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/.