Place in Fiction by Peter Gadol

Every author has aspects of narrative that he or she looks forward to in writing a book, and also areas he or she may wish to ignore (I’m thinking of the way, say, Joan Didion will ignore basic stage management in any given scene; no one ever crosses a street or sits down at a table in her fiction). For my part, I love writing about place. Setting is something I think about pretty much nonstop while moving through a first draft and subsequent revisions. It’s no surprise then that novelists whom I admire likewise seem extra-sensitive to the landscapes in their books. For me, the ancestral home at the center of Tana French’s new novel The Witch Elm becomes a lively secondary character in the narrator, Toby’s, story, a backdrop certainly, but also a foil. A certain elm tree on the property emerges as a vivid centerpiece around which the thriller turns.

I’m not sure where my interest in literary place comes from except to say I always thought AA Milne could have done more to describe Hundred Acre Wood. I’ve been very fortunate as an adult to travel abroad, but books afforded me my first explorations (actually my favorite book was the Atlas). Whenever I do travel now, I find I’m hyperalert, absorbing what details come my way, the stone streets, the faces in a market—and I want to instill in my readers the same wonder about the setting, even if I’m writing about a place they might know well.

If this resonates for you and narrative place is something you, too, are keen on, there are some essential principles I think you can keep in mind while writing:

1. Setting is dynamic.

Too often writers think about setting in the way they do about exposition as if it’s all about information that once dispatched can be filed away so the reader can barrel into the main action. It’s true that a reader will want to be located and perhaps understand what broadly lies within the perimeter of a central place, but as the chapters unfold, new areas within that space can be drawn. I’m thinking of the first section of Ian McEwan’s Atonement; readers are continually brought into different rooms in the manor, various cottages on the estate, and quite significantly to various dark gardens on the grounds.

The way I think of it, the work of depicting setting is never done, and sometimes when we go back to certain spaces we’ve already read about, they are renovated in ways that deepen the plot. I’m thinking of another Ian McEwan novel, The Comfort of Strangers, wherein lovely, mysterious Venice becomes disturbing, violent Venice.

2. Setting can function like a secondary character.

I’m less interested in idyllic, perfect fictional places than I am in places that propose conflicts for protagonists in the way secondary characters might. Mystery and thriller writers know this well. You can pick up any novel by Arnaldur Indridason and see the way the contained city of Reykjavík is like Detective Erlendur’s old friend; he knows its every street, its every trick. And yet the city again and again presents complex puzzles and, as is the case in Jar City, reveals its sinister history, hitherto opaque for our hero. Detective Erlendur will never really know Reykjavík completely, no one can.

3. Weather can deepen the tone—and climate is also dynamic.

When I define melodrama for my students, I like to refer to the classic Douglas Sirk film in which a woman is feeling melancholic and leans against a window; outside it is raining; the mood indoors and out is the same. But one needn’t descend into Sirkian expressionism to paint the mood—although rain works, certainly! Look at Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, set in Sri Lanka, for some good monsoon/fever manipulation. I like to point to Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan as a great example of the way the dynamic climate can relate to plot: How long will snow cover up a wrecked plane? And when will a thaw reveal it? Speaking of snow, over twenty-five years later I still recall needing to wrap myself in an extra blanket when reading Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow.

4. The way one draws setting will create useful constraints.

Every aspect of writing is variable, and every writer consequently designs the internal rules for a book, the constraints necessary to give it shape. In choosing a certain point-of-view, we recognize we may be closed off from limning certain characters’ thoughts. Similarly, we make choices about setting that guide us. Is our depiction of a fictional place accurate to a real place? Are we being true to an actual map? And if the work isn’t set in the present day, are we following an appropriate historic map? Or maybe we want to wholly invent the location for our work. Although even then, there will be the question of whether our invented town or canyon or street sits in proximity to known places in the real world of the reader. Then again, some authors choose to create new worlds with new architecture and new physics (see Renee Gladman’s Ravicka trilogy).

I’m very interested in books like Jim Crace’s Harvest, which would seem to be set in the agrarian English countryside at the advent of industrialization. Yet that’s never stated explicitly, and within the hermetic world of this bleak novel, we’re left to contemplate how outsiders in small communities are blamed, demonized, and tortured. Or there are works like José Saramago’s Blindness, a nameless state wherein the population mysteriously becomes sightless and descends into anarchy—or JM Coetzee’s Childhood of Jesus series, another invented place that seems topographically and linguistically to resemble an Iberian state but not explicitly so. Crace, Saramago, and Coetzee all stay within a familiar earthly realm (unlike Gladman), yet we’re never sure where exactly we are—but we inevitably see in these invented places our own world universally reflected.

5. Setting can generate plot.

Sometimes when we plan our novels, we know where we’re going; more often we don’t, or perhaps we have a general direction, but how exactly we’ll write out the chapters remains unknown and we make discoveries along the way. And when that happens, I’ve found that setting can generate plot. When I was first writing The Stranger Game, I took my narrator Rebecca on a hike in the park north in a city not unlike Los Angeles and had her come up on a house abandoned during its construction; because of something she hears in the house, she explores and witnesses some people who might be playing the eponymous game wherein people are randomly following strangers. I knew that the book would wind toward a criminal twist, but didn’t know where exactly to stage what I wanted to happen. It worked out well to take Rebecca back to the abandoned house. And then, well, without giving too much away, I’ll just say that for yet another plot turn, I decided to take the narrator and the reader back there again.

About the vital importance of place in fiction, maybe Eudora Welty articulated it best: “Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable as art if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else. …Fiction depends for its life on place.”

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Peter Gadol’s seventh novel The Stranger Game was recently published by Hanover Square Press / HarperCollins and listed as a Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2018. FX is developing The Stranger Game as a television series. Gadol’s other novels include Silver Lake, Light at Dusk, and The Long Rain. His work has appeared in foreign editions and in journals such as Tin House, StoryQuarterly, and the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal. A past NEA fellow, Gadol is Chair of MFA Writing at Otis College of Art and Design and lives in Los Angeles.

www.petergadol.com

Plotting or Pantsing? Which is better? by Lynette Eason

Getting from POINT A to POINT B isn’t always in a straight line

Do you ever sit down to start a new project and stare at your screen with equal parts anticipation and fear? I’ve written right at 50 books, novellas, etc. I’m traditionally published, which means when I sit down to write a story, I’ve already been paid for half of it. That, in turn, means I have to write the story or I have to give the money back. And since the money’s usually already spent…well, you get the idea. There’s no turning back at this point. Somehow, I have to start this story and finish it. And, in the end, it has to be phenomenal. Or at least publishable.

Last month, I turned in the last story in the Blue Justice series. So, while that series has come to an end, it was time to start the first book in the next series. I’ll be honest. The first book always terrifies me. Why? Because I put so much pressure on myself to get it right and that’s generally a crapshoot because, by nature, I’m not a huge plotter. So what does that mean? It means that I don’t really get it right the first time and I have to go back and make changes as the story unfolds.

But wouldn’t it be easier to simply plot the story out?

Maybe, but since I write on such tight deadlines, I don’t always have the time to spend plotting and thinking, thinking and plotting. I have to get the words on the page and then fix them later. However, that’s not to say that I don’t have a process that works for me. And it’s usually a route that takes me around my elbow to get to my rear.

I tend to start out with a character sketch then I figure out the first scene—and sometimes the last— then jump into the story without any real idea of where I’m going. Sometimes I struggle my way through it and swear that with the next book, I’m going to plot everything in advance, and then in the end, it just works out. Sure, I have to go back and add in red herrings or foreshadowing or tweak a character’s reaction to a situation or whatever, but again, in the end, the story works. Other times, those rare times, the story just flows. Like a gift, the words come as the scenes play out in my head and the characters do what they’re supposed to do. Code of Valor, book 3 in the Blue Justice series was one of those stories. I struggled with it a bit in the beginning, but as soon as I got the first few scenes done, I knew the rest of the story and where it needed to go.

Because I don’t use storyboarding or mapping or any of those really creative, cool devices, I get asked a lot of times how I do it.

“How can you just sit down and write and, in the end, have a story that not only works, but has all of the loose ends tied up in a way that makes sense?”

Aside from having fabulous editors that catch mistakes, I think it comes down to characterization. For me, I have to know my characters. I have to know how they think, how they react to life in general, their strengths and weaknesses, etc. Then I put them in situations where they have to draw on their strengths and overcome their weaknesses in order to grow and become a different person by the end of the story—a better person. And sometimes they have someone in their lives that helps make that happen.

In Code of Valor, my heroine comes from a very abusive past, but, thanks to counseling and someone in her life who graced her with unconditional love, she was able to overcome a lot of her issues. She learned her self-worth doesn’t come from what other people think of her and that just because she made some mistakes in the past, doesn’t mean she has no hope of a successful, happy future.

And, in the end, I wind up taking these characters on a life altering journey. A journey that allows me to experience the ups and downs and surprises along with them. A lot of people argue that you can’t have a really great story unless you plot it out in detail, but I know a lot of people who’d argue with that statement. Lee Child is one of those. I was at a conference and he stated that often he didn’t know what he was going to write in the next paragraph, much less the next scene. I wish I could have told him how much I appreciated that! Then there’s Jeffrey Deaver who said he takes eight months to plot out his novel then writes 110,000 words in six weeks. I might have been a bit jealous, but I’m sticking with what works for me.

And that’s my point. There’s no wrong way to write a novel. Plotter, pantser, or plantser. There’s only the right way—and that’s the way that works for you.

What about you? What’s your system? What works for you?

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Lynette Eason is the bestselling author of Oath of Honor, as well as the Women of Justice series, the Deadly Reunions series, the Hidden Identity series, and the Elite Guardians series. She is the winner of two ACFW Carol Awards, the Selah Award, and the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. She has a master’s degree in education from Converse College and lives in South Carolina. Learn more at www.lynetteeason.com.

How to Write a Killer Query Letter by Ellie Alexander

You finished your first manuscript—congratulations! Now what? How do you start the process of finding an agent and how do you write the (gasp) dreaded query letter?

My first piece of advice for writers beginning the querying process is to take a minute to celebrate the success of writing a novel. It’s no small feat. You should feel proud of your accomplishment. Go ahead and toast with a glass of champagne or take yourself out to dinner. After you’ve reveled in the moment, the real work begins.

Step One—research. It’s time to hit the bookstore or library. Spend an afternoon perusing the shelves to see where your book fits best. Nothing will get you a rejection faster than sending a query letter to an agent who doesn’t represent your book’s genre. Is your book fiction? Nonfiction? Where does it fall within sub-genres? For example, if you’re writing a mystery is it a traditional mystery, true crime, noir, historical, or cozy? Figure out exactly where your book will be shelved once it’s published. Believe it or not, this is one area where many new writers stumble. I recently reviewed a query letter of a writer who opened by saying, “My book appeals to all readers in all genres.” She was surprised when she got rejected by every agent she had queried. Publishing is a business and agents and editors need to know how to position your book in order to sell it.

Step two—complementary titles. While you’re on your research mission, pick a handful of titles that are similar in tone and style to your book. Read them! Don’t skip this step. Trust me. If you find that the books you’ve chosen aren’t a good match, go back and get another stack until you find five to six titles that are complimentary. Scour the acknowledgments section. Did the author thank their agent? Wahoo! You got lucky. Make a note and move on to the next book. If not, you’ll have to use some sleuthing skills online to see if you can find out who represented each author.

Step three—your dream list. Using the information you’ve learned, begin compiling a dream list of agents. This should include the agents who represent similar titles. It can also expand to agents you’ve met at a writing conference, discovered on Twitter, or who were recommended by a friend. Agent query (www.agentquery.com) is a great resource to find agents who are actively seeking new clients. You can search by genre and keywords. Your dream list should include fifteen to twenty agents to start.

Step four—cyberstalking. This is the one time when a little cyberstalking is acceptable. Visit the website of each agent on your dream list. Read their profiles. Learn what kind of books they’re interested in and what their submission requirements are. Some agents accept email queries. Some want sample chapters. Some request book proposals. Take extensive notes. Do NOT send agents perfumed packages or promises of chocolates and your first-born child. This “stalking” exercise is to ensure that each agent on your list is a good match for your project and that when you’re ready to start the query process you’ll know the exact requirements for each agent.

Step five—time to write. Start with a one to two sentence introduction that includes why you’re querying this agent, the title of your book, genre, and word count. Something like this, “I know that you represent one of my favorite writers, Author X, and I thought you might be interested in my 76,000-word cozy mystery which is similar in tone and style, but different in that it is set in the world of craft beer.”

After a brief intro, write three to four paragraphs summarizing your book. Make sure you include who your protagonist is, the hook, and why you think it will resonate with readers.

Include a final paragraph about your writing experience. This can be that you write for your community newspaper, a magazine, or a blog. You can talk about any professional writing organizations you belong to or the fact that you’re active on social media.

Close the letter by thanking the agent for their time and consideration.

Step six—important notes. Personalize each query letter. You’re going to need to go through your dream list one letter at a time and address each agent personally as well as re-write the introductory paragraph to reflect your research. This attention to detail and professionalism is going to set your query apart from the slush pile.

Keep your query letter to one page. Short and simple is the name of the game. Use your query letter to entice the agent to want to read more.

Track your queries on your dream list. Make note of when you sent each letter. Then, make additional notes when you receive responses from each agent.

Good luck and happy querying!

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Ellie Alexander writes the bestselling Bakeshop Mystery series and the Sloan Krause Mysteries for Macmillan Publishing.

Ellie is a Pacific Northwest native who spends ample time testing recipes in her home kitchen or at one of the many famed coffeehouses nearby. When she’s not coated in flour, you’ll find her outside exploring hiking trails and trying to burn off calories consumed in the name of research.

You can find her online at:

Web: https://www.elliealexander.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellie_alexander/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwd80ruKbz98VZQGT2I23-Q/featured

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elliealexanderauthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BakeshopMystery

The Impossibility of Historical Fiction by James R. Benn

Readers of crime fiction know the drill. Most often there’s a protagonist, some sidekicks, various obstructionists, a murder, and a murderer. The search for truth kicks in and the game is afoot.

This fictional construct in a historical mystery offers readers something extra; a lagniappe within the plot and the drive toward resolution, the joy of experiencing a time gone by. The understanding of the standard elements of (most) crime fiction provides a reassuring platform which lends familiarity to what might be new territory in terms of time or place.

Reading historical fiction, we are forced to think of the past not as simply a sequence of large-scale events, but rather to understand the patterns, causes, and consequences surrounding those events and how they impact characters we have come to know and care about. Intertwining the personal narrative of a fictional protagonist as an actor within the historical context can provide for a powerful historical understanding. We don’t just read about a battle, we feel the weight of a pack digging into a soldier’s sweat-stained back. Historians such as Bruce Catton and Douglas Freeman, among others, have written excellent volumes on the American Civil War, but it is Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage that today still stands as a defining description of what those terrible battles were like.

But there are challenges and pitfalls, because the past itself does not have the same shape or coherence as does the present which we inhabit. The past is filled with countless people, places, and conflicts which we turn into something called history to impose order upon chaos. As the 19th century historian John Lothrop Motley said:

"There is no such thing as human history. Nothing can be more profoundly, sadly true. The annals of mankind have never been written, never can be written; nor would it be within human capacity to read them if they were written. We have a leaf or two from the great book of human fate as it flutters in the stormwinds ever sweeping the earth. We decipher them as best we can with purblind eyes, and endeavor to learn their mystery as we float along to the abyss; but it is all confused babble, hieroglyphics of which the key is lost".

If that’s the opinion of a distinguished historian, how can writers properly represent history? Motley’s point was that modern readers cannot hope to understand the past, the motivations and worldviews of those people who are so profoundly different from us. The historian knows when and on what ground a battle took place, but historical fiction demands much more—a window into the soul of those who fought, killed, suffered, and died in that battle. The dominant challenge for me is always to remember that the men and women who grew up in the Depression and went off to war in the 1940s are deeply different people from us. Their environment created them, just as ours informs us.

Their world is not ours.

Their life expectancy was about 53; ours is 79. Their economy ran on agriculture and manufacturing; ours runs on service industries. There was no social security or universal medical care for them; we live with a life-long safety net in comparison. Travel, as we experience, understand, and expect it today, was unknown for most people (until the war changed all that). A twenty-year-old in 1940 would fully understand Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, historical figures 70 or 80 years in their past. They would be totally unable to comprehend Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, 70 years in the other direction.

There’s another line of demarcation which separates us. We know what happens next. The Spanish Armada does not invade England; The Union prevails in the American Civil War; The Allies liberate Europe and win the Second World War.

The people who lived through those climactic events did not know how things would end. It seems obvious to us now, but the trick is to create fictional characters who do not know what the future holds—to portray them on the razor’s edge of time, when defeat and disgrace are as likely as life, victory, and a return to normalcy—when the fear of the unknown is as palpable as the fear of whatever obstacle they face.

There was one time in my life when I understood what that must have been like for my fictional characters. I began to write my second book the weekend after 9/11. The skies were empty, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. Much like my protagonist must have thought after Pearl Harbor; I knew only that an unspeakable event had occurred and there was no sense of a knowable outcome. I cling to that memory, trying always to imbue my characters with the sense of being adrift in history, as indeed we all are. It’s critical that writers cleave to that notion and keep their characters from a clear-eyed vision of the future. For them, there can only be a ‘now’, whether that is 1066, 1863 or 1962.

How to accomplish this? For me, research is a total immersion in time and place, whether through reading, walking the ground, listening to music of the day, or watching movies my characters would have seen. I fill notebooks with jottings about the people and places in the story until I feel stuffed with facts, possessed with an overload of data that will allow me to envision how my characters would have interacted with their environment on every level; political, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Then I begin to write; and I hardly ever look at those notes again.

That information overload is there to give me the confidence to write, to construct characters as reliable simulacrums for their times. It’s hard work. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said in his essay “History and National Stupidity”:

“History is not self-executing. You do not put a coin in the slot and have history come out. For the past is a chaos of events and personalities into which we cannot penetrate. It is beyond retrieval and it is beyond reconstruction.”

It’s the novelist’s challenge to prove him wrong about ‘beyond reconstruction.’ Research goes far beyond learning the historical timeline. The historical novelist conveys a sense of the period through small ‘throw-away” details about clothing, food, transportation, dialect, and social customs.

Writer Thomas Mallon said it well: "Only through tiny, literal accuracies can the historical novelist achieve the larger truth to which he aspires namely, an overall feeling of authenticity. It is just like Marianne Moore's famous prescription for the ideal poet. He must stock his imaginary garden with real toads."

Or, as literary critic Logan Pearsall Smith said: “What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers."

We need to whisper the truth of the time in which we write. Too many facts poorly presented can kill a story. Too few, and we may fail to bring alive the characters and their times, leaving the reader with a limp presentation that could take place anywhere, anywhen.

I always thought he was joking, but now I understand what Oscar Wilde meant when he said, “The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”

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James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle mystery series, set during the Second World War. He has been nominated for the Dilys and Barry awards, long-listed for the 2015 Dublin IMPAC Literary Award, and was awarded the 2018 Al Blanchard Short Story Award. His most recent novel is Solemn Graves.

Making Your Inner Writer Stand Out by Seven Jane

It’s a well-known fact: most writers—myself included—are introverts. We spend a lot of time with our faces either buried between the pages of books or awash in the glare of our laptop screens. We have an affinity for cats—just ask Neil Gaiman, Ernest Hemingway, or Charles Dickens—and probably drink a startling amount of coffee, tea, or perhaps something stronger (and sometimes we mix them, ahem). We have exceedingly strong opinions on things like literary classics and Oxford commas. We are either early birds or night owls and never both. Sometimes we wear tweed.

And while some of us are pros at things like social media and blogging, many of us—maybe most of us—are not. After all, our passion is developing other people’s stories, not necessarily doing a great job of sharing our own. Point of fact, some of the most incredible writers I know barely maintain a functioning author website. Others aren’t visible online at all.

No matter if you’re a social media recluse or an avid Tweeter; or if you’re a newbie, an aspiring author, or a veteran; if you’re self-published or traditionally represented, it’s important to consider the importance of branding yourself. Besides your stories, it’s the single most valuable asset you have—and unlike your next book, if you don’t write it, it will write itself.

Branding isn’t just for companies. It’s for people, too, and we—as authors—need to think what our brand is, or is not, saying about us. Brand, in case you’re wondering, isn’t limited to things like logos and social media handles, either. It’s connection—the lasting, emotional impact your readership has when they hear your name, see the cover of one of your books, or talk about one of your characters. And in a very loud, very competitive, and very prickly publishing market, it’s an integral part of building customer—or in our case, reader—loyalty. Likewise, and more practical, it could be an important component of your next query, too. Today, beyond showing your writing chomps in your actual writing, publishers are looking for authors who know how to sell themselves in addition to writing their books. Some are even considering asking authors to submit marketing plans alongside their manuscript submissions and quantifying your platform is part of that. It sounds scary, I know, but like going to med school before becoming a doctor, it’s kind of a big deal.

Luckily, there is some low-hanging fruit you can pluck from the tree of opportunity to get started cultivating your brand. Start by thinking about what sets you apart from other authors and makes you a consistent source of literary creativity that readers need to get their nose into. That’s what brands are: distinct, intentional, engaging, and consistent.

First things first, before you begin thinking about yourself, consider your audience. Who are you writing for? Who reads your books? Are these the same people? Put your audience in the role of a character if it helps. Flush out their interests, motivations. Once you know who you’re talking to, then you can start talking to them in a way you’re sure they’ll hear.

Next, develop your voice—your writing style for readers, so to speak. Think about your values, your opinions, your sense of humor…and then be consistent about how you share it with others. Remember, your branding yourself, not your books. Be you, or the best version of you—the you in your author bio. And be authentic.

Now, add some color. Literally. Choose your look, and apply it consistently. Make a logo, if you don’t have one. Build a website. Get on social media. You don’t have to do the same thing everywhere—in fact, you shouldn’t—but you should be consistent in each place and have a cohesive image everywhere you touch your audience. Different platforms reach different audiences—readers, media, agents, and so forth—so just like we want to write books that pique our reader’s interests, we want to build our brand in ways that pique the interest we’re looking for. There’s no one best way, but, for the sake of example, here’s what I do:

• Website: information about my books, characters, events and media updates, bio, and contacts for myself and my agent, publishers, and my publicist. Most importantly, this is where I keep a weekly blog as well as updates on other articles and editorial contributions. Don’t be static. Make sure you’re updating your website regularly to keep visitors coming back.

• A subscriber newsletter: monthly writing updates, giveaways, and sneak peeks. Fan club!

• Instagram: a daily photo journal of my writing life, often with pictures of coffee and my cats, using colors and images that support my brand—dark and mysterious, like me.

• Twitter: where I maintain my own writing and reading community, chatting daily with other authors and readers, bloggers, and other bookish folk. Follow like-minded authors, journals, publishers, editors, agents, and readers who share your interest. Use hashtags to build your brand and find your tribe.

• Facebook: I’m bad at Facebook, but my friend Rue Volley is amazing—check her out.

• Goodreads: when I’m not writing, I’m reading…and talking about it. You should be, too.

Cultivating an author brand doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, practice, and more than a little adaptation along the way. My best branding advice? Tackle building a brand like writing a new book: outline it, identify the characters, sort out your settings and story plot, and then get busy filling in the lines with the things that make you brilliantly you. Be your introverted self, safely at home with your coffee and cats and tweed (or whatever your writing heart fancies), and make your brand start working for you.

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Seven Jane is an author of dark fantasy and speculative fiction. Her debut novel, The Isle of Gold, was published by Black Spot Books in October 2018. She is represented by Gandolfo Helin & Fountain Literary Management and supported by Smith Publicity.

Seven is a member of The Author's Guild and Women's Fiction Writing Association. She writes a weekly column for WFWA's Industry News newsletter and is a regular contributor to The Nerd Daily.

Website: http://www.sevenjane.com

Social: on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @sevenjanewrites

8 Tips for Writing Authentic Historical Mysteries by Erin Lindsey

So, you want to write a historical mystery. You want it to be authentic and meticulously-researched enough to please the pickiest pedants. But dammit, Jim, you’re a novelist, not a historian! Where do you start?

I have no idea. Or at least, I didn’t when I sat down to write Murder on Millionaires’ Row, a mystery set in Gilded Age New York. I’d never written historical fiction before. I cut my teeth writing fantasy, so while I was used to some light research on things like medieval architecture and technology, nothing I’d tackled up to that point prepared me for the rigours of setting my novel in a real place and time—let alone one as well-documented, and well-loved, as New York City.

But somehow, I blundered through, and two novels and half a dozen convention panels later, while I still wouldn’t consider myself an expert, I have accumulated a few tips and tricks for making your historical novel as accurate, authentic, and immersive as it can possibly be.

I’m going to skip the obvious ones – nonfiction books about the era, movies and television, visiting historical sites and so forth – and go straight to a few that might get overlooked.

1. Pick a setting you’re passionate about. It’s always a good idea to write what you love, but when it comes to historical fiction, you’re going to need that passion to sustain you through many long hours of research. Ideally, you have such a nerd crush on your setting that background reading doesn’t even feel like work.

2. Nose through the newspaper. Even if you don’t plan to include a specific historical event, browsing through local newspapers is a great way to get a feel for the day-to-day concerns of people living at that time, as well as the overall historical and political context. Since we’re talking historical mystery here, stories about crime are especially helpful. They give you a sense of what sorts of nefarious deeds the baddies of the day were up to, as well as helpful tidbits about policing and the justice system. Don’t pass over the advertisements, either. They’ll teach you a lot about what household items were in use, complete with brand names. Little details like that—what your heroine might find lying around her kitchen, say, or in her medicine cabinet—add wonderful texture.

3. Read autobiographies and memoirs. This is obviously important if you’re writing about real-life historical figures, but even if you aren’t, autobiographies and memoirs and a great way to get a feel for what it was like for people living in that time. What they worried about, how they spoke and wrote, who was important to them in their communities. Chances are you’ll find yourself drawing upon some of their experiences, however mundane.

4. Curl up with a good novel. Nonfiction is well and good, but I’m convinced there’s no better way to learn about the little things—etiquette, transport, clothing, food, dialect—than reading novels written in the era you’re writing about. Be careful with class and geography, though. If you’re writing about a housemaid in New York City, Madame Bovary is only going to get you so far.

5. Zoom out. Don’t forget to take account of the major social and technological developments of the day. For example, if you’re writing about 1870s America, the country is dealing with the aftermath of the Civil War. A hundred years later, it’s Vietnam and the civil rights movement. In the 1840s and 50s, the telegraph was changing the way humans communicated; by the 1880s electric lighting was igniting a revolution of its own. Even if you don’t refer to these big-picture issues directly, understanding them—and how they shape the worldviews and daily experiences of your characters—will add depth to the setting and the people living in it.

6.Add Etymonline to your favourites bar. If you’re keen to have your characters use only period-accurate words, this website is a goldmine. My New York City copper couldn’t have a “hunch” in 1886, because that word didn’t show up (at least in that way) until 1904. But my besotted heroine was safe referring to her “crush”, since that one’s been around since 1884. If you can pick up a book on period slang, so much the better. (For 19th century New York, I recommend The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech by Irving Lewis Allen.)

7. Grab a guidebook. Credit for this one goes to Tasha Alexander, who turned me onto Baedeker guides. Think of these like a sort of historical Lonely Planet. Just like modern travel guides, they cover hotels, transport, restaurants, sightseeing, and so forth – complete with amazing details like how much things cost and what sort of clientele you’re likely to encounter in a particular establishment. My personal favourites are the warnings – places ladies shouldn’t go, for example, or gentlemen wishing to be considered respectable. Baedeker specialized in Europe; for the US, I suggest Rand McNally & Co. Admittedly, these particular ones are specific to the 19th century, but I’d be willing to bet there are analogues for earlier periods as well.

8.Find your people. One of the best things about the internet and social media is that it’s easier than ever to connect with your fellow enthusiasts. Bloggers, podcasters, Facebook groups, Pinterest boards—chances are someone out there is busily collecting exactly the sorts of resources you’re looking for. Browse their collections—and don’t be afraid to reach out, either. In my experience, when people are passionate about something, they’re only too happy to share it.

Et voila – these are my best trade secrets so far, though I’m learning all the time. I hope you find them as helpful as I did!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to researching the various accents of Missouri, to make sure I do justice to a certain famous gentleman who figures in the next Rose Gallagher mystery. Suggestions are, of course, welcome.

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Erin Lindsey has lived and worked in dozens of countries around the world, but has only ever called two places home: her native city of Calgary and her adopted hometown of New York. She is the author of the Bloodbound series of fantasy novels from Ace. Murder on Millionaires' Row is her debut mystery. She divides her time between Calgary and Brooklyn with her husband and a pair of half-domesticated cats.

A Plot to Publish by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

In my entire writing life, I have only met one writer who didn’t want to be published. A member of the writing group I belonged to, she wrote small gems, her stories short and stunning. I suspected she’d tried agents and traditional publishers with no luck and had given up. But what if she’d come up with a plan? What if she’d got in on the Flash/Sudden Fiction phenomenon? What if she’d found little markets, magazines, and developed her genre? Wasn’t it worth a try?

Watching this woman take great pleasure in reading a new story each week, I vowed I wasn’t going to be her. I wouldn’t stop trying to publish my mysteries, go as big as I could go, not until those final flames got me and I went down still waving a manuscript in my hot little hand.

The PLAN began with what I was writing. It had to have a little more to it than the mass of other published stories—I concentrated on making my female characters a little quirky, a little deeper, having trauma in their lives—nobody perfect but all of them pretty damned special. I love my female characters. They are me—at my worst and best; all the friends I’ve cried with and laughed with over the years. They are the women I decry and those I admire. I wanted strength, individuality, and a past I could call on to fill in the ground beneath their feet. I didn’t even agree, always, with what they did in the novels—as long as they were true to who they’d come to be and were interested in creating a great story—no matter what I put them through.

Okay, I wrote the first of these female mysteries and finally—after a few years—was satisfied. Many drafts. More to come. I fell in love with nothing. If an editor would ask me to consider changing this or that—I would consider anything —and never find a hill worth dying on.

I sent the novel to five agents I’d researched closely. For me, each had to be a woman. Each had to have a decent client list—some of them writers I had heard of before. Each had to publish a lot of work by women. Each had to be listed almost monthly in Publishers’ Weekly with solid sales. Each had to have a great, client-friendly website with advice for writers on how to approach her, and often be quoted in articles about what agents want.

All five of these agents turned me down, but one said to send her my next novel and to stay in touch. This was the one I wanted most from the lot, so I started a file and began to send her any mention of me in media and news of what I was working on—always reminding her she said to keep in touch.

Never did I stalk her, as one writer did. She asked what they could do if she just came to their office and sat until they took her on. The answer was “Call the police.”

I only sent word of what I was doing when I had something to report—an article published, where I was on the new novel, conferences, seminars, and appearances.

I stayed friendly and kept my tone light.

All of this became the next part of my Grand Plot to Get Published!

I sold that first novel to a small, but solid, publisher on my own—listing articles I’d had in magazines and stories in newspapers. (This is a little like making it off-Broadway—not easy to do either). I included a local article on me in The Detroit News—as being president of a local writers’ organization (all things I’d done on my way to learning how to write and to connect with writers). I wrote about the famous writers I’d taken classes with and those I’d met while helping put on a writers’ conference.

I worked tirelessly at becoming a well-published writer, whether I was ever going to get anywhere or not. Actually, I never let myself entertain a single thought that I wouldn’t finally get where I wanted to go.

After that first book came out—very small thump in the publishing market—it did get me an offer of a contract on three more novels. I wrote these and with each got a little more attention, but not much. Smaller publishers give you credence, some bragging rights. Any kind of attention—newspaper, magazine, online; any good reviews (you ignore any other kind—though there won’t be many. People are starting to read you and will write nice things).

With each published novel, I let kept my Ideal Agent up to date with pub date, reviews—anything and everything. I told her where I was speaking, she had my website. If she was going to ignore everything, I’d give up eventually (but I doubt it). She began to answer—always congratulating me.

I wrote the contracted-for novels and then wrote a different series, with this agent in mind. I sent off exactly what she asked for on the website, no taking advantage of a make-believe friendship but still with very strong reminders of my contacts—and news of a call from a different New York Agent, asking to represent me (one not on my ideal list and definitely not this special woman I was after).

And then came the phone call. We already knew each other. It was fun talking and agreeing on what would be done with the new book. Now we are eleven books into our relationship. The relationship is all I wanted it to be. I’m being called an ‘emerging’ writer now (after all these books better to be ‘emerging’ than receding).

My plan wasn’t an easy one. Nothing was guaranteed. I listened to no one but myself, kept what I wanted at the front of everything. Never questioned what I was doing, nor asked advice. Maybe it’s the old thing about making a mental image of what you want and going after it. I have no magic mushrooms, no amulets, no secret book of phone numbers. All I’ve got is the best novel I could write and a plot, or plan, that I believed in. After all, if we can spend so much time writing the perfect plot for a mystery, why not for our own lives?

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Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli lives on a small lake in northern Michigan where crows and bears give her ideas for novels.

With three series out now, she has just turned in the fourth of the Little Library Series, due out next summer: AND THEN THEY WERE DOOMED. Her novels include: GIFT OF EVIL, the Emily Kincaid series, a Texas series, SHE STOPPED FOR DEATH, A MOST CURIOUS MURDER, and IN WANT OF A KNIFE (Just out). Having written fiction all of her life; having five children, ten grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren, her life is not only full but bursting with mystery and surprise.

Getting the Word Out by L.C. Blackwell

I spent more than eighteen months writing For Sale Murder. Draft after draft—researching, editing, formatting, designing a cover, finding beta readers, choosing an Indie distributor, prepping the book for upload, and more. I thought I was ready to release my very first mystery baby, all 85,000 words of it.

Wrong!

My domain, AuthorBlackwell.com, was locked up but I had no functioning website. I hadn’t plumped up my Facebook connections, either. Ditto for Twitter, LinkedIn. What’s more, I hadn't cleaned out my email contact list or beefed it up—I was too busy writing.

Developing a basic marketing plan was not a particularly challenging assignment; I was an advertising exec in an earlier life. My history, however, did not help me avoid making marketing mistakes.

Choosing to market my own book, I contracted with a print-on-demand distributor. My book is on all the right websites, but that doesn’t ring up sales. And hiring a publicist or paying a distributor to be your marketing arm doesn't take the burden away. You are still the captain of your sales force.

You must create noise about your book, and your name. You can’t be shy or apologetic. You must be brave, wear a mantle of courage. And most important, believe in yourself. Remember, not everyone will like your book, but if no one hears about it, those who could love it may not get a chance to read it.

Marketing to your target

My target was easy to define; it was integral to writing For Sale Murder. And that was a major advantage. I knew the who, the what, the where, and the how to direct my marketing efforts. It was easy to focus my message on postcards, email templates, bookmarks and everything else.

My first mistake: Not starting my marketing efforts sooner.

Developing a plan is vital. Initiating it in waves, I discovered, is critical.

A smart, early move: Creating a voting ballot for my book cover.

An L.A. Creative Director, a close friend, helped me. He recreated my rough cover design into three outstanding versions, which I sent to all my email and social media contacts for a vote. The ballot accomplished three things: 1. Great press. It announced to thousands of my contacts that I had written a new book; 2. A winning cover. I had a clear winner—by a landslide; 3. More press. In emails and posts, I announced the winner and included a teaser video.

Next Mistake: Not advertising my cover posts on social media.

I've since learned the value of a timed Facebook boost.

Catching up

Recognizing the need for more intel, I googled indie marketing tips, marketing groups, websites, et al. It was as though I was back at MSU cramming for finals. I downloaded free eBooks, articles, anything available to grasp publishing changes that could help fast-track my plan.

The results were formidable. And whittling down the number of resources and guides to a manageable list was a worthwhile task. I got new marketing directives and ideas I could put in place with little effort.

I also searched Google for mystery associations and mystery reading groups and websites. That search brought me a national list of Indie bookstores, mystery book clubs, mystery bloggers, book fairs, and shows. With slight changes to email templates, I was able to market to these groups. The result: an email response rate of 34% that equated to strong upticks in sales.

I am surprised and encouraged at the reaction to For Sale Murder. I was able to get a Publishers Weekly review, which I link to every email template I send. I’ve been interviewed and invited to guest post on wonderful blogger sites (DrusMusings.com is one of them). And, I’ve received invitations to join other mystery authors on mystery panels.

My marketing is not finished. My focus now? Libraries. What’s more, as I continue to build my brand, I’m writing my second book in the Peter Dumas series aiming for a late spring release. Marketing to start shortly!

My first mystery has been a learning journey in marketing. The websites and resources I discovered have contributed to my efforts and continue to do so. It is a time-consuming process to filter the best resources and the advice they offer, but the lessons learned are invaluable and will be a blueprint for my next book.

Every author competes with millions of books—on the shelf, online, in libraries, in bookstores.

And almost every sale depends on much more than just wonderful words between a front and back cover. The story description, the cover image, and how you present your book come into play. So, write your heart out. But don’t ever forget to strategize, target, and plan.

Some resources to help you on your writing and marketing journey:

GoCentral.com—GoDaddy’s sweet and easy website builder that anyone can manage. Plus, a support team that is unbelievable.

Blog.Reedsy.com—A British company with great info and an impressive list of available professionals—worldwide editors, artists, publishers and more.

The Self-Publishing Tools of Trade Every Author Must Know –by Lama Jabr.

Free Kindle download.

ttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LJS6TPQ/

A wonderful directory of tools and websites complete with description.

SistersinCrime.org—a supportive group with benefits for published and unpublished authors.

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L.C. Blackwell began a career in Chicago advertising agencies writing and producing Radio-TV and print advertising in a variety of industries that included Fashion, Food and Food Service, Consumer Products, Automotive, Children's Products and Retail. Among the client brands represented: Brown Shoe Company, Johnson's Wax, Armour (Dial Soap), Goodrich, Quaker Oats, Oldsmobile, Sportmart, Echo Housewares and American Dairy. A growing interest in programming saw Blackwell become an independent writer-producer developing creative for a select group of projects. Among them: "Belleza Latina," a 13-week package of daily short-form beauty programs written, produced and licensed to the Spanish Entertainment Network for a double run; A bull-riding documentary airing on ABC and Univision affiliates in Phoenix, Arizona; A multimedia promotion that included creative, jingle and presentation production for the National Fitness Foundation presidential appointee, George Allen. Additionally, L.C. Blackwell is the author of 2 children's books as well as a licensed Managing Broker in Illinois

What's the Point? by Mark de Castrique

A friend of mine was standing in line at the sales register of a local bookstore. The woman in front of her was checking out, and the clerk made a suggestion for a novel. She handed her customer a display copy and the woman quickly thumbed through a few pages. “Oh, this is written in first-person. I don’t read first-person.” She pushed the book aside.

“What?” I exclaimed when my friend related the incident. “She just threw out Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Sun Also Rises, not to mention that icon of all mystery detectives, Sherlock Holmes.”

What was the point for making such a sweeping, excluding statement? The point was for some reason the first-person point-of-view kept this woman out of all first-person stories. She refused to allow herself to believe that a character could be talking to her, the reader. As a writer, I believe point-of-view should have the opposite effect. It draws the reader into the story through the connection established between the narrator and reader. For me, first-person is the most intimate and personal form of storytelling because a character is inviting the reader to share his or her experiences.

But point-of-view should always be chosen for its contribution to the impact a story has on the reader. Thus, there are objective reasons for choosing from a variety of subjective perspectives. As a writer of a particular story, do you want your reader to know more than your protagonist or discover revelations along with her or him? Going back to my English grad school days, I learned point-of-view is a distance set between a narrator and the story and thereby a distance set between the reader and the story. It provides a place for both the narrator and the reader to stand. That place should be consistent and not make the reader feel unfairly manipulated.

First-person in a traditional detective novel puts the reader inside the head of one character and one character only—usually the detective with great exceptions like the ever-faithful Dr. Watson. The reader discovers evidence and corresponding solutions along with the detective. As a writer, I’ve found first-person provides an easier entry into my character’s world, and I hope the entry is as easy for the reader, especially in my two series where a bond can be created between reader and character-narrator across multiple novels.

I realize first-person point-of-view isn’t the only and certainly not the most prolific narrative device. Third-person opens up limitless options for taking the reader into multiple minds and locations not privy to the protagonist. For the thriller, third-person sets up the suspense when the reader knows more than the protagonist and is well aware of the danger lurking ahead. For that reason, I chose third-person for my thrillers, The 13th Target, and The Singularity Race.

Yet, there is not just one point-of-view labeled third-person. This plurality of viewpoints is both the strength and potential weakness of third-person. To keep me immersed in the story to the desired extent that I forget I’m reading, the narrative perspective needs to be consistent. Otherwise, the perspective becomes overly manipulative and frustrating. Information and character thoughts are inconsistently revealed and withheld. For example, when a narrative omniscient voice describing, not only the actions but thoughts of each character suddenly and arbitrarily withholds vital information like the message the detective reads on the bloody note clutched in a murdered man’s hand, then the reader has a right to scream foul. The writer didn’t play fair. It might be a good cliffhanger for the end of a chapter, but not if it’s kept from the reader until the end of the novel.

Third-person can also be a close third-person. The story stays with the view of one character, but no thoughts are revealed for any characters. This point of view is used masterfully by Dashiell Hammett in The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade appears in every scene, but the narrative style is one of objective description only, like a camera following Spade throughout the whole story. If you read the novel with point-of-view in mind, you’ll become aware of how often the descriptions are of characters’ eyes. These “windows of the soul” are as close as Hammett gets to revealing internal thoughts. Why? Because Hammett played absolutely fair with his readers! At the dramatic conclusion, the culprits come to realize they had misjudged what was motivating Sam Spade. But by keeping Sam’s viewpoint free of his thoughts, Hammett surprised the reader as well. The impact was heightened because Hammett not only wrote a great novel; he knew how to tell it with the most powerful point-of-view and he kept that view consistent.

So, point of view isn’t arbitrary. Whether it’s close third-person like Hammett’s, or limited to the thoughts of certain characters, or omniscient in all regards including narrator opinions, the choice should be made in service to the story and in service to the reader. How a story is told is inseparable from the story itself.

Which brings me back to the woman in the bookstore. In my opinion, she separated point-of-view from the potential power that the author’s narrative style brought for the most impactful way to experience the story. She built the first-person point-of-view into a wall and refused to accept it as the author’s gateway into the world he or she created.

And that, my friend, was the author’s point to begin with.

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Mark was born in Hendersonville, NC, near Asheville. He went straight from the hospital to the funeral home where his father was the funeral director and the family lived upstairs. The unusual setting sparked his popular Barry Clayton series and launched his mystery-writing career.

Mark is the author of eighteen novels: seven set in the fictional NC mountain town of Gainesboro, six set in Asheville, two in Washington D.C., one science thriller in the year 2030, and two mysteries written for Middle Graders.

His novels have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. The CHICAGO TRIBUNE wrote, “As important and as impressive as the author’s narrative skills are the subtle ways he captures the geography – both physical and human – of a unique part of the American South.”

Mark is a veteran of the broadcast and film production business. In Washington D.C., he directed numerous news and public affairs programs and received an EMMY Award for his documentary film work.

Mark lives in Charlotte, but he and his wife Linda can be often found in the NC mountains or the nation’s capital.

Adding a Supernatural Element to Your Thriller by Nicholas Kaufmann

Growing up, I was a Monster Kid through and through. One of my favorite memories from my youth is how every Sunday morning at 11 AM, WPIX-TV out of New York City would show an old, black-and-white Abbott and Costello movie. It seemed like they showed every film the comedy duo ever made, and week after week I watched and laughed along with their classic mix of physical comedy and wordplay. I enjoyed all the films, but my true, whole-hearted devotion was reserved for the movies in which Bud Abbott and Lou Costello encountered monsters, haunted houses, and mad scientists, movies like Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott, and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, and of course their greatest film and one of my all-time favorite movies, the incomparable Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In a similar vein (haha), I enjoyed swashbuckling adventure films, but if you wanted to keep my attention you needed to add some monsters to the mix, which is why young me would happily flip right past an Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks movie on TV to watch a Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movie. (Flynn might have been a greatsword-wielding sailor in The Sea Hawk, but he never fought a giant cyclops!) And needless to say, if the gang on Scooby Doo, Where Are You! was just solving regular mysteries instead of investigating monster sightings and hauntings, it probably wouldn’t have become my favorite Saturday morning cartoon.

I’m still a Monster Kid at heart, even though my youth is long behind me. (Long, long behind me. Don’t ask me how long, I won’t tell you.) I still love monsters and ghosts—anything supernatural. I love writing about them too, and have been doing so ever since I was a daydreamer in grade school scrawling stories of aliens and zombies in my notebook instead of paying attention to the teacher. In truth, I don’t feel any different from that schoolboy now, even with six novels and two story collections under my belt. That childhood love of all things supernatural has followed me into adulthood and played an enormous role in my writing. In fact, I can’t seem to write anything without adding the supernatural in some form or other!

For example, my Bram Stoker Award-nominated novelette General Slocum’s Gold isn’t just a heist story about a crew looking for a missing treasure trove on New York City’s abandoned North Brother Island, it also features ghosts, curses, and a thief with the supernatural ability to see through walls and doors with just a touch of his hand. My Thriller Award-nominated and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated novel Chasing the Dragon isn’t just about a heroin addict trying to get her life together; she also happens to be the last living descendant of St. George and is tasked with the same mission as her famous ancestor—to kill a very real and very deadly dragon. My urban fantasy novels, Dying Is My Business and Die and Stay Dead, are crime thrillers that take place in a contemporary New York City where all manner of magic and supernatural creatures hide in the shadows. And now my latest novel, 100 Fathoms Below, co-written with Steven L. Kent, is a Cold War submarine thriller with a supernatural threat onboard.

Adding a supernatural element to a thriller can do more than simply fold a fun, new ingredient into a recipe. It can also keep things fresh. There are lots of thrillers out there in which our heroes are chasing after a thumb drive with important, world-changing information on it, or rushing to stop a super virus from being unleashed or to stop a terrorist organization from detonating a bomb. These are classic plots for a reason, of course—readers still respond to them and are eager to see how particular characters deal with these threats—but sometimes the formula can feel stale. For better or worse, there can be a feeling of “been there, done that.” Adding a supernatural element can be a great way to shake things up. What if the ghost of the terrorists’ previous victim is what brings their new, insidious plot to our heroes’ attention? What if it’s not a super virus that’s in danger of being released but something more ancient, more malevolent? What if it’s not a thumb drive everyone’s after, but a powerful, cursed object?

Granted, the supernatural isn’t for everyone. Some authors prefer to keep things as strictly realistic as possible. In writing 100 Fathoms Below, Steve and I found what I think is just the right balance between the supernatural and the realistic. In the novel, everything about life in US Navy and life aboard a nuclear submarine was meticulously researched and kept utterly realistic. Into this verisimilitude, we threw a supernatural threat that is stalking and killing the submariners one by one. And perhaps that’s the key to successfully adding the supernatural to a thriller: keeping everything else as realistic and grounded as possible. Otherwise, you risk straining the suspension of disbelief.

So if you’ve been considering adding a supernatural element to your latest thriller but have found yourself on the fence about it, I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a try. As I mentioned, it’s a great way to shake things up and keep your readers on their toes. And who knows? You might even find yourself attracting a whole new audience of grown-up Monster Kids like me, who are always looking to discover new authors. Decades ago, it was those old Abbott and Costello movies that showed me how fun supernatural elements can be in an otherwise grounded story. Perhaps one day it will be a novel of yours that does the same for someone else.

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Nicholas Kaufmann is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated, Thriller Award-nominated, and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of two collections and six novels, the most recent of which is the horror novel 100 Fathoms Below, co-written with Steven L. Kent. His short fiction has appeared in Cemetery Dance, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Dark Discoveries, and others. In addition to his own original work, he has written for such properties as Zombies vs. Robots and The Rocketeer. He and his wife live in Brooklyn, New York.