And Now the Fun Begins

September 28, 2015September 28, 2015 ~ marilynm ~ 6 Comments

Because my latest Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery, Not as it Seems, is available in all the usual places, in paper and as ebooks, of course I’ve been busy with promotion.

I’m nearing the end of a blog tour with today’s post being on Paty Jager, my follow Lady of Mystery’s personal blog, http://patyjager.blogspot.com/ and I’ve already participated in one big book fair over in the area where the new mystery is set, the central coast of California. I’m headed to another, The Great Valley Bookfest in Manteca CA on October 10th, and I’ll be in my publisher’s booth at the Art Festival in Visalia on October 17th. You never know how these things will go as far as book selling is concerned, but it’s a great way to meet a lot of book lovers.

To be perfectly honest, I’m never really done with promotion because I have two series, which mean I have two new books coming out each year. Nor am I ever done writing–when I’ve sent one book off to a publisher, I’m busily working on one for the other publisher.

Is it all worth it? To be honest, if I’m talking about money, no.

You might wonder why I don’t quit. The reason is I love the characters in both series, the only way to know what’s going to happen to them next is to write the next book(s).

So, is it fun what I’m doing? Yes, for me it is. I love writing and the worlds I’ve created. I love talking to other writers and readers.

What I’m wondering is, is it fun for the rest of you writers? And readers, do you enjoy meeting writers at book fairs and other places?

Marilyn

Life of a Saleswoman

September 24, 2015 ~ Amber Foxx ~ 6 Comments

I was the Girl Scout who sold the fewest cookies. When my school asked students to sell Christmas cards for its building fund, I knocked on all of two doors. I could dance, act or speak in public without a flutter of stage fright, but facing a neighbor at her front door and telling her I was selling something filled me with dread. I was sure I was bothering her.

Needless to say, as a young adult, I planned my career in performing arts, not sales. Then I moved to Virginia to be with a boyfriend and we broke up. There I was, with a degree in theatre and dance and no money to move again. I passed the state insurance exam and went to work for a company that sold supplemental disability policies for auto accidents. The job sounded stable and professional. I had no idea what I’d gotten into.

My boss assigned me to ride around out in the country to hamlets like Frog Level, being trained in door-to-door sales by a huge mustachioed man in a plaid suit. I wish I could use his real name, it was so funny—I’ll call him Don Duck, though. It’s close enough. He drove under the speed limit, his big belly up to the wheel, serene as a smiling Buddha, teaching me the Dharma of Selling. “Ask for the sale.” “Agree with their objections. You’ll break down those objections, but do it so they don’t notice.” “Get them to agree with you.” People would pass him on those two-lane roads, giving him the finger for his slowness, and he’d say cheerfully, “Must be in some kind of hurry.”

He seemed happy. Our boss, though, was tense and smarmy, proud of the twists and turns he could take to avoid paying when people got hurt. (“Did you walk to your mailbox to get your check?” “Yes.” “Great, glad you’re feeling better. That’s your last check.”) When a policy had to pay out, he would grumble, “Don never should have sold those people.” If I found selling those cards and cookies hard, imagine how tough it was for me to knock on doors for a manager like that. I quit.

My next job was with a lingerie company as a model and salesperson, part-time with no benefits. We did fashion shows of elegant nightgowns—and also teddies and corsets-with-garters and thigh-high hose. Nothing showed that wouldn’t show in a bathing suit, but the setting had a whole different mood than a beach: hotel bars. I learned to twirl on my toe while shedding a sheer peignoir down my back to reveal the teddy, looking over my shoulder, the peignoir hanging from one finger—hokey, but I was an actor and it was a role I could play. Mingling with the audience to pitch the products after the shows, I was great at shooting the breeze, making jokes that were just risqué enough while still being a lady, channeling Mae West into my far from West-like form. My boss said I could, in her words, “sell ice cubes to Eskimos.” Not true. I could sell lingerie in a bar while wearing it.

One of the customers at a show thought I had such sales skill he offered me a job with his office supply company. I needed benefits, so I took it. This was before online ordering, back when sales reps and middlemen were the norm. Discouraging is an understatement—I was driving around gritty industrial neighborhoods with my catalog of office supplies trying to get office managers to place orders with us when I knew full well our company had nothing to offer that was better than our competitors. Hello. Our product line is limited and our service is slower and more expensive. Please buy from us. I couldn’t sell those ice cubes anymore, and I could see where I’d be headed once I was off probation and on commission.

I thought my selling days were over when I got a theater job and worked for ten years as actor and choreographer. Then, in one of my periodic self-reinventions, I went back to college and got two more degrees and my various fitness certifications, and eventually opened my own yoga and personal training studio. What was I thinking? I had to market it.

It started off well. Word of mouth was good, and I gave away some great T-shirts. (This was in a small North Carolina town, so they said “Down Om Yoga” on the back.) People are funny about fitness and stress management, though. When they get stressed out and need it the most, they stop. I forgot the Dharma of Sales and didn’t ask them to commit, though it would have been good for their health as well as my bottom line. I agreed with their objections and stopped there. It was a sad day when I closed my studio. A friend in Norfolk tried to reassure me that I’d done the best I could in that location, saying, “If you’d had a truck wash and gun-cleaning service along with the yoga, you’d still be in business.” But I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d been a better salesperson, I could have kept the place alive.

As a college professor, I don’t have to sell my yoga classes anymore. I don’t have to market anything. My selling days could finally be over. But no—I’m a writer. Unless an author is with one of the big publishing houses and has a publicist who does the shameless commerce for her, she has to be her own marketing department. Except for my peculiar genius for selling sexy nighties in a bar, I haven’t been a stellar saleswoman in the past. Why is this so hard? I need to get back in the car with Don Duck …

“Agree with their objections.” He eases off the gas, taking a curve past a bait shop and gas station. “They say they never heard of you? Yep. It’s true. They’re in for a good surprise, though, and they can brag about discovering you. What else do they say?” Don grins and loosens his tie. “They’re afraid they might not like it. Lordy. I know the feeling. I read a book I didn’t like once, and it gave me a headache. I read some I thought I wouldn’t like, though, and man, they won me over—kept me reading all night. I especially like those e-books that only cost me as much as a latté. I kick myself when I spend that much on a fancy cup of coffee, but not a book. I get into a book and my wife keeps saying say, ‘Don, turn off the light,’ and I say, ‘One more chapter,’ and it’s two more, three more … I never had a damned latté keep me up that long. Coffee wore off in a few hours. A good book—that’s forever. And I liked some of those characters better than my wife.” He glances my way, popping a mint in his mouth. “You got that? Agree with their objections. But then meet them and ask for the sale.”

I shrink into my seat. “Oh, Don, I’m sure you’re right … But I can’t. I’d be bothering people.”

“What’s the matter with you? You’ve won awards, you’ve got good reviews …” He sighs, shaking his head. “If you won’t get out there and sell your books, you’ll just have to give ’em away.”

Ah. That, I can do.

Blog follower giveaway:

Two blog readers will win all four books in the Mae Martin Series in paperback. Here’s how to enter:

You don’t have long—just a few days—so do it now. Send an e-mail to ambfoxx@yahoo.com with the heading Blog Follower. Let me know which blog or blogs you follow (I have four*), and I’ll enter you in the give-away. I will reply confirming your entry. You can ask to subscribe to my new release mailing list at the same time if you want, but I will not automatically subscribe you. Fear no spam. It’s not coming.

On Monday Sept. 28^th at 12:00 noon Eastern time, I’ll close the entries and put all the names in a virtual hat and have a colleague pull two out. I will contact the winners and ask for their mailing addresses, and contact the other entrants with only the first name and last initial and general location of the winners, no personal information, i.e. “Winners are Jane X in Saskatchewan and John Y in Florida.”

If you’re not familiar with my fiction, you can read the book descriptions on https://amberfoxxmysteries.wordpress.com and also try a free sample:

https://amberfoxxmysteries.wordpress.com/free-downloads-retail-links

*The four blogs are:

https://amberfoxxmysteries.wordpress.com a blog about the mysteries of life and reviews of mysteries set in New Mexico.

https://everywhereindies.wordpress.com a blog dedicated to supporting and reviewing the work of indie authors who publish everywhere, not just Amazon. (It started as my Nook book shopping list and grew.)

http://ladiesofmystery.com a group blog with seven other women who write mysteries.

http://amberf.booklikes.com a book review blog covering everything I read, from yoga philosophy to cozy mysteries to literary fiction to thrillers and more.

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU GET STUCK?

September 24, 2015September 23, 2015 ~ casojka123 ~ 4 Comments

Marilyn Meredith, another of the Ladies of Mystery, wrote a blog in July about whether you as a writer are a plotter or a pantser and how to know which you are. Plotters of course plan everything out even before they start to write. They may outline or write all the scenes down on 3 x 5 cards which they post on bulletin boards. Maybe they don’t do a formal outline, but they have a pretty good idea of who the characters are, what the plot is, and who the bad guy is.

I was never able to do an outline, even when it was a school assignment. The whole process seemed beyond me. So, clearly, I have to be a pantser, someone who sits down daily at the computer and doesn’t have a clue where the story is going. Most of the time this works for me. I have a vague idea when I finish one day where I’m going to do the next. The scene unfolds in my head as I write, the characters take over and the story moves along. I said, usually it works. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t and that’s when I pull up the unsticking ideas I’ve gathered over the years.

Stephen J. Cannell, a great mystery writer, now deceased, spoke at a meeting of the Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles chapter to which I belong and passed on a good thought: when you’re stuck, think about, “What are the bad guys doing?” He said he used that often as a way to approach the story from a different perspective.

As the writer, this works because you are now out of the head of your protagonist, the head in which you’ve become stuck, and are thinking about the story from the point of view of the bad guys. Sometimes, often for me, I don’t know where the bad guys are going either, but looking at the story from their point of view usually gives me an idea of what they’re up to.

I used this dictum in the book I’m currently editing, PSYCHIC DAMAGE, which is due out in the spring. I had two of the bad guys talking about the heroine who has something they want. I wrote a scene, and the scene got me unstuck. Later I realized I didn’t need it, but it had served as an unsticking tool.

As a pantser, I find that my subconscious often puts clues in the book which help me get unstuck. What does this discovery, found in Chapter Two, mean in the scheme of the novel when I write it? Often I don’t know when I write it, but I’ve learned to have faith that I will find out the meaning further along in the book. And it is often an unsticking tool, something that clarifies where the story is going. I’ve learned not to delete those clues that I don’t understand when I write them. They may come in handy later.

I got another unsticking suggestion from a friend, also a writer. She suggestion that I try writing from the point of view of another character or characters and see what that told me about the story. And it worked. I wrote from the point of view of a man who disappeared, and he told me enough about what his plans were to get me unstuck.

I suppose writers who outline don’t get stuck, or they get stuck in the outline process, not in the writing. But I do enjoy writing when I don’t know how things are going to turn out. If I had it all outlined, I’m afraid I’d feel as though I’d already written the book.

I remember one writer saying that when she got to the end of her book, she realized that no one could have committed the murder, so she had to go back and make it possible to solve. That does happen to us pantsers, but it’s all part of the fun of writing.

What about you other writers? How do you get unstuck?

The Fiction of Fiction

September 21, 2015September 20, 2015 ~ janegorman ~ 7 Comments

I recently read about a Nazi mystery train someone claimed to have discovered buried in a tunnel in Poland. Experts from around the world will be working with Polish officials, first to figure out if it’s really there and, if it is, to dig out and expose it. The next step will be to figure out what to do with its contents. Not an easy task. Either of them. But what a great mystery.

I’ve been asked a few times how I come up with the stories that I write. It’s a good question. And an impossible one. Because I have never stopped believing that truth really is stranger than fiction. It’s the true story of the Polish lustration laws that inspired the first book in my mystery series. A Blind Eye tells the story of a murder inspired, at least in part, by events of long ago. Events that still resonate, powerfully, today.

The connection between fiction and truth is a contentious one. Like many of you, I’m sure, sometimes I read for pure escapism. I look for books that truly take me away: to another time, to completely different people with different problems, even to another planet. But I’ve also noticed that some of my favorite books – the stories that most stay with me, make me think – are those tied to the present. My present. Stories that connect, even tangentially, to the reports I read about every day in the news. Reports about people like me, living in cities or towns like mine.

Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

My other books also use real life stories as their foundation. In A Thin Veil, the second book in the Adam Kaminski mystery series, Adam must help a law enforcement officer in Washington, D.C., who finds himself stuck between the duty he owes to the dead and the respect he owes to the powerful.

Here in Philadelphia, we’re gearing up for a visit from Pope Francis. Talk about unbelievable stories! As a proud Philadelphian, I’m looking forward to my city being at the center of the country’s – perhaps even the world’s – attention. The city will shine, I am sure. Of course, as a mystery writer, I can’t help but think what a great opportunity an event like this presents for an imaginative culprit. All That Glitters tells the tale of a similar event in Philadelphia, and a murder perpetrated in the ripples of unease and upheaval that surround it.

How about you: do you like your stories to be based in fact or do you prefer your fiction to be purely fictional, a true escape from the real world?

Visit my website at janegorman.com or find my books on my amazon page.

Spatter by Paty Jager

September 14, 2015September 13, 2015 ~ patyjag ~ 8 Comments

When I started my first mystery novel, Double Duplicity: A Shandra Higheagle Mystery, I had a “novel” way for the victim to be stabbed. While writing the story I had to write the scene when my main character the amateur sleuth, who in the first book hadn’t had any mystery/murder events in her life to that point.

The first thing I did was connect online with a forensic coroner who explained different types of stabbing with me. I asked if my murder weapon (not a knife but I won’t say what it is in case you haven’t read the book ;)) would cause spatter. Would the person who used the weapon have blood on them?

This is what the specialist said:

1) The “spatter” will depend on what the blade hits and the overlay of clothing.

2) Each rib has an artery that runs on the bottom side, in a groove (the intercostal artery). Hitting one of these, or tearing it by breaking the rib, will cause more bleeding—most of which will be internal—into the chest cavity.

3) There’s not likely to be any spatter until the weapon is pulled out; most of the external bleeding comes from removing the weapon.

4) If the weapon hits the heart, a lot more bleeding will happen—again, mostly internal, but some external. The right side of the heart is closest to the chest wall; this is the lower pressure side of the heart.

5) After the weapon is removed, blood leakage will be a pulsatile ooze, but not shoot across the room.

6) If the lung is hit, the biggest risk is air leakage in the chest (pneumothorax) and
bleeding in the chest cavity (hemothorax) or both (hemopneumothorax). The blood leakage from the chest is a frothy red/pink, as it’s full of air.

7) Clothing is going to make spatter much less likely, except for removing the weapon.

Here’s an article the specialist suggested:
http://medicalscenewriter.blogspot.com/2012/09/stab-wound-to-chest.html

Here is the scene where Shandra finds the gallery owner.

“Paula?” A light shone around the edges of the partially open office door. Shandra pushed the door open. “Why aren’t you answer—”

Paula’s arms hung splayed away from her body that was cradled in her leather office chair. A large red patch spread across her body and lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling.

Shandra backed out of the room. She couldn’t swallow for the lump of fear and vileness she’d just witnessed.

“Think… Call the police.” She punched in 9 as sirens shrieked and grew louder. “Maybe they’re coming here.” They had to be coming here. This town is too small for there to be two incidents where the cops are needed at the same time.

And this is what the seasoned detective thought when he walked into the same room.

He slipped his pack off his shoulder and extracted booties and latex gloves from the outside pockets before swinging it back onto his shoulder. He pulled the booties over his cowboy boots and wrestled his hands into the latex gloves.

The metallic tang of blood assaulted his nostrils as he stepped into the room. The scent stopped his feet and sent his mind spinning back in time to the gang fight he’d walked into in Chicago. There were many who left the alley in body bags. The scent of blood had permeated the whole alley where the two gangs had used every weapon they could get their hands on to annihilate the other.

His month long hospital stay, six months of grueling rehab, and then facing the leaders of the gangs as he testified at their trials was one horrendous bad dream. As soon as his part in the trials was over, his resignation hit the commander’s desk and he came home.

Ryan shook his head clearing it of the past and stared at the woman sprawled in the chair, staring at the ceiling. His gaze immediately landed on the large dark spot covering her chest. From lack of blood on the floor, if it was a bullet, it didn’t exit the back. Making it a small caliber and less likely anyone heard the shot. He peered closer. The large amount of blood and ripped clothing around the wound dismissed his thoughts of it being a bullet that caused the wound.

He slipped a hand into the outside pocket of the backpack and pulled out his digital camera. The click of photos one by one capturing the scene from all angles, triggered his detective mode. He forgot all else, moving in a circle, closing in on the body. Standing over the body, he looked straight down at her chest. The torn clothing at the entry sight and the gaping hole with pink foam…this wasn’t caused by a clean stab of a knife, it was viciously twisted to cause maximum damage.

Depending on the person and their knowledge it makes a difference in how the research is used.

Shandra Higheagle Mystery Series Books

Double Duplicity

Tarnished Remains

Deadly Aim

Murderous Secrets – coming the end of September

Paty Jager

Writing into the Sunset