Pardon My Paranoia – Are Nosy Bots Reading Our Emails?

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by Debbie Burke

 

Recently I had a disturbing email experience.

For some months, circumstances had prevented the five members of my critique group from meeting face to face. So we began exchanging group emails to bring each other up to date.

Since we’re friends as well as writing colleagues, our emails often include personal information about families, friends, dogs, health, etc.

With five people chiming in, a recent email chain became quite long.

Then one member received a pop-up notice at the top of her gmail that gave an “AI Overview” summarizing each person’s contributions to the discussion.

Where the &$%# did that come from??? How did a bot gain access to our emails?

Our conversations included deeply personal medical information about ourselves, family, and friends such as…

Who’s struggling with symptoms that doctors can’t diagnose? Who needs heart or brain surgery? And so on.

Private, personal, confidential conversations among close friends.

Out of nowhere, an AI bot gave us a nice, neat, efficient, accurate summary.

How helpful. But intrusive as hell.

How did this nosy bot access, read, and summarize our discussions?

Had an update from Gmail changed settings to allow AI summaries?

Click the following link for an article from HuffPo that describes what probably happened and reasons why we might not want a nosy little bot to read our emails.

More insights from Proton.me:

“Today, companies like Google are expanding AI access to private communications such as email, framing it as productivity and convenience. But Gemini operates under its own terms, making it harder to distinguish what data is handled by Gmail itself and what is processed by AI systems.”

If you don’t want Gemini AI summaries on Gmail, here’s how to change “smart” settings: help page.

When I checked my settings, I had already turned off “smart” features. Yet the AI summary still showed up. Hmmm. 

That leads me to believe someone else hadn’t disabled their smart features, which opened access to our Gmails.

***TKZ’s tech experts, please feel free share your knowledge in the comments.***

What does that mean for medical and legal professionals who send and receive confidential records? If a recipient doesn’t know to shut off their device’s smart features, can Gemini suck up private information for its own commercial use?

Doesn’t that violate HIPAA rules and attorney-client confidentiality???

I foresee class action lawsuits from victims damaged by confidentiality breaches.

What about writers?

We routinely email manuscripts to agents and editors. We also exchange manuscripts for beta reading, critique, editing, etc. Those manuscripts are copyrighted as soon as the author commits them to tangible form, on paper, digital file, etc. That protects our work, right?

Not necessarily.

You may have heard about the $1.5 billion judgment against Anthropic for using illegally obtained copyrighted books to train Claude, their large language model (LLM) AI program.

The award was a win for authors, right? Uh, only under limited conditions.

To qualify for compensation in the Anthropic settlement, their books had to be registered with the US Copyright Office, not just copyrighted.

Typically, traditional publishers register copyrights but some companies didn’t. Their authors were out of luck.

Also typically, copyrights are registered upon publication, after edits, rewrites, additions, etc.

That leaves many manuscripts in limbo.

What if we email manuscripts to agents or editors? Our work is copyrighted but, while it’s under submission, it’s probably not yet registered. Can these be vacuumed up to train LLMs?

Currently, regulation of AI’s use is virtually nonexistent. Laws haven’t caught up with constantly changing developments. Legislation to control and limit use is likely years away, maybe even decades.

Meanwhile, the ease, convenience, and efficiency of technology has seduced us into giving up privacy and confidentiality.

I turned off annoying Gemini intrusions by changing settings on my own computer, but I can’t control others’ devices. And of course I trust Google as much as that nice Nigerian prince who’s sending me millions. 

Yes, I could switch to a different email server but that would cut off my main contact point as an author.

I don’t know how to deal with this except to be more cautious of what I write in emails.

Back in 2019, I wrote about text messages that I naively thought were private. Then I learned Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. had accessed my texts to send advertising related to them. Stealth permissions buried deep in the phone’s terms and conditions grant access to third parties. By using the phone, you agree to the conditions, even when they’re next to impossible to find.

Six years later, Gmail is in a similar state where the onus is on the user to go extra miles to opt out of invasions into privacy.

This reminds me of wise advice from an attorney mentioned in the 2019 post: “Don’t put in writing anything you wouldn’t want to be read in open court.”

~~~

TKZers: Have you run into Gemini’s email summaries? What do you do to maintain online privacy? Or does that no longer matter?

~~~

You can’t believe your eyes. Can investigator Tawny Lindholm and attorney Tillman Rosenbaum save an innocent woman’s life after deep fake videos show the world she’s guilty? Find out in Deep Fake Double Down, winner of BookLife’s best mystery contest.

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The History of Books

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“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” —Abraham Lincoln

* * *

Thursday, April 23, 2026 is World Book Day. According to Wikipedia,

World Book Day, also known as World Book and Copyright Day or International Day of the Book, is an annual event organized by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to promote reading, publishing, and copyright. The first World Book Day was celebrated on 23 April in 1995, and continues to be recognized on that day.

Clearly, all authors should be celebrating World Book Day, but I have to admit I never heard of this special day until my husband and I were invited to give a presentation on the subject. As a result of that invitation, I did a little research and found it to be such a fascinating story, I figured TKZ folks would be interested.

Much of the information below outlining the major milestones in the history of books came from tckpublishing.com.

* * *

Mesopotamia, 3500 BC – Clay Tablets

The Mesopotamians used wet clay and wrote on it with a reed stylus. The tablets were then dried or baked to preserve the writing. Much of the content recorded inventories, sales information, contracts and legal agreements.

Egypt, 3000 BC – Papyrus

The Egyptians used marrow from the papyrus reed to produce sheets which were glued together to create scrolls. Some of the scrolls were very long—one measured more than 40 meters!

 

Greece, 500 BC – Goat skins

A shortage of papyrus gave the Greeks incentive to go in another direction, and they used sheep and goat skins to make parchment. It was a good solution, but not as good as leather.

 

China, 100 BC – Paper!

The Chinese are credited with inventing paper made from rolls of bamboo that were bound together.

 

Rome, 100 BC – Codex

Romans made a giant leap forward with the invention of the codex, a way to bind pages together to form what we would recognize as a book.

 

It took 3500 years to get to books in the format we’re used to seeing, but printing books in mass was still to come.

Movable type – 1000 – 1400

The Koreans invented the first metal movable type in 1200 AD and produced the first book with that type in 1377AD.

 

 

Gutenberg’s printing press – 1439 

Gutenberg’s brilliant invention provided for the mass production of books. The first mass-produced book was the Gutenberg Bible, printed in 1455.

 

Pocketbooks – 1500

Aldus Manutius is credited with inventing this precursor to the modern paperback.

 

Printing comes to America – 1640

The Puritans brought over a printing press and printed The Bay Psalm, the first book printed in the new world. It contains the Book of Psalms from the Bible. A few copies of the original printing are still in existence.

 

Project Gutenberg – 1970s

Michael S. Hart founded Project Gutenberg in 1971 as a way to digitize and preserve important books. As of March 2026, this volunteer effort has made over 75,000 free works available to the public.

 

Amazon Kindle – 2007

Amazon’s Kindle was introduced in 2007 to light a fire in the reading public. Over 80,000 titles were available for purchase on the first release. There are currently over 44 million book titles on Amazon.

 

According to medium.com, around 2.2 million books are published each year, and there are around 155 million books (unique titles) in the world today!

* * *

So TKZers: What are your thoughts on the history of books? What’s your favorite book? How many books have you published? Do you write in one genre or several?

* * *

THE WATCH MYSTERIES

Half-sisters Kathryn and Cece never meant to become sleuths, but trouble has a way of finding them. With Kathryn’s problem-solving skills and Cece’s theatrical talent, these reluctant detectives prove the search for truth is worth the effort.

Three complete novels on sale this week for 99¢ on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, and Google Play.

Rejections and Successes

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

All writers get rejected. Well, almost all…there have been a few first-time-out successes (though often followed by a second-book failure, leading to another form of rejection: no new contract).

Many writers report on the rejection slips and letters they received, putting them in a pile, or in a file, or on a spike in the wall. Persistence and production is what mattered. The pulpsters would get their stories returned by SASE (quiz, kids: what does SASE mean? No Googling!) and put them in another envelope and send them out again.

There are some famous rejections in literary lore.

“It is impossible to sell animal stories.” (To George Orwell re: Animal Farm)

“We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias.” (To Stephen King re: Carrie)

“If you insist on re-writing this, get rid of that Indian stuff.” (To Tony Hillerman re: The Blessing Way)

I will add mine. I was going through some old file drawers the other day, and found it. My very first book proposal and my very first rejection letter! Now, this was for a nonfiction book, and I was truly wet behind the ears (i.e., just out of college). It was a form letter, which began with a warm “Dear Author.”

In answer to your present query, we are not interested in seeing this manuscript as we are not looking for this type of book on this subject matter at this time.

We appreciate your writing us about your manuscript and would be open to future queries about other books you are writing.

Sincerely,

The Editorial Staff

Hey, at least they appreciated me! And said they were open! (That they said this to every author they rejected was a thought that did occur to me.)

In that same file drawer, I found an even earlier letter, this one concerning a screenplay I had written as a film student in 1975. It was from Hal Barwood, whom I’d met when he was living in a house on the street I grew up on. He was the writer, with his partner Matthew Robbins, of Sugarland Express, Spielberg’s first feature film. And other successes. He’d invited me to send him my script, which I did. (I also found the script. Boy, was I not ready for prime time!).

He wrote me a very nice letter on Universal Studios letterhead, with some sage advice.

The idea underlying your story would make a charming and professionally workable premise for a TV movie. But what I think you have started to write is a stage play. There’s nothing wrong with that — much of the dialogue is very snappy — however, in the movies much of the storytelling should happen on the bench during the “time outs.”

He could have ended it there, but finished with this:

Don’t despair — anyone who can crank out engaging stories like this one should keep his nose to the grindstone.

That’s the kind of encouragement that can make all the difference to a young writer. When I finally put my nose to that grindstone thirteen years later, it would be another seven years before I started to sell.

Persistence and production.

Now let’s talk about successes. I was also going through my bookshelves clearing out space. Over the years I’ve collected bunches of Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen magazines. These I decided to donate. And then I just happened to look down at one of them, and this is what I saw:

Our own Elaine Viets got the cover for the debut of her new series! Boom! I’d call that a major score.

I’ll never forget the box of books I received when my first thriller was published. My book! In print! From a real publisher! I was on my way. It wasn’t always smooth sailing (is it ever?) but I stuck around. I’m still sticking.

So let’s take a stroll down Memory Lane. Do you remember your first rejection slip? (For you kids, rejection email.) How about your first success, however you define that? Let’s hear your stories. And keep producing and persisting. Carpe Typem!

Reader Friday-Let’s Talk Billets…

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Okay, Killzoners, let’s be up front with each other…and have some fun while we’re at it.

 

Be it paper delivery, fast food shenanigans, kiddo-sitting, or shoveling out your neighbor’s chicken coop . . . what was your first paying billet (or J.O.B.)?

I like to think of my first job as the First Draft of My Life.

 

Remember these?

 

I was the advanced age of fourteen when I was hired in my mother’s office. I worked after school three days a week, filing real estate cards—way before the digital age—and answering the black dial phone. Not exciting, but I could start buying my own clothes!

 

We won’t talk about the other job I had . . . intermittently dog-sitting for our neighbor’s twin St. Bernards . . . actually, I don’t know to this day who was sitting who. (Whom?)

Two of them!

 

Your turn—what was your first experience with a paycheck (and, dare I say, taxes?)

And, second question: How has that first paying job influenced your writing–such as plot, character development, etc.?

 

 

Dialogue That Kills It: Crafting Conversations Full of Suspense

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By Jennifer Graeser Dornbush

_______________________

Hello all!  Before you dive into this blog I want to thank the Killzone for inviting me into the fold as a blogger. After such a warm reception last month, I am so honored and excited to be here and to get to know you all. Thanks for welcoming me!

____________________

Dialogue is where intention and motivation live.

Not in the gunshot.
Not in the dark alley.
Not even in the twist you’ve been saving for three chapters.

Suspense begins long before violence arrives — often in the quiet exchange of words between two people who desperately want to say what they mean, but don’t. Or can’t. Or shouldn’t.

In real life, we rarely say what we mean — especially when the stakes involve guilt, fear, shame, death, or discovery. We hesitate. We deflect. We contradict ourselves. We say nothing at all.

Your characters should do the same.

In suspense fiction, dialogue is where motive leaks, where truth fractures, and where readers begin to feel that something is very wrong — even before they understand why.

Let’s look at how dialogue works as a weapon, using examples from three of my novels, What Darkness Does and Frozen Lives and Last One Alive.

Dialogue as Combat — Not Conversation

New writers often treat dialogue as functional: delivering information, explaining a plot point, moving the story along.

But in suspense fiction, dialogue should never be neutral.

Every conversation is a contest.

In What Darkness Does, Emily Hartford’s conversations are rarely about what they appear to be on the surface. Early in the novel, when Nick reappears after being presumed dead, their exchanges sound restrained — almost polite — but the real conflict is boiling underneath.

“You don’t have to be here,” Nick said.

Emily crossed her arms. “You showed up. That doesn’t mean you get to stay.”

“I’m not asking for forgiveness.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I don’t have it to give.”

Nick wants permission.
Emily wants accountability.

No one explains the past.
No one names the trauma.

That emotional collision — not exposition — is where the tension lives.

The rule:
Two people enter the scene wanting different things.

Information.
Truth.
A lie.
Protection.
Dominance.
Approval.
Escape.

The dialogue isn’t about saying those wants out loud — it’s about defending them, disguising them, or attacking the other person’s position.

If no one is fighting for something in the exchange, the scene goes flat.

Subtext: The Engine of Suspense

The most dangerous dialogue isn’t what’s spoken.

It’s what’s avoided.

Subtext is the truth beneath the line — the thing the character cannot afford to say.

In Frozen Lives, one of the most chilling conversations involves a mother, Jo, carefully choosing her words in front of the man who has kidnapped them. On the surface, the exchange is domestic and calm, but underneath Jo needs her son’s obedience so they can survive.

“Sit down, Jeremiah,” she said evenly.

“I’m fine.”

She smiled. “I know. But I need you where I can see you.”

He hesitated — then sat.

Nothing overtly threatening is said.
No violence is named.

But control is absolute.

The smile contradicts the command.
The hesitation exposes fear.
Compliance seals the power dynamic.

That’s subtext.

In real forensic interviews, suspects rarely communicate cleanly. They answer the wrong question. They stall. They rush. They talk too much — or not enough. That same behavior should appear on the page.

To write strong subtext, ask yourself:

What would destroy this character if spoken aloud?
What truth are they circling but refusing to touch?
What are they protecting — themselves, someone else, or a secret?

Subtext isn’t cleverness.
Subtext is survival.

Power Struggles: Who Controls the Conversation?

Every suspenseful conversation is a negotiation of power.

Who’s leading?
Who’s resisting?
Who’s withholding?
Who’s pretending everything is normal?

In Frozen Lives, power shifts constantly in conversations between Emily Hartford and law enforcement. The badge carries authority — but Emily counters with medical expertise and evidence.

“You’re speculating,” he said.

Emily didn’t raise her voice. “I’m interpreting evidence.”

“That’s not your call.”

“It is when the body contradicts your theory.”

No raised voices.
No melodrama.

Just control — line by line.

Elsewhere in the novel, a predator maintains dominance not by yelling, but by setting rules, assigning seats, and speaking calmly while making consequences clear. The dialogue is polite. Controlled. Domestic.

That contrast — civility layered over threat — creates unbearable tension.

Common power moves in dialogue include:

• refusing to answer
• changing the subject
• overexplaining
• clipped replies
• strategic silence
• redirecting blame
• making someone else emotionally responsible

Dialogue becomes a tug-of-war — and the reader feels every pull.

Silence as a Blade

One of the most underused tools in dialogue is silence.

A pause.
A refusal to answer.
A single sentence — followed by nothing.

In What Darkness Does, I built an emotionally devastating moment by having characters reveal inner feelings with reactions, not words.

“We found her,” Emily said.

He stared at her.

“She didn’t suffer.”

He nodded once.

And said nothing.

Silence forces the reader to lean in.
It gives weight to what can’t be explained, justified, or undone.

Use silence at moments of revelation, moral conflict, or emotional rupture. Sometimes the most honest response is no response at all.

Let Characters Talk Like Humans — Not Narrators

If your dialogue feels too neat, too helpful, or too polished, you’re probably writing in author-voice.

Real people under stress:

ramble
contradict themselves
misremember
avoid specifics
go off on irrelevant tangents
blurt details accidentally
freeze

In Frozen Lives, locals give conflicting accounts — not because they’re lying outright, but because trauma, loyalty, and fear shape how they remember events.

“I mean, maybe it was him. Or someone like him. I didn’t really see his face — it was dark. But I felt like I knew him.”

Emily waited.

“You know how it is around here,” he added quickly.

The vagueness is the clue.
The emotional justification gives him away.

Let people be messy.
Let them be evasive.
Let them sound human.

Dialogue That Answers — Then Unsettles

Great suspense dialogue gives answers — and then disputes them.

In What Darkness Does, witnesses describe the same person in incompatible ways.

“He was polite,” one woman said.

“He scared the hell out of me,” another insisted.

“No,” a third said quietly. “He wanted us calm.”

Each account feels sincere.
Each is incomplete.

The truth becomes scattered across perspectives, forcing the reader to assemble meaning from contradiction.

When dialogue ends, the reader should feel less certain — not more.

Dialogue as Psychological Fingerprinting

Every character has a linguistic signature:

  • vocabulary
  • rhythm
  • emotional control
  • education
  • trauma response

Emily Hartford speaks with clinical precision — even when emotionally compromised. Grieving families speak in fragments. Rural characters protect themselves with understatement. Antagonists shift tone depending on who they’re speaking to — a tell in itself.

When Emily delivers information connected to a death investigation, her language tightens instinctively:

“We found her,” Emily said.

He stared at her.

“She didn’t suffer.”

He nodded once.

And said nothing.

There’s no elaboration.
 No emotional framing.
 No softening.

In other investigative moments, Emily’s speech remains just as contained — precise, bounded by what can be proven:

“There are no defensive wounds.”

“The injuries occurred around the time of death.”

“Cause of death is consistent with blunt force trauma.”

She names facts.
 She separates what happened from how it’s interpreted.
 She anchors herself to evidence.

Contrast that with the people receiving the truth:

“She didn’t—”

“Are you saying she was alone?”

“I just want to understand.”

Their dialogue fractures. Emily’s does not.

That contrast is the fingerprint.

People reveal themselves through how they speak — especially when they’re trying not to.

Put Characters Under Pressure — Then Make Them Talk

Dialogue is deadliest when someone is cornered.

Under pressure, people:

●      lash out

●      repeat themselves

●      say too much

●      say nothing

●      let something slip they meant to bury

In Frozen Lives, as the truth surrounding the crime rises toward the surface, conversations sharpen. Politeness erodes. Even small lines carry threat because the cost of speaking wrong is so high.

In Last One Alive, pressure surfaces most clearly in intimate conversations — especially between Solange and her husband — where the stakes are personal long before they’re criminal.

When Solange pushes for answers, the dialogue doesn’t open up. It closes ranks.

“Why are you asking me that?”

“Because you didn’t answer the question.”

Deflection comes first.

Later, when the pressure tightens:

“I told you what happened.”

“You told me something,” she said. “Not everything.”

And when evasion no longer works, honesty arrives stripped of comfort:

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

No confession.
 No tidy explanation.
 Just resistance, reframing, and control.

The characters aren’t fighting over facts — they’re fighting over who gets to define reality. Under pressure, dialogue turns strategic. Words become shields. Or weapons.

If you want dialogue that kills, trap your character — then force the conversation.

Investigate Your Dialogue Like a Detective

Before finalizing a scene, ask:

Who held power?
Who gained information?
Who lost control?
Where did the truth leak?
Where did the lie begin?
What emotion slipped through?
What was avoided?
Who walked away winning?

If you can’t answer those questions, the dialogue needs another pass.

Your Deadly Dialogue Checklist

✔️ Do characters want different things?
 ✔️ Is subtext doing the heavy lifting?
 ✔️ Does power shift?
 ✔️ Is silence used deliberately?
 ✔️ Does the dialogue reveal psychology?
 ✔️ Does someone lie or tell a half-truth?
 ✔️ Does it feel messy and human?
 ✔️ Does it raise more questions than it answers?
 ✔️ Does it leave the reader unsettled?

If yes — your dialogue is alive, dangerous, and driving the story forward.

Dialogue is where tension lives.
 People lie.
 People protect themselves.
 People hide their wounds.
 People weaponize their words.

Let your characters spar — through what they say, what they don’t, and what they’re terrified will be discovered.

Jennifer Dornbush is an author, screenwriter, and forensic specialist who brings crime stories to life with authenticity and heart. With a background rooted in real-world forensics and a passion for crafting unforgettable mysteries, Jennifer offers readers and viewers a front-row seat to the intersection of science, justice, and human nature. Jennifer’s crime expertise has made her a sought-after speaker, consultant, and educator. Through her webinars and master courses, Jennifer guideswriters in melding suspenseful storytelling with forensic realism to the screen and page. Meet her at www.jenniferdornbush.com

Quotable

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In this space we’ll occasionally post a quote about writing for your consideration. Comments welcome.

“Anybody who can be deterred from writing should be….If I were on the proverbial desert island I would write things and attach them to the back of a Galapagos tortoise in hopes they would get out somewhere.” — Harlan Ellison

I Think. Therefore I Don’t Amble

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Cogito, Ergo Sum - MuddyUm

I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? — Terry Pratchett

By PJ Parrish

A while back, I blogged here about a writer from one of my workshops named Jess who was having trouble taming her backstory. It was engulfing her main plot and you guys weighed in and helped her straighten things out. Heard back from her this past week and while things are going better, she still is having a hard time getting a firm grip on her plot.

I told her to go back in our recent archives and read Lindsey Hughes’ excellent post on Cause and Effect. In a nutshell, to quote:

Cause and Effect: The Story Chain Reaction

A story is not just a string of things that happen. A story is a chain reaction.

This happens, therefore that happens.

  • A character makes a choice, therefore something changes.
  • A secret is revealed, therefore a relationship blows up.
  • A plan fails, therefore the hero has to try something riskier, scarier, or stupider.

I thought Lindsey’s post was very revealing for helping anyone who is struggling to get their plot under control. Click here to read the whole thing. But it got me to thinking about back copy. You know, the pithy summary of a book that usually appears on the dust jacket,

So let me ask you today: Can you boil down your story in three or four graphs?

But why should I? (I can hear you taunting me.)

Well, if you’re self publishing, you have to come up wtih a succint and tantalyzing summary of your book to post on Amazon or on the back of your tree book. Or maybe you’re going to a conference and want to do a five-minute pitch to an editor. Or you’re querying an agent and you want to seduce him into reading your manuscript.

BUT…more to the point of this post today: You’ve driven your plot ball into the fescue and can’t see a clear path out. You need to re-focus your story. There is nothing more eye-opening than trying to condense the essence of your story down to a couple paragraphs that employ cause and effect. And as Lindsey suggests in her post, it can help you stop just ambling around and set you on the true plot path again.

I’m actually good at boiling down a story, probably because I once made my living writing newspaper headlines. It’s no accident that some pretty good novelists — Fay Weldon, Joseph Heller, Don Delillo — started out in the ad industry. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote streetcar sign slogans for $35 a week. Dorothy Sayers made a name for herself writing a mustard slogan before she got hot with crime novels. Salman Rushdie, who wrote ad copy while trying to finish his first novel, recalls taking a test for the J. Walter Thompson agency where, “they asked you to imagine that you met a Martian who mysteriously spoke English and you had to explain to them in less than 100 words how to make toast.”

So whenever I read good back copy, I get all a-tingly. Like this one:

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones and when the snow falls it is gray. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food – and each other.

That’s on the back of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s good because it captures not just the plot but also mimics style and mood of the novel.

On the flip side, there’s a lot of bad back copy out there. In the New York Times book review yesterday, there was an ad for a DIY “publisher.” Some sample “back copy”:

In the summer of 1863, an eighteen-year-old Amish farm boy feels trapped between his religious heritage and his fascination with the world outside his small Pennsylvania town. His solution is to leave home. And so begins his unforgettable adventure that will change his life forever.

 

Abused and mistreated, Jane grew up in the field of restraints which she calls a prison. And she hopes there is still an ounce of sanity left in her which leaves her with the choice of breaking away from the [title redacted].

 

[Name redacted] returns from the war minus a a leg and discovers that his wife has left him and his engineering business has shut down. Forced to re-invent his life, he and his family battle to overcome war’s damage.

None of these entice readers or capture the tone or mood of the books. They are wordy (“feels trapped”), filled with cliches (“unforgettable adventure”), vague on plot points, filled with generalities (“struggle to cope”), confusing, and devoid of any hint of conflict or suspense. And I suspect, that if I read any of these novels, they might all suffer from unfocused, meandering plots.

There’s no therefore there.

So, let me ask you again. Can you boil your book down to three or four graphs? Does your back copy reflect CAUSE AND EFFECT?  Again, to get a grasp on your plot, as Lindsey said, you must:

  • Think dominoes, not beads on a string. A weak plot is often a bead necklace. Pretty scenes, one after another, threaded together because they all belong to the same story.
  • A strong plot is a domino line. Each piece knocks into the next.

In back copy, you’ll often see certain trigger words used to set up the domino effect. Therefore is a fine word — nice for Descarte and Shakespeare — but a little high-falutin for us mere crime dogs. But…

BUT is a good alternative: Look at all the BUTS I have highlighted here in back copy I found on my shelf:

The Reverend Ronald Kemp came to the East End of London with definite ideas of right and wrong, which was only fitting for a minister of God. BUT the people of the East End had a few ideas of their own and the Rev. Kemp quickly finds his world torn asunder. — John Creasey’s Parson With a Punch:

FBI agent Kelly Jones has worked on many disturbing cases in her career, BUT nothing like this. A mass grave site unearthed on the Appalachian Trail puts Kelly at the head of an investigation that crosses the line…Assisted by law enforcement from two states, Kelly searches for the killers. BUT as darkness falls, another victim is taken and Kelly must race to save him before he joins the rest…in the boneyard. — Michele Gagnon’s Bone Yard:

Mickey Haller gets the text, “Call me ASAP – 187,” and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game. BUT when Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. — Michael Connelly

Here’s back copy for Sherrilyn Kenyon that’s corny as all get out but it it sets up some nice dominos:

He is solitude. He is darkness. He is the ruler of the night. Yet Kyrian of Thrace has just woken up handcuffed to his worst nightmare: An accountant. Worse, she’s being hunted by one of the most lethal vampires out there. And if Amanda Devereaux goes down, then he does too. BUT it’s not just their lives that are hanging in the balance. Kyrian and Amanda are all that stands between humanity and oblivion.

The buts set up the dominos.

As I was finishing this up, my student Jess emailed me. She read Lindsey’s post on CAUSE AND EFFECT and is excited to go back and give it another go. She is looking to jettison distracting subplots, But more important, she’s looking for missing buts.

It isn’t easy. But it can mean the difference between a meandering muddy brook and a clear swift-flowing river. Thanks for the piggyback ride, Lindsey.

Postscript: It took me a while but I found the story behind Dorothy L. Sayer’s mustard slogan.While working for S.H. Benson’s agency in the 1920s, Sayers created the hugely popular “Mustard Club” campaign for Colman’s Mustard. Her campaign featured the ubiquitous slogan “Has Father Joined the Mustard Club?”. She also created the “Three Mustardeers” for the brand.

Wordplay: Portmanteau

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Portmanteau is a linguistic blend of two or more words. In French, portmanteau means “suitcase,” implying it holds two or more words inside. We, writers, can use portmanteaus to make our word choice more interesting.

Choose carefully. The last thing we want is to cause confusion.

Even authors like James Joyce, Charles Dickens, and Lewis Carroll created a few portmanteaus that sounded like nonsense, but they worked. In fact, portmanteau first appeared in Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in a quote from Humpty Dumpty:

“Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy’ and ‘mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’. You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

A master of wordplay and creative word choice, Carroll created an entirely new genre of etymology in one quote. Portmanteau itself is even a portmanteau. It combines the words “porter,” which means “to carry,” and “manteau,” which means “cloak.”

Other portmanteaus have bled into everyday speech, like brunch (lunch + breakfast).

If you go back far enough into any word’s etymology, you’ll find any number of portmanteaus that helped create it.

Common Examples of Portmanteaus

Smog = smoke + fog

Motel = motor + hotel

Infomercial = information + commercial

Spork = spoon + fork

Podcast = iPod + broadcast

Glamping = glamorous + camping

Webinar = web + seminar

Chortle = chuckle + snort

Dramedy = drama + comedy

Listicle = article + list

Newscast = news + broadcast

Pokémon = pocket + monsters

Prequel = previous + sequel

Romcom = romance + comedy

Sitcom = situation + comedy

Telethon = television + marathon

Cosplay = costume + roleplay

Biopic = biography + picture

Bollywood = Bombay + Hollywood

Mockumentary = mock + documentary

Edutainment = education + entertainment

Botox = botulism + toxin

Brexit = Britain + exit

Affluenza = affluent + influenza

Juneteenth = June + nineteenth

Medicare = medical + care

Obamacare = Barack Obama + healthcare

Reaganomics = Ronald Reagan + economics

Ampersand = and + per se + and

Dumbfounded = dumb + confounded

Electrocute = electricity + execute

Flare = flair + glare

Fortnight = fourteen + night

Gerrymander = Elbridge Gerry + salamander

Shepherd = sheep + herder

Splatter = splash + spatter

Squander = scatter + wander (time, money, or opportunity)

Stash = store + cache

Taxicab = taximeter + cabriolet

Velcro = velvet + crochet

Adware = advertising + software

Animatronics = animation + electronics

Bionic = biology + electronic

Bit = binary + digit

Blog = web + log

Breathalyzer = breath + analyzer

Cyborg = cybernetic + organism

Email = electronic + mail

Emoticon = emotion + icon

Intercom = internal + communication

Malware = malicious + software

Modem = modulator + demodulator

Pixel = picture + element

Celebrity Coupling Portmanteaus

Brangelina = Brad Pitt + Angelina Joele

Kimye = Kim Kardashian + Kanye West

J-Rod = Jennifer Lopez + Alex Rodriguez

Lesser-Known Portmanteaus with Definitions

Brony = brother + My Little Pony — male fandom of the My Little Pony series

Movember = Mo + November — an awareness month where men grow facial hair to raise money for men’s health organizations

Ebonics = ebony + phonics — a common dialect in the American Black community

Stagflation = stagnation + inflation — continuous period of high inflation and unemployment

Pizzagate, Russiagate, Monicagate, Weinergate, etc. — The media creates portmanteaus with the word Watergate to imply an event is scandalous.

Imagineer = imagine + engineer — an engineer who works on creative projects

Netiquette = network + etiquette — proper online etiquette

Food Portmanteaus

Cronut = croissant + doughnut

Frappuccino = frappe + cappuccino

Froyo = frozen + yogurt

Grapple = grape + apple

Mocktail = mock + cocktail

Popsicle = pop + icicle

Pluot or Plumcot = plum + apricot (sounds delicious)

Spam = spiced + ham

Tofurky = tofu + turkey

Crossbred Dogs

Aussiedoodle = Australian Shepherd + Poodle

Chug = Chihuahua + Pug

Cockapoo = Cocker Spaniel + Poodle

Horgi = Huskey + Corgi

Labradoodle = Labrador + Poodle

Maltipoo = Maltese + Poodle

Pitsky = Pit Bull + Husky

Puggle = Pug + Beagle

Other Animal Portmanteaus

(usually bred in captivity)

Beefalo or Cattalo = buffalo + cow

Cama = camel + llama

Coywolf = coyote + wolf

Wolfdog = wolf + domestic dog

Geep = goat + sheep

Grolar Bear = grizzly + polar bear (Imagine the size of this bear!)

Liger or Tigion = lion + tiger

Wallaroo = wallaby + kangaroo

Wholphin = false killer whale (not orca; they’re long, slender dolphins that resemble orca in skull structure, black head, and markings, though with gray tones instead of white) + dolphin

Zonkey = zebra + donkey (Coincidentally, I’m on the waitlist to rescue/adopt a micro-mini version)

Conversational Portmanteaus

Athleisure = athletic + leisure

Brainiac = brain + maniac

Bromance = bro/brother + romance

Chillax = chill + relax

Fauxhawk = faux + mohawk (hairstyle)

Frenemy = friend + enemy

Ginormous = gigantic/giant + enormous

Guesstimate = guess + estimate

Hangry = hungry + angry

Jeggings = jeans + leggings

Mansplain = man + explain

Sheeple = sheep + people

Snark = snide + remark

Staycation = stay + vacation

Threepeat = three + repeat

Twerk = twist + jerk

Another common portmanteau is alcoholic + something addictive (workaholic, shopaholic, chocoholic, etc.) It’s so commonly used, many people believe -holic is a suffix for “addiction,” when in reality, it’s a conversational portmanteau.

Portmanteaus are not compound words. Compound words like “notebook” or “football” or “sunflower” use two words to create one, where portmanteaus shorten one or more words in a creative way.

TKZers, did you realize all these words were portmanteaus? Get those creative juices pumping and give us a new portmanteau! Or add to the list.

Dialogue Bloat

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The skillful handling of dialogue is the fastest way to improve any manuscript. And the fastest way to improve dialogue is to get rid of bloat (unnecessary fat; words that don’t add anything except to slow things down).

When you cut bloat you tighten talk. Agents, editors, and readers notice this. It boosts their confidence in the writer.

One place where I often find bloat is in the beginning of a newbie’s manuscript. That’s because the author is anxious to feed expositional material to the reader, thinking the reader needs to know this to understand the setup of the story. Here is an example from the old Perry Mason show, circa 1958. A couple is in their compartment on a train:

HARRIET
I still wish I were going to Mexico with you instead of staying here in Los Angeles.

LAWRENCE
This trip’s going to be too dangerous, Harriet. It’s some of the most rugged terrain in the Sierra Madre mountains. It’s no place for a woman, especially my wife. It’s almost no place for an amateur archaeologist, either. Thanks for coming with me as far as Cole Grove station.

You see what’s happening? It’s an example of the writer shooting information to the viewers through expository dialogue. In fairness to the writer, that was done all the time in those old days of television.

But it’s death to dialogue if you do it in your opening pages.

Dialogue has to sound like it’s coming from one character to another, in a way that both fits the character and the moment.

The first thing to look out for is a character saying anything that both the characters already know.

In the above example, they both know they live in Los Angeles. They both know she’s his wife. They both know he’s an amateur archaeologist. They both know he’s going into the Sierra Madre mountains. And they both know they’re going as far as Cole Grove station.

Don’t do that, especially in the opening. But bloat can happen anywhere.

I was at a conference once mentoring some students. One of them turned in a manuscript with the following (used by permission). A woman (Betty) has been planting bombs to avenge the death of her son. She now has a forensic investigator (Kate, who has been closing in on her) tied up, and is threatening to kill her:

Betty looked down at Kate. The triumphant smile on her face faded into a snarl at the mention of her son’s death. “Why do you care?”

“Because if my son had died as a result of finding out about something terrible that had happened to him that I had kept hidden to protect him, I would want to blame the person responsible.” Kate thought she would try the empathy tactic. She did feel a great sorrow for Betty and her tragic story. She watched as Betty returned her statement with a hard stare.

Here in this tense moment, Kate has revealed to Betty facts about the case, but the dialogue sounds unnatural. The long line has information stuffed into it, and feels more like it’s for the reader’s benefit rather than the character’s.

I told the student to go back and cut all dialogue that is not absolutely true to the character and the emotional beats. What would either of them really say?

She came back later with the dialogue much improved. A tip: If you find a bloated section of dialogue and you think the reader absolutely needs the info, break it into short, tense exchanges. Turn information into confrontation.

In the Perry Mason example above, we could render in fiction like this:

“Let me come with you,” Harriet said.

“That part of Mexico’s too dangerous,” Lawrence said.

“It’s dangerous in L.A., too, if you haven’t noticed.”

Lawrence laughed and stroked her hair. “The Sierra Madres are no place for—”

“If you say a woman again I swear I’ll file for divorce.”

“Honey—”

“You’re an insurance salesman, not an archaeologist! The only rocks you should be looking at are in your head.”

“Now, now.” Lawrence looked out the window. “Here’s Cole Grove Station.”

“Don’t make me get off,” Harriet said.

“See you in two weeks,” Lawrence said.

Great dialogue keeps readers in the fictive dream. Bloat pulls them out of it.  So never have a character answer the door and say something like, “Oh, hello Arthur, my family doctor from Baltimore. Thanks for coming to my home here on Mockingbird Lane.”

Comments welcome.