By PJ Parrish

Am a little under the weather today, so this post is a bit of a cheat. I love reading a feature in the New York Times Book Review called By The Book. Famous writers are asked a series of standard questions about their tastes. Always fun to read their revealing answers. I’m not famous but I’ll give it go. And then you guys can weigh in.

What books are on your nightstand?

Just went and checked. Well, this was surprising. Two out of three are non-fiction and I am pretty much a novel-addict. Am plowing through (still!) Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King. It’s the story behind the painting of the Sistine Chapel. I am not Catholic but I am fascinated by all things papal and this recounting of the power politics behind maybe the world’s greatest masterpiece is riveting. Pope Julius was so incensed over Michelangelo’s slow, secretive progress that he took to disguising himself and sneaking up into the scaffolding. Michelangelo caught him one night and hurled planks at the poor guy. The pope, bellowing curses, fled. The artist, fearing for his life, bolted off to Florence to hide until the pope cooled down. That scene didn’t make the Charleton Heston movie.

Second is Once In a Great City: A Detroit Story by David Maraniss. An elegantly told elegy for my home town that was abandoned by the world. Third (spine yet uncracked) is The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle. I’m off to Paris in 10 days and I always take along a book set in my destination. This thriller just won the Edgar for best Paperback Original. Met Kimberly in the bathroom at the Edgars. She was so gobsmacked she could barely talk.

What’s the last great book you read?

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I’ve read it twice now. An American epic. It’s tenderness gets to me and the characters still walk around in my head.

If you were to write something besides thrillers, what would you write?

Erotica. Tried it once. A sad middle-aged woman goes to Italy and gets laid. (This was pre-Under the Tuscan Sun so don’t jump on me.) My title was brilliant: Tarantella, which is a crazed Italian dance thought to cure deadly spider bites and bring the victim back to life. I still have the manuscript. It’s awful. I unwittingly wrote a comic novel.

What do you read when you’re working on a book? And what kind of reading do you avoid while writing?

When I was writing thrillers, I never read anything. Just couldn’t. My brain was too out there on Planet X to concentrate. I used to survive by binging on sports TV. This is how I became a hockey fan.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

That Keith Richards is really bitchy. In his biography Life, he says of Bruce Springsteen: “If there was anything better around, he’d still be working the bars of New Jersey.” And he says Mick Jagger is, ahem, not well-endowed: “He has a tiny todger.” (Which is an interesting new word I learned).

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?

Soupy Sez: My Zany Life and Times. It’s the autobiography of the infamous Detroit kids TV star Soupy Sales. It’s hilarious and ultimately quite sad. I loved this guy.

What moves you most in a work of literature?

Emotional honesty from the writer. Opening a vein. You can’t fake it. Though many try.

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

I grew up reading the backs of cereal boxes so I will read anything. But I don’t like political thrillers. The reality is bad enough.

How do you organize your books?

By category. All my dance books, from my near two decades as a dance critic, are grouped together. All my royal family books share a high shelf. Thrillers and mysteries, mostly from friends, dominate the lower rungs. 🙂 And there’s one shelf where all my France/Paris books live together in happy utopian disdain.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

Several very old and rare books on slavery. It was research for one of our series novels involving the underground railroad but I got carried away. One historic title is so offensive I shelve it spine in.

What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?

Charlotte’s Web. Got it as a little kid. It got lost, along with much of my childhood paraphernalia, in our many moves. I found a beat-up copy at a barn sale last summer here in Michigan. It smells musty and is inscribed “To my daughter Anne.”

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?

Well, my hero, I’d have to say, is Charlotte the spider. She’s confident, thoughtful and a true-blue friend. Villain? Two: Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre. Moping around in moors, mired in self-pity. And he locks his wife in the attic! And Lady MacBeth, with one of the best lines in all of fiction: “Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” Wish I had written that.

So, crime dogs? How would you answer any of these questions? Pick one or two or all. Would love to hear your secrets.

By PJ Parrish

Good morning, crime dogs. I am probably somewhere over Lake Erie as you read this. Or maybe catching the bus from lovely Newark airport into Manhattan. It’s Edgar Awards time, and as banquet chair, I am going to be out of touch today through Thursday night.

So, as I usually do, I thought I give you a look at some of the nominees this year. I focus on cover design because — obviously! — I have not read all the books under consideration. I like following trends in book design and it’s important to talk about it here because many of you, being self-published, design your own covers or have a lot of input into whomever you chose to design your book.

Your cover design is one of the most important decisions you have to make. It’s your mini-billboard to get readers’ attention, whether in a thumbnail-size on Amazon, on an iPhone, or, if you’re lucky, on an actual book shelf somewhere.

A cover creates the first impression, and encourages readers to buy your story. That’s why it’s essential to invest in it. Please, please, I beg of you, don’t hand this important task over to your nephew Jerome who just aced his sophomore art class. Hire a pro.

Two quick things to always keep in mind: Pay close attention to genre standards to signal to potential readers that your book is what they seek. If you’re writing dark, hardboiled stuff, you need all your cover elements — color, fonts, graphics — to convey the MOOD of your book. And if you’re writing in the grand tradition of Mary Higgins Clark, you’re going to want to go for something less gruesome or gritty. Something like this year’s nominees for the MHC Award:

Second, pay attention to what’s hot in the market these days. Yeah, there’s room for you to be yourself, but it doesn’t hurt to know what’s catching the eye these days.

That said, predicting what will be effective is not easy. Last year, the trend was toward bold typography (mainly sans-serif), nostalgic revival, and very abstract graphics. I see this in many of the Edgar covers this year and experts predict this will continue.

In cozies and juvenile mysteries, large serif or cursive sans serif fonts depicted in bright hues are popular. In fantasy and thrillers, animated GIF covers are hot — images like drifting clouds or flickering flames.

Eye-popping color is a big thing across every genre. As one designer put it:

The era of muted tones and grayscale snooze-fests is officially over. Bright, bold colors are everywhere, and it all started with contemporary romance covers that looked like they were designed in a candy shop. But now, these vibrant palettes are invading every genre—fantasy, thrillers, even horror (the horror!).

That gritty crime novel? It might have a shocking pink accent. Your post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic? Say hello to vivid oranges and electric blues. Why? Because readers want their bookshelves (and eReaders) to feel like an art gallery—not a funeral procession. And let’s be honest, a pop of color is way more inviting than 50 shades of beige.

Other mini-trends: BIG TYPE that takes up the whole cover space, like this:

Collages are big right now. Oddly enough in young adult — botanicals! Also, stock photography is yesterday’s news; the fresh look is illustrations.

Now let’s look at some of the Edgar covers to see if what I just said holds water.

BIG BOLD SPACE-HOGGING TYPE

ILLUSTRATIONS INSTEAD OF PHOTOS

COLLAGES!

BOLD TYPOGRAPHY

AND A FEW COVERS I JUST LIKE

I find this nominee for Best First Novel just haunting. No screaming colors, almost black and white. (only trendy thing is sans serif font). Yet the cloud image around the woman’s profile amplifies the title and makes me want to read the story.

Another winner, I think. This Best Young Adult nominee could have done the usual stock photo of an amorous Asian couple in a clinch. But the illustration conveys a modern mood (look at their expressions — is that love or hate?) with a nod to traditional Asian art.  Did you notice the half-hidden crane?

An interesting example of illustration rather than photograph. Not sure this one works, however, because the creamy background and water-color illustration might read too vague on anything other than a large format.

I’m conflicted on this Best Novel nominee. The setting is right there in the title but the combo of the green type and the murky street scene reads a bit muddy. BUT…then you see that one lighted window at the top of the building. Not bad.

Well, that’s all I have room for this year. If you’d like to see all the nominees and their covers, click here. Congratulations to all the Edgar nominees. This year marks Mystery Writers of America’s 80th anniversary. By the way, the 80th anniversary is designated as OAK. Which isn’t very interesting. Unless you’re thinking in terms of coffins or maybe Poe’s Cask of Amontillado.

By PJ Parrish

I love stories that take place in frozen tundras. Alien James Arness unthawed and on a rampage in The Thing From Another World. Neanderthal Timothy Hutton unthawed and seeking his god in Iceman. The Green Bay Packers vanquishing The Dallas Cowboys in the 1967 championship Ice Bowl game.

Icy climes have been the setting for some top-notch fiction. Maybe it’s the innate drama of the setting, or more likely the potential therewithin to exploit ice as a metaphor. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 short story “The Ice Palace” is about a southern belle who becomes engaged to a man from the North. She almost freezes to death in an ice palace at a winter carnival, which leads her to rethink the engagement. But ice stands as a metaphor for the differing attitudes of Northerners and Southerners.

Some of my favorites: Smilla’s Sense of Snow with its chilling opening at a Greenland funeral. Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman. And The Hunting Party, where Lucy Foley uses an important trope of the mystery genre: People aren’t always what they appear to be below their frozen surfaces.

And I have to add in here one of the most startling opening lines in fiction, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Full disclosure: Several of my own books take place in the frozen wilds of my native Michigan, including a scene where a body is found frozen in a lake and a terrifying trip across the “ice bridge” between Mackinac Island and the mainland that plunges my hero Louis Kincaid in the icy depths. So when this submission came across my desk, I was predisposed to like it. Thanks for offering it up, dear writer. I’ll be back in few minutes with my comments.

OUT ON THE ICE
a horror story

Hospital Corpsman Quinn Marie Chambers sat in the snow tractor her medical emergency kit in her lap, watching the other naval personnel and Marines investigating the beached whale. A small group of native Inuits looked on and seemed nervous.

There was little for Quinn to do as long as the other members of the Emergency Response Team didn’t get hurt somehow. She shivered at the cold.

The Inuit guide they called Mac sat in the back seat. He stirred, trying to get a better view of the goings on.

Quinn sipped warm coffee from her thermos cup and watched Chief Petty Officer Selsman trudge toward the big snow tractor. She finished her cup and poured another for him.

A nasty wind ladened with heavy snow and particles of ice blew into the cab when Selsman opened the driver-side door.

Quinn handed him the cup. “Beached whale?”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean?

“Someone put nine bullets into its head.”

“Murder?’

“Maybe. Not sure if you can actually murder a whale.”

Mac said, “This will anger Qalupalik. This is an unnatural death. This will dirty her hair.” He shook his head in resignation.

“Who the hell is Qalupalik?’ Quinn asked.

“She is—”

“—a legend. A Greenland fairy tale. She is the monster in the deep protecting sea life. It teaches children not to screw up the ocean,” Selsman said.

Mac held his chin up and crossed his arms..

“Don’t worry about it. NCIS will be here soon to investigate to see if any of our personnel are involved. If not, it’s not our problem.”

In the back seat, Mac quietly chanted an Inuit prayer for the dead whale.

The two Marines on the team high stepped through the snow and wind toward the tractor. One held his hand wrapped in a handkerchief that had blood stains on it.

Quinn scooted over to let the marine have space to sit down. She tended to the wound. “How did this happen?’

“I was digging a bullet out of the whale’s head and my knife slipped.”

“Did you get the bullet?” Chief Selsman asked.

The marine smiled. “Damn right I did. And I bagged and tagged it as well.”

“Gotta love a good marine,” Selsman said.

“You should throw that bullet back into the ocean so Qalupalik can confront the killer with it,” Mac said.

“Can’t. It’s evidence,” Selsman said, starting up the tractor’s engine.

___________________________________

First off, I like the concept here. I mean, a dead whale isn’t as sexy, crime-wise, as a dead human being. But the fact the whale has nine bullet in its head is pretty cool, but more intriguing: Why do these Marines care? So I was definitely willing to read on. Good original set-up. Haven’t read this one before.

Some other good things: The writer handles dialogue well. It’s easy to follow, clean and I like the clipped no-nonsense tone of the Marines. It feels authentic.

But. Here’s the one thing I didn’t like: The protag’s detachment. The clue is right there in the second paragraph: “There was little for Quinn to do as long as the other members of the Emergency Response Team didn’t get hurt somehow.”

She is watching. She is waiting. She is doing nothing. All the interesting action is happening apart from her. Now, here’s the problem: She is not an active part of this investigation. Her job is medical only. As the writer puts it, she can do nothing but sit there unless someone gets hurt. So right from the get-go, she is positioned as a passive character by the circumstances.

How could this have been fixed? Not sure. And it’s not up to me to rethink or rewrite someone’s story. And it’s not terrible the way it is. I just wish there was a better portal for Quinn to enter the story, grab the spotlight — and our attention. So I am going to ask the writer to step back and look for a different angle, a different perspective on this scene unfolding.

It could be something as simple as changing the order of events. Does Quinn HAVE to be sitting in the snow tractor waiting? Wouldn’t she be more interesting if basic curiosity moved her to go out and see the whale for herself? Maybe, dear writer, you entered your story a beat too late. Maybe you need to back up and have her out there on the ice with the others during the initial discovery?

What would that do to improve things? You eliminate distance and detachment. If she’s OUT THERE you can give us a description of the whale and the scene (right now we have none). If she’s OUT THERE, she can see for herself the whale’s head. Instead of you saying she is watching (passive) the marines investigate “a beached whale” you can have her OUT THERE thinking (active) “This was no beached whale. Someone had shot the whale in head.”

A couple years ago, a pygmy whale washed up on a California beach with a bullet hole in its head. True story. I will spare you the gory photos here. (here’s the link) but it would have made for a very bloody dramatic scene for Quinn to witness and describe for readers.

Quinn needs to see it. Quinn needs to feel it. Quinn needs to tell us what she is experiencing. The last place you want her to be is inside a vehicle, drinking coffee and waiting.

Make her a hero. Even if there is not yet anything heroic for her to do. You need to set her up as a potential hero. Active, not reactive.

Then, as she views this massacred whale, a marine gets cut and she finally has something to do. Maybe this then can provide contrast to her feeling of impotency, of NOT being a part of the action.

Two other problems: First, where are we? There is one reference to “Greenland fairy tale.” Does this take place in Greenland? Where exactly? Because you’re dealing with Marines, I assume we’re near Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base). This is way up north and operated by the U.S. Space Force. It is one of the most strategically important military sites in the world.  (Hence its presence in our political news). You must find a way to establish this. It can be handled easily through Quinn’s thoughts:

They were at least twenty miles from the air base at Pituffik. There wasn’t a village or a single hut anywhere near this isolated beach. They were 750 miles from the North Pole and the nearest settlement, Qaanaaq, was more than 70 miles away.

Second problem: You really need to spice up your description. Such a fabulous setting. Such a gruesome “murder.”  Yet you don’t give us any sense of what it looks like, feels like, SMELLS like. (dead mammal on beach!). Again, we’re taking about the difference between telling and showing. Don’t tell me it’s cold; show me. Don’t tell me the Inuits “are nervous.” Show me via their actions, through her consciousness.

This is a good first draft, dear writer. With a re-positioning of Quinn and some vivid description (use all the senses!), you’ll have a stronger opening. Some quick line edits follow. My comments in blue

Hospital Corpsman Don’t open with a title. Find a way to slip in later, more artfully what she does. Her ACTIONS should do it. Quinn Marie Chambers sat in the snow tractor her medical emergency kit in her lap, watching the other naval personnel and Marines investigating the beached whale. A small group of native Inuits looked on and seemed nervous. This opening graph is passive. Why not opening with a vivid description of the corpse? Then surprise us by telling us, through Quinn’s thoughts, that it’s not a MERE beached whale.

There was little for Quinn to do as long as the other members of the Emergency Response Team didn’t get hurt somehow. She shivered at the cold. A little lazy; what does this cold FEEL like? Where is she from? Maybe this godforsaken Greenland cold feels completely different than the cold in her native WHERE? Never miss a chance to compare and contrast and to slip in a nuggest of her backstory.

The Inuit guide they called Mac sat in the back seat. He stirred, trying to get a better view of the goings on. More distancing. 

Quinn sipped warm coffee from her thermos cup and watched Chief Petty Officer Selsman trudge toward the big snow tractor. She finished her cup and poured another for him.

A nasty wind ladened with heavy snow and particles of ice I know you can do better than this. “nasty wind” is cliche. Has she been in this climate/place long or is she new here? Frame it through her experience and consciousness blew into the cab when Selsman opened the driver-side door.

Quinn handed him the cup. “Beached whale?”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean? Again, she is passive. And you’ve deprieved the reader of SEEING THE ACTUAL SCENE! 

“Someone put nine bullets into its head.”  Bingo! This is where things get interesting. This should be like the third paragraph of your opening.

“Murder?’

“Maybe. Not sure if you can actually murder a whale.”

Mac said, “This will anger Qalupalik,” Mac said. This will dirty her hair.” He shook his head in resignation.  Great line! Let it stand there alone for a second.

“Who the hell is Qalupalik?’ Quinn asked.

“She is—”

“—a legend, Selsman said.. A Greenland fairy tale. She is the monster in the deep protecting sea life. It? teaches children not to screw up the ocean,” Selsman said.  Love how you brought in the Inuit lore.

Mac held his chin up and crossed his arms.. Not sure what you’re going for here? Anger? 

“Don’t worry about it. NCIS will be here soon to investigate to see if any of our personnel are involved. If not, it’s not our problem.” Who’s talking? And you need to start dealing with Greenland officials or at least bringing it up. Whales are both hunted AND strictly protected in Greenland. They would be obligated to immediately notify proper authorities.  

In the back seat, Mac quietly chanted an Inuit prayer for the dead whale. Unless Quinn understands Inuit, she wouldn’t have a clue what he’s chanting about. STAY IN HER POV. She can think that he seems to be chanting or singing but she can’t really know, can she? That is YOU the writer talking, not the character. Again, stay in her POV: What does it SOUND like? Don’t tell me he’s chanting; describe the sound.

The two Marines on the team high stepped through the snow First mention, btw, that there’s snow on the ground and wind toward the tractor. One held his hand wrapped in a handkerchief that had blood stains on it.

Quinn scooted over to let the marine have space to sit down. She tended to the wound. “How did this happen?’

“I was digging a bullet out of the whale’s head and my knife slipped.”

“Did you get the bullet?” Chief Selsman asked.

The marine smiled. “Damn right I did. And I bagged and tagged it as well.”

“Gotta love a good marine,” Selsman said.

“You should throw that bullet back into the ocean so Qalupalik can confront the killer with it,” Mac said.

“Can’t. It’s evidence,” Selsman said, starting up the tractor’s engine.

So, dear writer….again, thanks for submitting. I enjoyed reading this and want Quinn to claim her spotlight. And make this setting a “character” in itself. Remember what Smilla said: The Inuits have a hundred words for snow. You need more words! Would love the see your next attempt. Keep writing!

By PJ Parrish

Rejection bites.  Even 45 years after the fact.

I was cleaning out some old files the other day, searching for my portfolio of clips from my days working on my college newspaper The Eastern Echo. 

Didn’t find the clips but I found my first ever rejection letter from a publisher. It doesn’t have a date on it, but it had to be somewhere around 1980. That was back when I was trying to break into the romance novel business. I had a half-written manuscript and no clue what I was up against.

I decided to send it out to an agent. Guess who I picked? Mort Janklow. He was probably one of the top five literary agents in those days. His client list included Judith Krantz, Thomas Harris, Nancy Reagan and some guy living in The Vatican named John Paul.

I got a very nice letter back from him [his secretary], saying thank you but no thanks. So I decided, well, hell, who needs an agent? Why not go right to the publishers? I told you, I knew nothing back then.

So I sent my partial off to Dell Publishing. I don’t remember who I sent it to. And until the other day when I was cleaning, I didn’t remember exactly what their letter to me said. But here it is:

In case you can’t read it, here’s what it says. The bold-faced bracketed comments are mine.

Dear Sir or Ms. Montee,
We thank you for the opportunity [yeah, right!] to consider your proposal or manuscript. [what, they can’t figure out WHICH?]. We are sorry [I’ll bet] to inform you that the book does not seem a likely prospect [how elegant!] for the Dell Book list. Because we receive many individual submissions every day [you think I care how overworked you are?] it is impossible for us to offer individual comment [I’d say so since there is no human being attached to this letter to begin with] We thank you for thinking of Dell [insert sound of raspberry here] and we wish you the best of success [ie don’t darken our doorstep again with your crap] in placing your book with another publisher. [you’ll be sorry some day!]

Sincerely, [you’re kidding, right?]
The Editors [aka the evil Manhattan cabal trying to keep me unpublished]

I can laugh about the letter now. But it stung at the time, and in a way it still does. Because I remember how insignificant it made me feel at the time. (I didn’t realize how insignificant I actually was in the grand scheme of publishing). The impersonal-ness. The cop-out cliches. The fact that no one had the guts to even sign their name. But I kept this letter for some reason. Who knows why? My mom might know, because she always said that I never liked being told what to do. And these anonymous editors were telling me I couldn’t be a published writer.

(A year later, a different manuscript I had finished, was plucked out of the slush pile by an editor at Ballantine Books. They paid me $2,500. I was up and walking!)

Here’s the thing about rejection. It never stops. Even after you are published with a decent track record, you can still get dumped on. Four books into our Louis Kincaid series, my co-author sister Kelly and I decided we wanted to try our hand at a light mystery. We finished it, convinced we were the next Janet Evanovich, had our new pen name picked out and everything. But our agent couldn’t sell it. Not even to our own publisher. Which taught me a valuable lesson: It is not easy to write funny. I never tried that again.

Since I am retired now, I am sort of out of touch with the technical side of our business. Are query letters now done all by email? Does anyone even get paper rejection letters anymore? I kind of hope so, because tangible evidence of rejection can be a powerful motivator. Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie, was rejected by nearly 30 publishers. He kept the rejection letters pinned to his wall, eventually replacing the nail with a spike.

Do rejection emails still come in the same code of yesteryear?

1. “This doesn’t fit my needs at this time.”
2. “Your writing is strong but I don’t feel I can be enthusiastic enough to fully get behind this project.”
3. “I’m afraid I will have to take a pass. But I am interested in seeing other projects…”

What they really mean:

1. You can’t write.
2. I already have four authors who write interplanetary romantasy.
3. Solar Punk rip-offs are yesterday’s news. Have you considered writing a horror-hardboiled mash-up?

I don’t mean to make light of your woes if you are going through this phase of rejection now. It’s not fun. But you will get through this. You will keep going. And with time, you’ll probably get a better perspective about it. Like I did.

The manuscript I sent to Dell was really, really bad. It was called The Last Rose of Summer, by the way. Go ahead, you can steal that title. The manuscript had no business going out in the world in the state it was in. I know, because I kept it. And yeah, It found it, too. It was actually physically painful to read it. But it reminds me that I learned a lot, and I came a long ways. This is a learning process. It still is. It always will be.

I read a good column by David Brooks the other day. He normally writes about politics, but he is often drawn into the side current of family or tribal dynamics. He asked a simple question in his column: Why do people do things that are hard?

Why do marathoners run almost to bodily ruin? Why endure the tedium of practicing the violin? Why does your curiosity compel you to explore the darkest cave despite your fears of going down there?

Why do we keep writing when we don’t even know if someone will ever read it?

Brooks believes it has something to do living in an “offensive spirit.” Meaning, you’re drawn by a positive attraction, not fear of failure. You see obstacles as challenges, not threats. “By the time you reach craftsman status,” he writes, “you don’t just love the product, you love the process, the tiny disciplines, the long hours, the remorseless work.”

I know that strikes a chord with some of you.

So, if you are feeling blue today, just know this one thing: You are not alone. Pearl Buck’s novel The Good Earth was rejected on the grounds that Americans were “not interested in anything on China.” A editor passed on George Orwell’s  Animal Farm, explaining it was “impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” And let’s not forget the agent who dumped Tony Hillerman and told him to “get rid of all that Indian stuff.”

And know that if you remain in an “offensive spirit,” you can prevail. I feel this way about gardening. And trying to become a really good cook. And playing the piano and pickleball. David Brooks ends his column by quoting the sculptor Henry Moore. So I will as well — because it rings true whether you are writing a book or learning how to make pasta from scratch:

“The secret to life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is — it must be something you cannot possibly do!”

By PJ Parrish

It was early in my days as a mystery writer, and I thought I pretty much knew everything.

My first book got a really nice send-off from the great team at Kensington Books. The second book got an Edgar nomination. The third book in our Louis Kincaid series landed my co-author sister and me on the extended New York Times bestseller list.

I’m telling you this not to brag. But as a cautionary tale. Let’s keep going.

Then came book four, Thicker Than Water. From the start, my sister had reservations about it. I still remember what she said to one day when we were about 45,000 words into the first draft.  “It’s too….quiet,” she said.

She couldn’t quite articulate much more than that, it was just a feeling she had about the story. No one is murdered in present time; Louis is trying to solve a very cold case of a young woman’s death. The plot revolves around the dispicable man convicted of her murder, now out of prison, and two lawyers — one who put him behind bars and the other who died, knowing that he didn’t do much to prevent that. It is twisty, talky, and haunted by regret. Action took a rumbleseat to character. So yeah, it was a “quiet” book.

But that wasn’t the real problem. The problem was we let Louis get overshadowed by everyone else. He was the hero, yet we allowed the large cast of very colorful secondary characters to push him out of the spotlight while they strutted and fretted their grand hours on the stage.

Secondary characters are important. They can — and should — be a vital part of your story. No story can survive without them because they exist to support your protag and help propel the plot.

They are sounding boards, helpmates, or sidekicks. Iconic examples abound in crime fiction: Watson to Holmes, Cletus Purcel to Dave Robicheaux. Archie Goodwin to Rex Stout. Rocky to Jim Rockford.

They provide conflict and obstacles for your protago to overcome. Yes, this is what the antagoist does, but secondary characters can enrich a plot in small but significant ways — ie a police chief who constantly questions a detective’s methods.Captain McKay who dogs Dirty Harry Callahan to distraction.

They can be a love interest or companion. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro in Dennis Lehane’s series. Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum in Lilian Jackson Braun’s cozies.

They can be a foil, someone who provides a contrast to your protag. Nick Carraway to Jay Gatsby. Draco to Harry Potter.

They can be a mentor who helps keep your protag on the right track or see the bigger picture. M and James Bond. Dumbledore and Harry Potter.

As you can see, I’ve been thinking about secondary (and even tertiary) characters a lot. This is because I got hooked on Ted Lasso. Okay, I know it’s annoying to many of you when one of us goes nutso talking about a TV show you haven’t seen. But bear with me. Because I don’t think I have ever seen — or read — anything that does a better job with secondary characters than Ted Lasso. I strongly recommend you watch the series, not just for enjoyment, but for a great lesson in how to create and control a large cast of memorable characters.

Quick recap: Ted Lasso is a Kansas football coach who is hired to strategically tank a failing English soccer club. As head coach, he inherits a miserable quarrelsome team and an owner whose only goal is to punish her ex-husband by sabotaging his ex-team.

Digression: I thought Ted was a titular protag. But he’s actually a eponymous one. Jane Eyre = eponymous. The Man Who Would Be King = titular. Just saying…

The plot of Ted Lasso superficially revolves around the question of whether a guy who doesn’t know a red card from Red Bull can turn the franchise around. But the real drama comes from all the intricate and intertwined relationships and the paths of their individual character arcs. The show is about empathy, kindness, and human connection even as it tackles dark topics like mental health, addiction, and divorce with sensitivity and nuance. To say nothing about the chasms between fathers and sons.

Ted is the main guy. No doubt about that. As great secondary character Kathy Bates Libby Holden says in Primary Colors of the presidential candidate and his wife: “The Stantons are my sun. I lived my life drawing light and warmth from them.”

So it is with those in Ted’s orbit.

The show excels at crafting compelling secondary characters by giving them distinct personalities, personal growth arcs, and allowing them to drive storylines, even when not the main focus, creating a rich and relatable ensemble cast.

Ted is a classic fish out of the water, at soccer and his own life. But as the series goes on, Ted learns about his sport and the people around him, and starts to deal with his failing marriage, his anxiety and his father issues.

But as I said, every character in Ted Lasso has a unique personality, background and an important role in the story. Which brings us back to what we all, as writers, can learn from our second fiddles. Things to look for as you write:

Personal Growth Arcs
The secondary characters in Ted Lasso undergo significant personal growth throughout the series, developing new skills and changing their perspectives. Has-been soccer star Roy Kent is angry and unlikeable, but learns to let go of crippling grudges, forgive his enemies and himself.

Storyline Contributions
Secondary characters are not just background players. They often drive storylines and influence the main characters’ journeys. Team towel boy Nathan Shelley is ignored by the team and derided by his father, until he gets a chance to help coach. And become an unlikely plot catalyst.

Relatable Characters
The show focuses on creating characters that viewers can relate to, even if they are flawed or struggling. Team owner Rebecca Welton comes across as cunning and cold, hellbent only on destroying her ex. Her arc is redemption and atonement as she overcomes her loneliness to become a confident leader of men.

That’s just a few of the folks I came to love and root for. When I finally finished bingeing on the series, I felt exhilarated and sad, like I was saying goodbye to my family and best friends. Shoot, I admit it: I cried like a baby. Can there be any greater compliment to a writer?

One last note about my book Thicker Than Water. To this day, it remains one of my favorite books in my modest oeuvre. Because I love the people in the story. And because my sister finally, in the eleventh hour, figured out how to make it less “quiet.”

I spoke earlier about how, if you, the writer, are not careful, your second fiddles can out-perform your first chair. You have to find that fine line beween creating a vivid cast and not letting them take over. That is what happened to us. And worse, we took the gun out of Louis’s hand. We didn’t let him solve the case. We left it up to happenstance.

But…

In the second draft, Kelly found a way to put the gun back in Louis’s hand. So it was with Ted Lasso. He’s been running away from fatherhood for years, acting as dad to an entire team of grown men rather than the boy who needs him most. In the end, damn everyone else, he does what he has to do.

Keep writing, diamond dogs. And guess what? Ted Lasso is coming back for a new season.

By PJ Parrish

In the wee wee hours of the morning this week, I had an idea for a new story. Now, most things that happen around 3 a.m. usually don’t end well, and I should have remembered that, considering that the last time I was startled awake at that hour was when a coyote and neighborhood cat were squaring off in my driveway.

But no, I got up, grabbed a pen and wrote down an opening paragraph. Let me share it here now:

The deep waters, black as ink, began to swell and recede into an uncertain distance. A gray ominous mist obscured the horizon. The ocean expanse seemed to darken in disapproval. Crashing tides sounded groans of agonized discontent. The ocean pulsed with a frightening, vital force. Although hard to imagine, life existed beneath. Its infinite underbelly was teeming with life, a monstrous collection of finned, tentacled, toxic, and slimy parts. Below its surface lay the wreckage of countless souls. But we had dared to journey across it. Some had even been brave enough to explore its sable velveteen depths, and have yet to come up for precious air.

Whee, doggies! What’s that smell?

Okay, I didn’t really write that. But I had you going for a sec, didn’t I. But someone DID write it. Actually, it was 1,476 people who wrote that, give or take a few. This gawd awful paragraph was created years ago by Penguin Books for a project called “A Million Penguins.”

Maybe you heard about it. The idea was to write a novel with a million collaborators to be called a “wiki-novel”. It was launched by Penguin Books in collaboration with Kate Pullinger on behalf of the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University.

This is what the Penguin folks said on their website: “We’ve created a space where anyone can contribute to the writing of a novel and anyone can edit anyone else’s writing….we want to see whether a community can really get together, put creative differences aside (or sort them out through discussion) and produce a novel.”

Anyone could call up the site and contribute to the story. Because the site got more than 100 edits every hour, Penguin imposed “reading windows” that froze the novel so that editors could read over what had been changed to get their bearings on where the story was going. Chaos reigned. A month in, Penguin mercifully pulled the plug.

I was thinking about the Penguin project this week after reading an article at Literary Hub about how AI is transforming our business, and why writers should embrace it. To quote the author Debbie Urbanski in part:

So here’s what I really want us to imagine for the purpose of this essay: An AI writes a novel and the novel is good.

This is what a lot of people, and certainly a lot of writers, are angry and scared about right now. That AI, having been trained on a massive amount of data, including copyrighted books written by uncompensated authors, will begin writing as well or better than us, and then we’ll be out of a job. These concerns over intellectual property and remuneration are important but right now, it feels they’re dominating the discussion, especially when there are other worthwhile topics that I’d like to see added to the conversation around AI and writing.

Such as: how can humans and AI collaborate creatively?

Which brings me to a third possibility to consider: Can AI and a human write a novel together?

Sigh. I dunno. She posits that there is a “collaboration” possible between writer and AI. And that’s where I get queasy.

I collaborated with my sister Kelly on 15 books and a lot of short stories. It was at times a fitful process but always fruitful because we were equals and more important, we recognized that there was a third party in the collaboration that was always going to win any argument — the story.

I’ve had a couple other experiences with collaboration. Jeffery Deaver and Jim Fusilli asked me to join 14 other writers for a novel called The Chopin Manuscript, published by the International Thriller Writers. Deaver got the plot in motion and we each had a chapter after that. It was fun, frenetic and in hindsight, not a bad novel considering the inevitable clash of styles and egos. I remember I gleefully killed off one of the main characters in a great chase through the Paris catacombs but Jeff overruled me. We went on to write two more “serial thrillers” for ITW.

Letting another brain into your writing process isn’t easy. It should be approached with only the greatest care and clear-mindedness. When it goes bad — and I know some writers who’ve had it go very bad — it conjures up the Infinite Monkey Theorem:

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact, the monkey would almost surely type every possible finite text an infinite number of times. The theorem can be generalized to state that any sequence of events that has a non-zero probability of happening will almost certainly occur an infinite number of times, given an infinite amount of time or a universe that is infinite in size.

Which is how I view AI. I’m a retired Luddite who has no real stake in this brave new world. But I know that I should be paying closer attention. I have a friend who has been asked to write a script about the history of the mystery genre. He is struggling mightily because the subject is both broad and deep. He resorted to ChatGPT. And damned if the thing didn’t spit out a workable script. But it has an oddly lifeless quality, like someone afraid to color outside the lines.

So what happened to The Million Penguins project? The university behind it published A Million Penguins Research Report. It concluded:  “We have demonstrated that the wiki novel experiment was the wrong way to try to answer the question of whether a community could write a novel, but as an adventure in exploring new forms of publishing, authoring and collaboration it was ground-breaking and exciting.”

Groundbreaking. Exciting. Sounds just like what they’re saying about AI. Or is that sound just the thundering footsteps of a million monkeys?

Keep coloring outside those lines, friends.

By PJ Parrish

I am gearing up for my annual gig as chair of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Awards. This year is pretty special because it’s the 80th birthday of the venerable organization itself.

Digression: You’d think if you make it to your 80th anniversary, the appropriate gift would be something cool like diamond or platinum. Nope, the 80th is oak. What, for a coffin?

Well, maybe a coffin is apt, considering what we here all do — putting bodies in the ground. Anywho, we are going to honor MWA’s eightith by taking a look back to celebrate what was unique about each decade. So I’ve been boning up on crime fiction history this week. I am rather ashamed at my ignorance on this subject. Believe me, I have been trying for years now to get up to speed on my reading of our classics. But the MWA celebration is also forcing me to dig deeper into the less obvious writers and books.

And I’d like to pick y’all’s brains for some help on who and what books we should be including. More on that in a sec.

But first: Let’s review.

I suspect most of you know already that Edgar Allen Poe’s 1941 short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue is considered the first detective story. But do you know what is considered to be the first full-length mystery novel? That would be Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, published in 1861. Here’s the opening:

Chapter One

In the first part of Robinson Crusoe, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written:

“Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it.”

Only yesterday, I opened my Robinson Crusoe at that place. Only this morning (May twenty-first, Eighteen hundred and fifty), came my lady’s nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, and held a short conversation with me, as follows:—

“Betteredge,” says Mr. Franklin, “I have been to the lawyer’s about some family matters; and, among other things, we have been talking of the loss of the Indian Diamond, in my aunt’s house in Yorkshire, two years since. Mr. Bruff thinks, as I think, that the whole story ought, in the interests of truth, to be placed on record in writing—and the sooner the better.”

Not perceiving his drift yet, and thinking it always desirable for the sake of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer’s side, I said I thought so too. Mr. Franklin went on.

“In this matter of the Diamond,” he said, “the characters of innocent people have suffered under suspicion already—as you know. The memories of innocent people may suffer, hereafter, for want of a record of the facts to which those who come after us can appeal. There can be no doubt that this strange family story of ours ought to be told. And I think, Betteredge, Mr. Bruff and I together have hit on the right way of telling it.”

If you didn’t get through it, don’t feel bad. I tried to read this book to give it an honest chance but the sledding was too tough. If I were doing a Kill Zone First Page Critique on this, well, let’s just say I would try to be kind.  I did come across one phrase I liked:

Your tears come easy, when you’re young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you’re old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.

Such was the style of the age, right? Things got easier, thank goodness. About 25 years later, two guys named Holmes and Watson showed up in A Study in Scarlet. You might have heard of them. Probably the best-known detective and sidekick in the modern period. Without them, would Nero and Archie exist? Would Spenser have his Hawk? And how could Michael Knight manage without his Kitt?

Then we jump forward to the 20s and 30s, the so-called Golden Age of crime ficiton, dominated by the grande dames Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. In researching, I found one of the writers of this time, Ronald Knox, whose day job was Catholic priest, came up with his Ten Commands of detection fiction:

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

I especially agree with number ten. One should always be prepared for twin brothers.

In something of a backlash to Christie et al, some writers, mainly Americans, began to reshape the detective formula. Puzzle-solving novels were too…clean. The thirst for realism begat the hardboiled school. It was every man for himself and nobody trusted nobody.

First out of the gate, I discovered, was Carroll John Daly. His pulpy stories – The False Burton Combs (1922), It’s All in the Game (1923) and Three Gun Terry (1923) – all became instant hits with readers, especially his PI Race Williams. Après lui le déluge of the usual suspects —  Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy B. Hughes, Ross Macdonald, Jim Thompson. The list is long, and you still hear echoes of them in much of today’s crime fiction. Without them and the characters they created, the world would not have been blessed with Dirty Harry.

Here’s a paragraph I wish I had written, from Dorothy Hughes’s classic In A Lonely Place. Which was also a helluva movie starring Bogart and Gloria Grahame.

Once he’d had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow.

Where did things go from there? Wow, that’s a topic for another post, maybe part II, since this one is running long. And I am still heavy into research mode, only up through the 60s so far. I have learned that our genre has grown many, many twisted and bountiful branches. I’ve been doing this Edgars banquet gig for about 25 years now, and every year, when I see the new list of nominees come out, I am amazed at the variety and vitality I see. It seems to me that crime fiction, since the 2000s, has become ever more inclusive, exotic, richly textured and, yeah, I’ll go there — less dependent on cliches, stereotypes, and worn tropes.

So, now I turn to you guys. I am putting together the program and will be asking some authors to write about a particular decade in crime fiction — 1940 to the present — why they love it. I’m also having a video made that celebrates each decade of MWA’s remarkable history, which includes not just the influential books but also the standout crime TV shows and movies of each decade.

Tell me what you gravitate to — authors, characters, eras — and why it moves you. You’ll be doing me a solid, bims and fellas.

O Muses, O high genius, aid me now!
O memory that engraved the things I saw,
Here shall your worth be manifest to all!
— Dante, The Divine Comedy

By PJ Parrish

I am dipping a toe back in the fiction waters this week because I got an assignment to write a short story for an anthology. Man, my gears are rusty because I have officially retired from novel writing and without the daily routine, everything sort of freezes up.

Apologies to those of you who struggle with these demons every day. But shoot, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to do this. Which means I am going to resort here to yet another metaphor.

Writing is like sailing in the ocean in the middle of a squall. I know because when I was young and living in Fort Lauderdale, I used to sail Hobie Cats competitively. The day is always sunny when you launch your Hobie from the beach and you’re all aglow with hardy-har-har-endorphins. So it is when you sit down and type CHAPTER ONE.

Then the storm hits and there you are, hanging onto a 16-foot piece of fiberglas and vinyl, hoping lightening doesn’t hit the mast and fry your ass. You are out there alone in the storm, out of sight of land, riding the waves and the troughs, hoping you can make it home. You might even throw up. This is usually around CHAPTER TWENTY for me.

End of metaphor.

I often wonder what keeps writers writing. Tyranny of the contract deadline? Blind faith? The idea that if you don’t you might have to do real physical labor for a living? All of those have worked for me in the past. But today, I am sitting here staring at my empty screen waiting for my muse to show up.

Now, let’s get one thing clear here. I don’t really believe in WAITING for a muse to show up. I get really impatient with writers who claim they can’t write until they feel inspired because frankly, 90 percent of this is writing DESPITE the fact your brain is as dry as Waffle House toast. Or as soggy, depending on which Waffle House you frequent. The last one I was in was off the Valdosta Ga. I-95 exit in 1995 and the toast was so dry it stands today as my singular metaphor for stagnant creativity.

But I do believe that sometimes — usually when your brain is preoccupied with other stuff — something creeps into the cortex and quietly hands you a gift. And these little gifts are what get you through.

There are nine muses in mythology — Calliope, Clio, Erato, Melpomene, Polymnia, Terpsichore, Urania, Euterpe, and Thalia. (who was Dobie Gillis’s unobtainable ideal woman, btw). The muses ruled over such things as dance, music, history, even astronomy. No muses for crime writers, unless you count Calliope for epic poetry but James Lee Burke has her on permanent retainer.

I don’t have just one muse. I’ve figured out I have a couple who specialize in particular parts of my writing.

First, there’s my dialogue muse. I call him J.J. because he sounds like Burt Lancaster’s gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success. Always chewing at my ear saying oily things like, “I’d hate to take a bite out of you, you’re a cookie full of arsenic.” J.J. makes my skin crawl but man, can this guy write dialogue.

Then there’s my narrative muse. I call her Cat Woman because she slips in on silent paws, sings in a fey whisper and visits just as morning has broken. I sleep with blackout drapes, a white-noise machine and the A/C turned so cold the bedroom is like a crypt. So as I wake, there is icy air swirling and a soft swoooshing sound. And Cat Woman, whispering a long segment of exposition. I have learned to lay there, very still, until she is done, because if I get up to write it down, she vanishes.

My third muse is Flo, named after the waitress who worked in Mel’s Diner on the old Alice sitcom. Her voice sounds like the door of a rusted Gremlin. Flo’s Greek name is Nike (the goddess of victory) and her slogan is “Just Do It.” Because whenever those other muses fail me, Flo is there. She is the muse who knows that the only way I am going to get anything written is through plain old hard work.

I’d be lost without her. Who, or what, keeps you going?

By PJ Parrish

You can learn a lot about writing fiction from watching football. I figured this out recently after bingeing on both the NFL and college playoffs. (Yes, I have no life but it’s really, really cold here right now. Plus it gives me an excuse to eat potato chips and drink Dr Pepper spiked with Southern Comfort before five, so don’t judge me).

What you can learn from football is pretty simple:

• Always keep moving downfield. (Don’t keep rewriting chapter 1)
• Have a good game plan. (Outline your story. ie be a wily plotter)
• If you don’t have a good game plan, be quick on your feet and don’t be afraid to just chuck the rock downfield and see what happens. (Go where the story takes you. ie be an artful pantser)
• Run north and south, not east and west. (Don’t get distracted by subplots)
• Surround yourself with good guys. (Character developement is everything)
• If you drop the ball, get up and get back in the game. (you painted yourself into a plot corner. Your character sucks. Boo hoo. Get back in there and fix it.)

But maybe the best thing I’ve learned from watching football that’s helped me in writing is this:

Stop with the clichés, already!

I watch a lot of sports, but I have to say football has to be the worst when it comes to really stale commentary. While watching the playoffs, I started to write some of the bad ones down. From my list:

• They haven’t got all their weapons. (too many injuries).
• You gotta go with what’s working. (not sure what that means)
• He’s hearing footsteps. (the receiver got spooked and dropped the ball)
• They get points the old fashioned way — up the middle. (they run alot)
• It’s gonna come back to haunt them. (missed the extra point)
• He’s got alligator arms. (wide receiver didn’t make the catch)
• They beat themselves.

And the saddest one:

• There’s no tomorrow.

I actually heard Tony Romo use that one. I did hear one phrase I liked that I had never heard before. Vikings QB Sam Darnold fumbled and a Rams rookie defender scooped the ball up and ran it 57 yards for a TD. The commentator said, “He got a room service bounce.”  Your eggs Benedict is here, sir.

All right, all right. I hear you. No more football talk. Okay, so I will talk about the book I am reading right now. It’s been on my to-read shelf ever since I brought it back from the Edgars a couple years ago. It was a nominee and it’s pretty good. But then things started to go, well, south. (cliché!)

I began to notice there were clichés creeping into the narrative. Like this: “It was a perfect storm of bad investigative techniques and lazy-assity.”

Now, I kind of liked the lazy-assity thing, but “a perfect storm?” A couple chapters later, he referred to a suspect roundup as “picking the low hanging fruit.” After that, I got distracted because I started to search for more clichés. And they came: eagle-eyed,” “burning question,” “at the crack of dawn,” “sick as a dog,” “uphill battle.”

Now, these are all sort of venial, the kind of everyday phrases we all slip into. Nothing as bad as “When they sprayed the Luminol, the room lit up like a Christmas tree.” But they aren’t fresh, and when it comes to fiction, shouldn’t we all be asking more of ourselves?

I have to stop and make a distinction here. Sometimes, it’s okay to toss in a cliché in dialogue. Characters have to talk like real people, and having a guy SAY he woke up “sick as dog” may not be the most sparkling dialogue, but it has a place, if you’re trying to show the character isn’t the…pardon me…sharpest knife in the drawer. But in narrative, I can’t give writers a pass for stuff like “He was ready to take the plunge.”

I’m going to finish reading the book because the plot is tight and I like the anti-hero protag. But I wish this writer had worked just a little harder on the small potatoes. (cliché!) It’s not his first book and it won’t be his last, because he’s talented. Which is why I am asking for more from him.

Being original is maybe the hardest thing we have to do in writing. Keeping all the plates spinning in the air is hard — plot, voice, character, dialogue, pacing, subplots, secondary characters, sense of place, description. This is why using metaphors and similes is darn difficult. All the good ones have been taken already!

• “The pain just increases like a violinist going up the E string. You think it can’t get any higher and it does–the pain’s like that, it rises and rises…” — John LeCarre.
• “His smile was as stiff as a frozen fish.” — Raymond Chandler
• “Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh?” — Ray Bradbury.

The good ones aren’t all taken, not really. You have good metaphors and similes in you that not one other soul on earth can imagine. When you write, don’t settle for the dust on top. Dig deep to find what is unique in the way you see the world

But creating effective metaphors and similes is a topic for another day. I was going to write about that today but this post ran long. So let’s start with the easy stuff. For now, just go back into your work and find your little sins. Kill your not-so-darling cliches.

Get back in the game, crime dogs. Don’t leave anything on the field. Because there’s no tomorrow. Actually, for us writers there is, thank God. But don’t tell Tony Romo that.

“When vultures surround you, try not to die.” — African proverb

By PJ Parrish

Hey, it’s good to be back at The Kill Zone. It’s good to be anywhere. (Apologies to Keith Richards). Holidays and a bout with RSV behind me, I’m ready to get going again. The fact that my Lions beat the NFC norsemen for the No. 1 seed has me doing a happy-dance. Just wish my dad Al were around to have seen it since he almost put his foot through the Zenith after a particularly brutal season back in 1959.

Today, I have the pleasure of critiquing a nice entry in our First Pagers. I took a liking to it when it first popped up on my radar. Maybe because it involves a mysterious priest and I loved the papal thriller Conclave. Best line of dialogue, delivered by a cardinal played by Stanley Tucci: “I could never become Pope on those circumstances. A stolen document, the smearing of a brother cardinal. I’d be the Richard Nixon of Popes.”

Our writer calls their submission a “psychological thriller with supernatural undertones.” Title: Campus of Shadows. (more on that at end). Here we go:

CHAPTER 1

My new apartment complex is painted yellow with black trim and has a scrawny hedge bordering the single-story structure. As I climb out of the car my nose shudders at the scent of something dead in the air. I glance around expecting to see a dead possum or a bird that flew into a window but find nothing. The tune, Bad Guy, blasts from the apartment’s inner courtyard. I can’t wait to get in there and check it out. I hesitate with my thumb on the lock button wondering how hard college classes will be, if I’ll be able to take it all in stride.

A constant ticking draws my attention to a vulture in a gnarled oak with branches twisted so low they could trip someone up. The vulture is the reason for the stench. It must have the remains of something stuck in its talons. A strange curiosity draws me closer like a rubbernecker on the highway and I spot a shadow hovering around it, a miniature cloud.

Maybe some fool around here feeds it. Spinning away, I discover a priest walking toward me from the courtyard of the apartment. His gait and his toothy smile are familiar. “Father Aether?”

“David Everest, how are you?”

“I didn’t expect you to be the first person I saw when I got to college,” I laugh, extending my hand.

“It’s been a long time.” His outstretched hand and mine connect.

“Oh,” he tugs his hand away. “I got a shock.”

“Sorry, I must have created static electricity when I slid out of the car. Didn’t you get transferred to Miami, Father?”

“I did. I was here for a… meeting. A soul freeing of sorts.” A bead of sweat trembles on his jawline. “Anyway, I have a friend whose daughter left something at home in Miami last week. I dropped it off for her.”

“That was nice of you.”

A gust of wind howls through the courtyard entrance blasting me in the face and tearing at his vestments. He shivers and backs away. “I need to go. Bless you, my son.”

As Father Aether hurries off, I’m glad he didn’t ask too many questions. I’ve hardly been to church since he did my first communion. The ticking sound starts again. The vulture is staring at me with a weird look like it’s waiting for something. “Get out of here you dumb scavenger.”

_____________________________

Let’s start with what I liked. There’s a nicely developed (if a tad undercooked) sense of tension right from the start. The main character is entering a new life and environment (college) and immediately interacts with a somewhat mysterious priest from his past. There are some atmospheric descriptive details — a hot gusty wind, gnarly oaks, and the shock-handshake is a nice touch. And then there’s that lurking vulture. (symbolism alert!)

Though written in first-person, the writer deftly handles the insertion of the protag’s name via the simple device of introduction with the priest. I pay attention to this sort of thing because too many folks writing in first person forget to identify their protag until too late in the chapter.

So, I’d call this a good start of a first draft. But it can use some beefing up here and there.

First, the opening line is very weak. My new apartment complex is painted yellow with black trim and has a scrawny hedge bordering the single-story structure. Unless this apartment is in a decrepit Victorian, a New Orleans whore house, or a remodeled abandoned Catholic church (oooh, I like that!), who cares what it looks like? Never waste your first line on something meaningless. Unless the description directly supports your mood, atmosphere or foretells something about character or plot, get rid of it.

Consider something like this as your opening, dear reader:

The smell hit me as soon as I got out of my car. Foul, like rotting meat, or that sweet-sewage stench that I had smelled  as a kid when I had wandered into the basement lab of my father’s mortuary.

I heard a loud hiss and looked up. A huge black bird with a bald red head was perched on the lowest branch of the oak tree. It was so close I could see its black-bead eye. A turkey vulture. But what the hell was it doing here on campus? We were at least ten miles from any landfill or scrub land. 

I know about turkey vultures since I used to live in South Florida. They are butt-ugly, creepy and they make this nasty hissing noise if you get close. They hang out along remote highways, or near the Everglades, maybe on farms. Never in urban areas. So for this charcter to see one here MEANS something is wrong. USE THIS!

The vulture is not supposed to be here. So make that foul smell work harder as a symbol of a rift in the norm.

An aside: Don’t know if you realize this, writer, but vultures have quite a role in Christian lore. They are considered a symbol of God’s judgment of shame, or a diseased spiritual condition. In Revelation 18:2, Babylon is described as being “a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird.”

Something to explore maybe: Birds are powerful symbols in all religions. In Hinduism and Judaism, they are even linked to exorcisms. Christianity is rife with bird symbols, good and evil.

Let’s talk about the sense of smell. It’s the single most powerful one in your writer’s toolbox. I’d like to see the writer exploit this more. And if you can, relate the smell — always — to something directly in the character’s experience. I made up the bit about dad being an undertaker. But see what it does? It personalizes the smell AND slips in a grace note of backstory.

Makes your descriptions work harder.

Other things: I’m not a big fan of persent tense first person. But that’s just my taste. What do you all think? I think it gets a little tiresome for most readers over the course of 300 pages or so.

I surmise that we are in South Florida here, given the turkey vulture and the reference to Miami. But is there some way you can gracefully let us know exactly where we are? Can you slip in where he’s going to college? Is there an UM ibis flag in an apartment window?

And let’s talk about the song “Bad Guy.” I don’t mind songs being tossed into scenes (unless it’s Coltrane blaring on the CD player while the dissipated PI drinks himself into a coma-funk — cliche!). Being an old fart, I had to look up “Bad Guy.” It’s by Billie Ellish and it’s about guys who put up a fake tough-guy front. I like that. But only if it means something about your plot or character. Otherwise, it’s just a gratuitous toss-in culture reference. Of course you can’t reprint lyrics in your book, but maybe, as your character goes into his apartment moments later, the song keeps bouncing around in his head — for some reason! Again, like the vulture — you felt compelled to put it there so make it mean something.

That’s it. Like I said, a good start. But look for places to go deeper, to give meaning to the bread-crumb symbols you are planting. But so far, pretty darn good.

Let’s do a quick, light line edit. My comments in red.

Campus Of Shadows Work harder to find a better title. “Campus” is such a blah geographic signpost word. We KNOW this takes place at a college. Ditto “Shadows” is dime-a-dozen title word in crime fiction, like “death” “darkness” “evil”.  You can do better. Finish your book. The real title might reveal itself as you move on. 

My new apartment complex is painted yellow with black trim and has a scrawny hedge bordering the single-story structure. As I climb out of the car you backed into the image here. Starting a book with “As I did…” is throat-clearing and passive. Be active: The smell hit me as soon as I… Can you imagine starting a fight scene like this: “As my heart raced, the bullet whizzed by my head.” No, you can’t.  my nose shudders at the scent of something dead in the air. I glance around expecting to see a dead possum or a bird that flew into a window but find nothing. I looked up. Then stay with the vulture The tune, Bad Guy, blasts from the apartment’s inner courtyard. I can’t wait to get in there and check it out. I hesitate with my thumb on the lock button wondering how hard college classes will be, if I’ll be able to take it all in stride. Put this down below, after the priest leaves. His feelings about going to college are out of place here and leech out the tension.

A constant ticking souds like a branch against a window or a clock. Vultures hiss. draws my attention to a vulture in a gnarled oak with low twisting branches twisted so low they could trip someone up. The vulture is the reason for the stench. It must have the remains of something stuck in its talons. A strange curiosity draws me closer like a rubbernecker on the highway cliche and I spot a shadow hovering around it, a miniature cloud. Not sure I understand what you’re going for here. Be clearer. 

Maybe some fool around here feeds it. Spinning away, implies fright. He’s scared? I discover see a priest walking toward me from out of the courtyard of the apartment. His gait and his toothy smile are familiar. “Father Aether?”

 There is a very gusty wind, you say. So use it. How about something more mysterious: I see a figure coming out of the courtward, head bent against the hard dry wind. He’s dressed in black robes, flapping around him like wings. (bird imagery!) As he nears, I see his white collar.

“Father Aether?”  

He stops. “David Everest, how are you?” NICE WAY TO GET THE NAMES IN

“I didn’t expect you to be the first person I saw when I got to college,” I laugh, extending my hand.

“It’s been a long time.” His outstretched hand and mine connect.

“Oh,” he tugs his hand away. “I got a shock.”

“Sorry, I must have created static electricity when I slid out of the car. Didn’t you get transferred to Miami, Father?”

“I did. I was here I’ve been here in Palm Beach or whatever for a… meeting. A soul freeing of sorts.” Exorcism? A bead of sweat trembles on his jawline. “Anyway, I have a friend whose daughter left something at home in Miami last week. I dropped it off for her.”

“That was nice of you.”

A gust of wind howls through the courtyard entrance blasting me in the face and tearing at his vestments. He shivers David is starting school somewhere in South Florida in August or September, the hottest months of the year. Shivers? and backs away.

New graph “I need to go. Bless you, my son.” This seems unnaturally abrupt. Did you intend this? If so, it needs something, a gesture perhaps, to predicate it. He glanced back at the courtyard, his eyes lingering on the second floor. He shivered, despite the heat. Or something better.

As Father Aether hurries off, there’s that “as” construction again. We all have our tics! I’m glad he didn’t ask too many questions. He didn’t ask ANY. I’ve hardly been to church since he did my first communion. The ticking sound hissing starts again. The vulture is staring at me with a weird look like it’s waiting for something. A little too spot-on. Of course they stare — they’re looking for carrion.

need new graph. “Get out of here you dumb scavenger.” Can you think of a juicier line or action? What is going to happen next? I assume he goes up to his new apartment? What can happen with the symbolic vulture that TRANSITIONS to what comes next? I can’t suggest cuz I don’t know your plot. But his dialogue line feels flaccid. 

So, that’s it from me. I’m sure our TKZ folks will have other helpful insights. Thanks for submitting, dear writer. Keep moving forward. Happy and healthy new year.