Summer comes with many temptations, from scanty clothes to rampant hormones. Moralists believe young women should be protected from them all. But one summer temptation really riled preachers.
I’m talking about . . . beach books.
They especially upset a sourpuss named Rev. Thomas De Witt Talmage. The Rev. T fulminated against beach books in 1876, cautioning his congregation, “Do not let the frogs and the lice of a corrupt printing press jump and crawl into your Saratoga trunk or White Mountain valise.” Beach books, the rev said, were “literary poison.”
“I really believe there is more pestiferous trash read among the intelligent classes in July and August than in all the other ten months of the year,” he said.
It would take ten months to plow through Talmage’s own tomes. Want to stretch out by the pool and read The Abomination of Modern Society? How about 500 Select Sermons?
Personally, I think Talmage was a tad jealous of beach books’ popularity.
The young women of the 19th century sensibly ignored Talmage’s rants, and stuffed their vacation valises with summer reads. They sighed over Marion Harlan’s With the Best Intentions: A Midsummer Episode, set among the Gilded Age’s beautiful people. And devoured Laura Jean Libbey’s fiction about poor girls who worked to survive.
Laura’s titles were real grabbers. A Dangerous Flirtation Or, Did Ida May Sin? And Miss Middleton’s Lover; Or Parted On Their Bridal Tour makes me want to slap on some sunscreen and start reading.
These novels and other light summer reading are the descendants of today’s beach reads, though the term “beach reads” didn’t show up until the 1990s. Most of this information comes from Smithsonian Magazine.
Beach reads were easy to pack and hold. They were also a marketing scheme. July and August are traditionally the time when book sales drop. So clever publishers came up with books specially designed for vacations. The books were often set at resorts, and gave young middle class women tips on fashion and manners, in case they met a handsome young millionaire. In the beach books, these encounters usually ended in marriage.
Exactly what is a beach book?
Blogger Victoria Wood has a good definition. She quotes the Macmillan Dictionary, which says a beach read is“a book you can take on holiday, which is good enough to keep you engaged but not so serious it will spoil your holiday.”
“I think that’s a good starting point,” she said, “but I’d add this: the best beach reads are immersive, entertaining, and just plain fun—whether or not you ever set foot on sand.”
Traces of the prune-faced Rev. T prevail. Many beach books are written – and read – by women. Some are romances, others are thrillers or mysteries, and they can be scorned as frivolous. “Beach book” is sometimes used as an insult.
But beach books are a rite of summer. About Memorial Day, publications from the New York Times to Booklist magazine trot out their beach reads, many with bright covers and snappy dialogue.
Emily Henry boldly calls her beach romance Beach Read. It’s about a romance writer who no longer believes in love, and a literary writer stuck in a rut.
Kristin Hannah, who wrote The Women, about nurses who served in Vietnam, has the much lighter Summer Island.
The Housemaid by Freida McFadden, spanned the summer season in 2022, with the hardcover released in April and the paperback in August.
And, if there’s room for me on this golden beach, I have two beach books: Sex and Death on the Beach (2025) and Beach Blonde Betrayal (2026).
Both were released in July.
And my readers are extremely intelligent. Take that, Reverend Talmage.
The manuscript is as good as I’m going to get it, so it’s ready for my editor. My changes aren’t making it better, only different. What do I do while it’s in her hands?
There are many, an earlier version of myself included, who would be jumping in to the next book. But this one isn’t really “done.”
There’s a lot more than finishing the manuscript.
There’s adding its page to my website.
There’s waiting for my cover designer who had the nerve to go to Ireland for a family wedding.
There’s Front and Back matter. Don’t want to leave anyone out of the acknowledgments.
Do I want to line up a narrator?
Is this going to be a stand alone, or will there be sequels, or connected books.
Am I going to put it up for preorder? I want to release it in early October so it doesn’t hit the holiday themed books. Is it worth it for a short time?
Line up my early readers who get ARCs for reviews.
I’ve started one task: The book description that’ll go on the sales channels’ book pages. That might do double-duty as the back cover copy, once it’s ready to be formatted for print. Here it is.
When the camera lies, who do you trust?
Evvie Gale and Colton Hughes are dog park friends—nothing more. Until deep fake photographs threaten to end both their careers.
Evvie changed her name after a childhood trauma. She’s spent years perfecting the art of not being seen, working behind the lens instead of being in front of it.
Evvie built a quiet life behind the camera, exactly where she wants to be—out of the frame, out of sight. So when the gallery owner who’s carried her work for years drops her without explanation, she doesn’t just lose income. She loses the one identity she’s allowed herself to keep. Determined to find out what happened, she starts digging—and uncovers humiliating deep fake photographs.
Colton left the Wyoming cattle ranch he grew up on and never looked back—done with the hard labor, the long hours, and the debt that came with every bad season. In Colorado Springs, he found riding a desk beat riding a saddle.
A claim crosses his desk with supporting photos that feel “off.” His boss wants the claim approved and closed. Colton brings the photos to the one person he trusts to see what he can’t— his dog park friend, Evvie. She agrees to take a closer look.
When a family emergency calls Colton back to the ranch, he convinces Evvie to come with him. What he finds is that Evvie has brought more than her camera, a secret from her past that could bring danger to the Hughes family.
Feel free to share your thoughts.
And then some non-book-related things.
Take more time to read.
Work on Substack posts.
See what’s on the tube. Wonder why we still call it that. Or is that only me?
Get outside more—if it cools down. Don’t forget the camera.
Work on the details for my upcoming trip, including convincing the Hubster he needs some more appropriate clothing.
Watch the bears catching salmon at explore.org
Have a little fun. Does anyone remember Sniglets? Words that aren’t words but should be?
Examples:
Aquadextrous: Turning the bathtub faucet on or off with your toes.
Bovilexia: The strong urge to yell “moo!” when you drive past a cow.
Cinemuck: The sticky mix of dropped soda, melted chocolate, and popcorn on a theater floor.
Lerplexed: Trying to look up a word in the dictionary, but failing because you do not know how to spell it.
Mustgo: Leftover food hidden in the back of the fridge until it turns into a science project.
Pupkus: The wet smudge a dog leaves on a window when it presses its nose against the glass.
Snackmosphere: The large pocket of empty air inside a bag of potato chips.
What do you do “between” projects? Jump into the next or take a little “me” time?
And, on a final note: Another reason I’m glad I sell wide. That world’s largest river has decided to drop the price on my three Blackthorne, Inc. box sets. Three novels each. No warning, no way of knowing how long it’ll go on. So, they’re cutting my out of a chunk of my royalties on those sales. (No, they do NOT pay royalties on the price I set. Yes, I checked.) The other sales channels are selling the sets at the price I set.
If you’d like to take advantage of these price reductions, you can find the sets here:
I have no idea how long this price will be in effect.
Deadly Ambitions Peace in Mapleton doesn’t last. Police Chief Gordon Hepler is already juggling a bitter ex-mayoral candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut police department’s funding.
Meanwhile, Angie’s long-delayed diner remodel uncovers an old journal, sparking her curiosity about the girl who wrote it. But as she digs for answers, is she uncovering more than she bargained for?
Now, Gordon must untangle political maneuvering, personal grudges, and hidden agendas before danger closes in on the people he loves most. Deadly Ambitions delivers small-town intrigue, political tension, and page-turning suspense rooted in both history and today’s ambitions.
Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”
After college, I swore off writing outlines. No more nonsense with Roman numeral I, capital A, Arabic numeral 2, lower-case b, etc.
For years, I’ve been a proud, unapologetic pantser. My system is flawed and not terribly efficient, but it’s worked for nine books.
Well, I must confess, on my novel in process, my pants fell down.
Proof of Life (working title) is the 10th book in the Tawny Lindholm Thriller series. I know the characters well but not so well that they can’t still surprise me when they get into trouble.
The leads are investigator Tawny Lindholm and defense attorney Tillman Rosenbaum, a recently married couple in their 50s who work together in Montana. Both have adult children from previous marriages.
The inciting incident: Arielle, Tillman’s 22-year-old daughter, has been living in Israel for two years researching family history. She unexpectedly arrives back home in Montana, bedraggled and exhausted with a newborn baby girl. She’s clearly been on the run but refuses to answer questions. Even Tawny, whose superpower is to convince anyone to spill their secrets, can’t persuade Arielle to open up.
Because my books are thrillers, I also write scenes from the villain’s point of view. He’s a high-ranking Israeli cop who’s married, but not to Arielle. The baby is his, and he wants her back. His investigative methods are brutal but effective. If he finds Arielle, she’s in dire peril.
“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
Even before I started writing, I worried that the research needed about international laws was too complicated. But I pushed forward with the story, figuring I could fill in the blanks on rewrite.
Tawny and Tillman suspect Arielle has broken laws. They want to help her but she’s holding back critical information. They don’t yet know about the villain who’s hunting her.
Pretty soon, for the plot to make sense, I had to dig into the Hague Conventiontreaty regarding international child abduction. Who has jurisdiction? Who takes the lead during an arrest? FBI, State Department, Israeli consulate?
Laws on the books rarely translate into how they’re applied in real life (or realistic fiction). How could I find insights into actual practices? How are suspects treated? Do they go to jail pending hearings? What happens to the abducted child? Who takes care of her until custody is determined?.
For almost 200 pages, I wrote scenes out of chronological order as ideas occurred to me. The draft was full of notes saying, “needs further explanation”, “do more research”, “maybe cut?”, and “move this section?”.
No surprise that I started getting confused.
The excerpts I submitted to my critique group were discrete, self-contained scenes that they generally liked. But over several months, one member kept raising valid questions. I gave excuses but couldn’t come up with definitive answers.
More confusion.
In the past, I’ve used calendars to keep track of story timelines. That was especially important for Dead Man’s Bluff which was set against the backdrop of an actual hurricane. The calendar matched real day by day events like flooding, when roads were reopened, the staggered restoration of power over five days, etc. since those events impacted the plot.
Using a calendar also charts the cause and effect of each scene in relation to those before and after it. For this current manuscript, I didn’t use a calendar.
Bad choice.
Inside my head, arguments raged.
Wait a second, for the timeline to make sense, that scene can’t happen until much later. Oh no, that revelation is too soon because Tawny doesn’t know about XYZ yet. Oops, that confrontation between Tillman and the officials needs more build up. Should there even be a confrontation?
When I tried to cobble scenes together, they resembled Franken-novel.
photo credit: Andrew Fare
Pretty soon, I was in deeper trouble than poor Arielle.
For several weeks, I let my normally trusty subconscious work on the problems. But this time, even she was stumped.
So much for pantsing.
I admitted defeat and placed a 9-1-1 call to my brilliant brainstorming buddy Phyllis Quatman. She’s an attorney, author, and fantastic sounding board. Sitting at her dining table, we tore the plot apart.
Finally, Phyllis said, “Deb, you’re making this much too complicated. Why don’t you simply…” and she distilled the story down to its most basic elements. Get rid of this. Move that. Don’t go off on this tangent. Give the villain-cop a secret past that prevents him from using his official channels to find Arielle and the baby. Force him to go to ground and stay under the radar as she had to do.
Turns out my subconscious had already planted a breadcrumb about the villain’s secret past. That past simply needed to grow bigger and more sinister.
Three hours later, with brain buzzing and full of gratitude for Phyllis’s help, I drove home and started writing an outline.
Gasp! Me? The confirmed, unrepentant pantser?
This outline contains no Roman numerals, no capital and lower-case letters. It’s not scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Maybe it’s not even technically an outline.
However, it contains the complicated backstory of the events leading up to Arielle’s surprise arrival in Montana with the baby. Arielle’s secrets. Other characters’ secrets.
Most important are the villain’s secrets—there are humiliations and past crimes he never wants to come to light. Those are his motivations. What is his deep desire? He genuinely loves the baby and wants her back. What must he do to accomplish that goal? Find and kill Arielle.
Backstory isn’t simply backstory. It causes the present story.
One by one, secrets will be revealed. Each changes the course of the plot and builds toward the climax.
I pounded a signpost in the ground for the climactic showdown. Not many details yet but it’s a destination to head toward.
The outline clocked in at 1300 words.
Can any scenes from the original 200 pages be salvaged? Some, yes. Others may undergo severe rewriting.
Others go in the trash. Actually, it’s more like putting them in purgatory. When I cut scenes, I store them at the end of the Word doc as “outtakes” in case there are a few useable sentences or paragraphs. In practice, though, when manuscripts have been finalized, those scenes were not needed.
I’d already successfully pantsed my way through nine previous novels. I thought the same method would work for the tenth. It didn’t.
I had to change, adapt, and rethink the process.
Did I waste months drafting a story that couldn’t work? Would I have been more efficient and productive if I’d planned the plot in advance instead of pantsing it? Probably.
Will my quasi-outline solve the problem? I don’t know yet.
A whole lot of new scenes have to be written. This time around, I’ll write in chronological order with a calendar.
Lessons learned:
Just because a method worked in the past, it may not work now.
Doctorow’s headlights didn’t show the cliff soon enough to avoid this story dropping over it.
Listen to warning bells from my critique group.
Get over my childish prejudice against outlines.
One lesson I learned long ago was to ask for help from a good friend who’s objective, rational, and logical. Phyllis came through in a big way, as she’s done many times in the past. I’m filled with gratitude and appreciation for her.
Will I remain a pantser? Probably, but I’m no longer as confirmed and unrepentant. Maybe now my pants will stay up.
~~~
TKZers: Are you a plotter, pantser, or a combination of both (plantser)? Have you run into trouble with your system? How did you solve the problem? Or are you still working on it?
Cover by Brian Hoffman
Please check out Dead Man’s Bluff to see how using a calendar helped fiction mesh with real-life events.
Before I begin today’s post, I’d like to thank my colleagues at TKZ for their good wishes, and especially James Scott Bell and Dale Ivan Smith, for covering for me during my absence.
TKZ is the greatest. It’s nice to back.
Now on to some interesting fictional characters…
“Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.” — Elizabeth Bowen
* * *
I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately in a few unfamiliar settings – at least they’re new territory to me – hospitals, rehab orgs, and skilled nursing facilities – as we deal with my husband’s recent medical problems.
Now you might think such places would be depressing. After all, they’re home to the wrinkled and veiny aged population with their wheelchairs and walkers, prescription drugs and hospital beds. However…
I found these places not to be depressing at all, but fascinating. Most of the folks I’ve met aren’t persistent bellyachers despite their disabilities. Instead, they are people who have lived full lives and are up to facing adversity in their last years.
Take Jeb (not his real name). We met the 92-year-old at dinner one night in a skilled nursing home. Jeb is down to earth and fun to talk to, although he needs his hearing aids to stay in the conversation.
When Jeb noticed my husband was wearing a navy hat, our talk turned toward the military and veterans. We discovered Jeb had retired as a Colonel from the U.S. Army after thirty years of service and had served three tours of duty in Vietnam as a green beret.
Jeb is a relatively small man, not the muscle-bound giant I would have expected of a green beret, but he was a well-respected leader. He’s even the subject of a chapter in the book The Wars of the Green Berets by Robin Moore.
But in addition to his stories about the war, it was Jeb’s demeanor that captivated me. Although he lived through some horrific events, he is genial and warm, and his conversation is peppered with exclamations like “Oh heavens, yes!” and “Now, whaddya know!”
I realized after we’d spent a few hours with Jeb that he was the perfect model for Jake, a character in my WIP. I had been developing the character of Jake, a Korean War veteran who had lost his hearing in the war, and I had a good sense of who Jake was, but I couldn’t quite picture the physical character in my mind. Then I met Jeb and realized he was the model I had been looking for.
Jeb wasn’t the only character I met. Madeline (also not her real name) was another one whose determination to get out of the nursing home was funny and inspiring. As a matter of fact, it was during a conversation with Madeline that I suggested we form a team of residents to create a short story – a murder mystery set in a nursing facility. We’re getting suggestions for plot elements and characters from all sides to our tentatively named story, “The MerriLax Conspiracy” where the murder victim is, of course, one of the nurses. Madeline will play a leading role.
* * *
So TKZers: Where do you find characters for your stories? Are they based on people you know or always products of your imagination? Care to let the rest of us in on some of your experiences?
* * *
“DiBianca’s plot is tightly woven, but her cast of quirky and lovable characters steal the spotlight” —BookLife Reviews, Editor’s Pick
As readers and writers, memories are important. When we read, we are often bombarded with memories from our own earthly timeline. A character being lost might dredge up that frightening memory when your child got away from you in a crowded store. Or a nasty break-up reminds you of one you went through.
The question today is this: What is your earliest memory? Pleasant or harsh or in-between, what is a memory that stands out from your youngest years?
My earliest memory is when I was five and my sister was two. She slipped on the ice outside our house and banged her head on the walkway, knocking her unconscious. My dad hurried over and picked her up. I remember her head flailing around on his shoulder as he rushed her into the house. My six-year-old brother and I both thought she was dead, and were afraid to go in. But then we heard voices, Mom, Dad, and baby sister. We inched in and were relieved to see her sitting up in Mom’s lap.
This memory is especially poignant for me because thirty years later she really did pass away—and along with the reality of her death—was infused into both of my novels in different ways. And, tomorrow is her birthday, which makes this post/memory even more precious.
Your turn! What is your earliest memory? And how have you worked it into your story?
Most readers think that writers only write. (I wish) But these days, most authors have to either help promote their books or, with indie publishing, do all the promotion. Marketing that works involves connecting with readers, so I’m always looking for ways to engage readers (after writing a gripping story). I found a few to share with you.
#wordoftheday
Our own Terry Odell shared in an interview that she had been posting #wordoftheday on her social media sites, and I asked if she’d mind if I copied her idea. She agreed after threatening to make me the villain in one of her books and killing me off <G>…What she actually said was, “Sure. I stole the idea from someone else, anyway.”
Every day Terry posts a new word on Facebook (I’m sure you could post it on Instagram and Threads, too) that she chooses from Dictionary.com and asks her readers to make up a definition for the word. You can schedule posts to drop in, allowing you to schedule as many as you’d like or do one each day. It doesn’t take long. You can see that Terry has 19 comments on this post, which is a good response.
#PunDay
Amy Lilliard, another writer friend, creates Pun Day posts. She and a friend each make up a pun, and Amy puts it on her Facebook page and lets her readers pick the best pun. Like Terry’s Word of the Day, these competitions have generated a lot of engagement from readers.
Pinterest Boards
Another way to engage readers is to create a Character Board for your latest WIP on Pinterest. You can ask your readers what they would like to see on the board, or here are a few AI suggestions:
Photos or drawings showing what the character looks like.
Specific outfits, shoes, and accessories they wear.
Places they live, rooms, or nature backgrounds that match their mood.
Small items like weapons, books, animals, or food tied to their story.
An X offering:
A couple of years ago, there was a Twitter post going around where you posted either the title of a book or the first line, and then added “And then the murders began.” So I thought I’d try it using one of my books. It’s a way to get your book out there without saying, Buy me! This is something you can do on any social media site. I love seeing what readers come up with.
Polls
Polls are a great way to engage readers. I’ve created polls to see if my readers preferred the beach or mountains as a setting. You can put the poll in your newsletter, a social media post, or on your blog, if you have one. My next book is set in the mountains, and I made that decision after polling my readers.
Blogs
Blogs are a great way to connect with readers. TKZ is a great example of that. I have a blog with over 600 subscribers, over 1,000 visitors each week, and usually 25-30 comments that I always answer.
While those numbers aren’t astronomical, I started out about seven years ago with only 10 visitors each week (my family) and zero subscribers. I’m gaining more each week with my Mystery Question blog, where I have four statements (usually crimes). Three are true, and I make up one. Readers guess which one. Then on Friday, I review a book by another author.
If you decide to start a blog, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
Provide something that ties into what you write. I write suspense, so the Mystery Question ties into my books. And my Friday post readers appreciate that I promote other authors.
Be consistent. I’ve occasionally had to suspend my posts, and when I began again, it took a few weeks to get engagement going again.
Always respond to the comments — connecting with readers is the whole point of the blog.
Readers like to connect with the authors they read. We should give them the opportunity to learn more about us and our books. Take the time to share a little about yourself with your readers. It’s a win-win situation.
And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray…when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea. — Proust, In Search of Lost Time
By PJ Parrish
Morning crime dogs. Today, our submission writer is taking us to a far off place with a strange sounding name. Actually, they don’t tell us exactly where we are, but that’s okay because I can sense we’re not in Kansas, Dotty. The genre, our writer says, is international political thriller. Take a look and then let’s talk.
Light In the Kingdom Of Sand
Ari Edri woke to the heat and stink of his apartment, mouth sour with the taste of alcohol and cigarettes. His bed, little more than a cot, was drenched with sweat. The clamor of morning traffic outside the open window was all horns and chaos. His clock said it was nearly noon – another Monday and no reason to care or stir from bed.
He lay there for a moment, trying to find a comfortable position, but age, abuse, and arthritis made that impossible. Disgusted, he swung his legs off the bed and rose painfully to his feet.
In years past, he might have found a more accommodating home, but this was really all he could afford. He limped across the room to relieve himself. He winced at the pain and his reflection in the faded mirror. It was older, sadder, and more worn than he remembered.
Splashing water on his face, he looked around the room. The chair was still wedged firmly under the door handle. His old Luger lay on the bedside table. Unnecessary precautions, but habits die hard.
Long retired, he had done so without a single citation in his personnel file. Dozens of missions to support his country, and yet he was a cipher to them.
The lady downstairs must be cooking from Yael’s cookbook again. The smell from below and the thought of his ex-wife cooking a recipe she thought he loved brought a smile to his face unbidden. He looked at the picture of his daughter and granddaughter on the dresser. The smell and the picture were momentarily overpowering. Ari found his vision blurring, and he wiped a tear from his cheek too late to stop the next one. Tough guy, yeah.
He remembered his ex-wife and daughter confronting him about his drinking, telling him he couldn’t be around his granddaughter if he was going to be drinking. Not believing them led to not being able to see any of them. I should have believed them. How do you come back from that?
He moved the Luger to the small kitchen table and stared at it. Will today be the day? Will I finally have nerve enough? Not strong enough to stop the booze, why would I be strong enough to pull the trigger?
______________
I’m back. I enjoyed reading this submission. It has a good flow and I immediately felt sympathetic toward Ari Edri. (I like his name, btw, easy to remember as it trips off the tongue). But because this is pretty darn good, I am going to be a little hard on you, dear writer.
About Ari: We don’t know if he is the protagonist, the would-be hero whose journey we will follow for three hundred pages or so. The writer could be setting him up as a victim. Which is a fine entryway into a plot. Your story doesn’t always have to open with your protag; sometimes creating a scenario around a victim can be a really effective set-up. Done it many times myself. (Note to writer: If Ari is a victim, make sure you intro your hero very soon.)
But let’s assume Ari is the main man here. There is much I already like about the guy, thanks to judicious backstory insertion. Notice that the writer does NOT lard in paragraphs of backstory. They give us just enough to entice us about his circumstances — once an effective “warrior” of some kind, but now broken (tortured?) and forgotten. I sense bitterness, which will work well in Ari’s character arc, leaving me to wonder if this is, themactically, a story about redemption.
An aside: Redemption is a powerful theme. And never forget, writers, that THEME is what your story is really about. Yes, it’s about action, plot, car chases, a fight to save a person or a country. BUT your story is, at its deepest depths, about what is happening inside your character’s heart. Never forget that.
Now, about plot. Not much is happening in these first pages. It’s a slow build opening. I don’t mind that. I am willing to go along for a slow ride, BUT only to a point. Dear writer: I suggest you get Ari out and doing something fairly quickly. Too much remembering, musing, thinking, pondering and moping isn’t sustainable for long.
I will ask this to you all out there: Do you think the writer got into the scene too early? I often see mysteries and thrillers begin this way — the protag (usually a PI or cop) gets a phone call to come to a crime scene. We then get him swinging his tired legs over the bed, “padding” across the ratty apartment, hungover, staring at his gun, moping and thinking…
When…
It might be more effective to get the protag OUT into the world actively doing something. I really dislike cop stories that begin with the cop getting a phone call to come to a murder scene. Rather: Put him (and us) there and then go back and fill in the backstory of booze and broken homes. As James said in his great Sunday post on backstory: ACT FIRST, EXPLAIN LATER. Click here to read. Dear Writer: I suggest you go back and read James’s post.
Some other things about the submission. Given Ari’s name and the book’s title, I am assuming this takes place in the mideast. I don’t need you to slap a place tag on your chapter ie:
CHAPTER ONE
KABUL, JANUARY, 2023
That’s lame. But do find a way soon to tell us where we are organically. You’ve already hinted at it.
One last thing. And this is important….
I don’t get much sense of place. I don’t see you, the writer, using your sense, to bring Ari’s world to life. I think you can make this even better. Place is a character. You have to give it as much care as you do your characters. You are working with a good basic grasp of scene-building, but you’ve missed many chances to TAKE US TO YOUR PLACE.
This is a fault I see in many submissions, an underdeveloped sense of place, and no use of the senses in description. You’ve told us it is hot, sweaty and chaotic outside. You’ve toldus his apartment “stinks.” You’ve told us he looks worn and old. You’ve told us there is photo of his daughter and granddaugher. You’ve toldus he can smell something cooking downstairs.
Now SHOWus. What does “chaos” sound like? What does “hot” feel like? What does his apartment “stink” of? What does “old and worn” look like exactly? What does that family photo look like? And most powerfully, you set up this evocative memory of his wife’s cooking! What does it “smell” like? You must use your senses when you write. THAT is what takes us to your fictional world.
A sudden, brassy blast tore through the heavy air, a sharp and angry shriek of metal and electricity. Another horn joined in close behind—a long, heavy drone of pure frustration.
Note: The cacaphony of cars in say Chennai sounds completely different than it does in Chicago. And note that the noise can reflect the emotional noise in Ari’s head. Connect and reflect.
The world seemed to die each afternoon and nothing moved any longer. At last the summer was like a green sick dream, or like a silent crazy jungle under glass. — Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding.
Note: Trying to nail down weather description can make fools of us all. Tread lightly.
There is an invalid fug in the room – the faint animal scent of the furs, a vegetal stench of undrained cooking water, and the sour reek from a bowl with which a girl hurries away: containing, he suspects, the evacuated contents of the dowager’s stomach. — Hilary Mantel, Bring Up The Bodies
Note: Of course, your room isn’t historic and this isn’t your style. I offer it only as an example of how you must use your senses, especially smell. Which brings me to what you wrote:
The lady downstairs must be cooking from Yael’s cookbook again. The smell from below and the thought of his ex-wife cooking a recipe she thought he loved brought a smile to his face unbidden. He looked at the picture of his daughter and granddaughter on the dresser. The smell and the picture were momentarily overpowering. Ari found his vision blurring, and he wiped a tear from his cheek too late to stop the next one. Tough guy, yeah.
What what did you miss? The utterly golden opportunity to SHOWus what it smells like and more important, to link it to Ari’s emotional state. Some examples:
She smells of her cooking and the perfume Eau d’Hadrien. My mother wore it, too. She used to cook, like Lili. Our house smelled of garlic and thyme instead of sadness.― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
And of course:
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans. — Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.
I am bringing these passages about food in for a main and final reason. Ari is a deeply troubled man, with a strangled present and a tortured past. He is estranged from his family and deeply lonely. You instinctively chose to put in that smell coming from an apartment below. Not just any smell — the divine scent of his wife’s cooking. How wonderfully Proustian! Yet you didn’t SHOW us what it smelled like. And worse, you missed the opportunity to link it to Ari’s memories and emotional state. Yes, you had him tear up, but it feels distanced and unspecific. Details! Details! Details! This should be a coda, bringing us out of his backstory past and back to the present as he looks at that Luger.
Here’s a clip from one of my favorite movies, The Hundred Foot Journey. It is about a young Indian man who leaves his family to become a famous chef in Paris. In the most touching scene, he shares an after-hours meal sitting on the floor of his famous bistro, with a waiter, who is eating the Indian dinner his wife has made for him. It brings the chef to tears and to the realization he must go home to find himself again. I can’t find that clip, alas. But, dear writer, please find a way to connect Ari to his past through taste and smell.
Good start, writer. I enjoyed this. Now, back to work….
Live events put you and your stories in the same room as actual humans—humans who can see your covers, hear talk about your book, and feel that spark that made you write it in the first place. That proximity changes everything. You’re not battling algorithms or waiting for an email open; you’re creating a moment of connection. And connection sells.
Financially, it’s also where your margins flex. When you sell direct, you skip retailer cuts and keep the delightfully fat slice.
Here are a couple ways to make more money with your sales:
Use round, tax-included pricing (hello, $20) to make checkout brainless.
Use bundles. — Book 1 + Book 2, the whole series or a book + workbook.
Remember, you’re not a discount bin; you’re an artisan shop. People will be excited to meet and support the author.
Let Your Table Do the Talking
A good table is a quiet salesperson: it invites, explains, and excites before you even open your mouth. Have a pretty tablecloth in a branded color with your author tagline on it. Consider having banner with a scene from your books. Scene art not only makes your booth stand out, it draws target readers. If you are into dragons, and you see a dragon, you are already interested. Another way to target readers is to have signs with your genre and tropes. If you’ve got room, a simple black backdrop pushes visual focus to your covers (and hides whatever chaos lurks behind you).
Make it easy to catch readers’ eyes by elevating your books to eye level with risers or bookshelves. Stand your books up with the covers facing out. Your cover is your best advertisement! Bring more books than you plan to sell. You want to look prosperous, not sad. Place a big, friendly price signs where eyes naturally land and keep your bundles front and center. Sprinkle in a little on-brand swag (a bookmark with a review QR, a recipe or world-building card) that feels like a keepsake, not landfill.
Where the Buyers Are
Start big, then get clever.
Book fairs, signing events, expos, and genre conventions put you in front of motivated readers who came to buy books (bless them). These shows offer concentrated foot traffic, panel opportunities, and the chance to meet librarians, booksellers, and influencers—the kind of contacts that turn one weekend into a year of momentum. Genre-specific cons (romance, SFF, mystery) are especially powerful because the audience is pre-sorted to love what you write.
Non-book events like farmers markets, craft fairs, and art walks are great for authors. Being the only book seller in a sea of candles and sourdough attracts readers. The vibe is “support a maker,” which maps beautifully to “support an author.”
Homeschool gatherings and education-focused events can be gold mines for bulk sales and long-tail relationships. Parents and co-op leaders are actively hunting for quality reading, curriculum tie-ins, and author visits. Bring classroom sets pricing, unit-study guides, and a simple order form—make it easy to say yes for a whole group.
Think outside the box and follow your themes: a cat expo for cozy mysteries with feline sidekicks, a Renaissance fair for fantasy and historical adventures, or a culturally specific celebration like Jewish Joy Con if your stories and community align. When your setting, characters, and values match the event’s heart, conversion jumps because readers feel connected to your stories.
Finally, network like a pro. Trade cards with nearby authors and vendors, learn what they sell, and be ready to recommend them when your books aren’t the right fit (and ask them to do the same for you). A generous table neighbor is remembered, referred, and often invited back.
Let’s regale each other with our favorite word origins on this last day of July 2026, shall we?
Here’s mine: Boudoir
You might think, “Well, Deb, what’s so special about that word?” I’d tell you that it’s not the word that’s special, it’s where it came from and what the hidden meaning is.
Boudoir usually means a lady’s private dressing room, right?
Straight from the above website:
“The French verb bouder means ‘to pout,’ and it led to the French word boudoir, a noun that literally means ‘a place to pout in…’”
I don’t know about you, but I want one.
Your turn, TKZers. Astound us with your favorite word origin.
I hit “The End” on the current WIP, which is really “The Beginning.” Because I’m on deadline now, I’m revisiting a post that appeared several years ago.
I think in surgical terms when I tackle my draft. First, the major medical. The current manuscript came in longer than I wanted. Although I firmly believe that a story should be as long as it needs to be, the operative word is needs, and I check to make sure that every scene pulls its weight and advances the story. I confess that as a non-plotter, I often find things that never got followed up on, or were just fun scenes to write. If they don’t connect to the overall story, they get cut.
Purely practical note. At Amazon, there’s a “delivery fee” for ebooks based on file size. Longer books, bigger cut for them. Example: for my three-book box sets, they slice from 25 to 27 cents per book. They take about a dime from my “normal” length books. For those who go wide, B&N, Kobo, and Smashwords don’t have these fees. D2D keeps about 10% regardless of book length.
In print, the cost to produce the book via KDP is based on page count. More pages, bigger cut. I don’t sell enough print books to check out the other distributors, so I can’t speak for them.
For the indie author: Editors often charge by the hour or by the word. Cutting excess can save you money.
If you’re going to produce the book in audio and pay a narrator, the longer the book, the greater the cost.
These, to me, justify excising ugly fat. If you want more advice from the real experts, check this out.
Back to cutting plot threads. Should be easy, right? Patient has appendicitis, you cut out the appendix. In the manuscript, you find the threads that don’t need to be there and remove them. My characters often meet at a neighborhood dog park. I’d originally included two scenes where they met new people and their dogs there, thinking it might be strange to have them be the only two there. One of those new people might have been involved in shady dealings that affected my characters. The other did nothing more than show the dogs playing. The shady dealings never transpired, so I cut both of scenes. Easier to pop in a line about how the dog park was usually empty at the time my characters were there.
Threads don’t exist in nice, tidy packages. There will be places where you’ve foreshadowed, places where you’ve followed up, and places where you’ve made a reference, almost in passing, to something that happened or a character who appeared in that now defunct thread. Like the time my character apologized for being late because of a flat tire and explained how he had to get it repaired due to a nail. At the time, it foreshadowed a bad guy tampering with his car, but that never happened. I cut that paragraph. But a page later, he was thinking that the flat had put him behind schedule. Had to get rid of that, too.
A tip: Watch your transitions. It’s more than likely the scene before the one you cut led into it. That will have to be adjusted. Likewise the one after it. If you ended the scene with a page-turning cliff hanger, that cliffhanger now sends readers into an abyss with no bottom.
If you want the patient to recover, you have to make sure nothing’s left behind when you close him up.
Deleting a paragraph can create a dominoes effect. Watch what happens right before and after, and smooth out the edges. Critique partners, beta readers, and editors are helpful here, because they haven’t read the manuscript seventy-eleven times.
Moving on to the microsurgery.
Words that don’t add anything to the story need to go. They might even add distance, keeping a layer you don’t want between your readers and the characters. Or, there might be awkward bits.
I’ve talked about using SmartEdit before. It’s great for finding those pesky adverbs, repeated words and phrases, and another source of extra words: redundancies.
As with any automated program, you have to review every “suggestion” it makes. These programs don’t write genre fiction. SmartEdit suggests possible redundancies. I’ve run chapters and scenes through Grammarly as well, and find the same problem. Many of their suggestions don’t apply in context. However, they deserve a second look. Fortunately both programs show you where each “offense” occurs, so you can move through the manuscript quickly. Some examples of my overused phrases:
Outside of
Whether or not
Ask a question
Advance warning
Off of
Open up
Shut down
Temper tantrum
Major breakthrough
Basic essentials
Stand up
Fall down
Advance notice
Burning embers
Shrug a shoulder
I remember my high school Latin teacher complaining about advertising wording. “From its earliest beginnings to its final completion.” Or “Free gift.” He also said “up” is an overused word. I’ll never forget class clown Leon saying, “So what’s the bank robber supposed to say? This is a stick?”
Then there are the clunkers. Sometimes the eye catches them, but having Word (or your program of choice) read the book aloud to you will help you find them.
Listening calls attention to repeated words. Plus, you can hear words that aren’t really repeats, but echoes, such as this passage I discovered:
His mouth dropped. “You’re saying you’re going to wash my clothes?” She sighed. “Apparently.” It took several heartbeats for his mouth to close….
Did you spot the ‘clunker’? If not, read it out loud.
OK, TKZers: What are your tips for performing surgery on your manuscript?
Deadly Ambitions Peace in Mapleton doesn’t last. Police Chief Gordon Hepler is already juggling a bitter ex-mayoral candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut police department’s funding.
Meanwhile, Angie’s long-delayed diner remodel uncovers an old journal, sparking her curiosity about the girl who wrote it. But as she digs for answers, is she uncovering more than she bargained for?
Now, Gordon must untangle political maneuvering, personal grudges, and hidden agendas before danger closes in on the people he loves most. Deadly Ambitions delivers small-town intrigue, political tension, and page-turning suspense rooted in both history and today’s ambitions.
Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”
Summer comes with many temptations, from scanty clothes to rampant hormones. Moralists believe young women should be protected from them all. But one summer temptation really riled preachers.
