By Elaine Viets

In the writing business, there’s one thing we all have in common – waiting.
I’m not sure if waiting should be classed as an art or a skill, but it’s something we writers endure. It’s our common bond. All writers, indie or traditionally published, beginners or old hands, are waiting for something.
We’re waiting for our manuscript to be accepted.
We’re waiting for our editor to read our next novel.
We’re waiting for the copy-edits to be finished.
We’re waiting for the page proofs.
We’re waiting for our agent to tell us what she thinks of our proposal.
We’re waiting to see how that new mystery we just released online sells.
We’re waiting to see the new cover the artist promised by Friday.
We’re waiting to see if our short story will be accepted in the new anthology.
We’re waiting for a contract.
We’re waiting to see if we won that contest for unpublished writers.
We’re waiting for a royalty check. (Oh, yeah, that one.)

Some of us are better at waiting than others. When I’m waiting, I’m like an old-school teenager waiting for a phone call from the coolest guy at school – I jump every time the phone rings, and nearly kill myself answering it. I’m afraid to leave the house, and when I do leave, I hurry back. I check messages every ten seconds. I bug Don, my long-suffering spouse, with questions he can’t answer: Do you think he’ll call today? If he does, will he buy it? If he buys it, do you think it will sell?
Meanwhile, Don’s waiting for me to shut up.
I ask myself all the questions that should calm me:
What’s the worst thing that could happen if it doesn’t work?
I can entertain myself for hours with worst-case scenarios: I won’t make any money. I’ll have to start over. I can always sell it elsewhere. I can, can’t I?
Possibly the scariest waiting game I ever played was when I met Genny Ostertag. Genny was a hot new editor at a major New York publisher, back when those existed, and she was going to the Malice Domestic convention at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia. In those days, the hotel was located on Jefferson Davis Highway. That road has since become the Richmond Highway.
Genny and my agent had been playing telephone tag. I waited for days to hear back from him, while chugging Pepto-Bismol. Finally he finally called with the news:
He’d arranged a meeting with Genny. “She wants to have a drink in the bar with you,” he said, “and she wants to talk to you about your proposed series.”
Wow. Visions of fat advances danced in my head.
“But remember,” he said. “You can’t mention it until she says the magic words: ‘What are you working on?’ Before that, you have to make small talk. Promise.”
I promised, though I didn’t realize the wear and tear it would create.
I went to the convention bar half an hour early to meet Genny. I was too scared to drink, so I bribed the bartender to dress up my club soda and make it look like an adult beverage. Genny arrived and ordered white wine. We met and said hello, then made stiff small talk until Genny said, “Can you believe this hotel is on Jefferson Davis Highway? Don’t they know they lost the Civil War?”

And suddenly we were talking about the Civil War. I dredged up every fact I could remember about the Jeff Davis and the Civil War. (Did you know that Jefferson Davis used to be Secretary of War for the USA, and he started the US Camel Corps? Yep, he served under President Franklin Pierce, and that’s about all I know on Pierce. Anyway, Davis believed camels would survive in the deserts of the far West better than horses. His idea might have worked, except the experiment was interrupted by guess what? The Civil War. Just as well. I can’t see John Wayne riding to the rescue on a camel.)
Our conversation seemed to last at least as long as that war (1861 to 1865, just ask me) until finally, finally, Genny said, “So, what are you working on?”
And I told her about my idea for the Dead-End Job series. Genny became my editor and bought the series, which resulted in fifteen mysteries and a lot of adventures working those dead-end jobs. So it was worth the wait.
What are you waiting for, readers?
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Don’t wait! Buy the newly released ebook versions of the Dead-End Job mysteries, the Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper mysteries, and Francesca Vierling mysteries here: https://awfulagent.com/ebooks/?author=elaine-viets

By Steve Hooley

It was college prep English class, junior year, in a little high school in rural Ohio, when I was first infected with the virus.

We had a new teacher that year, Miss Linda Warner, fresh out of college with a degree in English and teaching. She was only six years older than we were, which is probably why the boys paid such close attention. Plus, new teachers were supposed to be tested. Right?

We soon discovered that we weren’t the only ones paying attention. A new student, John Kauffman, showed up that year. We had never seen him before, and have never seen him since. In fact, we didn’t see him when he was with us. He was either invisible or a ghost.

He had to have been present though, because he turned in assignments on time and on topic. Somehow, his papers became shuffled in with the other students’ papers and ended up on the teacher’s desk. We didn’t actually know John was in the class until Miss Warner began reading his papers.

Apparently, she fell in love with John’s writing, because she read his papers to the class nearly every day. John pushed the boundaries of acceptability with his writing, and the class loved it, laughing and cheering. Junior English became a favorite class that year.

John stayed for the whole year and got an A in English. He apparently enrolled in band as well, where a new teacher gave him a B for the year. The rest of us never heard a note he played or saw his instrument.

By the next year, our senior year, John had disappeared. The mystery of his identity was never solved. I often wondered what became of him. I say John was real, and he was sent there to infect us with the bug, the virus, Scribophilia (the love of writing). Some of us never recovered and now have the chronic disease, Scribophiliosis.

For me, the disease went into remission for decades, as I studied math and science, medicine, and finally woodworking. But, in 2009 the virus recurred when I edited my father’s memoirs of his service for the United Nations during WWII. He was descending into dementia, his manuscript was nearly lost, and he was turning 90 that year. I spent the summer organizing his story, had the book printed, and presented him with a box of his books on his 90^th birthday. While I stood and watched my father sign books with a confused smile, the virus got me again.

I took some correspondence courses from the Institute for Writers (then called Long Ridge Writers Group). I thought I would write magazine articles for the woodworking journals, but quickly fell in love with fiction.

I tried my hand at Science Fiction, but had no success.

I returned to the Institute for Writers and, under the tutelage of Carole Bellacera, took the novel writing class and completed my first novel.

I found James Scott Bell’s books and began seriously studying the craft of writing. I joined the ACFW and began attending conferences. And then, from a fan of the authors here, I learned about The Kill Zone blog.

I learned from Joe Hartlaub the pitfalls of publishing contracts when a small publisher offered me a contract for my first book, then quickly went bankrupt. Joe helped me retrieve my copyright before it was lost forever.

About four years ago, after hearing JSB preach about Indie publishing, I decided to go that route. Two unpublished books, four anthologies, three published books in a children’s fantasy series, and the virus is still clinging to my DNA. And happily, I am not interested in a cure for my disease.

So, how about you? Can you remember when you were first infected with the virus? What were the circumstances? Is there a teacher, relative, or friend you would like to thank (or curse) for encouraging your interest in writing? Or, has there been a particularly memorable milestone along your writer’s journey that has shifted you into a higher gear?

By John Gilstrap

This morning, we take a look at a few hundred words that were submitted by Valiant Author, looking for an honest critique. I think we all know the drill by now. First, I’ll present the submission as I received it, and then it’ll be my turn on the back end:

Chapter 1

Beginnings

There was a knock at the door. “Major Edwards? It’s 0600; you requested a wake-up call, sir.”

Elijah turned the lamp on beside him and folded back the covers of his bed. The stark contrast between the warmth of the sheets and the chill of the room caused him to shiver. He sighed heavily as he placed his feet in the slippers beside the bed. He drew a short breath as they touched his skin, feeling more of ice than leather, before slowly walking to the door. Opening it, there stood a corporal with a clipboard.

“Thank you, Corporal, I’m up now,” said Edwards.

The Corporal nodded, “Yes Sir, do you need anything else Major?”

“No, that will be all.” Edwards replied closing the door.

The day’s ritual had begun.

He could hear the corporal move down the hallway and knock on the next door. Edwards rubbed his face, trying to wipe the fog of sleep from his mind, the stubble of his beard scratching his palms as he did. He turned from the door and paused to look around his “home”. A bed, with a washstand next to it, occupied most of the room. On the far wall, a wingback chair and ottoman sat before a fireplace. The walls, covered by large red roses on blue-tinted wallpaper, meant to be cheerful and welcoming.

The wood floor reflected his mood of late, worn, bare, and darkened by the passage of time. An Orderly cleaned it daily, yet it always smelled the same. A thick musty odor hung in the air, a reminder, of the many lives that passed through before him.

Edwards glanced at calendar on the wall, his only reminder that the world still moved along, read Friday, March 3^rd, 1944.

It’s been over two years since I arrived in 1942, just one of thousands of Americans. Each of us, full of piss and vinegar, ready to kick the Nazis clean back to Germany. It seems like a lifetime ago. The swift victory we all believed in never came and one day just became the next in this interminable war.

=

It’s Gilstrap again.

A common trait among first chapters is what I call throat clearing, akin to the moment in public speaking when you approach the microphone and deliver an ahem as your first message to the audience. It centers you as a speaker. It makes the vocal cords vibrate to assure you that they are in place and ready to go, but the noise itself does little to advance the message people have gathered to hear.

In fiction, throat clearing is often disguised as setting or, heaven forfend, a prologue. It happens to all of us in early drafts, and I wager these passages rarely survive the final edit. All of that is fine. It’s part of the process. And it’s the bulk of what we find in this submission.  It’s less story than it is pre-story.

I can’t begin to calculate the number of times various writers in this space have espoused the importance of beginning at a high point in a story. As one who writes a fair amount of violence into my books, I feel confident in proclaiming that the process of awakening from a sound sleep is rarely the high point in a book set in the midst of war. Even if what follows is not a series of shoot-’em-up action scenes, the fact of the war–and the sense of melancholy that flows from it–is the central theme of this opening. I would feel much more empathy for Major Edwards’s situation if he were blowing bloody snot out of his nose in a trench than having been rousted out of the rack by his orderly.

Alas, I feel that Valiant Author’s actual story begins on the other side of the page turn.

That said, let’s take a look at the sample itself, ignoring the strategic location within the story and concentrating instead on the craftsmanship itself. My comments are in bold face.

Beginnings (Okay, this is purely my own prejudice, and I confess that I might be completely off-base, but I dislike named chapters. They seem trite and old-fashioned to me.)

There was a knock at the door. (This form of sentence construction–“there was . . .” is toxic to narrative. It’s so horribly passive. It means nothing. Room service knocks on doors, and so do SWAT teams when they serve a warrant, but each represents an entirely different variety of contact with the door.) “Major Edwards? It’s 0600; you requested a wake-up call, sir.” (A wake-up call? Is this in fact a hotel? And if so, why is a corporal doing the wakeup duty? Under the circumstances, not knowing what corner of the war Major Edwards occupies, 0600 feels a lot like sleeping in. While we’re here, another pet peeve of mine is the use of numerals in dialogue. I always spell things out–oh six hundred. Also a pet peeve: semicolons have no place in fiction. [Cue the arguments from English purists.])

Elijah (Because we’re not yet acclimated to these surroundings or these characters, we don’t know who Elijah is. I would write this as, Major Elijah Edwards . . .) turned the lamp on beside him and folded back the covers of his bed. (This seems at once precious and vague. Did he yank the chain on the lamp? Spin a knob? Was the knob knurled? Yellow light? Bright enough to hurt his eyes? And as for folding down the covers, is that really the image you’re after? That seems so very fastidious.) The stark contrast between the warmth of the sheets and the chill of the room caused him to shiver. (He shivered in the cold. We’ll understand why.) He sighed heavily as he placed his feet in the slippers beside the bed. (Generally speaking, sighs are a mistake. Heavy sighs are always a mistake in all genres but a few. As for the slippers, well, I guess we all must suffer in wartime.) He drew a short breath as they touched his skin, feeling more of ice than leather, before slowly walking to the door. (I don’t know where you intend to go with this story, so this might not be a criticism, but I hate this guy. He’s a whiny, privileged REMF [look it up]. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you’ve nailed it.) Opening it, there stood a corporal with a clipboard. (This is a tortured sentence. Notice the recurrence of the “there” construction.)

My recommendation is to kill all of the above paragraph–and the one immediately below–and replace it with something like, “Yup.”

“Thank you, Corporal, I’m up now,” said Edwards.

The Corporal nodded, “Yes Sir, do you need anything else Major?” (I wasn’t around in WW2, but this seems like a lot sucking up to a major. It’s not that senior a rank. Here again, I could be wrong.)

“No, that will be all.” Edwards replied closing the door.

The day’s ritual had begun.

Note: In over 150 words of text, nothing has happened. A guy heard a knock and he stood up. In 154 words.

He could hear the corporal move down the hallway and knock on the next door. (So everyone on the hall gets a wakeup call?) Edwards (He was Elijah above. Pick one and stay with it.) rubbed his face, trying to wipe the fog of sleep from his mind, the stubble of his beard scratching his palms as he did. He turned from the door and paused to look around his “home”. A bed, with a washstand next to it, occupied most of the room. On the far wall, a wingback chair and ottoman sat before a fireplace. The walls, covered by large red roses on blue-tinted wallpaper, meant to be cheerful and welcoming. (Still, nothing has happened. But I am hating him more. I mean, honestly. Who chose such awful wallpaper? I’m sure he’d take a trench any day.)

The wood floor reflected his mood of late, worn, bare, and darkened by the passage of time. An Orderly cleaned it daily, yet it always smelled the same. A thick musty odor hung in the air, a reminder, of the many lives that passed through before him. (Now, I might be thinking too hard. Are we in a hospital? Orderlies (never capitalized in the middle of a sentence) could be stretcher pushers, or, since this is a military setting, they could be folks who wake up officers and get their uniforms ready–though not likely for a major.

Edwards glanced at calendar on the wall, his only reminder that the world still moved along, read Friday, March 3^rd, 1944.

It’s been over two years since I arrived in 1942, just one of thousands of Americans. Each of us, full of piss and vinegar, (cliche) ready to kick the Nazis clean back to Germany. It seems like a lifetime ago. The swift victory we all believed in never came and one day just became the next in this interminable war. (Quoted thoughts can be really tricky. We don’t think in complete sentences–at least I don’t. I think in feelings, images. I certainly don’t engage in eloquent internal monologues. If I were writing this, I would write it as close third-person narrative.)

It’s still me, but I took off the heavy dark coat.

Valiant Author, I hope you understand that honest feedback is intended as a kindness, not as a spirit-breaker. I encourage you to re-think your story’s opening–and perhaps the entire story, whatever that might be–to approach it from the point of view of readers who crave good tales and want authors to snatch them by the lower lip and pull them into drama from which they cannot look away. At each turn in your story–at each new paragraph, even–ask yourself if the words you’re writing are advancing either plot or character. In a perfect world, every passage advances both at the same time.

Okay, TKZ family, it’s your turn . . .