By Elaine Viets

I can’t wait to tell you about my new mystery. “Late for His Own Funeral,” my latest Angela Richman, Death Investigator.
The idea came from a Los Angeles Times story that’s stuck in my mind for almost twenty-five years. Back in 1998, an LA coroner’s official told a woman that her husband was dead. I’ve changed the couple’s names to Harriet and Michael Brown.
The news of her husband’s death dropped poor Harriet into a nightmare. Michael Brown was Princeton-educated and a high-ranking political advisor. Yet the coroner said he’d died in police custody from an abscess caused by dirty needles. Harriet demanded to see her husband’s body. The official said no – the body was being autopsied. The wife refused to believe that Michael was shooting heroin. The police confirmed the dead man’s fingerprints as her husband’s. The dead man was also carrying Michael’s driver’s license.
Harriet said her husband’s driver’s license had been reported lost. The coroner’s investigator fed her a hunk of baloney. He “suggested that she was feeling anger and denial,” and that was normal.
Besides, the Browns had been going through a tough time, and Harriet knew her husband was depressed. Michael had moved out of the family home, and was staying with a relative. Michael had walked out of the relative’s home, crying, and the family hadn’t seen him for a few days. Harriet caved and planned Michael’s funeral.
The morning of the funeral, Michael was walking to his sister’s house when she drove by. Her car swerved to a stop and she screamed, “You’re supposed to be dead.”
The funeral was canceled. The real dead man was a drug addict who’d been carrying Michael’s missing driver’s license.
Turns out the police used Michael’s missing driver’s license as a basis to identify the dead man. There were many other snafus, but the first rule of body identification is: never, ever identify a body by a driver’s license.
That story sparked my new death investigator mystery, “Late for His Own Funeral.”
Here’s the story: Sterling Chaney is a rich and respected resident of Chouteau Forest, Missouri, home of the one percent. When his flashy sports car crashes at high speed, there isn’t enough of the driver left “to spread on a cracker,” in the inelegant words of the medical examiner.
Angela is at the funeral with the new widow, Camilla. The casket Sterling wanted causes quite a shock. Angela said:

Camilla, his widow, had given her husband what’s called the “Golden Send-Off” – she’d buried him like a rock star in a stunning Promethan casket. Sterling’s remains rested on plush velvet. The casket’s exterior was actually solid bronze, hand-polished to a mirror finish. It shone like gold.
Michael Jackson, James Brown, and Aretha Franklin all went to their reward in a Promethan casket. And now, Sterling Chaney. His casket, covered in roses like a Derby winner, looked incredibly gaudy in the austere Episcopalian church in Chouteau Forest, the largest town in Chouteau County.
I could hear the shocked murmurs and appalled whispers as the funeral home attendants rolled the garish casket up the aisle. The churchgoers would be even more shocked if they knew it cost thirty thousand dollars. In the pew behind us, a sturdy black-clad matron gasped, “Good heavens!”

But the service would soon have a bigger shock.
The funeral was interrupted by an unexpected guest – Sterling Chaney. Yep, he’s back, alive and well and drunk as a skunk, trying to take selfies with his coffin in the church.
Angela works for the county medical examiner’s office. She’s in charge of the body at the scene of murders, suicides, and unexplained deaths. Sloppy work by the medical examiner and the police created this mix-up. Angela is relieved the mess wasn’t her case.
After his dramatic entrance, Sterling Chaney, the man who was late for his own funeral, is all over the news. Sterling loves the spotlight, until a smart reporter reveals he earned his fortune by exploiting women who worked for him in a shady business. Sterling is disgraced and shunned by Chouteau society.
Then there’s another fatal crash.
This time, Death Investigator Angela Richman has to confirm that Sterling is really dead, then find out who killed him and why. Did the man who was late for his own funeral die twice?

Writers, do you use news stories for inspiration?

“Late for His Own Funeral” will be published by Severn House July 5. Pre-order your copy now from your favorite bookstore. The hardcover and ebook are available from Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/4xvthy2e
and Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/5f2ytdt6
Check the ebook price. It may be cheaper at one retailer.

Stories are all about words, but marketing seems to be all about images.

Back in 2019, Sue Coletta posted a great article about creating free and easy book marketing images, and I thought this would be a good time to revisit the subject and add some thoughts about video marketing.

TEXT VS. IMAGE VS. VIDEO

The social media platform I post to most often is Twitter. So how much more effective are images than text for marketing books on Twitter? Socialmediatoday.com posted an article in 2016 that compared the effectiveness of static images with text posts. According to that article, tweets with images generate 3X more engagement than basic text updates. That’s a fairly old article, but I’ve read similar statistics on other sites recently.

EASY IMAGES

In Sue’s article, she mentioned DIY Book Covers, a free site where an author can easily create any number of beautiful 3D images in just a few minutes. All you need is an image of the front cover of your book. If the final image shows the spine (as mine does below), you have to upload an image of the spine separately.

Sue also mentioned several sites where you can find free images to use as background material. I tend to use Unsplash.com. When I was asked to guest post on the Southern Writers Magazine Suite-T blog, I found this image (Photo by Thimo van Leeuwen on Unsplash):

Then all I had to do was paste my book image onto the background:

I normally use Corel’s Paintshop Pro for images, but the picture above was created using Microsoft’s Powerpoint and exported as a jpg.

Powerpoint presentations are familiar to many of us who created or sat through a semi-infinite number of them in our previous lives. More than a few of those were just bullet-point slides outlining schedules or goals or whatever. But Powerpoint is capable of much more.

Powerpoint is a fast and easy way to create an image and save it as a jpg (like the one above), png, or any one of a number of formats. If you have Microsoft Office on your laptop, it’s likely you have Powerpoint. (I believe all Microsoft Office installations include Powerpoint now.)

EASY POWERPOINT VIDEOS

Back to that Socialmedia.com article about images vs. text. They also commented on the value of video, stating tweets with video generate 9X more engagement than basic text updates.

Now that’s worth paying attention to.

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert in this area. I’m using Powerpoint to create videos because I’m familiar with it, and it’s already on my laptop. Many of you may have expertise in more sophisticated tools for video marketing, and I hope you’ll share that in the comments.

With Powerpoint, you can add background, text, pictures, and even audio, animate different parts, then export it as an mp4.

For example, my first novel featured a young woman training for a marathon. I wanted to connect with the running community, so here’s a simple 12-second video I created on one slide to advertise the book. There’s no audio on this one. (It’s my understanding that most people watch social media videos with the sound muted.) Watch the video, then I’ll tell you how I created it.

This didn’t take long to create. The Powerpoint slide consists of five elements on a gradient background. You can see the three text boxes and two images that I outlined below.

a) The text at the top left of the image and the silhouette of the girl running appear when the video begins. b) The text “Forever” appears a few seconds later. c) The image of the books and the text “The Watch on the Fencepost” were grouped together so they would appear at the same time a few seconds after “Forever.”

Here’s a screenshot of the slide as I was working on it. I apologize for the poor resolution.

You can see the Animation tab (circled in blue) at the top of the screen has been chosen, and the Animation Pane (right side of the screen, also circled in blue) has been opened. Choosing an element on the slide places it in the animation pane where you can edit its entry effect and timing.

There are two items in the Animation Pane. The first one refers to the “Forever” text box. The animation details instruct the entry to fade in several seconds after the video begins.

The second item in the Animation Pane refers to the group of the book image and title at the bottom. Again, the entry effect is “fade in” a couple of seconds after the previous element.

***

There are lots of different effects you can create. For example, my third novel has a number of light-hearted, humorous scenes, so I wanted to do something fun for its launch. Here’s a 24-second video (no audio) that was created on one Powerpoint slide:

***

And finally, here’s a 28-second video (this one has audio) illustrating the puzzle nature of my cozy mystery series. (The audio reminded me of a watch ticking.)

One bit of advice to save you some time: If you’re going to upload to Twitter, set the aspect ratio in Powerpoint to Standard (4:3). When you export to video, use the Medium File Size and Moderate Quality (960X720). Twitter doesn’t like the larger, higher quality videos.

Is it worth the time and effort to build a video that you may only post once or twice? Like so many other things in life, it depends. I enjoy making the videos, so it’s worth it for me. Although I’ve noticed a small uptick in sales after a video posts, I don’t know that it’s terribly significant. However, I’m all for anything that advertises my books in a way that will capture a reader’s attention and provide them with a few seconds of entertainment.

Besides, it’s another creative outlet.

As I said above, I’m not an expert at this. Those of you who have more experience and knowledge, please offer your own suggestions in the comments below.

***

So TKZers: Do you use images and/or videos to advertise your books? What tools do you use? What platforms do you post to?

Tell us about the main character in your WIP, recent release, or the main character in the book you’re reading.

What’s your favorite thing about that character?

In one short paragraph:

• Showcase their personality.
• Showcase their flaws.
• Showcase their inner struggles.
• Showcase something special about them.

Bloodstain Pattern Analysis is the forensic interpretation of human blood evidence in crime scene investigations. It’s used to recreate actions that caused the bloodshed. Because blood has chemical properties that behave according to specific laws, trained analysts can examine the size, shape, and distribution of bloodstains to draw conclusions of what did—or did not—happen.

Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) applies the sciences of anatomy, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics to answer questions like:

• Where’d the blood come from?
• Who’d it belong to?
• How’d it get there?
• What caused the wound(s)?
• From what direction was the victim assailed?
• How were the victim and perpetrator positioned?
• How many victims and perpetrators were there?
• What movements were made after the bloodshed?

You’ve seen the CSI shows where investigators, dressed in their ‘bunny suits’, photograph drops, streaks, smears, and pools of blood, then swab for DNA and String the room back to Area of Convergence points. Well, that’s pretty much how it happens, except today most Stringing is done by 3D computerization.

Bloodstain pattern interpretation is nothing new. It’s been around two hundred years and became increasing sophisticated as technology advanced. I’ve been involved in a number of BPA examinations during my time as a cop and coroner. One that really stands out was when Billy Ray Shaughnessey axe-murdered his ex-girlfriend and her new lover. The room looked like a bomb went off in a red paint factory. I’ll tell you more about it at the end of this article. First, let’s look at how blood behaves.

Blood has three components that are suspended in plasma.

Erythrocytes are your red cells that transfer oxygen through hemoglobin. It’s what gives blood the red color. Leukocytes, your white cells, are your body’s defenders and support your immune system in fighting infection and disease. Platelets are formed in your bone marrow and play a major role in hemostasis or plugging up breaches in vessels.

Blood composition is about 55% plasma and 45% formed elements, or cells, which remain suspended due to agitation caused by your circulatory system. That’s called viscosity—it’s density or internal friction. Once blood leaves your body’s pressurized containment, it’s subject to the forces of gravity and surface tension which dictates its resting shape. That can be in drops, streaks, or pools.

Crime scene bloodstains take different forms due to factors like velocity and distance of travel, amount of blood flow, angle of impact, and type of surface or target it lands on. There are eight categories of bloodstain patterns:

Single Drop — These stains are typically from a vertical fall and under low velocity, like when your cut your finger and blood drips to the floor. Blood molecules are very cohesive. They attract and bind in a surface tension that makes a sphere. The drop stays in a ball until it strikes an object or a force acts on it. This is called bleed-out.

Impact Spatter – These result from forceful impacts between an object and wet blood, causing the blood to break into little droplets. Greater force produces smaller droplets. The study of impact staining provides huge insight into the relative positions of individuals and objects involved in the crime. There are three sub-categories of impacts:

1. Low Velocity Impact Spatter (LVIS) — Also called Passive Impact Spatters, these are the largest bloodstain drops with a diameter of 4mm or greater. They travel at a slow speed, no greater than 1.5 m/s. They’re associated with being struck by a large, blunt instrument such as a chair or leaking from an open wound. They’re also formed when a large amount of blood has been transferred to another surface and the excess drips down.

2. Medium Velocity Impact Spatter (MVIS) — These spatters are associated with an intense beating like from a club, a hammer, a gun butt, or a bag of frozen pork chops. (Yes, I once had a homicide case where a guy’s head was caved-in with a bag of frozen pork chops.) MVIS drops are less than 4mm and get propelled at speeds between 1.5 and 7.5 m/s. The further from the target surface that blood is expelled, the larger the drops will be.

3. High Velocity Impact Spatter (HVIS) — This stain pattern is caused by gunshots, explosions, or contact with high-speed objects like having your throat cut with an electric carving knife. (Had one of those, too.) They’re evident by masses of tiny droplets less than 2mm in diameter and occur at velocities far in excess of 7.5 m/s. There’s no mistaking this type of bloodstain. The angle of impact is evident by an elongated shape – the longer the stain, the longer the angle from vertical.

Cast-Off Stains — COS are common in scenes such as Billy Ray Shaughnessy’s axe-murders where straight and curved lines of blood are made on the walls and ceiling by the centrifugal force of back-and-forth swings. They produce tear-shaped or oblong stains with ‘tails’ that point in the direction of travel. By reversing the line of travel, the path can be traced or stringed to its area of convergence.

Transfer Bloodstains — These are generally patches and smears of blood deposited secondary to the main, violent event. They say a lot about sequence. It can be when a victim tried to crawl away, the body was dragged, the perpetrator placed a bloody hand on a wall, or when he hid the axe in a closet like Billy Ray did. Tell you more about him soon.

Projected Pattern — This is from arterial damage, such as severed carotids, femorals, radials, and brachials where pressurized blood ejaculates via the still-beating heart. You’ll see groups of big to small splotches, usually in an arc pattern. Very common in stabbings.

Pooling — Usually occurs once the victim is unconscious and passively exsanguinates. That’s the fancy term for bleeding to death. Something telling to a Bloodstain Pattern Analyst is where large pools of blood occur in different locations—no doubt the body’s been moved.

Insect Stains — Not long after death, the bugs show up. They land in the bloodstains and make little tracks all over the place. These are easily confused with HVIS to the untrained eye and known in the industry as Flyspeck.

Expiration Stains — These are incidental bloodstains associated with injuries to the respiratory and abdominal tracts where a gasping victim expels through the mouth or nose. They appear diluted, more brownish in color due to mixture with saliva or mucous, and look like a fine mist.

Examination of a bloody crime scene is a slow and methodical procedure.

The area is still photographed from wide, medium, and close-up angles as well as videoed. Each stain pattern is marked, catalogued, and a swab taken for serology or DNA typing. The patterns are then Strung to their Point Of Origin, or area of convergence, and a complex application of trigonometry begins to tell a compelling tale of just what went down.

The visual absence of blood can be misleading.

Criminals occasionally clean up a scene or there may be only a small bit of blood emitted. Chemical reactive agents like luminol and phenolphthalein can be applied which visualize latent stains. Light spectrum tools, such as LumiLights, are also used to amplify spots not visible to the naked eye.

Getting back to Billy Ray Shaughnessey — This guy hid in his ex’s attic with an axe for two and a half days, waiting to catch her with a new beau. Sure enough, she brought one home from the bar. At 3:00 am, Billy Ray crept down from the hatch, snuck into the bedroom, and chopped them to pieces. Like I said, the crime scene looked like a bomb exploded in a red paint factory.

It took us three days to catch Billy Ray. He did the right thing and fessed-up, then re-enacted the murders on video. It was the coldest thing I’ve seen. Billy Ray described what he did as if he were watching Jason or The Shining, going through repeated motions of chopping, and back-swinging, and chopping some more. He demonstrated with a 2×2 stick as a prop. (We were nervous about giving him a real axe.) He showed how he modified body positions after death, where he hid his axe in the closet, and where he cleaned himself up.

Billy Ray did the right thing again. He pleaded guilty, receiving two life sentences.

During the three days we hunted for Billy Ray, the Forensic Identification team sealed the crime scene and independently conducted their Bloodstain Pattern Analysis. Once Billy Ray was done, we (the detective team) compared notes with the forensic team and — unbeknownst to what Billy Ray reenacted — the forensic folks got it bang-on. They’d reconstructed how many blows each victim received, various positions everyone was in, and… who fought back. I was sold on the science ever since.

Here are links to more information on Forensic Bloodstain Pattern Analysis:

A Simplified Guide To Bloodstain Pattern Analysis

The Forensics Library – Bloodstain Pattern Analysis

Principles Of Bloodstain Pattern Analysis – Theory and Practice

Bloodstain Pattern Analysis – Crime Scene Reconstruction

Kill Zoners – Have you used bloodstain pattern analysis in your works? Have you researched this science arm? Wide, wide open to comments.

By John Gilstrap

On November 1, 2010, I was a reluctant founder of a critique group that was designed to help a group of professional writers better. Everyone lived in Northern Virginia, so we could meet in person, and since I had the biggest basement (and a Big Boy Job at the time, which put constraints on my ability to come home and head out again) we agreed to meet at my house. In my rumpus room, as it were. Thus was born the Rumpus Writers, aka Rumpi.

Since then, Donna Andrews, Art Taylor, Ellen Crosby, Alan Orloff, and I have met every month, with 100% attendance by everyone. That’s 138 meetings. The madness of the pandemic drove us to Zoom, but the record remains. Among the five of us, we have published (or have under contract) 92 books, 53 of which came out since we started getting together. In addition, we’ve written and published 109 short stories and edited 12 anthologies.

Collectively, we have been nominated for 55 major industry awards, of which we have one 36. Awards and nominations include: Edgar, Derringer, Agatha, Lefty, Toby Bromberg, Anthony, Barry, Library of Virginia People’s Choice, Romantic Times Readers Choice, Dilys, Macavity, Thriller, Shamus, Alex, Mary Higgins Clark and (believe it or not) the Gourmand World Cookbook Award.

Full disclosure: I was resistant to joining this group back in 2010 for several reasons. First, I am loathe to share unfinished writing with anyone. I didn’t understand the point of wasting other people’s time reading something that I already know is not up to snuff. Second, groups consisting of busy people tend to fall apart quickly. People don’t take their commitments seriously and I feared that the group would devolve into a massive time suck.

I didn’t really know any of these other authors until our first meeting. I had crossed paths a couple of times with Donna Andrews, and had chatted a couple of times with Ellen Crosby, but that was the extent of it. I made my concerns clear on our very first meeting. Not only were they well received, they were shared by everyone. That’s when we made the commitment that we would never miss a meeting. We’d figure out a way to get together once per month, come hell or high water. So seriously have we taken this commitment that there’ve been a few times when no common dates were available in a given month, so we’ve doubled up the meetings on the previous or subsequent month. There’s never been a twelve-month period when we haven’t met 12 times.

Format

The meeting starts at 7 pm. Read: 18:59:60. Every meeting starts with news of both the personal and business variety. The news is sprinkled with a hefty serving of gossip, too, but there’s an ironclad rule that nothing said leaves the room. Given recent circumstances in the news, we are officially more secure and honorable than Supreme Court clerks.

The chatting lasts for about an hour, and then it’s time to get to the business of critiquing. In turn, we read aloud from that week’s submission. Then, there’s a round-robin of input and we move on to the next submission. It’s rare that everyone has something to read on any given night, but it happens from time to time. Most submissions are in the range of 12-15 pages, but they’ve gone as high as 30+ pages. I think I am the record holder on a complete short story, but I needed to know if the payoff actually paid off.

Rules of Engagement

This one’s pretty easy. We’re honest without being snarky. One of my most frequent comments is, “Nothing happened in that scene.” It’s easy to do. You get caught up in exposition or dialogue and action gets lost. A comment I hear about my own work more often than I’d like is, “That emotion felt unearned.”

Then there’s the occasional knife to the heart: “That whole thing just didn’t work for me.”

Occasionally, there’s disagreement between us when offering a critique of a member’s work and we talk through it.

The target of the critique remains silent, taking it in until the end, when it’s fine to seek further input.

Pre-Validation Means A Lot

I think a large part of the group’s success is driven by the fact that none of us has anything to prove. We’re successful as authors, we’ve got established audiences, and we don’t seek abject approval (though it is always welcome). After all of this time, we have grown accustomed to each other’s voices on the page, and every one of us routinely violates the rules that we’ve heard in conferences and such are inviolable. Most of the time, those violations work for the story, or are a part of the author’s style.

What pre-validation does in a group like this is eliminate the need for forced praise before getting down to the business of what doesn’t work. We all know and respect that we’re capable writers. As such, we are also able to choose for ourselves which bits of advice we’re going to take, and which we’re going to ignore. When the meetings end, nobody feels bruised, and the friendships remain intact.

What Does This Mean For Writers Seeking Critique?

Over the years, I’ve sat in on critique sessions among amateur authors, and they all make me squirm. Attendees often are far more interested in hearing how brilliant they are than how to make things better. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the writers who are convinced they suck and therefore never process the good stuff they hear. Then there are the competing egos and genres, where the MFA graduate insists that the mystery or romance that someone else has written isn’t literary enough, or the genre writer who thinks a literary piece doesn’t work.

All too often, feelings get thrashed and no one has a good time.

I tell people who are looking for honest critique that almost all external input is harmful unless you have a strong sense of yourself as a writer. You need to find an honest neutral gear in your creative self where you are able to absorb the compliments and the criticisms with equal cynicism. Accept if only for the sake of argument that the other parties are coming from an honest place, but don’t assume that the reader who liked the piece is more accurate in his assessment that the one who did not.

As I’ve written in this blog before, the fact that the person with the critique bears the title of teacher does not imply infallibility. Sometimes, in the grand scheme of things, they can be flat-out wrong. On the other hand, they could be brilliant. How are you to tell the difference? I have no idea.

Now to you, TKZ family. Have you belonged to a critique group? How did it work out for you?

A few months ago, I bought a walk-behind DR brush cutter to clear several overgrown acres in the back half of our new weekend property in Lamar County, Texas. In our part of the world we usually use tractors with bush hogs dragging behind, but I didn’t want to lay out the capital for such a big rig, hence the DR.

This thing is a beast that chews up saplings three inches in diameter without even struggling to clear its throat. Chest-high Johnson grass and weeds? No problem. It shreds that kind of vegetation with satisfying, crunching sounds reminiscent of a sharp knife cutting through limp celery.

The front stretches out like the hood of a ’76 Ford Thunderbird and the monster cutter is driven by an engine big enough to power that same car. The belt drive will yank it from your hands in third gear, so the only thing one has to do is engage the blade thick as a Roman broadsword and follow…sometimes reluctantly when the terrain forces a veer off the operator’s intended path.

One such unplanned shift in direction took me through a thick patch of head-high thorny blackberry vines and oak saplings, resulting in long, bloody scratches down my arms. However, when I looked back, the new lane was clear as a walking path in a city park.

Hang on, Ethyl, I think this boy’s gonna start reminiscing!

The whole thing reminded me of a scene that locked into my mind about twenty years ago when the legendary Y.O. Ranch in South Texas hosted a weekend cattle drive for outdoor writers and one of their children. Our youngest daughter who was thirteen at the time, nickname Taz, is a natural on horses and she was excited to go.

It was a real three-day cattle drive across that huge 40,000-acre ranch, moving a hundred or more longhorns from one pasture to another. On the first day, cowboys taught the city slickers how to ride, and later that evening kids learned to cook over an open campfire. It was a breeze for Taz, who grew up camping with us and already knew how to ride.

We pushed the herd on the second morning under a gray, leaden sky weeping with rain. The herd’s trail boss made it clear that if “things got western,” kids and dads were to get the hell out of the way and let the real cowboys handle the herd.

Ten experienced cowhands circled the cattle and pushed them into a long string through the first pasture full of prairie savanna grasses, cedars, and ragged mesquite. Mounted kids and dads filled in the loose circle of riders, walking their horses in pace with the longhorns and cowboys who looked to be straight out of casting.

I was riding point with the trail boss and Taz was halfway back when something spooked the tough, rangy longhorns. The leaders instinctively wheeled and charged into a thicket of fifteen-foot-high mesquite trees lining a dry wash. The rest of the herd followed, ignoring the experienced cattlemen’s attempts to stop them.

In the Trail Boss’s terms, things got western.

He spurred his horse and took off to the right and around the end of that big patch of crooked trees, intending to cut the herd’s leaders off and turn them until the rest of the cowboys punched through the dense foliage to help. Reins in one hand and a 35mm camera in the other, I followed right behind him and watched that man sit his horse like he’d been born in a saddle. Not nearly as graceful in the saddle, I held my own and we beat the herd coming through the brush and reined up in a small clearing to experience a scene straight from the 1880s.

The running cattle sounded as if a steamfoller was crashing through the thicket. Branches and limbs popped and crackled, hooves thundered on the ground, and whoops reached our ears both from kids and cowboys.

Then here they came. The leaders exploded through the thicket in a blast of dust and flying leaves with broken limbs and dead branches caught on their horns. The real cowboys popped out on both sides of the herd, doing their best to keep the cattle from scattering to the winds. My breath caught at the sight of a scratched and bloody kid bent low over the saddle horn to avoid the limbs, holding her hat with one hand, and riding like hell.

She passed us and flashed me a grin full of excitement and fun.

The trail boss roared and pointed. “Who the hell belongs to that kid?”

I raised a hand, expecting a good old fashioned dressing down in a cowboy way.

Instead, he built his own grin. “That little gal can ride with me any day!”

They passed, and I looked through a newly cleared lane stomped flat by hooves and huge bodies to see the rest of the kids and their fathers picking their way through the undergrowth.

Under a similar gray sky yesterday in Northeast Texas, I turned after unintentionally following the DR brush cutter through a ten-foot-high thicket of saplings and blackberry vines and the new lane looked similar to the one pounded flat by that runaway herd

So what does all this have to do with writing?

Creating your characters, building a scene, and then setting those fictional people on course is like starting that cattle drive. We’d planned to follow a two-track pasture road that day, an outline if you wish, but the thing turned on a dime.

I hadn’t planned on that lane the other day, just like Trail Boss hadn’t planned on his longhorns cutting a new path through the mesquites, but I was glad for the experience and such satisfying results, both times

My way of writing is to set everything into motion and then follow the plot as it turns when it wants, but those of you who outline may shriek and throw up your hands at veering off your course and abandoning your outline. Planners must push their characters say and do certain things at specific points in a manuscript, but wait a second.

Try this little exercise just once. Let your mind wander through five or six new pages, allowing your characters’ fictional personalities to find their way. They might turn around a sapling (read minor character), a mature oak (one of your major characters), or an unseen obstacle such as a dip or dry wash (clues or an unanticipated incident) and cut a different, open path that you can look back on with satisfaction.

What could a few bloody, mental scratches hurt in the long run?