a tense scene in Northeast Tennessee near the Obed River. Nikki is repelling off a sandstone cliff into a ravine, when her rope catches and threatens to snap above her. It doesn’t take long, though, for the tension to shift from the narrow ledge of the sheer cliff to the Smoky Mountains when a call comes through from her boss about a missing teen. As she and her team investigate the disappearance of the young woman, Nikki finds herself forced to relive her past when clues from her sister’s kidnapping a decade ago emerge, and Nikki discovers that her sister’s abductor is back. As she follows the clues deeper into the vast, mountainous landscape, the danger Nikki faces simultaneously intensifies.
For book two, Missing, I decided to switch the setting to the Nashville area, which gave the book a completely different feel from the sometimes sinister woods of the Smoky Mountains. Setting the book in the city allowed me to write very different scenes, including a confrontation with a sniper, a frantic boat chase after a possible murderer, and a tense hostage scene on the roof of an apartment building.
Right around the time of the book’s release last fall, I had the opportunity to return to Tennessee and visit the Smoky Mountains, a part of the state I’d never seen before. After spending hours and hours of research online, it was uncanny how it felt as if I was stepping back into a familiar place. I became my family’s tour guide to a place I might have never visited in person, but I felt like I knew. The craziest part, though, was that I kept expecting to run into Nikki!
Lisa Harris is a Christy Award finalist for Blood Ransom (2010) and Vendetta (2016), Christy Award winner for Dangerous Passage, and the winner of the Best Inspirational Suspense Novel for Blood Covenant (2011) and Vendetta (2016) from Romantic Times. She has over thirty novels and novella collections in print. She and her family have spent over twelve years working as missionaries in Africa. When she's not working she loves hanging out with her family, cooking different ethnic dishes, photography, and heading into the African bush on safari. For more information about her books and life in Africa visit her website here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Fun and Games – Plot and Characters / Debra H. Goldstein
Writing a mystery piece is like playing an intricate game with the reader. While the writer might know how the cards will fall, they have to keep a poker face and leave the reader in suspense. This week’s Killer Nashville guest blogger Debra H. Goldstein is well versed in both strategic games and mystery writing and uses that to her advantage in her newest book, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery. Goldstein pours her real life experiences into character development, making the plot feel that much more natural to the reader. Her blog details some methods of balancing character traits with an intense murder/mystery plot.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Fun and Games – Plot and Characters
By Debra H. Goldstein
I love to play games. Whether cards, Mah jongg, board games, it doesn’t matter, my competitive streak comes out. Can’t help it — besting my opponents becomes my goal. Not only do I accomplish this through strategic moves, but by observing and taking advantage of the other players’ body language while maintaining a poker face. It’s a perverse kind of entertainment. I use the same techniques in writing mysteries because I believe readers want mysteries to be engaging and FUN.
On a personal note, I am part of a regular Thursday Mah jongg game. After months of playing with the same women, I know their quirks. When one has a good hand, she tends to lean forward in her chair, eyes intent on the tiles being thrown. Another, when frustrated by her tiles or unable to settle on a hand, picks up her ever-present beverage and sips at it while glancing aimlessly around the room. If they watch me when I’m waiting for one last tile, they would notice I tend to rest my left arm on the table while I pick and discard with my non-dominant right hand — the only time I use that hand during the game. It is a subconscious giveaway habit I consciously am trying to break.
When I plot a mystery, I give my characters their own particular features to help advance the plot. The plot is simply the tale with its twists and turns. The addition of the character’s individual characteristics puts meat on the plotline.
In my new book, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery, the protagonist, Carrie Martin is a young lawyer whose mother reappears in her life after a twenty-six year absence. She leaves Carrie with a sealed envelope and the knowledge she once considered killing Carrie’s father. Before Carrie can fully process this information, her mother is murdered at the retirement home where her father resides. Compelled to solve her mother’s murder, Carrie’s efforts put her in danger and show her that truth and integrity aren’t always what she was taught to believe.
Carrie is a serious protagonist. At twenty-nine, she doesn’t know everything which allows other characters to educate her in ways that may or may not be true. She can be impulsive, but tries to appear polished. This image is repeatedly shattered when she does things like blurting out to the Detective assigned to her mother’s case, Carrie’s former live-in lover, that except for when she visits her father, she works nonstop seven days a week. As she notes, “Great, I’ve just told him I am a workaholic with no social life.”
A serious protagonist must have moments of humor for the reader to identify with her, but the plot itself requires a greater amount of comic relief. The pink-haired Sunshine Village Mah jongg players are Carrie’s comic foil. From the ring-leader whose hair, nails, and lipstick are the same shade of pink to the one who is either sharp as a tack or completely out to lunch, each player has an identifying characteristic that moves the plot forward. It may be something the character says, a physical action involving a prop like a cane, or a way of behaving. Each identifying quirk helps establish red herrings and definitive clues.
The key is to work the trait into the story so that it amuses the reader, but also subliminally triggers the reader’s mind. The outcome may result in believing something false is true, ignoring a blatant fact, or understanding the link to the next part of the story. It also serves to distinguish each of the characters.
Without individual characterization, any story would be one dimensional which translates to boring. By contrasting the humorous characters against my more serious protagonist, my hope in Should Have Played Poker is to make its reading FUN – sort of like playing a game.
Judge Debra H. Goldstein is the author of Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery (Five Star Publishing – April 2016) and the 2012 IPPY Award winning Maze in Blue, a mystery set on the University of Michigan’s campus. Her short stories and essays have been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Mardi Gras Murderand The Killer Wore Cranberry: a Fourth Meal of Mayhem. Debra serves on the national Sisters in Crime, Guppy Chapter and Alabama Writers Conclave boards and is a MWA member. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Fun and Games – Plot and Characters / Debra H. Goldstein
Writing a mystery piece is like playing an intricate game with the reader. While the writer might know how the cards will fall, they have to keep a poker face and leave the reader in suspense. This week's Killer Nashville guest blogger Debra H. Goldstein is well versed in both strategic games and mystery writing and uses that to her advantage in her newest book, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery. Goldstein pours her real life experiences into character development, making the plot feel that much more natural to the reader. Her blog details some methods of balancing character traits with an intense murder/mystery plot.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Fun and Games – Plot and Characters
By Debra H. Goldstein
I love to play games. Whether cards, Mah jongg, board games, it doesn’t matter, my competitive streak comes out. Can’t help it — besting my opponents becomes my goal. Not only do I accomplish this through strategic moves, but by observing and taking advantage of the other players’ body language while maintaining a poker face. It’s a perverse kind of entertainment. I use the same techniques in writing mysteries because I believe readers want mysteries to be engaging and FUN.
On a personal note, I am part of a regular Thursday Mah jongg game. After months of playing with the same women, I know their quirks. When one has a good hand, she tends to lean forward in her chair, eyes intent on the tiles being thrown. Another, when frustrated by her tiles or unable to settle on a hand, picks up her ever-present beverage and sips at it while glancing aimlessly around the room. If they watch me when I’m waiting for one last tile, they would notice I tend to rest my left arm on the table while I pick and discard with my non-dominant right hand — the only time I use that hand during the game. It is a subconscious giveaway habit I consciously am trying to break.
When I plot a mystery, I give my characters their own particular features to help advance the plot. The plot is simply the tale with its twists and turns. The addition of the character’s individual characteristics puts meat on the plotline.
I
n my new book, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery, the protagonist, Carrie Martin is a young lawyer whose mother reappears in her life after a twenty-six year absence. She leaves Carrie with a sealed envelope and the knowledge she once considered killing Carrie’s father. Before Carrie can fully process this information, her mother is murdered at the retirement home where her father resides. Compelled to solve her mother’s murder, Carrie’s efforts put her in danger and show her that truth and integrity aren’t always what she was taught to believe.
Carrie is a serious protagonist. At twenty-nine, she doesn’t know everything which allows other characters to educate her in ways that may or may not be true. She can be impulsive, but tries to appear polished. This image is repeatedly shattered when she does things like blurting out to the Detective assigned to her mother’s case, Carrie’s former live-in lover, that except for when she visits her father, she works nonstop seven days a week. As she notes, “Great, I’ve just told him I am a workaholic with no social life.”
A serious protagonist must have moments of humor for the reader to identify with her, but the plot itself requires a greater amount of comic relief. The pink-haired Sunshine Village Mah jongg players are Carrie’s comic foil. From the ring-leader whose hair, nails, and lipstick are the same shade of pink to the one who is either sharp as a tack or completely out to lunch, each player has an identifying characteristic that moves the plot forward. It may be something the character says, a physical action involving a prop like a cane, or a way of behaving. Each identifying quirk helps establish red herrings and definitive clues.
The key is to work the trait into the story so that it amuses the reader, but also subliminally triggers the reader’s mind. The outcome may result in believing something false is true, ignoring a blatant fact, or understanding the link to the next part of the story. It also serves to distinguish each of the characters.
Without individual characterization, any story would be one dimensional which translates to boring. By contrasting the humorous characters against my more serious protagonist, my hope in Should Have Played Poker is to make its reading FUN – sort of like playing a game.
Judge Debra H. Goldstein is the author of Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery (Five Star Publishing – April 2016) and the 2012 IPPY Award winning Maze in Blue, a mystery set on the University of Michigan’s campus. Her short stories and essays have been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Mardi Gras Murder and The Killer Wore Cranberry: a Fourth Meal of Mayhem. Debra serves on the national Sisters in Crime, Guppy Chapter and Alabama Writers Conclave boards and is a MWA member. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Fun and Games – Plot and Characters / Debra H. Goldstein
Writing a mystery piece is like playing an intricate game with the reader. While the writer might know how the cards will fall, they have to keep a poker face and leave the reader in suspense. This week's Killer Nashville guest blogger Debra H. Goldstein is well versed in both strategic games and mystery writing and uses that to her advantage in her newest book, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery. Goldstein pours her real life experiences into character development, making the plot feel that much more natural to the reader. Her blog details some methods of balancing character traits with an intense murder/mystery plot.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Fun and Games – Plot and Characters
By Debra H. Goldstein
I love to play games. Whether cards, Mah jongg, board games, it doesn’t matter, my competitive streak comes out. Can’t help it — besting my opponents becomes my goal. Not only do I accomplish this through strategic moves, but by observing and taking advantage of the other players’ body language while maintaining a poker face. It’s a perverse kind of entertainment. I use the same techniques in writing mysteries because I believe readers want mysteries to be engaging and FUN.
On a personal note, I am part of a regular Thursday Mah jongg game. After months of playing with the same women, I know their quirks. When one has a good hand, she tends to lean forward in her chair, eyes intent on the tiles being thrown. Another, when frustrated by her tiles or unable to settle on a hand, picks up her ever-present beverage and sips at it while glancing aimlessly around the room. If they watch me when I’m waiting for one last tile, they would notice I tend to rest my left arm on the table while I pick and discard with my non-dominant right hand — the only time I use that hand during the game. It is a subconscious giveaway habit I consciously am trying to break.
When I plot a mystery, I give my characters their own particular features to help advance the plot. The plot is simply the tale with its twists and turns. The addition of the character’s individual characteristics puts meat on the plotline.
I
n my new book, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery, the protagonist, Carrie Martin is a young lawyer whose mother reappears in her life after a twenty-six year absence. She leaves Carrie with a sealed envelope and the knowledge she once considered killing Carrie’s father. Before Carrie can fully process this information, her mother is murdered at the retirement home where her father resides. Compelled to solve her mother’s murder, Carrie’s efforts put her in danger and show her that truth and integrity aren’t always what she was taught to believe.
Carrie is a serious protagonist. At twenty-nine, she doesn’t know everything which allows other characters to educate her in ways that may or may not be true. She can be impulsive, but tries to appear polished. This image is repeatedly shattered when she does things like blurting out to the Detective assigned to her mother’s case, Carrie’s former live-in lover, that except for when she visits her father, she works nonstop seven days a week. As she notes, “Great, I’ve just told him I am a workaholic with no social life.”
A serious protagonist must have moments of humor for the reader to identify with her, but the plot itself requires a greater amount of comic relief. The pink-haired Sunshine Village Mah jongg players are Carrie’s comic foil. From the ring-leader whose hair, nails, and lipstick are the same shade of pink to the one who is either sharp as a tack or completely out to lunch, each player has an identifying characteristic that moves the plot forward. It may be something the character says, a physical action involving a prop like a cane, or a way of behaving. Each identifying quirk helps establish red herrings and definitive clues.
The key is to work the trait into the story so that it amuses the reader, but also subliminally triggers the reader’s mind. The outcome may result in believing something false is true, ignoring a blatant fact, or understanding the link to the next part of the story. It also serves to distinguish each of the characters.
Without individual characterization, any story would be one dimensional which translates to boring. By contrasting the humorous characters against my more serious protagonist, my hope in Should Have Played Poker is to make its reading FUN – sort of like playing a game.
Judge Debra H. Goldstein is the author of Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery (Five Star Publishing – April 2016) and the 2012 IPPY Award winning Maze in Blue, a mystery set on the University of Michigan’s campus. Her short stories and essays have been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Mardi Gras Murder and The Killer Wore Cranberry: a Fourth Meal of Mayhem. Debra serves on the national Sisters in Crime, Guppy Chapter and Alabama Writers Conclave boards and is a MWA member. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Beyond Google: Using Subject Matter Experts / Ross Carley
Researching your subject matter is crucial when it comes to comprising your work, especially in the mystery genre. One small, incorrect fact can jar the reader from your storyline. Ultimately, you can lose the trust you have gained with your reader. That’s why it is always important to refer to experts in their field to help smooth over any areas that you are unfamiliar with. Balancing this new information is important as well. Killer Nashville guest blogger Ross Carley explains that it is necessary to engage the reader without overwhelming them, as he did in his novel, Dead Drive.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Beyond Google: Using Subject Matter Experts
By Ross Carley
If your mystery significantly involves an unfamiliar topic, utilizing a subject-matter expert may be essential. In today’s world, topics such as terrorism and cyber-warfare that dominate the news provide excitement and interest for readers. If your plot involves cybersecurity and cybercrime, though, you’d better understand the difference between computer malware and a virus, and explain it at an appropriate level that engages readers without overwhelming them.
Some activities may feel straightforward to write about, depending on the author’s experience and background. For example, most of us are comfortable with processing email and doing research on the Internet, but when should you stop trying to wring information out of the Internet, or the library, or your social buddies, and find an expert who really knows your topic?
My favorite advice from mystery author and mentor Les Roberts (past president of the Private Eye Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League), early on in the days when I was trying to figure out what to write was, “Write what floats your boat.” Do I need to know a lot about such-and-such (fill in the blank) to write about it? Paraphrasing Les, ‘No. Write what you’re passionate about. Write what interests you. Your reader won’t be interested or passionate if you’re not.’
What if you’re really interested in horse racing, or cybercrime, or baseball, and you’re not an expert? You may wonder how to decide when you need to involve someone who is an expert, what a subject-matter expert is, and how to find one. You should involve an expert at some level for any area you don’t feel completely comfortable writing about. You may think that it isn’t really necessary if the subject area isn’t central to the plot.
Let’s say you’re writing a scene at a baseball game, but it could take place elsewhere. The fact that there’s a baseball game going on isn’t important to the story. So you think nobody will notice and you can gloss over it.
You might get away with it, but if you commit a baseball knowledge faux pas that could occur due to ignorance of the structure or rules of the game, you stand a good chance of creating a distraction for your reader that jerks them away from the plot. Put another way, it interrupts their suspension of disbelief that helps keep them involved. Put more bluntly, you lose credibility, and maybe you lose them.
I recently edited a story set in motorsports racing. The author apparently didn’t know the difference between an engine and a motor. The whole thing fell apart for me at that point.
So, find a subject matter expert to review your work if for no other reason than to ensure that you’ve eliminated unwanted distractions.
It’s generally agreed that a subject matter expert is a person who is an authority in a particular area or topic. Perhaps it’s a little too restrictive, but I think of a subject-matter expert as someone whose testimony on the subject would be admitted in a court of law. I have served as an expert witness and taught courses in topics including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), so when I needed to drop a little espionage into Dead Drive, I felt OK writing it myself. The trick was to make sure that people (editors, reviewers, readers) who had never heard of ITAR not only understood it, but liked it.
Expertise can come from years of experience, or from a relevant educational background. Most of the time, experience wins out over education. To understand how things happen on a cop’s beat, don’t query someone with a Ph.D. in criminal justice. Ask a working police officer with significant relevant experience, as I did while writing Dead Drive. An example was my question of how a police officer who becomes a murder suspect would be treated by his/her peers.
Although you often need to go beyond information found on the Internet, it’s a good place to identify subject-matter expert “candidates.” They may refer you to someone else, but I’ve always found people helpful.
I’m now writing a murder mystery based in the motorsports industry (formula racing). Tentatively entitled Formula Murder, it is scheduled to be published in early 2017. I have limited experience in racing (most of it decades old), and I needed to create a formula racing series and venue out of whole cloth. A colleague with contacts in the industry introduced me to the former Race Engineer for Helio Castroneves. We’re having a ball working together!
The bottom line is to find a recognized authority in the area, and don’t be afraid to ask anyone. Working with these experts can be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of writing.
Ross Carley, pen name for Russ Eberhart, is the author of Dead Drive, a PI murder mystery. Russ has served as a military intelligence officer, an engineering professor, and the CTO of a defense contractor. He is a consultant in cybersecurity and computational intelligence. He lives with the love of his life Francie in Indianapolis. If you want to learn more, you can reach him at his website.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Beyond Google: Using Subject Matter Experts / Ross Carley
Researching your subject matter is crucial when it comes to comprising your work, especially in the mystery genre. One small, incorrect fact can jar the reader from your storyline. Ultimately, you can lose the trust you have gained with your reader. That's why it is always important to refer to experts in their field to help smooth over any areas that you are unfamiliar with. Balancing this new information is important as well. Killer Nashville guest blogger Ross Carley explains that it is necessary to engage the reader without overwhelming them, as he did in his novel, Dead Drive.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Beyond Google: Using Subject Matter Experts
By Ross Carley
If your mystery significantly involves an unfamiliar topic, utilizing a subject-matter expert may be essential. In today’s world, topics such as terrorism and cyber-warfare that dominate the news provide excitement and interest for readers. If your plot involves cybersecurity and cybercrime, though, you’d better understand the difference between computer malware and a virus, and explain it at an appropriate level that engages readers without overwhelming them.
Some activities may feel straightforward to write about, depending on the author’s experience and background. For example, most of us are comfortable with processing email and doing research on the Internet, but when should you stop trying to wring information out of the Internet, or the library, or your social buddies, and find an expert who really knows your topic?
My favorite advice from mystery author and mentor Les Roberts (past president of the Private Eye Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League), early on in the days when I was trying to figure out what to write was, “Write what floats your boat.” Do I need to know a lot about such-and-such (fill in the blank) to write about it? Paraphrasing Les, ‘No. Write what you’re passionate about. Write what interests you. Your reader won’t be interested or passionate if you’re not.’
What if you’re really interested in horse racing, or cybercrime, or baseball, and you’re not an expert? You may wonder how to decide when you need to involve someone who is an expert, what a subject-matter expert is, and how to find one. You should involve an expert at some level for any area you don’t feel completely comfortable writing about. You may think that it isn’t really necessary if the subject area isn’t central to the plot.
Let’s say you’re writing a scene at a baseball game, but it could take place elsewhere. The fact that there’s a baseball game going on isn’t important to the story. So you think nobody will notice and you can gloss over it.
You might get away with it, but if you commit a baseball knowledge faux pas that could occur due to ignorance of the structure or rules of the game, you stand a good chance of creating a distraction for your reader that jerks them away from the plot. Put another way, it interrupts their suspension of disbelief that helps keep them involved. Put more bluntly, you lose credibility, and maybe you lose them.
I recently edited a story set in motorsports racing. The author apparently didn’t know the difference between an engine and a motor. The whole thing fell apart for me at that point.
So, find a subject matter expert to review your work if for no other reason than to ensure that you’ve eliminated unwanted distractions.
It’s generally agreed that a subject matter expert is a person who is an authority in a particular area or topic. Perhaps it’s a little too restrictive, but I think of a subject-matter expert as someone whose testimony on the subject would be admitted in a court of law. I have served as an expert witness and taught courses in topics including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), so when I needed to drop a little espionage into Dead Drive, I felt OK writing it myself. The trick was to make sure that people (editors, reviewers, readers) who had never heard of ITAR not only understood it, but liked it.
Expertise can come from years of experience, or from a relevant educational background. Most of the time, experience wins out over education. To understand how things happen on a cop’s beat, don’t query someone with a Ph.D. in criminal justice. Ask a working police officer with significant relevant experience, as I did while writing Dead Drive. An example was my question of how a police officer who becomes a murder suspect would be treated by his/her peers.
Although you often need to go beyond information found on the Internet, it’s a good place to identify subject-matter expert “candidates.” They may refer you to someone else, but I’ve always found people helpful.
I’m now writing a murder mystery based in the motorsports industry (formula racing). Tentatively entitled Formula Murder, it is scheduled to be published in early 2017. I have limited experience in racing (most of it decades old), and I needed to create a formula racing series and venue out of whole cloth. A colleague with contacts in the industry introduced me to the former Race Engineer for Helio Castroneves. We’re having a ball working together!
The bottom line is to find a recognized authority in the area, and don’t be afraid to ask anyone. Working with these experts can be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of writing.
Ross Carley, pen name for Russ Eberhart, is the author of Dead Drive, a PI murder mystery. Russ has served as a military intelligence officer, an engineering professor, and the CTO of a defense contractor. He is a consultant in cybersecurity and computational intelligence. He lives with the love of his life Francie in Indianapolis. If you want to learn more, you can reach him at his website.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Beyond Google: Using Subject Matter Experts / Ross Carley
Researching your subject matter is crucial when it comes to comprising your work, especially in the mystery genre. One small, incorrect fact can jar the reader from your storyline. Ultimately, you can lose the trust you have gained with your reader. That's why it is always important to refer to experts in their field to help smooth over any areas that you are unfamiliar with. Balancing this new information is important as well. Killer Nashville guest blogger Ross Carley explains that it is necessary to engage the reader without overwhelming them, as he did in his novel, Dead Drive.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Beyond Google: Using Subject Matter Experts
By Ross Carley
If your mystery significantly involves an unfamiliar topic, utilizing a subject-matter expert may be essential. In today’s world, topics such as terrorism and cyber-warfare that dominate the news provide excitement and interest for readers. If your plot involves cybersecurity and cybercrime, though, you’d better understand the difference between computer malware and a virus, and explain it at an appropriate level that engages readers without overwhelming them.
Some activities may feel straightforward to write about, depending on the author’s experience and background. For example, most of us are comfortable with processing email and doing research on the Internet, but when should you stop trying to wring information out of the Internet, or the library, or your social buddies, and find an expert who really knows your topic?
My favorite advice from mystery author and mentor Les Roberts (past president of the Private Eye Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League), early on in the days when I was trying to figure out what to write was, “Write what floats your boat.” Do I need to know a lot about such-and-such (fill in the blank) to write about it? Paraphrasing Les, ‘No. Write what you’re passionate about. Write what interests you. Your reader won’t be interested or passionate if you’re not.’
What if you’re really interested in horse racing, or cybercrime, or baseball, and you’re not an expert? You may wonder how to decide when you need to involve someone who is an expert, what a subject-matter expert is, and how to find one. You should involve an expert at some level for any area you don’t feel completely comfortable writing about. You may think that it isn’t really necessary if the subject area isn’t central to the plot.
Let’s say you’re writing a scene at a baseball game, but it could take place elsewhere. The fact that there’s a baseball game going on isn’t important to the story. So you think nobody will notice and you can gloss over it.
You might get away with it, but if you commit a baseball knowledge faux pas that could occur due to ignorance of the structure or rules of the game, you stand a good chance of creating a distraction for your reader that jerks them away from the plot. Put another way, it interrupts their suspension of disbelief that helps keep them involved. Put more bluntly, you lose credibility, and maybe you lose them.
I recently edited a story set in motorsports racing. The author apparently didn’t know the difference between an engine and a motor. The whole thing fell apart for me at that point.
So, find a subject matter expert to review your work if for no other reason than to ensure that you’ve eliminated unwanted distractions.
It’s generally agreed that a subject matter expert is a person who is an authority in a particular area or topic. Perhaps it’s a little too restrictive, but I think of a subject-matter expert as someone whose testimony on the subject would be admitted in a court of law. I have served as an expert witness and taught courses in topics including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), so when I needed to drop a little espionage into Dead Drive, I felt OK writing it myself. The trick was to make sure that people (editors, reviewers, readers) who had never heard of ITAR not only understood it, but liked it.
Expertise can come from years of experience, or from a relevant educational background. Most of the time, experience wins out over education. To understand how things happen on a cop’s beat, don’t query someone with a Ph.D. in criminal justice. Ask a working police officer with significant relevant experience, as I did while writing Dead Drive. An example was my question of how a police officer who becomes a murder suspect would be treated by his/her peers.
Although you often need to go beyond information found on the Internet, it’s a good place to identify subject-matter expert “candidates.” They may refer you to someone else, but I’ve always found people helpful.
I’m now writing a murder mystery based in the motorsports industry (formula racing). Tentatively entitled Formula Murder, it is scheduled to be published in early 2017. I have limited experience in racing (most of it decades old), and I needed to create a formula racing series and venue out of whole cloth. A colleague with contacts in the industry introduced me to the former Race Engineer for Helio Castroneves. We’re having a ball working together!
The bottom line is to find a recognized authority in the area, and don’t be afraid to ask anyone. Working with these experts can be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of writing.
Ross Carley, pen name for Russ Eberhart, is the author of Dead Drive, a PI murder mystery. Russ has served as a military intelligence officer, an engineering professor, and the CTO of a defense contractor. He is a consultant in cybersecurity and computational intelligence. He lives with the love of his life Francie in Indianapolis. If you want to learn more, you can reach him at his website.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Keeping Characters Relevant in an Ever-Changing Media Landscape / R.G. Belsky
In the rapidly changing world that we live in, it is important not only for the writer to change with it, but for the literary character as well. A character’s evolution through time, especially in a series of work, allows for the reader to build a connection with the character. Social media proves to be ever-changing the way that society receives news, and thus should be reflected in literary characters. In this weeks guest blog, author R.G. Belsky shows how he has adapted the culture of today with his reporter protagonist Gil Malloy in his most recent novel, Blonde Ice.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Keeping Characters Relevant in an Ever-Changing Media Landscape
By R.G. Belsky
Fictional PIs today are a lot different than Philip Marlowe was back in the 1940s and ’50s. They use DNA evidence, online research and social media to help solve crimes. Same thing with lawyers who operate with modern techniques that Perry Mason could never imagine. And police officers in novels now certainly have to be a lot more sophisticated (not to mention socially aware) than the Jack Webb stereotype of yesteryear.
The bottom line is that a fictional character — just like in real life — needs to keep up with the changing times.
But it’s not always that easy to do for a mystery writer.
My protagonist is a New York City newspaper reporter named Gil Malloy. And there is no industry undergoing changes more rapidly today than the newspaper business — with papers folding, staffers being laid off and readers turning more and more to blogs and other online media for the news.
So how do I deal with this in my novels?
Well, in The Kennedy Connection — the first Gil Malloy mystery published in 2014 — I didn’t deal with it much at all. Gil was still very much the traditional old-fashioned newspaper reporter working for the print editions of his paper, the New York Daily News. By the time of Shooting For The Stars in 2015, Gil was spending a lot more time putting his stories online before print. Now, in Blonde Ice— which comes out Oct. 18 — Gil has gone viral big time. He tweets constantly, Live Stream reports from crime scenes and works for a tech-obsessed twenty-something year old new boss who cares more about web traffic than selling newspapers.
So that familiar image of a newspaper reporter pounding away on his story in the newsroom or racing to a payphone to call in his scoop to rewrite is just a memory from the past.
But the problem for a novelist like me — who writes about newspaper reporters and the media — is that everything in that world is changing so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up with it all.
A few years ago, newspapers barely had websites. Then came Facebook and Twitter and Live Video Chat and all the rest. A book generally takes 12-18 months to make it to publication. There’s simply no way any of us can foresee what new social media developments there will be by the time our book comes out.
But I still try my best to keep my character Gil Malloy up-to-date with the latest developments in the media world in order to make sure he seems authentic to the reader. Best-selling mystery writer Janet Evanovich touched on this briefly at Killer Nashville 2016 when she was asked how she felt about mystery characters aging during a series. Her reply was: You can keep your character the same age if you want, but you do have to be aware of and acknowledge changes in the world around them.
The only alternative for an author is to set a novel in another time period. Like Sue Grafton does with Kinsey Millhone in the ‘80s. Those pay phones Kinsey uses are sure a lot simpler to write about than keeping up with the latest updates on smartphones, iPads and social media apps.
But you want to know something? It really doesn’t matter all that much in the end for me and my books.
Sure, the media is changing all around us so rapidly that sometimes it’s hard to keep up. But it’s always been that way. And always will be.
There used to be twelve newspapers in New York City — now there are ten times that many local news outlets available online. People once got their breaking news first from radio, then from television and now from Twitter. CNN changed the face of journalism with a 24-hour news channel a generation ago in the same way blogs and websites and social media are doing it now. TMZ is breaking big scandal stories online every day the way the National Enquirer used to do once a week at the supermarket checkout counter. But the news is still the same. The only thing different is the way it’s delivered. Or, to paraphrase The Who, “meet the new media, same as the old media.”
In the end, the only thing that really matters to me — both in the newspaper business and in writing my Gil Malloy mystery novels — is the story.
People always want to read a good story.
And that’s one thing that never changes!
R.G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a New York City journalist. His new mystery Blonde Ice — the latest in a series featuring newspaper reporter Gil Malloy — will be published by Atria on October 18. Previous books include Shooting For The Stars (2015) and The Kennedy Connection (2014). Belsky is a former managing editor at the New York Daily News; city editor of the New York Post; news editor at Star magazine and — most recently — was a managing editor at NBC News. He recently won the Claymore Award at Killer Nashville 2016 for Forget Me Not, a new book project — and was a Finalist for the Silver Falchion Best Mystery and Best Thriller awards with Shooting For The Stars. Reach him here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Keeping Characters Relevant in an Ever-Changing Media Landscape / R.G. Belsky
In the rapidly changing world that we live in, it is important not only for the writer to change with it, but for the literary character as well. A character's evolution through time, especially in a series of work, allows for the reader to build a connection with the character. Social media proves to be ever-changing the way that society receives news, and thus should be reflected in literary characters. In this weeks guest blog, author R.G. Belsky shows how he has adapted the culture of today with his reporter protagonist Gil Malloy in his most recent novel, Blonde Ice.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Keeping Characters Relevant in an Ever-Changing Media Landscape
By R.G. Belsky
Fictional PIs today are a lot different than Philip Marlowe was back in the 1940s and ’50s. They use DNA evidence, online research and social media to help solve crimes. Same thing with lawyers who operate with modern techniques that Perry Mason could never imagine. And police officers in novels now certainly have to be a lot more sophisticated (not to mention socially aware) than the Jack Webb stereotype of yesteryear.
The bottom line is that a fictional character — just like in real life — needs to keep up with the changing times.
But it’s not always that easy to do for a mystery writer.
My protagonist is a New York City newspaper reporter named Gil Malloy. And there is no industry undergoing changes more rapidly today than the newspaper business — with papers folding, staffers being laid off and readers turning more and more to blogs and other online media for the news.
So how do I deal with this in my novels?
Well, in The Kennedy Connection — the first Gil Malloy mystery published in 2014 
— I didn’t deal with it much at all. Gil was still very much the traditional old-fashioned newspaper reporter working for the print editions of his paper, the New York Daily News. By the time of Shooting For The Stars in 2015, Gil was spending a lot more time putting his stories online before print. Now, in Blonde Ice — which comes out Oct. 18 — Gil has gone viral big time. He tweets constantly, Live Stream reports from crime scenes and works for a tech-obsessed twenty-something year old new boss who cares more about web traffic than selling newspapers.
So that familiar image of a newspaper reporter pounding away on his story in the newsroom or racing to a payphone to call in his scoop to rewrite is just a memory from the past.
But the problem for a novelist like me — who writes about newspaper reporters and the media — is that everything in that world is changing so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up with it all.
A few years ago, newspapers barely had websites. Then came Facebook and Twitter and Live Video Chat and all the rest. A book generally takes 12-18 months to make it to publication. There’s simply no way any of us can foresee what new social media developments there will be by the time our book comes out.
But I still try my best to keep my character Gil Malloy up-to-date with the latest developments in the media world in order to make sure he seems authentic to the reader. Best-selling mystery writer Janet Evanovich touched on this briefly at Killer Nashville 2016 when she was asked how she felt about mystery characters aging during a series. Her reply was: You can keep your character the same age if you want, but you do have to be aware of and acknowledge changes in the world around them.
The only alternative for an author is to set a novel in another time period. Like Sue Grafton does with Kinsey Millhone in the ‘80s. Those pay phones Kinsey uses are sure a lot simpler to write about than keeping up with the latest updates on smartphones, iPads and social media apps.
But you want to know something? It really doesn’t matter all that much in the end for me and my books.
Sure, the media is changing all around us so rapidly that sometimes it’s hard to keep up. But it’s always been that way. And always will be.
There used to be twelve newspapers in New York City — now there are ten times that many local news outlets available online. People once got their breaking news first from radio, then from television and now from Twitter. CNN changed the face of journalism with a 24-hour news channel a generation ago in the same way blogs and websites and social media are doing it now. TMZ is breaking big scandal stories online every day the way the National Enquirer used to do once a week at the supermarket checkout counter. But the news is still the same. The only thing different is the way it’s delivered. Or, to paraphrase The Who, “meet the new media, same as the old media.”
In the end, the only thing that really matters to me — both in the newspaper business and in writing my Gil Malloy mystery novels — is the story.
People always want to read a good story.
And that’s one thing that never changes!
R.G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a New York City journalist. His new mystery Blonde Ice — the latest in a series featuring newspaper reporter Gil Malloy — will be published by Atria on October 18. Previous books include Shooting For The Stars (2015) and The Kennedy Connection (2014). Belsky is a former managing editor at the New York Daily News; city editor of the New York Post; news editor at Star magazine and — most recently — was a managing editor at NBC News. He recently won the Claymore Award at Killer Nashville 2016 for Forget Me Not, a new book project — and was a Finalist for the Silver Falchion Best Mystery and Best Thriller awards with Shooting For The Stars. Reach him here.
(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, Jonathan Nash, 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.
Submit Your Writing to KN Magazine
Want to have your writing included in Killer Nashville Magazine?
Fill out our submission form and upload your writing here: