Category Archives: writing

First Page Critique: A Pearl of Great Price

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by Joe Moore

We continue our first-page critiques with the anonymous submission: A Pearl of Great Price.

“Fug,” Jasper Moore muttered under his breath.  It felt good.  He hadn’t worked himself up to saying the real f-word, but he would.  It was damn hard to get past all those years of living with Prissy Miss Minnie.  If she’d even heard him say “fug,” she’d look like she was passing a pig from her butt.

He looked down at the bulging gut hanging over his dungarees, his hairy freckled arms, his fingernails dark with grease.  That was who he was.  His damn job kept him hovering over dirty engines twelve hours a day, this damn house always needed something fixed, and his damn wife wouldn’t even let him say “damn.”  Don’t forget the damn church was sucking him dry and scaring the pee out of him.  And those awful snake dreams.  Snakes crawling all over him, sticking their long fangs deep in his arms.  It was enough to make a man run screaming for his life.

He looked down at the large grease stains on the garage floor.  This was the only place in the house that was his.  Minnie had claimed everything else with lace doilies, prim little pink flowerdy furniture, and pictures of that pansy-assed Jesus.  Christ on a barbecue.  Except it was him, not Christ, that was roasted—every single goddam day.

Reaching past the canvas tarps covering a five-gallon bucket, he grabbed a hot Budweiser, dragging it out through the empties.  A man couldn’t even drink in his own home.  Had to hide it from the little woman who said drinking was a mark of the beast.  Well, he’d show her who the beast was when she got home from that stinkin’ church.  The Tabernacle of the Children of the Only Real Living Lord with Signs Following.  Huh.  One of these days he’d tell her just what that damn Tabernacle was all about.  One of these days.  He took a gulp of the hot beer and wiped his mouth his left hand.

A creak from the back door startled him.  A man stood against the light from outside, so Jasper couldn’t make out who it was.  The only light in the garage came from the open doorway and the grimy window above his workbench.

“What the heck?”  He didn’t like anybody to sneak up on him.  His heart pounded in his chest.  The man was about the size of his stinkin’ father-in-law, the man who made it clear that Jasper wasn’t anywheres near good enough for his precious daughter.  Hell.  He was too good for that little tight-assed prude.  Then, Jasper realized the man hadn’t said nothing.  He had to hold tight to the Bud to keep it from slipping out of his hands.

“What you doin’ here?  Ain’t good manners to sneak up on a man quiet-like.”  Still nothing.

“Now, looka here.  Just what the heck you want?”  Jasper felt a weight in his chest. “Why, Jathper, we gonna have uth a little talk.  You know the kind.”  The man’s calm voice spooked Jasper, who recognized that lisp from the Tabernacle and the trips the took to the beach. Only one man talked like that—Flembo Reeves.  He held a large wooden box in front of him, one like the snake-holding boxes the Tabernacle used.  Weird rattling and bumping sounds came from the box.

Jasper’s heart thumped even harder.  You coulda called, you know.  I’m busy right now.  Got stuff to do here.  And what you doin’ here with that box anyway?   Them things belong in the Tabernacle, not in a person’s home.”  He looked down at the Budweiser in his hand.

“Oh, I coulda called.  But I wanted to thurprithe you.  Juth like I have.  Don’t you like thurprithes, Jathper?”  Jasper’s hands shook, as he crushed the beer can in his hand.  Damn Flembo scared him like the snakes did.

I have mixed feelings about this one; I want to like it but I don’t. What I do like is that it contains an interesting voice with an edgy taste of humor, but the humor is walking a tightrope between appealing and raw. Like so many of our first-page submissions, this one is top heavy with exposition. I feel like I’m being forced to like Jasper. And like many other submissions, I believe the writer has started in the wrong place. As Jim previously stated, start with your character in motion, then drop back and explain. Or as he also puts it: Act first, explain later.

Possibly a better place to start would be somewhere around the fifth paragraph; A creak from the back door startled him. Of course, the writer would have to massage it a bit, but that would be my call.

Also, there are missing quote marks, missing words, and a couple of typos. Here’s a tip: proofread your submission before you send it to anyone; agent, editor, whoever.

Finally, be VERY careful using colloquialisms and characters with speak impediments. Strange or unusually spelled words will stop the reader’s eye cold. They are the equivalent of roadblocks placed in the sentence to cause the reader to slow down, pause or stop altogether. Never make the reader work at reading. There are too many other books out there that that your reader can choose from. Is it really so vital to THE STORY that you let the words get in the way?

I think with a little bit of work, this could be smoothed out. I would strive to let that unique voice come through that right now seems to be hiding just below the surface.

Other’s reactions? Would you keep reading?

Coming up short with word count

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By Joe Moore

“I’ve cut this rope three times and it’s still too short.”

image Despite the corny old carpenter joke about miss-measuring, it’s something that does happens from time to time when writing a book. You’re under contract to deliver a 100k-word manuscript and your first draft is 10k short. What do you do? Do you “pad” the writing—go in and add a lot of stuff just for the sake of word count. Padding usually involves “staging” or additional extraneous actions by your characters as they move around the “stage”. But doing it too much will call attention to the padding and wind up getting sliced out by your editor. Intentional padding is not the answer. But there are some legitimate ways to increase word count without bloating your story.

One suggestion is to build up your story’s “world” by conducting additional research and adding a few bits and pieces of atmosphere throughout. Let’s say your scene takes place in Miami Beach. Your character is having breakfast on the balcony of her hotel room overlooking the Atlantic. Without slowing down the story, add a few lines about the history of the hotel. Since most of the hotels on Miami Beach have been around for decades, certainly something might have happened years ago at the same local that could reflect on or be pertinent to the story’s plot or situation.

Another method is to utilize your character’s five senses. Are you making good use of them? Sitting on that balcony, your MC must be able to smell the fresh sea breeze and hear the gulls calling from overhead. Or she notices the ever-present container ships slipping along the horizon in the Gulf Stream. Could be that she can feel the film of salt coating the arms of her chair. How does her freshly squeezed OJ taste? You don’t want to use all 5 in every scene, but engaging the senses is a great way to expand the prose and take advantage of an opportunity to further develop your character.

The skill in expanding a manuscript is to do so without appearing to pad the writing. And you want to avoid going down a new rabbit hole and suddenly winding up with too many words such as introducing a new subplot. Always consider the two basic criteria for any additional words: they must either advance the plot or further develop the character. Otherwise, they don’t belong.

What about you? Have you ever come up short on contractual word count? How did you expand the story without it becoming blotted or obviously padded?

Is #2 more important than #1?

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By Joe Moore

image Here’s a question that popped up recently on a writer’s forum: has being published made it easier for agents and editors to accept your future work? Are they more lenient because you’ve already been published or do they give your writing the same level of scrutiny that unpublished submissions?

There are many factors here that can affect the publication of a second or third book. Obviously, the success of book one will certainly help getting a contract on the next one. But just because you had the first one published is no guarantee contracts will be issued on follow-ups.

I think that being published through traditional, legitimate methods means that you’re writing on a professional level. And people who write at a professional level usually have an easier time at getting published. Publishing credits do help in getting read, but there’s no substitute for a great book.

I also believe that the most important book you’ll ever write is your second one. Number 2 is THE book. It’s far more important than the first or the third, perhaps the most important of your career. Many folks can write one book, but the number declines when it comes to that second novel. It’s the one that can make, damage or even destroy a future in fiction.

What do you think? Did you feel it was easier to get that second book published after the first hit the shelves? Do you think #2 is critical?

Don’t forget to download a copy of FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

What is sellthrough?

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By Joe Moore

Someone emailed me the other day and asked what sellthrough means in regard to publishing. Sellthrough is one of those buzzwords that helps a publisher evaluate their current and future relationship with a writer. It’s determined by the amount of books that were shipped and paid for, and it’s expressed as a percentage. For instance, let’s say a writer had a print run of 5000 books and the publisher shipped 4000 (orders). Of those, they received payment for 3500. The sellthrough would be 87.5% since 3500 is 87.5% of 4000. And a sellthrough that high would be a very good thing.

Now, the next question sent to me was: How important is sellthrough in the eyes of the publisher?

For that answer, I went to my friend Neil Nyren. Neil is senior vice president, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Here’s his response:

“Sellthrough is important for a couple of reasons. Every book has returns, no matter how successful it is – that’s just the nature of the business. But returned books cost money. We’ve printed and shipped them, but they haven’t sold, and so now all we can hope to do is sell them as remainders. So the fewer books that come back, the better the potential profit picture, for both the publisher and the author.

“Sellthrough is also an important indication of the traction a writer is acquiring in the marketplace. If your sellthrough is 80%, that means the books are sticking and the accounts have a positive history with you (after all, for every five books they ordered, they sold four). And that means a publisher can use that as a springboard to get them to order more copies next time (“Look how well you did!”). It’s an indication that – even if the figures are still small – there may well be growth potential there. It’s a very positive sign – and we can use all the positive signs we can get!”

So for all the published authors out there, it’s easy to calculate your sellthrough. Check your statement and divide the number of books sold by the number shipped—some publishers even calculate the sellthrough for you and display it on the statement. In the above example, the answer is .875 or 87.5%. For those who aren’t published yet, when you finally do get your first statement, you’ll already know one number to watch for that can tell you and the publisher a great deal about how you’re doing.

Download FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

The Edge

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Let’s do another first-page critique. This one is the prologue from a manuscript submitted anonymously called THE EDGE:

Emma is five years old in the nightmare.

She’s huddled in the V-berth of the sailboat she’s called home her whole life. She wonders what’s gone wrong. When her mommy tucked her into bed the ocean had been calm, the moon was a beacon of light. Now her little home is lurching and rolling on an angry sea. The sails crack like whips as the wind shrieks. The night is a black monster that wants to swallow her.

She hears her mommy rush up on deck and scream. She’s screaming for Emma’s daddy. “Ivan. Where are you? Ivan?” Why doesn’t he answer? The boat’s so small, there’s no place to hide. When Emma plays hide and seek, she always knows her mommy will find her. Where is daddy hiding?

Then everything in Emma’s dream goes silent, like a movie with the sound turned off. She sees huge waves crash over the cabin windows. She watches her mommy’s feet appear, first on one side of the boat, then the other. Fast. Her mommy is so fast.

Hold on tight, Mommy. Emma wants to call out but no words come. She feels sick. The boat plunges and bucks. She vomits in her bed. The smell makes her sick and she vomits again.

Emma wants her mommy to come back inside and comfort her. Her body bumps and thumps against the walls of the berth as if she’s a ragdoll. She clutches her bear and closes her eyes as the boat does a slow tumble over on its side.

This is a tough call. As we’ve discussed here before, prologues can work for you and against you. In this case, we’re starting with someone named Emma having a dream. Unfortunately, this first page tells me absolutely nothing about Emma and the book. All I know is she has bad dreams. The first question that comes to mind is: who cares?

I know it sounds crass, but it’s a legitimate question. Having read just this much, I have to ask, would the reader care? Would the agent or editor? Would anyone care enough to read on? There’s no grab or hook. Nothing happens. The dream is probably something that could be utilized later in the story since I’m sure there’s a reason for it and for the mommy-daddy-boat-on-troubled-waters thing. But as it stands, this might be a turn-off for an agent unless it was preceded by the greatest query letter and synopsis in the history of literature. My advice: ditch the prologue and get on with the story.

Download FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

In the land of zombies

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Recently, I watched a movie called ZOMBIELAND staring Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine). It was a fun movie with lots of laughs and clever moments like the “Zombie kill of the week” involving a grand piano, and a guest appearance by Bill Murray who played himself. Sadly, he was accidently shot and killed. Those things tend to happen in zombie movies. I’m not a zombie fan, but I enjoyed this movie.

zl1 I think it takes a lot of guts to write about zombies or vampires or werewolves. That’s because I consider those topics to be “box” stories. I feel that the moment you write the first word of a zombie story, you have placed yourself in a box. It’s hard to make a zombie more disgusting; everyone on the planet already knows how disgusting they are. Just like it’s a challenge to make a vampire more vile or a werewolf more dangerous. It’s sort of like writing about Jeffery Dahmer’s hearty appetite. You’re making the tough job of writing even tougher. The secret to great zombie stories is not the zombies, it’s the characters that must struggle to survive. Characters make the story. After all, George Lucas could have easily changed Luke Skywalker’s name to Frodo Baggins, set the story in a place called The Shire, changed the name from Star Wars to . . .well, you get the point. It would have been the same basic story because what matters are the characters, not the setting.

We don’t get to pick which one-page submissions we critique, our fearless founder Kathryn Lilley hands them out to each of us. So I may not be the best choice to comment on a zombie story simply because I don’t read them. But I can comment on the writing. And my comments follow today’s one-page anonymous submission called RUE.

They say that a person’s first memory shapes its being.

My first memory was of pain. Incredible, unending pain, beyond any possibility of relief. I tried to scream. There was no breath in my lungs to scream with, and besides, there were…things. In my throat, and in my nose. I couldn’t even think, the pain was so bad.

After a moment, or it might have been an eternity, the pain pulled back some, and I was able to grip the things – tubes, like the ones my grandmother had had in her mouth near the end (grandmother? I couldn’t remember the woman’s face, only that she had died in a hospital) and pull them out. That hurt too.

Once I was sitting upright and reasonably awake, I became aware of the hunger. It was terrible, a deep painful gnawing in my gut. I was starving.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” I called. My voice echoed out into the hospital, but there was no other sound. And there it was, the thing that had been bothering me: it was too quiet. I had been in hospitals before, and they were noisy places, polluted with the sounds of blood pressure machines and the many, many other things humans use to keep death at bay for just a little while longer.

So I got out of the bed. My feet hurt, but no more than anything else, and they would carry me. There was nobody in the hospital – or at least, nobody I could find. I kept thinking I could hear voices, just around the next corner, or the next…

I found the cafeteria, though, and helped myself. Eating with my hands like a savage I emptied three huge serving bowls of lasagne that had seen better days. It didn’t really help much. I was still starving.

I went on. It was about then that the first zombie found me. It had been a doctor once, I think. It wasn’t anymore. It was just a mindless…thing, and it was hungry. My first impression of it was confused. Lab-coat, once white, now a sort of greyish brown. Grey skin. Hair falling out in clumps, and eyes that saw nothing. And over it all a deep black chasm of hunger, laced with hopeless screams. That’s one thing the living were fortunate not to know. The walking dead are still aware. Trapped, helpless in their decaying bodies, the soul of each zombie screams endlessly for some kind of release, bound about by the endless consuming hunger of the undead.

This is a pretty good beginning although I was a bit thrown by the first line indicating this was “My first memory”. I immediately pictured an infant with a phenomenal awareness. But reading on made it clear that it was an adult or young adult. The sex is unknown.

There’s conflict right off the bat with the medical impediments and the unnerving isolation in what should be a busy place. I think it’s over-written and just needs a good, swift kick with a red pen. But overall, I’m going to assume a zombie fan would keep reading to find out if this person makes it out of the hospital. In reality, isn’t that the plot of all zombie stories?

One advantage to writing a zombie story is that the basic conflict is built-in and comes with the territory. We know there’s going to be danger around every corner and the protagonist will probably get few moments to take a breather. So overall, I’ll give this submission a B-. Get out the editing pen, clean it up, delete all the unnecessary words, and the author will have a good start here.

What do you zombie and non-zombie fans think? Would you keep reading?

Download FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

One-page critique of Bullet’s Name

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By Joe Moore

We continue our one-page critique project at TKZ with an anonymous submission called Bullet’s Name.

August, 1937

It was just after eleven on a Sunday morning when God-fearing people were in church and reprobates were sleeping in from reprobating all night.

Jasper Green was waiting for me in a rundown colored roadhouse a few miles outside Salisbury, North Carolina. I parked the well-worn Ford sedan that I’d rented three days earlier for ten bucks a day from a less-than-honest car dealer in Charlotte. I parked just shy of sparkling Dodge coupe with a Carolina plate.

The front door stood open so I crossed the porch and walked into the dim interior. The water-stained ceiling undulated gently like the surface of the ocean. The pine floors were worn paper smooth and the place smelled of spilled beer, cigarette smoke and a hint of a shallow piss pit out back. Some of the dark-brown floor stains looked like residue from blade work.

Green sat like a king with his back in a corner, his black hair pomaded to his narrow skull like sun-baked paint. His right hand was under the table, his dusty brown eyes reflected amused disinterest. A young negress, with a lithe body that gave turned a simple cotton shift into an elegant gown, was delivering a bottle of whiskey to his table when I came in and she looked at me like I was tracking in a dog turd.

In a welcoming gesture, Jasper Green smiled disarmingly and raised his chin to invite me over. When I got to the table, he pointed at the chair opposite and said, “Sit down and take a load off, buddy.”

I would recommend that the writer proofread the work before submission. Even if this is a rough first draft, the writer could have taken a few seconds to make sure this single page was clean and devoid of errors. There are words missing: “the” or “a” before the word “sparkling”, and extra words that don’t belong: “gave” just before “turned”. We are told twice in a row that “I parked”.

Regarding the writing, there’s nothing wrong with using metaphors, similes and strong description to create atmosphere and sense of place. But in this example, there are way too many. Some are confusing and some just don’t work. I don’t think using the verb “undulated” is a good way to describe a ceiling unless you’re drunk on your back staring up at it.

I would bet that beer drinkers love the smell of beer. I would even bet that they would have no issue with the aroma of spilt beer. I think what the writer meant was the odor of spilled beer from a week or a month ago—the smell of stale beer.

I assume the dark stains resulting from “blade work” mean blood spilled from past knife fights. That almost works, but for me it was too obscure.

I would suggest changing “colored roadhouse” to “negro roadhouse”. In today’s politically correct mindset, colored does not have the impact that negro would.

I’ve heard of people described as having a narrow face or even a narrow head, but a narrow skull doesn’t quite put a vivid picture in my mind. Word choice is so important. The word skull, for me at least, has a totally different connotation than head. And is pomaded the right word choice for this setting? The first page may not be the best time to send your reader running for a dictionary or the writer trying to exhibit an extended vocabulary. Remember that you are establishing your voice from page one.

From across the room, the main character could see that Jasper’s eyes were a “dusty brown”, a description I find somewhat attractive for a person the writer is trying to paint as a dark or questionable character.

The sentence that starts with “A young negress” lacks proper punctuation. It also paints a contradiction. This “lithe” girl who turns rags to royalty when it comes to her wardrobe suddenly is assumed to think in terms of turds. A complete turn-off for me.

An overall comment: you cannot describe a character into being good or bad. This can only be done through their actions and reactions. This submission tries to use description to do the job. It may be a sign that the writer doesn’t “know” the characters well enough yet.

Summary: proof read, use economy of words—less is always more, use proper punctuation, and start a story at the moment of impact where the main character is tossed out of his or her comfort zone. Chances are, an agent would not read beyond this page.

What about you? Would your read on?

Download FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

Pardon my french

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by Michelle Gagnon

During our first page critiques, we discussed the danger of incorporating strong language on page 1 of your manuscript. Encountering an f-bomb at the outset of a novel can turn off a lot of readers, so editors are understandably leery of acquiring works with it.

However, I think that strong language does have a place in novels- at least in mine. I frequently get emails or reviews from people who say things like, “I loved this book, but wish that someone had gone through and crossed out all the f-bombs for me.” Equally perplexing to me are the people who claim that they “didn’t mind the f-bombs, but at times Gagnon takes the name of the Lord in vain.”

Here’s the thing: I’m not the one doing it. My characters are, and they’re doing it because in real life, that’s how people in their particular professions and circumstances talk.

I understand that we don’t all approve of strong language- I certainly don’t use it frequently. But then, I’m rarely chasing serial killers, or trying to stop a domestic terror group from destroying Phoenix. When my characters are staring at the timer on a bomb, I don’t think “gosh” is going to be the first word to leave their lips. I try to be judicious with the swearing, but it’s most important to me to remain true to the characters spouting it. From my admittedly somewhat limited exposure to them, gang members and ex-con skinheads tend to have foul mouths. So do many law enforcement officers, especially when they’re talking to each other. I strive for accuracy in every other facet of my books. So why should I be expected to compromise on this one?

Maybe I’ve simply become inured. The places I’ve lived (including San Francisco), it’s rare to get through the day without hearing random swearing (and now that people are constantly talking loudly into their cell phones, they really seem to have lost their filter). I’ll join in on any bemoaning of what that means for us as a society. But since that experience informs my work, I can’t pretend it’s not the current reality, allowing my characters to speak as though they just stumbled off the Leave it to Beaver set.

I was raised a Unitarian, which is a religion that promotes tolerance of all beliefs. So I empathize with people who don’t condone taking the name of the Lord in vain. And yet, I can attest that my characters harken from a wide range of religious beliefs. Because of that, chances are they’re going to use such terms from time to time. And in the interest of realistic dialogue, I believe in letting them. If I were writing Inspirational thrillers, it would be an entirely different story. But I’m not.

I’m curious to hear what people think about this. Does strong language have a place in thrillers? Does it bother you, or not?

The demise of free advertising and a first-page critique of The Birds

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By Joe Moore

Have you ever seen someone reading a novel at the beach, on a plane, train, doctor’s office, subway, or just noticed a book sitting on a coffee table in someone’s house? Next to having a friend or trusted colleague recommend a book, seeing someone else reading a book is a great product endorsement. After all, that stranger on the plane paid good money to buy it, and you can tell even from a distance just how much they’ve read. If it’s more than half way, that’s a great indicator that the book is worth your time. And what’s really cool is that every one of those books come with free advertising. It’s called cover art. Not only is seeing someone reading a book a good indication that it’s worth reading, but the cover helps reinforce the sell.

Now comes a new dilemma, a byproduct of the emergence of e-books. With the advent and growing popularity of e-readers like the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, there’s no more free advertising. Seeing someone reading from a Kindle on a plane or in a Starbucks tells you absolutely nothing about the book. How far have they read? Who knows. And what genre is it? After all, isn’t that the job of the cover art? Even in this era of the emerging e-readers, publishers still believe that books need graphic representations, if only for online marketing. But what about all that free advertising those authors got when their books showed up at the beach or on a train?

If the trend continues, someday it might be gone.

imageAnd now for my critique of today’s first-page submission to TKZ. I don’t know what the author’s WIP is called, so I’ll refer to it as The Birds. You’ll soon see why.

As I maneuvered through the after-work crowd and weaved between the tents of the farmer’s market in Daley Plaza, children clambered up the spine, mounted the wings, and slid down the belly of the 50-feet Picasso sculpture. At the market, people mused over smoked cheddar and peppercorn; heirloom, beefsteak and roma tomatoes; red and black raspberries; white and sweet potatoes; red, green, and yellow peppers and orchards of every variety.

Wild shadows cut across the sky and a gust of wind whooshed into my ear. I stopped cold. Lying at my feet, a seagull quivered. His wings were crooked and bones protruded through his gray feathers. Blood saturated his white underbelly and painted the ground, then the trembling ceased.

“Are you alright?” a man asked, “Did it hit you?”

Forming words seemed impossible. I shook my head.

“Poor thing,” said a woman.

The man tilted his head to the sky. “Never seen seagulls this far inland. Mostly pigeons around here.”

Hundreds of seagulls flying in disarray blocked out the fading evening light. Their cries reminded me of a maternity ward, when one newborn’s cries started up the rest of the babies. A great swoosh of wings stirred up the still air and reverberated across the sky. Something brushed against the back of my neck. Another, against the top of my head. I crouched, covering my ears. One by one the birds rained down on us. Bones snapped against the pavement. Bones crushed underfoot. People panicked and ran into each other. A man elbowed me in the side.

This is a dramatic opening. In fact, it’s verging on melodramatic. It’s also over written and somewhat confusing. Obviously, there’s some scary stuff going on in this scene. Something is making flocks of seagulls fly in disarray and crash into the ground. The problem for me was that the writing is way over the top and exaggerated. And the character is in no real danger, only the birds are. Still, it has some intrigue. An apocalyptic event or environmental situation is causing animals to fall from the sky right into the beefsteak tomatoes. That’s not to be taken lightly. I’d be interested in knowing what it is, but if I were an agent, I’m afraid I’d be hard pressed to keep reading. My advice to the writer is to pull back, distill the essence of this scene and proceed with an economy of words.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

Download FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

More, more, more…

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by Michelle Gagnon images.jpg

So like Clare, I’m currently out of town on vacation (nowhere as exotic as Australia, but I’m still enjoying a bit of a break from the San Francisco fog).

Last week I attended Left Coast Crime in LA, where I was fortunate to have the opportunity to catch up with John Gilstrap and James, and to meet Kathryn for the first time. Which was kind of shocking-the funny thing about blogging like this is how well you get to know each other without ever meeting face to face. For instance, I feel like Basil is practically family at this point (albeit as that crazy cousin who kicks off the conga line at family events). The post 9/11 literature panel that John and I were on made episodes of the Jerry Springer show look dull in comparison. In the bar afterward, almost every passerby stopped to tell John that they’d heard about his performance. He’s officially a legend now, and will probably start showing up late to our Denny’s meetings, if he makes them at all.

I got the chance to talk to Lee Child briefly at the conference (I know, I’m a shameless name dropper), and we were discussing the fact that for the first time he’s releasing not one but two books this year. This has become a trend with the recent industry downturn. It’s easier for publishers to push more books written by their stable of well known authors than to build up a new name, so old faithfuls like James Rollins, John Sandford, and of course James Patterson are being offered nice bonuses for increased productivity.

Even authors who aren’t household names are being urged to try to churn out multiple titles a year. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t people who do this well. But when my agent and I were negotiating my last contract, and they pushed for an increase to two or three books a year, I said no.

It’s a struggle for me to finish one book a year. It takes between 4-6 months for me to compose the initial draft, then I send it off to my editor and have a few weeks head start on the next book. Then the edits come back, and I have in general another month to polish it. At which point I mail it back, work a little bit more on the next book…just when I’m getting in the groove again, it’s time for round three. Add in the months I need to coordinate marketing for that book before its release, and it’s always about a year, start to finish. The thought of adding another book, never mind two, into the mix would be hive-inducing.

Yet many writers do manage to produce more than one book a year. Which raises a few questions for me. Firstly, does the quality suffer? Dennis Lehane claimed that the book a year grind made him feel like his work was deteriorating, so he took two full years off to write the next book- which turned out to be MYSTIC RIVER.

I also question whether or not having an author flood the market with books actually helps their sales if they’re not James Patterson or Stephen King. Is it better to come out with three books a year, rather than one? What does everyone think?

Now, back to the sun…