Tag: writing

Guest Blogger -D.J. Williams

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments
I sat across from Michael Connelly’s agent and wondered how I ended up there. To say that Connelly was an influence in my pursuit to be a storyteller would be an understatement. Along with Grisham and Patterson, he is in the top three of my favorite authors. Connelly’s agent had read my first novel, The Disillusioned, or at least enough of it to request a meeting. I listened as he shared how they had built Connelly’s career culminating with finalizing the Amazon deal for Bosch. I shared with him a story idea that had been resonating for a few years and knew from his response that I had something unique.
When I left his office I knew that The Disillusioned was only the first novel in the Guardian series. But what was next? As I thought about my story idea and my conversation with Connelly’s agent, I had a moment of inspiration. To move the series ahead, a story from the 1920’s would become an underlying mystery revealed throughout the series. It wasn’t enough on it’s own. The challenge was to bridge the gap between these two eras. Eight months later I had a first draft of Waking Lazarus, an epic global adventure filled with riveting characters and page turning twists and turns. While I had written a first draft of Waking Lazarus in less than a year, it took months of rewriting and editing to cross the finish line.
I write in this genre because I love mysteries filled with suspense. I love the rush of diving into a scene and seeing what happens next. And I love writing stories that go beyond entertainment. As you’ll find in the first two novels of the Guardian series there are key themes of light versus darkness, religion versus faith, and power versus innocence that drives the characters forward. You’ll also find that there are strong female characters and colorful settings throughout to keep readers on edge.
One month ago, Waking Lazarus was released worldwide. Once again I’ve been humbled to capture the attention of industry veterans including Peter Anderson, Oscar Winner/Cinematographer, who has endorsed this latest adventure, “Waking Lazarus is a captivating visual story with a colorful narrative. Once I started reading, it was hard to put down.”
I will always remember those few hours being taught a master class in how to build a series that could potentially go the distance. Thank you Michael Connelly’s agent for imparting your words of wisdom!
Lazarus
Waking Lazarus
by D.J. Williams
Jake Harris’ life hasn’t turned out the way he planned. Battling his addictions, and the shattered pieces of his family, he is hired to ghostwrite a memoir. From the 1920’s story of a controversial evangelist, to the present day mystery of a former District Attorney, everything changes when his search for the truth leads to an atrocity hidden from history. With a past he can’t remember, he begins to discover that he is not the person he believed himself to be. Rather, he is a threat to a secret society that has remained in the shadows for nearly a century. Jake is drawn deep inside a world he never knew existed that brings him closer to his own extraordinary destiny.
 

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Books, Book Clubs, and Surprises

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 6 Comments

by Janis Patterson

We all know that a writer’s work is far from glamorous. We work weird hours, usually in pajamas or sweats or grotty jeans. Deadlines make us crazy, ill-behaving characters even crazier. Sometimes people just don’t understand that the people in our heads can be more real than those live people beside us. However, sometimes something lovely and sparkly and so incredibly ego-boosting happens and we feel as pampered and admired as movie stars.

Earlier this week a friend welcomed me to speak at her book club about my Egyptian murder mystery A KILLING AT EL KAB. We had arranged the date several weeks before, and each member bought the book to read by the meeting time. The ladies bought snacks based on some of the meals described in the book. I figured since they were so invested in the story, I’d go above and beyond and bring in a little theatre. (Yes, I’m a long-time and admitted ham…)

I wore the beautiful silvery-blue galabeyah I had tailored in Egypt and several pieces of Egyptian jewelry, including my incredibly ornate Berber silver necklace. I took two other titles (THE EGYPTIAN FILE and THE JERUSALEM CONNECTION) to give away as door prizes. I took my big 17” laptop (the same one I hauled all over Egypt last year) to show a small collection of 50 or so pictures out of the 2,500 or so.

It was a most pleasurable evening! The ladies wanted to know about how the book came to be, and were suitably impressed that The Husband and I had been invited to stay at a dig house – which NEVER happens to civilians. They were overawed that our host, the Director of the Belgian Archaeological Mission to El Kab worked his way through three dense layers of Egyptian bureaucracy to get us official permission to come. Remember, the Egyptians invented bureaucracy – that’s why they had all those statues of scribes!

Several of the ladies were interested in the process of writing a book, as if there were any kind of single answer to that! I told them how I wrote – which in the best of times is a skimble-skamble kind of affair – all the while telling them every writer had their own way. I wish I were more organized; I wish I were more disciplined; however – if I haven’t become either by this time it’s probably not going to happen, so I just go on the best way I can. Then one of the ladies asked how I created my characters; specifically, why had I chosen to make Sandra, the protagonist, a fake psychic.

Okay, there comes a time when everyone must reveal their dirty little secrets. I told the ladies about several ways writers created characters – interviews, lists, etc. – and then confessed mine. As expected, they were startled as I told them I didn’t create characters. Oh, I had tried – I had made lists, decided what my characters’ grandmother’s maiden name was, what flavor of jell-o they liked, etc, until I had a nice long description of what the character was. A description that was never used, because the character became a dead thing, a creation without life that simply lay there flaccidly on the page.

What I do, I said, is nothing. My characters simply march in, demand to be written about, and let me get to know them as we go along. Once I had two characters – a major one and a minor one – who fought viciously through the whole book. In the last third, the major character was talking to another major character, and just happened to drop the little bit of news that he and the minor character were divorced.

Well, that startled me, right along with the entire rest of the book’s cast. And the ladies. Some of them – mostly the ones who were ex-schoolteachers – were appalled. I shrugged, said that was the way I was built, and that if the writer wasn’t surprised, the readers wouldn’t be surprised.

The ladies were certainly surprised, but I guess they’ll get over it. Maybe they already have – they’ve asked me to come back next year!

Why Do We Write?

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 8 Comments

by Janis Patterson

It’s just about the greatest mystery of all – why do we write? Oh, let’s be honest – we all have great dreams of becoming rich and famous, hitting every list made, having screaming fans lined up around the block just to buy a book with our autograph in it… all lovely dreams, but I think that most of us are savvy enough to realize that such things happen to only a very few. (I mean, it could be me, but most likely not…)

These days the vast majority of professional writers are not getting rich. Some make a decent living, some make money on the hobby level. Only a few are truly prospering. Almost all – save for the fortunate few – could make much more money in some other field of endeavor. A great number do have to work at another job to survive.

Of course, there is the indefinable cachet of being ‘an author,’ of having written a book.

Perhaps that accounts for some of the people writing today. They aren’t that interested in writing a book, but they positively salivate at the thought of being known as having written one.

And therein lies one of the main problems of self-publishing. Don’t get me wrong – self-publishing is one of the greatest things to happen to both readers and writers. It expands the market, gives power (and money!) to the authors and gives the readers a much wider choice of reading materials. On the downside, it also allows people who should never be allowed near a word processor to publish a ‘book’ and become a ‘published author.’

Stringing a requisite number of words together does make a book – sort of – just not necessarily a good one. There is no magic pill to turn an idea into a good book. Writing a good book is not easy, but just about anyone can do it, if they put enough work into it. Talent can make it easier, but mainly it’s learning what makes a good book and how to create one… and I repeat, that is a lot of work.

Usually the ‘I am now a published writer’ crowd stops with one or two books. Even good writers sometimes stop with one or two books after they learn how much work it takes to get their ideas decently on to paper – or how little remuneration most of them can expect. If the writer is holding out for traditional publishing, the wait can go on for years before the bland negativity of a rejection letter appears. Even if one is lucky enough to be picked up by a trad house, the money usually isn’t all that good and there’s even more waiting until release.

So why do we write? It’s pleasant to create a world and a population out of nothing but imagination and caffeine (and on occasion chocolate). It’s pleasant to talk about ‘my publisher’ and ‘my new release.’ It’s pleasant to see one’s name on a book, and – should you have a book signing – enjoyable to talk to people who like to read and then to write your name into the copy of your book they just bought. And to receive the checks, however small, is nice too.

Still such minor triumphs can’t justify why people continue to write and submit and self-publish for years with minimal returns. It is made even harder when their books are of decent to very good quality – but the lightning of good luck strikes a badly written story, dousing its author with fame and fortune.

So why do we do it? The answer is simple. There’s no choice to it. Anyone can write, given enough time and study and dedication. Writers cannot help but write.

 

Keeping a Series Strong

~ Amber Foxx ~ 3 Comments

Amber in tree finalI hope this hasn’t happened to you, but … have you ever picked up the sixth or seventh book in a series you follow and been let down? Maybe the author crushed you with backstory aimed at new readers. Or worse, the author took your loyalty for granted and got self-indulgent with a book full of “darlings” that should have been killed. Series fans, myself included, sometimes forgive all of that and keep reading because they love the characters. New readers who happen to start with a later book in the series won’t be so forgiving.

Authors who handle backstory well (in my opinion) give very little and slip it in only as needed. In one of Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon novels, she briefly mentions that Anna acquired her dog, Taco, after accidentally causing the death of her friend who owned him. That’s it. No other details. The story moves on. To me, this was brilliant. The reader knows just enough with this bit of painful background to understand Anna’s feelings about Taco. I hadn’t yet read the earlier book, Blind Descent, in which the accident occurs. When I did read it, nothing had been spoiled.

I’ve started other series late in their progress and quit without finishing due to backstory overload. It wasn’t just dull; it ruined the earlier books for me. Of course, a series character’s personal life changes and grows in each book, and it’s inevitable that book three will give away transitions in the lead character’s love life or family life, but it shouldn’t spoil the mystery plots of books one and two. I suspect that most people like to begin a series at the beginning, but others grab the newest book first. Sometimes the new release in a series is the only thing my library has available in audiobook, so off I drive with no prior familiarity with that author. It’s usually a good experience, but once in a while I get a book that threatens to put me to sleep at the wheel with tedious summaries of the characters’ previous adventures, sometimes in the worst way possible: expository dialogue. “Remember when we solved the mystery of the missing heiress? You saved my life and hers.” “But it was your quick thinking that got us there.” “And then the press made a hero out of her husband, of all people.” On it goes. Both characters were there and know what happened and yet they tell each other so the author can tell the reader. Yawn. Hit eject button. Pull over for coffee. Try a different audiobook.

This experience has motivated me to get a new critique partner for each book in my series. I have long-term reliable partners who know my work and my characters, and who do great plot critiques, but I also need fresh eyes on each book. Because of my aversion to backstory, I include as little as I possibly can. The new person who hasn’t read the prior books lets me know what was unclear, and then I can insert the necessary minimum at the right place. The new reader also will not be as tolerant of scenes that are fun for me and for people who have a long relationship with my characters, but which are slow in moving the plot—symptoms of that other error which can creep into a long series: self-indulgence. My new critique partner will catch it and help me cut the fluff.

I want the person who picks up book five first to have a complete, compelling experience within that story, and to be curious what happened in the rest of series. Also, I hope for the later books in the series to be as alive and exciting for long-term readers as the first book was.

Murder Without Violence

~ janegorman ~ 8 Comments

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I had the great pleasure this past weekend to attend a meeting of my local chapter of the Sisters in Crime (the Delaware Valley Chapter). The guest speaker for the meeting is a Conservator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (which is, coincidentally, where I earned my PhD in Anthropology). Because it is a museum of archaeology rather than fine arts, Molly Gleeson conserves artifacts and other specimens. That includes human remains.

It was a fascinating talk — as they always are at these meetings. Ms. Gleeson prefaced her talk by warning us that she was going to show us images of human remains, then admitted that for this particular audience that might not be a problem. We all write and read about murder. We’re used to human remains, right?

IMG_2463Well…maybe. A murder mystery can be many, many things. It can be light hearted and funny. It can be chic lit. It can be dark, gritty. And it can be gory, a story of violence and evil. When choosing a new book to read, a mystery reader has to know what she’s getting into — or she reads at her own peril.

Personally, I prefer not to read gruesome stories. I particularly avoid books that include rape scenes, but I generally skim through (or avoid altogether) stories with too much gory detail, too much vividly painted violence. I write the books I like to read. Relatively dark mysteries, gritty even, but with the violence taking place almost entirely off the page.

As an aside, one of the most beautiful death scenes I’ve ever read was written by the late, great Ruth Rendell (who, incidentally, did not shy away from violence when she felt it was called for). I always picture that pretty corpse floating peacefully and elegantly down the river, surrounded by wildflowers, whenever I’m trying to write my own murder scenes. I have not yet achieved Rendell’s level of artistic description of death, but I’ll keep trying.

Screen Shot 2016-03-20 at 2.05.07 PMWhich brings me back to the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Sisters in Crime. Each month, a technical speaker is invited to come to our group, to share his or her knowledge of biology, ways to kill a person, how crime scenes are handled, even about ancient methods of human preservation (mummies). To an outsider, we probably seem like a pretty gory bunch.

Quite the contrary. In our group, you’ll find cozy writers, young adult writers, and many, like me, who write traditional mysteries that are high on mystery but low on sex and violence. But one thing we have in common: we’re all well-informed on those gory topics that inform the background of our stories, but don’t make an appearance on the page.

How about you? How much violence do you want to see in the mysteries you read?

janegorman.com