The Break In Between

I recently finished a major edit of my latest novel and sent it off to my agent. Like most writers, I’ve got notes and synopses for multiple new projects but I wanted to try something different. When I’ve changed day jobs, I take a break in between leaving one company and starting something new. It’s a time to reflect, let go of the past, and embrace the new. I call it a “palate cleanser.” After writing 2 standalone novels back-to-back, I decided to try that with my writing. Take a break. Let go of the most recent characters who occupied my imagination every day for the last 13 months. Catch up on my reading. Do some projects around the house. Take a couple of weeks away before launching into the next book. It lasted 4 days.  The leading characters in my new WIP demand to be heard. They want their world built. The secondary cast paces anxiously in the wings, throwing their hands in the air, screaming, “What about us?” Is it habit? Maybe compulsion? I don’t know. I don’t question my muse. I embrace her like the dear friend she is, grateful for the strength of our bond. How about you? Do you take breaks between writing books or stories? 

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Digging Into "A Borrowing of Bones"

More than crime fiction brought the Miss Demeanors together. We all also happen to be clients of the fabulous literary agent, Paula Munier. Paula’s debut mystery,  A Borrowing of Bones, came out yesterday! Publisher’s Weekly says, “The portrayal of working dogs will appeal to fans of David Rosenfelt and Margaret Mizushima. The blend of lovingly detailed setting and lively characters, both human and canine, makes this a series to watch.” Friend of the Miss Demeanors and #1 NY Times bestselling author, Lisa Gardner, adds, “Finally, a suspense novel that combines my two loves: a thrilling police procedural, assisted by two fabulous working dogs. A one-sit read that will make you happy you did.” Robin: Your day job is a literary agent. How common is it for agents to write in the genre they represent? Paula: Lots of agents write. Evan Marshall writes writing books and mystery novels, Donald Maass writes novels and nonfiction. Edwin Hill, whose debut Little Comfort just came out, works for Macmillan. Jill Santopolo is an acquisitions editor who also writes bestselling novels for both children and adults. The list goes on and on.
 Robin: You previously wrote a non-fiction book about a dog (Fixing Freddie) and, now, a dog is featured prominently in your debut mystery. As a lifelong dog-lover myself, I have my own thoughts about this, but what do you think makes our 4-legged friends such compelling characters and so much fun to write?
 Paula: My dogs and cats have been a big part of my life since I was a little girl. They’ve always been my friends—sometimes my only friends when I was an Army brat moving from school to school with no siblings and no friends in the new neighborhood yet. My pets filled the void. I think that people like to read about the real world, and pets are part of our real world. Certainly, I was inspired by the real-life hero working dogs I met through Mission K9 Rescue and other organizations. To write about dogs who are literally saving our lives, both in civilian and military life, is a huge honor and privilege. Dogs help people with disabilities, they sniff out bombs and drugs, they rescue the lost and the injured, and more. Dogs can do all kinds of amazing things. I like writing about dogs, and I like reading about dogs—and I admire the writers who do it well. As an agent, I look for such writers, because there’s usually a market for their stories. In fact, I always tell aspiring writers that if they can write from the point of view of a dog or a cat and pull it off, I’ll sign them tomorrow. I personally don’t dare to try that. But look at how successful the writers are who can, such as Spencer Quinn in his popular Chet and Bernie series or Garth Stein in his bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain. That makes for great storytelling.
 Robin: A Borrowing of Bones is the first book of a series. Did knowing that you’re creating a cast intended to span multiple books impact your process?
 Paula: Whenever you write a mystery series, you have to populate that first book with people who can provide a supporting cast for your protagonist. I knew I needed that supporting cast, and I wrote many of the supporting characters right into the story in the first draft—but my editor wanted more and so I gave him more. If you go back and study the first novels in series that you love—which is what I did when I realized I was going to write a series—you’ll see the seeds of subsequent books right there in the debuts. I reread Lee Child’s first Jack Reacher novel and Louise Penny’s first Inspector Gamache novel and Elly Griffiths’s first Ruth Galloway novel and Julia Spencer-Fleming’s first Clare Fergusson novel and that proved enormously educational for me. Robin: How did your role as a teacher in the Writer’s Digest First Ten Pages Boot Camp inform your experience as an author?
 Paula: Ironically, I never set out to write A Borrowing of Bones as a novel. What I set out to do was come up with a sample opening chapter that I could use in The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings to show how you need to revise a story and polish a story before you try to shop it. Because most of us editors and agents don’t give you much past that first page—it’s either there on that first page or not. What we’re looking for is that feeling you get when you open a new book from your favorite author. You’re in your favorite chair, you’ve got your glass of wine or your cup of tea, and you turn to that first page and you read the first couple lines and you just go, “Ahhhhhhh,” because you know you’re in good hands. You know you’re in for a good ride. It’s right there on the first page. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for that feeling, and I was trying to teach writers how to evoke that feeling in The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings. I had just been to this fundraiser for Mission K9 Rescue, an organization that devotes itself to rescuing and finding forever homes for abandoned military working dogs. The Army takes care of its dogs, most of the time anyway, but the dogs provided by defense contractors often end up with very uncertain futures. The fab thriller writer Leo Maloney hosted this fundraiser where we got to meet the dog handlers and their working dogs, be they cops and drug- sniffing dogs or soldiers and bomb-sniffing dogs or game wardens and search-and-rescue dogs. I fell in love with these dogs and their handlers. I needed that first chapter, and I couldn’t use anybody else’s first chapter because I was going to use it as an exercise and revise it and revise it over the course of the book. So, I wrote a sample chapter inspired by these dogs and their handlers. My agent Gina Panettieri read it and loved it and said, “You should finish this book.” Ultimately, I have Gina and Phil Sexton of Writer’s Digest to thank for A Borrowing of Bones. Phil came to me and said, “We’d like you to write a book based on your First Ten Pages Boot Camp.” That book became The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and the opening chapter that I wrote to use as a sample became A Borrowing of Bones.
 Robin: As a non-fiction author of a series of acclaimed books on the craft of writing, how is this debut – a work of fiction – different for you?
 Paula: This book is different for me because all my life I wanted to be a mystery writer. It was not a desire that I necessarily articulated until later in my life, but I always thought that if I ever had the time, I’d want to write the kind of mystery I love to read. For me to do this now is a dream come true. It’s been on my secret writer’s bucket list for a very, very long time. It just goes to show that it’s never too late. I had given up on this dream and I thought, “Well, you’re never going to have time or the energy or the effort or the wherewithal to ever do this, and that’s okay.” Then I wrote that first chapter—and because it was just an exercise for a writing book, I wrote it just for fun. I threw in everything I loved—Vermont and Shakespeare and vets and working dogs and the woods—I even threw in Pablo Neruda. (The title comes from a line from a Pablo Neruda poem.) Let that be a lesson to all of you writers out there: It’s never too late. Just do it. Robin: Find Paula’s debut, A Borrowing of Bones, at your local bookstore or favorite online bookseller!  

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Remembrance

I know this is a blog for writers but I can’t let this particular day go by without acknowledgment. On this day in 2001, I was just beginning my career as a cyber first responder. It has been an honor and a privilege to work with and support the efforts of the men and women in law enforcement agencies ever since. Thank you for all you do.   

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Where Do Ideas Come From?

While running errands, I spotted the item in this photograph at my local shopping center. It’s a fitness-tracking bracelet on curb wall between stores. Completely unbidden, my writer-mind went into overdrive: – Why is it there? It seemed carefully placed yet there was no one around.
 – Did someone leave it there intentionally or did someone happen up on it in the parking lot and placed it there on the walkway, where it would be obvious to the person who lost it? – Did someone steal the item from someone they know then leave it there as a taunt?
 – Did someone get disgusted or frustrated by their lack of steps or whatever and they left it behind themselves?
 – Did someone intentionally leave it at the shopping center as a red herring, knowing these bracelets have GPS trackers?
 In the time I spent shopping for groceries and getting a birthday card for my mother-in-law, this little item I spotted in passing sparked ideas for a character and a story. I snapped the picture then sat in my car and jotted it all down.
 I find inspiration all around me, sometimes in the most random places. Where do your ideas come from?
  

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Survival Tips

The other day I was talking to a writer friend I’d lost touch with for about 20 years. We each shared stories of inspiring successes and heart-breaking failures and it occurred to me that there are a lot of highs and lows in this business. So I asked my fellow Miss Demeanors: How do you deal with the ups and downs? What are your survival tips?  This is what they said: Tracee: how to survive the ups and downs? I’ll take the ‘downs’ first and say it’s necessary to remember that this is a job, and like any job there are ups and downs. Some failures are private…. a flat scene, newly discovered plot holes. That these private ‘failures’ are in our heads doesn’t help and I think it’s necessary to have someone, or a group, to turn to and share the trials and tribulations and get a sympathetic pat on the back. Finding the right support person or group is important. Certainly someone who understands that while the failures are on paper, they are also real. Big failures, certainly those that are public, let’s say a particularly bad review, well, this is no different than losing a client at work, or a trial, or not being re-elected. Everyone has professional set backs, it’s what we learn from them, and how we dust off and get back to work that matters. Now success is another thing altogether. Success is such a sliding scale and – at least for me – when I hit my goals suddenly they are in the rear view mirror. Possibly we all need to remember to celebrate the little victories – that might be getting good feedback on a rejection letter from an agent! Or it might be staying on the NYT bestsellers list for more than 100 consecutive weeks. Every writer should appreciate where they are in the process and value the successes as they come (even while keeping a weather eye on the NYT bestseller’s list). Bottom line – don’t be afraid to applaud the small things, even while dreaming of the big time! Cate: Personally, I’ve been feeling the downs a lot this year and it helps to have people to commiserate with that remind when those successes, now in the rear view, were your destinations. thanks Tracee! Michele: I take the ups and downs as they come, remembering both are temporary. I seek comfort from other writers who understand how difficult this can be to do. Then I sit down, put my pen to paper, and start writing again. It’s the only remedy I know that works.  Robin: I’ll start with the downs first, too. As Tracee points out, “down” is relative. It’s not like writers and artists get a lot of sympathy from non-artists on the down days. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard, “Isn’t this something you’re doing for fun? Just don’t do it.” Thus, I’m selective about when/if/what I share on a bad day. When I do, I’ll turn to writer friends, of course, and friends who have revealed themselves to be cheerleaders and allies. Before I had an agent, I didn’t tell anyone but my significant other, because she would bear the brunt of my moping around. As far as how I deal with it now, I give myself permission to feel bad, because it’s natural, but only to a point. It is a business, as Tracee said, and bad days happen. Wallowing serves no one. If I’m on the brink of wallowing, I look for opportunities to get out of my own head and help someone else. Volunteering, mentoring, sharing my expertise in some way. And, like Michele, I write. It makes me happy in a way nothing else does, which is why I do it in the first place. The good days are also relative. Before I signed with Paula, I printed out agent rejections whenever they said something complimentary, highlighted the good parts in bright yellow, then stuck the pages up where I could see them in my home office. I celebrate every win, no matter how personal. Had a great writing day? Yay! Attended a conference where I learned something? Yay! Met a personal hero? Yay! Sold a short story? Yay! Finished a new manuscript? Yay! Celebrations could be as humble as doing a literal happy dance (picture lots of fist pumping in the air) to splurging on a nice dinner or bottle of wine. When I signed with Paula, I did all three 🙂 Alison: I don’t think I can possibly add to what the rest of you have written, but I’ll try. As a relatively new writer, I firmly believe we can all use a little help from our friends–writer friends–with whom we can be completely honest. It’s hard to admit that you’re not happy with your writing or you got a bad review. I’ve known both and then some. After a little time has passed, I go back to the work I don’t like (if it’s not already sent to the copy editor) and revisit. When it comes to reviews, I also force myself to wait. If the critique doesn’t sting anymore, then the criticism had more to do with the person writing it than with me. If it still stings, then it’s me, and something I can learn from.  Alexia: My coping mechanism isn’t particularly profound–shopping. When I’m down, finding something nice cheers me up and when I’m celebrating success, shopping is my reward.If I’m in a full-on blue funk where nothing’s right with the world and everyone sucks, I try to do something completely unproductive and totally fun. A change of environment or a new experience or reliving an old but enjoyable experience usually gives me renewed energy. I also try to avoid the news and scale back on social media as I find the constant negativity reinforces my own glumness.One thing I have to guard against when I experience a success is impostor syndrome. I have to remind myself that I earned the success and I’m not a fraud, I didn’t just get lucky, and I deserve it.I don’t obsess over reviews, good or bad. Obsessing over reviews is crazy-making. I remind myself everyone is entitled to an opinion and not everything is to everyone’s taste. I take reviews as opinions on my work, not me. And advice/feedback from people I know and respect is a good thing–I use it to improve. (And I’m actually my harshest critic; see my above comment about impostor syndrome.)I tend not to share the downs with others. As an introvert, that’s not in my nature. When I commiserate with colleagues it tends to be about bigger things like the state of the publishing industry in general instead of something specific to me. Paula: I love this question. As a writer, because I know firsthand that if you don’t love the writing, you’ll never last. As an editor, because I know that the writers who get published are the writers who finish, and revise. And as an agent, because I see way too many good writers quit just when success is right around the corner. The answer: Never give up, never surrender!

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Toy Lady

Over the next few days the Bouchercon Mystery Convention will be taking place in St. Petersburg, Florida. More than 1,500 mystery writers and fans will be attending. Karin Slaughter will be the guest of honor. It will be a fabulous time, but I had to bow out this year because I will be having a different sort of fabulous time. I will be sorting toys for my church Attic Sale.  I am the chairperson of the Toy Department, which is not an honor I actually had to fight for. But it’s an honor nonetheless. That means that I spend hours sorting through black trash bags and trying to figure out what that thing is that looks like a bean ball and how much can charge for it? The miraculous part about this whole exercise is that we raise a huge sum of money. The Attic Sale as a whole raises about $50,000 and my little department raises about $2,000. (You can only charge so much for a used Barbie car.) Every penny that we raise we donate. We give to local organizations that help kids in our community, to groups who help prisoners trying to get acclimated after they get out of jail, to groups who help veterans find homes. We donate to people who’ve been hurt by natural disasters. Organizations abroad. You name it, we give to it. Or if we don’t, we will, if you ask nicely. My favorite part of the whole exercise is the way the whole church comes together for the sale. It reminds me a little bit of that scene in the movie Witness where they’re building a barn. Except no Harrison Ford. And there is also a food department that sells the best ham salad sandwiches I’ve ever had.  So hugs to all my friends at Bouchercon. Hopefully I’ll see you next year in Dallas. And meanwhile I’ll be buried under toys. 

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How to deal with criticism (as a writer)

 This month’s issue of The Writer magazine contains my article on How to Deal With Criticism. I happened to be under a tight deadline for that article, and it was due right in the middle of ThrillerFest, but it didn’t matter because never has anything I’ve written come so easily. Do you ever just sit down and find words flowing out of you? Me neither, but I did in this case. Partly it’s because I criticize for a living. As a teacher at Gotham Writers, my job is to read through my students’ writing and give them helpful ways to improve it. Although I try to be positive, there comes a point when you have to note that the story would be better if it had a plot. For example. Then, as a writer, I receive criticism for a living. I write something and send it to my fabulous agent. She has a few suggestions. She sends it out to publishers. They have a few suggestions. Then there are the kind folk on amazon. If you can’t figure out how to deal with these suggestions, you’ll have a very short career as a writer. So I had A LOT to say in this article. Plus which, it contains one of my favorite sentences I’ve ever written (perhaps inspired by the fact that I’d just met George R.R. Martin at ThrillerFest. Here it is. “I find being critiqued a harrowing experience. My beautiful words that I have treasured and nurtured for years, are now being flayed alive like something out of Game of Thrones.” So please check out the article. And don’t criticize it! (And thanks to the fabulous Paula Lanier for the photo.)

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An interview with Edwin Hill

Please join me in welcoming Edwin Hill, author of the twisty and beautifully written debut novel, LITTLE COMFORT (which Publishers Weekly proclaimed “a standout” in its starred review.) Harvard librarian Hester Thursby knows that even in the digital age, people still need help finding things. Using her research skills, Hester runs a side business tracking down the lost. Usually, she’s hired to find long-ago prom dates or to reunite adopted children and birth parents. Her new case is finding the handsome and charismatic Sam Blaine. I was fortunate to be able to ask Edwin some questions, which are below.  Should you want to read Edwin’s book, and I know you will, you can find it at all the usual locations, as well as at the Porter Square bookstore, which is FEATURED in the book. You can also check out his website at https://www.edwin-hill.com/ So, on to the questions:  As a person who stands only 4’11, and that if the wind’s not blowing, I was greatly intrigued by your protagonist, Hester Thursby, who is “a quarter inch into little person territory.” Could you tell us more about her and how the idea for her came to you? One of the benefits of writing a first novel is that you get to spend as much time as you want writing – because absolutely no one is waiting for it! And, honestly, when I first decided to try writing LITTLE COMFORT, I didn’t really know what the plan was or if I’d even finish. Hester evolved through the creative process of thinking (and sometimes bashing) my way through developing a crime novel, which I really didn’t know how to do when I started. The first character who came to me was Sam Blaine, a sort of Tom Ripley-like antihero. I knew I wanted him to be someone who could charm his way into any situation. I drafted a number of chapters, and decided he needed a stronger foil than the one I had developed, and Hester was born. She changed over time, too. She was really just any 36-year-old woman living in the city when I started, then I gave her a home life and set her up in an interesting living situation. Hester started to take shape for me once I figured out that she has her own apartment in a house she shares with her long-time partner, and that she retreats there to watch ‘80s slasher movies. From there, I started to evolve her physical description. A book I’ve always loved is Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride. There is a character in that book called Tony, who is short, like Hester, and one of the things that stood out for me in reading that character was how much Tony had to fight for respect as well-meaning people accidentally dismissed her. I started to imagine what it would be like if Tony had to deal with those same subtleties while fighting crime. I also liked the idea of giving Hester a physical description that would make her really stand out in a crowd. Standing out makes undercover work really challenging! 2.       Part of what makes Hester so appealing is her relationship with Kate, the 3-year-old child who has been abandoned into her care by her best friend, who is also her non-husband’s twin sister. Clearly family—biological and created—is a theme of this book. Could you address that a bit? I put family front and center in everything I write, both the family we are born with and the ones we wind up creating. For Hester, who grew up mostly on her own in a very challenging situation, so much of her life has been about surviving that she struggles with the generosity needed to raise a three-year-old. One of the themes of the novel is choice.Hester has to choose which path she’s going to take with Kate, and what kind of world she’ll create for Kate, and I didn’t want it to be an easy choice for her. Hester is a thirty-six year old woman who has consciously opted out of having children, and doesn’t necessarily want this one. 3.       Your characters are so beautifully drawn, and it’s impossible not to like them, whether they are behaving virtuously or otherwise. Do you have tips for writers hoping to improve their characterization? Oh, thank you. That is really kind of you to say. I guess I start by trying my best to like every character, as a human being. Every person on earth has something good at their core, and I try to remember that when I write, and to make that the focus of the character, rather than their actions. As a writer, when you focus in on that good, it makes the contrast of terrible actions and decisions all the more powerful. 4.       You take us behind the scenes into the exclusive world of the Boston Brahmins. How did you research that? My research around the Brahmins was mostly through reading – there is no more overrepresented group in literature that the rich and privileged! I really like Susan Minot’s books, especially Monkeysand Folly, for example. She does a terrific job of capturing the closeness and claustrophobia of a privileged life. I also went on a garden tour on Beacon Hill to get a glimpse of the interiors of a few houses on Louisburg Square, at the heart of Beacon Hill. I wouldn’t say no to living there! 5.       I’ve read that Agatha Christie influenced you. Which other authors do you enjoy? Like most writers, I read all the time and am influenced by so many different people. Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton definitely defined my childhood reading (along with C.S. Lewis and a few others). I think Laura Lippman creates wonderfully complex stories and rich worlds. One novel that I read regularly (maybe because it’s short!) is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. She is such a craftsman, and is able to move through time so effortlessly in that novel. I like to read it to remind myself what’s possible. 6. I always enjoy “path to publication” stories. How long did it take you to write this and how did you go about getting it published?  My path is not a short one!About twenty years ago, I wrote another novel that didn’t sell, and I wound up getting discouraged and giving up for a while. I also had to focus on some basics – you know, like earning a living! Then, in 2004 or 2005,  I read Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories, and was inspired by the way she mixed genres – mystery and literary – and was able to infuse so much humor into the Jackson Brodie series. She also really tore apart the structure of a “mystery” novel and made it something completely unique, and that left me wanting to go at it again. But I didn’t start right away! I wrote a single page that sat on my computer for about four years.Finally, in 2010 I switched jobs and negotiated a month off. Free time like that doesn’t come around all that often, and I realized I could either travel somewhere or I could give writing another shot, so I spent the month writing, and then spent the next four years continuing to write and revise, and then about a year finding a new agent. My agent sent the novel all around New York, and it was resoundingly rejected everywhere. But I analyzed the rejection letters and was able to determine some trends – basically I had too much story – and revise the novel one more time.And it finally sold.   

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Happy Labor Day!

Today is a day when we celebrate those who labor, and also those who’ve stood up for the rights of those who labor, and in honor of that, I thought some Labor Day mysteries might be in order. So if you’re interested in murder and the labor movement, here are some suggestions:  1. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. When the last honest man in a mining town known as Poisonville is murdered, the Continental Op goes in to take on the whole town. 2. For the Love of Mike by Rhys Bowen, in which Molly Murphy has to go undercover in the garment business. 3.  A More Perfect Union by J.A. Jance, in which Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont. investigates a murder involving a union. (Possibly not an incredibly pro-union book.) 4. A Red Death by Walter Mosley, in which Easy Rawlins has to spy on a supposed Communist organizer. Also, I’m happy to report that the Miss Demeanors have been honored by making Feedspot’s list of the Top 100 Mystery Book Blogs and Websites for  Mystery Readers & Authors. We are number 18 and are in some very good company. You can check it out at: https://blog.feedspot.com/mystery_book_blogs/ 

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