Mystery women

On March 1, I’ll be speaking at  a feminist mystery writing panel at the Book Culture bookstore in NYC, with several of my fellow Miss Demeanors. Whenever I think about feminism, I think about my mother, who was a very reluctant feminist. My mother got married in 1955 and she embraced the whole suburban dream. She used to joke that she was one of the few people in the world who actually wanted to be a housewife. We lived near Levittown, Long Island, which was the epicenter of suburbia at that time.  My father worked as a display animator, which meant that he made mannequins move. You might have seen his work at the It’s a Small World ride at Disney World. Everything was going to plan, except that, when he turned 30, my father came down with a form of Multiple Sclerosis so virulent that within a few years he couldn’t move.  My mother found herself in desperate need of a job. We were blessed to have a business in the family and she got work there, but the experience taught her, and me, that no matter what your plans, a woman has got to be able to rely on herself. When writing my Maggie Dove mysteries, I was drawn to yet another woman whose life did not go to plan. Maggie Dove was a woman content with her life as a mother and wife. She thought she had everything all figured out, but then her life was jolted by tragedy and she had to build everything up all over again. She solved a mystery, started up a detective agency, made new friends. Took risks. If I had my life to do over, I would take many more risks than I have done, and yet I’m glad that now, as I hit my sixth decade, I’m not yet too old to take challenges. This January I went on the Women’s March, which was not at all the sort of thing I would have done in years past, but as I looked around at all the strong women around me, I thought how proud I was of all of us for speaking up, for taking a stand. My mother would have been right at the front of the line. Info about the panel:https://www.bookculture.com/event/112th-kelly-oliver-susan-breen-tracee-de-hahn-carrie-smith-cate-holahan

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Pub Day Jitters

In honor of Tracee de Hahn’s publication day this week for Swiss Vendetta, the MissDemeanors all weighed in on the flurry of feelings they experienced on their first “Pub Day.” (Excuse the snow metaphors. The New York Area, where I live, was just buried beneath a foot of the stuff). For me, I remember a vague feeling of nausea. I was concerned that my first novel, Dark Turns, would be ruthlessly criticized. I was emotional and easily aggravated all day. I am happy to say that those feelings lessened for my second novel, The Widower’s Wife, and I am hoping that I may even approach happiness on the launch day for my third, Lies She Told, next September.  Here’s how the rest of the crew felt:  Susan Breen: I had two book launch days in 2016. On June 14, my first Maggie Dove book was published and I was an absolute wreck because it’s set in a village very much like my own and I worried everyone would hate it. (They didn’t.) On November 8, (Election Day), my second Maggie Dove mystery was published and I was a wreck because I was so worried about the election. So I guess there’s a theme there. C. Michele Dorsey: When No Virgin Island was published, there was a great party held at the James Library in Norwell, Massachusetts, which was attended by more than 100 people, including friends, relatives, clients, fellow-writers, and former classmates. The very generous, effervescent, and talented Hank Phillippi Ryan interviewed me with her usual charm and wit. Later, she wrote, “Now that was a launch party.” As I looked out at the crowd of people who had so kindly supported me, I thought, this is like being at your own wake. The final honor came when relatives of a murder victim in St. John whom I had mentioned in the acknowledgements of No Virgin Island came to honor me and to buy my books. That moment can never be duplicated. Alexia Gordon: I felt nauseated on book launch day. I thought everyone would hate me and no one would buy my book. (No, I’m not at all insecure. ) I distracted myself by hopping on a plane to New Orleans to listen to Walter Moseley’s awesome speech at the Sisters in Crime SinC into Diverse Writing Pre-Bouchercon Workshop. The next day I hopped on a plane to Ireland. So, I guess you could say I dealt with my book launch by high-tailing it to a different continent. Tracee de Hahn: Three days into my launch I have to say that book launch and for me tour is tremendous fun! Interacting with real readers! In real stores! My first two visits were to Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington and in Cincinnati and the stores, the people who work there, and the great job they do promoting books each and every day made for a fantastic experience. Can’t wait to visit the other stores. Robin Stuart: My non-fiction book launch was anticlimactic. On the one hand, I achieved an arbitrary goal I’d set for myself to be traditionally published in my field. And it’s cool to think that university students read my words to learn about digital forensics. But my stretch goal, as we call it in dayjob-land, has been to fill a shelf (or several) with a series of novels bearing my name on their spines. I’ve been planning my debut launch for a couple of years now, pulling together a series of promotional events with a little (okay, a lot) of help from my friends. That’s one I can’t wait to see come to life. In the meantime, I have been and continue to hone the craft. It all begins and ends with spinning a good yarn, after all.

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How Much Rejection Is Too Much

We’ve all heard the stories of writers who had their debut novels rejected dozens of times before they ultimately became best sellers. Or, more often these days, novels that were rejected only to achieve rousing success after being self-published. I love these stories! But a downside to them is that they often urge writers–and have encouraged me–to keep spending money shopping work that should be put in a drawer.  Every writer has trunk junk, those novels that served as course work in our own, free, MFA programs. If you have a book, you know what I’m talking about. That coming-of-age book filled with exposition or stilted dialogue. The thriller where, maybe, there was a giant backstory dump for the first five chapters before the action started. The mystery where we couldn’t get the plot right or kept forcing characters into situations that didn’t grow naturally from their personality profiles and back stories. The “great story” that had, basically, no real genre and didn’t qualify as literary.  Sometimes, trunk junk is resurrected. But, more often than not, it stays in a drawer, an embarrassment to the writer who has since learned better. In the worst cases, it never goes into the trunk and the writer keeps laboring to get it published even though his or her time would be better spent moving on to the next, publishable, story.  So, how many rejection letters should a writer stomach before moving on? After querying and being rejected by every agent in that year’s annual agent guide for my first novel before moving on to my next novel, which got an agent, I have some thoughts. Number one is forget cold calls. Go to a couple great pitch conferences, get critiqued, and then try to attract the attention of an agent who has seen your face. If, after doing this a few times, you still don’t have any takers, put the novel in a drawer and move on to the next one. The next one might sell. And, if the first is really that great, you can publish it when you’re better known with a proven track record of sales.  I’ll add an asterisk to this advice. If you, marketing maven, have the power to personally publicize your self-published work thanks to, say, a large blog following or hook-up with local radio stations or personal level of celebrity, then go for it. You might be the success story that inspires us all to keep writing in the face of rejection. 

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Best Punishment Ever?

Thriller writers are necessarily consumed with crime and punishment. Who gets off? Who gets caught? Is the killer murdered or sent to prison? Does he or she go free? Our novels are our worlds where we can deliver justice as we see fit, or as we believe it is doled out in real life.  Perhaps this obsession with punishment is one of the reasons that I was drawn to this NPR story: Teens Who Vandalized Historic Schoolhouse With Swastikas Sentenced To Reading. It has been shown that reading fiction improves the ability to empathize, perhaps because it encourages individuals to get into the mind of a character whose circumstances are undoubtedly different from their own. What better way to rehabilitate teenage perpetrators of non-violent hate crimes than by encouraging them to empathize with the people whom they had targeted? The teens were sentenced to go to the Holocaust museum and write a book report per month from a reading list curated by the judge. The books include Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner, and Richard Wright’s Native Son. I’ve read all of these and loved them. Two I read in high school and I think they definitely gave me more of an understanding of the legacy of discrimination, both economic and on the collective conscious of those discriminated against. What do you think of the judge’s actions?     

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My Relationship Status With E-Books: It's Complicated.

 As a reader, I love e-books.  I love their immediacy. If I hear about an interesting novel, within seconds I can have it on the Kindle app on my iPhone or on my e-reader device. Books arrive to me faster than prime shipping. It’s like living in a library with all the new releases.     Digital books are also cheaper than hardcovers. E-reader apps have built in highlighters so I don’t need to sit with a sharpie by my bed to make note of favorite passages. Best of all, they have built in dictionaries. Never must I stumble on a word like Margaret Atwood favorite “alacrity” (definition: brisk cheerful readiness). As a writer, though, e-books can be infuriating. Aside from the sheer economics of them (many writers I know that have both physical and e-books earn less off their digital books), there’s the black box of sales reporting. While Amazon gladly releases Bookscan data detailing physical book sales, there is no tool tallying digital downloads that can be seen by outside authors. There are apps that allow me to guess based on my hourly-changing Kindle rank what my sales are likely to be, but I do not know how accurate these are. For example, today, The Widower’s Wife is #70 in all Kindle books. According to JungleScout, that rank would mean I was likely selling over 1,000 books per month. Kindlepreneur has a formula that would put that at over 1,000 books per day. Big difference. Who is right?  I don’t know if either of them are even close. Some discussion groups say that a better estimator of sales is to take the number of reviews and multiply them by 100.  I assume my publisher has this data–or at least gets reports on a monthly basis–but they probably won’t say anything until my first check is in the mail. I’ve asked… What are your thoughts on digital data? Is your publisher forthcoming with information? Do you use calculators? Is it all a black hole until that royalty check comes in?  

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PUB DAY!!!! An interview with Swiss Vendetta author Tracee de Hahn

 Publication day!!!! For my first book, it was the fulfillment of a dream, the culmination of years of work and the validation that I had not been crazy when I’d quit my journalism job to get “serious about writing fiction.” It was also terribly unnerving to know that my baby would now be out there, inviting judgment. I was uncharacteristically touchy the whole day, like a raw nerve. Today is fellow MissDemeanor Tracee de Hahn’s publication day for Swiss Vendetta, the first in her Detective Agnes Lüthi mystery series. Award-winning author Charles Todd called the mystery  “a true page turner” and the novel has been hailed as “tense, atmospheric and richly detailed.” She answered a few questions about her writing process and feelings about her big day for today’s blog.  Q. What was your inspiration for writing Swiss Vendetta? A. My husband is Swiss and we lived there for some years. It is a fascinating country. Incredibly beautiful and peaceful and orderly… until you notice the undercurrent of energy expended to keep it that way. The contradiction is fascinating and made me think of the elements of a mystery. There were a few other pieces that had to come together – the winter setting was inspired by the memory of a devastating ice storm some years ago in Geneva. The famous Château de Chillon on the shores of Lac Léman above Lausanne was the inspiration for my Château Vallotton (Lord Byron was also inspired by this location). After I had the location in mind, the plot and characters evolved. The crime at the center of the book came easily. Q. How do you come up with your characters? Are they modeled after people that you know? A. They certainly contain bits of people that I know, but the elements of the individuals are transformed into something wholly of my imagination. For example, one of my favorite characters in Swiss Vendetta is the aging Russian, Vladimir Arsov. His voice, his manner of speaking, and his confidence were all inspired by an Italian architecture professor I had the good fortune to know. Arsov’s life story was all my invention, but the reader will understand how the man’s presence – based on my friend’s – helped created the rest. Q. Do you picture the actress who would play your protagonist in a movie?A. I’ve thought about the cinematographic dimension of the book, but I haven’t thought about the actress who would play Agnes. Hopefully I’ll need to one day. Q. What was the most surprising thing about the book publishing process to you? A. The collegiality of the writing community, particularly those in the mystery and thriller genre. Writing is a solitary endeavor and they make it less so. I imagine that before the internet, authors wrote to one another. Now the immediately of the internet and the growing network of conferences mean that we can connect daily. There is much to be learned and this group is always willing to share. Q. Now that it’s launch day, are you happy, sad, relieved? All of the above? Why?… A. A combination of happy and relieved. I know myself too well, and while writing is solitary, a book is a shared experience. I wanted to be out and about at launch time. My publishers lined up a tour of several cities and I’ll be distracted for a few weeks. For the actual launch date, I am signing at one of my favorite book stores, in a city I love – Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, KY. If you want to join me on tour, the events are all up on my website at www.traceedehahn.com Q. What is next for you?  A. Finalizing the second in the series and then starting the third! I think that the second is a psychological hurdle. I have a dozen ideas for the next one and hopefully the ones after that. Really, can’t wait to get started! 

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The Non-Feel Good Novel

One of my favorite novelists is Herman Koch because he makes me consistently uncomfortable. The first book I read from Koch was The Dinner. The novel’s POV protagonist, Paul Lohman, starts off as a pretty likable guy. He has some issues, a few stray thoughts that would give most people pause, but doesn’t everyone? Who hasn’t thought something that they would never say aloud? Who hasn’t laughed at a friend’s off-color joke?   As the story goes on, however, it becomes clear that Paul’s naughty thoughts are much more than one-offs. By the book’s end, I felt a bit guilty that I had liked Paul at the start. That guilt made the story stick with me even though the ending wasn’t one to revel in and the characters weren’t people whom I would ever cheer for in real life. I like my good characters with a healthy dose of bad. To me, that makes them complicated, and complexity makes people human. I’m not alone. How could Breaking Bad have been so successful if plenty of people weren’t willing to root for Walter White? Still, not everyone feels this way. When I wrote The Widower’s Wife, some readers didn’t like the fact that my main character, Ana, contemplates a crime when she feels her back is against the wall and isn’t consistently honest. They couldn’t identify with her choices. Understandable. Though I wasn’t asking readers to sympathize with her as much as empathize. If they had Ana’s back story and then were put in her difficult circumstances, might they make a similar choice? At the end of the day, my test for characters–those I read and those I write–is believability, not likability. Given their individual histories, do their actions follow? Whether or not they would be my friend is another matter.  What do you think? Should writers err on the side of likability? Should protagonists make you uncomfortable?     

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Happily Ever, Never, or Maybe After

                 There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”― Frank Herbert Readers seem to have very definite opinions about endings. I know I do. But I wonder if writers feel the same way about endings when they have a pen in hand.It seems there are three choices for writers. An ending can delight as in “happily ever after.” Or it can devastate. I can still hear my daughter sobbing inconsolably at the end of Ann Karenina. Then there is the dangle. I’m talking Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island or even more maddening to me, Anita Shreve’s The Last Time They Met.            You might have guessed, I’m a happily ever after girl. After thirty years of practicing family law, I am without apology when I say I not only want, I need a happy ending. Not that I haven’t been riveted by tragic finales like those in Mystic River and Ordinary People. But when I write, I try to give my readers a resolution that is satisfying if not entirely happy.            What about you, my fellow Miss Demeanors? What do you look for when you read? Is it different than when you write? Delight, dangle, or devastate? Alexia: It depends on the book. For a stand-alone mystery I like a nice, tidy ending. The murderer is exposed and brought to justice, order is restored. For a series, subplot cliff-hangers are okay as long as the main plot’s crime is wrapped up by the end of the book. If I’m reading comedy, I want a happy ending. If I’m reading satire, horror, or sci-fi, I don’t mind danglers and not-so-happy endings. I don’t read romances but I might if one ended with boy-doesn’t-get-girl or girl-realizes-she’s just-fine-on-her-own-and-doesn’t-need-to-waste-time-chasing-after-unobtainable-men. The only type of endings I can’t stand are those that don’t follow from the set-up in the rest of the book, those that are too convenient, and those that are utterly bleak, mean-spirited, or promote the idea that life is a miserable hell and humans are irredeemable. Tracee: Anna Karenina gets a pass. It was a tragedy from start to finish, so no one could have expected anything less than a sad ending. I don’t need a neatly wrapped happy ending (a la Jane Austin with wedding bells and applause) but I do like a sense of completion. Preferably not a grim one. I think that when you write a series you almost have to commit to an ending that provides some sort of hope for the future, or the hero/heroine would always start the next book arising from the ashes of tragedy. Perhaps once in a while you can get away with it, but rarely, I think. Now that you’ve suggested it, in the future I will aim for a mix of delight and dangle as the characters move from the edge of devastation in the next to end pages! Robin: I’m a dangler. The closure of a tidy ending is satisfying, like Sue Grafton’s method of using the report submission style, but an artfully crafted dangle stays with me longer. I’ll ponder the continuing lives of the characters. I lean towards dangling in my own work, too. Besides being fun to read, the resolution-but-not-necessarily-an-ending is also fun to write. Paula (Munier, our occasional Miss Demeanor): I like happy endings, or, failing that, hopeful endings. No “Life is shit” endings for me. Susan: I like it when I don’t see an ending coming. Too often I feel like I know from the first chapter how it’s all going to wind up. I also love the sort of ending that makes me sit and think for a while. I’ve always loved the ending of To Kill a Mockingbird because it’s so emotional and yet restrained. I’ve often pictured Atticus sitting there, waiting for his son to wake up. How different it would be if she showed  Jeb tapdancing the next day. Cate: I like “life is complicated” endings.   

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Feeding the Hungry Reader

French Comfort Food, by Hillary Davis, one of my favorite cookbooks,    How would you like a buttery grilled cheese sandwich filled with Cheddar cheese, tomatoes, and bacon right now? Or perhaps a tuna melt on rye bulging with melted Gruyere? Maybe a plate of creamy macaroni and a combination of three cheeses, not one? Too plebian? We could add chunks of lobster.            Not feeling savory at the moment? Could I get you a plate of warm chewy chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven? Or a piece of apple pie with feathery light flaky crust? No? I could dish up a piece of moist golden cake with homemade chocolate buttercream frosting if you’d prefer.            If you aren’t hungry by now, you may not be human. Just the very description of these foods, often categorized as “comfort food” is enough to make a reader salivate, which is why most readers and writers are captivated by food in stories. Food helps to create atmosphere and lends authenticity to an environment. I defy you to read Barbara Ross’s Maine Clambake series and not crave lobster. When Stone Barrington cuts into a steak at the legendary, now defunct, Elaine’s in Stuart Woods’ wildly popular series, most readers find their mouths mysteriously open.            Food enhances reading. Food enriches writing. Food brings joy to life. Cozy mystery writers have long understood this. Joanne Fluke (Blueberry Pie Murder), Diane Mott Davidson (Sticks and Scones), Lucy Burdette (Killer Takeout), and Edith Maxwell (When the Grits Hit the Fan) all have written popular series with variations in food themes.            Other mystery subgenres feature food regularly. Olivier cooks up a gastronomic storm at his bistro in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, while Clara serves comfort food to friends at her kitchen table. From Steak Frites with Mayonnaise to Coq Au Vin with a Hint of Maple, readers feast on Canadian specialties when not merely content to munch on a steady diet of buttery croissants.            Readers, myself included, have been driven to patronize restaurants featured in books. Margaret Truman’s books enticed me to try the old Le Lion D’Or in Washington D.C. when my daughter was in college there. My husband didn’t get it, especially when the tab arrived. He was on board when we headed to a Spanish restaurant in Harvard Square where William Tapply had his protagonist, Brady Coyne frequenting.            Writers use food more than gratuitously. It can be part of the plot as in Tana French’s recent release, The Trespasser, where a romantic dinner prepared by the murder victim but never shared, became an integral part of the story.            In Permanent Sunset, I chose the bride’s choice of her wedding menu as a window into her soul. I later used the wedding meal, which was never served to guests due to the untimely death of the bride, to color a police officer corrupt and to paint a portrait of the surviving family members.            I happen to love writing about food, possibly because I love reading about it (I own a few hundred cookbooks and this is after “downsizing”), only slightly less than cooking it. For me, it is as much pleasure deciding what to serve my characters as it is what to serve guests in my home. I recently created a meatloaf dinner for my grieving protagonist, which she quite enjoyed.            Fortunately, calories don’t count when you are writing about food. Only pleasure. What brings you please when you read or write about food?                       Dessert from Hillary Davis                       

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Writing Books on My Desk

     I love to write. I love books. Why wouldn’t I love books about writing? I have shelves full of them, some better than others, a few well weathered from repeated readings and reference. Some provide inspiration. Others are instructional.     I’ll pull out Stephen King’s On Writing when I need no-nonsense advice about how to write without pretension or self-deception. “It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” I snagged a first edition of On Writing for eight dollars recently. Score!     Elizabeth George (Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life) and Harry Bingham (The Writers and Artist Guide to How to Write) frequently come off the shelf when I need help with craft. Paula Munier’s (full disclosure, Paula is my agent and appears occasionally on MissDemeanors.com) Plot Perfect: How to Build Unforgettable Stories Scene by Scene falls into my lap when I get stuck trying to tell my story, even though I know what it is. Her Writing with Quiet Hands: How to Shape Your Writing to Resonate with Readers is where I go when I need to remind myself about who I am as a writer.     There are so many other good books on writing, I could spend all of my time just reading about writing, but that would only fuel my avoidance of writing, something most writers seem to periodically suffer from. I try to read about writing in measured doses, either when a new writing book comes out and I am looking to ignite my writing, or when I’m in trouble, which happens a lot.    Three new writing books are sitting on my desk right now. Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel (revised and expanded) by Hallie Ephron is perched on the top of the pile. I learned how to write mysteries from Hallie in person and through her first book. The woman was born to teach. The new edition is bulging with information essential to new and seasoned writers.     The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings: How to Craft Story Openings that Sell, also by Paula Munier, reminds us that “the most important thing your opening needs to do is this: Keep the reader reading.” I spend an enormous amount of time aiming for a perfect beginning, terrified if I don’t write one, I and my fledgling novel are doomed. I need this book.     Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel, first released in 2001, dared me to think about writing big and provided tools, which I return to when mired in a thicket of words.  His new release, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface, is sitting between Hallie Ephron and Paula Munier’s books. I’m writing a different kind of book right now, challenging myself to stretch into telling a story through a character entirely unlike any I’ve written before. I’m learning why readers really fall in love with protagonists in this book. “You are not the author of what readers feel, just the provocateur of those feelings,” Maass tells us.      I’m feeling fortified and challenged by these three new books, which also quell the fears I have about braving new territory. The comfortable presence and support of a team of pros waiting on my desk to assuage the panic when I inevitably get stuck keeps me writing because I know help is only a book away.What writing books are sitting on your desk or shelf?                  

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