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