Tag: mystery

mystery

The Better Book Battle: Mystery Fiction vs. Literary Fiction.

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There’s been renewed debate, recently, about the relative value of mystery fiction vs. its “literary” counterpart thanks to a self-described “passing remark” by Notre Dame English professor William O’Rourke that disparaged the mystery writing community as suffering from a “fatal lack of talent.” In a subsequent article in the Irish Times, O’Rourke clarified that he did not intend for his remark to insult mystery writers in particular but, instead, to denigrate the entire literary culture in America.  After reading both articles, it’s clear that O’Rourke believes our nation subsists on the literary equivalent of McDonald’s, formulaic, processed writing intended to keep readers turning pages thanks to contrived cliff hangers. Other cultures, he argues, consume the good stuff–books that make folks stop and think.  I don’t believe O’Rourke is entirely wrong in his assessment of the average American’s fiction diet. Our busy culture values easily digested entertainment. And, in my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with that. I like having a cheeseburger now and again. Sometimes, I want something fun to read on a plane, or at the beach, or to listen to in the car. However, I certainly disagree that mystery writing as a whole is formulaic fast food. Good writing–and there is plenty of it in the mystery realm–transcends genre and turns formulas upside down. A recent example (which guessing from Mr. O’Rourke’s criticism he’d probably dislike) is Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. It’s a fantasy. It’s a mystery. It’s a family drama. Above all, it’s a story that forces readers to contemplate grief. What does losing a child do to a family? How do gender expectations limit an individual’s ability to properly mourn? Do people really survive the murder of a loved one with their former self intact or is violent loss so transformative that there is forever a person before and a person after?   Last night, I saw GET OUT, a movie by comedian, writer and actor Jordan Peele which manages to be a fantastic commentary on race and related micro-aggressions wrapped in a horror film. It certainly made me think about how the construct of race divides Americans, even when people are trying for it not to. At one point, for example, a character tries to prove he is not racist by saying how many times he voted for former President Obama, as though supporting a black political candidate was proof of post-racial colorblindness. Of course, the character brought up his vote precisely because he was seeing the color of the person he was talking to and assuming his support would create a bond.  Personally, I think the best writing is not the sort that purports to be literary from the get go. Sure, authors may applaud themselves for writing a “difficult book” filled with words intended to elevate the Flesch-Kincaid reading level. But those writers certainly don’t win many fans among readers.  The best authors aim to tell an engaging story that also makes their audience contemplate some larger issue. There are plenty of mystery books that do this. Emma Cline’s The Girls, Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl are examples. Each made me consider the nature of crime and punishment as much as I did when reading Dostoyevsky’s novel named for the very subject. These books, each in their own way, made me ponder what constitutes real justice. Can living with the knowledge of an immoral act and evading legal retribution prove worse than serving time?  Perhaps more importantly, these stories stayed with me long after I finished reading them, and I suspect they did for most readers. They were popular and they were smart. As I tell my daughters all the time, it’s quite possible to be both. 

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Make Your Mark

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   One of the cool things about being a writer is having an excuse to indulge my pen fetish. I’m forever searching for the “perfect” writing instrument, the Magic Pen of Wonder. A pen whose ink flows smoothly over the page with a solid (but not too thick) black line, a pen whose heft and shape meld with my hand to become an extension of my neural synapses. A pen that unleashes torrents of literary brilliance. I haven’t found *that* pen yet but I keep looking. I hate crappy pens (too lightweight, gloopy ink, annoying skips) even more than I hate lima beans. (I’ve hated lima beans since I was a kid.) Crappy pens stifle me. “Perfect” doesn’t mean expensive. At the moment, my go-to pens (not the ultimate but mad decent) are the Sharpie Pen and the Optimus felt tip, available at the dollar store. My fellow Miss Demeanors discuss their favorite mark making instruments. Paula Munier:A dear friend gave me a set of lovely amber lacquered Waterman of Paris Carene pens with gold-played trim years ago that I love, and to which I have since attributed magical powers. They are my lucky pens, which I use to write in my lucky red leather-bound journal with the hand-tooled Celtic roses on the front. (I write nonfiction directly on the computer like the former reporter I am, but I write all my first drafts of fiction with my lucky Waterman of Paris pens in my lucky red journal.) I go through about half a dozen ink refills and half a dozen notebook refills for every draft. It’s a ritual that keeps the story flowing–and writer’s block at bay. Michele Dorsey:I loved writing with a fountain pen when I was in parochial school where I learned to write cursive with the Palmer method. When I discovered the Uniball Gel Impact Roller with its bold 1mm line, I was in heaven. This baby writes as smooth as jelly sliding over peanut butter. My legal clients would swoon over the Uniball while signing documents. I gave a fair number away. I still buy these by the box. But I still missed the fountain pens from my youth. There is something elegant about writing with a fountain pen. It says “I want my words to be worthy of this noble instrument.” A few years ago while attending a writing seminar in Boston, I strolled into a Levenger store (sadly no longer there) during the lunch break. There it was. A fountain pen with my name on it. I bought it, returning to the workshop, poised to write notes with my long-lost friend. The feel of this pen in my hand, the sensation of the ink flowing across the page, is soothing to me. It makes writing as much as a physical act as a cerebral one. While not practical for drafting lengthy manuscripts, at least not for me, I get great pleasure taking notes and journaling with my trusty fountain pen. For me, it’s about revering an object that connects what’s in my head to the page. Now I collect fountain pens when I travel. The most recent addition is one I found in Amalfi, Italy, the site of the first paper factory. Susan Breen:My favorite pen is a Zebra Z-Grip flight. It’s smooth and flows easily and I buy them in packages of 50 from Staples. When you start a new one it has a little crust of ink on its tip, and there’s something thrilling about seeing the crust come off and the words begin to roll out. (Possibly a small thrill, but a thrill nonetheless.) Cate Holahan:So here’s my confession…. I don’t use pens except to sign books and then I use a sharpie because they’re reliable and cheap. I’m not especially attached to them, though. I take notes on my omnipresent smart phone (either by voice or typing). All my writing is done with word where it can be backed up to the cloud, reducing the risk of losing anything. All my plotting is done in excel where I can move around cells as elements of the story change. I even graph my character arcs in excel. Robin Stuart:Ha, I make mind maps of my characters to figure out how and why they intersect, and what each brings to the story. I use a pencil for that so I can erase and move people around. I used to use a dry erase whiteboard until I realized I needed something more permanent that I can refer back to and adjust as I arc out sequels/series. The drawings become touchstones so now I draw them in my notebook. I LOVE pens and notebooks. Where Paula is superstitious about her pen, I’m superstitious about the notebook. I use the same kind every time. The “when” of hand writing vs laptop is more nebulous. There’s no set rule but I carry the notebook everywhere. The laptop only comes with me on vacations or writing trips because I have another laptop I have to carry for my day job. I’ve only traveled with both computers once and I’ll never do it again. Much too stressful to keep track of both of them. Plus, I made no friends in airport security lines. As far as pens, my favorites are the ones that just feel right in my hand. Their weight distribution, width and materials vary. Friends & loved ones familiar with my stationery fetish give me pens as gifts so I have a heck of a collection. The most recent addition is from Disney World, engraved with panels showing how to draw Mickey in various poses. Tracee de Hahn:I love pens, but more as objects than as utensils. I have a few Waterford fountain pens that allow the ink to flow beautifully. Unfortunately, I only use them to write personal notes. When writing a story of any sort I pause too often and the nib dries and it’s frustrating. Instead, I resort to generically decent pens of many types and kinds. (I’m also prone to losing them, so I have dozens on hand.) Now ink WELLS, that’s another story. I have a large collection of those, ranging from silver to bronze, even a few traveling Chinese calligraphy ones made from copper and brass. Since all of the ink wells were intended for use with a quill, they don’t get real use… other than as objects of beauty and inspiration.

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Fair Game

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 The movers brought my furniture today. Except for a few minor snafus—driver arrived, crew didn’t; car battery died so couldn’t get it off truck—everything was going well. Until. The crew parked in the nameless alley behind my house and had almost finished unloading my household goods when a cranky neighbor showed up and demanded both the crew’s pickup truck and the moving truck be removed. She “needed” them moved, she said. The movers had parked in the alley to avoid blocking the road in front of my house. They weren’t impeding traffic. They weren’t parked in the woman’s yard. They weren’t blocking her driveway or preventing her from leaving her house. Cranky neighbor was so offended by a moving truck in a back alley, she called the police. The policeman who responded did not seem overly concerned. He remained polite and professional. He simply asked the movers about how long they thought they’d be then left. Cranky neighbor stayed home and spied on the movers, looking for reasons to scold them. Welcome to the neighborhood. Being an author always alert for story ideas, I immediately thought this woman would make the perfect fictional murder victim. I fantasized ways of killing her off and created a list of suspects with a motive for doing her in. The list was long. I mentally scouted locations for the crime scene and devised a reason for my sleuth to be in this otherwise charming town. Then I stopped. I reminded myself part of what made this town charming was its small size. If I wrote a story and people read it (as I hope they would) they’d recognize the person on whom I’d wreaked fictional vengeance. That probably wouldn’t get me invited to many parties or included on any Christmas card lists. Last Spring, Richard Cohen wrote an article titled, “How Writers Will Steal Your Life and Use it For Fiction.” He explained how writers crafted characters inspired by people they met and examined how this literary identity theft impacted both writer and written about. One of my favorite episodes of “Midsomer Murders” deals with a man whose life has been turned into a novel by someone else. He feels victimized, his experiences stolen, leaving him with nothing to write about himself. There are ways to borrow someone’s life without offending them or risking libel charges. Transform males into female characters and vice versa. Borrow traits from several different people and combine them into a single character. Change your locale. Get their permission. Some people might like the idea of being an author’s muse. However we handle it, we’re unlikely to stop using bits and pieces of real people to build fictional characters. Life has too many good stories to pass up. Maybe writers should all wear warning buttons like the one I recently gave a writer friend—”Be careful. Anything you say may end up in my novel.” How do real people inspire your writing? How do you disguise them? 

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Good Bad Guys

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 I binge-watched “American Greed” on Hulu tonight. The show, in its eleventh season, airs on CNBC. Stacey Keach narrates each episode which details a fraud investigation. The show doesn’t focus as much on the law enforcement officers and prosecutors who pursue the fraudsters as it does on the con artists who commit the crimes. That’s what fascinates me about the show—the look inside the mind of a criminal, what motivates a person to lie, cheat, and steal. I remember someone in one of my writing classes asked about creating an antagonist. I don’t recall the exact wording of the question but the gist was, how do you create a believable, relatable villain? The answer was, make sure the villain is the hero of his or her own story. Every villain has a reason for their actions. Their motivation for doing what they do makes sense to them even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else. When I’m plotting a mystery the first things I figure out are whodunit, howdunit, and whydunit. Literature has given us spectacular villains, some as remarkable as the heroes they oppose. Professor Moriarty,  Mr. Ripley, County Dracula, The Joker, Cruella DeVil. In 2013, The Washington Post published a list of “best” literary villains.https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-greatest-villains-in-literature/2013/09/12/fa7dd6c6-0e74-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html?utm_term=.f6f39f348116 Who are some of your favorite bad guys? 

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Is there such thing as too many books?

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 My husband claims that I don’t understand the purpose of a book tour (which is evidently to tout my own book). Recently, during the course of sixteen days, I traveled through seven states, visiting 13 bookstores. During that time I bought books. (Of course.) How could I not? Each store was a unique experience. Moreover, it was a chance to talk about we were each reading. The clerks had amazing recommendations and it was impossible not to follow up on their suggestions. One of my first purchases was The Lives of the Great Gardeners. It is a lovely surprise. Four to six pages on individual gardeners throughout the ages – from Le Notre and Thomas Jefferson to contemporary designers. Matthew Beaumont’s Night Walking promises to be a journey though London. The Art of American Still Life was purchased at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, one of two books accompanying a charming exhibit. The Sound of a Wild Snail is a marvelous tale of patience and harmony. Rising Tide was a favorite recommendation in Arkansas where much of the subject – a terrible flood – took place. My mother’s family is from the region and I recognized many of the names and small towns. I will dive in soon for a full read. Some are new authors and titles to me. Others feel like old friends – most particularly Louise Penny, Ian Rankin, Charles Todd and Charles Cumming. These books have climbed to the top of my to-be-read list (I’m 25% of the way through…. Todd’s Racing the Devil lived up to and beyond expectation). The Warlock and the Wolf was a gift from the author who attended one of my book signings. Many thanks for the thoughtful gesture. I confess to purchasing Michael Connelly’s The Crossing at the airport to get me through the first terminal wait. But it made the trip with me, so counts as part of the haul. Like many people, I fall into reading habits and this was an opportunity to branch out. I’m curious – have you branched out in your reading selection recently?  

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Book Tour! A time for writers and readers.

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 On February 6th I left home for my very first book tour, and for the next two and half weeks I visited 13 cities to talk about and sign Swiss Vendetta. I had an idea of what to expect. I have public speaking experience from my former job in the non-profit world and with university alumni relations. The latter required travel and sometimes Q&A in a different city every night. From this, I was prepared for the daily cycle of fatigue and even random thoughts along the lines of – why did I say yes to this? At the same time, I anticipated the jolt of energy that arrived every time I stepped in front of the crowd or sat at the signing table. In this, I wasn’t disappointed. There were a few surprises. The first one is a slightly embarrassing: that people had read Swiss Vendetta. To give me some credit, the night of my first stop coincided with the day of the book’s release. It was impossible for anyone other than a beta reader or recipient of an advance copy to have read it. I got used to that rhythm. The questions were about my background, why I started to write, did I always know I wanted to write mysteries. A few days into the tour, the story changed. A man raised his hand, not for a question, but with a statement: I loved this line from the book, “The young are foolish. But foolish doesn’t mean you deserve to die.” For a second I didn’t know what to say. Was the nice man a plant, someone sent by my mother to make me feel good? How could he know what was in the book? Fortunately, I relied on the old standby of Thank you, which bought me a moment to realize he’d read the Swiss Vendetta and had an opinion. However, in that first half second it was a little like what it must feel like to meet a stranger who holds up a photograph and says, Hi, I’m your here-to-fore unknown brother. Very personal and unsettling and then exciting and also a step into uncharted territory. From this point forward I had the great pleasure to meet readers – many people who had read the book and wanted to talk about characters and setting and plot points and favorite lines. Each and every one of them gave me a tiny moment of joy (even the man who had a complicated question about a character entering a place and leaving and then reentering). It was a pleasure to talk about the second in the series – A Well-Timed Murder – and to speculate about a third. I had another entirely pleasant surprise near the end of my time on the road. In reading emails from readers who had a thought to share, and some who said that they wished they could come to a signing but work prevented it, there was one from a very nice woman who had heard my book recommended by an author at his own book signing. I have always felt a comradery among writers (at least in the mystery and suspense genre) but the idea that we are out there in the world celebrating each other was such a pleasant experience. I arrived home exhausted. There is a rhythm on the road that keeps you going and when the rhythm breaks you feel the fatigue of travel and of ‘being on’ every afternoon or evening. At the same time, I can’t wait to go out there again. Apart from actually writing, talking about writing and reading is pure joy. Thank you readers who turned out and made these weeks unforgettable! As a reader, what do you look forward to at a book talk and signing? Authors, what’s been your experience meeting your readers? 

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Mystery women

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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

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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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Best Punishment Ever?

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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.

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 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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