D.A. Bartley, Author at Miss Demeanors

Writing: From A to Y

May 12, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

It’s early on Saturday. I’m snuggled in bed with a book:Y is for Yesterday, to be exact. I’m still in my pajamas with the covers pulled up over my knees. My first foray out of bed this morning was to the three-foot stack of TBR (“to be read”) books in the corner of my room. With some difficulty, I managed to pull Sue Grafton’s last book from somewhere in the middle without causing the entire wobbly tower to collapse. I don’t know how I managed to have not read Y is for Yesterday yet, but I’ll admit my failure and begin to remedy the situation. The only reason I put the book down is because it’s my turn to post for Miss Demeanors this week. I hoped I’d have a brilliant idea for a theme by now, but I don’t. I looked through my calendar, desperate for something to spark an idea. Nothing. Then I realized that the next time it’s my turn to post, Blessed be the Wicked will be out. I will be “a published author.” I looked back at the book I didn’t want to put down and decided that was the theme: getting from A to Y in writing. I can’t offer perspective on what it looks like when you’ve written enough books that you’ve nearly run out of the alphabet for your novels’ titles, but I can give one person’s view from A. So this week I’m going to post about what it’s like at the beginning of the alphabet, just before your first book is published. The good, the bad, and the ugly . . . and then some more good. I would love to hear from others, so please share your own stories from wherever you are in the alphabet.

Oh, the Places You'll Go

March 29, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

Warning: These photos of the places that inspire my fellow Miss Demeanors will cause longing and dreaming (and, we hope, a little fear about the darkness lurking beneath all that beauty). The only remedy is to open up a book. Tracee: First off, I start with Switzerland! Everything about it is special. Kidding aside, when I develop my story I think about places in Switzerland that are special – meaning there is an element of unique to that place. A castle on the shore of Lac Leman? An elite boarding school set in a chalet? The world’s leading watch show? The task is to share these with readers without too much description. What is the essence of the place? Perhaps the people who are there (their behavior, clothing, actions); the smell (fresh air, smell of cows, chocolate); the architecture (new concrete, historic stone). I find myself diving in and then trimming the description, and trimming. People need enough to understand the atmosphere but not build the building. Paula: I fell in love with Vermont many years ago, and so I set A Borrowing of Bones there simply because Iwanted to visit this wonderful place in my mind as often as I could. The research trips where I get to go there in body as well as mind and spirit are a bonus. I put so much pro-Vermont content in the book–food and drink and wildlife and more–that my editor finally said to me, “Does everything in Vermont have to be the best?” Photo Credit: William Alexander Michele: When I try to describe the lush natural beauty of St. John in the US Virgin Islands to people, I tell them if you picked up the state of Vermont in the summer and plopped it into the Caribbean, you’d have St. John. Culturally rich with history, music, art, and literature, the island is blessed with people who know how to live in contradiction. Inundated with tourists, yet juxtaposed in the kind of isolation unique to an island, the people of St. John are its essence. People who choose to live surrounded by water are by definition different. And after Irma and Maria blew through St. John with 286 mph winds, it is the people who are nurturing the island back after near devastation. The photo I am sharing is “my writing spot” under a tree at Hawksnest Beach. The tree no longer stands, but the water is still sparkling turquoise and warm. And I am #stillwriting. Cate: I tend to like contrasts in my settings: a claustrophobic cruise ship cabin surrounded by endless ocean, a crowded beach house beside a vast sea. I use water as a metaphor for escape in a lot of my work and the characters’ inability to enter it as a way of highlighting their trapped situations. There are a lot of moats in my stories. I also like the duality of water, we need it to live and too much of it can kill us. Susan: My Maggie Dove mysteries are set in a small village in the Hudson Valley, partly because I live in a small village in the Hudson Valley, but mainly because I think village life lends itself so perfectly to mystery writing. It’s difficult to be anonymous in a village. People know what you’re up to. Why is your Subaru parked in front of Mr. Andrew’s house? Are you paying a visit? Having an affair? Or killing him? People trust each other, but they’re also a little suspicious, especially of newcomers who’ve only lived here 30 years. I’m attaching a picture of our train station, which looks mysterious to me! Alexia: The Gethsemane Brown mysteries are set in a small village that only exists in my head and on the page. I don’t have an answer for “Why Ireland?” other than, “Because Ireland.” (Because it’s green and beautiful and historic and modern and mythical and mysterious and friendly and familiar and exotic all at the same time.) “Why a village?” is easier. Because crime is expected in inner cities and, to a lesser extent, economically depressed rural areas. But villages and small towns and suburbs are viewed as safe, Norman Rockwellian, havens. Nothing bad is ever supposed to happen there. People flee to these bubbles to escape crime. But beneath their sedate, non-threatening veneers, ugliness and dysfunction and intolerance and evil lurk, waiting to strike and rock everyone’s seemingly happy, safe little world. I (perversely) love the idea of giving people who think they have nothing to worry about something to worry about. I also like the idea of showing the suspicion and mistrust and intolerance that hide beneath the polite veneer of small towns/villages. A result of growing up reading Miss Marple mysteries I guess. I try to communicate the danger underlying the calm surface by painting my village as a beautiful, charming, picture-postcard kind of place, then dropping a murder or five in the midst of it. Robin: What isn’t special about San Francisco?
I love boats. They’re featured in the book out on submission right now and in a short story I’ve just submitted for my local SinC chapter’s anthology. Boats can be tranquil (the gentle roll of golden waves at sunset) or ominous (the setting sun cast shadows like spilled ink across the murky waters). They can be claustrophobic, like Cate said, or they can express freedom. Personally, I just think they’re a fun way to see the City from a unique perspective. It never gets old to me. I have a friend with a historic yacht and every time I go out I see or experience something new. This photo is from one of our trips just before the “dancing lights” came on at the Bay Bridge.

The meaning of everyday things

March 28, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

A bottle of beer is just a bottle of beer . . . except when it’s not. Sharing a drink with a friend is usually unremarkable, but if the last time you saw that friend, he was going on his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that bottle in his hand is a statement. If you’re one of his family and friends who take the sacrament at church every Sunday, the beer means one thing. If you’re the friend who’s holding your own bottle, it means something else. In a world where we can get almost anything from anywhere, items themselves have become less tethered to place. I order my Ritter Sport chocolate from Amazon, but I remember the days when it was hard to find outside of Germany. For writers, that means it takes a little more effort to convey the meaning of things without over explaining. When you’re introducing readers to a new place, those things matter, but having a light touch is hard (at least for me!). As a reader I love it when an author introduces me to something new about a culture I didn’t know without making too big a deal of it. Linda Castillo did a lovely job of this in Among the Wicked with her all-women quilting sessions. Without saying too much, Castillo made it clear that these gatherings were a little less guarded than they would have been with men present. A quilt was more than just a quilt. The same can be said of Jack Reacher’s famous toothbrush, although in that case the thing conveys the lack of connection to place. Any favorite examples of everyday things that take on special meaning in novels you’re writing or reading? Is the thing connected to place or not?

Using All Five Senses

March 27, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

I tend to focus on the visual when I think about place, but I’m entranced by writers who describe a location with the other senses. It’s a skill I’m trying to improve in my own writing. So, here it goes for my trip to Utah: touch, sound, smell, and taste. Please add your suggestions! the chill of the shade on my skin as the sun set the cheering of the crowd a faint whiff of sage brush smoky, fatty pork drenched in mustard bbq sauce

Writing about Cultural Setting

March 26, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

Utahns are friendly and stubbornly optimistic. There’s an open warmth wherever you go in the state. I’d argue that some of that, at least, stems from growing up hearing stories of overcoming unbelievable hardship as a community. The lyrics to the Mormon pioneer song advises that we “put our shoulder to the wheel.” Every person helped out on the trek from the east coast to the Salt Lake Valley—pulling a handcart, or, if you were lucky, riding in a covered wagon—through snow and mud, despite disease and famine, toward an unknown destination. Politeness and friendliness are to Utah what competence and efficiency are to Manhattan, but that’s a superficial description. Cultural setting needs to scrape beneath the surface. Just as some of the nicest most generous people I know are New Yorkers by birth or adoption (meaning you’ve lived in the city long enough to have survived at least one business cycle), there are plenty of Utahns who don’t conform to the branded image of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign. It’s the below-the-veneer characters who make a story interesting: the people who don’t fit in; people who see the world in a different way from the majority; the ones who’ve been knocked around a bit in life. Then there are the people who keep secrets, who lie and cheat. The ones who sometimes make the wrong choice and feel bad about it . . . or don’t. All of them keep a story moving. Some of the scenes I like best are where my characters confront challenging decisions head on. I start writing and I don’t know where the characters will lead me. Will there be a heartfelt apology or a stubborn refusal to admit wrongdoing? Will she choose kindness or cruelty? Honesty or deceit? Love, loss, greed, and generosity are part of being human wherever you live on the globe, but different cultures translate that humanity in different ways. Linda Castillo lets us peak into what it means to be Amish; Dana Stabenow gives us a flavor of indigenous life in Alaska. Then, of course, there is Ann Cleeves, Henning Mankell, James Lee Burke, Hans Rosenfeldt and so many others who set their novels in worlds where we get to learn something about the culture where murder happens. I’m always looking to add to my TBR list. Any suggestions for authors who excel at introducing new cultures?

Seeing with New Eyes

March 25, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

Snow in the Wasatch Mountains, court-side seats at a Jazz basketball game, a stroll around Temple Square, otherworldly rock formations at Arches, sweeping vistas in Canyonlands, bison and birds on Antelope Island, and the quiet beauty of Huntsville after a treacherous drive up rocky Ogden Canyon. I spent last week in Utah, a place I haven’t lived full time since I graduated from high school. After my son fractured his wrist snowboarding, my family made a quick decision to turn our ski vacation into a hiking vacation. We drove down to Moab. In a delightful coincidence, friends of ours from New York were there for a few days. Over a lunch of green papaya salad, beef noodles and curried chicken (yes, there’s a great Thai restaurant in Moab, Utah), our friends described the immense beauty of my home state. I was about five the first time I remember traveling from our house in the alpine mountains in the north ofthe state to the red rock in the south. My child self assumed that everything I saw was normal. It took my friend, who lives a few blocks away from us on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, to remind me that it was pretty fabulous to be able to drive 45 minutes to world-class skiing and then several hours to spectacular desert hiking. Sitting in a Thai restaurant in Moab, I saw my state through new eyes. When we made our way back through the desolate beauty of southeastern Utah to Salt Lake, I appreciated the astonishing Utah’s topography. I’ve lived a lot of places in my life: Scotland, France, Germany, Russia, Massachusetts and Philadelphia. There’s something wonderfully special wherever you are. Sometimes, though, we get used to it. We stop seeing what makes where we are special. We stop seeing through new eyes. I’m devoting this week’s posts to what makes setting—the people, places and things—compelling and unique. What would Nero Wolfe be without Manhattan and his orchids? Can you imagine Longmire any place other than Absaroka County, Wyoming? Could Jimmy Perez exist outside of the Shetland Islands? My question for you is: what makes your setting unique and how do you describe it to those who don’t know it first hand?

The Business Part

February 4, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

While I can’t vouch for its veracity, the story that Charles Dickens invented the book tour when he started reading–performing–A Christmas Carol in 1853 is a nice one. According to lore, no other major author had read his or her own work to an audience before. I don’t know about you, but that seems like entrepreneurial spirit to me. Over a century later, most of the English-speaking world can’t imagine December without his ghost story. It is undoubtedly a great tale filled with iconic characters and important questions about life choices. Maybe we’d all be reading A Christmas Carol even if Dickens hadn’t stepped onto the stage of City Hall in Birmingham . . . and maybe not. Once you’ve got your galleys and/or ARCS, you’ve got your pub date, and you’re waiting for the actual books to be printed, what are you supposed to be doing? I’m sure with a little googling and some emails,you could secure a stage in Birmingham, but if that’s not your scene, what do you do? Work on your next book! (Yes, Paula, I hear your voice in my head.) Take my–and your–agent’s advice and keep writing the next book, but you aren’t done when the last book is out of your hands. As much as many writers wish that a writing career were just writing, there is that pesky “career” part, too. Like with the writing bit, everyone approaches the career bit in his or her own way, but approach it one must. Glenn J. Miller posted some great advice on the Career Authors website yesterday. (Yes, yesterday. There must be something in the air.) His advice is actually so good, I’m going to suggest that you check it for yourself. Miller advises writers to do three things to get their career going: (1) Create an author platform where people can find you, (2) Write three compelling, related books, and (3) Find fans who love the work you do and delight them. These three simple steps are an ideal way to organize your thinking, but flexible enough to accommodate whatever works best for you. Step two is all about the writing, but steps one and three aren’t. Since my own first book is scheduled to be released this August, I’m hardly one to be doling out advice on the topic, so I won’t. I do know that there isn’t just one way to create an author platform any more than there is one way to write a compelling book or find readers who will love your work. So, I’m spending real time now devoted to finding my way to meet these goals. I’m not quite sure how, yet, but I can tell you I have ruled out reading on a stage in Birmingham.

You've Written the Book. Now What?

February 4, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

Drum roll. Here they are, as promised, ideas from critically-acclaimed and award-winningauthors about what they actually do to bring their books to the world. (No, I wasn’t able to get Lee Child’s thoughts on the subject, but I have a feeling his advice would be something like, “drink coffee and write.” It works for him!) There are DIY ideas and thoughts on hiring a publicist. I love Robin’s word “authorpreneur.” Reading what my fellow Miss Demeanors have done is motivating. I came away with three principles to follow as I embark on my own path to pub date: (1) There’s no harm in trying anything and everything, (2) Do what makes you happy, and (3) There’s a difference between pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and doing something that is a bad fit for you. Learn to distinguish between the two. Please, take your time and read their advice for inspiration. Maybe there will be an idea that works for you. Susan: One of the benefits of working for Gotham Writers, is that after a book comes out, they set me up for all sorts of Gotham events. So when Maggie Dove’s Detective Agency came out, I spoke to a very large crowd at Bryant Park. Of course, I was giving a lecture on character, but I made sure to include lots of references to Maggie Dove. That’s my favorite type of promotion, when I can combine talking about myself with talking about something else. I’ve also loved appearances at Scones and Bones at the Madison, NJ library because everyone there loves cozies. I did hire a publicist for my first book and I paid a ton of money and was named one of More Magazine’s book of the month, which was fabulous, but I also spent my whole advance on that, and I’m still not sure I got my money’s worth. Of course, I absolutely love twitter and Facebook and have connected to so many people that way. Paula: My favorite advice for PR and marketing comes from Glenn Miller, book marketing guru and founding member of Career Authors. He says you should find the strategies that work for you, the ones you’ll actually do consistently, and do them. This is basic brand building for you as an author. Then you can supplement your efforts for every book launch: work with a publicist, hire a social media manager, do ablog tour, etc. For me, this means Twitter, Facebook, and events. Like Susan, I prefer events where I’m talking about something else and to get to slip in references to my books occasionally. The debut of the first novel in my mystery series comes this fall, where I’ll be doing supplemental things as well for the launch. Mostly this means I’ll do whatever my publisher wants me to do. Starting with Instagram, which totally goes against the grain for me in that I am not a selfie person. Live and learn. Tracee: I agree with Paula. We listen to what our publisher wants; however, at some point we each have to develop what works best for us. Some social media doesn’t feel like the right fit at first, then you find your own way of using it, or simply get comfortable and keep going. I do like being in front of real people – partly because I think you get feedback or at least a reaction. A Well-Timed Murder just launched Tuesday and I’ve been in bookstores in Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky so far. In Little Rock I had the great pleasure of meeting the B & H Book Club in person – a follow up to our Skype chat last year. That was a lot of fun, to talk to readers you’ve developed a relationship with. It’s the same with the amazing people who work in the bookstores. Every time I visit a store I hear about other authors and new books, and when you see that “Staff pick” sign by your own book it’s a nice adrenaline rush. We couldn’t do this without them! Michele: First, do treat yourself to a splash of a launch for your first book. It truly is a once in your lifeexperience. Find what social media you can work best and stick to it. I started with Facebook, added Twitter, and am now easing myself onto Instagram. I used a book trailer for my first book because I knew readers who love the beauty of St. John would be drawn to it. I’ve done blogs, interviews, appearances at libraries and bookstores. But what I am convinced works best is the age old advice. Write a damn good book. Here’s a photo from my book launch for No Virgin Island, where mentors Hallie Ephron and Hank Phillippi Ryan celebrate with me. Robin: My nonfiction books were published by small presses who did zero on the publicity front so it was all up to me. The first book also preceded the ubiquity of the Internet thus there were no social networks. Still, I am the daughter of parents who were both involved in advertising and PR when I was little and I guess I learned creative self-promotion without realizing it. I turned promoting that first book into something of a career – I had t-shirts made of the book cover then took those to the largest industry conference of the year. I sought out the big “names” and gave them t-shirts. I’m actually kind of shy but I forced myself to talk to EVERYONE which is how I met magazine editors who remembered the shirts, thus the book, and threw freelance work my way. One of those people contacted me to co-author the second book. Living in a major media market, I also called radio and TV stations until I got on air on a local morning television show. Eventually a sports-themed startup contacted me and I ended up teaching for a couple of years which gave me a platform to sell more books. At its peak, that first book cracked Amazon’s top 100 ranking in its niche-within-a-niche category. Even though it’s now out of print it’s still in the top 500 and being sold as a collectible. The second book, still in print despite being almost old enough to vote, is currently ranked #371 in its category. Apparently, I do okay at the authorpreneur thing. I can’t wait to tackle promotion in crime fiction so I’ve already started by jumping in and volunteering to speak at conferences as a cyber expert, and connecting with other authors on Twitter and through organizations like MWA and Sisters in Crime. Cara Black just let me know last week that she thanks me in the acknowledgements for her next book, coming out this summer. Cate: I am still figuring out the publicity thing. I agree with Michelle’s advice of write a darn good book. Word of mouth does a ton and if the book isn’t great, people won’t talk about it. I think identifying influencers on Instagram and Amazon, and then offering them ARCs or free copies helps. If they like it, they give it a good review that then their 1,000 to 50,000 followers read. I think being paired with the right books on Amazon makes a difference (though I don’t know how to do this). I observed that The Widower’s Wife was lumped with two best sellers from Harper and Penguin on the site. I guess people who bought the latter two books were also buying mine. It gave me a tail wind to ride (those other two books had a ton of marketing behind them coming from a larger house). The Huffington Post also helped with the Widower’s Wife because they picked it as a book to read if you liked Big Little Lies. I don’t know how it got their attention but that was a Hallelujah moment. I am still hoping for something similar for Lies She Told but it’s been more difficult because I think there aren’t as many books that it easily compares to. That Hollywood pitch thing: It’s like Game of Thrones, in outer space! Or it’s like Big Little Lies on a cruise ship works, as trite as it may seem.

The Art Part

February 4, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

I’m not a philosopher, so I’m not going to attempt some deep and thoughtful analysis about the written word. What I do know is that finding your routine–whether it’s daily word count or a certain time of day spent writing–helps. I have a word-count that I meet before I do anything else but go to the gym and brush my teeth five days a week. One day on the week-end I write a little something, but it doesn’t have to be the story I’m working on, it just has to be something. I’m a firm believer that what works for some may not work for others.We’re all so different it would be bizarre and unnerving if there were only one right way to do anything. I’m also a big fan of trying things out, seeing what does or doesn’t feel right, and making adjustments. As my Mom (and avid mystery reader) always told me when I had a big decision to make “If it starts not working, you can always do something else.” I try to not pre-judge an idea until I give it a chance. Last summer I went to a panel at ThrillerFest with the DIY MFA Guru Gabriela Pereira. She said she kept a jar on her desk to write down anything that got in the way when she was writing. She would write down the annoying thought on a little piece of paper, fold it up and put it in the jar. Okay, I was skeptical, but the next day when I was working on my on word count and one of those nagging thoughts that had absolutely nothing to do with my story kept circling my head, I decided to give it a try. It worked . . . for me. The act of writing down my distraction, foldingit into a tiny square and setting it in a glass jar allowed me to get back to the work I wanted to be doing. (Yes, I have identical jars: one here in the city and another up in the attic room in the country. No, I’m never going to tell anybody what I write on those little pieces of paper!) I guess the point is: do whatever it is you need to that allows you to access the story. Maybe it’s a certain cup of coffee, music, time of day. You might need to light a candle or find a particularly quiet room. Whatever your thing is, do it so that when you hit your word count/page count/minute or hour goal, you look back and find at least something (even if it’s only one word) that makes your heart beat just a little faster. Do that. And then do it again.

The Artist and the Entrepreneur

February 4, 2018 D.A. Bartley Uncategorized

I love themes. I’m the kind of person who plays bachata in the background if I’m hosting a dinner party with Central American cuisine (my sister-in-law is from Belize and got me hooked on bachata) and chanson for French. The reason I bring this up is because it’s launch week for Tracee’s second Agnes Lüthi Mystery A Well-Timed Murder. Perfect timing for a week devoted to what’s really involved in getting your book out there into the world. With my own pub date set for this August, I’m learning quickly that it’s not just about the edits. Spoiler alert: being an author requires a lot more than writing. It’s easy to think of writers as artists, but writing is also about producing something and getting that something to the people who will want it. In other words, a writer lives both in the world of the artist and the world of the entrepreneur. Exhibit A is Tracee’s elegant Tour Postcard below. After the writing and rewriting, the back-and-forth with an editor, then a copy editor, then a production editor, finally there’s a book. …but that’s just the beginning. That’s when the entrepreneur joins the artist. That’s when you do book readings, post videos, be interviewed, attend conferences, write guest blogs, send out newsletters, find a publicist. OR NOT. What I’m discovering as I stumble into this world is that there are as many options for what an author can do as there are opinions about what an author should do. My fellow Miss Demeanors will share their thoughts on the topic this Friday. In the meantime, if you’re in Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia or Texas, I know someone who’ll be signing her latest book about a Swiss-American police officer who is on leave in Lausanne, Switzerland, recovering from injuries she sustained in her last case, when an old colleague invites her to the world’s premier watch and jewelry trade show at the grand Messe Basel Exhibition Hall. Little does Agnes know, another friend of hers, Julien Vallotton, is at the same trade show—and he’s looking for Agnes. Julien Vallotton was friends with Guy Chavanon, a master of one of Switzerland’s oldest arts: watchmaking. Chavanon died a week ago, and his daughter doesn’t believe his death was accidental. Shortly before he died, Chavanon boasted that he’d discovered a new technique that would revolutionize the watchmaking industry, and she believes he may have been killed for it. Reluctantly, Agnes agrees to investigate his death. But the world of Swiss watchmaking is guarded and secretive, and before she realizes it, Agnes may be walking straight into the path of a killer.