Every day, the publishing industry is becoming more like Hollywood in every way

Think about this: The publishing industry is becoming more like Hollywood every day. It didn’t used to be like this. So, if you accept that premise, and you are an established author or aspire to be published by one of the big publishing houses what do you do? Well, to be successful in the publishing industry (we're talking New York), you look at what it takes to be successful in Hollywood.

1. You gotta be great, not just good, but great.
This means you leave no loose ends, your craft, your networking, your brand, EVERYTHING has to be perfected to within an inch of its life. The first thing that decision makers in Hollywood look for when they consider product (a crass way to look at artistic work, but there you are) is a reason to say no--ANYTHING that falls beneath their self-set standards of excellence/perfection, no matter how small or insignificant. It’s their way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Get your format wrong on the cover of your screenplay, and FZZZAAAAAAHHTT! Like a bug hitting a electric zapper light on a hot summer day, you’re toast. Does this arbitrarily eliminate product that could make them a lot of money? Of course it does, but that doesn’t factor into the equation. It’s the self-justifying paradigm that is important. So by exercising your due diligence and going the extra 500 hundred miles to be absolutely the best you can be, craft your product to the industry and the market, and produce transformative work, you give yourself at least a fighting chance. Be careful--one of the most common comments editors are giving manuscripts these days is "I've read this before". They are looking at fresh takes on established themes. Don't default, go on to the second choice or third choice or beyond in how you treat your materials.

2. Hone your brand.
If you don’t create and define your own brand experience for other people, other people will either wonder what the heck you’re all about or decide for themselves something about you that could completely miss the mark and spoil your chances. This starts with who you are, your work, and positioning it so that it creates an experience for others that YOU want them to have. An experience that creates affinity, loyalty, and yes, love. If you don't understand branding, better study up.

3. Begin with the end in mind.
Total follow through. Visualize the book as published, as the publisher supported it from acquisition through preproduction, marketing and PR, through the sales chain until it arrived on the shelves, well-positioned and with a high level of awareness among the buying public and achieving break out sales. Then back it out to the agent, who that person is, how they really “get” the book, how it needs to get sold, to what publisher, and how it needs to get marketed successfully. Your choice of agent may be the most important decision you make--everything flows from there. Then back it out to the hiring process—hiring the agent and researching the pool out there so that you understand the relative merits of each agent, their strengths and weaknesses and how that relates to you and your work and your ultimate goal, networking with friends and other authors to get more information and referrals that give you more ammunition and strengthen the power of your choices. Back it out to the query letter where you position yourself and your work to give yourself the best chance to engage your chosen agent prospects in an interview process. Then .....

4. Start from the beginning. It starts with Word One. Every page, every sentence, every word must have integrity. Integrity with your self as an artist, integrity with the marketplace. Airport fiction. A book that the weary traveler can pick up from the airport gift shop rack and settle back for four hours (or until it’s time to deplane) for a totally engrossing read that causes that reader to pine for that very next opportunity to sit down and continue reading. And when the reader finishes the book, the reader feels longing for the story to go on, but it cannot, because it’s over!. (“when’s your next book coming out???”).

5. Do your Research and Self-examination.
Yes, you have to figure out what you can write that will resonate with a diverse, large audience out there (who actually still reads). Know yourself, know the market, and learn from the very best in any way you can. And then transform yourself. Go the extra five hundred miles.

You're on your own, bro

In the latest politician-screws-around-and-gets-caught story, this one involving Handsome John Ensign, a Nevada senator, there was one breath of fresh air.

He came out to admit his affair with a staffer (or a staffer's wife, or maybe they were both staffers) without the most important appendage for these press conferences.

His wife. Nowhere to be found. Hallelujah! No wife, embarrassed and ashamed (why the hell should she be ashamed?) standing by her man. Nuh-uh. His wife stayed home and saved herself the photo op of the year.

Good for you, Smart Wife.

If he's determined to go down the tubes, it's good that you don't let him take you down with him.

By your silence we shall know you. And we like you already. Finally, a woman who said, "You're on your own, bro."

I love a guy who loves dogs

I'm talking about Brian Williams. In his NBC special on the White House, he had a few meetings with the First Puppy, Bo.

There are people who don't like animals. There are people who don't see animals. There are people who like animals well enough. Then there are people who turn into little kids whenever they cross the path of a dog or a cat or a horse or a ferret. I'm one of those people. On my walks, when I see people coming in my direction and they have a dog, my eyes light up and I think, "Ooh, a puppy!" Or "Ooh, a Rottweiler!" I can barely contain myself. "Can I pet him? What's his name?" Etc.

Brian Williams is like that. When beautiful Michelle came into the room with Bo at the end of the leash, Brian Williams immediately dropped into a crouch and said, "Ohhhhh, good boy!" Then he apologized to the First Lady for not greeting her first.

My kinda guy.

Fear of Flying

I learned to manage my fear of flying by this simple reasoning:

1. Commercial air travel is many times safer than driving a car
2. Most crashes occur during take-off or landing, not when the plane is at cruising altitude, and it's almost impossible for a plane at 32,000 feet to go down. Almost impossible, emphasis on "almost."

Close enough to get me to fly on airplanes. I figured, during takeoff, there were several minutes of danger, and all I had to do was hold tight for those few minutes, and then we were likely home free. I'd wait to hear the little ping that came when people were free to move around the cabin, and I loved it when we leveled off. As far as landing: it's hard to keep up being terrorized for hours on a plane; mostly you just want to get to your destination. I also figure if you made it this far, you're likely to make it all the way. So by the time we come in for a landing, I'm cool as a cucumber.

So what do I make of the recent spate of airline crashes? Sully's crash--that was birds: take-off.

The crash into the house in Buffalo? That was a small feeder airline with pilots getting $22,000 a year. So I'll avoid those little commuter airlines if I can.

But the Air France crash just off Brazil? This one rattles me. They were at cruising altitude. They were not supposed to crash. But they did.

So until I find out why this airplane fell out of the sky, I am hereby refusing to fly from Brazil to France in an Airbus.

What are you afraid of?

Mapping the brain, politically

There's an interesting column by Nicholas Kristoff about the differences in the brains of liberals versus conservatives.

One difference: Conservatives register more disgust with more things. Maybe, but the most liberal person I know won't use a Porta Potti at a sporting event. Just won't do it.

I think everyone has a certain disgust level. I can't stand the smell of cooked cruciferous vegetables. I'm almost physically ill. But give me a snail fork and some garlic butter and I'm ther

What was your favorite car?

Mine was a pale blue 1970 Ford Maverick, which I had for 21 years. It had a dark blue vinyl top, which of course peeled. My dad used to change the brake shoes on it himself, out on hot summer days on the bermuda grass in the backyard, using his own tools on those heavy-duty springs. Could have blinded himself. But he grew up as a farm boy, and during World War II he was the head mechanic on B-17s. Every time one of those B-17s was worked on, he had to go up with the pilots. Talk about a guarantee. What was the best car you ever owned?

(For a favorite car, the 1957 Thunderbird comes to mind. With the porthole.)

kernels of advice

When writing, think about bright shiny object. Always. Keep challenging yourself. Keep doing that question thing, take the last choice. Get as much as you can out of a situation – run into the torpedo. Head right toward it. Go into its teeth. More on what Bright Shiny Object is all about in a later post.

Back to work

From 11-11-08

I’ve reached the 50,000-word-mark on THE SHOP. This makes me feel good for a couple of reasons. One, 50,000 is actually a real book. I looked it up. According to Harlequin guidelines, some of the lines run 50K to 60K. So that means, if I stopped writing right now, it would be a book. If I stopped right now, the story would go over the cliff (along with the reader.) The book would end in an abrupt, ridiculous and unsatisfying way, but at least it would meet the very low standard of being an actual book. Yay!

Usually, my books run 100K. But this book will probably be shorter—I expect it to come in between 80K and 90K.

The reason for this is I’ve changed some of the ways I write. I’m really wonkish about this stuff, to the point of being a real bore, so I won’t go into it too much. The result is better pacing (in my view), and more actual story up to this point, so now I’m looking down the road thinking, Jesus Mary and Joseph, I’m going to get to the end a lot sooner than I ever did before! This is off-putting. My frame of reference, at least regarding book length, is all shot to hell.

The reason for this? I’m writing a lot more narrative and covering more ground. Have you ever watched a dog agility competition? The dogs go over jumps and walls and they also run through tunnels—usually a nylon tube set on the grass. I picture my book as a dog running through one of these tubes. The dog is the story-line (and also the main character), but there’s all this stuff around him. The stuff around him is the world of the novel, including the setting, the characters, the back story, the relationships, the outside circumstances, the problems. That’s the space inside the tube.

By writing more narrative, I’ve found a way to give the reader a better use of that space. I’ve utilized more of the space inside the tube. I’ll give you an example:

Zoe tried to quell the voices running around like a squirrel on a wheel, wishing instead she and Riley could just go back to shopping trips and hanging on the dock with the guys, texting back and forth with Shane, tending to their Facebook pages, the boat and the pool and the beach and the moonlit parties and Hubbard family lawn barbecues. Riley’s dad’s liquor cabinet, the pot (which she didn’t really care for but she smoked anyway), the damp-palmed, hard edged, heart-pounding thrill when Shane kissed her…It might still turn out all right. Maybe it was a false alarm.

Here’s another one:

Davy Crockett was a giant black man with a bullet-shaped head he shaved every morning. His nickname was “the Gentle Giant,” for his courtly manner. In deference to the name his parents gave him, Davy had a coonskin cap tacked up on the wall above his desk. The thing was moth-eaten and smelled musty, but it was a good talking point. Davy was the PD’s only detective, what they call a generalist. He covered everything. He worked homicide, but he also worked auto theft, smash and grabs, and simple theft. Davy had been a good friend of Dan’s when they were both deputies with the sheriff’s office. They grew up together, kind of (Davy lived in the black neighborhood in Port St. Joe’s) and played on the same football team in high school. “I can tell you what’s on the list, I guess,” he said. “What you want to know?”

Okay, not to get all wonky on you, but that covers a lot of ground. I didn’t do much of that before. It’s kind of like shorthand. There’s so much in all our lives, stuff that affects the way we see the world, and if we can take snapshots of these things all crowding into our psyche at certain times, I believe there’s a more comprehensive vision of the person at the center.

Sometimes I’d plod along. I had a lot of dialogue, and I still have a lot of dialogue, but hopefully, fewer talking head scenes. Dialogue can get away from you and go on pages longer than it should. In my opinion.

Anyhoo, wonk that I am, I call this type of writing “narrative summary” or “summary narrative,” I can’t remember which.

It’s one of many things I’ve been doing to transform my writing.

See? It hasn’t all been watching Morning Joe and fiddling with my electoral map. I been workin’.

First memories, Snow White, and Big Bird

As I hack my way through the near-impenetrable forest of my new book, I sometimes write ahead. I’m looking for some small piece of the book that will inspire me to get through the springy, head-whacking limbs of the first half. Often, these scenes end up being mere placemarkers, but I like the idea that they’re set in the future waiting for me, like a beacon in the jungle gloom.

My character’s mother died when she was very young. Jolie has no real memories of her, which is fortunate, because her mother was verbally abusive. Her mother suffered from post-partum depression, but the seeds of her mental illness were there before the child was born. Jolie’s father loves his daughter without reservation, and tries to keep her mind off her mother’s anger. A VHS tape of Snow White was the toddler’s constant companion, especially after her mother’s death, and her father painted a rosy picture of Jolie’s babyhood, hoping to replace whatever trauma the child might have suffered with good memories. He might have gone a little overboard:

“She hadn’t done it in years, but suddenly Jolie felt the need to look at her mother. Not the photos on the mantel she walked past every day. They were photographs of a young woman on her wedding day and also on vacation in New Mexico. That woman had pale skin and black hair. She was young and generically pretty. There was a trace of fragility in that beauty, or maybe it only seemed that way, considering what lay in wait for her. The photos were beautiful but one-dimensional, only approximating her mother’s spirit. As a child, whenever she asked her daddy what her mother was really like, he told her she was like Snow White—good and pure and kind and beautiful. Jolie had grown up with the Disney Snow White book and the VHS tape. And so she grew up thinking of her mother as Snow White, even though logically she knew that wasn’t true. It was in the Disney book and on the Disney tape that she experienced the bond with her mother. Everything was entwined with Disney’s Snow White, so that the few glimpses she had of her mother were these: the soft, flawlessly smooth face of Snow White bending down with sweet breath and gentle, luminous eyes, sun and shadow on a white wall behind her. Or being strapped into her stroller by a slender girl in a puffy-sleeved maiden’s dress. It was the Disney character in the sunny kitchen, moving about in a graceful waltz, bluebirds flying to her shoulders.”

Okay, then. Books are long and instant gratification is rare. So sometimes, when I’m inspired, I paste a snippet of my writing into an email for my long-suffering writing buddies, Chilly and MP. (The names are changed to protect the innocent.)

Sometimes MP can be inspired, too. Here’s his version, below:

“As a child, whenever she asked her daddy what her mother was really like, he told her she was like Big Bird—good and pure and kind and beautiful. She had grown up with the Sesame Street TV show and the stuffed animals and the comic books. And so she grew up thinking of her mother as Big Bird, even though logically she knew that wasnʼt true. It was on PBS she experienced the bond with her mother. Everything was entwined with Jim Henson’s Big Bird, so that the few glimpses she had of her mother were these: the soft, feathery face of a yellow Muppet bending down with sweet breath and a gentle, luminous beak. Or being strapped into her stroller by a six-foot ostrichlike creature of ambiguous sexuality. It was Big Bird in the sunny kitchen, moving about in a graceful waltz, Bert and Ernie riding on his or her back.”

This is the respect I get. But I am philosophical. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, “You go with the friends you have, not the friends you wished you had.” I only wish I could get this picture out of my mind: Big Bird’s prodigious beak coming down and spearing the baby in the eye.

How many people have I killed?

When my girlfriends and I walked out of the movie theater yesterday after seeing “Stranger than Fiction”, my friend Bea turned to me and said, “How many people have you killed in your books?”

Damn. That’s a really tough question. Over the years I’ve developed an almost Rumsfeldian disregard for casualties in the fictional field, but I know that I have not killed as many as, say, Clavell did in SHOGUN. But I have sent a lot of souls to their deaths, most of them deserving. (Well, there was the Good Samaritan in the campground in DARK HORSE who got hit in the face with a shovel, but that was a walk-on part.) (Or a walk into part, to be more precise.)

I have eleven and a half books under my belt, give or take, and some of those books have faded in my memory, so it’s going to be hard to come up with a body count. For this exercise, I’ll limit it to DARKNESS and DARK SIDE.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN: 11. Does it count when some of them are dead before the story begins? I’m counting those.

Breakdown:

Strangled – 2
Murder-suicide – 3 (back story)
Booby trap shotgun – 1 (another guy lost his eye and had internal injuries)
Bludgeoned to death – 1
Burned alive – 1
Beaten to death – 1 (also back story)
Shot execution style during home invasion – 2 (back story)

Jesus. Am I deranged, or what?

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: 7

Shotgun while sleeping – 2
Murder-suicide with shotgun - 2
Blown up in truck (suicide) – 1
Shot execution style during home invasion – 2 (back story)

I see I was much less bloodthirsty in DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. Was that because I was in a good mood?

Most memorable way I’ve killed someone: The surprise shovel to the forehead? The guy who was badly injured (not killed) by a booby trap of fishhooks to the face? The woman who was shot in the head and then posed in one of her own animal cages as a trophy? I really did like that one.

When you write mysteries and thrillers, there’s bound to be some carnage— a little collateral damage. A few heads are going to get cracked. But I wonder if I’ll ever pay for these gratuitous and sometimes cheerily flippant murders. I wonder, too, if there’s a formula for figuring out how much I’ve been paid over the years per body.

Just curious – writers – or fantasizers - what’s the most interesting way you’ve killed someone? And what kind of body counts are you coming up with?

Stranger than Fiction

Today I’m gonna plug the movie “Stranger than Fiction”. If you’re a writer, if you’re an author, if you’re a reader who thinks about what you read - go see this movie! It’s fresh, original, and thought-provoking. (It does rely on a tried and true story line, but doesn’t everything?)

Logline - An accountaint named Harold Crick (Will Farrell) suddenly realizes he is the main character in a book - and the author plans to kill him off. He must find the author before that happens.

Will Farrell ’s performance is incredible. He reminds me (a little) of Tom Hanks when he made the move from comedy to mainstream films.

The Darkest Path into the Woods

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I was an opera singer. For a while. There were two parts to the job: one, singing. And two, going to concerts where I listened to other people sing.

I hated the second part. Being a narcissistic personality (not uncommon for opera singers in general - why do you think they’re called “prima donnas” and “divas”?) I didn’t want to listen to anybody else. Plus, I didn’t like going out at night. An opera singer who’s also a homebody? Not the best fit, I’m thinking.

There are two parts to a writer’s job, too. (Well, actually, there are three—there is the take-it-on-the-road-performing-monkey act we all have to do). But for this discussion, I divide a writer’s life into a) writing, and b) reading.

This I LOVE. I’ve been a reader all my life, and now this is part of my job? When I’m lounging by the pool with a book or on a rock in the middle of a stream in the woods, I’m working? Baby, I’ll take that devil’s bargain!

Plus, I read only the best, so it’s always fun.

A few years ago, when I decided to become a much better writer, I decided to read only the best and learn from them. I diagrammed books like THE LAST COYOTE, by Michael Connelly. I wanted to see if I could find the working parts of the stage set, the story beneath the story.

Lately, I’ve come up with something new, and suitably interactive for this age of video games and interactive websites and blogs.

I’m reading a book for fun, which is my primary goal. But at certain points in the book, we come to a crossroads. There’s a definite Y in the road. It might be something the main character is going to do, or something he might find out, or something big that’s about to happen. But there’s a choice the author has to make. Does he go this way, or that? If he goes this way, will it deepen the story, make it more suspenseful, set up more complications, lead us in a certain direction? Which choice is better for the story? Where do you get more bang for your buck? Where do get the most mileage? Which creates more questions than it answers, which leads us down a darker path into the woods?

I write in the book what I think will happen. “Do they find the body here?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Because that will lead to this which will lead to that…” Then I continue reading.

I feel like I am the author, writing the book as I go along.

I’ve never understood people who want to write books but don’t read them. What’s that all about? How can you do that without building up a life list of stories, without seeing what other authors have done? I’ve read so many books, I’ve learned (in the back of my mind) so many plots, that I’m past Plotting 101. It’s simple arithmetic that if you go over similar ground often enough, the mind is going to want to find new paths.

I used to write books in different genres, just for the challenge. I was always bored. Now I’m not. I think the monster load of reading has made the challenge of plotting more exciting, not less. There are so many ways to go, but which path will surprise you the most, and surprise the reader even more?

Great beginnings

I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings lately. (Coincidentally, there was a great blog about this not too long ago at Murder She Writes).

I’m about to start the new book, and I want to give the beginning more thought this time. Usually, my beginnings would just sort of come to me. Sometimes, partway through the book, I’d rethink my beginning. Sometimes I’d have to put something before the beginning, to set the tone for the book.

All authors have their strengths. I think the best first chapter guy in the business is Harlan Coben. So yesterday, on a perfect fall Arizona day, the deep blue sky throbbing overhead, the bougainvillea lush and deep pink, the pool glittering like an acquamarine, I sat on the chaise in my “office” (read, back terrace), batted at a few mosquitos, and read some Harlan Coben beginnings.

I honestly don’t think you could beat the beginning of JUST ONE LOOK.

Here is what he does in the first twenty pages or so of JUST ONE LOOK.

He knows his people and the situation cold. The suburban lifestyle, the love of one’s kids.
He makes that situation normal, and the character expects that normalcy to always be there.
He puts tension in every scene — there is always conflict. Conflict with another mother (small), conflict with the Photomat guy - nothing is easy.

He foreshadows trouble in the first sentence.
He goes forward in the scene but drops in a little thing from the past, sometimes one sentence, like “her leg still ached at times”. From what? we wonder.

We’re getting close to something important, and then he interrupts it with a phone call, something else to think about. And the tension builds again because we’re no closer to where we want to be.

He finally gets to the big thing, the thing we have been waiting for, and he slows it down with description. In this case, it is about a packet of photographs, and we know something is wrong and he describes the packet, and the photographic paper, and the this and the that until we’re ready to chew the scenery - WAIT for it - and then we finally find out what it’s about.

And that brings up more questions. Who put the other photo in with the rest? Why? How did they do it? Who’s in the photo?

The main character wants to know, too, so she marches down to the Photomat, and we see her character in action. She is smart, she won’t take any bullshit, she thinks on her feet, she WILL find out, if not now, later.

She needs answers and only her husband can give them, so she gets ready to talk to him, for some relief, for everything to be the way it always has been in their marriage, one day after another, and–

He takes off. She hears him drive out. This is not the way life is supposed to be.

How can you not turn the page? JUST ONE LOOK is an object lesson for a great opening chapter.

I think I’m a strong writer in most respects, but particularly with standalones, it’s good to get out of the gate fast. You need tactical speed.

One of the great stories in horseracing is about how Seabiscuit’s trainer Tom Smith prepared Seabiscuit to face off with War Admiral in the big match race. War Admiral always broke fast and that early speed would make it impossible for a horse to catch up with him. Seabiscuit just left the gate the normal way. But the wiley trainer decide to take War Admiral out of his game by getting Seabiscuit to outbreak him. He did this by using a bell and having the jock really get into him—and he did this in secret sessions. Every time the horse heard the bell, he’d take off like hell was on his heels.

Seabiscuit did outbreak War Admiral, and it did take War Admiral out of his game. All complacence gone, War Admiral’s jockey had to make it up as he went along. Suddenly War Admiral was playing catch-up. That maneuver resulted in a four-length win by Seabiscuit.

So it can be done. You can train yourself to do things better. In my police procedurals, my beginnings were just fine. But now I’ve got to break faster, and put up faster times at every pole.

Without changing things so dramatically that I lose all sense of self.

Story

In old movies, you’ll sometimes see a jaded newspaper reporter, cigar jammed between his lips, telling a young girl reporter with stars in her eyes: “What’s your angle?”

“Angle” sounds cynical. But in fiction and in nonfiction, a writer does need to find the story.

The difference between nonfiction and fiction: it’s easy to see how the story is set up. In good books, this set-up is very clear. And if it isn’t, the nonfiction book will go down the dumbwaiter of obscurity.

On Imus right now a guy is describing the book in which he chronicles the lives of the men who held the flag aloft in Iwo Jima. His father was one of those men. Two things stand out here: FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (after twenty-seven rejection letters) is a bestseller, and, I wish I could get my book on Imus.

But listening to the author talk about his book got me thinking: if I were tapped to write Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro’s story (that’ll never happen), what would be the lynchpin? The obvious story is about a sensational horse who looks to be a lock for the Triple Crown after a drought of twenty-eight years, but breaks down catastrophically, and his owners go to great lengths to save him. It is the classic Hero’s Journey of myth, which I have chronicled here before.

But another part to the story is just now emerging. Barbaro was a Super Horse. If he had not broken down, it seemed inevitable that he would have been the horse we were waiting for. Some people wait for the Second Coming; horse people wait for the next Triple Crown winner. But while the cameras were trained on Barbaro holding his hind leg up off the ground in pain and fear, while Edgar Prado stared at his saddle on the ground, his face drawn in deep lines of sorrow, another story was about to take hold. A horse named Bernardini went on to win the Preakness.

Hardly anyone saw him win it, though. All eyes were for Barbaro off to the side as Bernardini ran by. Barbaro being stabilized, the horror unfolding. Bernardini’s victory was the most hollow in sport.

Since then this marvel has notched the Jim Dandy, the prestigious Travers, the Jockey Club Gold Cup against older horses, and most people believe he will run away with the Breeder’s Cup Classic. Bernardini is a living flame, and try as the folks who already have it written in stone might, he is altering this saga for good. Some people despise him for that. He’s a racehorse, doing his job, winning with effortless grace and flawless beauty, Javier Castellano sitting chilly on him with a trademark loose rein—but this damn horse is ruining everything!

Or is he?

Speaking as a teller of stories, I think that he has made the legend even greater. He has added scope and dimension to an already spectacular story.

Barbaro’s story is one of tremendous courage and stamina. He is running the greatest race, and he shows every day that he is a Thoroughbred who was bred for the challenge. Never once has he given up. Other horses have. When he was stricken with laminitis, he had a ten percent chance to live. His owners, who love him dearly, did not want him to suffer. His surgeon thought he saw a small chance. Gretchen Jackson looked at the horse in the stall and she did not see an animal about to die. She saw an interested party, and he was saying, “Aren’t you going to consult me?”

This is a story of fortitude. Of months – maybe even another year – of Barbaro slowly growing his hoof back. There’s a sign at New Bolton Center: “Grow Hoof Grow”. There’s a saying at Tim Woolley Racing: “Another comfortable night”. Loving Barbaro is like watching grass grow.

The story is a great one, but as an author, I can see the glimmer of something more. I can see the contrast between these two horses, and the races they are running. They only met once, in the race in which Barbaro broke down.

Who is better? Or can we even compare them? Should we compare them?

Like it or not, this is the story that is taking shape, and if I were writing this book, it would be about the two horses, not one. I do not see Bernardini as an antagonist, but lots of people do. The resent him because they think he’s stealing the spotlight away from Barbaro.

But I see this as the story of two horses, their paths converging and then diverging. It is the story about courage and brilliance both. One horse calls on his inner strength every day and is fighting for his life while another is burning up the tracks, a bright sensation. Both are Thoroughbreds, doing what they were bred to do. Barbaro was sired by Dynaformer, a true stayer. And Barbaro’s a stayer in the most important sense of the word. But it is the contrast of his new life with his old life, the contrast of his quiet battle with Bernardini’s brilliant run, that truly shows his greatness, and the greatness of the Thoroughbred.

This is what I believe about story: the best ones are organic. The best ones have room to grow. You start in one direction, and suddenly you come across the real story, because you’ve been picking your way along the road, looking at the ground for gold and you find it.

Think about THE PERFECT STORM or SEABISCUIT. Both of these books could have never seen daylight, had the author not found the real story.

In nonfiction as in fiction, you have to have everything: characters, plot, writing that pulls you along, a climax. But most of all it comes down to story.

Comfort Zone

Recently, there was a very good blog on MP’s site about his comfort zone, and what happened when he stepped out of it (kind of like Superman whipping off his glasses and suit and donning his Superman outfit - which reminds me - since there are so few phone booths, does he have to use the men’s room?) . MP has always written crack female characters, and has quite a following for two of his characters, Tess and Abby. But he decided he wanted to deepen character, and found himself hating where he was: at a coffee place with two women jabbering about their boyfriends while sipping cappucinos and eating something with watercress in it. Probably, they had their lowfat dressing on the side.

Being the pro he is, MP knew immediately that his little experiment didn’t work, and he consigned the chatty Ferragamo-shoe-wearing fashionistas to the circular file where they belonged.

Now I’m contemplating being a little out of my comfort zone. For the first time, I’m thinking of writing a book that has no Arizona ties. Because I see myself as an Arizonan first and an American second, this is going to be pretty tough for me.

I’m not going nuts, however. I’m not setting a book in New York. I can’t even conceive of setting a book in New York. Although I’d love to write about Saratoga in the summer, I just don’t have the depth of experience to do it. Sure, I could send an Arizonan to New York. But think like a New Yorker? Nuh-uh. I saw enough “Seinfeld” episodes to realize I’d be hopelessly out of my depth.

I do understand small towns and rural places. And I love that stuff. I figure the more I can do with that stuff, the better. It’s in my comfort zone. A book can still resonate, still be big and have big issues, even if it is a manhunt on the Gulf Coast and dead people at a Cash N Run. Look at Mystic River. Look at James Lee Burke’s New Iberia.

But I have to have been there. I’ve been on the Gulf Coast of Florida and talked to people and gotten some ideas about feelings there, like the friendliness quotient, which is generally, say, higher than it would be in Laguna Beach. (Sorry, Laguna, but you know it’s true.)

When embarking on a new experience and a new challenge, I think it’s wise for writers not to take themselves completely out of their game. (Racehorse Rule number 3: don’t try to change a horse’s running style in the middle of a race.)

From what I can see in the writing biz, what you want is this: the same, only incrementally different. The same, only bigger. Or even just: the same, but suddenly a light goes on and the people publishing see it differently. As Red Pollard said in the movie “Seabiscuit”: “Brick by brick, my son.”

Jockey Change

When you start losing races, sometimes you have to change one or more factors, and often that starts with a jockey change. This is a part of life for a jockey, along with the knowledge that he could go out in the tenth race on a Friday and not come back. Or if he does, it could be in an ambulance and he could be paralyzed. But the jockey often gets the blame. The trainer comes in for his share of the blame, too, and there have been some pretty ugly trainer changes over the years. Recently, veteran trainer Bob Holthus lost the best horse in his stable, Lawyer Ron (who ran in the Kenucky Derby and had won six races going into that race). Holthus lost him to one of the big trainers, Todd Pletcher. Holthus should have seen the writing on the wall when the horse’s owner died in a swimming accident before the Derby. But the new owners let him run Lawyer Ron two more times after the Derby, with a win and a second—not exactly terrible. What was really awful was that ten minutes after Holthus got the call, the van came for the horse. How do you say goodbye to a horse who has taken you that far? How does the groom say goodbye?

It stinks, but as I said, jockeys and trainers know that the joys in the biz are transient. I remember Mike Smith winning race after race on Skip Away, but he lost one or two races and that was it. The trainer went for Jerry Bailey. Jerry Bailey was the go-to guy, and as much as the trainer liked Mike Smith, Jerry was available.

It’s business, but it’s also personal. It’s hard not to take it personally, it’s hard not to see it as a direct assault on your abilities, and even your likeability. It well and truly stinks.

The only thing is, sometimes the jockey change makes an enormous difference. The new jockey suits the horse better. They start winning again. The new jockey can get the horse to relax. There are different jockeys with different skills. Pat Day, for example, was known for his patience. In fact, they called him Pat Wait All Day.

Just like jockey and trainer changes in horseracing, agent changes are part of the writing business. I’ve been dumped by one of the best. It came in a phone call where he said, “I think you should go with so-and-so.” (So-and-so was leaving to go out on her own.) Then he said, “Besides, I don’t do romance.”

Funny, I didn’t do romance, either. Clearly, if he didn’t know that, we were not meant for each other.

So I’ve been dumped and I was briefly insulted. But I didn’t really care for him anyway. Who would like an agent who saw you as a romance writer when you weren’t one? (This falls under the category: sour grapes.)

Breaking up is hard to do. It shouldn’t be personal, but it is. But sometimes you need a jockey change.

Two questions:

Writers – have you ever had to make a change that you thought might make the difference, and if you did—did it work out the way you planned?

And – Does anybody have Jerry Bailey’s phone number?

Whose phone number was that?

Over at Murder She Writes, Karin Tabke (whose book Good Girl Gone Bad will be excerpted in Cosmopolitan’s November Issue) mentioned how disorganized she was. I put this in comments over there, but I thought it would make a good blog.

How lazy and disorganized can anyone be?

I’m in between books, just coming up with the new one, and so I decided to tackle the mountains of paper and newspaper clippings and doodles on small slips of paper with phone numbers for names I don’t know and Publisher’s Weeklys from last December and newsletters from MWA, Sisters in Crime, Novelists Ink, Southwestern Writers (thank you, Thriller Writers, for sending only email newsletters - which reminds me I’ve got to clean up my millions of emails) and old circulars that got mixed in and the seven or eight notebooks I started and never finished and printouts of stuff from three drafts ago.

Five hours later and three HUGE garbage bags of all this stuff plus whole newspapers (with “save this” written on the front) and I could finally dust my combination desk and bookcase, and sit down on a couch where the cat barf didn’t vie with the four-color brochure of Randy Graf for Congress. (Randy Graf is a former golf pro who looks like he left the kegger too late and spent the whole night looking for his Camaro.)

So, Karin, to answer your question, my life is a mess! A little less messy today, but now I have to tackle the approximately five million files and 2 million slightly-different versions of my latest book somewhere in My Documents, but because our laptops keep giving out, and we move everything back but not to the same place, every time I’ve turned on a “new” computer it’s like coming home to a living room where somebody moved the furniture.

This is what happens when the weather is so damn nice all the time that I move my “office” outdoors and write from a chaise lounge.

How do you deal with clutter? Or are you neat?

The Better Half

The revelation came while I was in the shower getting ready to go to the gym. As revelations go, it was a timely one, because I didn’t really want to go to the gym. And I knew I had to write down this blog before I forgot this great feeling I’m having.

What is this spine-tingling revelation?

There are two halves to being a writer, more or less: writing, and being published. I should be a guru sitting on a mountaintop somewhere, with insights like that. Because of course I’ve always known this.

But I realized in one of those flash-quick moments that one half of the equation is a thousand times better and more potent than the other.

If you dream of being a Bestselling Author, of NYT lists and being limoed around NYC and being feted at posh parties, you would probably think the better half was the being-published part. And maybe you’d be right. But the best part of being a writer for me is writing: the coming-up-with-it, the way it fills in, the research, the slogging along writing it, the rewriting, that chortle of glee when you get it right, all the times you just show up and type something—typetypetypetypetype—and it makes no damn sense at all.

Toweling my hair, I felt as if an arrow of shining light had gone right through my heart. I am about to start a new book. As good an excuse as any not to go to the gym!

If selling a book and seeing it come out in stores were the real goal (although that’s what I say to myself every time), then writing would be anti-climatic. I’m no bestselling author, so I’m only guessing at this, but I don’t care how high you climb, how many Edgars you garner or how many bestseller lists you’re on—- there’s always a downside to the ego trip. And for me, a sensitive who can see a backhanded slap coming from miles away, it can be pure torture. Oh, there are some really good things about being published. The money, for one, if it’s good. Seeing the cover for the first time. Getting the galleys. Getting advance praise and great reviews. The day it comes out! (Although a look at your amazon number might take the bloom off the rose.) Holding it in your hands. Seeing it in a store. But for sensitive types like me, there’s always the down side. It’s never as good an experience as I think it will be. There’s always the store I’ll walk into where they have no books at all. It’s always something. And worse, the publisher expects you to get out there and flog that book like there’s no tomorrow, making personal appearances and talking about yourself when you don’t want to (don’t get me wrong—I love to talk about myself, but that’s not the venue for it), being on the radio, and the constant fear that someday, I’ll have to go on television.

That’s the downside.

What I love about my big new standalone is that a word isn’t written yet. Maybe this will be The One. Sure, I have fantasies of bestseller lists and fawning reviews and the whole country being taken by storm over my book, but what’s the most fun? What do I love best? The idea that I can make this one perfect. I keep trying for perfect and haven’t gotten there yet. But this one… It’s got it all. A big High Concept, a brilliant premise, great characters (at least I like their names—- Nick Holloway and Jolie somebodyorother). I can feel it in my gut, the excitement of embarking on the carnival ride of my life.

And the great thing is, it stretches out endlessly in front of me like an unpopulated beach, the surf shimmering in the sunlight, the sky a deep, aching blue.

With no publication in sight.

Favorite summer reads (so far)

I’ve read a ton of books, and a lot of them are really, really, good. Here are some exceptional books from the police procedural/thriller genre:

THE FALLEN – T. Jefferson Parker
THE HARD WAY – Lee Child
LINCOLN LAWYER – Michael Connelly
VANISH – Tess Gerritsen
A PIECE OF MY HEART – Peter Robinson – a new author for me, and brilliant! I could write a whole blog on this book alone.
S IS FOR SILENCE – Sue Grafton
EYE OF VENGEANCE – Jonathon King
THE TWO MINUTE RULE – Robert Crais
DEAD WRONG – J.A. Jance
THE HUNT CLUB – John Lescroart
THE COLOR OF LAW – Mark Gimenez, a new author
AN UNQUIET GRAVE – P.J. Parrish
RAIN STORM – Barry Eisler

For the most part, these are established authors, most of whom are bestselling authors. They’re best sellers for a reason.

As an author, I’m constantly learning, and I try to read the very best. Life is too short not to. I start a lot of books—and a lot of the books are relatively good—but I don’t finish that many. Reading is not only what I do for fun, it’s part of my job. I try to learn one thing at least from every book I read. Like art, it’s good to study the masters.

My taste might not be yours. I’m sure there are many, many books that readers would like to see on this list, but it’s my list, so there. Neener neener neener.

I know I’m missing somebody, and for that, I apologize.

What are some of your favorite books from this year so far?

The Management

Becoming real

I always loved the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, the stuffed toy bunny who wanted to become real. He was so beloved that he became worn and threadbare. That was what made him a real bunny by the end of the story.

Unfortunately, wearing out a story or book idea until it is threadbare can have the opposite effect. I know a lot of people who will not talk about their books, particularly plots, because they are afraid that by talking about them they will wear them out. They will kill the magic.

I think this may be true, but I’m such a notice box (an English term for someone who loves attention) that it’s always hard for me to keep my story under wraps. I am always dying to share.

I can’t seem to help myself. Maybe it’s because I am the same kid who coveted those gold and green and blue stars the teacher would put on my school papers, the kid who couldn’t wait for show and tell. A…notice box.

And I have to admit, I love it when something becomes real.

Three days ago there was no such thing as an abandoned biker bar called the Silver Spur Tavern. There was no gray GMC Yukon hurtling down the lonely road the tavern was on, a five-year-old child named Lynette Sokolof strapped in the back seat.

There was no Highway Patrol officer feeling her way through the abandoned bar, her shoes almost skating on broken glass, the smell of bat-guano in her nostrils, going on the “dark ride” of her life.

(A “dark ride” is a carnival term for rides like Disney’s Haunted House, where people either walk or ride gondolas through the dark and ghosts and goblins jump out at them and scare them to death.)

I loved the idea of my officer interviewing a carnival worker and realizing that her own dark ride had been real, and it had ended in death.

See? I told you I couldn’t help myself!

This is a question for authors, but of course readers can weigh in, too.

Do you refuse to talk about even the bare bones of your story because you might lose interest in it once it has been exposed to light?

Are stories really like vampires?

A medley of mass market paperbacks

In The Silver Bullet: Hardcover vs. Paperback?, I put forward the theory that the majority of mass market paperbacks on the racks at Walgreens, Kroger’s, K-Mart etc. are romantic suspense, erotica, paranormal, anthologies, and chick lit (all part of the romance genre). There’s also a smattering of historical romances, cozy mysteries, westerns, horror and sci-fi/fantasy. This leaves very little room for straight suspense or police procedural mystery/thrillers in the impulse-buy market.

When I say mystery/thriller, I am talking about mystery/thrillers that have been released in original paperback, not paperback versions of hardcover novels.

Yes, you still see some suspense, noir mystery, and police procedurals, and some thrillers in these outlets, but due to shrinking shelf space, you’re not going to see them in Walgreens unless there’s some push by the publisher.

And I’m not even mentioning the titles that take up over half the rack—the big established names on the paperback bestseller list, which always consist of J.D. Robb and James Patterson.

Mass market paperbacks have always relied heavily on the “impulse buy” component. And, like the animals in ANIMAL FARM, some mass market paperbacks are more equal than others. (Those would be the ones that get into the Walgreens and all of the grocery stores, where impulse buying happens. Or books that have space bought for them on the New Releases kiosks at the chain bookstores. A couple of books spine-out in the bookstore, however, aren’t going to attract anyone’s eye.)

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. You can see this month’s list for Berkley Jove, which is under the same umbrella as Penguin Signet here.

I think this is a good snapshot of what’s popular in mass market right now. Bear in mind, this is only one imprint, with its own philosophy and style. You can see the Berkley Prime Crime mysteries (mostly cozies) here. You will see the categories “police procedural”, “private eye” and “suspense” listed. But if you look carefully, and know the market, you will see that a lot of these books came out in hardcover first. I’m talking about writers like Jonathon King, Jack Kerley, C.J. Box, Martha Grimes, P.J. Tracy - the list goes on.

The question I’m asking: is this sampling reflective of mass marketing publishing in general, or is this particular to one month, and one company?

The Silver Bullet: Hardcover or Paperback?

Is there a silver bullet for a writer these days? Is it better to be in mass market paperback or hardcover?

Inquiring minds want to know.

This is a question for authors, but for readers, too. I want to hear from hardcover authors, trade paper authors, and mass market authors. I figure if I talk to enough blind men I’ll get some picture of the elephant.

A few of my own observations first.

Original paperback has changed a lot in even the last couple of years. It’s always heavily favored romance writers (close to 50%) but now I think it’s even better for them—as long as they’re flexible and can change with the tide. I don’t think other genres fare as well, and they seem to be losing ground. The exception to this is horror and movie tie-ins.

The hot thing right now in romance is paranormal and erotica. But chick lit is doing fine, as well as romantic suspense and some cozy mysteries.

Everything else – and maybe I’m wrong about this – seems to be in the dumper.

Assuming my theory is correct, there are a number of reasons for this. There was the mass firing of jobbers by the independent distributors many years ago. (Richard Curtis can tell you all about that – you can Google it.) Book space in stores – particularly grocery stores and places like Walgreens, is shrinking. They are being replaced by the Costcos, Wal-Marts, etc., which has led to a rise in the popularity among trade paperbacks, particularly in chick lit.

People can wait a few days now and buy a hardcover book for pennies on the dollar, online. This is hurting paperback sales because people can buy their brand name authors right after they come out for not that much more than they’d pay for an unknown or relatively-unknown author in original paperback.

Which means that down the line (other than in romance), there may be no brand name authors. Except for James Patterson.

More than ever, original paperback is an impulse buy. And I believe the majority of people who buy mass market are young women. Horny young women. They know from the covers just what kind of book they want, too: romantic suspense, chick lit, erotica, vampire, or cozy mystery (how did cozies get in there? A backlash by the more matronly among us?)

What does that do for the writers of the male-oriented tanks-and-missile books? Or westerns? Am I overstating my case here?

You talk to hardcover people, and that’s no bed of roses either. Small hardcovers yield small print runs, and I’ve heard from hardcover writers that if the book sells out its printing, often there will not be another. Small hardcover runs into the same problem as some mass market, in that if Cindy Blow has a choice between buying Janet Evanovich’s latest book for $14.95 and some unknown author’s hardcover for $25.95 – who she gonna call? Who wants to buy a pig in a poke?

(Leading to the question, what, exactly, is a poke?)

Publishers seem to be in a panic, and looking for the Next Big Thing just to keep their bottom line from dropping below the radar screen. Used to be the big publishers (and maybe this is still true of some) would give a mystery series five or six books before pulling the plug. Now mystery and suspense books are like cooked spaghetti – you throw it up against the wall to see if it sticks.

I liken it to TV. There’s a new fall line-up every year – a whole new season of shows. But more and more, they’re pulling shows after two or three episodes.

In this atmosphere, I don’t know how you’re going to build stars of the future.

Despite this, the cream does seem to rise to the top. The thing is, the cream has to rise to the top meteorically. Or else the cream has to hopscotch between small presses, trade paper, and hardcover (Reed Farrel Coleman comes to mind) until someone finally notices.

Anything to get traction. Spend your whole advance and go to 500 bookstores, as Joe Konrath is doing, or else write erotica. That seems to be where we’re headed.

Perhaps I’m overstating the direness of this situation. I actually do believe good books will out, be they romance, mystery, suspense, nonfiction—whatever. I think it’s harder to be heard over the babble, though. And I think an author these days has to be flexible, inventive, resilient, tough, and yes, sneaky.

These are just my observations. I want to hear from you. I want to hear from small hardcover people, big hardcover people, “successful” authors, people who are worried about their futures, and of course romance writers, who seem to be bucking the tide. And I’d like to hear from readers.

Cruelly derivative

I wrote this first as a comment, then decided it needed it’s own place on the blog.

It occurred to me, as I reread the blog about Fluffy, that I kill people in my books (and yes, I kill animals and chidren, too) but I am not preoccupied with cruelty. As Karin’s husband (the cop!) or Lee can no doubt tell you, there’s a lot of homicide that happens not because of cruelty, but because of impulse, stupidity, rage, accident, even indifference (witness the guy who watched his wife drive over the edge of a cliff).

Cruelty is a special circumstance, and it makes me queasy. I don’t really want to spend time there. Probably a reason I don’t like to read about serial killers, per se, although a good book about them, an interesting book that doesn’t rest on cliches - that is something I can enjoy.

Writers always write about something. There’s some underlying theme in their stories, sometimes a theme they aren’t even aware of. People do the same things over and over again, and I think writers try one or two problems from several angles, and would be surprised how similar in theme their books are. I write about some forms of cruelty, but I have to say the infantile cruelty of the sadistic sociopath leaves me cold.

I can do a spree killer. I can do a serial killer. But there’s nothing in my makeup that can get me to put the truly cruel actions on stage. The result of actions, yes. But if the only way to write a really good book is to have that “fire in the belly” and show somebody blinding a helpless person or other horrific things onstage, well, I guess I don’t have it.

Doesn’t mean I write cozies. I dealt with an internet sexual predator who lures children in DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN.

I said this over at MSW: too many people, a lot of them just getting into the biz but also a bunch of lazy old “pros”, write the same book as hundreds of other people. You always have a slightly veiled scene of someone torturing someone else (usually a woman). It’s supposed to be chilling and depraved, but it bores me to tears. There have simply been too many of them. When I wrote my first horror novel, I was reading the same damn prologue in every book I picked up. (Late eighties.) It struck me as both derivative and infantile. And ultimately, boring.

There’s always a lot of talk about “going all the way” in a book. That if you don’t show every torture, you’re “not doing right by your readers”. Nope. Not true. You’re a writer, which means that at heart you’re a manipulative son-of-a-bitch. You can freak people out and destroy their minds with the simplest of actions. It’s called finesse. It’s called knowing when to hold ‘em, and when to fold ‘em. There’s nothing brave about following the lead of every beginning thriller writer hunched over his prologue thinking he’s tremendously original because the guy wears makeup while he’s slitting “the whore’s throat”.

You have to get underneath that to what’s real. And beyond it, if you ever want to reach people where they live. And get to what they really fear most.

Death to Fluffy: dead pets and other plot devices

There’s a great blog by Karin Tabke over at Murder She Writes about killing off a pet to show the depths of an evil person’s depravity.

I posted there, but it got me thinking not only about killing off pets and children in books, but what it means in the larger context of the times, and also what it means to the craft of writing in general.

Like a lot of kids, I grew up with OLD YELLER, BAMBI, and THE YEARLING. These were the life lessons kids needed to hear. Animals die. And if you’ve grown up with a pet, you learn that in quick order. Some of these stories came out of a time (I’m thinking, THE YEARLING) when what we ate came right from the pen out back. You couldn’t afford to get attached to an animal who might end up on your mother’s lace-draped sideboard. There was also a “toughness” thing: You need to learn this because I say you do.

A lot of books I read came from that mindset. Now I’m grown up and I read for fun, for escape, and sometimes for deeper meanings, but I’m not a kid anymore and I get to choose what I want to read. Fact is, I don’t want to be torn up about a little helpless kitten being stomped to death by some asshole like Tommy Lee. I don’t want to put that in my Salad Shooter, and see how many tears come out. That’s not what I read for.

I know bad endings are there for a reason, and they do elevate the story, they do add depth and importance. Sometimes deaths are necessary, as in the James Herriott books. Plenty of death there—the guy was a country vet. Death is, after all, a part of life.

Maybe it’s cruelty I can’t take. I don’t like it. I don’t want it in my head. I don’t want to think about it. I choose not to read about wanton cruelty to animals or cute little kids. Or even uncute little kids. I choose not to write about it, either.

I have rules. I use them in my writing, and I use them in my reading.

It’s okay to kill a kid or an animal if we haven’t met them first.

It’s okay to reference the death of a kid or an animal. Offstage.

It’s not okay to spend half the book with an animal and then have the heroine (or hero) find it stuck on a spike of the wrought iron fence that wraps the garden.

Sorry, these are my rules. If someone does that, I put down the book right there. I never read that author again. (There are exceptions. I haven’t read Harry Potter, but I’m guessing that could be the exception. Sometimes it does come down to context.)

But there are other good reasons, writerly reasons, for not killing a child or animal you know.

1) It’s a cliché. How many times have you read a book where the only way to show how depraved and evil someone is is to have them kill the heroine’s pet? It’s over-used and gratuitous, so I don’t think that makes for good, or even interesting, writing.

2) It’s expected. A woman has a cat. Someone is stalking her. She stupidly lets the cat out. The reader expects something to happen to the cat. I think that makes for false tension. The reader’s mind is focused on the cat, thinking, “God, I hope she doesn’t kill Chuckles.”

3) It takes the reader out of the story. You’re in the story, you’re there with the heroine, and then she lets the cat out. And suddenly, you pull back. If you’re me, you think: that bitch isn’t going to kill that poor cat, is she? (Bitch, being the author.)

4) Laziness. There are much better ways to show an evil character. Subtler, smarter, even more digusting ways. But it takes work, and it takes imagination. Killing the animal is lazy.

5) You will lose a good portion of your audience. It’s hard enough to get an audience in this biz, you want to lose half? Uh-uh. Not me.

6) You fall sway to a false directive (channeled directly to you from the many times you read The Yearling) telling you, “You have to do it.”

My question is simple. Why?

The way the mind works

One of the things I love about writing is the problem: how do you pry a story out of your subconscious? The whole endeavor is mysterious. Mysterious, but—as authors know after writing a few books— trustworthy.

I had a breakthrough today with my plot.

Let me back up. I wrote my way into TRICKSTER, and got to about 23,000 words. Then I wrote an outline, primarily because Penguin/New American Library wants outlines.

I see the outline as showbiz. It’s like you’re on the rubber chicken circuit, and a couple of people show up in a cafeteria in Idon’tcaretown, population 3. That’s the “venue”, and you want to shoot whoever booked you into this joint. But even if what you’re peddling is pure vaudeville crap, you get up there and dance your heart out.

I knew the outline wasn’t right a few days after I wrote it. The coincidences were too great. But at least I’d laid down a path.

I saw something in the paper the other day, something really neat. (No, I’m not telling you what it is.) And I thought: how can I use that in a book? I was thinking about a future book, not this one. But suddenly I saw a way to tell a much better story for TRICKSTER. A story with resonance, a story with the right kind of ending.

This is my third “breakthrough” for TRICKSTER. It’s getting as regular as a bus schedule.

The outline I wrote wasn’t wasted. It was the springboard for this magic—this alchemy—to happen. I had blazed a trail and it wasn’t a good one, but at least I was in the area.

Will I rework the outline now? Nope. As far as I’m concerned, the first outline is “close enough for book-writing work”. I plan to leave my shadow-plot alone to work itself out as I go along. A book in the first draft stage is kind of like a vampire—if you expose it to too much light, it can wither up and die.

But I did want to tell you about the magic that comes with writing a book. It comes at the oddest times, and you can only get it by being there; by just showing up. As far as I’m concerned, the best thing about writing is the journey.

The rest is just noise.

Horseracing and writing

You’ve all heard me say it. “Someday I’m going to write a book called, ‘Everything I’ve ever learned I learned from horseracing.’”

But what, exactly, does that mean?

The Imperious Lady Barf says: “Who cares?”

Lady Barf notwithstanding, I’ve always been a strong believer that the things you learn in one discipline are transferable to another, that the wisdom you gain over the years is always applicable to the next career, kind of a like a two-for-one coupon.

So I thought I would explore a few tenets of horseracing, and how these apply to writing novels.

Don’t change a horse’s running style. Most horses have a racing style that suits them; frontrunners run in front, stalkers follow the frontrunners, and come-from-behind horses drop way back and make a big run at the end. For me, because I’m not a particularly fast or nimble writer, I can only write one kind of book. I know where I’m most effective, and that is as a writer of police-procedural/thrillers. That’s my running style. My comfort zone.

Forget immediate gratification. In horseracing, you breed the horse, you work with him a bit as a yearling, you school him early as a two-year-old, you run him in a prep race or two, you aim for one of the bigger races in the late summer or fall, and you plan your way to the the classics. (We’re talking about the elite here. And why not? Don’t we all want to be elite?)

Writing a book takes time. For me it takes a year, although at some point I’ll have to shorten that up a bit. It takes time to produce a book, so you’re usually waiting. There is no immediate gratifcation in horseracing or writing. Which leads to:

Patience. This is not my strong suit, but I try to have it when I can. You’re going along on the backstretch, waiting for the pace to pick up, waiting to make that one run, or waiting for the hole to open in front of you. The publishing business is like that. You’re waiting, waiting, and waiting some more. With that first race, you don’t know if you’ll get there or not. You’re just hoping for a good showing; maybe second or third (which means a modest but good sell-through). You know there will be other races. There are always other races. Unless:

Injury happens. One morning you go to the barn, and the horse who just won the Arkansas Derby, the horse who is the favorite for the Kentucky Derby, has heat in his ankle. Game over. As simple as that. All those months, those years of training, over in that one moment you put your hand on the horse’s leg and feel heat. Your next thought is, “Surgery?” And your thought after that is, “Maybe we can point for the Travers.” (The Travers Stakes is the “Midsummer Derby”, a few months down the line.)

Anybody who saw Barbaro break down in the Preakness knows what it’s like to be going for a Triple Crown one minute and just hoping to stay alive the next.

In writing, injury can be a number of things: bad reviews, bad sales, being orphaned to another editor, or getting cut by your publisher. You’re just galloping along at a good pace, you think everything is great, and suddenly you’re on your ass in the grass blinking up at the sky and saying, “What happened?”

Like horseracing, writing is a tough game. There are no guarantees.

Conversely, great things can happen. Where there’s life, there’s hope. You’ve got a horse in your barn, nice bloodlines, didn’t do all that well as a two-year-old, but suddenly he’s coming right at just the right time. He’s maturing. He’s a different horse. He’s grown up.

Writers grow up, too. Sure, they’re in optional claiming races and they haven’t done much, but sometimes those horses get good, really good. And you want a horse to have a good foundation, a few races under his belt. A good publisher, like a good trainer, gives his horse time to develop, time to find his footing. Maybe the horse has been unlucky. Maybe the distance was too short for him and he will do better later. If he’s a turf horse, maybe it was soft going and he doesn’t like soft turf. So the trainer rethinks his strategy. Maybe he makes an equipment change—adds blinkers, gives him a different jockey, shortens him up or runs him longer. Maybe this is a horse who needs two turns—maybe he likes distance. Maybe the trainer puts him into hardcover with a good advertising budget.

Horseracing is big business. In both horseracing and publishing, there’s more of an emphasis on business these days than love of the sport. Sometimes they like to flash the cash just to make a big splash. Some of these mega-corporations would rather spend all their money at the yearling sales or at the two-year-old-in-training sales on horses that might never run a race. We’re talking millions, just the way publishers pay for celebrities who will probably never make back their advances.

But, this is where the paths of writers and racehorses diverge.

Writers live longer than horses do, generally speaking. We can always start over if we have to. We’re not handicapped by the name on our Jockey Club papers, either. We can use our experience to become better and better, so that we finally find our stride and start winning races.

There’s always room in the writing biz for a dark horse, no matter where he came from. There’s always another chance.

So here’s the question: what have you brought to the writing life from another discipline, and how does that affect what you do now?

And if you’re not a writer, have you ever had experience in one field that you applied to another one?

This game ain’t for guys in short pants

There’s a lot more to this writing stuff than meets the eye. I say this because I’m reading a book that I think is good on many levels, and has kept my interest – and then some – up until now.

The writer’s inexperience is showing, and he’s made a big mistake. It’s a mistake that should have been caught by his editor, and I’m surprised it wasn’t.

Mystery readers are savvy. They read lots of mysteries and because of that, they figure out things fast. The game is to beat them at it, and give them the surprise they crave.

Ideally, I want the reader to figure out who the real killer is (or the big surprise) about two pages before I tell them. That way, the reader feels vindicated. They think I’m smart, and more important, they think they’re smart. You want to orchestrate it so they come to the finish line just a tad bit before you do.

This author has come acropper in two ways:

Using multiple viewpoint, he sets up what the bad guy is doing. That would be fine, if he had control over the material.

But on the protagonist’s side—the character is an amateur sleuth—it completely falls down. By two-thirds of the way through the book, the reader starts to lose interest. Why? Because the protagonist should be smarter than that.

The protagonist has both pieces to the puzzle—big, eyecatching, fire-engine-red pieces. When they’re put together, the mystery is solved. Only problem is, the main character has these two pieces at his fingertips midway through the book, and then spends eons wondering about them. When it’s obvious. And not just because we know what the bad guy is doing.

The novel was flawed from the beginning. There isn’t enough plot for the book. Once the reader sees that the sleuth has both pieces, but keeps wondering, “What’s the connection? Why would this person do such a thing?” and doesn’t put two and two together, it’s all over. Especially when the other piece is sitting there blinking on and off like a neon sign, screaming “Me! Me! Me!” That’s the end of the tension.

When the reader loses respect for the protagonist—Game Over.

Writers - have you ever been in the middle of a book, story, or essay, and suddenly realized: “This isn’t going to work!”

Moving the furniture—one centimeter at a time

I’ve finally reached the place where I’ve written as far into the book as I can without real honest-to-God plotting.

I hate this part.

I love this part.

This is where I wonder if I’ve gone to the well too many times, if the boys down in the boiler room have punched in their timecards, taken their last paychecks, and split for parts unknown.

I wonder if this is the time it’s just not going to work.

I’ve written down twenty-three knotty questions that don’t appear to have any answers yet. Trying to figure out this complex plot is like moving heavy furniture across a thick rug. The rug keeps bunching up, and most times, the furniture won’t budge.

And yet this is (one) of the reasons I write. Surely, all these mental gymnastics will keep me forever safe from diseases like Alzheimers? Well, probably not. But I know I have a brain, because it aches. I go between careful plotting on the computer, to stream of consciousness-anything-goes-type ramblings, to writing longhand in my journal. I make a lot of lists. I come at the question from one angle, let that sit for a while, and come at it from another. Anything to move this giant armoire one bloody inch.

It’s awful. It’s wonderful. It is the reason for everything.

What is a Thriller?

From June 11, 2006

As I get ready to attend Thrillerfest, the question keeps popping up: what’s a thriller?

An article in Publishers Weekly tried to explain it to me, but, as usual, I have to come up with my own definition.

I think the closest I’ve come to the understanding of “thriller” versus “mystery” versus “suspense” is a book by Carolyn Wheat called How to Write Killer Fiction: the Funhouse of Mystery and the Rollercoaster of Suspense.

With apologies to Wheat if I make this too simplistic: people who read mysteries are more into control. They want their investigator or even their amateur sleuth to gather up the facts and figure things out along with the reader. Suspense readers, on the other hand, like being out of control. They like that roller-coaster ride. They like the idea that a normal person is somehow thrown into a frightening situation and has to use resourcefulness to get out of it.

So where does the thriller part come in? My own belief is that the thriller designation covers both mystery and suspense. In mystery, it is that melding of investigation and nail-biting heart-pounding suspense. This piling on, the tension from page to page until you reach critical mass, is what raises a book to a new level. It’s bigger, has more scope, more twists, puts the investigator in danger (sometimes). Mystery thrillers generally start to take off by the midpoint of the book.

In suspense, a thriller is, to coin a Colbert-like phrase, suspensier.

Where does that leave me?

It leaves me on the mystery side of thriller.

No secret which writers I admire the most: Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, and Jonathan Kellerman. All these guys are on the “control” side. Control that, at some point, starts to lose its grip as the thriller aspect kicks in.

Recently I experimented with the beginning of a suspense novel, throwing a character headfirst into a scary situation. It didn’t stink, but when I read over what I’d written, it didn’t have the tension or what I perceive as the “addiction” of the writing I have in my police procedurals. It didn’t have the pizzazz, even though I tried to force pizzazz into every freaking word.

That’s because I’m a builder and a piler-onner. Look at it like a nest. You put one straw or twig on another and you build and build and build. It’s a different kind of writing from, say, Harlan Coben’s thrillers.

When in doubt, I always go back to horseracing. One of these days I’m going to write a book called, “All I ever learned I learned from Horseracing”. Sport distills truth like nothing else.

In horseracing, there are front-runners, stalkers, and come-from-behind horses. Each horse has his own style, his own way to win. Jockeys know that it’s not a good idea to take the horse out of his style of running, even if his style of running doesn’t suit a particular race. If you have a horse like Sinister Minister, who just has to have the lead or he’ll use all his energy fighting you, you have to let him do what he wants to do, even if he’s running a mile and quarter and will likely burn himself out. No matter what, you don’t want to take that horse out of his game.

By attempting a suspense standalone, I took myself out of my game. The writing I had come to be so proud of suddenly was flat. I knew I was in way over my head.

I know what kind of writer I am. I know where I’m most effective. I’m a thriller writer who comes from the mystery side of things.

The perfect criminal name

Names are important to writers. Especially crime writers. You want to set the right tone, especially if you’re talking about a low-level criminal with an IQ lower than Barbaro’s post position in the Derby.

For the moron who perpetrated a mistaken home invasion (and killed Laura Cardinal’s parents) I came up with a name I thought would fit: Ricky Lee Worrell. This is the kind of guy who does all his food shopping (and robbing) at a convenience store.

Recently, in a syndicated “News of the Weird” column we get in the local paper, they named “Wayne” as the middle name most likely to be used by a criminal, followed by a host of real-life miscreant monickers. They had names like Ricky Wayne Dobbs, or Allen Wayne Hobbs, or Donny Wayne Cobb.

In my experience, the three best middle names for small-time criminals are:

Wayne
Ray
Lee

So the perfect criminal name is:

Wayne Ray Lee.

Well, it would be perfect, except it sounds kind of Asian, which throws the whole thing off.

See, the thing is, even when you have a formula, it sometimes doesn’t work out in real life.

Sparking the imagination, as far as it goes

I’ve never been to Connecticut. In fact, I’ve never really thought much about Connecticut, until I leafed through the “New York Times Magazine” (architectural issue) and saw a very small photo of a home in the real estate ads in the back: “New Canaan, CT…beautiful center-halled colonial.”

Sometimes you see something that brings you up short and fills you with so much yearning that it’s hard to breathe. This white house sits above its reflection on the still mirror of a lake, surrounded by lush, Maxfield Parrish trees—mounds of leaves, boughs of flickering sun and deep shadow. The house looks older, and has a row of smallish vertical windows that I’ve always associated with indoor/outdoor porches. Included in the description are the magical words: “dock access”. I picture summer cookouts, fireflies, water skiing, umbrella drinks (do Connecticutians do umbrella drinks?) looking good in a swimsuit, and earnest, lovestruck swains. I can almost smell the mosquito repellent.

I’m a westerner. I love the vaulting sky, the desert, the big mountains. The lore of the west is ingrained deeply in me, and affects everything I see, say, and do, just as my Irish heritage does. I am a composite of my past, my parents’ past, my roots in both family and place.

I wouldn’t know what to do with Connecticut.

Connecticutians have their own traditions, rituals, outlook, dialect, and experience. In fact, they probably don’t even call themselves Connecticutians. They’re different from me, and I find this daunting, even though I know the human condition spans across all kinds of people around the world.

Yet the picture sits here at my elbow, haunting me with its beauty. Who lives there? Whoever it is, he/she must be wealthy. How could anyone keep a house like that up, unless he’s rolling in it? Can’t I find some way to put it in a book? Move it to another place other than Connecticut? I’ve been to Wisconsin. I’ve been to New Zealand. New Zealand, I can do.

I know there are authors who can easily write about places they’ve never seen. I myself can imagine what it’s like to kill someone, and have written such scenes more than a few times. So why can’t I set something in Connecticut?

It’s hard to admit that I suffer from a decided lack of imagination. It must be a glitch in my personality. Some little voice telling me, “No, you can’t do that.”

For me, “the surly bonds of earth” aren’t just words in a poem.

My writing—-and my thinking—have always been deeply rooted in reality. No fair taking shortcuts. No fair making things up—in a profession where all you do is make things up!

I’ve decided to write something about this house and see where it takes me. Not exactly a profile in courage, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.

The Hero’s Journey

From June 2, 2006

Had to share this with you. According to Barbaro’s usual vet at Fair Hill, a couple of U.S. soldiers presented Barbaro with a folded American flag that had been flying in Iraq.

Here’s the link: Tim Woolley Horseracing.

Why has this horse caught the imagination of so many people? (Yes, there are plenty of people who don’t understand why animals are important, who just don’t get it. But I’m not talking about them.)

The other day at Murder She Writes, Allison Brennan talked about “the hero’s journey”, and how important that journey is to the underpinning of great fiction. I think Barbaro’s story embodies the hero’s journey. I think that is why his story is irresistable to so many. Here was a horse who really could have won the Triple Crown. Most horseman would agree with that assessment. He could win on turf and he could win on dirt. He was tractable and yet had phenomenal speed when he needed it. He seemed unassailable. Then the worst happened. It happened in front of the cameras, televised to the world, and revealed horseracing’s deepest shame: that yes, Virginia, horses are still killed on the racetrack. The people around Barbaro held up screens. Anyone who’s ever been on a racetrack knows what that means. The shocked crowd, so close to crowning a champion many thought had not been seen since the likes of Secretariat, suddenly believed he would be dead within moments, and carted away from view.

But he wasn’t euthanized. His injury was catastrophic, the odds almost impossible. But this champion had a champion’s heart and a champion’s mind. Other heroes grew in ranks around him; his owners, Gretchen and Roy Jackson, his trainer Michael Matz and his family, his rider, Peter Brette, his jockey, Edgar Prado, his groom, Eduardo Hernandez, his regular vet, Kathy Anderson, and another Matz groom, Rafael Orozco, who helped hold Barbaro on the track, and all the people at the track and on the ambulance who got him to New Bolton. And a new hero, Dr. Dean Richardson.

Nothing was spared in saving this horse. People waited and watched and prayed and hoped and cried.

The story is far from over, but we are more hopeful every day. Why? Because this horse is creating a miracle with every day he lives and thrives. By being the individual he is, by accepting his fate with grace and a good nature, by taking care of himself.

Animals do amazing things. Look at rescue dogs. They are not just things without souls, as some people believe. And man’s bond with other animals is stronger than some people can imagine.

We’re smack in the middle of the Hero’s Journey. Barbaro has gone to the gates of death and now he is coming back, and he is bringing back a gift, just as Joseph Campbell described in THE POWER OF MYTH.

He’s bringing back a gift, and it’s for us.

How do you do it?

There’s a thread over at Lee Goldberg’s A Writer’s Life , “Writing Blind”, about how writers write their books. Concensus: we’re all different.

Some people swear by detailed outlines. Some people run like hell from outlines altogether. Example of a writer who goes by a detailed outline: Jonathan Kellerman. Example of a writer who sets up a premise and lets the characters go: Stephen King.

Don’t read anything into this, though, because everyone writes in a slightly different way, and the end result is the end result.

I’ll tell you how I go about it, although every book is different.

I come up with a premise, a locale, some characters, the likely killer, and a possible climax.

I try to deepen these things, usually by writing lists, working it out in my journal, talking to myself. But I am leery of letting the story “set” too much early on. I want the characters to have some say in the matter. That’s my instinct.

Then I start writing. I’ll map out several scenes, and try to follow that. I usually end up deviating in small ways and large. I keep looking at what I have as the pages build up behind me, and see what kind of sequences I’ve come up with.

A sequence is like this: man goes into a store, the store is being robbed, the man is winged but because he shoots back and kills the robber, the man is arrested, someone in the store insists he’s the robber, and now he’s in big trouble.

One thing leads to another, until the natural end of the sequence—which leads to the next sequence.

I’m always prepared for things to fall apart about a quarter of the way through (self-fulfilling prophecy?) and I rethink the way I ramp up to that section.

At the back of my mind, more twists and turns are coming. Usually another big part of the plot elbows its way into the book.

I try to keep writing, moving forward.

Pretty soon I’m supposed to come up with detailed outline. For the publisher. I avoid that until I have to.

I lie in my outline. Not big lies, but I just have to come up with something, and if I’m not sure, I say stuff I might not do. But a funny thing happens as I work on the outline, which becomes more and more anal-retentive. It finally starts to gel.

Then I start writing faster. When it’s really going right toward the end of the book, I forget completely about the ending I’ve mapped out and just follow my characters around each corner, finding out what is going to happen as I go along.

Although usually it’s pretty close to the outline.

After the first draft, I know I’ve dropped a lot of stitches, left undeveloped characters and even left whole scenes unwritten. Time to go back in and pull it together. Sometimes a new character shows up and changes the whole complexion of the story. Themes assert themselves.

Somehow it all comes together.

It changes every time. I want things to be random, and yet I want control of the material. This is as close as I can come.

Branding, Part Two: Presenting a United Front

If you want to see an extreme example of a strong brand, watch the open to Steve Colbert’s The Colbert Report (Comedy Channel).

I’m not talking politics here; I’m talking execution.

Steve Colbert hijacked Fox pundit and cult hero Bill O’Reilly’s persona, made it even more extreme (if that’s possible), and forged a brand so strong that his cult status has eclipsed O’Reilly’s.

With his Republican good looks, Colbert could be an up-and-coming mouthpiece for the religious right. He has perfected several mannerisms that serve him well: whipping off his glasses and staring hard into the camera; running around the set cult-hero style.

The open is a montage of Extreme Patriotism: an animated screaming eagle; pounding, repetitious music; Colbert waving the American flag with fanatic glee; the patented removal of his glasses. And the most chilling shot: he stands, arms folded against his dark conservative suit, smugly evil as he absorbs the accolades of an adoring public—a buttoned-down David Koresh.

It is perfect.

Nothing is wasted. Everything is unified, everything projects the brand.

Not only is the open strong, but so is the rest of the show. Colbert never once loses focus on his brand. Each segment reinforces his arrogance: his “Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger”, the way he treats his guests, and his word for the day. (He even invented a word that will soon find its way into the dictionary: “truthiness”.)

I may not be able to come up with a strong brand for myself, but boy, I know it when I see it. And from Colbert, I’ve learned this: For a strong brand, you need to present a united front. If you’re blogging about down-home recipes and talking homilies one day and writing dirty sex talk the next, you’re going to fragment your brand.

As a former opera singer, I learned about overtones. When you are on key, there are overtones all the way up the scale, reinforcing the note you are singing. I believe this is the most important thing in branding; presenting that unified front.

Is branding persona? I think to a large degree, it is. As an author, you’re selling two things: your books, and yourself. Stephen King never needed any help—his books were so strong from the git-go—but his gangly, creepy looks did not hurt. From the very beginning, his publicity photos enhanced that image. Dean Koontz really broke out with the book WATCHERS; in pretty much every recent publicity photo you see him with his golden retriever, because goldens and Koontz are symbiotic. (And, too, because he loves his golden.)

Whenever you try something new on your blog or develop promotional materials, ask yourself this: does it fit with what I’ve been doing so far?

Say what you like about Paris Hilton, she’s got a brand. And she doesn’t mess it up by visiting orphans in Africa.

What is “Brand”? Part One

Jennifer Apodaca at Murder She Writes is talking about the confusing world of branding, and how branding defines the writer.

When you say you’re branding yourself as an author, or a blogger, or even a real estate agent, what do you mean? What are the elements that go into brand? For instance, the brand for the Royal Canadian Police could be: “They always get their man”.

Or the brand for the meat industry could be: “Beef: it’s what’s for dinner”.

Is that all brand is, though? A slogan? I think brand is a hybrid between the name we give ourselves, and the way others see us. When they meet, that’s brand! (I think.)

Okay, I’ll be honest. I have no idea what my brand is. I keep going around and around the barn, but never seem to be able to get inside.

So I thought I’d put up some names up and see what you think of—the first thing—when you see them. These are a lot of names, words, disciplines, and events. I’m just asking you to pick out anywhere from one of them to a few that give you a strong reaction, and write a word or phrase or even paragraph that you think defines them. The first thing that comes to mind.

I’ll start:

Babe Ruth: Chubby, porcine-faced but phenomenal baseball player and home-run hitter who dominated the game in the golden, olden days.

Janet Evanovich
Stephen King
Simon Cowell
Donald Trump
Cal Ripken
Nora Roberts
Michael Connelly
Patricia Cornwell
Don Imus
America’s Cup
Love Canal
Ariana Huffington
Rush Limbaugh
Paris Hilton
TomKat
Oprah
The Super Bowl
James Patterson
Nancy Drew
The Rolling Stones
The Stanley Cup
Mary Higgins Clark
Michael Jackson
Randy Wayne White
Carl Hiaasen
Fenway Park
Jackie Collins
Earnest Hemmingway
Howard Stern
NASCAR
The Kentucky Derby
Saddam Hussein
Terry Bradshaw
Tami Hoag
Jennifer Crusie
Dan Brown
Secretariat
JFK
The Dixie Chicks

These is my words

THESE IS MY WORDS is the title of a wonderful fictionalized account of a young woman’s life in 1880s Arizona by Nancy Turner.

It’s also what I said to myself when an editor changed the words in my book. As in: “But these is my words, dammit!”

I was over at Murder She Writes and we were talking about what makes a good editor. Which brought up a bad memory of when I had to deal with a truly piss-poor editor. So piss-poor, I thought this person was an ambitious copy editor rewriting my words for me. (Disclaimer: Most copy editors wouldn’t do that.) Thing was, I couldn’t imagine a regular editor doing such a thing, so I blamed the nameless, faceless copy editor. Not my finest hour.

What I didn’t know: I’d been orphaned; given to another editor mid-book. Nobody bothered to tell me.

I know how to write words. I know how to write paragraphs, and I know how to write a whole book. Put enough words together, and you have a voice. As Karin at Murder She Writes wondered, was this editor messing with my voice?

Yup.

This was a long time ago. It has nothing to do with the publishing house I am with now. It was, however, a legitimate publishing house, which surprises me. Rewriting someone’s words is not an editor’s job. Or am I naïve?

A good editor says, “I don’t think this scene is necessary”, or “Could you bring out this character thread a little more?”, or “I have a problem with this section of the book”. The good editor expects me to go away and fix it, but she wants me to do it my own way.

I had never met the other kind.

Now there’s a book out there with somebody else’s words masquerading as mine, and I wish I had withdrawn it. But, craven as authors often are, I’d already spent the advance.

I got out of there fast, though.

Has anybody else encountered this problem? I’ve had this done on a smaller scale when I wrote magazine articles, but usually these changes were minimal, due to time and space constraints, and I understood that (kind of). But we’re talking about a whole book here.

Shameless promotion…for someone else

Sometime’s a book’s so good I have to tell people about it. I’ve long been meaning to read NYT Bestselling author P.J. Parrish, but I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t gotten around to it until now. I just read the most recent book in the series, AN UNQUIET GRAVE. I loved every minute of it. If you’ve read my screed on revisions, you know that a good story requires a main character who acts as the reader’s touchstone. The character is someone you’re willing to follow anywhere. Louis Kincaid, a former cop and now a P.I. based in Florida, is that kind of character. Having been a cop, he’s naturally wary of peoples’ motives, but P.J. Parrish threads the needle. Kincaid’s got a wonderful soul.

Teaser: an isolated insane asylum from early in the last century is about to go under the bulldozers—as creepy a place as you could imagine.

I loved the strange twists and turns in this darkly atmospheric novel; I didn’t know from page to page where it would lead. I was sad when I got to the last page because I didn’t want to leave.

You want that in a writer.

Of carpet cleaning and plagiarism

If you have cats and carpets, you need three things: paper towels, a carpet cleaning foam spray, and a damp sponge. Armed with these tools of the trade, I can pick up any untoward glottal deposits by the Imperious Lady Barf easily and con brio.

Which brings me around to the subject of the day: plagiarism.

Fellow author Sarah Strohmeyer wrote a letter to The New York Times today, which brought up some unsettling questions about Kaavya Viswanathan’s well-honed practice of borrowing from other authors and plagiarism in general. (To continue the Kentucky Derby theme, Sarah Strohmeyer is a stablemate of mine at NAL, although she’s in graded stakes company while I’m in optional claiming.)

As authors do, Sarah was reading another author’s book. She’d written a scene she was happy with—then came across a remarkably similar scene in the other author’s book. She deleted her own scene, since there were striking similarities. Now she wonders if there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of books out there with similar scenes. Books she can never hope to find or read.

This is the problem with writing fiction. As Sarah says, women’s fiction is universal. I would go on to add that westerns, mysteries, thrillers, etc. are universal.

Cat barf is universal, too. I’ll bet you there are thousands of people out there who clean up cat barf the same way I do. Now what if I wrote a scene in my book about Laura cleaning up cat barf?

“Laura glanced at the carpet: cat barf, again! She went to the cupboard and got out the carpet foam spray cleaner, then reached under the sink for an old sponge she kept for precisely this purpose. She pulled off a couple of sheets of paper towels and knelt down on the carpet and removed the hairball and put it in the garbage. She sprayed the carpet and wiped it with the damp sponge. ‘There,” she thought to herself. ‘No more cat barf.’”

But what if another author, somewhere, in a book I haven’t read (and judging from the millions of books out there, I probably won’t read) has already written and published this?

“Jan looked at the carpet and thought: cat barf again. She walked to the kitchen, pulled off a couple of sheets from the roll of paper towels, took the carpet foam cleaning spray from the cupboard, and an old sponge she kept under the sink for exactly this kind of situation. She removed the hairball and threw it in the garbage, then sprayed the carpet and wiped it with the damp sponge. ‘Aha!’ she said. ‘The cat barf’s gone!’”

Would my face suddenly appear on “The Smoking Gun” website?

Experiences are universal. Most people have waited in line at the MVD, or eaten at a fast food place, or mowed the lawn, or made love. There are only so many words in the English language to describe these actions. And romance writers alone write hundreds of sex scenes a year. Mystery writers write hundreds of crime scenes a year. Western writers write hundreds of shoot-outs a year. As Sarah Strohmeyer points out, how is she going to read thousands of books just to make sure she isn’t unconsciously lifting something?

Writers read. We can’t write in a vacuum. I’ve read at least a thousand books in my lifetime. Some of that stuff inserts itself into my subconscious. There is no way I haven’t written something similar to someone before me—many, many, many times. There are only so many plots, and there are only so many words to go with those plots.

When I went to “The Crimson Tide” site and read the first few paragraphs that Kaavya Viswanathan “lifted”, I thought: that could happen to anyone. I could have done the same thing. But as I read more and more of these examples, the pattern became clear. This wasn’t coincidence.

So I’m opening it up to you. Have you ever come across a book where the premise was similar to your own, and you got that uncomfortable feeling? Or a scene you wrote, in retrospect, was similar to one you saw in a book?