Tag: Janis Susan May

Noise Levels and Other Considerations

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

This is a noisy world. There are sirens and neighbors and families and appliances… and not even noise-cancelling headphones can guarantee total silence. At least, not at my home with a house reconstruction going on to the west and the neighbor to the east – though a wonderful man in many ways – owning every gasoline-powered piece of lawn equipment ever made. His lawn is beautiful, though.

Now all writers are different. Some like lots of noise, claiming it is a stimulant, while others like pure silence as they say it frees their creativity. Depending on the time and our mood of the moment I daresay most of us fall somewhere in between.

Some writers swear by writing in different places – cafes, car parks, just about any place you can think of. Now when we have to be someplace besides our office, a writer can work almost anywhere, especially a writer under deadline. Have to take your child to ballet practice? Need to get the car worked on? Have a lunch hour at work? You can take a laptop or one of those keyboards that feeds  into your phone (I keep meaning to get one of these, just as soon as I get a phone which can handle it), or even a humble pen and paper, then make use of the time to up your word count.

Other writers believe in total silence – or as total as one can achieve short of moving to an uninhabited mountaintop in some third world country. Noise-cancelling headphones help, as sometimes does a white noise machine, but nothing can truly drown out the noise of the modern world.

As I usually do, I stand firmly in both camps. There are times I write happily in front of the blaring television while listening to The Husband tell me about his day, and other times I have on my headphones, my office drapes drawn and a sign on the door threatening a dire fate to anyone who disturbs me.

So what is the best way to write? I can only speak for myself, but as always my practice varies. If I had to choose just one atmosphere, it would be classical music (either full orchestra or piano only – no screechy strings, please) playing softly in the background, preferably of an emotion and tempo appropriate to whatever I was working on at the moment. After that, as pure a silence as could be achieved. Of course, I would – and have – made do with whatever had to be undergone at the moment.

By contrast, I have a friend – an excellent writer – who is addicted to writing in cafés. Now I admit there are advantages to writing in a café, foremost of all being to command endless cappuccinos by the mere raising of a hand! On the other hand, there is a constant swirl of people and babble of conversation, to say nothing of being the object of curiosity by the customers (“They’re real writers? And they’re working on books?”) for all as if we were some sort of exhibit in a raree show. I am no shrinking violet when it comes to being in the public eye – far from it – but not while I’m trying to concentrate on work.

However – being a fair individual and willing to experiment, I have joined my friend on occasion, and yes, despite being interrupted by spectators telling me about how they have always wanted to write a book, or have a sure-fire idea for a best seller, both broadly implying that I should stop and either teach or co-write with them (grrr) I managed to get a fair amount of writing done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really writing – just lots of typing that, on a cool-headed reading the next day, was barely one baby step away from garbage. I didn’t try to save any of it, but I did go put on some Chopin, close the drapes and the door and try to salvage the underlying idea.

By contrast, my friend actually wrote a short story that same afternoon, one when it was polished, she sold.

How boring life would be if we all worked exactly alike!

A New Year, A New Me?

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments


by Janis Patterson

Don’t worry – this isn’t going to be an evangelistic paean about how I’ve totally remade myself to claim a glorious and bounteous New Year and the rest of my life. That would be nice, though, but I’ve tried it before and it doesn’t work. For long, at least. I think my record is about two weeks.


No, I’m the same old curmudgeonly, opinionated, workaholic biddy I’ve always been. The only changes are that I am a year older and – for a blessed change – rested. From writing stuff, at least. I finished my 22 novel republishing blitz on 25 October. I was so tired (and cranky, I will admit) that The Husband insisted I take November and December off.
And that proved to be a good thing. I am indeed rested and the creative mind is starting to percolate again. I would like to say that my house is cleaner, but I don’t tell lies. Sadly, it probably never will be, as I totally lack the housekeeping gene… and I thought I’d never marry anyone who was as bad a housekeeper as I, but… A sterling man in every other way, but…


We spent the early part of December in Germany, redoing our favorite Christmas market tour, enjoying good German food and beer and a refreshingly enthusiastic attitude toward Christmas everywhere from the markets to the stores to the street decorations. And the people. Love the people.


It’s a good thing I had no other commitments, as since the third week of December I have been at war with Lufthansa airlines about their last-minute cancellation of the final leg of our inbound flight and the subsequent disappearance of our luggage. My bag was found – in the hands of a thief, no less – but The Husband’s is still among the missing. Not to go into details, Lufthansa has handled the thing very badly and withheld information we need if we are to go forward, information that none of the dozen or so of Lufthansa employees we talked to said we needed. Needless to say, it is going to get very ugly.


Back to writing. Aside from the Lufthansa unpleasantness it has been a lovely two months. Germany was – as always – beautiful and fun. My writing mind is unfolding and starting to bloom. I’ve contracted for two novellas – one a Regency romance for a ‘summer weddings’ anthology, the other a WWI mystery for an anthology centered on July 4th. The other novellas include the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWII and Viet Nam.


And that doesn’t address the two nearly-finished books of my own done for my own publishing company and a major new release that has to be stage-managed. I’m even considering releasing a compilation of my blog posts from years past. Plus, we’re off to Egypt again in a short time. This will be my 8th trip and this time I get to see Abu Simbel for the very first time! I’m so excited!


Sounds like I won’t be rested for very long.


A writer’s work is never done. But – it is a lot easier when you are rested both mentally and physically, even if that desirable state only lasts a short time. You have to let the well refill. A happy new year to all of you –

The End Is Nigh

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 5 Comments

by Janis Patterson

For every beginning there is an ending… and conversely, for every ending there is a beginning… and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.


This year has been a landmark year for me – it’s been one of the lowest output years for me in well over a decade (only two books as opposed to the four or five I usually do) and yet I’ve been busier than I ever have.
In case you have been living under a rock and not heard about my republishing blitz I’m going to give you a quick précis…


During the covid crazies I got very lazy. The Husband was home – and even retired during this time – s0 we had things to do and my writing business came in a distant second to being with him. I knew that rights on previously published books were coming back to me, but being distracted by other things I just let the reversion letters pile up on my computer.


Until January of this year. Life was returning to a semblance of normal and I realized I wasn’t getting any younger (are any of us?) and if I wanted to get back into this writing thing I had to get busy, so a good start would be republishing those reverted books through my own company. A quick wander through my hard drive shocked me, because there were 26 (yes, TWENTY SIX) of the little beasties. Gulp.


A quick perusal decided me that for various reasons four of them were going permanently ‘under the bed,’ hopefully never to be seen again. That left 22 to be republished. As I am lazy, doing that could possibly take a couple of years, years which I might not have. As I was raised in advertising and journalism, the fact that deadlines are sacred is bred into my blood and bones. My father taught me that (to use his words) “There is only one excuse for you to miss a deadline, and that is death. Yours.”


So I set myself a deadline – I would release a book freshly edited, freshly formatted and most with new covers every other Wednesday until all were out, starting on January 15. MISTLETOE MAGIC, the last book, comes out October 25.
22 books released every other Wednesday, each on schedule, each reworked as promised and all without missing a single release day. (Actually, there were 24 released – one through one of my publishers and the other as an outlier which appeared suddenly through a set of circumstances too complex to go in to… neither of which I counted as part of the blitz.)


I’m exhausted. I would love to take a few weeks off away from the computer, but I have deadlines… one for a July 4th mystery anthology, one for my new Flora Melkiot book and one for a summer Regency romance anthology. Sigh. Even though we spend our days pretty much in the same room (the den) The Husband says I spend more time with the computer and my invisible friends than with him and lately he’s been right. I’ve taken my computer along on every trip we’ve made this year – and it saved my sometimes tenuous sanity the days we were holed up in a motel in Mississippi when he fell ill on our way home from NINC!


Anyway, the blitz is now over and the encroaching deadlines await. It doesn’t get any easier, people. It really doesn’t.

And now for some good news! EXERCISE IS MURDER is now available in audio from Audible! (The ebook is available from Amazon and will hopefully be available in paperback before too long… it is the first appearance of the redoubtable Flora Melkiot!)

Scams and Cheats and Crooks, Oh My!

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 15 Comments

by Janis Patterson

Okay, I am officially livid. How long are people going to have to put up with such blatant criminality?

To explain – a couple of days ago I went to a meeting at one of my ladies’ clubs. It’s an old club, and most of the members are older. It’s very dignified, very much hats-and-gloves proper. I love it, though I do sometimes feel that – since I am a ‘creative’ type – I’m their token artist.

I digress. It’s no secret there that I’m a novelist, and some of the ladies just love to talk books with me. This time a very nice older member whom I know slightly brought a guest of approximate the same fairly advanced age, and asked if they could talk with me. Sure. I’m friendly…

Turns out that her guest (and dear friend) wanted to know how long it should take for a publisher to bring out a children’s book. Legitimate question. I told her honestly I didn’t know too much about the children’s market, having only done one myself, but that a general rule of thumb for traditional publishing from contract to release could be a long as two, two and a half years.

The writer began to cry, and said “But it’s been over four, and I don’t have any more money!”

Uh-oh.

Not wanting to have her embarrassed, I pulled her and her friend into a small parlor and closed the door so I could get the entire story, which is one that is all too familiar. She had written a children’s book which she wanted to get published, so she answered an ad in a popular magazine. You’re all seen them – “Publisher Seeking Manuscripts – 100 years in business.”

It should read Publisher Seeking Money – 100 years of stealing.

This poor woman had signed a contract (which she didn’t remember what said or even if she had a copy of it) and every time they asked for money to cover editing, or an artist, or an artist to replace the first, or an artist to replace the artist that replaced the first, or copyright (which she never saw), or some other d*mn*d thing that made no sense to this poor woman. Of course, time and again they couldn’t go any further until they had more money. Four years and close to $70,000 (yes, SEVENTY THOUSAND, seven and four zeroes) later, they still hadn’t released the book.

By this time I was so red-eyed furious I was ready to do a violence. As gently as I could I told this woman a few truths about the publishing industry… you know – that money always flows TO the author and NOT away from, that authors should be appraised of every step in the process, that legitimate publishers get so many submissions they not only don’t have to advertise for manuscripts but instead are very picky about the submissions they receive even from agents and other industry professionals, that this company is making their money from charging authors instead of selling the author’s books, that before signing a contract with anyone you have to do your due diligence… If you don’t know about the publishing industry, find someone who does! I tried to be as gentle as possible, but by the time I was finished this poor lady was just howling.

So, you ask, why didn’t this woman do some of these things, like check the company? Well, the company really has been in business for over 100 years (which to my mind says something dreadful about their morals and the efficacy of law enforcement) and some people say it does provide a decent vanity press service. Vanity press, not a publisher presence. That difference is as big as the difference between a jobbing printer and a legitimate publisher. Or a Hot Wheels and a BMW.

Now this lady is in her late seventies or early eighties. Her husband is long dead. Her two children live at opposite ends of the country. She is pretty much on her own. She is also, her friend confided to me later, dancing on the edge of something Alzheimer’s-like.

In other words, prime picking for crooked, conscienceless vultures like this ‘publishing’ company.

I gave both ladies my phone number and said they could call me any time they had questions. I also stated firmly that she needed to let her children know what was going on, that she needed to request a copy of the contract she signed and she needed to contact her attorney. Now. In reality, there is not much else I can do, except beg everyone to spread the word –

1) legitimate publishers DO NOT advertise in magazines for submissions

2) money flows TO the author, not away from

3) do your due diligence and investigate before you sign anything – if you don’t know anything about publishing, talk to someone who does

4) contact an attorney before you sign anything

Somehow we have to stop these predators. They skirt the law and have a lot of experience in doing close-to-criminal things that if not exactly illegal are definitely immoral. The cost in human emotion and plain old money is enormous. Spread the word.

If Wishes Were Horses…

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 4 Comments

by Janis Patterson

Hello. My name is Janis and I am a word nerd.


I love old words, convoluted words, obscure words… Unfortunately, it is definitely genetic. My father was the same way, and one of the delights of my early youth was playing esoteric word games with him. Which, I might add, gave me an everyday (to me, at least) vocabulary that did not endear me to the educational system. In grade school I learned quickly to accept that my automatic use of what were to me perfectly ordinary words would upset and draw the derision of my classmates; what I did not expect was that it would have a similar effect on the teachers, who had to have it proven that the words I used were not made up nonsense syllables but perfectly good – if not really common – English words. For several years I had to make it a practice to always carry a large dictionary with me. That was only one of the things about public education which earned my (well-deserved) contempt. I have never suffered fools gladly.


Anyway, that is an overly long explanation for why I’m on several word-a-day type daily emails. About half the time the words are too common to be much noticed, but every so often there is a really good one. Today I received the word velleity, which means “a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action.”


Wow! Who hasn’t felt like that at least once if not many times?


We all know those people who say “I want to write a novel” but never actually do anything toward it. Then there are those of us who do write who say “I would like to do a book about … (whatever subject is currently teasing our mind)” but the project never goes beyond a vague wish. There are millions of possibilities, and everyone indulges occasionally. My grandmother would have called it daydreaming.


And that’s okay. We all work on many levels at all times, and not all ideas/wishes/concepts are destined to bear fruit. Sometimes it’s little more than ‘play-time’ for our minds, which probably need it more than the rest of us. Nothing can do work all the time, and play time is essential.


It also goes beyond writing. Multiple times I personally have expressed a wish for some unknown reason to learn how to crochet, once even going so far as to buy a hook and some yarn. Both of them are now gathering metaphoric dust at the bottom of some drawer or other, as that is as far as I have ever gone. Velleity in action. The same goes for reorganizing my kitchen (where I usually spend as little time as possible), or creating an herb bed in the back yard (when I sadly possess a black thumb invariably deadly to all living plants), or any number of momentarily alluring but basically low/no priority daydreams.


However, I am a true believer that energy is never wasted, even the ephemeral energy of a transitory daydream. It merely changes form. Case in point, the herb garden. I actually did some reading on herb gardens and while a real herb garden never appeared in my life, it did in one of my books, enhancing it greatly. See? Energy really is never wasted.
So, dream your dreams – just don’t let them take over your life. You might never bring them to the fruition of reality, but someday somewhere somehow they might be just the thing you need to complete some other venue.


Now I must go, because I’m thinking about how nice it would be to paint our guest bathroom…