Tag: crime fiction

The Secret

~ susanoleksiw ~ 5 Comments

Many of us in the writing community have a secret, and it’s not exactly the same secret. We write our books, talk about our characters, whom we love, and gnash our teeth over the plot holes, the ever-jiggling middle that refuses to settle down and dash forward, and the ending that leaves us dissatisfied, rewritten three or thirty-three times. You know this because you read us here. None of this is kept secret from anyone who reads a writer’s blog. And then we have to edit the soggy mess, find beta readers, edit it again, and then pop over to our editor, if we have one, or switch hats and become our own publisher.

Somewhere in this scenario is one step that every writer loves. We each have our own. Which one is mine? Those who know me can probably guess.

When I was in college I was the editor of the student humor magazine, which meant handling proofs and working with the printer. I loved working with the printer, seeing those strips of paper with types-set pages on them with little red pencil marks and handing them over to the printer. For some reason I prefer to forget, I always seemed to get him at dinner time. Yes, I love the publishing/printing process. And that brings me to the topic of today—Crime Spell Books.

CSB is the third publishing venture I’ve undertaken with friends or colleagues. What may seem daunting to others has an irresistible pull for me. Two other writers and I began Crime Spell Books after the new editors/owners of Level Best Books, another venture I began with another two friends, dropped the anthology for New England mysteries. They lived in the DC area, so it was understandable. But New England needed its own anthology, so Ang Pompano and Leslie Wheeler and I grabbed the opportunity, and published our first in 2021.

Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime Stories 2024, now availables is our latest offering, with twenty-four stories, in every sub-genre. We post a call for stories in January, and we read every one that comes in over the next several months (to end of April). We rank the stories 1, 2, or 3 on our own lists, and then we share them to see what we have. It’s always gratifying to see how close we are on most of them. When we decide how many stories we want, we begin discussing the remaining stories that came close, and work for agreement.

Anthologies are among the best works we in the writing community can produce. They show a variety of writers and interests. They require strong collaboration. Each editor loves certain stories and not others, and here we rely on a deep respect for each other’s experience and taste so we can come to agreement. Not every story I love gets into the anthology, and the other two editors probably feel the same. But the result—a list of excellent mysteries and crime stories by known and unknown writers—is something we’re all proud of. And then we come to my special love/hate experience—formatting. I do this because I think there is something wonderful about holding in our hands a finished book that we made, with the chapters and lines of text laid out properly—no unruly paragraphs or rebellious headers or recalcitrant page numbers. Everything is in order and proper and beautiful.

So that’s my favorite part, as much as anyone might question that statement while I’m working on it. The end is worth the frustration, gnashing of teeth, moments of panic, and sheer terror that one wrong punch of a button will send the whole thing to oblivion. And then it’s done. The proof comes in the mail, and then the final copy. And I look up from my desk and there it is. Beautiful. Finished. I can rest of my masses of edited copy and have another cup of tea.

Reframing

~ susanoleksiw ~ 6 Comments

Reframing is a well-established psychological tool for tackling problems that may seem intractable, and I found myself appreciating it recently.

For the last three years two other writers and I spend much of the spring and summer working on the annual anthology Best New England Crime Stories published by Crime Spell Books. All three of us read and select the stories, and all three of us edit. All the other duties are split. Ang Pompano sends out the acceptance or rejection emails and works on promotion, developing ads and the like. Leslie Wheeler manages the books, and works on sales opportunities. I get to write jacket copy, and lay out the book for POD. We have a great cover designer, and all three of us weigh in on the art and design. We review each other’s work, offer suggestions, and manage to put out a book we’re proud of every year while also having fun at our launch at Crime Bake in November.

Writing jacket copy is perhaps the least onerous job of a writer with a book going to press. My practice has been to look over the list of stories, arrange them in loose groups, and talk about the kinds of crimes they contain. I wrote the copy this month and sent it around to Ang and Leslie. Both liked it but Leslie had a response I hadn’t expected but found provocative. With all the talk of crime in the news today, depressing for everyone, perhaps we could focus on the characters who are fighting back, challenging the criminals or the system. This immediately appealed to me, and I ditched the first draft and reshuffled my note cards.

Looking at these stories from the perspective of the range of characters caught up in circumstance of crime and its consequences changed the way I viewed them and let me see beyond the cleverness of the plot, the range of characters swirling around incidents, the grounding bit of information, the unexpected twist. Most were ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances finding something within they didn’t realize they had. They were sometimes stymied by their situations, tripped up by bad luck or trapped by betrayal, but they were a match to the challenge, though not all succeeded in bringing about justice.

By reframing I also got closer to a different view of the crime. When a crime is committed it is most often by a person shriveled by life and seeking an unimaginative solution. An ordinary scam inspires a docile matron, and a drug addict discovers how far he has gone on the path to a. new life, and what his world is really like, something most readers will never experience. For others, following clues and solving a crime leads to a painful reckoning. Rewriting the jacket copy turned out, also, to be more challenging than cataloging a variety of crimes. As expected, the protagonists in these twenty-four stories were a varied lot.

With every year, we three editors choose stories that we think are well written, well thought out, and interesting as fiction. Because it’s crime fiction there is an understandable emphasis on the structure, the plot with a crime and its solution. But with a change in perspective, a reframing, I find myself appreciating the range of personalities grappling with life’s body blows. There is a richness not as easily appreciated otherwise. I hope our readers will feel the same way when the book is out in November.

Writers’ Groups

~ susanoleksiw ~ 4 Comments

Twice a month I moderate a writers’ group for men and women writing in diverse genres. This isn’t the first group I’ve worked in, and probably won’t be the last. 

Two people make a group, which means the novel I wrote in college was the topic of a group consisting of me and the typist and sometimes me and my boyfriend. But the first group whose intent was to bring its members’ work to publication was one I joined in 1989, and attended regularly for several years.

I’ve been thinking about groups and their purposes lately because even though I’ve been moderating the current group for several years, I rarely contribute. This one began as a walk-in opportunity for library patrons, but with the advent of the pandemic, we switched to zoom, and over the last several months, using a private (not library) zoom account, we have decided to become a private group, freezing the membership to its present number.

We are here for different reasons. Most groups are organized around a single goal that every participant agrees to. The group focuses on a certain genre, for example. A writer I knew back in the 1990s wanted to start a group for those working on crime fiction set in foreign lands. Since I wasn’t yet writing the Anita Ray series, I was out. The group fizzled. Another group was for established writers, those who had published at least one book in any category and now wanted to work on mysteries. That was fine until the woman who assumed the role of moderator invited writers she met and liked, which changed the dynamic. The unwritten rule that the group decided on whether or not to send an invitation to join after meeting the writer was buried and forgotten. The group of professionals helping others develop their work morphed into an entirely different series of sessions.

Other groups popped up over the years. I enjoyed one that included four people, including a moderator who gave lots of advice and then checked up on us to see if we followed it. I didn’t last long. In another we got assigned pages to read and comment on, which felt like work in addition to what I was writing.

I have enjoyed and learned from every one of these groups, but probably not what the group organizers were expecting. First, the more diverse the genres the better. A poet among mystery writers will teach about language and the rhythm of language. Writers of fantasy among literary fiction writers will challenge others’ imagination. Writers of nonfiction in a group of novelists will challenge us to describe reality, settings, physical details with greater precision. 

But mostly, groups of any kind of diversity will teach us about human nature. I still look back on some of the earlier groups to pluck out humorous or unexpected quirks for a fictional character. There’s nothing like watching writers grapple with different points of view on something intensely personal to them to see an emotional range in human behavior. The more diverse the group, also, the wider and more free-flowing the discussion, something I always enjoy.

Every writers’ group I’ve ever been in has been a terrific learning experience for which I’m grateful—the good will, the insight, the language skills, the thoughtfulness, the overall support. Writers are generous people, always ready to help their colleagues. I may not get (or ask for) help with a specific piece, but I gain every time I listen and learn.