Monthly Archives: August 2008

Capturing fear on the page

Posted on by

By Kathryn Lilley

As a young girl, I hated feeling afraid.

But as a grown-up mystery writer (or at least, grown older), I love describing fear.

Like many authors, I’m a professional scaremonger. Give me any type of fear—it can be emotional, physical, healthy, or deluded—and I’ll do my best to exploit it into the stuff of page-turning prose.

Becoming a suspense writer was the only logical career choice for me. My family hails from the Deep South, where the art of self-protection (and its spawn, gun ownership) is a time-honored tradition. During my formative years, while other families were discussing events of the day around the dinner table, my father and I were drafting sketches for an all-terrain escape vehicle—just in case nuclear war broke out. (I believe the final design resembled a cross between a modern-day Stryker and an M48 Patton tank. Among its more notable features was a dedicated flamethrower).

The mission of guarding against life’s dangers, both real and imagined, ranked high in our priority of family values. We had a loaded M-16 hanging on the wall, and a vintage cannon in the dining room. I think it was some kind of Austrian Howitzer—all I know is, the old brass weapon made a truly deafening roar when we fired it on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium. During the celebratory bang, everyone stood way, way back in case the damn thing exploded and blasted off part of the hill.

Gun play features heavily in my family stories and legends. People love to tell the story of my great-grandmother Nell. She left her house one afternoon for a stroll, then was approached by a couple of men asking for directions. Nell pulled a pistol from her fur muff and casually waved it about in the air to indicate which way they should go. Which they promptly did.

Even our ancient family history is fraught with mystery. At some point in time, one of my ancestors was “disappeared” from the family Bible; the man’s name was simply scratched out. For a couple of generations, no one seemed to know what had happened to him, and his name was never mentioned by the living. Eventually, an enthusiastic family genealogist turned up an old church funeral log in Texas that revealed his fate. The log noted that his body had been discovered—beheaded—lying on a train track. Next to the dead man’s name, the minister had written a single-word question: “Murdered?”

With this kind of genetic legacy, is it any surprise that I feel compelled to write novels that feature danger, suspense and murder? I really had no other choice—it’s all in the family.

What about you? As a mystery or thriller writer, what events started your interest in exploring the darker side of life? As a reader, why do you think you’re drawn the genre?

* Win a copy of DYING TO BE THIN *

I’ll send a signed copy to the author of the best comment today, as judged (extremely subjectively) by moi!

There’s No Place Like Home?

Posted on by

By Clare Langley-Hawthorne
www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com

I did a radio interview on Friday and the host asked me “you were born in Canada to British parents, grew up in Australia and now live in America, so where’s home?” It took me just a few seconds to answer because as my children were born in America, for me, wherever they are is home. Yet the question has a deeper resonance in many respects. As a writer I get to determine where my characters live and what their heritage is. I get to decide whether, for them, they ever find ‘home.’

My parents and I arrived in Melbourne in 1973 when Australia was a far cry from the cosmopolitan place it is today. My mother thought it parochial and frightening. In many respects it was as alien to her as the moon would have been. A clear vaulted endless sky to her beloved green England that was (more often than not) shrouded in cloud and rain. I grew up with the image of England firmly entrenched in my head. Canada (which I left when I was a year old) was little more than a place on a map, but England – that was the place of my ancestors, the place of all my parents’ memories and the stories I read as a young child. When I left Australia to come to America I didn’t really have any misgivings and since living here I have had few hankerings for the place – preferring to make my home wherever I lay my hat. For my husband, however, Australia remains firmly rooted in his consciousness. There will never be another place that’s home for him.

I found it intriguing that as soon as I started to write my first novel, Consequences of Sin, I knew it would have to be set in England and I knew I would be drawing upon my parents’ experiences, in both the North and South, rather than my own. I also found that my main character, Ursula Marlow, was in a similar predicament to me – she was effectively homeless. Lancashire, the place of her childhood, was no longer home. Her father, having made his fortune, moved to London to show the world that he had finally made it. Yet London was not her home either. Not being a member of the aristocracy (her father is bourgeois ‘new money’ after all) she has an entrée into society only by virtue of his money and she will never be truly one of them. Essentially, she roams the earth as a perpetual outsider.

If you look up the word ‘home’ in the dictionary you will find a myriad of definitions – concepts which I get to toy with in my books to keep my characters off guard. At least my characters haven’t started to complain about my treatment of them like they do in Spike Milligan’s hilarious book Puckoon – well, not unless I’ve had one too many glasses of red wine (drinking, now there’s an Aussie trait if ever there was one!)

I’ve been doing a number of library panels this summer and most of the authors seem to agree that their characters are outsiders. More often than not, this is what provides them with the ability to observe and solve a mystery in ways that those characters who are at home within themselves and society cannot. I like the idea of the homeless character constantly searching either for a sense of self or reconciliation with their own past. I wonder, though, how much I am projecting my own search for home in my books. Perhaps it provides a unique perspective as, being essentially nomadic, I am just as happy to immerse myself in researching another time and place as I am to board a plane and go live in another country.

Will my children feel the same? Will America be their home or not? Will I ever let my fictitious children find that comforting ideal? In short, will Ursula Marlow find her home before me?

Stay tuned for Killer Sundays! Upcoming guest schedule for the Kill Zone

Posted on by

We’re pleased to be hosting some great guest authors on Sundays in the near future, and we’ll be adding more to our guest list. So stay tuned for Sundays with the Killers!

Here’s our current guest schedule:

Sunday, August 24: Tim Maleeny http://www.timmaleeny.com/

Sunday, Sept. 7: Alafair Burke http://www.alafairburke.com/

GETTING IT RIGHT COUNTS

Posted on by

By John Ramsey Miller

At some point during our careers we get something wrong and editors and proofreaders miss it, but some reader somewhere will always find it and might just rub your nose in it. And there it is forever––the screwing of the pooch––immortalized, bound between covers. Some readers are so anal they’ll go through a novel with a fine tooth comb to find every misused semi-colon, every missing or extra comma throughout a novel so they can perform a “superior” jig. But for some readers there is no bigger turnoff than stumbling over an inaccuracy on a subject or a location that they know. Turning off readers is the last thing we authors can afford to do.

It has been my experience that we authors can’t depend on our editors, or copy editors, to catch inaccuracies because those professionals may assume we know more about a subject than they do, and the author should indeed be in that position.

I remember a copy editor on INSIDE OUT made a note on the manuscript informing me that New Orleans didn’t have an Italian “mafia” like the families in New York and Chicago. Sam Manelli, (my fictional Don), was therefore not plausible. I sent an e-mail to the editor explaining to her that Carlos Marcello’s organized crime organization was the single largest industry in Louisiana in the 70s and 80s, generating an estimated two billion dollars a year. Marcello’s crime organization was larger, more successful, and just as violent as any other Mafia organization. (http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/family_epics/marcello/1.html)

I’ve always been interested in guns (particularly handguns) and I have owned dozens of them and I’ve been shooting most of my life. But when I write about guns I still double-check my technical information with people who are more knowledgeable than I am with a specific gun, or other ordnance. I also own several volumes of Shooter’s Bible and Gun Digest––available in any bookstore––which offers technical information on thousands of firearms. These reference books contain critical details on thousands of guns and will tell you how many bullets (or shells) a gun holds, how to spell the name, what caliber(s) a gun is made to handle, its weight, size, barrel lengths, and other tidbits you might leave out but that should know. You can go to a gun store and ask the clerk to show you the guns you are going to write about. And shoot one. Some gun ranges rent handguns, so you can become familiar with the experience of firing a weapon.

And, outside of Hollywood (the Capital City of inaccuracy), those who are shot with guns are not propelled backwards. Due to the way muscles and tendons operate, most humans will collapse forward (even collapsing toward the weapon). Even victims of a machine-gun burst or a 12 gauge double-ought blast will not take flight because bullets and even buckshot do not transfer the energy necessary to move the weight of a human being. Don’t just take my word for it, those two goofy debunkers on TV’s Mythbusters gleefully shot a hog carcass with handguns, rifles and shotguns, and the hung-up carcass didn’t even swing from the impact. Okay, the point is, people out there know their stuff, and if a gun person reads that a revolver has a safety (or a clip) you will loose that reader forever, and he will tell his gun buddies and they will laugh at you and never again open one of your books.

When I write about professionals, I interview them. I’ve talked extensively with US Marshals, Homeland Security personnel, TSA officials, FBI agents, agents with the DEA, CIA operatives, bounty hunters, homicide detectives from several cities, beat cops, and deputy sheriffs. I will interview attorneys, coroners, physicians, judges, herpetologists, forensic experts, and any other professionals who can answer my questions on any related subject. The plain truth is: experts are delighted to help you get it right. Ninety-nine percent of the time knowledgeable individuals will be delighted to tell you more than you need to know about their area of expertise.

For my first Thriller, THE LAST FAMILY, I was imagining a character who was going to kill a child using the curare-like drug, Succinocholine, a fast-acting paralytic commonly used by anesthesiologists. (I later changed the victim to a grown woman and threw the boy off a cliff). Given in large amounts the drug stops the heart muscles cold. I called the Mississippi State Medical Examiner out of the blue, and merely said, “I’m John Miller, and I’m writing a novel. I need to know how much Succinocholine it would take to kill a 9-year-old child.” After about three beats, the doctor replied, “How much does the child weigh?”

Before we hung up, I told him I’d never witnessed an autopsy, and he told me to drive down and he’d treat me to one. Several days later, I was standing beside a stainless table in Brandon, Mississippi, watching the good doctor ply his trade. As a result I can write a believable autopsy scene because I know what the room and the action looks and sounds like, and even why the good doctor smoked cigars while deconstructing corpses.

You can set a story in a fictional place, based on a real one or plucked strictly from your imagination. If you use a real place as a setting, go there and walk it, or change the location to one you can walk. If you write about the French Quarter in New Orleans, you should know which direction the one-way streets run and what the buildings look like on those streets. Being there allows you to gather impressions. Learn what a place smells like, how the people on the street look, and the phrasing and cadence of their speech. Gather names of your local characters from people you meet, from gravestones or local phone books. It’s about the details. It is as important to write where you know, as well as what you know. Your readers––those who know––will notice the difference, and those who don’t will still appreciate your descriptions.

When I set UPSIDE DOWN in New Orleans I walked side streets and used locations around the French Quarter that tourists never see, as well as some they might. When I had a character running for her life, I walked her route, and experienced for myself what she would be seeing, hearing and smelling as she fled from professional killers. Even though I lived in New Orleans for nine years, I made a trip back to the Crescent City to see what things in the area had changed radically during my absence.

I had crucial scenes in UPSIDE DOWN that take place on the Canal Street Ferry, so I went on the Thomas Jefferson, asked for the engineer and he gave me a tour of the vessel. I asked him how my character might go about taking over the boat, and he told me. I walked the vessel with the engineer and took a lot of pictures for reference, timed the crossing, asked the crew questions and I made notes that included my impressions and the names of any items I might want to write into my story.

When I sat down to write those chapters I was able to choreograph action knowing which doors led where, how long the trip across the River took, and exactly where everybody who worked or rode on the boat might be during a run across the river. I knew how many people worked on the ferry and what job each of the crew was responsible for. I studied the passengers, and watched how the cars came on, how they were parked, and how they exited the vessel. When I wrote the action months later, I could close my eyes and be on the vessel. I could smell the river and the engine exhaust, and hear the engine, the horns of other vessels, the sound of the Thomas Jefferson’s bow pushing through the still surface, and the voices of the passengers heading home after a long day.

You can learn a great deal about a place over the internet, and by talking to people on the phone, but the important impressions you certainly can’t get that way, and the little things allow the reader to more fully experience a late-night ride across the Mississippi River. I changed some minor things on my ferry, but I was accurate where it counted. By the time I finished those chapters, I was sure that only the man who designed the vessel and the people who work on her would spot my changes, but I was confident that very few others would.

Poetic license won’t cover blatant ignorance on a subject or a real setting you are writing into your book. Research involves an investment in an author’s time, energy and (often as not) some expense, but I believe that my primary job is to entertain my readers and make sure they get the best story I can write. As an author, I believe I owe my readers as much realism and texture as I can write into a fictional story.

Well-Behaved Characters by John Gilstrap

Posted on by

Like all authors, I suppose, I teach a number of writing classes and attend my share of conferences, and one of the questions that always comes up goes something like this: “I hear authors talk about how there comes a point in every story when the characters take over and start writing the story for you. Does that happen to you?”

The short answer is no; and frankly, it sort of ticks me off. I’d love to cede the process of plot development to my characters. Hell, somewhere in the middle of the second act, where all the tedious stuff is being manipulated and I’ve got to keep the pacing going, I’d cede the process to a stranger in a grocery store if he could make it any less painful.

As it is, my characters just sit there and wait to be told what to do. Lazy bastards. Not an original thought from any of them. In fact, during those tough times when I’ve written myself into a corner and don’t know how to extricate myself, I believe I’ve seen them chuckling at my plight. If I didn’t need the characters to make the story work, I swear sometimes that I’d fire them all.

I faced a storytelling crisis last weekend. Staring down the throat of an August 15 deadline for Grave Secrets (coming in June, ’09), I needed an ending. I mean, I already had an ending from the initial drafts, but I needed an ending. A kick-ass final sequence that would leave the reader exhausted and satisfied. The one I already had took care of the satisfaction part, but it didn’t have the roller coaster feel that I wanted.

So I shot one of the characters.

Don’t worry, it wasn’t a gratuitous thing. The shooting is organic to the plot, and it provides the twist I needed. It also wiped those sanctimonious smirks off their faces. Sometimes it helps to remind them of the power I have over their lives.

Seriously, though, when I found myself in this crisis-of-ending, I think I discovered what authors really mean when they talk about characters taking over. By shooting that character, I gave the other characters in the scene something to react to. Things started happening—things that I hadn’t planned for, which is really saying something for an author who is as outline obsessed as I—and new twists occurred to me as I wrote. I got really into the scene. The characters’ reality became so much my own reality that all I had to do was observe and record what I saw in my imagination. It was one of those moments of high concentration that I think every writer adores. When I finished and went back and read the thirty pages I’d written, I loved it. I’d nailed it.

I submitted the manuscript a week early!

Back to this business of characters taking on lives of their own. I’ve decided that when I’m in the zone, writing fiction has a lot in common with method acting. As the creator of characters, I spend a lot of time in my characters’ head space. Every action they take is the result of some plot-related motivation, and over time I come to understand those motivations. As plot twists come along—triggered by the actions of other characters whose motivations I’ve come to understand even as the rest of the cast have not—the reaction becomes obvious.
It’s not about them telling me what to do; it’s about me drawing them clearly enough to know what they’d do on their own if they were real enough to walk among us.

I do love this job.

Welcome to…THE KILL ZONE!!!

Posted on by

By Michelle Gagnon

That sounds so ominous, doesn’t it?

So I drew the short straw for the inaugural Kill Zone posting. It’s a lot of pressure. I feel the need to write something weighty and momentous, a breathtaking post befitting the gravitas of a blog launch.

After a week of pondering, I’ve still got nothing. So in lieu of providing an illuminating perspective on an important issue, I’m going to do a whiny wrap-up of my recent book tour instead. With any luck, John and Clare have come up with something more impressive for their turn. A person can always hope, right?

And away we go…

My Book Tour, aka “Death March with Signing Pen”

Just to clarify, I’m not really complaining. I’m know that I’m lucky to have books published, luckier still that people appear to be reading them, and that foolish booksellers allow me into their stores armed with my bookmarks and refrigerator magnets. I love bookstores in general, and I’m a shameless performer, so the opportunity to get up in front of people and pontificate is something you’ll have to pry from my cold dead hands. That said, as I enter week four of my book tour (which I’ve officially dubbed “death march with signing pen”), I have come to notice the downside. I’m truly a homebody at heart; I love spending ninety percent of my time locked indoors with little but a keyboard for company. So being gone for extended periods of time is not only wearing, it makes me start missing things…

1. Food: I have no idea how a person manages to eat dinner during these tours. I leave my house around 5PM to get to most of these events, and then I generally get home around 10 or 11PM. Most local restaurants have closed by the time I’ve finished reading, and when I get home I don’t have the energy to assemble a bowl of cereal. Seriously, I haven’t had a hot meal in weeks. I’m wasting away. I’ve developed a theory that this is how Lee Child remains so svelte.

2. Television: I’m way behind on my programming. I’ve actually had to delete things from my Tivo UNWATCHED to make space for more critical shows. Which presents a horrible conundrum for me: though I have yet to watch the HD version of “The Science of Sleep,” I had intended to watch it someday. Will it be on again in the future? Can I really risk deleting it in favor of an episode of Project Runway?
Which leads to my next concern: as far behind as I am on my regular series, I’m completely in the dark when it comes to reality shows. This might not seem grave to some of you, but when my husband has a better idea of who might win “So You Think You Can Dance” than I do, things have gone horribly awry.

3. Company: I can pretty much guarantee that if you do more than a few tour stops with the same author, the two of you will quickly adopt the worst attributes of an old married couple. So it was with Simon Wood and I. Early on, we found each other charming. He chuckled at my “accidentally killed off my main character” story, I gasped during his “trapped at an underground fight club in Tulsa” anecdote. But the bloom quickly faded, and by week three we were sniping at each other, rolling our eyes, and generally behaving like the main characters in “The War of the Roses.”

4. Family: Granted, this should have come first. You know things are getting bad when your kid stops recognizing you. All right, I’m exaggerating (I am a writer, after all) but after being gone for five days, then heading out for a different corner of the Bay Area every night, it does become a little surreal. Plus, I reflexively tried to sign my name on my toddler the other day. Not good.

5. Beds: Of course, at times the beds have been the least of my problems. There was, for example, the Days Inn behind the strip club in San Diego, with all sorts of sketchy characters lurking in the corridor outside my room. But a month of sleeping on strange beds does tend to wreak havoc on my spine.

6. Flights: I’m not a nervous flyer; in fact I used to look forward to getting on a plane and going somewhere exotic. Now that I’ve spent the past four weekends getting on and off planes, I have a few…let’s call them helpful suggestions…for the airlines. For instance, why not take off on time? I swear, I haven’t been on a trip in over six months that didn’t experience a two-to-five hour delay at the airport (or better yet, on the tarmac). And hey, is it really so difficult to have some form of nourishment available? I’ll pay for it; I would just love to be able to purchase that twenty-dollar mealy sandwich on the plane if I didn’t have the opportunity to grab one during my two mile-long sprint from gate 1 to gate 50 as I changed flights. And while we’re on the subject, consider turning off the seatbelt sign from time to time (an especially good idea during that three hour-long stint on the tarmac). When the person next to you maintains a running monologue on the size of their bladder, as the flight crew flips through celebrity rags and growls at anyone attempting to get out of their seats, it becomes abundantly clear that the glory days of civilian jetsetting have drawn to a tragic close.

So, anyone else have war stories to share? Best comment receives a signed edition of my first thriller THE TUNNELS. If you don’t win, console yourself by signing up for my newsletter at www.michellegagnon.com and I’ll toss your name in the hat for an Amazon Kindle, iPod Shuffle, Starbucks gift certificates, and other fabulous prizes.

Michelle Gagnon is a former modern dancer, bartender, dog walker, model, personal trainer, and Russian supper club performer. Her debut thriller The Tunnels was an IMBA bestseller. Her latest book, Boneyard, depicts a cat and mouse game between dueling serial killers. In her spare time she frantically watches television in an attempt to make room on her tivo drive.