(Morning, crime dogs. I am out of the country and purposely out of computer contact for four weeks on a two-year-delayed vacation. When you read this, I hope to be sitting in a Paris cafe, sipping vin de maison and stuffing my face with a croque monsieur. So forgive me, but I’m posting a couple of old columns. I will try to check in via iPhone. À bientôt!)

Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake. — John Cleese.

By PJ Parrish

I’ll never forget this piece of advice I got from my agent: “No one is waiting for your stand alone thriller.”

Immediately, my hackles went up. (As I wrote that, I realized I didn’t really know what a hackle even was so I Googled it. It is the hairs on the back of dog that shoot up when he’s angry). I said nothing to the agent, but hackles erect, I hung up the phone, and opened the laptop to finish my stand alone thriller.

See, we were eleven books deep into our Louis Kincaid series at the time, and the series had done pretty good thus far. We had a loyal fan base who really loved our character. We’d won some awards and cracked some bestseller lists. But here’s the thing: I had this idea for a serial killer book set in Paris and I couldn’t let go of it. The bad guy — a professional cellist — haunted my dreams at night and kept my imagination afire during the day. I couldn’t get anything done on the series book. The stand alone was a siren call.

Would it crash us on the rocks? Well, maybe. At the time, we were coming up on a contract renewal with our publisher and they were expecting a new Louis book. But Louis was, well, being sort of recalcitrant. The story wasn’t moving along because he just wasn’t talking to me. We clearly needed a vacation from each other.

So I took up with the killer cellist. The book poured out of me, uncharacteristically. (I am a really slow writer). And it was really good. I’m not being immodest here. Every writer just knows when they’re onto something. it was solid plot-wise, filled with cool pretzelly stuff. It had a haunted protag, a prickly side-kick woman cop, and a charming villain who just had a hangup about garroting women with e-strings. It also had Paris’s catacombs, Miami’s decaying art deco hotels and crumbling Scottish castles.

What wasn’t to love?

The publisher grudgingly put it out. No promotion, small press run and an ugly cover. (see above left for original cover and right for new cover when we re-issued it). It got some nice reviews and didn’t sell well (though it sells fine now as a back list title). It remains one of my favorite books. We were dropped by the publisher not long after that.

Did I make a mistake?

My agent was probably just trying to tell me that we didn’t have the star-power name to write whatever we wanted, that we needed to rely on the safety our our serial reputation. Stay with what brung you to the dance, right? But no, I don’t think it was a mistake. Here’s my take-away for any of you out there who might be struggling with the fear that you might make a mistake:

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Okay, that’s not my words. Albert Einstein said them. But I believe them. If you write in fear of doing something wrong, you are doomed. Whether you are venturing into a new genre, experimenting with a different plot structure, or trying to write a short story for the first time, or just switching from the comfort of first person to third, you can’t be afraid to fail.

I had to write that book. I just had to.

But how do you know when you’re onto something good? How do you trust your instinct to stay with a story when your brain might be telling you to jump on the neo-fem-jeop bandwagon? (female in jeopardy but with a new twist, of course).

That’s a hard one. No one can answer that one except you. It’s part of that chimeric thing we call voice. Why would you want to be a poor man’s Jeff Deaver? Or another sad clone of Gillian Flynn? Write the book that only you can write.

Here’s something else to chew on: Sometimes doing something the wrong way is the only way to find the right way. Writing fiction is not a straight-forward process. Yes, there are basic tenets of what makes a story work — plot structure, dialogue, all the craft stuff we talk about all the time here. But even if you follow every “rule” to the letter, there’s no guarantee you’re going to succeed. If you concentrate on what is safe, what is trendy, what is sell-able (revelation: No one really knows what will sell) you will produce junk.

Maybe, after all your work, no editor will want to publish your book. Maybe, after you work hard to get it up on Amazon yourself, not enough readers will find it. Was it a mistake?

• Not if it helped you grow as a writer. Maybe you rushed your book into print before it was ready (ie not well edited or formatted). Sloppy doesn’t cut it.
• Not if it made you stronger. No one is ever going to be harder on you and than you are. Rejection comes with the business at every turn. Mistakes help you grow a shell.
• Not if it helps you find your way to your next story. And there always had to be a next book.

So, what’s my final takeaway from all this? What did I learn from my mistake of writing the stand alone thriller that no one was waiting for?

Don’t write the book you think might sell. You have to write the book that is tearing at your insides to get out.

Write the book that keeps you up at night.

Info dumps will kill the pace of a novel in a heartbeat, in my opinion.

Hopefully our readers are lost in the world we’ve created, but when an author pauses to jar them back into the physical pages by including blocks of details that can be successfully distributed at other times throughout the book, we’ve done them a disservice.

When descriptions, backstories, or elements are released at the volume of an open fire hydrant, all of those specifics will stall the novel’s momentum.

Timing is also critical. Is it necessary to stop the story with details about a person’s clothes, hair, or wrinkles? Why not introduce those characters with a detail or two, them build on that description as we get to know them.

Why not show them those elements? By showing and not telling, you can include more action, and keeping it in your character’s point of view, those factors are less noticeable.

Your protagonist can run fingers through thick gray hair. He can pop a button on a soft, often washed denim shirt he’d owned since college. She can unconsciously touch a scar across the bridge of her nose that she received in an auto accident when she was six and is now terrified of Mustangs. He prefers a Beretta M9 because he carried one in the military.

Imagine meeting someone at a party.

“Hello, my name’s Reavis Z. Wortham and as you can see, I have gray hair, though thin on top, and I’m kinda lanky, measuring in at five foot eleven inches. My polished black boots are ostrich skin, but I wear jeans and my shirts lean toward blue, because that’s my favorite color. Since I’m a fifth generation Texan, I wear a felt silverbelly hat. These brown eyes can look right through a person if I dislike them, and the crows-feet at the corners of my eyes tell a story.”

Good lord! I’d run from myself, or pour a stiff drink and hope the next person I meet will give me information about themselves and their lives a little at a time as we get to know each other.

Think back to a first date. Would you finish the evening if that individual pours out similar information in long, boring paragraphs?

Instead, let’s seed your character’s past, interests, or physical descriptions that are throughout the story.

Now, with all that said, rules are made to be broken. I’ve heard that it’s terrible for an author to put their character in front of a mirror to describe them, and that’s true most of the time.

However, I cheated with a mirror in my novel, Dark Places (which was listed by Strand Magazine as one of their Top 12 novels of 2015, so I know it worked). But I cheated in a creative way that gives the reader a backstory and attributes of two characters who we met much earlier in the book.

In Dark Places, my teenage female protagonist, Pepper, runs away from home in the late 1960s to follow Route 66 from Texas to California. Her dad, James, granddaddy Ned Parker, and a tough, mysterious character named Crow are on her trail. They fear she’s been picked up by a gang similar to the Hells Angels, and one of the three have to go inside a biker bar in the desert to get her out.

Of course I sprinkled physical characteristics for all the players on stage throughout the first and second act to give them depth, but now I needed to drill down even more so we can see who is most qualified to take on a biker gang.

They argue in a room in my fictional mid-century motor court and we learn which one is hard enough to take on the gang.

Here’s that except from the novel.

*

Crow and James were arguing about who would go to the bar where the Devil Rattlesnakes hung out. Standing beside the window, James fumed. “It’s my daughter in that saloon!”

Expressionless, Crow nodded. “I completely understand. But for one thing, we don’t know for sure she’s in there, and I kinda doubt it. What do you do for a living?”

“What? I run a hardware store.”

“Ever been in a fight, other than the one in the courthouse?”

James squared his shoulders. “Yeah. More than one, too.”

“Um hum. I meant after you got out of school.”

“No.”

“Any experience in law work, like your daddy there?”

“No.”

Crow tapped the dresser with a fingertip. “Come here.”

“What?”

Softly. “Come here.”

James joined him. Crow pointed at the mirror. “Tell me what you see.”

“I see us.”

“Right. Tell me what you really see. Truthfully. Describe…us. Start with you.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“It’ll explain what I’m trying to tell you, James. What do you see? Describe your head.”

James Parker looked into the mirror. “A head.”

Crow nudged him with a hard shoulder.

“All right. Short, graying black hair of a man in his late thirties. Cowlick. Two eyebrows, also black. Brown eyes. A nose. Two ears that need trimming, I guess. Lips, and a chin with a dimple.”

“That’s about right. Now, describe me.”

“A guy with long hair.”

“More detail. Lots of detail, more than you used on yourself, but don’t stop at my chin.”

James growled in frustration, low in his throat. He drew a deep breath. “Long black hair, like an Indian.”

“I am Indian, but you’re right. Keep going.”

“Hair that looks like them hippies, then. A scar across your forehead from the middle to your temple. Black eyebrows. Almost black eyes. Indian cheekbones. No mustache or beard though, like those hippies, but that’s because you’re Indian again. A nose that looks like it’s been broke before…”

“Twice.”

“Huh. Square chin with a horizontal scar in the cleft under your bottom lip. Scar on one ear. Wide shoulders. Some kind of necklace under your western shirt that needs washing, but it was expensive when it was new. Shirt’s hanging outside your jeans. You look tough.” He looked down. “Levis and work boots.”

Crow flexed his hands. “These?”

“Big hands. Big knucks. Lots of scars.”

Crow turned them over.

“Rough. Calluses.”

“So between me and you, who do you think has more luck walking into a rough bar full of bikers?”

*

We already knew a lot about those two, but it was necessary at that point in the story to pit James and Crow against one another in front of that mirror. It was timing.

Yep, I threw a lot out there, but paragraphs of information didn’t stall the story. Instead, I chose to show and not tell by providing those details in conversation, which flows naturally, hopefully making the readers part of the story. With what I provided, you were able to build those characters and see them in your mind’s eye.

Weave your story elements as you go. One quick sentence or two to set a scene, a couple of sentences further down to provide a backstory for your protagonist, or a phrase here or there are the building blocks of a successful story.

Remember, no dumping allowed.

Why do writers want to write?

Good question, and one put to me the other morning that caused evening introspection. Let me tell you how that came to be.

Rita (my wife of thirty-nine years) and I are on a week’s getaway to Galiano Island near our home on British Columbia’s Pacific west coast. We met another couple at the tie-up wharf and got talking. You know, general stuff… “Where you from? How long you here? Where you headed after this?”

Then came a question aimed at me. “What do you do when you’re not on vacation?”

“’Besides bleeding money through the stock market,” I replied. “I’m a writer.”

“Interesting. What makes you want to write?”

I wasn’t stuck for an answer, but I was stuck for the right answer. Later that night (after five five-o’clocks on the dock which is mandatory attendance among the boating fraternity), I introspected with Google searches about writer motivation. I came up with a Youtube video by a remarkable young singer/songwriter named Meskerem Mees. She summed my introspection with this line in the lyrics from her piece titled The Writer:

“And I am but a writer, so writing’s what I do.”

Kill Zone writers, Ms. Mees’s song is uplifting. Here are the links to the video and the lyrics.

And the takeaway question which you’re expected to answer—why do you want to write?

After a couple of years of Covid, writers are again taking to the highways and airports to gather with colleagues at writers’ conferences.

My husband and I recently returned from attending two conferences just a couple of weeks apart. Although the conferences were different in their content and presentation, they were each wonderful in their own way.

Killer Nashville is targeted (love that word) at mystery, suspense, and thriller writers. We were there for two reasons: First, Hank Phillippi Ryan was one of the keynote speakers, and studying Ms. Ryan’s book Truth Be Told had a great influence on me when I was working on my first book. Secondly, my novel Time After Tyme was a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award in the cozy mystery category.

The American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) conference was held in St. Louis this year. One major reason we chose that one was to meet James Scott Bell and attend his Story Grinder course. Mr. Bell’s books on the craft of writing, his courses and novels have been hugely instrumental in my own writing career.

There are many reasons to attend a conference, and lots of benefits to be had. Here are a few:

1. Gather with fellow writers. Authors spend a lot of time in solitary pursuit of the perfect story. It’s a good idea to get out occasionally and meet new people. Even for those of us who are introverted, the company of fellow authors is special. After all, most of those people are introverts, too.
2. Learn a new skill. Workshops, lectures, and courses give writers an opportunity to sharpen their expertise in the craft.
3. Get feedback on a current project. Most conferences provide some critical feedback of an author’s work for free. Others charge a small fee.
4. Pitch your work. Conferences are an opportunity to pitch your work to an agent or an acquisitions editor. Remember to rehearse your pitch and have it ready. You never know who you may bump into on the elevator.
5. Sell some books. Most conferences have a means to offer your books on consignment. We’ve had success in selling a few books at each of the conferences we’ve attended.
6. Help a new author. Many attendees are first-timers. This is an opportunity to provide encouragement and feedback to someone who is just beginning their writing journey.
7. Get motivated. Conferences have a way of energizing the author and getting the creative juices flowing. Use the excitement to build on your next novel.

Deciding on the ideal conference

Choosing a writing conference is similar to finding a college to attend. There are plenty of choices, and you’ll want to consider size, focus, cost, and travel distance. Some conferences are specifically tuned to a narrow genre selection. Others may be open to any writing area. There are plenty of lists online, but I think the best resource for finding a good conference is from your colleagues, like those here at TKZ. I hope we’ll see some recommendations in the comments.

Before you sign up

• Check out the conference to see if it offers the kinds of courses and workshops you’re interested in.
• Research the professional editors and agents who will be onsite for appointments, and register early to get appointments with the ones you want to meet with.
• If you’re going to put your books on consignment in the book shop, be sure you understand when to drop the books off, when you have to pick them up, and any other requirements

One more thing

I wanted to have some clever and useful give-aways at the conferences this year to advertise my mystery series, so I had some jar openers made to take with me, but they didn’t arrive in time for Killer Nashville. No problem, I thought. I’ll take them to ACFW. However, when I arrived at the ACFW conference with over a hundred jar openers ready to be placed on a swag table, I was told they didn’t have an area for that. I should have checked.

So, TKZers: What conferences have you attended and which would you recommend? What benefits have you experienced by attending a conference?

A gripping experience! If you’d like one of these FREE cute and practical jar openers (5-inch diameter), send me an email or contact me through my website at kaydibianca.com with your name and address. I’ll send you one while supplies last.

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Marx is a man who stands astride history, whose influence is so widespread and undeniable that he demands our awe and admiration, and who has made the world a better place because he was in it.

I speak, of course, of Julius Marx, better known as Groucho, born on the East Side of New York on October 2, 1890.

Create and Refine

Though a comedy icon, Julius’s initial ambition was to be a singer. At age 15 he began appearing on the vaudeville stage with an act called The Three Nightingales. He was later joined by his brothers Arthur (better known as Harpo) and Milton (Gummo). They traveled the circuit all over the land.

One night in Nagadocious, Texas, a donkey ran loose outside the theater during the act. Several audience members got up and left to see what was going on. Julius, aghast, quipped out loud, “Nagadocious is full of roaches!” He added, “The jackass is the flower of Tex-ass!”

To his surprise and delight, the audience laughed. And thus comedy entered the act.

Harpo, Chico, Groucho, Gummo, c. 1913

For the next several years the boys, now joined by Leonard (Chico), developed an act built around music and a comedy sketch about a classroom. Fun in Hi Skool, like all vaudeville acts, ran under ten minutes and featured the rapid-fire dialogue and hijinx that would develop into the Marxian style. They worked it, refined it. It took over a decade before the brothers made it to Broadway with a revue called I’ll Say She Is. It was a hit, but still only a vaudeville-style show.

So the boys took the next step and developed a comedy with an actual plot—The Coconuts (1925). This was the first iteration of the Marx Brothers as we know them today. Herbert (Zeppo) had joined the troupe after Gummo dropped out.

They kept on refining and had another Broadway hit, Animal Crackers (1928), that came at the same time the movies were moving into the sound era. Perfect timing! The talkative Groucho, the language-mangling Chico, and the horn-tooting Harpo never would have made an impact in the silents.

The film version of The Coconuts came out in 1929. More refining as they learned the art of the motion picture. Two more movies followed (Animal Crackers and Monkey Business), leading finally to their greatest achievements: Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933).

Lesson: Never stop working, learning, correcting, refining, polishing. This is especially important in your early years. But it should also continue as long as you call yourself a writer. Never rest on your laurels (or your Hardys, either).

The Rebel

Groucho was the ultimate rebel, always sticking it to pretentions. That’s why the quintessential Groucho song is “I’m Against It” from Horse Feathers.

Margaret Dumont, a real socialite, was his favorite foil. She was upper crust and formal. Groucho romanced her, primarily for her money, while his rat-a-tat and oddly connected dialogue flummoxed her. There were other targets, too. In Duck Soup, Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) is trying to woo Mrs. Teasdale (Dumont) in the presence of the officious Trentino (Louis Calhern):

 Lesson: “The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.” – William Saroyan. “You have to evolve a permanent set of values to serve as motivation.” – Leon Uris.

Know what you believe, and be bold with it in your fiction.

Always Playing

Groucho’s comedic mind was always at play, even in “real life.” You can see it at work on his TV show You Bet Your Life, which was built upon spontaneous riffing off his guests.

This ability stayed with him as he aged. Just watch his astonishing appearance on Dick Cavett at age 81.

Even after he was slowed by a stroke, Groucho’s wit remained rapier-like. Case in point: Milton Berle was an attention grabber, always trying to take over a room. One night he showed up at a birthday party for George Burns, where the enfeebled Groucho was also a guest. After Berle loudly told a few jokes, Groucho snapped, “I don’t think you’re funny.”

“But Groucho,” Berle said, trying to save the moment. “Everything I know I stole from you.”

“Then you weren’t listening,” said Groucho.

Lesson: As writers, we should always be writing…even when we’re not writing. We must keep our minds active in looking for material. Train yourself to ask “What if?” all the time.

You’re sitting at a traffic stop. An elderly woman pushes a shopping cart of clothes in the crosswalk. You think: What if she is the missing heiress of a huge fortune? What if she is an undercover agent in disguise? What if she is an alien in a host? What if she has gold bricks hidden in that cart? You let the ideas park in your mind so the Boys in the Basement can play with them.

Also, this is good for your health. My theory on dementia is that the always-active imagination is a preventative. I point to all those great comedians who lived long and stayed sharp: George Burns, Carl Reiner, Bob Hope. And right now, Mel Brooks. By “thinking funny” every day, even in private conversation, they kept their brains active and alert. (Burns was on The Tonight Show once, aged 96, smoking his ever-present cigar. He told Johnny he smoked 15-20 cigars a day, and had a martini in the evening. “What does your doctor say about that?” Johnny asked. “My doctor’s dead,” said Burns.)

The Marketer

In 1945 the brothers were developing a spoof of the Warner Bros. classic Casablanca. Purportedly, one of the characters in the parody was to be named “Humphrey Bogus.” Wanting to protect its property, the legal team at Warner Bros. sent an inquiry about the Marx project, with the subtle threat of possible legal action.

Groucho immediately saw a way to generate publicity. He wrote a letter to Warner Bros., making more of the kerfuffle than there really was, and leaked it to the press. It became the talk of the town. Groucho was in his element, with paragraphs like these:

I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if they plan on re-releasing the picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim you own “Casablanca” and that no one else can use that name without your permission. What about Warner Brothers — do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were.

Lesson: Be alert for creative marketing opportunities. For example, an event or anniversary that relates to your book might arise, giving you occasion to mention it to your email subscribers or on a blog. You can also use a deal price promotion whenever you like, as I am about to do now! (This is called the art of the segue.)

My next Mike Romeo thriller, Romeo’s Rage, is up for pre-order at the deal price of just $2.99. Yes indeed, it can be ordered now and will be auto-delivered to your Kindle on Oct. 16. Click the above link. Outside the U.S. you can go to your Amazon store and search for: B0BFRP7SQV

There will be a print version, too.

Well, this post has gone on long enough. And so, as Groucho once sang, “Hello, I must be going…”

Commence comments.