Tag: Janis Patterson

The Research Monster – or – Down the Rabbit Hole

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 8 Comments

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

Hello, my name is Janis Susan and I am a research geek.

I have always believed that historical accuracy in our fiction is of paramount importance – equal to that of a good story, in fact, and the further back in time we go the more important it becomes. Why? Because it is sad but true that a lot of readers get most of their knowledge of history through fiction and as writers we have the responsibility to make sure that the history in our books is as correct as we can make it. And by correct, I mean as it really was, warts, unpopular language and beliefs, politically incorrect (according to current standards) behavior and all. A lot of what happened in the past is unacceptable in today’s climate, but that doesn’t matter… it’s the past! As someone said, they do things differently there.

There are those who say that close adherence to history doesn’t matter, that only the story is important. I say that’s dishonest and lazy. It’s just as easy – as if writing anything were easy – to make a story historically accurate as it is to slap something together and call it historical. If an author is going to disregard history then he/she should at least be honest and call it alternative fiction.

I remember a mystery I read a couple of years ago that sent my blood pressure soaring. It wasn’t a bad story – the characters were fleshed out, the clues were there, the descriptions of physical objects and places were fairly good (if a little on the loose side, but hey – if they weren’t enough to set a history geek like me screaming, they were pretty much okay) and the mystery itself was involving and well-resolved. What sent me over the edge was that while the storyline was acceptable, the main characters dashed impossibly quickly back and forth over the Atlantic to Europe chasing clues. You see, the story was set in the mid-1920s, and transatlantic air passenger flights didn’t begin until 1938-1939 (depending on the parameters of different research sites) so there is no way the characters in this book could have zipped back and forth across the Atlantic – after all, Lindbergh didn’t make his history-making solo transatlantic flight until 1927.

The first sort-of-real transatlantic flight was indeed made in May, 1919, in a seaplane called the NC4. However, because it had no reliable navigation equipment, the plane would fly at night shooting their position from the stars. Then in the day, they would land on the water and sleep, and take off again when the stars came out. They were also followed by a Navy warship of some kind in case they crashed. As a side note, I have seen this plane in the Naval Aviation Museum (fascinating – do go if you can!) in Pensacola. It is huge! I mean, really really huge, so big you can’t get a picture of the entire thing in one shot. It is also so incredibly flimsy that I marvel any man would risk his life by flying in it.

Back to the discrepancies in this book – the first passenger transatlantic flights were Zeppelins, flying from Germany to New York, and they took four days. Commercial heavier-than-air transatlantic flight didn’t begin until 1938-1939 (again depending on the parameters of different research sites) so there is no way the characters in this book could have gone back and forth across the Atlantic in mere hours like they were on some modern jet.

See what I mean? Looking up one little fact like the date commercial transatlantic flights began and off I go down the rabbit hole of research.

Another example – some time ago I was judging a Regency romance contest. One of the entries was okay – fairly decent writing, good-ish story… nothing to rave about, but okay. Until the hero reached into the pocket of his Bath-cloth coat and pulled out a fountain pen to sign something. Wow! Talk about hitting a wall! FYI – fountain pens were not invented until 1827, when a very primitive one using a goose-quill nib was patented in France, or if you prefer, the modern steel-nibbed version which was patented in 1884. (See – I’ve spent the last 20 minutes or so reading about the history of fountain pens – never knew they could be so fascinating!) In either case, though, there is no way our Regency hero could have used one!

I gave the book the average scores it deserved on plot, writing, etc., but in the ‘anything else’ category I gave her a zero on period accuracy (I would have given her a minus score, but there was no way to do it) and explained why in a kindly tone. Wow! I got a letter back from her so hot that the flaming pixels almost burned through the screen, demanding to know why I had marked her down for ‘such a little thing.’ “After all,” she screeched, “it’s an old-fashioned pen – who will know the difference?” Ticked, I replied back “Anyone with a brain and the slightest knowledge of history.”

It is unfortunate that far too many readers learn about history from our books instead of academic sources and for that reason alone we need to be as accurate as possible. There are eras about which we have to extrapolate from scant knowledge – the Ice Age, for example, or third century sub-Saharan Africa – but in most historical ages (especially the popular ones like Ancient Egypt or Regency England or medieval Europe) there are lots of research materials to choose from and explore. It is part of our responsibility as writers to do so. Again, far too many readers get a great deal of their knowledge of history from fiction, and we can and should never forget that those who do not remember history – good, bad and indifferent – are condemned to repeat it.

Some Thoughts on Writing and Publishing

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 8 Comments

by Janis Patterson

It is the best of times to be a self-published author.

We can put our own books out without having to deal with the ‘writing by committee’ mentality that infects the world of traditional publishing. We can reach directly to the reader without having to bow to the whims, prejudices and rules of the traditional publishing gatekeepers. And, as an added benefit, the reader can choose from a vast array of books instead of being held down to the narrow pigeonholes of traditional publishing. Plus, as a self-published author, you get the largest slice of the monetary pie, as opposed to  the minuscule percentages offered by traditional publishing.

It is the worst of times to be a self-published author.

We not only have to handle the necessary quality controls of creating good books – great writing, good editing, great covers, proofing and printing standards – but we also have to deal with publicity, marketing techniques and legal issues. Some writers make enough money to hire all these things done – most don’t, and every minute spent on publishing/publicizing/whatever is a minute not spent on writing.

Moving beyond the personal, there is also the wider world of self-publishing that seems to become more surreal every day. There are always pirates who take books and them put them up for free on the internet without the author’s consent. Their rallying cries are “If it’s on the internet it should be free!” (Wrong!) and “Writers should just be happy that their words are being read!” (Even wronger! Try that twisted logic with your doctor or plumber or just about any professional…) Other pirates take your book and sell it, but without the author’s consent – and without ever sending the author any of the proceeds.

Then there are what I call the literary pirates – the singularly untalented ones who want to be thought of as an author so badly that they take someone else’s book, change the title, the main characters’ names, probably the name of the town and maybe even the occupations, and then publish it as an original book under their own name. Sadly, this criminality is hard to detect, as most of the retailers simply accept books and don’t run any sort of comparison software to make sure it is an original work. Most examples of it are never caught, and the few that have been were brought to the author’s attention by dedicated fans who saw the similarity to one of the author’s books.

Even worse, there is a growing corruption in the self-publishing world. Book stuffing is a big problem at the moment in Amazon’s KU. Some Book Stuffers have used book stuffing to game the system for fantastic amounts of money and driving legitimate authors off bestseller lists, all the while delivering little more than a badly written short story and lots of garbage. Lots of them also use clickfarms to up their pages read count into the realm of KU bonuses, which is what gets them most of the page reads – and the money. What’s sad is that Amazon doesn’t seem to care. They’re getting the money customers pay for these bloated nothings. Although – I have heard that they are meeting with some concerned authors and writers’ organizations – and I hope that is true – so maybe something positive and good for real writers is being done.

Another thing is that even if a book meets the criteria for a real book (actually written by the person claiming it, page count not inflated by rubbish and repeated short stories) it’s really just a bad book. The internet is simply swamped with ‘books’ that are terribly written, worse plotted and which have never seen either an editor or even spellcheck. Some people are so stupid – or who want to be ‘an author’ so badly – that that they think merely stringing X number of words together with a rough semblance of a storyline equates a book. They buy a cheap cover (I don’t care how much it costs, most of them are definitely cheap), stick up the resultant product and wait impatiently for fame and fortune to come flooding in.

Add to that that the market is waaaay down now. Sales are bad. My sales are so low at the moment that if they get any worse I’ll have to start paying people to not read my books!

So perhaps the pertinent question should be, under these conditions, why would anyone become a writer?

The answer is simple – because we can’t do anything else. If we never sell another book, we will still write. If the publishing world turns upside down, we will still write. No matter what happens, we will still write. We’re writers.

A Mystery Writer’s Responsibility

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 4 Comments

by Janis Patterson

We write mysteries. It is our duty to provide our readers with a good story that has an interesting plot, accurate research, believable characters, and a satisfying ending.

It is also our responsibility to be sure that in our quest for interesting and different content we don’t turn our fictional books into training manuals. Yes, we want ways of death that rise above the common and usually sordid killings that regularly adorn our daily news, but we must walk a fine line between creating an interesting fictional killing and providing an instructional blueprint for a real one.

I think this duty of responsibility is why in so many early mysteries and in a few current ones the murder weapon is a common blunt instrument or some exotic, untraceable poison, though exotic, unknown and untraceable poisons are currently somewhat out of vogue. Current mysteries seem to be grounded much more in reality than the ones from the so-called Golden Age.

To illustrate my point, years ago I attended my first NRA convention. (By the way, if your mysteries involve firearms, I cannot recommend highly enough that you attend one – the knowledge and help there are phenomenal! It will be in Dallas next month and I definitely intend on going! I’ll probably be blogging about it.) I talked to a lot of people, getting all kinds of information and contacts for my reference file (you do have a reference file, don’t you?) when I talked to this one man who was simply entranced that I was a mystery writer. Normally I’ve found that people just love to help writers, but this guy was totally over the top. He had worked both as a firearms salesman and in a ballistics lab, and among a lot of other things gleefully told me the way to have a ballistically clean bullet. No striations. No rifling. No marks on the projectile to tell which or even what kind of gun it came from. No information except the caliber. Nothing that law enforcement could trace.

I listened intently, partially fascinated and partially revolted. It was a simple process and could be done by anyone with the IQ of a goldfish. Then he asked if I’d use it in one of my books – obviously hoping that I’d put him in there too. Horrified, I said most certainly not, begged him not to tell this process to anyone else and then explained why. He was suddenly as horrified as I – apparently he had never thought that what he regarded as an interesting curiosity could actually be used to commit a real-life untraceable killing.

And no, don’t ask me what the secret is. I destroyed that part of my notes and have deliberately forgotten how. There is some knowledge that should never be shared.

So while killing people made of pixels can be both fun and profitable, we as writers owe our readers and the world in general a sense of restraint and responsibility. I truly believe that none of us would actually use some of the stuff we know to do harm to others, but we must never forget that our stories are read by all kinds of people, some of whom might wish to do harm or even read us in search of ways to do harm. Never forget that we want to entertain, not instruct. I don’t think any of us want to be an accomplice.

Fairy Tales, The Easter Bunny and a New Touchstone

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 3 Comments

by Janis Patterson

Every year I look forward to the holiday season. I love Christmas – the decorations, the carols, the promise and reassurance of my faith, the bonhomie, the electric excitement in the air. New Year’s is the symbol of new beginnings and though I have never been able to keep a New Year’s resolution for more than a few weeks there is always a clean, untried ‘blank-slate’ feeling to a new year.

Every year I look forward to the end of the holiday season and the return of real life. While wonderful, the holidays are exhausting and pretty much take over your life. Parties to give and attend. Presents to buy. Calls to make. Lunches with friends. Wrapping presents. Visiting family for extended gatherings with out-of-town members. Taking down and putting away decorations. Getting the house back to the familiar chaos we call ‘normal.’ Thank-you notes to write. Yes, it’s tiring, to say the least.

Now we’re eleven days into the New Year, which makes it not so new any more. And, usually after all the holiday hubbub dies down, it’s not so different from the year before. I still have deadlines and stories crying to be written. The laundry pile stays pretty much the same no matter how many loads I do. Since the holiday leftovers are long gone I must contrive something for dinner every night and fix a lunch for The Husband to take to work. Not so different from last year and many years before that.

Still, there is something about the turn of the year – as artificial a delineation of time as it might be – that makes us think. Personally I want to make it a touchstone for upping my career game. A touchstone, not a resolution. Resolutions are usually regarded as hard things, immobile things, things you must do every single day for the rest of the year. I don’t respond well to hard, immobile and must do. Never have, and probably never will.

So what did I do? In between huge meals with family and much-needed naps I spent New Year’s Day thinking about what I wanted to accomplish career-wise in the new year and what it would take to get it done. Of course I thought about a few things that are definitely ‘wish list’ and probably never going to happen, but I did try to keep things ‘real.’

First of all, I know that no matter how much I hate it, I’m going to have to do a lot more publicity. I have an extensive backlist in several genres and yet my sales would have to work for a week to get up to pathetic. It’s all about discoverability, and that means getting your name and your work out there.

For a long time I followed the fairy tale that if your book is good, it will sell. (I refuse to tell you how long I believed in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny…) As nice and tidy as that would be, it doesn’t work. People don’t buy what they can’t see, and well-promoted garbage will pretty much always outsell a good book buried in the ever-increasing tsunami of available books. While a writer can live in the ivory tower and do nothing but write (my personal dream) it’s time for me to realize that if I want to be a selling writer, I need to get out there and sell. The Tooth Fairy has retired.

Neither can you live on your backlist alone. New releases feed the machine. It’s the genre writer’s version of publish or perish. Readers – especially genre readers – are exceptionally voracious, with some reading more than one book a day. Writers can no longer afford the luxury of doing just one book a year if they want to keep their name in front of the reading public.

Last year I wrote five books. This year I have to get them all out. (Last year was an ivory tower year for me for several reasons.) This year I hope to do – and release – four. Remember what I said about a touchstone? I didn’t promise myself or make a resolution to write and release four; that’s too solid, too demanding. During the year when I hit a wall, when my career seems more trap than joy, I’ll think back to that food-stuffed, family-surfeited New Year’s Day and remember what I thought about the forthcoming year. Then I can decide if it is still what I want, still feasible, still relevant to my current reality.

I hope it will be. But it doesn’t have to be. But whatever I decide, though, I have to do what needs to be done to make it come true.

 

 

Tell Me Again – What Time Is It?

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 2 Comments

by Janis Patterson

One of the most unsettling things about being a writer is what I call ‘time dislocation.’ There is the Now that we are all experiencing – the date printed on today’s calendar, the time shown on all our clock faces. We writers, however, must deal with the Now of our work, which very seldom if ever coincides with real time. For those of us who work on several projects at once – some contemporary, some historical – the dislocation can be severe.

And sometimes the dislocation lapses over into the real Now. As I sit here writing this, I’m preparing for a trip and when you read this I will be in Germany with The Husband, touring the magical Christmas markets of Bavaria. The year he was stationed over there I went over to spend Christmas with him, through weather and scheduling and just plain bad luck I missed seeing any of the markets. He, of course, had been to several and promised me he would take me to some – sometime. It took a couple of years, but on Friday (almost two weeks ago to you) we’re off.

Which brings up another kind of dislocation – weather. It’s cold in Germany, very cold for my Southern bones, especially when we’re going to be walking around outside every night. (Though there is the Gluhwein (hot mulled wine) to look forward to!) I live in North Central Texas… I don’t have many cold weather outfits! Yes, it does get cold here – we do have noteworthy ice storms, but they usually last only a day or two, and we just stay inside until they’re over! I’ve been packing and unpacking and repacking, trying to decide what will (1) be warm enough and (2) will not require a couple of steamer trunks. There is consolation, though; we are not journeying to Ultima Thule… whatever my final wardrobe choices lack can easily be remedied with a quick pass through a local store.

Even with all the preparatory kerfuffle I am looking forward to the trip for two reasons. First of all, I’m going on a very romantic trip with a man I adore. That should be enough – and would be – but secondly I am also a very firm believer that everything can be turned to research. I’ve been thinking about the second book in my Dr. Rachel Petrie series of archaeological mysteries, and Germany is rich in archaeological sites. We’ll be doing the tourist thing during the day, so I’m going to take LOTS of notes.

Which brings up a problem. I learned to type the summer before I entered the fourth grade, so have always regarded anything more than a signature on a check as cruel and unusual punishment. And this is the first time in thirty odd years that I have ever taken more than an overnight visit anywhere without bringing along a typewriter or a computer. We’re going to be moving light and fast on this trip, and hoping to bring home a lot of goodies, so The Husband convinced me that this trip I wouldn’t have luggage space for a computer or tablet… or even time to use them. I have agreed not to take anything more than a purse-sized notebook and a pen or two… but I feel naked.

However… as I have been known to say repeatedly, Writers Write. We write the best way we can, and if that means a pad and pen, that will have to do. It’s a lot easier than trying to remember exactly when Now is! Any of them.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!