The Scariest Book I Ever Read Wasn't A Mystery

  I have always been an insatiable reader, beginning as a very young child when I would devour golden books by the dozens, those thin flat volumes with golden binding. Soon, I graduated to Nancy Drew, becoming a life-long mystery lover. The scarier, the better, and not necessarily gory. I learned very early that what goes on inside the mind can be more frightening than external forces. Witches and vampires can be banished; it’s those internal demons that will level you. I balance my fixation with psychological thrillers with a steady stream of non-fiction, just so I don’t become as weird as some of the characters to whom I am so drawn.            So, when I ordered “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed, carrying Oprah’s badge of approval stuck to the cover, a book about a young woman’s hike across the Pacific Crest Trail, I thought I was just going for another walk in the woods, like I had with Bill Bryson. Strayed was racked with paralyzing grief after the death of her mother, which led her first onto a trail of self-destruction before her rather random, ill-considered and impulsive foray into the wild.            Before long, I knew something was very wrong. On vacation, I read a book a day. “Wild,” which is beautifully written, was going at a pace of a few pages a day. Unlike with Bryson’s “Walk in the Woods,” his recount of hiking the Appalachian Trail, which I read in two days (only because I wanted to savor it) on a hammock while camping at the Audubon Sanctuary in Wellfleet, I had a growing aversion to the book.            I didn’t get it. Sure, it was painful to read about Strayed’s grief for a mother who, while less than perfect, was adoring and courageous in her own right. But I practice family law and am immersed in human suffering every day. As Cheryl encountered critters and characters, I felt my heart race, my palms sweat and heard my own mother’s words.            “You can’t do that. You might be…” Fill in the blank with your own brand of fear. Stabbed, robbed, murdered, hit by a car. The consequence to whatever action you were considering taking was always disproportionate and negated any joy the challenge might offer. Why would a bike ride, trying out for a play or considering an urban hospital school of nursing necessarily lead to tragedy?            “If you go to Boston City Hospital for your nurse’s training, I won’t be able to sleep for three years. You’ll be murdered, raped, or at the very least, mugged for sure,” my mother had said, when I decided that being a nurse in an urban environment in the 70’s was a place I might make a difference. I ended up in a nursing school in the hospital where I had been born, which was more like a country-club, and while in Boston, seemed oblivious to the social civil war raging outside its doors.            As I read on at a pace slower than grass grows, my mother’s words became my thoughts. “Jesus, Cheryl, don’t be stupid. Do not get into a pick-up truck with that guy, no matter how much licorice he has.” “Are you kidding me? You’ve just seen not one, but three bloody rattlesnakes, that actually rattled at you, and you are not going to be smart enough to call it quits?” “Do not tell me you are going to drink the water from that mud puddle. Better to die of dehydration. Think of all the germs, dear.” “What, you’re going to eat berries right off a bush? How do you know what they are when they aren’t even labeled? They could be poisonous, you know.”            My writing group members didn’t help. One by one, they’d read the book, each proclaiming how much they enjoyed it. I was one year into the book and at page 103. Still, a little stubborn like the author, I refused to quit the flipping book.            I marveled at her, as she set up her tent nightly. When I go camping my husband erects the tent and a screen room so I can arrive later with flowers, candles and a tablecloth to decorate. Strayed goes two weeks without a shower, peeing in the woods. I get nervous about getting the hot and cold water straight at a hotel. Strayed worries a bit about snow and ice and sliding off a mountainside. I am terrified of driving in even the slightest snowfall, grateful that my gloves absorb the sweat from palms so my hands don’t slide off the steering wheel and cause the accident three flakes of snow would never cause. “You’re not going out and drive in this weather, are you?”            I realized I am terrified to walk alone in the woods, yet since my forties I have wanted to do just that. I flirted with Outward Bound, but found more excuses than reasons to ignore my fears. I loved walking in the woods with my husband, but rejected I could do it without him. Was I more afraid of the woods I was sure was populated with the very murderers I love reading about, or was I really just afraid to be alone. Alone with me. To face what Strayed’s mother had confronted when she learned she was dying. “I never got to be in the driver’s seat of my own life… I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I’ve always been someone’s daughter or mother or wife.”            Once Strayed was on the home stretch, I began to relax. I knew she made it because the woman is on Facebook and blogs. She seemed to be acquiring some wisdom on her journey, yet I was worried about her not having a job or a place to live, or even know where she would live, at the end of the trail. “What? You don’t have a place to live after you went through all that?”            When I had fewer pages left to read than I had read, I was able to pick up my pace. I took “Wild” with me wherever I went, enjoying the sight of the now familiar cover photo of Cheryl’s battered boots with the endearing red laces, giddy with her that our journey together was nearly done. I relaxed as she bathed in a stream, walked beneath a canopy of endless trees. When she described the moment when she realized she was solitary, but not alone, one with nature, without any interfering, intervening events or forces, I finally got it.            It is not the howl of the coyotes, the beady eyes in the dark, the man with the fish knife we fear. It is fear we will never rediscover who we are, never return to the instant when we drew our first breath, that single second when we became alive before we were subjected to the expectations and demands of others. Before we had to pass the Apgar, demonstrate a suckling response, evacuate the Meconium stool from our prehistoric existence. We are forever seeking a return to that moment when we were truly authentic, pure and uninfluenced, devoid of fear or any other human emotion. We just were. Maybe the only other time we reach that moment is when we succumb to death. Maybe we should fear death less. Or maybe we should all walk alone in the woods.            It took Cheryl Strayed eighty days to hike the Pacific Crest Trail and conquer her fear. It took me fourteen months to read her book and make a dent in mine.

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Taglines.

 I need a tagline. Something appropriate for, let’s say, a bookmark. Put differently, I have to distill my entire book, the product of hours, days, months of work, into a few words. Not necessarily a sentence. A few words that suggest a sentence. If you are a marketing professional you might jump on this opportunity. Headlines! Titles! Taglines! Short, snappy and full of punch. This is the reason I am not in marketing. It is also the reason I don’t write short stories. They are, to be clear, too short. Actually, this exercise is one long flashback to writing the summary section of my query letter. (Deep breath, that one worked, surely I can conquer this hurdle.) Hmmm. Maybe I should look at that letter again and Wordle it? I’ve read that a tagline is mission, promise and brand. Give me 5,000 words and I can bring it home for you. Actually, right now, I’d settle for 300 words, since I’m staring 3-7 in the face. In a perfect world I would have worked my way through the problem to end this post with my tagline. Instead, I will end with the decision to go back to writing my next book. Never thought I’d say that the need to write a few thousand words was comforting.    

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What's in a name?

 It’s time. Madame XYZ and Monsieur ABC need names. Real names. My main characters are named the moment they appear on the page – after all, their name says something specific about them, not least importantly what region of Switzerland (or the world) they are from. A name can hint at age, social or economic situation. A first name might be traditional or modern; ‘plain Jane’ or something to make half the population cringe. That’s not to say I haven’t changed a major character’s name at close of writing. I’m not alone in this, legend has it that Margaret Mitchell used Pansy O’Hara until it was time to publish ‘Gone With The Wind’. Would Pansy have made the splash that Scarlett did? In my case, Agnes Lüthi started life as Micheline. Is she better as Agnes? Yes, I think so. Still, it was a big change. But today is minor character naming day. The groundskeeper and tow-headed 10-year-old boy get to keep their parts and therefore they get a name. I am sure I will spend more time on this than it deserves, on the other hand, a name says it all…..

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The Dreaded Word Count

  Does it help to count? The first 1,000 words of a new book are the hardest (and the most thrilling when they are DONE!). No more blank white page. You know where the story starts (in this draft at least) and you’re off and running. The next ten thousand slip by, then you re-group. Move through with edits and the beginning is richer, more detailed (in my case, real names for minor characters in lieu of Monsieur ABC and Madame XYZ). Thousands more words. Yippee!  On the other hand, there are days when you edit and see the words disappear. 32,032 is now 27,501. Yikes. I frantically do the math: How did I cut 16%? Why? A blood-letting. Now I question my judgement: maybe I didn’t need to trim that scene, cut that chapter, edit that description. There have been darker days:  When the manuscript was complete and in the hands of the publisher and I knew deep down in my heart that I needed to cut several characters and trim trim trim (okay, surgically remove) an entire theme or two. It felt dangerous. What if I couldn’t fit it all back together again? This was major surgery, none of your outpatient stuff. In the end I learned a good lesson…. Just do it. Have a plan—this isn’t willy-nilly cutting to see what happens—and keep track of what is cut and moved, and what is now missing and will have to be redistributed to other characters and descriptions. But do it. After I cut and redistributed and in-filled I ended up with a few thousand more words. By then the word count didn’t matter, but it illustrated that if I aimed for the best book the rest would follow. I’m trying to keep this in mind….. and not care that today’s work feels like driving in reverse. 

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What to do with your book trailer

So, you have a book trailer to promote your latest mystery or thriller. What do you do with it? I ran into this problem today when my cousin, a multimedia producer, and I finished the book trailer for The Widower’s Wife. (See Trailer Below) Aside from posting on the obvious places–your web site and your Amazon author page–where else can this kind of media live? I make a list of book video bloggers on YouTube and send them the link to the trailer in hopes of interesting them in reviewing the book. I also post on bookreels.com, a book trailer site, and submit to book bloggers who are considering a review.  Sometimes, a book blogger will post the trailer along with the review or leave it up on the site as a teaser to his or her commentary.  I also put it on the video sharing sites like Vine and send it out to my email list.  Where do you put your trailer?   

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Breaking The Rules

 In grade school, my English teachers insisted upon three things: two spaces after a period, all sentences must have a subject, verb and object, NEVER start a sentence with “but.” These were laws. Breaking them meant deductions on your paper, often stamped atop the document in red with an accusing circle highlighting the offending sentence.  As a thriller writer I can say with gusto that all “laws were meant to be broken.” Authors aim to have a conversation with readers through their point-of-view characters. When I’m in a character’s head, I endeavor to write the way they would think–with a bit more editing. Few people think in proper sentences. Declarative statements and words are thrown into the mix of subject-verb-object complete thoughts. Actual dialogue trails off… Here’s a sentence from Ulysses: “God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you’re not a gentleman.”  “A ponderous saxon” is all a subject. But, it’s a good one.
And, that prior sentence started with “but.” Take that fourth grade. 

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What scares you?

  So much of writing is scary. Should you write down those thoughts? Will your family think you’re crazy?Should you send your work out to an agent? What if she thinks you’re crazy?Will anyone buy your book? What if all the reviews are one stars? So much of publishing makes me nervous, but I vowed to myself, when I turned 50, that I would try to say yes to everything people asked me to do, which is how I came to take part in a reading at the Parkside Lounge last Thursday night. This was an event fraught with anxiety. First of all, it was in the East Village in NYC.  Once I get south of 14th Street and the numbers go away, I just have to accept that fact that I’m going to spend an hour lost.  I carefully mapped out subway directions. Dragged my sister-in-law and a friend into a subway, which wound up being un-airconditioned. It was 100 degrees. My make-up dripped onto my lap.  Then there was the place itself, which was, exactly as I feared, much cooler than I am. (I’m not speaking of temperature here, but of a state of mind.) The walls were red (I think). There was a pool table in the bar. The emcee was a very cute young man who reminded me of Lin-Manuel Miranda. And there was I to read about the Sunday School teacher who is the protagonist of my cozy mystery. But not yet, because first there were three hours of other people reading. (I was the headliner, either because I’m that good, or because I harangued the most people into going.) First up was a man writing about his first time using a condom. Then came various other intense and very moving pieces. Then came a woman describing an intimate relationship with an ice cream cone, and then came me, talking about Maggie Dove. I went up to the stage and the light shone right into my eyes. I’m a teacher and used to relying on visual cues. When people start looking down at their cell phones, I know it’s time to move along. So it was weird to be in a cocoon of light.  Anyway, I started to read the first chapter of Maggie Dove. Suddenly everyone got quiet. You know that feeling when people are really listening to you? It’s a nice feeling. When I was done, everyone applauded. Sincerely, I felt. Afterwards I got an e-mail from someone who had been there who had been one of my students several years ago. She was so excited to hear about my book, had written one herself. Wanted to reconnect. The next day I got this group photograph, and as I looked at it, I thought how much fun the whole thing had been. Writing is about saying yes.   But now I think I’d like to stay curled up in my office for a bit. At least until Thursday, when I have a reading at Bryant Park. How about you? Have you ever done anything scary? 

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Writing in Stolen Moments

Sunday morning. The sky outside my car window is straight out of a Monet painting. Waves of cicada songs swell from the wooded lawn around the parking lot, overwhelming the electric guitar crunch wafting from the open windows in the building behind me. My six-year-old daughter is somewhere inside, jamming on the bubblegum pink Fender that we bought her when she decided Taylor Swift was more of an idol than her mother. I am sitting in the passenger seat with an open laptop. These are the stolen moments in which I write blog posts. Novels demand more extended periods of silence. When working on a book, I start writing at nine a.m., as soon as I return from dropping my kids off at their respective schools and walking the dog. When writing, everything else waits. The cooking. The laundry. The constant cleaning. A half-hour mid-day break is for walking the dog and moving my cramped legs. I swallow a green juice while circling the block or shove a cereal bar in my mouth. I’d be a good customer for soylent. Eating takes too much time.After I return to my manuscript, I work until 3 o’clock sharp. Unless, of course, I am in the midst of penning a particularly good or difficult sentence which takes me until five after the hour, resulting in a mad dash to the car and a rash of apologies to a nursery school teacher for lateness, yet again.  Once my kids get home, I am a full time mom: ferrying them to activities and play dates, sitting beside them at the kitchen table explaining the directions in workbooks or conducting science experiments or building snap circuits. I am cooking—constantly. Cleaning—constantly. At eight p.m., they go to sleep and I spend time with my husband while, likely, folding laundry. Around ten thirty, he sleeps. I edit. Sometimes, I miss being a journalist. Then, I was in an office by eight a.m. and returned home at seven. No one wondered what I did all day. No one questioned the worth of my efforts since, after all, I was earning a salary that put a precise value on an hour of my time. I never had to justify why, despite being “home,”  I really couldn’t make the latest school fundraiser. But, I would always miss writing more. Telling stories is part of who I am. So, though it’s a beautiful Sunday morning, I’m content to sit in the passenger seat of a hot car, banging away on a laptop.   

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Atmosphere and Authenticity

Setting the scene… in my case Switzerland. How much is too much; how much is not enough? I have several friends who don’t ever finish their great American novel, often because they keeping digging in for more detail, more perfection, just more! (Even more editing, which often means ‘less,’ then they need ‘more’ again. Argh!) There is no magic formula to finding the balance between setting the scene and overburdening with detail, a writing reality that I am contemplating today as I develop several minor characters. (Confession here….. they develop in situ, meaning the draft is well underway but the characters are shifting as the plot develops). Because Switzerland draws residents and visitors from around the world each of these characters very deliberately comes from a different country and a different culture.I have the good fortune to be in India for the moment and am concentrating on a character from that country. I’ve visited India many times and have a sense of ‘my man’ but each time I speak with someone a little detail is added, or a detail is questioned. It is easy to slip down the rabbit hole and have more backstory than is necessary and I feel myself asking: is this enough?  In the end, the magic formula is likely all the details that we as writers think of before mentally paring to just enough for the reader to visualize. This allows the reader room to insert their own experiences and dreams. That said….. maybe I should go speak again with my hosts, learn a little more, and add a few more details to ‘my man’!  Follow me at www.traceedehahn.com  

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Continuing a series after the big reveal. Case Study: Mr. Robot

Mr. Robot is my favorite television show. About mid-way through the first season, writer Sam Esmail reveals–SPOILER ALERT–that the main character, Elliot, suffers from a form of schizophrenia. The protagonist, Elliot, and the antagonist, Mr. Robot, are the same person!  Some critics argued that the show would have difficulty after such a big reveal. How could Esmail ever again surprise the audience post pulling the Palahniuk card? Won’t the viewer get bored watching Elliot battle clearly defined demons?  Season two started this week and I think Esmail has answered those questions with a resounding No. As long as the characters are interesting and have new challenges that allow them to evolve, it’s easy to watch and wait for the next big reveal.  The key is the confidence the audience has in the writer to take us to new places. As Esmail wrote, “A con doesn’t work without the confidence.” And what’s a series except a long con–a story that continues to confound our expectations with each new plot twist?  

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