KN Magazine: Articles

2/11/22 2/11/22

The Consistent Grace of Barry Sanders by Steven C. Harms

THE WRITER’S PLAYBOOK

Barry Sanders. The greatest running back in NFL history (calm down Browns and Cowboys fans). The forever pride of the Detroit Lions. Electric. An athlete absolutely worth the price of admission. Slashing, spinning, juking, power-running, twisting, lunging, and whatever other contortions he needed to make to succeed on a football field. Over a 10-year career, he scrambled his way to over 15,000 rushing yards, 109 touchdowns, 8 All-Pro selections, 10 1000-yard seasons, 10 Pro Bowls, NFL Rookie of the Year, 4 consecutive 1500-yard seasons (only player ever to do that), MVP in 1997, and Hall-of-Fame Inductee. The accolades could go on…and on.

John Teerlinck, the Minnesota Vikings defensive line coach in 1994, said that the only way they could figure out how to simulate his abilities during their practices was to have the defensive linemen chase chickens around the field.

He was poetry in motion, and I had a perfect seat as a front office executive of the Lions from 1994 until Barry’s sudden retirement following the 1998 season. I got to know him during my time there and I never met a professional athlete humbler and kinder than this man. For all his celebrity and stardom, he’s lived an unassuming life with a consistent character of grace. He was the same man on and off the field during his career, and if you ever watched him, his character never wavered. Look up any number of his touchdowns and you’ll see him calmly give the football to the referee after every single one. Never spiked the ball, never called attention to himself. Grace.

I bring up Barry not to call out that I was fortunate to know him and work with him, but to shine a light on consistency of character. He never did anything out of character and interacted with anyone around him with the same demeanor, whether you were a fellow player or the woman at the supermarket checkout.

As writers, we should take note of Barry’s character consistency. As we all know, when we introduce and develop the people who populate our stories, it’s vitally important to keep consistency with each’s character. Readers can easily sniff out a faux moment when one of our characters says or does something that’s, well, out-of-character. It’s a major distraction if there was no particular reason why he/she would do that other than you, the writer, needed something to occur and used the wrong character to facilitate that plot moment.

I’m not suggesting fictional characters can’t change throughout a story, but substantial character shifts without a change agent (as examples an accident or being victimized) should cause you to be circumspect. Pay attention to a character’s reaction, action, verbalizations and thought process. A character can’t be a science flunky in Chapter 2 yet figure out the forensics in Chapter 34. And I’d argue that it’s not necessarily as glaring as the previous sentence, but rather it’s the subtleties around consistent character detail that make a story believable.

The character of each character, so to speak, is a crucial element. An effective means for consistency’s sake is to develop a back story for each one by taking a deep dive into what made them who they are. Once you have that, writing their moments within your story makes it flow so much easier. Actors do this so that by the time they appear on stage or film, the actor knows everything about their character’s past, so they perform in the present at a believable and consistent level. Writing is the same exercise. So, if one of your pivotal plot moments doesn’t fit with any character, then either ditch that plot line or reconstitute one of your characters. You’ll find the plot moment you want goes amazingly well using the right character doing/saying/reacting at the right time with the right reason.

One final note, because it’s a story of the consistent grace of Barry Sanders that only myself and one other person experienced. During my third or fourth year, I used to hold a private event with a sizeable number of Lions sponsors and fans on a weekly basis to “talk football” with our radio color analyst – dinner, discussion, and then Q&A. That event occurred with regularity during the season specifically on a Tuesday night because that was the player’s off-day during the week, and we always wanted one of them to make an appearance.

I had bugged Barry about participating and giving me just one night. Understand it was usually the second or third tier guys that would do this. Once in awhile we’d get a solid starter, but mostly it was the guys that didn’t have the spotlight. My cajoling finally worked with Barry, and he agreed to appear at one of them sometime around mid-November. Once he agreed I suggested we can arrange to have him picked up at home and then brought back afterward but he told me ‘No,’ that he’ll just drive over to the stadium and meet me at my office, which he did, showing up on time and dressed in a nice suit and tie (I didn’t ask him to wear that). I had one other employee assist – a young guy from our public relations department named James.

The evening went spectacular as you can imagine. Barry toughed out about an hour talking and taking questions. At the end of the program, James and I walked him back to my office. It was a cold night and James said he’d run out to the parking lot and grab Barry’s car to warm it up and bring it to the curb near my office. As James exited with the car keys, Barry and I had some nice time together just asking questions about family and the like. Eventually we both noticed that James hadn’t returned. Awkward minutes went by and finally James reappeared, sweating, head down, and clearly shaken. Long story short – he had accidentally broken the car key off in the door (yes, this was before remote starts were around).

In classic Barry Sanders fashion, the Pro-Bowl, MVP, multi-million-dollar superstar NFL running back simply told him that it was okay, and he’ll have it attended to the next day with his car dealer, then asked if James would be kind enough to take him home using his own car.

Humble grace. He didn’t spike the ball. He stayed consistent. Never broke character.

Steve

Steven C. Harms is a professional sports, broadcast and digital media business executive with a career spanning over thirty years across the NBA, NFL, and MLB. He’s dealt with Fortune 500 companies, major consumer brands, professional athletes, and multi-platform integrated sports partnerships and media advertising campaigns.

He’s an accomplished playwright having written and produced a wildly successful theatrical production which led him to tackling his debut novel, Give Place to Wrath, the first in the Roger Viceroy detective series. The second book, The Counsel of the Cunning, is due out in fall of 2021.

A native of Wisconsin, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. He now resides in Oxford, Michigan, a small, rural suburb of Detroit.

2/11/22 2/11/22

Case Status by W.C. Gordon

FORENSIC FILES

The following is an except from the novel The Detective Next Door.

“On Tuesday, November 8th , 2016 at approximately 0720 hours, officers reported to 16 Hibiscus Dr. in reference to a report of a stolen vehicle. Contact was made with the victim who advised that his blue 2016 BMW 330i was stolen by an unknown suspect(s) sometime overnight. No forced entry was noted and the victim stated that the vehicle was unlocked and the keys were inside.”

Every follow up investigative narrative starts the same: A brief synopsis of the incident. This particular synopsis, like many, makes me want to punch the victim.

“During the afternoon hours of 11/8/16, I was assigned this case to further investigate.” That means that this idiot, I mean victim, and his lack of wherewithal to lock his car and not leave the keys inside is now my problem. It’s referred to as a “victim assisted crime” in law enforcement and it’s annoying.

It’s the usual script with these people.

Victim: “Detective, why was I targeted?”

Me: “You weren’t targeted. The suspects were only looking for unlocked vehicles that may have had the keys left inside.” Translation: If you locked your vehicle, it would still be parked in your driveway.

Victim: “What is the police department doing about this?”

Me: “We have increased patrols in areas that are repeatedly targeted in an effort to deter future crimes.” Translation: Apart from holding your hand while you lock your car and remind you on a daily basis to not leave valuable stuff in plain sight, we’re kind of out of ideas on how to prevent this from happening. You’re the reason why my insurance premiums are high.

Victim: “How many agencies have you resourced to recover my car? I love that car. My golf clubs were in the back. I love those clubs.”

Me: “Sir, we work very closely with other agencies and utilize a multitude of investigative resources in efforts to locate and recover your vehicle. We have automated license plate readers located throughout the region which will notify me if there is a sighting of your vehicle, and the South Florida Task Force, which specializes in stolen vehicles, has been made aware of this particular incident.” Translation: Your car is probably in a chop shop in Hialeah or in a shipping container on its way to Dubai. Again, if you locked your car we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Victim: “I worry that whoever stole my car will come back and target my house. Maybe even me, my wife, or my kids.”

Me: “Sir, I can assure you that this was not personal. The suspects were only looking for unsecured vehicles and happened upon yours. They will not be back to target your home.” Translation: These mutts don’t even know what neighborhood they were in, sometimes not even the town, let alone be able to find your house in particular. Some kid was pulling on door handles hoping to find one that some idiot was careless enough to leave unlocked with the keys in it. You’re that idiot, sir.

Me: “Sir, if I may ask: Why were your keys inside of your vehicle?” I already know the answer.

Victim: “Oh, I always leave the keys in the cupholder so I know where they’re at and can find them.”

Bingo. That’s not the first time and sure as hell won’t be the last time that I have been told that. It never ceases to amaze me though.

Me: “Sir, have you considered a hook in the garage to hang the keys? Maybe a dish on the stand by the front door?” Translation: Anywhere but inside the car you big dumb dummy!

Victim: “Well Detective, hindsight is 20/20 isn’t it?”

Me: “Of course, sir.” I say as I raise an eyebrow that to any reasonable person would be interpreted as a subtle screw you.

As I leave the victim, I let him know that I will be making all efforts to recover his vehicle in a timely fashion and list all the resources that will be utilized. I assure him that I will not rest until I personally find and return his vehicle, letting him know this case is my top priority.

When I get around to returning to the office after grabbing lunch, getting a coffee, picking up a shirt and slacks from TJ Maxx, getting the wife some flowers from Publix and myself a W.C. Gordon 18 bottle of Knob Creek from the liquor store next to it, I sit down at my desk and type the following: “Based on my investigation, I have exhausted all possible investigative leads at this time. Due to there being no known suspect(s), witnesses or investigative leads, I will be reclassifying this case from active to inactive until new investigative leads become known. Case status – Inactive.” Done and on to the next waste of time.

W.C. Gordon is a cop, veteran, and author of the novel The Detective Next Door. His writing is influenced by his personal experiences in the military and in law enforcement, which he then mixes with bourbon and dark humor. He lives at his home in South Florida with his wife and dog.

1/7/22 1/7/22

30,000 Feet by Steven C. Harms

When I was in my twenties, I once found myself at 30,000 feet sitting in a luxurious seat of a 4-person Learjet bound from New York to Milwaukee. Across, and facing me, sat a person in a suit and tie who was in charge of security. To his left was a gentleman named Rod Thorn, an executive with the National Basketball Association and former GM of the Chicago Bulls. And across from him, seated next to me, was none other than the long-time commissioner of the NBA, David Stern.

David Stern will always be remembered as a giant in the sports industry. His tenure lasted thirty years, from 1984-2014. He’s been regarded as one of the very best ever to serve as commissioner of a pro sports league. His visionary mind and leadership skills lifted the NBA from “that fourth league” to the powerhouse it has become today. In writing terms…on a par with the mystery thriller greats.

Needless to say, for a young Midwesterner who had never been to New York City before accepting a job at the league office in mid-town Manhattan, and then striving to learn how to adapt and get my feet under me, that moment was surreal. The trip started with a phone call from Commissioner Stern’s assistant simply telling me that “David would like you to attend a game in Milwaukee with him next Wednesday night.” Private airport, chartered jet, and four of us in total making the trip. There and back just for the game. Gulp!

David asked me for a few reasons. One, he was cognizant of my background being a native Milwaukeean and the previous four years working for the Milwaukee Bucks. He wanted to acknowledge that and welcome me to the league office with this gracious trip offer. It was his way of saying “welcome aboard” and allowing me to on-board in a very unique and opportunistic way. Second, I know now he did it not only to see what sort of person I was, but to allow me an unbelievable few hours of access to him and to parlay that into career advancement.

In retrospect, I failed, or at least got a D- grade. I was so nervous about making a misstep, that I was blind to the moment in front of me. I spent most of the evening answering his questions when he engaged, but I never asked him even one. Those four hours were more pensive than anything I’d ever experienced, and I wasn’t smart enough to figure out in real time the opportunity that lay in front of me. Had I positioned myself correctly, my career in sports would’ve been super-charged. I eventually made it to a VP position years later, but it took a lot longer than if I had simply let go my fear, and leveraged that moment. David never said anything negative to me, being the professional that he was, but he opened a door and all I had to do was walk through it. I guess the best way to say it is that I blinked. The simple glare of an internationally known sports executive giving me unfettered access on a small, private trip was a light so bright that I blinked instead of embraced. I came to this understanding years later, but too late to fix my error.

One significant learning from this life experience of mine is that it can be applied to young/new writers. You’re going to have a 30,000 foot moment, even if it’s one minute long in an elevator at a writing conference on your way down to breakfast when that well-known author you never thought you’d meet, jumps on two floors later. Or maybe just a random meeting that came your way.

I’ve found that one of the most treasured aspects of being an author is that the writing community, generally as a whole, is a network of individuals who support each other and are willing to lend advice or guidance when asked. Learn to leverage the already organic helpful nature of your fellow authors (seek them out through any number of means – social, events, clubs, workshops), and be prepared to meet and genuinely connect with the many authors that are over-the-top successful. And when you cross paths with a David Stern, and you will, equip yourself with the inner confidence to engage. A few other thoughts:

Have your proverbial “elevator pitch” down to a tee, customized to a publisher, agent, and to a well-known author. The successful author you meet is an influencer, either for a blurb on your next book, or a connection that can open doors. Grab the moment and try to establish a relationship.
If you’re going to an event (book signing, conference, workshop, etc.), and you know so-and-so successful author is going to be in attendance and perhaps even a featured guest, dive into their background. Learn as much about them as you can so when you do have the 30,000 foot moment, you can comment or ask a question about them that is connected to who they are as a person. It can be as simple as where they’re from and something about that city or state that you can use to begin relevant communication. That alone will increase the odds of their engagement with you. As an author, I find it refreshing to have a conversation with someone I don’t know who wants to talk about something other than one of my books or characters.
Check yourself when the moment hits. Recognize it. Drop your fears, be confident, and don’t hesitate to ask a question to begin the conversation.

In the words of David Stern, “Follow your dreams and make the most of every experience.” And another of his quotes on a related note – “You will ultimately be defined by the sum total of your responses to circumstances, situations and events that you probably couldn’t anticipate and indeed probably couldn’t even imagine. So just keep your eyes on the course and be ready to move in different directions depending upon the crises and opportunities with which you are faced.”

Writing a great story is hard; marketing it is perhaps harder. You’re going to meet a David Stern, if you haven’t already. Are you primed? Are you ready to professionally and politely capitalize on that moment?

Steve

A native of Wisconsin, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. He now resides in Oxford, Michigan, a small, rural suburb of Detroit.

1/7/22 1/7/22

Cherry Gin & Tonic by W.C. Gordon

FORENSIC FILES

“Huh, no kidding.” I think back in my mind’s Rolodex of cases worked and can’t remember having one of these before. I click ‘add to cart.’ “The hose draggers already come in with their little machines and meters and make sure the air is good to go?” As I say it, I figure the officer on scene wouldn’t be alive to have this conversation with me if they hadn’t. I click ‘add to cart’ again. “Alrighty, I’m on my way.” I hang up the phone, select the free shipping option, and hit ‘place order.’

“Whatcha got?” Perry says as he walks into my office with a fresh cup of coffee.

“Suicide by the sounds of it. Did you bring me a cup?”

“You know, I was going to.” He takes a sip. “Then I realized I didn’t want to make the effort.”

“Same as working your cases then.”

“Exactly! Guy blow his brains out or something?” Perry asks; never one to let tact get in his way.

“Nope. Sounds like he did the running car thing. Carbon dioxide poisoning.”

Perry raises an eyebrow, “You mean monoxide?”

“Yeah, that too.”

I arrive at the front of the residence and find no one. No crime scene tape. No police officer maintaining the crime scene log. Nothing. I double-check the call notes that I printed out and confirm the address.

I key up on the police radio, “Delta 6, 10-55 any unit on-scene.”

A static-filled transmission comes back and says, “Go ahead.”

I key up again, “I’m 97. Can you advise your 10-20?”

“97 with the decedent.”

“10-4. Where exactly is that?”

“On San Remo. 122.”

I look at the house that I’m parked in front of. Number 122 is on the red door in black letters. I thought this road was Valencia though. I key up and say, “I’m at 122 Valencia.”

“10-4,” the static-filled voice says.

Not 10-4. Not 10-4 at all. You said you’re on San Remo. I’m on Valencia. This is a row house. No garage. This suicide allegedly happened in a car inside of a garage. I key back up on the police radio and advise that I am at a different address.

“10-54, same address.”

With that, I am tempted to turn my police radio off, put the car in drive, take myself to an early lunch, and forget that I was ever dispatched to this nonsense. The back-and-forth radio traffic continued for far longer than I wish to admit to before I realize that 122 Valencia and 122 San Remo are, in fact, the same address. This is one of those new neighborhoods that have the front of the residence facing a road, with one name, and the back of the residence, where the garage is, on an alley that they gave its own name for some unknown reason. I am confident that I have never been so annoyed with an investigation before the investigative part has even begun.

I finally park, duck under the crime scene tape, sign into the crime scene log, and assess the situation. The garage door is completely up, presumably to allow the carbon monoxide to ventilate. It is also allowing for an unobstructed view for the neighbors who have decided this is a far better way to spend their Monday morning than watching soap operas. Don’t these people have jobs?

I make contact with the initial responding officer, Shauna, and get the facts. “Ok, Detective, this is what we have. 51-year-old white male. Garage door was closed. Vents on the lower portion of the garage door were covered with cardboard and taped into place. Windows of the car were in the down position.” “Naturally,” I say. Shauna looks up and says, “What?” I tell her not to worry about it and to continue. “The car was in drive with the e-brake on and still running. There was about a quarter tank of gas left when it was turned off by Fire Rescue. Not sure why it was in drive.” I explain to her that this model of BWM will turn itself off if left running in park for a while. This guy probably learned by trial and error. “House was locked up and nothing suspicious was found. Lots of valuables inside.” With that, she closed her notepad.

“Who found him?”

“The realtor. I guess the house is for sale and there was a showing scheduled for today.” Shauna said.

“Looks like the price just dropped by about ten grand. Okie-dokie, let’s have a little look around.” To my surprise, Shauna followed me as I started taking stock of the surroundings. Most officers walk the other way when the detective shows up, knowing that the investigation is being turned over and their burden has come to an end. It’s nice to see an officer wanting to learn a few things. The decedent had a black tank top on, tan shots, and Reef flip-flops. That was handy as a lot of skin was exposed.

“See this discoloration in the lower parts of his body?” I ask. Shauna nods. “This is lividity. When a person dies, the blood pools in the lower areas of the body as it’s positioned and is typically dark. However, you’ll notice that this guy’s lividity is a bright pink color. That’s good.”

“Good? Why is it good?”

I look at Shauna and explain to her that carbon monoxide poisoning causes a cherry-colored lividity and that so far, the lividity color and location is consistent with dying in the car and not being murdered somewhere else and placed in this car to look like a suicide. I say that’s good because a murder would be far more paperwork. I push his body off of the seat and pull his tank top up.

“See where there’s no cherry color?” I ask Shauna.

“Yep.”

“Lividity won’t develop where the body was in contact with something. This adds to the good column.”

“Cause he wasn’t murdered and placed here?” she says with a smile.

“Bingo! Cause that would be what?”

“More paperwork!” we say in unison. We smile in unison too. I wonder how old she is. You have to be 19 to be a cop in Florida. Our agency won’t hire anyone under 21 in an attempt to lower liability. She’s been here about a year. It doesn’t take a great detective to put her in her early 20s.

“So,” I ask Shauna after realizing I’ve been staring at her too long, “How long do you think this guy’s been dead?”

“About 24 hours,” she replies with confidence.

“Very good. What brings you to that conclusion?”

“Complete guess. Sounded reasonable.”

I tell her it’s a damn good guess. I explain to her that rigor is still set and that in this temperature and humidity, it will probably begin to release around the thirty-hour mark. I explain that there is still a quarter of a tank of gas left. This car will probably idle for about thirty-five hours before running out of gas. I explain that his Rolex is still running. Stillness will stop an unwound Rolex after about forty-eight hours. I tell her that a search of his cell phone will probably give a more accurate timeframe but twenty-four hours was a damn good guess.

“Pretty impressive,” she says. I think she may actually be impressed.

“Impressive? What’s impressive are those Yeti tumblers. Did you notice his beverage?” Shauna glances at the cup holder by the gear shift lever. I grab the Yeti and remove the top. “It’s still full of ice. These things can really keep drinks cold. This would be a morbid sales pitch but still an effective one.” As I give the drink a sniff, Shauna makes a slightly disgusted face. Ok, a completely disgusted face.

“Gin and Tonic,” I say.

“How do you know?” She asks.

“The smell. Quinine. The botanicals of the gin.” I pause for effect. “The bottle of Tanqueray in the recycling bin.” I smile as I point over to the recycling bin. “And, I’m a G&T drinker myself.”

“Aren’t they old man drinks?” The seriousness of her face as she asks the question cuts me deep. I immediately recognize our age gap. With my left thumb, I twist my wedding band around my ring finger and force a smile.

“Put in your report the cause of death as carbon monoxide toxicity with likely acute ethanol intoxication. Put the manner as suicide.”

“Sure thing, Detective. Thanks for the info. Have a good day.” With that Shauna turns around and walks away with her ponytail bouncing. I take myself, and only myself, to lunch.

11/19/21 11/19/21

Ducks on the Pond by Steven C. Harms

THE WRITER’S PLAYBOOK

One of the most fascinating aspects of writing in the mystery/thriller/suspense genre is the enormous opportunity to consistently deliver a unique plot twist that the reader didn’t see coming. It’s the chapter that ignites the story like a rocket, captivating the reader such that they never forget it for the rest of their lives. The grander that “moment” plays out, the more unforgettable it becomes.

Now place yourself at a baseball game at whatever level – Little League, high school, collegiate or MLB. While the sport offers several incredible moments in every game, there is one that trumps them all… a Grand Slam in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the game. As the game unfolds the intrigue builds and sets up that seminal moment to transport the fan from watching the game, to inching to the edge of their seat, to standing to elation or complete depression. The reason is the emotional investment by the fan culminating in that razor’s edge setting of a thrilling victory or crushing defeat.

The reason both a reader and sports fan experience a very similar “rush” is the experience they witnessed in the outcome of both stories. For the reader, the plot twist triumph of good over evil and for the fan, the plot twist athletic accomplishment that results in victory for their team.

In this manner, I think lifting a page from baseball’s most glorious moment is educational in the construct of a plot twist that a reader will remember forever. The Grand Slam set up takes time to build to because all the pieces must fall in place in a certain way, and in a definitive order to set the stage.

Baseball’s ability to deliver that plot twist moment is different than any other sport. It takes time to build to because all the pieces must fall in place and in a certain way in order to set the stage for that glorious home run. The game lingo for players on base are “ducks on the pond,” a metaphor used by baseball announcers and fans across the country. Its origin goes back to the 1940’s and is still used today. Most often, getting those ducks on the pond is not accomplished with big plays, but rather a combination of small moments that have connective tissue to the previous one.

As an example, it’s the bottom of the 9th inning and the hometown team is down by one run. Last chance to win the game is they must score at least twice. I’ve seen this countless times over my 15 year career with the Detroit Tigers. What happens is a combination of smaller plays that build the Grand Slam story along the lines of:

Batter 1 is walked unintentionally.
Batter 2 sacrifice bunts Batter 1 over to second base, eliminating the double play possibility and advancing the runner.
Because Batter 1 is at second base in scoring position, so the pitcher intentionally walks Batter 3 to reset the opportunity to force a double play and end the inning. Now Batter 1 and Batter 3 are on base.
Batter 4 hits a deep enough fly ball to allow Batter 1 to advance to third base but holds Batter 3 at first because the relay throw comes to second base preventing Batter 3 from advancing.
The pressure has ratcheted up the pressure on the pitcher, now facing Batter 5. The pitcher’s composure is challenged, resulting in a hit-by-pitch scenario on the sixth pitch with a 3-2 count and the game on the line. The pitcher has now erringly put Batter 5 on first and has moved Batter 3 over to second. Bases loaded…ducks on the pond!
Batter 6, the best slugger on the team, steps to the plate and you know the result. Fans go nuts as the plot twist unfolds. The crack of the bat brings them to their feet in unison as they watch the baseball sail over the fence. Elation! Victory! Can you believe what just happened? Grand Slam to win the game!

The point of this comparison is that a combination of smaller plot lines that build and feed off one another (positively and negatively) is maneuvered in such a way as to build plot and ratchet up the stakes of the outcome. It may be your antagonist commits an unforced error, or that your minor character does something that the reader doesn’t even realize feeds the set up later in the book. By the time the unbelievable plot twist chapter comes along, it’s loaded with “ducks on the pond.”

A home run plot twist is great for the reader, but a Grand Slam, bottom of the ninth inning home run is an emotional thrill ride of huge proportions.

Happy writing!

Steve

A native of Wisconsin, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. He now resides in Oxford, Michigan, a small, rural suburb of Detroit.

11/19/21 11/19/21

The Sounds of the Sea by W.C. Gordon

FORENSIC FILES

Technology in law enforcement is really beginning to amaze me. Gone are the days when we would just kick in a door and run through the house. I’m on my way to a call of an apparent suicide now. This guy lives on the 9th floor of an ocean-front condo. The neighbor calls and says she heard a loud pop. Cops show up for a welfare check and the front door is locked and nobody is answering. Normally, that would be the end of it. We wouldn’t return until the neighbor called back to complain about the stench and there were flies on the inside of the window trying to get out. Then you would force entry and find something resembling a human form melted into the couch, or bed, or whatever. Not in today’s law enforcement arena. Today we fly a drone up to the 9th floor and into the open slider on the balcony. Today we see a dead guy with a gun on the couch without having to go inside. Well, you ultimately have to go inside but it saves some headache doing it this way. For instance, if the guy was suicidal but not enough so to kill himself. Then the cops walk in and, BAM!, you have a suicide-by-cop scenario. That’s a lot of paperwork and typically a lot of zeros at the end of a check for the family. Now, a drone can go inside and assess the situation before the cops do. If the not-totally-suicidal-guy shoots the drone, it’s far less paperwork and cost.

It’s a pretty South Florida evening and I decide to take the stairs instead of the elevator. The heat and humidity have given way to a cool ocean breeze and a little exercise won’t kill me. At the 4th floor, I decide that I could be wrong and there has been enough death in this building today, so into the elevator I go. I check in with the officer at the door of the apartment and sign the crime scene log. I look at the Halligan tool rested next to the threshold and inspect the damaged lock. The officer says, “It was locked when we got here.” I nod my head, smile, and say, “The property manager probably has a key but it looks like you guys wanted to use your own.”

I walk into the residence and find the decedent lying on the couch. He’s leaned back against the cushions with his feet up. At least he got comfy. Gun rested next to his left hand and GSW to the left temple. Hmmm, a lefty? A watch is on his right wrist so I suppose that’s consistent with being left-hand dominant.

“How long ago do you think he did it?” asks a new officer in training. His Field Training Officer nearby just shakes her head.

“I’d say approximately three hours ago. If I had to be more specific, I’d say at 6:02 pm.”

The new officers’ eyes open widely as his FTO roll their eyes. “Wow, you can tell that just by looking at this guy?” I hate to burst his investigative bubble but I can’t help it.

“No, the neighbor called at 6:03 pm and said she heard a loud bang about a minute earlier. We call that in the detective bureau a ‘clue.’”

“Was there a note?” I ask the new officer.

“What kind of note, Sir?” The FTO is getting visibly annoyed at this point.

“What we like to call in detective work a ‘suicide note.’” The officer shakes his head in the negative.

Suicide notes are great to have but are increasingly rare at these types of scenes. More common are suicide texts or emails. The soon-to-be-dead will send a farewell electronic message and then do the deed without realizing that their electronic device will typically lock itself. That leaves me with the task of using a dead finger or face to unlock the phone. Difficult, if not impossible, in late stages of decomposition or if the decedent blew their face off. I explain all of this to the new officer and he looks slightly disturbed.

Okie-dokie, time to inspect. No blood spatter on the wall so likely no exit wound. A .38 Special so not a shock that it isn’t a through and through. A ragged entrance wound. Scorching of the skin. Some dark smudging. No stippling. Some deformity from the overpressure. Definitely a contact shot. His head is tilted to the right slightly which caused blood to pool in his ear. I notice something odd about his ear. With my gloved hand, I poke at a little foreign object. You have got to be kidding me. The blood disguised the color. I tip his head to the left and inspect his right ear. An earplug? This guy put orange foam earplugs into his ears before shooting himself. He’s ok with dying but not with tinnitus. Now I’ve seen it all.

After a cursory search of the residence, I call the medical examiner and tell them what I have. I leave out the earplugs. They decline to come out and have a look for themselves. They dispatch the body snatchers, I mean the removal service, and that is that. In and out in less than forty-five minutes which gets me a mandatory four-hour overtime call out. Back home and to my glass of Eagle Rare.

7/9/21 7/9/21

Pre-Game by Steven C. Harms

Allow me a brief introduction. I’ve spent the previous thirty-plus years as a sports and entertainment business executive, having worked in the NBA, NFL, and MLB. But for two years at the NBA League Office in New York City, the rest of my career was at the local market level. I’ve been intimately involved in crafting the fan experience along the way, with probably close to 1,600 sports or entertainment events under my belt. Some of those national in scale (All-Star Games, World Series, Playoffs), but most were the garden variety regular season game or concert stop for a touring performer.

My journey has brought me so very many unique experiences and allowed me the opportunity to meet and, in some cases, get to know many professional athletes and entertainers along the way. People like Michael Jordan, Muhammed Ali, Torii Hunter, Barry Sanders, Magic Johnson, Miguel Cabrera, Dick Enberg, and artists such as Bruce Hornsby, Celine Dion, Bob Seger, and others.

I’m truly not one to name drop, however, my background was important to tee up where this blog will be going.

I’ll be sharing stories in future blogs that I hope you’ll find entertaining (sort of a peek behind the curtain), but that will also be educational to you, the writer. One of my crowning achievements was becoming one myself, and in that process, the corollaries between writing/readership/story-telling and the business of sports and entertainment became apparent. A novel is all part of the entertainment mosaic. We can draw best practices from sports and entertainment, and apply them to our craft of writing compellingly great books, our author journeys, our reader’s experiences and, hopefully, finding some nuggets to become better at our craft.

This first blog is dedicated to what I’m calling the “pre-game experience.”

As a sports business executive, I always kept both eyes on our most important stakeholder, the fan. They drive almost every decision because, ultimately, their engagement with our product dictates the success or failure of our enterprise. The same goes for the books we write. Without loyally engaged readers (fans), the arc of our success is flat-lined or plateaued, or perhaps barely off the ground. And I’ll argue that a percentage of that success line is built in the pre-game.

Assuming that you’ve gone to a sports or concert event, take a moment to think about the experiential nature of that activity and what occurs before the game or concert even starts. There are a number of moving parts that can negatively or positively impact the feeling of having a great experience. Ticket purchase process, parking your vehicle, getting to your seat (crowd control management), cleanliness of the facility upon arrival, temperament of the customer-facing event staff, and so on.

When I go to a game as a fan, I’ve paid my money and I have an expectation that I’ll enjoy the hours I’m dedicating to that activity. But if the parking attendant is rude, or argumentative, or errs in giving me the appropriate change back, or rudely barks at me to “park right here,” I’ve already taken a negative position before I ever get out of my car.

Additionally, venues, concert tours, or your favorite hometown team, spend an awful lot of energy and money in creating a captivating welcome or opening ceremony targeted to you, the fan. Why? So you’re pulled into the excitement and it’s “special” from the moment you arrive. As a sports marketer, I knew we were building memories for each fan…every…single…game.

Another example is Disney. If you’ve ever been to one of their theme parks, you know what I mean by customer service and appreciation. Your entire experience begins way before you first walk through their gates.

One pillar of live sports and entertainment marketing is to be fully prepared when the gates open and eliminate all pre-game missteps.

Content with thoughtful and respectful authenticity will do far more good than quick hit fleeting posts. CLICK TO TWEET

Let’s flip the spotlight over to writing and ask yourself what’s the pre-game experience for your readers or potential readers of your new book and you as an author? Some areas to consider:

Your book cover. Is it something you really like, or is it a cover design that a majority of readers would find too artsy, or clunky, or just too weird to hold their attention? Look at it from a reader’s viewpoint and try to take your emotional attachment out of the decision. This is your main gate to your arena, so to speak. What does it look like? I understand the argument that covers don’t sell books, but I disagree. A great cover designed to capture the reader’s attention will serve a positive role in selling your books.
Same for your title – see above.
I’m big on an opening “wow” chapter or prologue, in particular within the mystery thriller genre. The open sets the stage for the rest of the book (which for this conversation is the transition from pre-game to start-of-game). It’s your opportunity to capture all that anticipation from your reader, much like the moment when football teams come bursting through the tunnel onto the field just before kick-off. The thrill, pomp and circumstance of it emotionally and energetically pulls the fan into the action about to unfold. Your opening chapter is that level of “moment.”
Does your author brand have “stickiness” or can you build to it? Stickiness simply means are you resonating with readers? Are you writing quality stories that are memorable enough to establish you as a brand? One tactic is to insure you have a website that emphasizes your uniqueness, looks fantastic, is easy to maneuver through, and uses imagery, fonts, colors and text that reflect you.
How are you set-up and operating on social media? Sports teams are very good at pushing out content, as are today’s athletes and performers. Sports entities and celebrities have a built-in base simply because they are who they are. Love or hate a team, they’ve been around for decades and have a brand. If they post something, it’s going to get attention without much effort. The vast majority of authors, on the other hand, are not household names. Pay attention to what you post. Asking my main character’s hair style of my WIP is, at best, a vapid exercise. You may get some responses, but to what end? Quality over quantity is where the focus should be. Content with thoughtful and respectful authenticity will do far more good than quick hit fleeting posts. And remember – potential readers are probably scoping you out on social media.
Athletes and musicians practice to perfect or improve their performance for games or competition in order to win. As authors, there are things you can do to hone your skills. Your novel is the same as a sports event or concert. You have one shot to win that game or nail that performance. How are you preparing? Conferences, writer’s groups, workshops, reading other author’s books, utilizing a quality editor, and the like are all there for improving your writing skills to facilitate better results for the reader’s experience. And, if you’re dedicated to the details of the pre-game experience, your odds of winning or scoring well will climb exponentially.

Think about your pre-game rituals and what you are or aren’t doing to prepare before tackling that next novel. Hall of Fame Football coach, and NFL legend Vince Lombardi put it well, “The will to win is not nearly so important as the will to prepare to win.”

A native of Wisconsin, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. He now resides in Oxford, Michigan, a small, rural suburb of Detroit.

7/9/21 7/9/21

How to Audit Your Author Platform in Five Easy Steps by Mary McFarland

THE OM OF THE SOFT SELL:

EASY, LOW-COST MARKETING

FOR THE CRAZY-BUSY AUTHOR

Do You Feel Besieged by Offers to Help You Sell More Books?

Authors are besieged by sellers offering workshops, challenges, and online universities—gasp!— built around helping us sell books. If you’re struggling to keep up but still not selling books, it’s time to start using digital tools to audit your platform and build in a “soft sell” to attract readers.

Are You a Victim of the “Hard Sell?” If you’re making yourself sick—and broke—trying to sell, i.e., “market” books and keep up with digital marketing fads, you’re a victim of the “hard sell.” The hard sell puts immediate pressure on authors. Buy our workshop! Our app! Our system! Buy now! Since its introduction in the 1950s, it has today found a perfect spot in the digital marketing community, where fast, high-pressure selling occurs in nanoseconds.

If you’re a victim of the hard sell, your first step is to audit your author platform.
Click to Tweet

If you’re a victim of the hard sell, your first step is to audit your author platform. First, however, here’s two preliminary steps toward recovery:

Halt the desperate urge to get “likes.” Likes don’t generate enough traffic to buy a latte, and they’re a time-suck. Learn instead to identify what’s motivating social media use among prospective readers (See Figure 1). Note:“buying”is at the bottom of the list.
Brainstorm the motivation behind your brand. What themes do your books explore that creates passion among your target audience? How do you want readers to perceive you? What exceptional reading and promotion experiences, what “value” do you offer that your competitors don’t? Who are your competitors?

Fig. 1: Top 10 Motivations for Using Social Media. Image courtesy of PRO Platform.

Why Do I Need to Audit My Author Platform?

Your platform is the locus of your author identity, where the impressions readers form over time become your author brand. There are two critical reasons to audit your platform. One, auditing your platform lets you control and build your brand and adjust it as readers’ desires change. Note:do you think the platform Amazon started with (See Figure 2) would entice buyers today?

Fig. 2: Early Amazon page. Image courtesy of Version Museum.

Two, your platform, in addition to conveying your brand, is also a place to use your “soft sell” to target and attract readers. Why would you want to do this? To find out, take this quick quiz:

Who’s the greatest customer-centric, soft seller of books in history?
Who sits on the Web, does nothing—that we can see—and attracts readers in droves?

Readers trust the Amazon brand and love buying in a bookstore where they rule but feel not one iota of pressure. That’s the “Om” of a digital marketing brand whose “soft sell” is the heartbeat of the most recognized brand on earth.

What Tools Do I Use to Audit My Author Platform? Figure 3 shows the digital tools you can use to perform a quick platform audit, tells you when to perform and audit, and lists the free digital tools.

Keep in mind that digital tools evolve constantly, so begin with the suggested list in Figure 3 and build on it as your platform evolves. Note: There are many digital tools available, but these tools are author tested.

Fig. 3: Digital Tools for Performing a Platform Audit. Image courtesy of Red Girl Digital.

What Are the Steps to Audit My Author Platform?

Follow these steps to complete your author platform audit.

How to Audit Your Author Platform: Five Easy Steps

Step 1

Tools Needed: NAMECHK, KNOWEM

Goal: Identify all social media channels on your author platform, where you are now or want your brand to be in the future.

1. Go to www.namechk.com and check your author name (your brand). Is it available across all social media platforms?

2. Go to www.knowem.com and check to see which categories are available or taken.

Note: These tools are helpful if you’re planning a brand. They let you see if it’s available on certain channels before you spend time brainstorming names.

Note: If your channel is taken, check to ensure it’s by you. If it’s not taken, go claim it.

Step 2

Tools Needed: FACEBOOK ANALYTICS, GOOGLE ANALYTICS, INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS, PINTEREST ANALYTICS

Goal: Measure reader engagement on your social media channels.

Most social media sites have built-in analytics that break down the number of links, shares, clicks built into the site.

Go to each SM site on your platform, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and search on “analytics.”

Note: Keep in mind, you must interpret what these numbers mean across your author platform and find “digital strategies” to “tweak” them to increase reader engagement.

Step 3

Tools Needed: BOOKBRUSH, CANVA, LANDSCAPE, PICMONKEY

Goal: Check for brand consistency, i.e., look and feel across your author platform and intended branding.

Go to each social media channel and check the following:

Color palette. Are you using the same color palette consistently on all channels? What branding message does your color choice convey? For example, red and orange (McDonald’s) conveys friendly and affordable.

Author bio. Any inconsistencies?

Graphics. Consistently conveying your brand message? Is your logo use consistent?

URLs. Are they all consistently branding you?

Note: Use a consistent color palette and graphics, message and logo. If you find cleaning up inconsistencies difficult and time consuming, use the tutorials and help features of the digital tools. Yes, it’s time well spent.

Step 4

Tools Needed: CALCULATOR.NET

Goal: Identify top performing channels based on engagement and social media ROI.

Social Media ROI formula: (Earnings – Costs) x 100/Costs

Example:
You invested $50,000.00 in social media PR and ad campaigns on Facebook, and you earned $70,000.00.

70,000.00 (earnings) – 50,000.00 (costs) = 20,000.00 x 100/50,000.00 = 40% ROI

Note: this example is not typical, but whether you made a few hundred or a few thousand from your social media campaigns, the goal is to increase earnings by keeping an eye on readers’ changing desires.

Step 5

Tools Needed: Free SEO Checker: Website SEO Analysis Tool & Audit Report (neilpatel.com)

Goal: Identify basic Search Engine Optimization “SEO” for your Web site’s traffic, including page score and monthly traffic.

CONGRATS! YOU COMPLETED YOUR AUTHOR PLATFORM AUDIT!!!

I’ve Audited My Author Platform? What’s My Next Step?

Good job! You did it! How does your platform look? Does it consistently convey your brand across all channels to your prospective readers?

Extra fun: If you are just beginning to grasp SEO and how important it is to your sales success, Author Imprints has a great article with suggestions for analyzing and improving your SEO. It’s located here: www.authorimprints.com/author-metada-audit/

A Challenge: A great challenge for any author is learning which sales strategies are working for competitors. Go to your competitors’ platform and identify what types of “sell” they are using with various promotions. Is it the “hard sell” or the “soft sell?”

Hi, I’m an aspiring author and like you I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore.

In 2015, I watched my post-launch sales ranking for Jump the Line climb to 40,000 in “romantic suspense,” a saturated category, and then drop. I let it. I paused my author platform to research how digital marketing and technology work together to promote—or impede—book sales.

We can’t see or control technology’s “back end,” but it’s driving digital marketing. Its twin is the “hard sell” that has formed around it to drive us all crazy. While tech’s front end (e.g., Amazon and Facebook, etc.) is a user-friendly “soft sell,” its back end is a hard sell. Do your marketing, i.e., your ad campaign and key word setup right, or you’ll spend tons and sell little. Crack the code with the latest fad or miss the sales bus!

The marketers have us believing we must know things like—gasp!—how Amazon Web Service (AWS) works, that we must know its secret “algorithms” to sell books. Friends, it’s unknowable except to the AWS army of geeks. What can beating our brains out trying to decipher Amazon’s algorithms possibly do but waste time and exhaust us?

We don’t need to knuckle to hard-sell digital marketing recipes, unless—of course—they are created by us to serve us. What we do need to know is how our own author processes, such as the book launch, work on top of and in conjunction with technology’s back-end. In addition, we must become experts in exploiting useful and, especially, free digital marketing tools.

What fuels my twin interests in digital marketing and technology? First, I’m out to disrupt the myth that authors must make ourselves sick fighting technology to sell books. My mission instead is to deliver the “Om” of digital marketing, the fun, easy and, especially, the healthy digital recipes for selling books. Second, my background as a technical writer in the software industry, and a Master’s concentration in using Web 2.0 technology, have long fueled my desire to both write fiction and serve fellow authors.

My research in digital marketing for authors is a journey. I’m inviting you along to share and support our community. If you find digital tools that support authors, share. If you spot a problem, and you think digital tools can fix it for our community, share harder!

www.redgirldigitalmedia.com (July 2021)

www.marymcfarlandbooks.com (July 2021)

7/9/21 7/9/21

Dropping in on Another World by Maria Hudgins

MYSTERIOUS GETAWAYS

Taking in the skyline of Vienna from the top of my hotel, I was surprised to spot the Prater Wheel in the distance. Still the world’s largest Ferris wheel, it stood, not in the middle of the city, but way over in the north on the bank of the Danube River. Why had I expected it to be downtown? Simple. My concept of the city, the wheel, and even the entrance to the sewers had been formed and cemented by The Third Man, starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, the screenplay written by Graham Greene. In the story, it seemed like the amusement park and Ferris wheel were in the heart of the war-torn city.

Our minds are filled with images of things we have seen—or think we have seen. Have I seen the Alamo, or do I just think I’ve seen it? I may have only read about it in a book, but part of who we are is what we’ve read. Do you have a mental picture of Istanbul? Of Paris? Of Japan? Have you been there, or have you just read about it? Part of the joy and challenge of writing a story is creating a world to put it in, and different authors create different worlds in the same geographic place. Inspector Morse’s Oxford is very different from Dorothy L Sayers’s.

Picture Los Angeles as described by Walter Mosely in Little Scarlet:

“The morning air still smelled of smoke. Wood ash mainly but there was also the acrid stench of burnt plastic and paint. And even though I knew it couldn’t be true, I thought I caught a whiff of putrid flesh from under the rubble across the street.”

Or Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles in The Gods of Guilt:

“He got in the front and I jumped in the back. After a quick stop at the sandwich shop on Alameda I had Earl point the car west. The next stop was a place called Menorah Manor, near Park La Brea in the Fairfax District.”

We all think we know what a little English village is like, but is that because it really is or because of what Agatha Christie told us? In the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, she says:

“Our village, King’s Abbot, is, I imagine, very much like any other village. Our big town is Cranchester, nine miles away. We have a large railway station, a small post office, and two rival 'General Stores.' Able-bodied men are apt to leave the place early in life, but we are rich in unmarried ladies and retired military officers. Our hobbies and recreations can be summed up in the one word, 'gossip.'"

When creating a world with your words, remember, this is not a travelogue. Less is more. The story is the thing." Click to Tweet

I’ve driven through little villages in the English Cotswolds, and I can tell you this is pretty accurate, except for the retired military officers. When creating a world with your words, remember, this is not a travelogue. Less is more. The story is the thing. You can wax poetic for pages about weather in Sweden, or, like Stieg Larssen in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you can say, “He considered walking, but it was a blustery December day, and he was already cold. “

That’s it. You get the idea.

Maria Hudgins is the author of the Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries, the Lacy Glass Archaeology Mysteries, and a number of short stories. She has visited Italy, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Egypt, Turkey, and the Greek Islands, and used these locales in her stories. She still has the notebooks she kept in each of these places.

7/9/21 7/9/21

The County Coroner by Cara Bryant

The Northwest Territories is a vast expanse of land with a small population. There are roughly 44,000 souls spread out over 442,000 square miles of thick forest and vast tundra. Given the circumstances, when it comes to filling jobs, there are challenges in finding staff. One of those jobs is community coroner. The term “community” means not a traditional coroner. Most people think of a pathologist or someone with medical training. In the NWT and a few other Canadian provinces, people with no experience—but able to lift upwards of 100 pounds—are hired all the time to be community coroners. It is a job I began with no formal education in medicine of any kind. Other than episodes of CSI, I was not familiar with what the job would entail.

Basically, when a sudden death occurs, there is a need for someone to remove the body from the scene, or if it is already in the hospital, take it to the morgue. There’s a lot of paperwork to fill out, on top of working with the family of the deceased and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). I don’t inform the family of the death, that heart-wrenching job is left to the police.

It can be surprising what objects hold sentimental value for people. I once had the wife of a deceased person ask to be given back a plastic sandwich bag found in a pocket. CLICK TO TWEET

Part of the job involves examining the body and recording any contents the person had on them, like wallet, jewelry, etc. I always took great care with possessions, no matter what they were. It can be surprising what objects hold sentimental value for people. I once had the wife of a deceased person ask to be given back a plastic sandwich bag found in a pocket.

I remember clearly early on in my coroner work doing an exam on an elderly woman who had passed away a few hours prior. The deputy coroner was writing down my findings, any bruising or cuts, that sort of thing. Holding her arm, it jerked out of my hands, causing me to scream in surprise. A moment of sheer terror that the deputy thought was hilarious. Rigor mortis had begun to set in.

Another night, I had actually just gotten into bed when I was called to the scene of a crash. A man had been killed in a vehicle collision. He was stuck inside the car, which was severely banged up. Removing him in the middle of nowhere in -40F was no easy task. With no other options, myself and some of the other first responders had to physically pull him out of the car. The rubber gloves I had been given froze to my hands in seconds and I had to take them off. I wore my thick winter gloves instead. I had forgotten to put on my snow pants and my legs were nearly frost bitten by the time we got back.

It’s certainly not an easy job. When I tell people about the work I do the reaction is often one of revulsion and/or confusion as to why I would volunteer for such a job. To be clear, I do get paid a flat rate per case. Death is a scary thing for a lot of people and they rather avoid it all together. For me, it has created a great appreciation for life. It’s also a reminder to wear your seatbelt, your helmet, your lifejacket every. Single. Time.

7/8/21 7/8/21

Drug Groomer by W.C. Gordon

FORENSIC FILES

Elvis Costello fills the cool air inside my department-issued, grey Toyota Camry. The A/C is on high and struggling against the South Florida summer heat. Elvis belts out what was once considered an angst-ridden song but is now Classic Rock. Soft rock at that. This will be my last few moments of comfort before I battle the outside heat, followed by the stifling, still warm air of the indoors. The indoors without an A/C running. And the smell. Bodies decompose far quicker in high humidity and high temperatures. It’s Tuesday. Yesterday was a holiday and the groomers were closed. It was last open on Friday. Her son is allowed to live in the back area when the shop isn’t open. So that puts the time of death sometime after 4 o’clock on Friday and now. I look at my watch—a Citizen Eco-Drive that my wife got me for my 40th. It’s 9:30 am. I need coffee.

I pull up to the front of the shop. Scruffy to Fluffy. Very clever. I take quick stock of the scene: Five police cruisers. That’s a bit excessive for what they’ve already determined is an overdose. That being said, I know that two of the officers on scene are salty old vets just trying to hump this call for as long as possible to avoid being dispatched to another call. I see a very distraught woman at the front of the business being consoled by another, far less distraught, woman. I’ll assume that is the mother of the newly deceased. Thank goodness. Nothing worse than having to do a death notification. That’s the hardest part of the job. Figuring out how someone died is typically easy. Notifying their next-of-kin that their dearly beloved whoever has shed their mortal coil is usually an emotional endeavor. Usually but not always. When the family has located the decedent, that relieves me of the burden of the notification.

Bobby, one of the old salts, walks over to my car. I roll the window down and ask who the primary officer is. He says it's Valinucci. Fantastic. A great cop who’s got more time backing his patrol car up to a curb than I do in a uniform. I ask Bobby to send him out to me. Within a few minutes, Valinucci is walking out to my car with a big smile on his face. He knows the drill and gets into the passenger’s seat.

“How’s my all-time favorite detective doing?” he says with a smile.

“Who knows? He’s probably at Lighthouse Diner enjoying a big breakfast with an even bigger mistress!” With that, Nooch lets out a laugh and we catch up on some small talk. Always invite the officer to have a seat in your car. Little things like getting the basics of an initial investigation inside the comfort of an air-conditioned vehicle do not go unnoticed by a patrolman.

“How’s the mom?” I ask.

“Heartbroken, but she gets it. She knows his issues. Enabled him. The usual. Thirty-six years old and living in the back of her grooming shop doing dope after hours.”

I make my way to the side entrance of the shop and sign the crime scene log. I can already smell it. That being said, the stench is not as bad as I prepared myself for. Not quite as heavy and cold as I anticipated. At least not yet. I walk past the grooming tables and bathing stations that are set up. I admire the organization of the brushes, combs, and shears that are neatly placed on a pegboard. The shelf has all manner of shampoos and conditioners. Eye and ear cleaning kits. I see a separate area for leashes and harnesses that brings to memory a human trafficking case.

As I approach the restroom, I can see through the threshold of the door what I recognize as a Vans checkboard slip-on shoe. I didn’t know grown men still wore those. I had a pair when I used to skateboard. I was thirteen then.

The decedent is in what is commonly referred to as the “praying position.” That’s when the body is found in a kneeling position, bent over, with the head between the knees. Lividity is noted as set and appears consistent with body positioning. His face is mushed into the floor and appears to be beginning to become one with the terrazzo. There is a considerable, but not excessive, amount of fluid around the head. Most perceive it to be vomit but it's actually a foam. An opioid overdose causes the heart and lungs to slow which causes fluid to gather in the lungs. That fluid mixes with carbon dioxide and exits the mouth in a foam-like form. When someone dies on their back, a foam cone erupts from their mouth. You never quite enjoy a snow cone after seeing it.

I reach down and take hold of a finger. I have done this bare-handed in the past but with the lethality of fentanyl, or the even deadlier carfentanyl, I am sure to glove up first. The finger feels cold but in reality, is only room temperature. Rigor mortis is long gone and the skin is retracting. The medical examiner will call this ‘secondary flaccidity.’ So far, in this heat, I’m thinking he probably OD’d sometime Saturday. I give the body a quick scan and… What. The. Hell?! There’s a very familiar sticky thing attached to this guy’s lower right leg. Right above the shoe normally worn by a teenager. It’s a telemetry lead used to run an EKG.

“Did rescue come in here?” I ask, to nobody in particular.

“Yeah, they ran a lead on the guy.” Shouts the officer maintaining the crime scene log.

“You’re telling me they couldn’t figure out this guy was done?”

“I guess not.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t shove Narcan up his nose.” This last comment didn’t solicit a response from the officer. Probably a good thing, as I think the mother of the deceased could probably hear me shouting. I don’t know who I’m more annoyed by; the evidence destruction team marching in here with their dirty bunker gear to run an EKG strip on an obvious corpse or the officers for allowing it. Whatever; it's not exactly the crime of the century.

I tip the decedent over to find what I’m looking for. And there it is, a syringe; however, I also cause the guy to expel some long pent-up gases. Now the stench has fully engulfed the room. I have what I need and make my way out of the business with haste.

A quick call to the medical examiner goes as expected: “Thirty-six-year-old white male… Moderate decomposition… No signs of trauma or deformity… History of drug use… Narcotics paraphernalia in the area… Needle… Yeah, needle, like a syringe… Yep… Yep… Ok… Great, thanks.”

My A/C is on full blast but the windows are down. I need the cold air on my face but also allow the dead guy’s scent to escape as it is lingering on my shirt. I debate about having the mom sit in the car. I decide against it. When I’m done, I can walk away from her but getting her out of my car could be a chore.

I walk over to the grieving mom and the conversation goes as expected: “My deepest condolences… Looks to be an accidental narcotic-related overdose… It’s such a terrible disease… Yes, ma’am, I will be doing everything in my power to bring the evil person who sold your son these drugs to justice… Yes, they can be charged with homicide… I will be in touch with you when the toxicology results come from the medical examiner’s office… Take care, ma’am.”

I then walk over to Bobby and tell him that the ME is not coming out. They’re going to send the body snatchers to scoop up the dead guy. I tell him to call me if they find anything out of the norm when they move the body.

Back to my car for more glorious A/C and to hear Elvis sing about watching detectives. Now for the most important decision of the morning: where to get a good cup of coffee.

10/4/19 10/4/19

Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem at Killer Nashville International Writers' Conference

Murder, Mystery & Mayhem at Killer Nashville

by Joseph W. Borden

You’ve just arrived in Nashville after a long and arduous flight. The night is dark, maybe it’s storming. Your feet are sore, eyes tired. You’re just about at your wits end. You hail a cab. “To Killer Nashville,” you yell, “and step on it!” After dragging, pushing, pulling all your luggage inside and checking in, you finally get to your hotel room. But when you open the door, you see furniture overturned, drawers opened, their contents strewn across the floor. But, worst of all, there’s a dead body occupying your bed!

This is scene you might’ve witnessed at Killer Nashville 2019—albeit something would have to go very wrong at check-in for you to wind up in the room that hosts the mock crime scene each year.

Nashville has long been known for its ties to country music, but what about its connection to murder, mystery, and mayhem? Since 2006, each August, Nashville has been home to The Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. The conference, a bastion of the dastardly, hosts about 350 mystery, thriller, and suspense writers each year. These miscreants and ne'er-do-wells are blackguards of the darkest kind—each of them well versed in the languages of espionage, foul play, and general malfeasance. The 2019 conference featured Guests of Honor Alexandra Ivy, David Morrell, and Joyce Carol Oates, all of whom are renowned storytellers and purveyors of the perilous.

Killer Nashville boasts over 60 educational sessions throughout the weekend, ranging from subjects as innocent as “Reviews & How to Get Them” to more nefarious ones such as “Evolution of the Cyber Threat Actor.” Aside from writers, the event brings agents, editors, and other industry professionals from all corners of the globe—and everyone is there for a shared purpose: to learn, connect, master the art of murder…of fictional characters, of course.

The mock crime scene that is featured at Killer Nashville each year is one of the most popular aspects of the conference, as one might expect at an event filled with current/former law enforcement officials and admirers of the macabre. Staged by forensic professionals, the crime scene is an adaptation of real crime scenes they have encountered. Throughout the weekend, attendees work to solve the murder of Ralph David Reed. They attempt to piece together the mystery by using the clues left on scene and by watching pre-recorded witness & suspect interviews. Whomever gets the closest to solving the murder is awarded the Dupin Detective award. This year, Amanda Feyerbend took home this honor, the only one of 100+ participants to deduce every single fact about the “murder” correctly.

“The Killer Nashville Mock Crime Scene was such a great experience!” said Feyerbend. “As I walked around the room, I tried to put on my investigator’s hat and soak up everything I could about the intricate scene. I’d hoped to win the Dupin Detective Award, and when Former Assistant Director [of the TBI] Dan Royse said all those kind words and called my name, I was ecstatic. It’s such an honor. The whole conference was amazing, and I can't wait to come back next year.”

But it’s not all fun and murder games at the conference; there’s also glory to be earned at the Killer Nashville Awards Dinner. Villains and vagabonds alike come together to listen to speeches from Guests of Honor & scholarship winners, and to see who will go home with coveted Killer Nashville awards. Killer Nashville coordinates two large award competitions: the Silver Falchion Award & the Claymore Award.

The Silver Falchion Award honors the best books readily available to a North American audience in both fiction and nonfiction from the previous year. The competitions recognizes books in 10 different categories relating to mystery, thriller, suspense and all the fiendish iterations those genres can form. From those categories, only one can be honored as Book of the Year. The 2019 Book of the Year recipient was author Baron R. Birtcher for his title Fistful of Rain. Birtcher also won Best Action Adventure and Best Attending Author for the same title—one could say he’s a dangerous man, indeed.

Of his award, Birtcher said, “I'm still trying to wrap my head around the honor of having won the Silver Falchion for Book of the Year! I've been attending Killer Nashville for 10 years now, and it still stands as my favorite. Drawing incredibly talented writers from all over the world, the programs, panels, networking, and above all, the camaraderie among the attendees is unparalleled. There is a reason that Killer Nashville is considered to be one of the preeminent writer’s conferences on the planet. "

The Killer Nashville Claymore Award is one that is particularly special to the conference, as it recognizes the best 50 first pages of an unpublished manuscript. Most of the writers who enter the Claymore Award competition have never been published before (mischief-makers in training, if you will). In 2019, for the first time in its decade-long history, the Claymore Award had a tie for first place. Originally, it was suggested that a tiebreaker would be had by way of knife fight but, eventually, the contest judges concluded that less bloodshed would be preferable, from a PR perspective.

"Winning the 2019 Claymore Award was an enormous gift of confidence for me,” said John Carenen, who won for his title Breathtaking in the Blue Ridge. “I was delighted to be one of the 20 finalists and stunned when my name was announced at the Awards Dinner. And to have David Morrell present the award added to what was a surreal moment. I don't think anything that follows in my writing career can top that event."

Joseph Simurdiak took home the Claymore for his historical fantasy A Red Autumn Wind. Of his experience, Simurdiak said, “Killer Nashville enthusiastically cultivate[s] new and rising voices. [M]any Claymore finalists go on to land book deals, and I felt like I'd crossed some kind of threshold. It [the night he won the Claymore] was truly one of the most amazing nights of my life, the realization of a childhood dream. But it was also a huge step in an even larger journey, one in which the following chapter is already underway.”

Although it may be a conference full of those who have one foot in the dirty underworld of society (strictly—well, mostly—in a fictional sense), the overall goal for Killer Nashville is to create a nurturing environment in which writers at all stages of their careers can come together to better their writing and make lasting connections with like minds. So come, all ye scoundrels, and see what all the buzz is about. It’s truly an experience to die for.

10/3/19 10/3/19

Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem at Killer Nashville International Writers' Conference

Murder, Mystery & Mayhem at Killer Nashville
by Joseph W. Borden

This is scene you might’ve witnessed at Killer Nashville 2019—albeit something would have to go very wrong at check-in for you to wind up in the room that hosts the mock crime scene each year.

9/13/16 9/13/16

Raising the Stakes for Your Writing Skills / M. Elizabeth Lee

Writing a thriller has proven time and time again to be one of the most mind-boggling and challenging genres to write. With a thriller you need to keep your reader reading while building up to an exciting event slowly. Keeping your reader interested during this escalation, while at the same time keeping your twist well-hidden, is the challenge we are tasked with overcoming. In this week’s guest blog, author M. Elizabeth Lee gives some fantastic tips and tricks for building a compelling thriller.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine

Raising the Stakes for Your Writing Skills
By M. Elizabeth Lee

Writing suspense is like trying to climb a ladder while simultaneously building it. Do it correctly and you lead your reader on a thrilling journey where the stakes grow higher as dangers known and unforeseen press ever closer. If a thriller is successful, the reader leaps from the top of the ladder, filled with exhilaration after the crazy ride he or she has just completed. But when thrillers go wrong, and readers are not pulled along by a taut plot, compelling mystery and believable characters, they have no incentive to keep climbing the ladder, and instead, slide limply back to earth, where they use their last ounce of squandered energy to assign a one star rating. Sad!

The desire to know what happens next is the driving force of all fiction, and no more so than in the suspense genre, where the whole point is to keep the reader so spellbound that they miss their train stop or forget to walk the dog. That addictive sense of what happens next is the benchmark of great suspense writing, but creating that feeling is a feat like none other. Executing suspense successfully requires a complex mind trick; crafting your twisty, surprise-laden story while hiding what you’re doing from the reader, and simultaneously attempting to distance yourself enough to evaluate whether any of it is working. It’s enough to make a suspense writer wish for a second brain, or a timely case of temporary amnesia.

But as most of us have only one mind at our disposal, the evaluation process must be sidelined for the majority of the writing process. It’s much more beneficial to focus on the juggling act/magic trick of creating suspense, which has everything to do with manipulating reader expectations.

Expectation is tricky in thrillers, because serious fans of the genre a.) Love surprises, and b.) Have read it all before. In a typical thriller, some misdeed has been committed and the protagonist must figure out who did it and why before something even more horrible happens. Thriller writers are ingenious at ways of finding fresh angles to explore this basic construct, but to be successful, most thrillers do these four things:

Establish High Stakes (and then raise them) — Tension is at its highest when everything is on the line. Start with a big problem, and make it bigger. For example, in Love Her Madly, Glo, the protagonist, is faced with either losing her best friend or the guy she thinks might be her true love. That’s a tough decision, but it’s kid stuff compared to the choice Glo faces later when she must either follow her best friend into the clutches of armed strangers or swim across a dangerous channel to get help. Boxing characters into near hopeless situations and forcing them to act is a foolproof way to create dramatic tension. Extremes are interesting and characters are (fortunately) not real, so writers can push all they want and no one gets hurt.
Taut Pacing — Opening with a tight focus helps build momentum quickly. Keep extraneous detail to a minimum. Remember that bestselling European author who devoted pages to descriptions of computer hardware? Don’t do that. Your story is stronger without it.
Mystery — Readers will be happiest if they can’t guess by chapter two who the villain is and why he plans to poison the reservoir. Shocking twists are the genre’s beating heart. Come up with a good one, and gain a fan for life.
Payoff — Thrillers don’t have to end with an epic warehouse shootout, but they should have a climactic payoff. It doesn’t have to tie up every loose end, or even signal that the protagonist’s quest is over, but it should resolve the plot’s main mystery. Show your readers some love by giving them a payoff that will cast the journey they’ve taken in an entirely new light. Or conversely (or perhaps, perversely), keep a little extra mystery simmering on the back burner. By the final pages of Love Her Madly, Glo finally learns what has become of her lost friend, but a final discovery throws the truth Glo thought she had gleaned back into question. A little residual doubt can make a novel linger, ghostlike, long after a book has been shelved.

Thriller writers are constantly finding new ways to advance the genre. While a traditional “lone wolf overcoming adversity to find the truth” tale is a trope that is here to stay, I’m a fan of unreliable narrators and enjoy both writing kncover-lee and reading this style of thriller. Using a suspect narrator provides a tricky “Can I trust this?” intimacy with characters who might be lying through their teeth, half-crazy, deluded, or all of the above. When I was writing Love Her Madly I had to decide how truthful to make Glo about the night her best friend disappeared. Will readers take her story at face value? I can’t say. With this type of thriller, part of the fun is trying to suss out all the manipulations that are in play. The truth may be out there, but unless your narrator permits, you might never discover it.

Whatever the approach, readers of suspense want that thrill, and it’s our job to bring it. As mentioned earlier, one of the most difficult aspects of authoring suspense is handling doubt. After working on a story for months, sometimes years, it would be wonderful to automatically know that all those painstakingly placed dominoes will topple just right. But the truth is, you can’t know. You must wait for your readers to tell you their experience, keeping in mind that it is the rare author who nails it perfectly the first time.

It’s why our fellow writers, agents, editors and loyal reader friends are so essential to the work. They want to help us excavate the outstanding thriller lurking just beneath the surface of that killer draft. Accept feedback. Make it better. Keep reading. Keep writing. That’s our path.

Suspense writers are daredevils at heart, and the stakes are incredibly high. When a thriller doesn’t thrill, it’s a failure. But for those focused on the high wire act of creating a visceral thrill from words spun on paper, nothing else will satisfy.

Elizabeth Lee is a novelist, screenwriter and actress living in New York City. Her thriller, Love Her Madly, was released this August from Atria Books/Simon & Schuster. Reach her at www.melizabethlee.com

(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)

Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.

For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.

And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.

*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.

9/6/16 9/6/16

Was, Had Been, Is / Fran Stewart

Over time the way that we use words and phrases has a tendency to change. Ideally this would work towards the evolution and continued improvement of the language. As of late, however, the more common trend is bending the rules and taking shortcuts until these incorrect methods of writing become the accepted norms. In this week’s guest blog, author Fran Stewart shares her thoughts on the subject.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine

Was / Had Been / Is
By Fran Stewart

The English language expands and contracts, usually without our being aware of it. Language always evolves, with the additions of new words as new technologies come into their own, as musical forms or pop cultural icons rise or wane in popularity.

This recent change, though, seems more basic to me than the simple addition of words. We seem to have forgotten what it was to remember the past. I’d noticed the change in newspaper quotations, in magazine interviews, and in the conversations of people around me. But it all came to an explosive awareness recently when I heard a Public Radio commentator – that’s right, National Public Radio, that bastion of proper speech and erudite ideas – say, “So here I am walking down the street yesterday, and . . .”

Whatever happened to past tense? There I was yesterday, walking down the street. The street experience happened yesterday, so wouldn’t past tense be appropriate in reporting it? Apparently not. More and more, I find that people tend to think in present tense, speak in present tense, and write entire novels in that same tense. The use of the present tense is so ubiquitous now, that I’ve experimented with mentioning it to writers with whom I’ve been speaking, calling their attention to their own use of the present tense, only to be met with incredulous denials. “I don’t do that,” they’ve said. “Do I?”

Maybe I’m more aware of past versus present since I began writing the ScotShop Mysteries. A Wee Murder in My Shop, the first book in the series, introduces Macbeath Donlevy Freusach Findlay Macearachar Macpheidiran of Clan Farquharson, otherwise known as Dirk. Did I mention that Dirk is the wonderful ghost of a 14th century Scotsman? The 14th century was a time during which the English language changed drastically, from the almost entirely incomprehensible (to us) Old English to the Middle English used by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales.

I’ve had great fun listening to Dirk talk and watching as he struggles to integrate 21st-century Americanisms into his ghostly psyche. He’s in the process of gradually enhancing the vocabulary of Peggy Winn, owner of the ScotShop, with words like whinge and beceorest. When Dirk tells Peggy Ye needna whinge so, or Why d’ye beceorest when ye canna do any the thing about it? she can usually decipher the meaning from the context in which he says these things. (I’m happy to report that the narrator for the WEE MURDER audiobook got Dirk’s voice and accent exactly right.) Whinge and beceorest are similar in the same way complain and grumble are—they’re both nuances of the same sort of idea. But each one adds its own flavor, one closer to a whine; the other nearer to a grouch. And those nuances are part of the beauty of the English language.

For decades, I’ve had a personal vendetta against the Smurfs, who taught an entire generation that the use of an exact word was never necessary when one could simply use smurf as a verb, a noun, any part of speech. Now, I don’t consider this move to expressing oneself almost exclusively in present tense to be nearly as insidious as the dumbing-down of our language by the little blue critters (or rather, by their TV script-writers). It does give me pause though, to wonder whatever will happen to a handy little word like had. As every writer knows, or should know, when we write in past tense, if we have to go even farther back in time, we stick in a had (or two) to make the timing clear. After that, we can dispense with the auxiliary word. Here’s an example:

Gladiola Grim played the piano at every social function. We hated it. Her sense of rhythm had always been atrocious, but the last time I heard her play, just before she was murdered, she exceeded our lowest expectations when she executed her variations on Moonlight Sonata. I use the term executed judiciously, of course, since poor Beethoven would have gleefully strangled her if the stranger wearing a black cape hadn’t obliged shortly after the musical fiasco.

There is no need, as you can see, to put another had before the word exceeded. The timing is perfectly clear. Without the past tenses and past perfects, though, the chronology becomes harder to follow:

Gladiola Grim plays the piano at every social function. We hate it. Her sense of rhythm is atrocious, but the last time I’m listening to her play, just before she’s murdered, she exceeds our lowest expectations when she executes her variations on Moonlight Sonata. I use the term executes judiciously, of course. Poor Beethoven misses out on strangling her because the stranger wearing a black cape beats him to it.

I would like to keep had in the running. If English has to evolve—and what language doesn’t?—Dirk and I would vote for clarity rather than what I see as a lazy approach to tenses.

Fran Stewart is the author of the Biscuit McKee Mysteries – Gray as Ashes is the seventh book in that series – as well as a standalone mystery – A Slaying Song Tonight, set during the Great Depression. Her non-fiction work includes From the Tip of My Pen: A Workbook for Writers. Her new ScotShop Mystery Series from Berkley Press began with A Wee Murder in My Shop. The second book in that series, A Wee Doe of Death, was released in early 2016. Book number 3 of the ScotShop Mysteries, A Wee Homicide in the Hotel, will be released February 7, 2017. Fran lives quietly with various rescued cats beside a creek on the other side of Hog Mountain, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Read more about Fran and her works at www.franstewart.com

(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)

Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.

For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.

And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.

8/26/16 8/26/16

How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration / Alex Dolan

As writers we know that inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime. It's important to be alert and soak in the details of the world around you. Often times we draw inspiration from our non-fictional surroundings to power us through creating our fictitious tale. In this week’s guest blog, author Alex Dolan shares the story of how he got inspiration for his upcoming novel, The Empress of Tempera, and how you can get inspiration for yourself.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine

How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration

How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
By Alex Dolan

A few years ago I wandered into the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco to kill time during lunch. I was staring at the work of an artist I’d never seen, and noting my interest, one of the staff shared his story.

The artist was a man named Rudolf Bauer, a German painter who rose to fame before World War II, and someone who was influential to some artists who have become household names, such as Kandinsky, Chagall and Klee. In fact, Bauer was so significant, his primary benefactor, Solomon Guggenheim, commissioned Frank Llloyd Wright to design a modern art museum on 5th Avenue in Manhattan to house his collection.

Yep, that Guggenheim Museum was built for this guy. So why haven’t you ever heard of Bauer?

He was a popular painter while Hitler was coming to power. As an artist, especially an artist whose primary benefactor was a Jewish American, he was a target. He was arrested for his “degenerate” art and spent several months in a Gestapo prison. With help from Guggenheim, Bauer found passage to the United States, and signed a contract that set him up with a house and Duesenberg convertible.

The problem was, Bauer didn’t read English, and signed a contract he didn’t fully understand. The contract also stated that Bauer couldn’t earn any income in the U.S. as a painter. All of the money he made through his works would go to the Guggenheim family.

Bauer sunk into depression and stopped painting, and the Guggenheims ended up boxing up the collection and storing it in the basement of the museum, where it festered in anonymity for decades. It was only when the museum changed curators and unboxed the archive that they rediscovered an artist who had been condemned to obscurity by one of the wealthiest families in America.

I thought the story was fascinating. I went back several times to get more details, and read as much as I could about Bauer. In the end, the story provided the seed that grew into my novel, The Empress of Tempera (Sept. 13, 2016 release). KNCOVER ALEX

I didn’t want to retell Bauer’s story (just in case anyone’s wondering if I just gave spoilers for my own book), but I was driven by the idea that a family with wealth and influence could expunge the memory of a prominent artist. It’s an old story — the rich versus the underprivileged. I played with the idea of what might happen if a painting from a forgotten artist was discovered, and that discovery stirred up a blood feud that had been dormant for decades. David and Goliath. Rocky and Apollo Creed. The underdog story. I added my own spin on it by inserting a protagonist who was a kleptomaniac, who becomes obsessed with the painting and needs to steal it for herself. Then, the mayhem was easy to release.

All of this came from a willingness to go somewhere new and talk to someone.

I believe that fiction and storytelling is a way of mirroring back what’s happening in our world. So it makes sense that the inspiration for your next great story can come from the real world. As part of my show, “Thrill Seekers,” I interview thriller writers who have been at this for a lot longer than I have, and I often hear how they found their initial creative inspiration in a headline, or when they were visiting a new place, or when they had a novel experience. All of these writers seem to have the universal trait of being curious to digest what’s happening in the world. Eventually, something they learned or someone they met worms its way into fiction.

I also think it’s easier to find inspiration when you’re looking for it. So, I’m nosy. If someone’s telling me something interesting, I ask her for all the gruesome details. I’ll let him talk himself hoarse. Maybe this will become the start of something wonderful, and maybe I’ll just learn something interesting to share with another friend. Eventually, when I listen hard enough, I find something.

I recommend anyone who’s trying to come up with new story ideas to soak up as much of the world around you as possible. The more you read, watch, talk, and listen, the more likely the Isaac Newton apple will fall on your head.

Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” and I agree. Inspiration can find you at any moment. But it helps if you’re looking for it.

Alex Dolan is the author of The Empress of Tempera and The Euthanist. He’s also a California-based musician and the host of Thrill Seekers, part of Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. 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, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.

For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.

And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.

8/26/16 8/26/16

How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration / Alex Dolan

How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration

How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
By Alex Dolan

Yep, that Guggenheim Museum was built for this guy. So why haven’t you ever heard of Bauer?

All of this came from a willingness to go somewhere new and talk to someone.

Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” and I agree. Inspiration can find you at any moment. But it helps if you’re looking for it.

(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)

Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.

For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.

And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.

8/5/16 8/5/16

Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel / Shana Thornton

Sometimes when we get done writing we sit back, look at the finished product, and wonder what's missing. We wonder what is keeping this story from being the suspenseful piece of work that we want it to be. Often times, that answer can be that a story is perhaps too linear. It can, of course, be comfortable to stay in our comfort zone and stick with an easy-to-write plot. What we sometimes must do instead is keep the reader turning pages with a secondary plot. In this week's guest blog, author Shana Thornton shares her experience with doing just that.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine

Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel

Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
By Shana Thornton

Writers often say they have a finished novel, but it’s missing something to make it a more suspenseful story. Maybe there’s not enough action in the book to hold your attention as the writer, and your fears could materialize if a reader stops reading your book due to lack of tension to make them turn those pages. Consider adding a crime, specifically, a murder as a secondary storyline. The murder does not have to happen to your character or even someone they know, and it can still be a captivating, secondary plot line for your readers.

When murder is a secondary storyline in your novel, you enrich your story with an event that could motivate your character(s) to make different choices. As with real life, when a murder takes place nearby, people are naturally preoccupied by the investigation happening in their community or on the news. Your main character could easily become obsessed with a murder, and you reveal more about the character’s mind to the reader. Simply by showing fear in the character’s mind, you increase the tension of the story.

A murder as a secondary story line adds suspense to a book that may not have any or enough, and the murder keeps the reader on edge, wondering if the crime will become more important and in es KNCOVER SHANA sence, take over the story. For example, in my first novel, Multiple Exposure, my main point for writing the book was to show how fear and war affect the family members of soldiers who are deployed. I wanted to focus on the heightened state of fear caused by 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I decided to show those themes through a narrator, Ellen Masters, whose husband is a Special Forces medic and photographer. He is deployed for the majority of the present-day action of the book. During that time, Ellen teaches classes at a university and three students are brutally murdered at a park near her home.

This secondary plot line can also help with character development. The character experiences fear in my book. For Ellen, the murder becomes an obsession that leads to heightened anxiety. When she arrives home, she looks under the beds, in the closets, behind doors, waiting for a murderer to come after her. You could also show a character’s compassion, courage, and/or shock and disconnect to a murder.

You could also push the suspense beyond a focus on the main character(s), and develop the tension in the larger community. For my book, not only does the reader face the murder and fear through Ellen’s eyes, but she goes on to show the reactions of the community where she lives. She describes how the college students on campus react to the loss of the murdered students. This reveals more about the setting and the people who live in that setting. In the reader’s mind, the story can become expansive as you show the community, press coverage, and how groups deal with the aftermath of a murder in differing ways.

Two storylines can be intimidating, especially in the beginning of the writing process. To maintain both storylines, keep the main plot line simple and weave in enough to entertain your readers and keep them guessing about what may happen next. Eventually, the two storylines will become entwined, even if only in the character’s mind. You will create added depth and tension to your characters and the overall story.

One common mistake when pitching a book with a secondary storyline is that we writers often forget to highlight that plot line when describing the book. Recently, I was at a book event and continuously pitched my book as a war novel from the point of view of a soldier’s spouse. Later, as more readers stopped to talk, someone asked me if I had any murder mysteries, and that's when I realized that I had been giving a book spiel that didn’t include the murder suspense part of my novel. Work on a pitch for your book that incorporates both storylines into the description. Chances are that readers will be interested in one or the other. You’ll gain readers who enjoy the murder mystery/suspense side of your story, and they will turn those pages as quickly as they can read the words to find out what happens next.

Shana Thornton is the author of two novels, Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel (2015) and Multiple Exposure (2012), and co-author of the nonfiction creativity book, Seasons of Balance: On Creativity & Mindfulness (2016). Shana is a native middle-Tennessean. She earned an M.A. in English from Austin Peay State University. She was the Editor-in-Chief of Her Circle Ezine, an online women's magazine featuring authors, artists, and activists. She is the owner of Thorncraft Publishing, an independent publisher of literature written by women (thorncraftpublishing.com). Shana lives in Tennessee with her family.

To read Shana’s interviews with women authors and activists, visit Her Circle.

To read more of her nonfiction, visit her blog.

Follow her on Twitter @shanathornton

Instagram @shana_trailbalance

(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)

Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.

For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.

And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.

8/5/16 8/5/16

Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel / Shana Thornton

Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel

Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
By Shana Thornton

To read Shana’s interviews with women authors and activists, visit Her Circle.

To read more of her nonfiction, visit her blog.

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Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.

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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.

3/4/16 3/4/16

Live From Bangalore: A Book's Journey

It’s no secret that the world is shrinking; globalization, social media, and widespread availability of the internet has made the exchange of information between distant locales easier and faster than ever before. But what effect does this brave new world have on publishing.

Author and Bangalore-based businessman Vasudev Murthy recounts his own publishing experiences and how this global market has allowed his works to take minds, and journies, of their own.

A Book's Journey

By Vasudev Murthy

They say that every book finds its reader. In 2016, that could well mean someone in a tiny town in Brazil or in Seoul in Korea.

I live in Bangalore, a city in southern India. I write on a variety of subjects—Music, Crime, Humour, Management . . . I have a lot to say and I shall keep writing. I’ve been published by Rupa, Sage, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Poisoned Pen Press and a few more. I realize that I’ve been very fortunate.

But this is not about my fortune but the interesting experience of suddenly finding my books being read in far-away places. Much happens by serendipity as I shall show.

I wrote Sherlock Holmes in Japan in 2012-13. It was published by HarperCollins India and was then showcased by them at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Robert Rosenwald, the CEO of Poisoned Pen Press bumped into someone at the HarperCollins stall and decided to acquire the US rights. PPP renamed the book Sherlock Holmes, the Missing Years: Japan and did an additional round of editing and launched it in the US in March 2015 with a gorgeous cover.

Things became even more interesting. Shortly thereafter, HarperCollins sold the Portuguese language rights to Editora Vestigio in Brazil. It was translated with a great deal of finesse by Ana Oliviera and appears to have become very popular. The book’s production was quite wonderful and the cover design daring and different. What a pity I can’t read the language!

I developed a positive relationship with PPP (in distant Arizona) and worked with them on planning my next book. And soon, I signed a contract with PPP for Sherlock Holmes, the Missing Years: Timbuktu. The book was published in January 2016.

Meanwhile, a Korean publisher called Gamesman reached out to HarperCollins and acquired the Korean language rights. Their particular speciality is the sale of one e-chapter at a time; Korea has apparently adopted e-Books in a very big way. Along with that has come new business models which allows readers to decide on moving ahead chapter by chapter; that’s pressure on a writer to keep things interesting throughout or lose the reader!

A friend in Japan introduced a major publisher Kokusho-Kankokai to HarperCollins India which resulted in the sale of the Japanese language rights, something that I was hoping for at the back of my mind.

But what has all this taught me?

One: the world is truly shrinking. Deals are made faster than ever before and publishers are unafraid of placing their bets on a relatively unknown writer if the theme is compelling enough.

Two: the book you write has a life of its own. I can no longer control its destination and I have no way of knowing how true the translation is. It’s a risk worth taking. One never knows what may happen. For instance, a reader in Brazil made a video about it!

Three: your neighbour in Bangalore does not know who you are, except as the guy with the barking dogs, but people in tiny towns in Brazil and the US do and often write in. I find it slightly surreal. The books have made me an international citizen in a way.

Four: it’s very exhilarating working with publishers and editors overseas and seeing how they think. It’s enriching for the writing process. For example, Timbuktu needed a great deal of research. The publisher worked with me from concept to completion. That’s a wonderful example of how the writing process need not be solitary in this age, and can call upon well-wishers from across vast distances.

Five: speed and responsiveness is king. The quick exchange of information, photographs and graphics ensures that a book is out faster than ever before. That means both publishers and writers need to have a great sense of urgency. And communication needs to be crisp and clear.

Six: Marketing has changed. Book launches don’t happen for me because it’s not possible to travel vast distances. I have to support my publisher in whichever way they think best, which these days may include video interviews or blog submissions. I am fairly active on twitter and that does help.

Seven: you may write for a certain audience and include unusual cultural references; the reader is liberal and prepared to find out what you mean. However, there is an additional responsibility placed on us to be rigorous in our research or risk criticism. And what about the poor translator who must be so precise in conveying the syntax as well as the nuance?

This is the journey my book has taken. I hope you find it self-explanatory. Who knows how this picture will look after the Timbuktu book gathers steam?

murthygraphic

20160223Headshot_Murthy Vasudev Murthy has authored books on a variety of subjects including music, crime, management and humor. His publishers include Sage, HarperCollins, Bloomsbury, Poisoned Pen Press, Editora Vestigio, Gamesman, LiFi, Kokusho-Kankokai and Rupa, and his book Sherlock Holmes in Japan (Harper Collins, India) has been translated into Portuguese, Korean and Japanese.

Vasudev lives in Bangalore, India where he runs a consulting firm. When he's not knee deep in researching or writing his next book, he can be found teaching, conducting animal welfare seminars, playing the violin, or twisting his aging body into improbable yoga asanas. He has been rescued by six dogs who highly recommend his books as an excellent source of dietary fiber.

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