Author: janispattersonmysteries

What’s Old Is New Again

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by Janis Patterson

I don’t have much time to read, but for various reasons not long ago I agreed to review a few books. Two were okay – nothing to write home about, but at least grammatical and spelt correctly, with not-totally-stupid plots. The third… well, to call it puerile and sophomoric would be flattering it. If I hadn’t promised a review on it I wouldn’t have gotten beyond the third page. How can anyone think such a train wreck of a book is ready to be released is beyond me. Either they are supremely ignorant or totally ignorant.

Once my duty was done, though, I needed to clear my mental palate, and thought that something classic might soothe my outraged sensibilities. So I picked up a Mary Roberts Rinehart (one of my all-time favorites) mystery.

I really only intended to read one, but found out that’s sort of like eating a single peanut or potato chip. I happened across an omnibus of all of her long fiction on Amazon – and free, yet! It was a mixed blessing, though. It did contain books I had never heard of, but as I steadily munched through them I noticed a wildly varied level of editing quality. Some were wonderful; some were obviously edited by a set of drunks to whom English was not a first nor even a second language!

That’s neither here nor there, though; in the face of Rinehart’s genius even the editing errors were nothing more than a mild annoyance – and those of you who know how completely inflexible I am about proper spelling and editing will doubtless find that statement amazing if not downright incredible. But in the case of Rinehart’s genius it really doesn’t matter. No matter how badly they are misspelt they are some of the most fascinating books in the language.

Rinehart wrote in a number of fields, including short pulp fiction (by which she supported her husband and family during a time of need) as well as novel-length romance and mystery. I write romance and mystery myself and know how difficult that can be; she made it seem easy.

Her books will not, however, appeal to everyone. Contemporary to the time they were written – just before and just after World War One – they reflect both the style and the ethos of the era. No conscious, mad scientist style murders, no lascivious young lovers experimenting in athletic sex. Most characters are repressed, if anything, obsessively proper and yearning for respectability. A kiss on the hand becomes as emotionally satisfying as a two-chapter roll in the hay out of a modern romance novel. Solving a murder becomes not only a legal imperative, but a moral one as well. What’s worse is her writing style is equally dated, reflecting the usage of the times, and done – most of the times – in a measured and omniscient voice, now sadly unpopular, but one which I have always liked. She wrote from 1908 to the mid-1950’s (she died in 1958) – at least, those are the most accepted dates.

With all these drawbacks, why is Rinehart so prized and such a delicious read?

Two reasons – characterization and plot. Her plots are convoluted and impeccable and delicious. During her career she was called ‘the American Agatha Christie.’ I personally think in many cases she is the superior. Her characters are spot on. There is no endless repetition of hair or eye color, descriptions of physical flaws or rippling whatevers; to be sure there are descriptions, but minor ones, and usually at the beginning of a book. Her characters are not just compilations of attributes, but living, breathing people. I would know them if I met them on the street. Two of the ones I remember the most are a Belgian spy during the trench warfare of World War One, suave, outrageous and highly courage, and the other a teenaged girl of the pre-war period, who can and does cause chaos without ever trying.

Not only was Rinehart a gifted writer, she was an amazing woman. Married to a doctor, mother of three sons in an era when women were not supposed to be much else, she paid her own way (with a car, no less) to the Front in France during the War, where she not only acted as a war correspondent but drove food and supplies for the soldiers to obscure and remote outposts. She also became a well-known New York literary hostess.

It isn’t often I have such public fangurl moments, but it’s better than when I cry with regret or shake with anger that such a consummate craftsman is lost in the dust of history. Now, if you will excuse me, I am only half-way through THE AFTER HOUSE, and just have to find out how she’s going to work her way out of this tangle!

Clues, Magic and Little Cat Feet

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by Janis Patterson

I’ll admit I get a little put out when people (including some writers) say “Oh, I could never write a mystery – how do you think of all those clues and where to put them?” Usually, when I’m wearing my romance-writer hat (yes, I write both, along with several other genres), these are the same people who say “Oh, I could churn out one of those stories if I ever had the time.”

Grrrr.

To me that is as stupid as someone saying they can cook a roast but could never cook hamburgers. Or vice-versa. Writing is a learned craft, and the basic tools are the same whether you write confession stories or blockbuster action-adventures or small town cozy mysteries with a bakery shop (sometimes a needlework store) and a romance.

Yes, I am the first to admit that there is an element of magic in writing, of taking twenty-six simple symbols and turning them into a story that will touch and enthrall the reader, but magic – like luck – really does seem to prefer the prepared who have worked like the devil to learn their skills.

But magic aside, writing is a craft. Sometimes when I start a mystery I have a hazy idea of who and why, and that often changes, sometimes several times, but as I write along I leave a strong story behind me. If I may steal Deborah (Debra?) Dixon’s mantra of ‘goal, motivation and conflict’ I’ve found that following that guideline for almost every scene (excluding a very few, very short ones used mainly for transition from one arena of action to another) as well as for the entire book makes it much easier. In real life we sit around, we dawdle, we have purposeless (though sometimes pleasant) conversations, we sit in traffic, we… whatever, but in a book we don’t have that luxury. Every word, every action has to count and either explain why our characters/events are the way they are and/or bring us closer to the climax/resolution.

I’ve told this story before, but in my mystery THE HOLLOW HOUSE for the first two thirds of the book I was absolutely positive I knew who the killer was. Then – boom! All of a sudden I realized that wouldn’t work. Well, it would have worked because I’m the author and what I say goes – sort-of, but dramatically it was a bust. Rather than start over again or back up and throw out great chunks of wonderful, deathless prose <grin> I kept on writing and within a few pages I knew who the murderer really was. Except – another chapter, and the whole thing started over again. He couldn’t be the murderer. Gritting my teeth I forged on.

To make a long story short, if it’s not too late, this process repeated itself five times during the last third of the book. I was getting alarmed, as I was running out of potential villains, and will never subscribe to the ancient trope of a convenient homicidal maniac wandering around who just happened by and had never been mentioned before. Grimly I went on, and in the next to the last chapter suddenly all was revealed to me. I will admit that by this time I had ceased to feel like a writer and more like a scribe, just taking down what I couldn’t control.

But the final solution was perfect. Things could not have worked out better. The only thing that made me sigh with apprehension was that now I would have to go back through the entire manuscript and put in clues. I was as astonished as anyone could be when on rereading I found that they were already there. Who knew? Magic? Anyway, I think I put in two or three more, just so I would have the illusion of being in charge…

So perhaps I should restate my premise – writing is work, writing is a skill is available to just about anybody who will study and practice. And the magic? I think it comes creeping in on little cat feet (sorry, Mr. Sandburg) under the cover of study and practice just waiting to jump out when you expect it the least. And it doesn’t make any difference whether you write mystery or romance or horror or action-adventure or any of millions of other kinds of stories – the building blocks are the same. But you do have to learn how to use them.

Christmas is Coming

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by Janis Patterson

For once I’m way ahead of a deadline. It’s a situation that doesn’t happen very often, and I’m going to enjoy every bit of it!

A couple of months ago a couple of mystery writer friends and I were having lunch and somehow the subject of holiday anthologies came up. They seem to be a popular genre and – as all of us are always interested in upping our sales – the idea of us doing a Christmas anthology of murder mystery stories appeared (sorry, gang – I don’t remember whose idea it originally was) and everyone loved it.

My mind – like most writer’s – is a strange and fearsome place. Immediately a story began forming in the swirling and dangerous depths of my imagination and in spite of a looming book deadline, a much-looked-forward-to and lengthy trip to Atlanta to the NRA convention coming up and a vicious case of food poisoning (the worst I’ve ever had) I started writing immediately, much to the detriment of my current work in progress. Some stories just need to be told immediately.

Christmas is supposed to be such a happy time of family and presents and religious devotion, but it seems like I remember reading somewhere that more people commit suicide at Christmas than any other time of the year, which is horrifically sad. Even though I can’t call up the statistics, it seems I also remember there is always a jump in murders and assaults during the holidays as well – which is sad too, but it makes the season a natural for tales of murder and dark deeds.

I have always believed that stories should be just as long as they need be to tell the story. Our group had decided on novellas rather than full novels, and as novellas go, mine is short – truly a novelette (does anyone use that term any more?) at just over 15,000 words. But the story is a very small slice of time and a very concentrated tale with a sparse cast of characters, so that’s all it needed. I could of course pad the word count, but that would dilute the story.
The story? It’s a delicious mix of a family Christmas in a snowbound mansion and a horrible relative who is found dead on Christmas morning. He has been stabbed… and garroted… and poisoned. I have always believed in overkill. The title is, appropriately enough, KILLING HARVEY.

Anyway, the story was finished before we left for the NRA convention – for which I’m glad, as the convention gave me so much information and so many story ideas that my head is about to explode.

If all goes as planned, our anthology should be for sale online sometime mid to late November. If the project falls apart, I’ll release the story by myself. So – be warned : either way KILLING HARVEY will be available, so please plan to buy lots of copies. It will be the perfect virtual stocking-stuffer.

Now as my original deadline approaches with the speed and grace of a runaway train, I must get back to my work in process.

Writing Would Be Perfect If…

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by Janis Patterson

I mean it. Writing would be so perfect if it weren’t for the readers.

I know, that is a very incendiary statement, but it’s true. We’re asked to live up to readers’ expectations without being given much of a hint as to what those expectations are. Or what they’re going to be in six months or a year, after some big unexpected blockbuster shows up and turns everything we thought we knew into a fruit salad.

Have you ever noticed how so many of those big unexpected blockbusters are usually done by people who have never published a book before? Without the need to cater to a pre-conceived notion of what readers (and publishers!) want, they write what they want. But I’ll bet there are many many more who write what they want and never get by the second reader at an agent’s or publisher’s office. It’s the one that gets through that messes everything up for us working professional mid-list writers. We’ve finally (we think!) worked out the reading habits of our demographic and adjusted our plotting/writing accordingly and some of us make a fairly decent living doing that.

Then – boom! Some off the wall writer hands in a new style of book and suddenly that’s what everyone is wanting. I’ll bet all those writers who hit the jackpot aren’t trying to make a living off their writing, that they have jobs to pay their rent and bills, but they don’t mind messing things up for the rest of us. Humph!

It has become a bad joke in the writing industry that publishers are eagerly seeking something like [insert name of current bestseller here] – something just the same, but different. I have known writers who start to growl menacingly when told this and publishers don’t seem to understand that such a statement is not really good corporate communication.

Sadly, though, it isn’t just publishers and agents. I have talked to readers about this phenomenon and am astonished at how easily the little darlings are led – of course, they are the same people who rush to buy a detergent that screams “NEW” and “DIFFERENT” when the only things new and different about the product are that the boxes are smaller and the price higher.

I have talked to readers (in both romance and mystery, as I write both) who are upset with the new fashion of genre bending. I recall one most decisive woman who hated the idea, saying “When I read a story I want this to happen, and then this, and then this.” She was not happy when I asked if she were so rigid in her reading desires why didn’t she just read the same book over and over again and save herself some money.

Her reply was fit for neither print nor pixels.

I guess you really can’t please everyone. Sigh.

What Happens Next

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by Janis Patterson

After listening to those of my friends who have become mothers – some several times – the more I am convinced that finishing a book is sort of like having a baby. The initial idea is delightful and often quite pleasurable. The gestation period is variable, ranging from horrendous to enjoyable, and sometimes both on any given day. The final wind-up is a lot of hard work and sweat, and though a book does not cause the same amount of physical pain as a baby, with a book you cannot be anesthetized to insensibility and then wake up to a brand new book.

Once the deed is done and over with, though, and The End typed boldly at the bottom of the manuscript a debilitating lassitude creeps in. You feel hollow and in an odd way bereft. That which you have cossetted, worried over, been obsessed with, hated, and loved pretty much to the exclusion of all else for X number of months is gone. It is no longer extant only within you. It lies there on table or hard drive, unable to take flight on its own, but neither a part of you any longer. It is no longer totally dependent on you.

Oh, it’s still very much in need of you, and in a way perhaps the hardest work of all lies ahead. Edits. Congruency runs. (You don’t want a character named Eddie to be called Charlie in chapters 4 and 21 when there is no plotline reason for it.) More edits. Revisions. Perhaps even more edits and revisions in a seemingly endless obscene dance. Then, when it is finally spruced up and ready to be seen out in the world, there are the submissions to agents and editors, or if self-publishing, the conferences with cover artists, even more kinds of editors and formatters. No matter how you are publishing there is publicity to be thought of and budgeted for, even perhaps ARCs to be sent out and reviews to be solicited.

But that is in the future. At the moment you have just typed The End, and that hollow feeling is enveloping you. I cannot do this again, you think. This is absolutely the last time. Even when an idea – a new idea, a simply splendid idea that will never give you the trouble and pain this one did – pops into your brain you are so totally wrung out it doesn’t even sound appealing. You’re never going to do this again.

I know. I just finished a book day before yesterday that has given me no end of pain and problems and trouble. And I know the unholy circus of editing and all the rest lies in front of me. The whole idea seems so daunting I want nothing more than to lay my wrung-out, bereft, hollow self down with a margarita within easy reach and do nothing.

If only that dratted new, shiny, oh-so-delectible idea would just go away and leave me alone…