Vision and Betrayal by Ginger Bolton

Like almost everyone else, I started my first novel with “What if?”

There were really two what ifs.

One: What if that real-life woman didn’t return my call because she had mysteriously disappeared?

Two: What if I started writing, you know, just to see what happened, both to my character and to me? Could I actually stick to writing an entire novel, or was that idea as imaginary as my fictitious character and her search for a missing woman?

I started writing.

That, I’m sorry to say, was the end of my relaxed and comfy existence. My character moved into my brain and took over my life.

I knew what had happened to the real woman. She not only turned up, she brought me an enormous chocolate-chip cookie. I also knew what had happened to the imaginary woman, but my protagonist didn’t, and she was trying very hard, no matter how many obstacles I threw at her, to find out. She nagged and nagged at me to finish her story. Eventually, with my writing-obsessed early mornings and weekends, I did.

But I wasn’t done. I had drafted the original manuscript as a pantser. I started revising. I added scenes. I moved scenes. I embellished scenes. I trimmed them. I polished the entire manuscript and then tore it apart and had to polish it again, over and over . . .

Pantsing was exhilarating and fun.

It also took years.

One of my hobbies (if I can drag myself away from writing and revising) is sewing. Mostly, that means that I like to shop for fabrics. I often find one or several that I cannot possibly resist. I might not know how exactly I want to use the fabrics, so I stash them away and wait for inspiration. That’s kind of like the pantsing version of sewing, which is not to be confused with sewing up a pair of pants, in case you wondered.

Frequently, I know exactly what I want to sew, and I plan it all, complete with pattern, thread, buttons and zipper. Right. That’s like plotting.

So, back to writing. As I said, the manuscripts that I pantsed took a verrrrrry long time.

I was offered contracts for manuscripts that I had not yet written. I couldn’t take years to write them. I had deadlines. I continued pantsing, but in a more organized, structured, and, I have to admit, panicky fashion.

And then I got a new editor. He didn’t mind long outlines, he said. Like twenty pages, he said. I had already written a twenty-page synopsis for the first book in the series when he said that. . .

I had, somehow, edged into more plotting than panstsing.

Now, back to sewing.

There’s a problem. After I’ve planned exactly what I’m going to make with that fabric, that pattern, that thread, those buttons, and that zipper, I often simply stow the ingredients for the project with the other, unplanned fabrics. Unfortunately, visualizing the finished project can be enough. I might never construct it.

Uh-oh. You know where this is heading, right? The more I run my characters and their adventures through my head like a movie, the less I think I need to complete the manuscript.

Plotting was supposed to help, but my imagination had betrayed me.

However, if I actually want to wear a garment I’ve planned, I have to buckle down and finish it.

I definitely want to meet my deadlines, so I do what I do with sewing (when, that is, I actually sew.) I complete the project in logical (for me) steps.

Would I ever just start cutting into fabric with a firm mental picture of the finished product but only a hazy idea of how I would get from yardage to garment? Gulp, yes, I have done that, with dismaying results.

Would I ever just start writing to find out what path I’ll take to the end? I’ve done it and I might do it again, but for now, I have to admit that I’ve transformed myself, more or less by necessity, from a pantser to a plotter. Careful planning can, for me, yield speedier and more satisfying results—who knew?

Besides, I was never that crazy about making pants.

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Ginger Bolton writes the Deputy Donut Mysteries—coffee, donuts, cops, danger, and one curious cat . . . SURVIVAL OF THE FRITTERS and GOODBYE CRULLER WORLD have already been published. JEALOUSY-FILLED DONUTS will appear in September 2019, and three more Deputy Donut mysteries are in the works.

Ginger writes surrounded by unfinished knitting, sewing, and crocheting projects. She lives near a yummy donut and coffee shop which she avoids while walking her two rescue dogs, but maybe not other times. As Janet Bolin, she wrote the Threadville Mysteries—murder and mayhem in a village of crafty shops.

Imagine Me As A Little Old Lady / By Parnell Hall

Dropped. Desperate. Never going to write again.

Been there. Done that.

The scariest thing for a writer is to be dropped by your publisher. There you are, on top of the world, one of the chosen few, and suddenly it's snatched out from under you, and you find yourself in a Road Runner cartoon realizing you're standing on thin air.

When your publisher drops you, no one wants you. It's not a good job recommendation. "Why did I leave my publisher? They looked at my royalty statements."

When Warner Books dropped my Stanley Hastings series I was devastated. There I was, thirteen books into the series, with Edgar and Shamus nominations, getting reviewed regularly by the New York Times. Suddenly no one would touch me. I huddled with my agent to see what we could do.

No one wanted a private eye series by Parnell Hall. The problem was to get a publisher to publish something else. We decided to get as far away from Parnell Hall territory as possible.

Stanley Hastings was a New York City P.I. So, how about a little old lady who lived in a small New England town and solves crime? Fine, but it sounds like Jessica Fletcher. What would make it different?

Enter the gimmick.

My little old lady needed something that set her apart, made her special, made her someone people would want to read about.

We hit on crossword puzzles. It seemed a natural. A crime is a puzzle, so if you threw a crossword puzzle in it you'd have puzzles within puzzles. It was perfect.

I still wasn't happy. I would be writing about a sweet, little old lady with a nationally syndicated crossword column who solves crime on the side. The whole idea was so sugary sweet it made me sick.

So I twisted it. While Cora Felton looks like your favorite grandmother and even does breakfast cereal ads on TV for schoolchildren, she is actually a loopy old hellion who's been married so many times she's not sure exactly how many husbands she's had, only recently gave up drinking and can't remember much of the seventies and eighties, smokes like a chimney and swears like a sailor.

She is also the Milli Vanilli of the crossword puzzle community and couldn't solve a crossword with a gun to her head. Her niece Sherry constructs the puzzles, and Cora Felton is just the name on the column. This arrangement was initially to allow Sherry to hide from an abusive ex-husband. Now Cora can't admit to being a fraud without destroying her commercial career.

With those few tweaks, I liked the character a lot. I started in on the manuscript.

I had one problem.

I didn't know much more about crossword puzzles than Cora did. Sure, I'd done them as a kid, but not for over twenty years, and I wasn't good then. My Stanley Hastings books were based on my two years working as a private eye in New York City. I had never been a little old lady presumed to have an unusual talent for crosswords.

So I entered the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the national tournament held in Stamford, Connecticut. I practiced for it by doing the daily puzzles in the New York Times, and by the time of the tournament I felt pretty good about it.

The first puzzle was easy. I flew right through it. I got about halfway done, I looked up, and the room was empty. Everyone had finished and left. Out of 254 contestants, I finished 250th, just ahead of the four people who failed to turn in a paper.

With this practical experience, I wrote the manuscript and gave it to my agent.

He liked it a lot, but we were still worried. Would an editor read a manuscript with the name Parnell Hall on it? The odds were not great.

So we put the name Alice Hastings on the manuscript and sent it around.

Bantam immediately snapped up this book by an unknown woman for more money than anyone had ever paid me. I did not take that as an insult. I took the check to the bank and cashed it.

Of course, we had to tell them I wrote it. That didn't worry them. They were happy to publish the book under the name Alice Hastings. They even asked me for her bio. I wrote, as I recall, "Alice Hastings was raised in a small New England town by English lit teachers with a fondness for Agatha Christie and the Sunday Times crossword. When not writing, Alice enjoys tennis, swimming, and co-ed softball."

Bantam was all set to go. Then they heard I was planning to take the author photo. At that point, they chickened out. They decided to put my name on the book.

I argued against it. Alice, I thought, would sell better. But we went with my name and the book did all right.

Still, I wonder what I might have made as a woman.

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Parnell Hall is the author of the Puzzle Lady, crossword puzzle mysteries, the Stanley Hastings private eye novels, and the Steve Winslow courtroom dramas. With Stuart Woods, he is the co-author of the New York Times bestselling Teddy Fay series. His latest Puzzle Lady book is The Purloined Puzzle. His next, Lights! Camera! Puzzles!, will be out in April.

When Mystery is Out of This World / by Claire Gem

Even in a world where people are suffocating under stress, many consciously and deliberately seek even more. Fans of mystery, thriller, and suspense novels not only want their reads to bring more tension into their lives, they demand it. Unless these books raise their blood pressure and deliver that rollercoaster ride of adrenalin, they will put them down, disappointed.

The difference, of course, is that the tension and anxiety, the stress and worry—none of it belongs to the reader, but to other people: characters in a world entirely apart from their own.

Ah, but there are different flavors of mystery, thriller, and suspense novels, each with its own nuance. I’d like to talk about the difference between these categories, as well as reader expectations for each. These expectations are the hurdles an author needs to pay particular attention to. Unless their stories fulfill these reader expectations, the book will not satisfy.

In a mystery, a crime has been committed. Reminiscent of Hasbro’s age-old board game, Clue (I’m dating myself here, but it’s still around), players (in this case, readers) are presented with a dead body, or a disappearance of a living body, or some other horrendous crime that is baffling and unexpected. An investigator, whether it be a police detective or simply a curious grandma (as in cozy mysteries) is determined to find out who did it and why. Then, just like the board game, clues begin to surface, and it’s up to the investigator (along with the reader) to figure out which clues are simply dead-ends, and which will lead to justice.

A mystery is a journey. The reader tags along with the protagonist to uncover a secret that isn’t revealed until the end.

A thriller novel differs from a mystery in that the tension we experience takes place largely inside the hero or heroine’s head. We become intensely emotionally invested in the protagonist from the first pages. They are in dire danger—the reader oftentimes knows even more about the threat than they do. Thriller novels combine elements of mystery and horror to immerse the reader inside a world of trouble, worry, and self-doubt. The themes? We live in a dangerous world. We are all vulnerable in some aspect. The unknown is the scariest threat of all.

A thriller differs from a mystery in that the danger—the bad guy or force—is usually known to the reader right from the start. Also, there is action. Twists and turns. Unlike the quiet, methodical journey of following clues in a mystery, the reader never knows what’s going to happen next.

So how do these genres differ from suspense? Aren’t they both suspenseful? Here’s where the lines become blurred. You can categorize your novel as a mystery/thriller, or as a mystery/suspense.

Once you throw the label “suspense” into the mix, you open up yet another realm, one where the danger or threat becomes all the more elusive. The pacing is also different. A suspense novel promises the reader an agonizingly slow build-up of tension. Not as much action. Clues are vague and not as obvious. As www.libraryjournal.com describes a psychological suspense, it’s not the inciting event, the “rock” or big splash (murder or other crime), but the “focus is on the ripples that rock makes.”

Now, all of these types of stories are titillating enough when they’re set in the real, normal world we live in. What happens when we throw in elements that are out of this world?

I’m not referring to the paranormal or fantasy genres. These are deliberately set in worlds entirely different from our own. Think Harry Potter, where wizards live at a magical place called Hogwarts. Or a world that looks like our familiar hometown until the guy with the fangs rises out of his coffin. Think Twilight, where falling in love with a vampire isn’t exactly a bad thing.

No, what I’m referring to is a story that takes place in the real world but carries definite elements of the supernatural.

And yes, before you ask, I do believe in ghosts. In poltergeist activity. In haunted houses. In psychic ability. If I didn’t believe in those things, I couldn’t possibly write stories about them with passion.

This raises the stakes, as well as reader expectations. What I write is supernatural suspense. The important difference, as I see it, between supernatural and realistic mystery/thriller/suspense is getting the reader to suspend disbelief.

It's easy to get a reader to buy into a mystery. Watch the news lately? There are plenty of human villains, crimes committed, and the eternal quest for who did it and why. In a thriller, we know the threat to the protagonist from the start. We feel their fear, doubt, and confusion. We may not completely understand the danger, but we believe—we know—that it’s real.

In supernatural suspense, the challenge is more difficult. We need to get the reader to buy into the notion that psychics can see and communicate with dead people, or their lingering spirits. That ghosts may exist. That haunted houses can truly be haunted. Until we can get the reader (who may not believe in ghosts or psychics) to buy into our premise, we can't possibly offer them the kind of thrill ride they seek.

How can an author accomplish this? Research is one way. I’m a stickler for historical accuracy, even if I’m describing a crumbling insane asylum. Bad stuff happened there, in that “mental hospital,” all those years ago. Torture, neglect, and psychological manipulation really were acceptable medical treatments for the insane, once upon a time. Remember One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

When my ghost—a pathetic little girl—goes looking for her father in Spirits of the Heart, my readers get on board, emotionally. Daddy was once a patient in that terrible place (an asylum that actually existed in my hometown). Heaven only knows what horrors he faced while still alive. And why can’t she find him? Be reunited with him in the afterlife?

Once you grab a reader’s heart, you’ve got ‘em.

Another way to get a reader to suspend skepticism of the supernatural is to present them with a known legend. In Hearts Unloched, that’s exactly what I did. There really is a tiny town in upstate New York known as Loch Sheldrake. In its center, the “loch” is a small but extremely deep lake. Urban legend claims that back in the early twentieth century, the loch was a favorite dumping ground for the Mafia. Gangsters would make the two-hour drive from New York City to drop their victims into what was considered “a bottomless lake.”

Chained to an old jukebox or wearing cement overshoes.

The legend, although I first heard it from my husband who grew up in the area, has its basis in truth. The local museum in nearby Hurleyville has an entire file cabinet drawer filled with newspaper clippings...

If there is a documented urban legend about dead bodies disappearing into a tiny lake in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t the possibility exist that maybe some of those sunken souls are unsettled? Still trapped in their watery grave? Maybe a little ticked off and wanting vengeance?

By setting stories in the real world, with accurate detail and historical context, an author of supernatural suspense can plant his or her readers’ feet firmly on the ground—before presenting the stuff that might make them go “yeah, right. Uh huh.”

Here they are: actual historical facts and legends. In this way we lure them just a little closer to the edge of believing in something they might not ordinarily be willing to accept. But it takes one more element to get a reader to suspend disbelief.

Real people. Characters who are normal, everyday folks with problems, just like you and me. Characters we can identify with, who are struggling, lonely, flawed, who have physical or emotional scars.

Characters so real, they dive off the page and straight into the reader’s heart.

Supernatural suspense. Not thrillers: in these books the pace is slower, there is less action, and the tension builds slowly. They are not typical mysteries, since the dead bodies show up on their feet, with opinions and agendas of their own. They’ve been dead for dozens, if not hundreds of years. These spirits then become cast members—integral parts of the story.

Would it be easier to accommodate reader expectations of real-world mystery or thriller novels? Perhaps. But I’ve always loved a challenge. I believe in the supernatural. I believe in an afterlife. I want my readers to believe as well.

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Claire Gem is an award winning-author of supernatural suspense, contemporary romance, and women’s fiction. She also writes Author Resource guide books and presents seminars on writing craft and marketing. Her supernatural suspense, Hearts Unloched, won the 2016 New York Book Festival, and was a finalist in the 2017 RONE Awards.

Claire loves exploring the paranormal and holds a certificate in Parapsychology from Duke University’s Rhine Research Center. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Lesley University.

A New York native, Claire now lives in Massachusetts with her husband of 40 years. When she’s not writing, she works for Tufts University in the field of scientific research. She is available for seminars and media interviews and loves to travel for book promotional events. Find Claire on her website http://www.clairegem.com/.

Controlling the Flow of Information by Simon Brett

As a writer, you have one enormous advantage over your readers or audience. You know the whole story, and they don’t.

Except in very rare circumstances, you don’t start off knowing the whole story. You begin with an idea, which hopefully leads on to other ideas, which in turn act as springboards for further ideas. Characters begin to develop, as do conflicts between those characters. Settings become more solid and pertinent in your mind. A plot emerges. Gradually your story takes shape.

There’s no right or wrong way of building a story. Some writers don’t start the actual writing until they have the whole scenario worked out in their minds. Others begin with a sentence that intrigues and see where it leads them. Some regard the first draft as the exciting part of the process—telling themselves the story—and resent any changes that have to be made afterwards. Others find the first draft a terrible bore, creating a great block of material from which, rather like a sculptor with a mass of stone, they will carve out and perfect their work of art. For them the fun of writing lies in cutting away the dross, refining and reshaping.

But, by whatever process writers arrives at it, there comes a point when the whole story is known to them. And what they then have to decide is how much of that story they want their readers or audience to know at any given point in the narrative.

This is true in all writing, but particularly so in the two areas in which I specialise, crime fiction and comedy. The effect of both is weakened by giving out too little or too much information. For example, I remember my sister once saying to me, ‘I’ve just heard this very good joke about the Lunchpack of Notre Dame.’ I asked her to tell me more and she gave me the set-up question: ‘What’s put in a plastic box and swings from a bell-rope?’ I said I didn’t know and she told me the punch-line: ‘The Lunchpack of Notre Dame!’ She was disappointed at my lack of reaction to the joke, but then she had given me rather too much information too soon.

And that’s how storytelling works. The writer feeds out the narrative gradually, withholding clues and details until the optimum moment of revelation. A lot of a writer’s planning will involve thoughts like: ‘If that’s going to happen there, then it must have been set up earlier.’

For this reason, one of the most difficult parts of any book, play, or screenplay is the exposition. A lot of information has to be conveyed in as short a time as possible. In the visual media it’s easier. The look of a person, the environment in which they live, their clothes, their possessions can all increase their viewers’ knowledge of their character. And all that information comes across the moment the character walks on stage or appears on the screen.

In a book you don’t have that shortcut. Everything needs to be described, but it’s down to the writer to decide how much needs to be described. And here the general rule is: go for the minimum. If a character’s height is going to be important to your story, tell your readers how tall he is. If it isn’t, don’t bother. Two-page descriptions of every new character in the manner of Charles Dickens are completely unnecessary. The same goes for where they went to school, what their parents did for a living, how many siblings they had, whether their childhood was happy, and an infinite number of other details. Let your readers do some work for themselves; let them create their own pictures in their minds. Only supply the kind of information if it’s going to be relevant in the story you’re telling.

Some writers, I am aware, say they cannot begin a novel without knowing all the characters in detail, without having built up lengthy dossiers of all their personal data. In my view that’s just another displacement activity—and no one is more skilled in displacement activity than writers. Anything that puts off that dreadful moment of actually having to write is fulsomely welcomed.

The importance of exposition generally means that the opening of any piece of writing is the bit that gets most rewritten. As new ideas emerge in the course of creating the story, new information has to be injected into the set-up chapters or scenes. And it’s a task with which most writers have difficulties. If you ever feel uncertain about your own skills as a writer of exposition, I recommend that you take down from your bookshelves the Complete Works of William Shakespeare and turn to The Tempest. In Act One Scene Two of that classic play you will find one of the worst pieces of exposition you will ever encounter. The first 284 lines set up the backstory to the action in what is effectively a monologue by Prospero, with brief interjections from his daughter Miranda, on the lines of ‘What happened next, Dad?’ It is inept and tedious. So even the greats had their problems with exposition.

But there’s no way around it. Your readers or audience have to be given that information somehow. And it is in that ‘how’ that the writer’s skills are really tested. Particularly in a crime novel, the plot is often dependent on a detail which the readers cannot claim they haven’t been told of, but which is slipped into the narrative in a way that doesn’t draw attention to it. Something apparently trivial can frequently turn out to be of pivotal importance.

The skill required to shuffle in this kind of information can be compared to that of the conjuror. As he uses his patter to distract the audience from what he’s doing with his hands, so a crime novelist has to find his own means of distraction to disguise the importance of certain details. All you have to do is to obey the basic rules of story-telling. Make your scene so dramatic – or so funny – or so intriguing – that your readers have an emotional response to your writing and almost unconsciously assimilate the facts that you have so subtly shoehorned into the narrative.

Never forget that a book is an interactive medium. The relationship between writer and reader may develop and change, but it never disappears. And a skilful writer will be constantly aware of the effect that his or her words are having on the reader at any given point in the action. That’s what story-telling is about.

EXERCISE

A good way of honing your skills at controlling the flow of information is to write a page of dialogue which contains the fact that you are trying to hide. Say, for instance, the fact is: ‘The pastor had once been a professional footballer.’ Think of the various ways in which, without actually stating it in so many words, you can get that information across. The aim of the exercise is to make the little scene of dialogue you write so compelling that your readers become more concerned about the drama of the situation than about listening out for the facts which it contains. And the only restriction placed on what you write is that you are not allowed to hide your important fact in a catalogue of many.

A development of this exercise works even better with a group of writers. The tutor or moderator of the group writes on scraps of paper a number of pieces of simple information and gets each participant to pick one out of a hat or bag. The group then writes their dialogue and when everyone has finished, the pieces of work are read out in turn and the other participants have to try and guess what the hidden snippet of information was. The exercise combines the fun element of a party game with a useful lesson in writers’ diversionary tactics.

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Simon Brett has published over a hundred books, many of them crime novels, including the Charles Paris, Mrs. Pargeter, Fetheringand Blotto & Twinks series. His stand-alone thriller, A Shock to the System, was made into a feature film, starring Michael Caine. Simon’s writing for radio and television includes After Henry, No Commitments and Smelling of Roses. Bill Nighy plays Charles Paris in the Radio 4 adaptations of his books. In 2014 Simon was presented with the Crime Writers’ Association’s top award, the Diamond Dagger, and he was made an O.B.E. in the 2016 New Year’s Honours ‘for services to literature’.

You Don't Say? by Brad Harper

Dialogue is an ancient Greek stage direction, meaning "action through words." One of the first critiques I got from an agent, looking at my neatly printed manuscript was "There's not enough white space," meaning there was too much narrative description, and not enough dialogue.

Dialogue opens up the tight-knit block of words we are accustomed to in textbooks and allows your story to breathe through verbal exchanges between your characters. Frequent doses of white space make your work less intimidating and helps your reader speed along through your story.

Dialogue is used to accomplish three things: Exposition, to reveal character, and to provoke an action. Let's look at these in turn.

Exposition. I write historical fiction, so putting my reader into an unknown universe and making them quickly comfortable there requires that I give them a sense of time and place, but without the dreaded "Info Dump."  So how do I do that? I incorporate the information transfer into as graphic a manner as possible. In my first novel, A Knife in the Fog, my heroine, Margaret Harkness, is a female author from a proper middle-class British family temporarily living in Whitechapel to do research on her novels. As she takes my narrator, Arthur Conan Doyle, on a tour of Whitechapel, I interspace her narrative describing the conditions in that neighborhood with Doyle's own observations, reinforcing her comments while giving the reader strong visual scenes that bring her words to life. By the time they reach their destination, a site where Jack the Ripper killed one of his early victims, the reader is primed for the violence soon to follow.

In one of my early and most difficult scenes, I have Doyle meet with the Scotland Yard Inspector leading the hunt for Jack the Ripper. He has a lot of crucial information I need to slip into the reader's mind as painlessly as possible so that the rest of the story makes sense. To keep the Inspector from giving my hero a monologue I intersperse questions, requests for clarification, and brief descriptions of the Inspector in various stages of lighting his pipe and sending smoke up to the ceiling, (an example of dialogue provoking action).

Characterization. The vocabulary a character uses needs to be carefully considered. Any character with more than one scene gets a biography of some kind in my story bible, a summary of the major characters and the historical period I can refer to quickly as I work through my story. The words used should befit their education and station in life, and the tone consistent with the situation and their relationship to the person they are talking to.

On that same walking tour Margaret gives a very proper Conan Doyle, she at one point refers to the streetwalkers using backyards and stairwells for a "Four-Penny Knee Trembler," which so shocks Doyle he nearly comes to a dead halt as they walk through Whitechapel. Margaret's casual use of the term while otherwise speaking in the proper tone of a lady of her class, tells you much about how she has come to terms with her environment, while Doyle's reaction tells you much about him as well.

To provoke action. Much of human conversation is conducted nonverbally through facial expressions and body movements. To avoid your dialogue from becoming verbal tennis matches, intersperse them with small actions to give the reader an image to tie to the words, such as my pipe-lighting Inspector.

The action should be consistent with the situation and the character's motivation at the time, it can't be random, but with a good imagination you can come up with enough variety to keep the words fresh.

My final comment is not something you'll see in any books on writing, but something I discovered on my own. I have three main characters in my novel, Doyle, Miss Harkness, and Professor Joseph Bell, the real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. I wish I was this clever to begin with, but as I completed my novel I realized that I'd ascribed to each of them one aspect of personality.

Doyle is pure Ego. A proper British gentleman, the peas could not touch the carrots. Bell is Super-Ego. He understood the need for rules, but could see the larger picture, so also knew when the rules should be ignored. Margaret is pure Id. She says what she thinks as soon as she thinks it, and is basically the person it requires two to three stiff drinks for most of us to become. I found that dialogues with the three of them challenging to write, but engaging.  Having a third person active in the conversation created an inherent tension and kept my readers engaged, wondering what would happen next.

Try it, and see if it works for you.

By the way, it is a rare thing if a dialogue only reveals character, provides exposition, or provokes an action. A good dialogue usually does all three, thus provoking "actions through words."

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Brad Haper is Board Certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, he has conducted over two-hundred autopsies, several of them forensic in nature, and uses his clinical experiences to inform his writing. He has worked as a professional Santa Claus for the past five years at a local theme park. A soft touch, he only threatens those on the Naughty List with burnt cookies.

His writing credits include a short story sold to The Strand and The Sherlock Holmes Magazine of Mystery, as well as his debut novel, A Knife in the Fog, featuring a young Arthur Conan Doyle, Professor Joseph Bell, Doyle's inspiration for Holmes, and Margaret Harkness. Miss Harkness was an author and Suffragette who lived in the East End of London for a while to do research on her novels featuring the working poor. Together these "Three Musketeers" assist the London Metropolitan Police in the hunt for the man who became known as Jack the Ripper, until he begins hunting them!

What is a Story Without Adverbs? by Lynn Truss

The question a lot of people have been asking me is, “So, Lynne, what’s the difference between writing these stories for radio and writing them as a novel?” This is because my new book A Shot in the Dark  (first in a series of comic crime novels set in 1957, featuring Constable Twitten of the Brighton Constabulary) has its origins in a long-running series of radio comedies for the BBC in the UK. So the question is a good one, and I certainly enjoy answering it, partly because I’m fascinated in general by the demands of different forms of writing, but also because adapting this particular material to novel form wasn’t at all the easy-peasy business you might imagine. “But I know these characters!” I wailed. “This shouldn’t be so hard!” But my familiarity with the characters was, of course, a large part of the problem, and I admit that at first I struggled. I admit that I needed help.

So I thought I would write here about adverbs, because adverbs are a minor (but quite interesting) aspect of the leap I had to make from one form to the other. The thing is, adverbs are rightly objects of disdain in most forms of writing, but are essential in writing for radio – they are your prop; your crutch; your helpmeet. For example, take the bald line of radio dialogue: “You’re right, Constable Twitten. I admit it. I murdered him.” Then imagine, in brackets before that speech, any one of the following adverbs: quietly; hotly; defiantly; sarcastically; coolly; dispassionately; self-pityingly; tauntingly. You see how helpful that is? You see how much work those adverbs are potentially doing? (I am told, by the way, that movie writers do not supply such prescriptive hints to actors, and that the practice is frowned on. But in the world of radio, where rehearsal time is minimal and studio time is limited, let me assure you: written stage directions really do cut the crap.)

So I would say that I have spent many an hour in my writing life reaching for – and nailing – the pertinent adverb for the sake of a radio script. And then, suddenly, I decide to write A Shot in the Dark and I find myself … free! I am no longer in the dark, hearing voices, and I no longer have to rely on modifying words ending in “ly”! Well, what a luxury. What brave new world is this? As a novelist, you have so many other ways of contextualising your character’s words: you can describe a person’s character, history, actions and demeanour. You can enter his very thoughts.

It was all up, then? Johnny felt all the bluster drain from him.

“You’re right, Constable Twitten,” he said, sitting down and wringing his hands. “I admit it. I murdered him.”

A Shot in the Dark isn’t my first novel, I ought to explain, but it’s the first time I have wrestled with the form, and I think the exercise has done my writing nothing but good. I expect there are still countless adverbs in A Shot in the Dark, but please don’t write to me to point them out, because a) that’s not the right way to read a book, and b) it’s too late to change them now, you idiot.

I think we should all remember (she concluded, somewhat grandly) the words of the great Stephen King in his excellent book On Writing, where he says, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” When I first read On Writing, I remember I found this dictum a tad harsh, but my own experience as a newly-emancipated radio writer has now confirmed for me that he’s right; there is simply no excuse for them – and I vow right here to be much more vigilant in future. Be merciless with the insidious adverb, King commands (authoritatively). Tear them out like dandelions, because once they (surreptitiously) take root in a person’s prose they (scarily) spread, and then you will find they are (alarmingly) much, much harder to get out.

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Lynne Truss is a celebrated author, scriptwriter, columnist, and broadcaster. Truss is the writer of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including the bestselling book on punctuation Eats, Shoots & Leaves. She lives on the south coast of England with two Norfolk terriers.

The Antibiotic Crisis Scares Me So Much I Wrote A Novel About It / By Rachael Sparks

When I decided to write a novel, I believed the adage that you should write what you know. For me, that topic was clear: the fact that we are running out of antibiotics faster than we can develop new ones. Gonorrhea, Staph, CRE, and tuberculosis are all displaying an ability to adapt and survive most of the medicines we’ve developed for them. 700,000 annual deaths are attributed to resistant bacteria worldwide; the accurate count is probably more since our systems for tracking this are faulty.

But weaving my experiences into my novel didn’t come easy. Instead, I found myself summoning old ghosts I didn’t necessarily want to unpack. I had to treat these memories as a research project: which ones would make an impact in my story if I only wanted the feelings to be recreated in the reader? Our impending antibiotic crisis first began to scare me in the early 2000s as a young tissue transplant coordinator in Austin, Texas. A daily job responsibility was to visit the medical examiner’s office. In most cases, medical records gave me enough info to screen; however, for certain deaths, especially those outside the hospital, coordinators sometimes need to perform a quick physical check of the injuries or donation exclusion indicators.

That day, a young woman of my age—24 at the time—lay on a gurney in the ME’s office after an atypical journey through the system that ensures each death is properly vetted by the county forensic officials. It’s not her real name, but we’ll call her Jane. Jane had died in a hospital and her cause of death was fairly evident: a fatal infection of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA that spread to the blood. Blood cultures had long before confirmed her diagnosis, but because Jane was young and first admitted to the hospital for a different reason, the medical examiner investigators decided to order an autopsy. As a microbiologist, I thought that was a wise decision too. She was young, healthy, with complications post C-section. She shouldn’t have developed a severe infection and then died of it after weeks of treatment and surgeries.

But in a minor mix-up, she had been taken to a funeral home first, then transferred back to the ME’s. When I entered the morgue room to look over the bodies and saw her form on the metal gurney, I froze. Jane was a strange misty gray from head to toe, her body playing black-and-white in a Technicolor scene.

“Why is she . . . Isn’t this the young one who was septic?” I asked my investigator friend.

“Yeah. The funeral home guys embalmed her, like five minutes after she got there.”

“Why?” That would prevent many critical steps in the autopsy process, the most important being blood tests.

“Because they were terrified of getting MRSA.”

Their reaction seemed extreme, but people at the time didn’t know as much about why these resistant infections were happening more and more. I did, though.

As with many medical travesties, we did it to ourselves, and in ways innumerable. We took a miracle drug and used it so much that the bacteria, awash in it, naturally evolved ways around it. We demanded doctors prescribe us antibacterials for viral infections. In some countries, you can still buy antibiotics without a prescription. We threw antimicrobials into soaps, body gels, even cutting boards. We gave it to our cattle, our chickens, our fish farms, our pigs are given as much yearly as we use annually in healthcare. Why? Until January 2017, mostly for money. The meat industry has learned over half a century that these antibiotics can increase growth and overall herd yield. Now, it’s restricted to use for treatment of illnesses—but those are only getting worse too. It’s predicted that 10 million people will die of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections by the year 2050, but we haven’t approved a new human antibiotic in the last 30 years.

Until the Affordable Care Act, we didn’t hold health care facilities responsible for giving patients preventable infections. They got paid if you got sick due to their poor cleaning or neglect. A healthcare finance executive explained to me that treatment is more profitable than cure. And developing a cure isn’t profitable for pharmaceutical companies because we won’t buy that cure and use it with abandon. Now that we are learning from our mistakes with antibiotics, we’ll use new ones scarcely and responsibly. Not exactly a huge ROI for Big Pharma.

These truths frighten me. As a microbiologist and a lover of medical history, I can vividly imagine the day when a simple scratch could develop into an infection for which amputation is the only cure. While I don’t nibble my fingernails about it daily, I strictly enforce antibiotic stewardship on my family and remind friends that antibiotics won’t fix their cold. The image of Jane’s body has never left me. I still wonder how her child fared.

After years working to battle healthcare-associated infections, I realized I was tired of writing technical articles, marketing brochures, and polite blogs on the dangers ahead as our antibiotics lose their power. I was sick of stretching military metaphors to explain in layman’s terms how resistance builds among bacteria. I thought of the novels that have moved me, the authors whose imaginations left a dent in our collective awareness: Aldous Huxley. Upton Sinclair. Michael Crichton. Crichton saw genetic dabbling in recombinant DNA and fathomed a pterodactyl reanimated through a technology he knew could be both powerful and dangerous. Now “Jurassic Park” is a fable for several generations: research of dubious intentions yielding disastrous results.

And often, the lessons we chisel onto our collective consciousness are those in our fables.

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Rachael Sparks was born in Waco, Texas. She graduated with a degree in Microbiology from Texas A&M University. After a decade-long career in Austin, Texas, as a transplant specialist, she joined a startup fighting healthcare-acquired infections, thus satisfying her lifelong interest in infectious diseases and the science of human health. After relocating with her husband, daughter, and mother to Asheville, North Carolina, she finally put her first novel onto the page. In her free time, she serves on the board of the Asheville Museum of Science and loves to cook, brew, garden, and spend time with friends and family.  

What is a Cozy Mystery, Really? / By Vicki Delaney

What, exactly, is a cozy mystery?

On one hand, that seems to be an easy question to answer. A cozy mystery is often described as a book containing no overt violence or sex on the page. It’s a character-and-community based mystery featuring an amateur sleuth.

But I believe a cozy mystery is far more that than.

A mystery novel without sex and violence is not necessarily a cozy.  Plenty of intense psychological dramas have no sex and violence, but they can be very grim indeed. Books that are character and community based can also be dark and disturbing.  Mysteries with a frightening supernatural or horror element, for example.

In my interpretation, to be a cozy, the story must have no sense of tragedy or impending doom.

People in cozies do not live tragic lives, and they don’t fear tragic happenings.  They live in a very pleasant, close to idyllic, community, surround by good friends and close family.  Not everything is perfect in their lives (how boring would that be?) but generally they are good and happy people. 

Someone is murdered, and that’s never funny, but that person is (usually) not much liked by the community or strangers to it. Their death needs to be solved so that the perfect, orderly community can go back to the way it was—perfect and orderly.  The characters live in an essentially good world that needs to be put back to rights. No human trafficking rings, child prostitutes, mob hit men, gangs, or Russian assassins here.

A cozy mystery will never feature child-endangerment or abuse, terrorists, organized crime (unless handled with a humorous touch), or natural disaster. The murder is intimate and personal, and committed for personal reasons. There are no far-reaching or long-lasting implications. At  the end of the book, order has been restored and all is once again right in their world.

Cozy mysteries are not trying to make an important statement about the human condition, or hoping to change the world. A cozy mystery tells a story that attempts to be entertaining, that’s about people much like us (or like us if we were prettier, or smarter, or younger!) and our friends and family.

In terms of structure, cozy mysteries are very much ‘puzzle mysteries’: a game of wits between the author and the reader as to whether or not the astute reader can solve the crime before the amateur detective does (i.e. before the author reveals it). Clues must be laid down in such a way that the reader has a chance of reaching the conclusion on their own. The author lays red herrings in such a way as to hope to distract the reader from reaching the truth before all is revealed.

Cozy mysteries are about real people living real lives (except for that pesky murder bit), although writ large. Everything is exaggerated. The nosy neighbour is nosier, the ditzy friend is ditzier, the mean girl is meaner. And the handsome man is, well, handsomer.  Even better if there are two of them.

Readers who enjoy cozies often tell me that they read them to escape from the real world. They get enough bad news on TV, and sometimes even in their own life. Cozy mysteries really are an escape. 

I began my career writing gritty police procedurals and intense psychological thrillers and I recently switched to cozies. I’m having a lot of fun with them. Keep it light, keep it funny, and have a good time with it.

The word I often use for the cozies I write is FUN. They should be fun for the author and fun for the reader as well.

My newest book is the fourth in the Sherlock Holmes bookshop series, A Scandal in Scarlet from Crooked Lane Books.

These books are firmly in the cozy camp and are about a woman who owns The Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium in the Cape Cod town of West London, located at 222 Baker Street. The business next door is Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room, at 220 Baker Street.

The main character, Gemma Doyle, is a modern young woman who bears an intellectual resemblance to the Great Detective himself. Her side-kick Jayne Wilson is ever-confused but always loyal.

Sounds a bit silly? Sure it does. And it’s supposed to be. It’s nothing but fun, and what’s wrong with that?

So pull up a comfortable arm chair or get out your deck chair. Light a fire in the fireplace, or slap on that sunscreen, pour yourself a mug of hot tea or something icy and simply enjoy the adventures of a cozy heroine and her friends as they try to put their world back to rights.

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Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than thirty books:  clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing three cozy mystery series: the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series for Crooked Lane, the Year Round Christmas mysteries for Penguin Random House and, as Eva Gates, the Lighthouse Library series, for Crooked Lane Books. 

Her newest book is the fourth Sherlock Holmes bookshop mystery, A Scandal in Scarlet.

Vicki lives and writes in bucolic Prince Edward County, Ontario. She is a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada.  Her work has been nominated for the Derringer, the Bony Blithe, the Ontario Library Association Golden Oak, and the Arthur Ellis Awards.

Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. On Facebook at www.facebook.com/evagatesauthor. Twitter @vickidelany

Hungry for Murder with Jude Dillane by Cathi Stoler

There’s no getting around the fact that my protagonist in BAR NONE: A MURDER ON THE ROCKS MYSTERY, Jude Dillane, loves to eat. At five foot nine, it seems that everything she consumes goes to height, rather than her waistline, so she can slip into those long, lean vintage jumpsuits and couture jackets she loves to wear.

Creating a character who owns a restaurant—one who is so involved with food and drink and taking care of her bar—was a good way to give my readers an insight into Jude’s personality.

She hasn’t always had it easy, starting with being named after Saint Jude, the saint people pray to when all else fails, losing her family at an early age, and often choosing the wrong man when it comes to relationships.

All of these setbacks have made Jude strong and resilient. And being behind her bar at The Corner Lounge makes up for some of her past disappointments. It allows her to channel her energy into positive actions and face new challenges, like helping her friend and landlord, Thomas “Sully” Sullivan delve into a murder at the Big City Food Bank, where Sully volunteers. Maybe not so positive, but definitely a challenge.

Of course, solving a murder can be hungry-making work, not to mention frustrating, which is where her partner and chef, Pete Angel’s mac ‘n’ cheese comes in. It’s Jude’s favorite comfort food, one she indulges in while she’s thinking about the fraud and deceit she’s encountering at Big City. A stiff drink or two can help, as well. One of her favorites is The Corner Lounge’s signature tequila drink, Jalapeno Envy.

Taking on a dangerous assignment doesn’t mean Jude will be missing any meals. On the contrary, she finds lunchtime with the suspects at Big City an opportunity to try a few new dishes while she fishes for information that can help her solve the case. Her favorite lunchtime partner is Jamila, the pretty, young receptionist who raises gossip to an art form. At the front desk, Jamila sees all and reports all. She also loves taking Jude to dine at the food trucks around Big City with their delicious tapas and bocadillos, savory little sandwiches made with homemade Spanish bread. It does seem like sleuthing is more manageable when your stomach is not rumbling.

Food isn’t the only thing on her mind as she works through a list of suspects. It’s a dangerous business that Jude is involved in, and when Sully is injured and another Big City employee dies, Jude finds she may be in the killer’s sights and that her murder might be on the menu, as well.

Here’s the recipe for Jude’s favorite drink from The Corner Lounge. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

JALAPENO ENVY

• 2 oz. Patron Gold Tequila      

• 1 oz. Agave Syrup                 

• 1/4 Ripe Mango (peeled)

• Squeeze of lime

• Jalapeno pepper cut into thin rings

Place tequila, agave syrup, mango in blender with half dozen ice cubes.

Blend until smooth.

Pour into a cocktail glass and add a squeeze of lime.

Float jalapeno pepper rings on top.   

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Cathi Stoler is the author of the Laurel & Helen New York Mystery series, including Telling Lies, Keeping Secrets and The Hard Way, as well as the novella, Nick of Time. Her newest novel is Bar None, an urban thriller. 

She is the winner of the 2015 Derringer for Best Short Story “The Kaluki Kings of Queens,” as well as the 2012 Derringer Short Story finalist for “Fatal Flaw”. Her short mystery fiction has also been published in several anthologies and online. 

Cathi is an active member of the mystery community and is Co-Vice President of Sisters in Crime New York/Tri-State, and a member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. A native New Yorker, she lives in Manhattan with her husband Paul. Please visit her at www.cathistoler.com.

Order Bar None now! 

Think INTO The Box by CJ Lyons

Want to know a secret about writing great thrillers? It's not "think out of the box" but rather "think inside the box." Many thrillers are big, bold, anything-can-happen rushes of adrenaline. The key words being: anything can happen. That's an open system. There are no boundaries. Anything can happen. Once the audience believes that, they'll no longer be surprised by what you throw at them. So, the thriller writer is forced to go big just to get a reaction—even if that reaction is a simple startle.

They’ll pile on twists and turns and explosions and car chases and surprise endings but no, that's not really the ending, try this…and it becomes sensory overload. Yes, there's a release of adrenaline. But no release of endorphins, those chemicals that create a bond between the audience and the story. A reader might enjoy the thrill ride while it lasts, just like they would a two-minute rollercoaster, but it won't stand out as unique.

But, consider great thrillers. A great thriller doesn't rely on bigger, badder any-things happening. They aren't created in a world that is an open system where anything can happen. No. They're built in worlds where nothing can happen. And then the writer makes something happen. Something bad, very, very bad. Bad beyond the character's wildest expectations, because they live in a world where nothing like that can happen.

In these thrillers, the writer creates a closed system. A glass box if you will, where nothing bad can get inside and the people living there are like the folks you see on vacation, darting out in traffic without looking because they're on vacation and when you're on vacation nothing bad can happen.

(A lot of great comedy also works this way, only, in the end, the BAD thing ends up being a GOOD thing.)

Think Jaws. Idyllic seafront small town where nothing ever happens. Great place to raise your kid. In fact, the burnt-out big city cop moves his family to work there precisely because nothing ever happens. The town's budget depends on nothing ever happening. Their very existence relies on that.

And then…well, you know the rest.

Hitchcock was a master of this. Yes, he played with tons of great twists and turns but what makes them memorable was that they took place in closed systems, the worlds he meticulously crafted, where nothing like that could ever happen.

Most people will think of Psycho as a prime example of this, but my favorite Hitchcock movies where he takes this to an extreme are North by Northwest, Rear Window, and Shadow of Doubt.

I consciously have done the same in my Lucy Guardino Thrillers. I take Pittsburgh, one of the most livable cities in America, a sleepy former steel town bounded by three rivers and mountains and tunnels and bridges (geography that makes it a physically closed system in addition to being an emotional one) and then I turn the entire city into a killing zone, rife with murder and mayhem.

But wait, this is Pittsburgh. That could NEVER happen, right?

That's the point. Take a look at your own thrillers and see if you might not be better served by using a closed box for your world where “nothing can happen.”

Then go make SOMETHING happen and have fun with it!

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New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over forty novels, former pediatric ER doctor CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge Thrillers with Heart. 

CJ has been called a “master within the genre" (Pittsburgh Magazine) and her work has been praised as “breathtakingly fast-paced” and “riveting” (Publishers Weekly) with “characters with beating hearts and three dimensions” (Newsday).

Her novels have twice won the International Thriller Writers’ prestigious Thriller Award, the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Readers’ Choice Award, the RT Seal of Excellence, and the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery and Suspense.

Her latest thriller, THE COLOR OF LIES, releases from Harper-Collins in November. Learn more about CJ’s Thrillers with Heart at www.CJLyons.net

Writing From Opposite Genders / By LS Hawker

Jackie: How do you write women so well?

Melvin Udall: I think of a man. And I take away reason and accountability.

As Good As It Gets, 1997

I remember watching this movie when it came out, and Jack Nicholson’s character said the above line in response to a woman who asked him how he wrote women so well. It got a huge laugh.

I’ve been asked how I write men so well many times, but I’ll get to that in a second. The truth is complicated. But let me back up.

I started writing fiction when I was eight and wrote my first novel at 14, a god-awful, steaming pile called THE LAST RUN with a female protagonist my age. Among the myriad of problems was that protag—she was one-dimensional and wholly unbelievable.

It took a few more stabs at female MCs before I discovered what the problem was: my female characters were me, only prettier, cooler, taller, smarter. I couldn’t seem to craft a female protagonist who was not somehow a better version of me. So I decided if I would ever be able to stop Mary Sueing my main characters, I needed to write from a male perspective.

In my second novel, I did just that. It was a YA with a high school baseball-playing protagonist who falls in love with an older, ugly girl, and the resulting consequences in his rigid, rule-bound jock world. The very first place I sent it off to was the Delacorte Press First Young Adult Novel contest, and I was a finalist, right out of the gate. I realized I was on to something.

Writing in the male POV got me out of my own head, freeing me to stop thinking about how to make myself (ahem, I mean my character) look cool. I thought instead about how the character felt. What he thought about. What he did and said.

It worked so well that I wrote male protagonists exclusively until 2013, what my friend Marc called “Dick Lit” as opposed to Chick Lit. That year I decided to try out a female MC again. That novel was ironically the first one I ever sold, in a three-book deal to HarperCollins Witness Impulse. Imagine my shock when I read in my contract that all three books were required to have female protags. You mean I have to do it again? Twice? The answer was yes, but the curse was broken anyway. THE DROWNING GAME became a USA Today bestseller and ITW Thriller Awards finalist, so I guess I waited long enough to do females again. To be fair, there’s a secondary POV character who’s male, so I cheated just a little.

For my fourth novel, however, I felt the itch to go back to the male POV. In THE THROWAWAYS, which comes out January 22, 2019, we’re introduced to four lifelong friends in their late twenties who become embroiled in a dangerous situation. It’s a thriller, of course, and so there’s lots of action and near-death experiences. But there’s also exploration into the nature of male friendship that is often given short shrift thanks to our culture’s weirdness toward it (and inter-gender friendship, but that’s a topic for another time).

I’ve been lucky to have many close male friends over the years, so instead of just superimposing a portrayal of female friendship over male ciphers, I’m able to address the essence of male relationships from personal experience. This is thanks to my close-knit college group of guy friends, one of whom, John, likes to say that I was Elaine from Seinfeldbefore there was a Seinfeld. I was even invited to one of the guys’ bachelor parties back in the day. (Yes, I went. No, there were no strippers.)

I learned much from hanging out with those guys, and it’s thanks to their transparency and inclusiveness that I was given an insider’s look into the esoteric world of mandom. This group shaped how my male characters speak, think, and behave, and no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise, there is a distinct difference between the binary genders. Some of these lessons taught me that, in general, men:

1. Speak with conviction. They use fewer qualifying words like maybe, possibly, might, may, etc. Right or wrong, they believe what they believe, and you’re going to hear about it.

2. Say “I think” instead of “I feel.”

3. Believe they deserve—as we all should—to be heard, to pursue their passions, to exist.

4. Don’t sit around talking about their feelings when tragedy strikes. They go out and raise hell to take the tragedy-struck’s mind off his troubles.

5. Think in a linear fashion, i.e., A+B=C, unlike women, whose thought processes more resemble a spiral, seeing connections outside of the lines, thinking and feeling many things at once.

6. Don’t spend much time thinking about their looks.

7. Want to fix things. Not think about them, not solicit opinions, but to spring into action, even if that action makes no sense whatsoever.

8. Often don’t speak directly about difficult subjects, don’t express their feelings verbally, but speak around them or use humor to deflect.

As I said up top, I’ve been asked often how I write men so well, and like my male friends, I prefer to deflect. This is how I answer, by using a variation of Melvin Udall’s line from As Good As It Gets: “I think of a woman. And I add emotional tone-deafness and entitlement.”

It gets a laugh, but the truth is I write men so well because I love to do it. And I have to give credit where it’s due: it wouldn’t be possible without my friends.

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LS Hawker is the author of USA Today bestseller and ITW Thriller Awards finalist THE DROWNING GAME, BODY AND BONE, and END OF THE ROAD, published by HarperCollins Witness Impulse. THE THROWAWAYS, her fourth novel, will be released1/22/19 from The Vanishing Point Press. View the book trailers and read about her adventures as a cocktail waitress, traveling Kmart portrait photographer, and witness to basement exorcisms on LSHawker.com.

Time Management for Writers / By J. Lee

So what’s it like to write and publish a book with a full-time job and young family?

If my experience is any indication, the glib answer is it’s not for the lazy, the easily stressed or those incapable of routine.  The more philosophical response is that it requires big-picture thinking in a season where every day is spent doing several small-scale tasks.  And for me, in order to ensure all of those tasks added up to a book I was proud of – without impeding my responsibilities a dad or an employee – nearly every moment of the day was (and still is) meticulously scheduled. 

Sigh. 

Exhibits A, B, and C: I have a giant, laminated excel spreadsheet of critical writing tasks and life priorities taped to my bathroom mirror so it’s the first thing I see every day. My desk has a stack of printed, individually numbered sheets of paper on it counting down to the publication of The Hubley Case on November 6th.  And just to make sure I keep it every week, I handwrite “Date Night” on my old-school, At-A-Glance calendar.  No joke.  A typical Monday looks an awful lot like a typical Friday.  And if you’ve read the “quirks” section of jleethrillers.com, you know that consistency (to put it generously) is my jam these days.  What you might not know is it isn’t innate to my personality.  It’s learned behavior due to having a limited number of hours in the day with (at times) a seemingly limitless number of things to do. 

The truth is, there’s nothing outstanding about my process.  There are lots of ways to go about it.  In the end, it just takes honesty, commitment, and sacrifice.  And a whole lot of rinse and repeat.  My life is like a German train schedule.  That might not sound very glorious, and sometimes it isn’t, but to be the kind of dad and employee I want to be, I don’t see any way around it. 

During the year I wrote, edited and worked towards the publication of The Hubley Case, I awoke at 4:21 each morning and “wrote” – a loose term my wife and I use for anything related to the book – until around six-thirty. From then until seven, I played with my kids.  Now, if my one-year-old wanted me to walk with him to get the paper and it was 7:02, did I rebuff him?  Absolutely. Stick to the schedule, kid.  Okay, just kidding.  But were there plenty of times I’d take a work call while simultaneously backing out of the driveway, waving goodbye to the kiddos and shoving a flash drive into my pocket to finish a few edits during a 30-minute lunch break?  Youbetyourbippy.  And that’s just the first two and a half hours of the day.  But you get the point. 

Lots of folks wake up to exercise, commute, do daily devotions or get a jump on the day in whatever way suits them.  So like I said, the process itself isn’t a peek-behind-the-curtain-and-gasp kind of thing. It just involves scheduling your day around what’s most important to you and how you operate (early bird, night owl)…and then sticking to it like bacterial glue.  I’ve gotten the “opportunity” to practice the art of persistence throughout this busy season, and so will you.

But I’ve also learned something interesting.  Though my college self would balk, I’ve found the less time I have available, the more I get done.  And I’d suspect that that applies to many others as well.  Years ago, there was certainly more unscheduled, leisure time.  In college, I used to frit away hours pretending to study just to flirt – and then literally have to go back to study on my own – with the college girl who eventually became my wife.  I tented outside for almost four months with my buddies in below-freezing weather to get into Duke basketball games.  I was in four after-work sports leagues after college.  And I still didn’t get half the work or writing done that I do now. There’s something about forced discipline that simply brings out the efficiency in me. 

These days, my life is a writing-family-job-family-writing-bed daily sequence.  Is it sustainable forever?  Not a chance.  Does it mean that sometimes while watching “Daniel Tiger” with my two kids that I am thinking through the next murder or betrayal in my story?  Who doesn’t?  Has some of the whimsy (ok, most) in my life has been replaced with spreadsheets and timelines?  No doubt about it.  But the result has been worth it for me. 

Thanks a lot for your support…that’s a big part of what makes the sacrifice worth it.  And to those considering balancing the work, family and writing worlds that often don’t overlap much, I hope you found my perspective helpful.  Just remember…we don’t usually regret the chances we DO take in this life.  

Thanks for reading.  Shoot me a note if you have any questions.

Lee

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J. Lee lives in the suburbs of Chicago.  He graduated from Duke University with degrees in Engineering and Sociology and a minor in Business.  In his spare time, he can usually be found playing Frisbee Golf or reading in his La-Z-Boy. The Hubley Case is his first novel. To learn more about or contact him, please visit www.jleethrillers.com

2018 Killer Nashville Conference Takeaways / By Max Lopez

One of the most uplifting and simultaneously disheartening phenomena you may experience at a writer’s conference is being surrounded by hundreds of people doing the exact same thing that you are. Although it can be intimidating to see so many authors all working tirelessly to get their next book published, I was reminded this year at the Killer Nashville conference of the special community that Killer Nashville has cultivated over the years. Whether it was chiming in during lively discussions about what was and wasn’t working for them, or respectful debates between two authors living on the opposite ends of the social media use spectrum, it was easy to see why so many writers, publishers, agents and publicists find themselves returning to Nashville for this event every year.

If you weren’t able to come out this year, fret not! Here are just a few of the publicity tips and tricks for authors discussed during the informative and fun conference:

• Looking for a new way to drive traffic to your site? Try Pinterest! After creating boards and pins with original content that tie to your book, you can link all your posts back to your site. One author claimed to have grown his website traffic by 50% after just a few weeks of cultivating an active account.

• Team up with the authors you meet! Whether or not you have a blog, or have a blog that accepts guest posts, there are many ways to boost your fellow authors in a mutually beneficial way. Create Facebook groups to keep each other updated on your books, and maybe even team up to give away each other’s books online.

• Social media may be important, but only if you enjoy it! When you’re thinking about investing time and effort into a platform ask yourself if it’s going to be something you dread doing every day. If you enjoy conversations and interacting with your audiences, try Twitter! If you have a knack for photography, Instagram may do the trick. What works for you is going to work for your brand.

• Starting your online presence from scratch can be difficult but getting plugged into the communities that pertain to your book right off the bat can expose you to new ideas on how to connect with your audiences. Much like the research you do for your book, you can entrench yourself in those spaces. For instance, if your main character enjoys fly-fishing, go ahead and follow some fishing accounts or join a fly-fishing group. Thinking in these detail-oriented terms can help point you to a new group of people who will enjoy your book!

• Perhaps most importantly: have fun. Writing is work, but when you’re having that writer’s block or not feeling so great about your latest sales numbers, don’t forget why you started writing!

A huge thank you to everyone that makes Killer Nashville happen, we hope to see you there in 2019!

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Max López is a publicist and new author ambassador for JKS Communications in Nashville. With a degree and experience in journalism and business, he also has crisis management skills. An avid outdoorsman, he enjoys bringing energy and positivity to any team he's a part of.

Dramatic Infrastructure: Using Everyday Events to Deliver Emotional Impact / By Roger Johns

Success as a storyteller depends on understanding not only the mechanics of the story you’re telling, but also how to properly shape a reader’s responses to the events in the narrative. Readers quickly lose interest in writing that’s emotionally flat, but provoking, sustaining, and directing the reader’s emotional experience can be challenging.

One way to meet this challenge is to keep track of the everyday experiences that produce specific emotions and to examine their dramatic infrastructure to learn why they hold the power they do. Understanding events at such a basic level allows us to manipulate the facts without destroying an event’s capacity to evoke an emotional response.

This makes everyday events adaptable to situations beyond those in which we originally encounter them, greatly enlarging our toolkit. And it’s lets us separate the fiction our characters inhabit from the facts of real life. Putting real people on the page, explicitly or implicitly, can cause legal problems.

As a hedge against useful observations slipping from my memory, I keep a diary of emotion-laden experiences, along with the specific emotions they trigger, and I try to work out why they affect me the way they do, and how I can modify them to produce different emotions. Here are a few examples from my little black book.

A Suitcase Full of Sadness: The Power of Disrupted Expectations

Not long ago, two empty suitcases appeared at the foot of the bed in the guest room––a signal that my wife was gearing up for a business trip. I had been expecting to see a suitcase, but there were two instead of one. And they showed up a day earlier than I expected. These were minor deviations from the norm, yet their effect was palpable. Their power came from the fact that something was out of place (that second suitcase) and something was out of sequence (the packing was happening a day earlier than usual), and this disrupted my expectations.

After I noted that these details had affected me by amplifying my usual reaction to my wife’s imminent departure (sadness), the storyteller in me recognized their greater value and I began tinkering with the scenario. How could I modify the facts to provoke suspicion as well as sadness? The shoulder strap of an evening gown peeking out from under a business suit, maybe.

What about fear? If no suitcases had appeared (again, something out of place), even on the day I would normally expect them (something out of sequence), I might fear my wife had lost her job. Or, if there were three or four suitcases, instead of one, I might fear she was moving out and leaving me?

The key is to recognize that disrupted expectations affect our emotions, and the precise effect depends on the facts that hang on this basic scaffold. The facts could be details that are out of place or out of sequence, as they were here. But they could be anything the author cares to use. If one character uses an expression another character has never heard them use, it disrupts an expectation and raises the question of what that first character has been reading, or who they’ve been talking to, or where they’ve been. If a character who is chronically late, shows up early, an expectation is disrupted and an emotional response is triggered (surprise, happiness). Or, if a character who is chronically early shows up late a different expectation is disrupted, evoking different responses (worry, irritation).

Hey! You! Get Outta My Cab: The Power of the Totally Unexpected

The example above involved disrupted expectations, but what about completely unexpected situations?

Three or four years ago, my wife and I pulled into a parking spot at one of our favorite restaurants. Before we could get out of the car, a taxi pulled into the other end of the lot. This caught our attention because taxis in this area are uncommon. My wife and I watched as a well-dressed couple, a man and woman, exited the taxi from opposite sides.

The trunk popped open and a two pieces of luggage were lifted out and set on the pavement behind the cab. We were too far away to hear what was being said, but the couple’s gestures and facial expressions were enough. They were in the throes of a pitched argument––almost a shouting match. After less than a minute, the man climbed back into the cab and it pulled away, leaving the woman standing there with her bags. She quickly slid the strap of one bag over her shoulder, yanked up the handle of her other bag, and then stalked off, rolling one bag behind her and swaying under the weight of the other.

The overwhelming emotional response to this scenario was curiosity. Several times, over dinner, we speculated about what had happened and why. Even though it’s been years, it left such a strong impression we never fail to mention it when we find ourselves back at that restaurant.

The power of this experience came from three characteristics: its brevity, its unusual facts (a taxi so out of place, two people climbing out of a taxi to argue in the parking lot, one person abandoning the other) and rich vein of questions it exposed: What were they going on about? Why was the woman the one who was left behind? Where had they been going? Did the man continue on to the original destination or did he abandon both the woman and the destination? Were they spouses, lovers, business associates, or strangers who just happened to share a cab? What happened to the woman?

At a book talk I attended a few years ago, I had the privilege of listening to Michael Farris Smith describe the event that inspired him to write Desperation Road. He was driving down some highway in the Deep South, when he saw a woman walking along the road, a garbage bag slung over her shoulder. Due to the state of the economy at the time, this was apparently not an uncommon sight in those parts. What took him by surprise, though––what was completely unexpected––was the young girl walking hand in hand with the woman, along this busy highway. He had never seen anything like this and it haunted him until he wrote a novel in which he imagined some very interesting answers.

Both the couple from the taxi, and the woman and the girl walking along the highway, were unexpected glimpses of something far outside the ordinary, a turn of events that never fails to provoke a strong reaction. Curiosity and desperation are just two of them.

In his short story, That Bus is Another World, Stephen King leads us down the garden path through what looks like an ordinary day of being stuck in big-city traffic, and just when we’re not expecting anything much to happen, one of the characters does something utterly unexpected, leaving wide-eyed horror in its wake.

It’s brief, it’s bizarre, and it raises a ton of questions. And even though King uses this mechanism to elicit a sense of horror, I can easily envision the story producing feelings of transcendence, tenderness, hatred, or any number of other emotions, simply by changing a few facts, by having the character do something different but equally unexpected.

This three-factor scaffold, it seems, will support fact patterns that elicit just about any response you want, as long as you want the response to be intense.

No Room at the Inn: Passive-Aggression, Emotional Extortion, and Access Control

Passive aggression is an example of another fundamental structure rich in possibilities. Several months ago, I was booking a hotel room and I was doing it the old-fashioned way––by talking to someone on the phone. It should have been straightforward, but it wasn’t. The reservation clerk would ask me for a bit of information and just as the answer was coming out of my mouth, she would cut me off with a different question. If I tried to continue with the answer to the earlier question, she would cut me off again with something like “No, I need to get this first.”

This happened four times and with each interruption her tone became sharper and her sighs of exasperation got progressively louder. After the fourth time, I got fed up, told her I had to take another call, and then I hung up . . . and called a different hotel. I can’t say with absolute certainty that she was jerking my chain, but the timing of each interruption was so precise and her irritation grew so theatrical I was certain enough, and I felt justified bailing out of the call.

This was classic passive-aggressive behavior and, while it’s often just plain irritating (a sometimes useful emotion to evoke), it got me to thinking about how its fundamental structure makes it an incredibly versatile emotional trigger. This is because passive-aggressive behavior is an example of power in its most fundamental form––access control. The victim needs something, the aggressor controls access to what the victim needs, so the victim endures the aggressor’s abuse as the price of access.

Sometimes the aggressor is abusive because they feel generally powerless in life and this is a way to remedy that, albeit on a petty level. In other cases, the aggressor may have a darker motive like revenge or emotional manipulation, or the satisfaction of some sadistic appetite. With each different motive, this fundamental power equation triggers a different emotion.

Another way to use it is to explore the price the victim will be required to pay. In the case of me and the reservation clerk, her irritated tone and her dramatic sighs were her ways of letting me know she was getting what she needed. But it also told me she was charging too much. So, I cancelled the transaction and found accommodations where the price of a room didn’t include a tax on my dignity.

In Silence of the Lambs, FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling needs to stop a serial killer and her antagonist, imprisoned psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, needs to watch people suffer. In order to stop the killer, Clarice needs access to the insights in Lecter’s head, so Lecter proposes a bargain. If Clarice will let him observe her anguish as she recounts painful childhood memories, he will grant her access to his psychiatric expertise so she will have a chance to rescue the killer’s latest victim.

But, how much emotional pain is Clarice willing to endure? Will Lecter raise the price as Clarice’s need grows more urgent? Will Clarice risk losing Lecter’s cooperation by only pretending to pay his price? Will Lecter risk losing access to Clarice’s agony by feeding her bogus information? Does Clarice control access to something Lecter is willing to pay for?

Using these price-to-be-paid elements of the power equation, Thomas Harris, the author, evokes a nearly endless sequence of emotions, keeping the reader on an emotional rollercoaster throughout the book.

Lecter’s behavior goes way past passive aggression. In fact, there’s nothing passive about it, at all. It’s pure emotional extortion. But the difference rests entirely on the facts. The fundamental framework in Silence of the Lambs is the same as it was for me and the reservation clerk: A controls access to something B must have, so B must meet A’s price. One set of facts produces irritation, the others produce shame, revulsion, fear, dread, hope, hatred, and craftiness. The emotional responses that the basic power equation can produce are probably endless.

Conclusions

Disrupted expectations, the completely unexpected, and the power of access-control are just three examples of mechanisms that can be adapted to deliver an emotional punch. They prime the pump, so to speak. Virtually any event or situation that evokes an emotional response can be used. The key is to understand the dramatic infrastructure of the situation or event so you can adapt it to your storytelling goals. After that, it’s simply a matter of dressing up the basic mechanism with the facts that produce the emotional experience you choose.

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Roger Johns is the author of the Wallace Hartman Mysteries from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books, and is the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year (Detective ▪ Mystery Category) for his debut novel, Dark River Rising. The second volume in the series, River of Secrets, will be out on August 28, 2018. Roger is a member of the Atlanta Writers Club, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and Mystery Writers of America. Please visit him at www.rogerjohnsbooks.com.

Spoiler Alert / By Ellen Whitfield

Could spoilers be a good thing?

Mysteries and thrillers have always been my go-to reads, and when I started working as publicist for authors, I was excited to get to work with so many talented writers who craft books in my favorite genre.

What I didn’t want to reveal to them, however, is that I am the queen of spoilers. I almost always read the end of a book before I get there, usually when I’m about a third of the way through and have a grasp on the characters and main plot points. I am especially guilty of this with mysteries, because I literally cannot wait to find out what happens.

And romances with love triangles? I cannot stand the suspense and I must find out how things shake out in the end.

WHY? Everyone asks me this, and I honestly don’t have a perfect answer. I think it has to do with wanting to be able enjoy reading the book without rushing through to the end and feeling stressed out about what might happen.

Before I started my spoiler habit, I was frequently disappointed when the murder was committed by someone who didn’t fit the profile I had put together in my head for the killer, and I would feel slightly stupid for not picking up on hidden clues that obviously pointed to one character. (I would make a terrible detective.)

But now, I more often than not close the final page of a book with a contented sigh because I have been able to follow the trail that the author laid down, and everything came together in a satisfactory manner.

Does it occasionally take away the enjoyment of the book? Every once in a while, yes. Earlier this year, I read The Woman in the Window, and I feel like that one may have been more enjoyable had I waited to find out both twists presented close to the end. (I’m really sorry, A.J. Finn.)

But more often than not, I find that I feel more relaxed and can focus more on the writing once I know how the story will end. I pick up clues that I may have otherwise overlooked, and I feel better about siding with certain characters, knowing they won’t betray me in a twist ending.

If I don’t peek, I find myself itchy and distracted, and not really enjoying the book, which is kind of the whole point, right? I still enjoy the build up to the eventual reveal and I think I’m still a fair judge of the story overall.

But authors, especially mystery authors, put so much work into crafting an intriguing tale, and I always feel like I’m betraying the way a story was meant to be read when I flip to the last chapter. I took an informal poll of some of the writers I work with, and I was surprised to find that they weren’t horribly offended.

Most of them said it’s the reader’s choice as to how they want to read a book, even the thought of someone immediately finding out what happens makes them feel a little icky. But one of them even said she herself was an offender.

I read a 2011 article that cited research from a UC San Diego's psychology department study to say that spoilers are misnamed: for some people, they enhance the story rather than spoiling it.

One of my authors presented a perfect analogy: "If someone wants to 'eat dessert' before dinner, that’s fine, as long as it doesn’t spoil their appetite for reading the book from the beginning, and as long as they don’t reveal the ending to someone else.”

If you are going to eat dinner anyway, does it really matter if you eat dessert first? Grab a bowl of ice cream, flip to the end of the book, and let me know what you think.

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Ellen is a publicist at JKS Communications. With a strong journalism background, Ellen balances her understanding of “the other side of the desk” when it comes to media pitching with a true love of an avid bibliophile. She has been part of the community of journalists in her more than seven years experience in print media with such well-respected outlets as The Dallas Morning News, The Advocate (Baton Rouge and New Orleans) – where she coordinated books coverage for the paper, Waco Tribune Herald and others. Her experience on the editorial side of travel, community and lifestyle sections of newspapers, social media and online media is to the benefit of authors in a variety of genres. She has an eye for design and a passion for detail. A Louisiana State University graduate, Ellen lives in Louisiana with her husband, a newspaper executive, daughter, and (ever-growing) collection of 550 books.

R.I.P Malibu Barbie / By Jennifer Dornbush

The daughter of a death investigator shares how a toy from her unconventional childhood feeds into her career as a Hollywood screenwriter and novelist.

When I told some friends about a very unusual Barbie doll accessory my sisters and I used to play, they wanted proof. Not being able to recall where it last ended up, I emailed my family to ask who was in the current ownership of … the Barbie body bag.

The next day, I received a very distressing photo and email from the Newaygo County Medical Examiner’s office (aka Mom and Dad). What started as a simple quest to find the bag turned into an unorthodox correspondence.

Before you step into this email chain you need a little background on my family.

#1. My father was a medical examiner and my mother served as his office manager.

#2. They ran the M.E. office from their home. I and my two sisters often helped out.

#3. No, Mattel does not manufacture Barbie body bags. The body bag you see in the photograph is a sample version given to us by a vendor.

The emails began….

Subject line:  Miss Barbie found dead according to Newaygo County Medical Examiner report.

Message: 

We are sorry to inform you that little Miss Barbie was found lying in her case without any obvious signs of what caused her death.  Therefore the medical examiner was notified.  He came to examine the scene and then packaged her up in this adorable "Barbie body bag" to be taken off to the morgue for examination and autopsy. If and when we get a final answer to the cause and time of death, you will be notified. If this office can be of any further help in your investigation, please do not hesitate to contact us. 

Within a matter of minutes, emails about Miss Barbie’s demise were bouncing around between the family.

First came denial …

From: Reporter Dornbush (me)

From the photo you sent, that looks like Skipper, not Barbie. Please confirm her identity.

From: The Newaygo County Medical Examiner’s Office

This email is to correct a grave error on our part about the name and person of the deceased in the white body bag in the pictures that were recently sent to you.  It has come to our attention that we were mistaken in the identity of the person in the body bag.  Records now indicate that she was "Skipper", Barbie's little sister.  We do apologize for the mistaken identity and our office will do better in the future to make sure we have the correct identity of the person/s that our office is required to investigate. 

Then came blame…..

From: Detective DeVries (my middle sister)

Reports from witnesses state that Skipper was cat walking down the runway when her arch enemy dropped the disco ball on her. She was rushed to the hospital where her arch enemy switched her IV to pain meds causing Skipper to hallucinate and stumble out into the hallway where a candy striper’s cart struck her and caused a fatal hematoma in the brain.

From: Sherlock Holmes Graeser (my youngest sister)

I disagree with your evaluation of the crime, Detective. During a recent interview, Skipper’s best friend confided that Skipper had an acrimonious relationship with Ken’s new wife, Malibu Barbie. She has reason to believe Malibu poisoned Skipper at their Dreamhouse.

From: Reporter Dornbush (me)

My sources familiar with the matter concur and say they believe Ken had a hand in her demise. He was overheard complaining to his spray- tanned friend, Steven, “I’m tired of driving Skipper everywhere in the convertible. She should grow up and get her own license.”

And then, overwhelming guilt when this answer arrived….

From: The Newaygo County Medical Examiner’s Office

The official autopsy report is in and the M.E. has found that after being shut up in her doll case for over a decade, Skipper died from an acute case of loneliness. She had no one to play with; no one to pay any attention to her; no one to take her places, no new clothes to try on. She languished away from lack of attention until she just gave up the ghost. 

We all speculated that perhaps this was Mom’s way of telling us to get our old toys out of her house.

Finally, we arrived at acceptance….

From: Detective DeVries

Please pass along our condolences to the remaining family of Miss Skipper. We will consider this case closed.

From: Sherlock Holmes Graeser

I am sorry to hear of Skipper's death but am delighted to see how well the white body bag goes with her 70s style, flowered halter top dress. She was well-preserved and stylish to the very end.

From: Reporter Dornbush

I accept your official document on this matter but will continue into the investigation as journalism integrity compels me to do. In the meantime, I will run a flattering obituary in this Sunday’s paper. We ask that you please hold her body and belongings just a little while longer until we can get home to claim them.

Such are the antics of a coroner’s family. The place I called home and once relegated with great embarrassment has now become the cornerstone of my storytelling. I’ve embraced my uncanny childhood and it’s warped influence on me.  But before I began fictionalizing the skeletons in my closet, I spent years trying to keep them there. [And yes, we had a real human skeleton in our family. His name was Sam and he lived in the barn. But that’s for another story.]

A plaque hanging on the wall of my office reminds me: Home is where your story begins. Write from that place. Especially if it makes you cringe.

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Jennifer is a writer, speaker, and forensic specialist. Jennifer has several crime drama series being developed for television. Wanting to share her love of forensics with other storytellers, she scribed non-fiction work, Forensic Speak: How To Write Realistic Crime Dramas, published by Michael Wiese Productions, hailed as a north star to creating authentic crime dramas. As a forensic specialist, she has consulted with TV writers on network and cable TV shows. She regularly leads seminars and webinars on forensics and crime fiction and has taught screenwriting on the high school and university level and mentored new writers. Sign up for her newsletter and YouTube channel FORENSIC FRIDAYS at: www.jenniferdornbush.com

The Mystery That Starts With A Secret / By Emily Bleeker

Five months ago I stood in a courtroom filled with people. I handed the bailiff a piece of blue paper. She gave it to the judge. He looked down at me over a pair of bifocals, and that is when the truth spilled out, “I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I didn’t know. It will never happen again.”

And on that day I swore that I’d never, ever…forget to renew my vehicle registration online before the expiration date. And that was my first and only run-in with the law. In my life as a mom of four, you’d be more likely to find me in the pick-up line at school than watching a line-up, and the crucial decisions in my day usually include some “edge of your seat” problems like…is it too close to dinner to have a snack?

Though my search engine history would leave an NSA agent shaking his head and putting me on a watch list, the stories I write exist solely on the page and in my mind. I’ve always been drawn to mystery, thrills, with maybe a dash of blood and betrayal in the mix.  I like to think/hope that this proclivity for the morose comes not from sociopathic tendencies but from a curiosity that started long ago.

When I was younger, my mom, sister and I would watch that crime TV news magazine shows about real-life mysteries. I’d watch the beginning of the story with fascination as the happy pictures scrolled across the screen, and family members shared memories of a loved one lost, or maybe a loved one accused of a terrible crime. Though allegiances would change with each interview, the pictures didn’t. The smiles on the wedding day, the tender snuggles with newborn babies, the laughter recorded on a grainy video in a crowded room, all remained the same on the face of the victim or the suspect. In that fuzzy opening of the program, it was impossible to know, perhaps by design, who to trust.

And that’s how it works, right? Every good mystery starts with a secret and at least one person who is willing to go to great lengths to cover it up. And that is what I like to write about, this thing we all have in common—secrets. I think at first we all might say, “Secrets? What Secrets? I’m an open book!!” But they are there, deep down, things either no one knows about us or only our very trusted friends and family. Those are your secrets. And maybe you wouldn’t murder someone to cover them up, but that’s because you are you. My characters aren’t always as nice—'cause where is the fun in that?

So many of the questions I get when I talk to book clubs center around the “why” of these lies. Why didn’t she just tell the truth? Why did she hide this or that? Why? Why? Why?

As readers, we are far easier on fictional characters than we are on humans in real life or, gosh, even ourselves. Think about it—we clear away the clutter and unfolded laundry to take that picture of our kid for Instagram. We tweet about our blessed ten-year anniversary and not how we’ve thought about a divorce every day for nearly a decade. We post a grand thank you message on our birthday when most days we feel utterly alone. And these are the garden-variety secrets of our lives. Think of the vitriol and judgment that so much of social media and other online outlets vomit out at the slightest provocation.

Gosh, no wonder we are afraid to be real.

But, if I’ve learned anything from writing stories about people with secrets it is that hiding is not worth it. Though it makes for great, page-turning fiction, the only way to resolve the chaos, mystery, and turmoil in my character’s lives is to uncover the secret. Only then, when their greatest shame and fears are exposed, can there be growth and resolution in the story. 

As social scientist Brené Brown explains, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.” I like to watch my characters run from their less than perfect pasts, but that’s because they are figments of my imagination. In real life, secrets end in shame, loneliness and worst case scenario—a true crime documentary. So let’s read about those juicy, tense, mysteries that come from scandalous hidden truths, and maybe even sneak in a show or podcast to keep our brains twisting. But as for me, I’ll leave that excitement on the page or screen and instead of running from my story, I plan on living it out in the open for everyone to see. I hope you will join me.

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Emily Bleeker is a former educator who discovered her passion for writing after introducing a writer's workshop to her students. She soon found a whole world of characters and stories living inside of her mind. It took a battle with a rare form of cancer to give her the courage to share that amazing world with others. Emily lives in suburban Chicago with her family. Between writing and being a mom, she attempts to learn guitar, sings along to the radio (loudly), and embraces her newfound addiction to running. Connect with her or request a Skype visit with your book club at emilybleeker.wordpress.com

Writing for Young Audiences / Kathryn Berla

In my mind, the most difficult thing to write is a young adult because the writer must always keep her focus on the adolescent voice while conveying emotions that many adolescents aren’t fully equipped to put into words. And yet, these emotions will likely be the most intensely felt of our lives, setting the stage for how we move forward in our jobs, our marriages, our parenting. Everything. The profundity of this time of self-discovery is exactly what led me to write in the young adult genre.

GOING PLACES was my first foray into the world of mystery writing. Although it’s a young adult book, the mystery involves a much older man and his interaction with the protagonist. Once I got a taste for writing a bit of mystery, I was anxious to write another, this time allowing myself more freedom to explore it in an adult way. However, with one foot firmly planted in the young adult world, I didn’t want to stray too far. I simply wanted to allow myself more leeway.

Thus, THE KITTY COMMITTEE was born.

I’m more of a psychologically-oriented person and writer. What goes on inside a person’s head is always far more interesting to me than external events. What causes a person to be cruel or commit a crime? Why do others go along with it? What are the long-term consequences beyond just the immediate action and how can these consequences change a life?

Two books that I read in my younger years had a profound effect on me, raising questions about the burdens we carry forward from childhood into adulthood. One was Margaret Atwood’s CAT’S EYE and the other was John Knowles’ A SEPARATE PEACE. Combine that with my decades-long interest in sociopaths, and I had a theme I was anxious to explore. Sociopaths are different from you and me, and yet they live amongst us in more numbers than we might imagine.  Often, they’re productive and successful people, a fact that I’ve learned through my research. We tend to think of them as monsters but that’s often not the case. In THE PSYCHOPATH INSIDE, neuroscientist, James Fallon, discovers during his own study about psychopathic tendencies that his personal brain scan showed all the physical markers that placed him firmly in that category.

Reading the relatively new young adult thriller, MY SISTER ROSA, led me back to the old classic, THE BAD SEED, and a new way of looking at the disorder. Perhaps in ancient history, more of us, if not all of us, were sociopaths. How could empathy, morality, and guilt be productive when the human species was in survival mode? Once we had advanced to the point of forming civilized societies, those same traits became critical. But does evolution simply erase unwanted traits in the blink of an eye? My dentist tells me that more and more people are born without the wisdom teeth we no longer have the use (or space) for.

So, what happens to the “normal” person who gets caught in the web of a sociopath when it’s leading nowhere good? Sociopaths can be keen observers of people. They can learn to fake the emotions they know are important to others but don’t recognize in themselves. Perhaps they do this on a subconscious level, perhaps it’s conscious. But if you spend a lot of your time observing others and how they react to different situations, you’re bound to gain insights that are helpful when it comes to manipulation.

In THE KITTY COMMITTEE, I explore this concept as well as the concept of survivor’s guilt of those who get sucked into the vortex of a sociopath. Because the events take place during the intense and uncertain period of adolescence, I felt more freedom to dig deeper by looking back through the eyes of an adult. And like all of my books, forgiveness, and redemption are at the forefront as the most powerful motivators in the human heart.

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Kathryn Berla enjoys writing in a variety of genres including light fantasy, contemporary literary fiction, and even horror. She writes for all ages: children, middle grade, young adult, and adult. She's the author of the young adult novels: 12 HOURS IN PARADISE, DREAM ME, THE HOUSE AT 758, and GOING PLACES, which received VOYA Magazine's Perfect Ten rating. You can follow her on Twitter @BerlaKathryn Instagram @AuthorKathrynB and Facebook @KathrynBerlaBooks

Character Development in a Series / Karen Randau

Whether you’re writing a standalone book or a series, you need believable characters who cause the reader to feel something. The characters must change—from weak to strong, devastated to overcoming, or lonely to thriving in a satisfying relationship.

In each book of a series, the change should unfold before the reader’s eyes to create a satiating experience. Characters should travel a believable arc from book to book, and each book is a building block to who the character has become.

Believable Characters Show Relatable Traits

Your key characters need certain characteristics.

• While often larger than life, they must be relatable to evoke the reader’s empathy, and they are never perfect.

• They encounter obstacles and conflicts and have a huge dose of fear, but they develop into someone who faces their instead of shrinking away.

• They fail, but they learn from their failures and overcome the obstacles you’ve put in their path.

Start with a Name

Names matter more in allegories than in commercial fiction but give your characters’ names a lot of thought.

Ethel is a good name for a woman born in the early twentieth century, but horrible for a contemporary girl. I often Google popular baby names of the timeframe and geography of my character’s birth. Research the name’s meaning.

If you want a character who is Slavic, big, strong, and violent, choose a Slavic name that Americans could pronounce and means something similar to your character’s description. For example, the Slavic name Nicholai is a variant of Nicholas and means victorious; conqueror of the people. You could use either version. Don’t forget to Google the first and last names together to ensure the combination doesn’t belong to a famous person.

Help Readers Visualize the Character

Sure, you must know the basic physical characteristics of all your characters (hair, eye, and skin color in addition age, height, build, piercings, tattoos, the sound of the voice, and physical imperfections). Advanced writers let the reader visualize the character in their own way rather than spelling out how the writer envisions the person. When possible, reveal physical characteristics through action and dialogue (showing) rather than by telling these traits (and not by the character looking in a mirror).

Backstory: Where a Series Becomes a Challenge

Backstory is everything that happened to your character before Chapter One and is what shaped that person into who they are today. You need not tell their whole backstory, and tell little—if any—in chapter one.

For my antagonist, protagonist, and key supporting characters, I create a one or two-page summary of their birth, siblings, where they grew up, educational level, political affiliation, spiritual beliefs, occupation, income, goals, skills/talents, friends, strengths, weaknesses, triggers, flaws, hobbies/pleasures, and anything important to their personality. Pick the few most relevant and reveal them through action and dialogue.

In my summary I like to include a photo I find online, but I avoid revealing who I envisioned in my writing. Let the reader imagine your characters for themselves.

Keep track of how characters in a series change from book to book. If you’ve planned an entire series, plot the character arc from the beginning of book one until the end of the final edition. If your process is to develop your story and characters as you write, think through the character arc for each book and keep it consistent with the previous books.

In my Rim Country Mystery series, protagonist Rita Avery started as a naïve, shallow person who cared more about fashion than her neighbors, and she rarely questioned the motives of her lying husband. The challenges and obstacles in the first book changed her, and the events in following books continued her transformation. By the fourth book, Rita is a savvy and compassionate private investigator who carries both a gun and anti-anxiety medication because of what happened in the first book.

You can find templates online for character development. Feel free to use the worksheet I developed for myself, found at http://www.karenrandau.com/character-development/. For a series, update your character summary with each book to provide greater depth and to decide which traits and backstory to highlight in your work-in-progress.

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Karen Randau started writing as a way of life as soon as a teacher taught her to print Run Spot Run. She received a degree in journalism/public relations from the University of Texas at Austin, and had a career that spanned the industries of high tech, mental health, and nearly three decades at Food for the Hungry. Later, a seed of an idea turned into her debut novel, Deadly Deceit, the first in the Rim Country Mystery series, published in June 2016. The series now also includes Deadly Inheritance (January 2017) and Deadly Choices (July 2017). For more information, visit http://www.karenrandau.com/.

No Fear, Ish / Robert Mangeot

In fall here, the yellow garden spiders come out. If you live anywhere in North America, you may know the beasties I mean: monster ladies in monster webs, their bodies over an inch long and their leg span a couple inches more. When summer breaks, for a few weeks they make a hunting ground of my eaves and shrubs. Despite her size, this queen lady is harmless other than to the imagination.

Most of my life I’ve been afraid of spiders. Those darting legs. Creepy egg sacs. Venom, maybe. You never know in your fear place, do you? Yep, I steered clear of little spiders, big spiders, spiders on floors, spiders in webs, leggy spiders that aren’t technically even spiders but really harvestmen but try telling that to my racing pulse. Whatever is next-level down from the full-on willies, that was me and spiders. Less so recently, and for an unexpected reason: I wrote about one.

A few years ago, I was doing passive idea-gathering on the internet (less charitably, goofing off), and I came across an article on giant tropical spiders who ate birds. A legit article from a legit source with legit pictures of the feasting in-progress. Genus Nephila, the article went. Forget my local ladies. A nephilid can boast a two-inch plus tubular body and a leg span wide around as your dinner plate, and the rain forest-y parts of Queensland and Southeast Asia are lousy with them. Birds, bats, snakes, all on her menu. Banana spiders are the common name, though more poetic minds dubbed them the Golden Orb Weaver. Their webs are super-strong and perfect for industrial uses from military to clothing to surgical supplies, which was the story hook: spider silk the stuff biotech dreams are made of.

Did I mention a leg span wide as your dinner plate? Go ahead. See for yourself. These ladies stalk plenty of YouTube clips. Inspired if freaked out, I put a giant nephilid at the heart of what became “Queen and Country,” published in the March 2018 Mystery Weekly. In the story’s early drafts, the spider queen was this malevolent force the principals searched in vain—and at some risk—to bag for Big Science. I gave the spider extra size and, with creative license, that serious venom to boot. No, my subconscious and I didn’t spare her any shock factor.

Something else happens when honing an idea: research. You know, facts and stuff. I studied nephilid diet, reproduction, hunting and feeding, day vs. nocturnal behavior, how she might walk, how she would behave in various weather conditions. And I studied her webs, the elaborate architecture spun in sun-glinting patterns, the parchment-y decorations she weaves in— stabilimenta, I would learn—that still baffle arachnologists as to exact purpose. Here was where the surprises started. The more real-world behavior I worked into my devil spider, the more rounded she became on the page. The more vulnerable. I came to root for her.

Research gives me more than just a better story. What I learn stays with me long after I’ve typed The End. I came to tolerate a spider encounter, to trap-and-release or live-and-let-live. After all, if there are spiders around, that means there’s lots of stuff spiders eat around, and those critters would be the root problem, wouldn’t they?

Look, I won’t claim to be cuddly with the things. If a house spider crawled on me now, I would leap none-too profile in courage from my chair. But I’ve come to enjoy our sharing space, with my local giant ladies especially. Every fall, my non-bird-eating queens break cover and spend their regal nights under my porch eaves. Last year, I described our resident queen’s stabilamenta pattern and web structure to my wife, how the spider would have to take her capture silk down soon, what with rain on the way. My wife asked how the hell I knew all that. And why, she didn’t add aloud.

Great questions.

The longer I’m at this whole writing thing, the more I realize what’s behind the ideas that I keep after. A desire to understand and, maybe in some cases, overcome. Thanks to a short story, these days I greet my fall spider friends with no fear. Ish.

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Robert Mangeot lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife and cats. His short fiction appears here and there, including

ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE, LOWESTOFT CHRONICLE, Mystery Writers of America's ICE COLD, and the

Anthony-winning MURDER UNDER THE OAKS. His story "The Cumberland Package" was a finalist in the 2017 Derringer

Awards. He proudly serves as current chapter president for Sisters in Crime Middle Tennessee. When not writing, he

can be found wandering the snack food aisles of America or France.

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

Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.