By John Gilstrap

It’s launch day!

Okay, technically, it’s day-after-launch day.  Yesterday saw the arrival in stores of Nick of Time, my first stand-alone thriller in over a decade.  Here’s the publisher’s blurb on book:

SHE’S RUNNING OUT OF TIME
Nicki Janssen’s days are numbered, but she refuses to accept her fate lying down. Defying her father and doctors, she hits the road with a pocketful of cash, a bus ticket—and a romantic fantasy of riding off with her childhood crush . . .
 
HE’S RUNNING FROM THE LAW
Handsome, dangerous Brad Ward is facing a different kind of sentence. Sent to prison for felony murder, he has escaped and rekindled his relationship with Nicki. But when Nicki’s father joins forces with a deputy sheriff, the search for the runaways ignites a manhunt—a blistering chase that accelerates with every stolen car, every act of violence . . .

As much as I love writing the Jonathan Grave series, it was nice to return to my writing roots in Nick of Time to tell a story where the stakes are personal rather than global.  I hope the world likes the story as much as I do.  (Note: The e-book version of the novel was released in five parts, beginning last April, as a run-up to the release of Friendly Fire in July.)  There’s an interesting story behind the story, as well . . .

My writing career can be best tracked on a severe sine curve.  I started off with runaway “success” with my first novel, Nathan’s Run.  Big advances (in 23 countries!), movie deal, the whole nine yards.  Warner Books bought my second book, At All Costs, before Nathan’s Run was published, for even more money and Arnold Kopelson was going to make an even bigger movie.  I was set for the big time.

Then reality arrived.  Both books sold reasonably well—especially for a freshman writer—but I didn’t come close to earning out my advances.  When it came time to sell Even Steven, my third stand-alone thriller, my agent had to break fingers to get a two-book deal from Pocket Books for a tiny fraction of what the first two books sold for.  Then the real nightmare began.  Pocket became Atria, my editor left, and then the editor that replaced him left.  Even Steven tanked, and then Scott Free was essentially remaindered in place.

My next book was at the time called Living Wil, in which a terminally ill teenager named Wilhemina Janssen runs away with her childhood crush.  Sound familiar?  I couldn’t give it away.  The book wasn’t big enough, they said.  Since my other books didn’t meet sales expectations, everyone told me that my career as a writer was over.  That was 2003.

I thought they were wrong.

I believed that I needed to write something completely different.  That’s when I stumbled by happenstance onto a guy named Kurt Muse, whose real life story became the subject of my nonfiction book, Six Minutes to Freedom.  My agent at the time refused to represent it for political reasons, so I turned to my good friend and current agent, Anne Hawkins, who had all kinds of difficulty selling SixMin because I am not a journalist.  But then the folks at Kensington Publishing decided to roll the dice, and the book did pretty well.  In fact, it continues to do pretty well.  (Wait till the movie comes out!  But that’s a topic for a later post.)

The research I did for SixMin opened doors and provided me with the access I needed to write the Jonathan Grave series, which I’m happy to say seems to have found some traction among readers.  I just finished the 9^th book in the series, and am under contract for two more.

Meanwhile Living Wil sat in the drawer, where it had resided for a dozen years.  On a whim, I took it out one day and read it.  Much to my surprise, I loved it.  It was a little dated, and my writing style has evolved, but the bones were all there.  I sent it to my editor and she loved it, too.  So, after a significant rewrite that changed Wilhemena to Nicki and tightened the action, it was ready to go.  Parts of Nick of Time still make me cry every time I read them.

I hope you give it a shot, and if you do, I hope you like it as much as I do.

More than that, since TKZ is primarily a writers’ blog, I hope you embrace the big take-away from this peek beneath the book’s kimono: Setbacks are only as important as you allow them to be.  What “everybody” says is irrelevant because failure cannot be inflicted on anyone.  Failure can only be declared by the individual who decides to give up.

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late. — William Shakespeare

By PJ Parrish

I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.

But today — for the first time in months — I feel good enough about the new book to leave it alone for a few minutes.

See, I’ve been working on the same book for too many months now. Nay, I have been working on the same CHAPTER for too many weeks now, and I am beginning to think I will never finish. Part of the problem is that both my co-author sister Kelly and I have had too many personal life intrusions this past year that have affected our ability to maintain momentum. And like Woody Allen’s shark, if your WIP doesn’t move constantly forward, it dies.

But the larger part of our problem is that this book, unlike all our others, is being written on spec. We don’t have a contract for this one yet so we don’t have the tyranny of a contractual deadline.  Being a former newspaper person, I have always done my best work under a strict deadline. But with this book, time had been stretched and now the ticking clock sounds as loud as Poe’s tell-tale heart in my ears.

Here’s the thing: The worst thing you can do to screw up your career is to turn in your book late.

Being on time is very important. And it gets increasingly important the further into your career you go. Why? Because you can’t get a foothold in today’s crowded marketplace — or keep one — if you can’t turn out a book a year on time.

Time management is the hardest thing a new writer has to grasp, I think. Before you get published, you have the luxury of limitless time. Time for the virgin writer is a lovely, expandable, ever-accommodating thing. Kind of like a big purse. The bigger your purse, the most junk you carry around, right? Same with deadline. The bigger and looser it is, the more you will abuse it. Trust me. I know.

First-time authors spend YEARS making their books as good as they can. You have to, in order to get an agent to take you on. Ah, but then what? Then you enter the publishing machine and you have to produce another. And another. And yet another. And here’s the worst part of it: Each book has to be better than the last because publishers’ attention spans (dictated by the computers at B&N and rankings at Amazon) are increasingly short.

Here is another thing working against us. Unlike in the good old days, few writers entering the game today will be given the time to find their legs, their voices, their audiences. The reason is awful but pretty simple: It’s all bottom line these days and there are too many young turks waiting to take your place on the publishers list. You have to produce well…and often.

As Jim Bell put it in his Sunday post on industry updates: “My drumbeat has always been: First, write the best book you can every time out! That’s why we emphasize craft here at TKZ. There is no substitute for quality. And if you can up your production, so much the better.”

So, what happens if you are late?

You lose your place in line. I learned this in great detail at a Killer Nashville conference I went to a few years back. There was a very instructive panel with an agent, a Barnes & Noble manager, and the main buyer for Ingram distributors. It was all great advice, but the best insight came when someone asked what happens if you are late delivering your manuscript. All the experts agreed: You don’t want to do this. Ever.

Here’s the simple explanation: In traditional publishing, a publisher creates its schedule at least a year in advance. And when an editor buys your book, the process begins whereby a bunch of folks decide where that book will be positioned to get maximum attention. Publishers jockey around each others schedules, trying not to have their books competing with similar books — or with big star authors. Or Harry Potter for that matter.

So you sign your contract. You get your slot. Say you have a July 2017 release with manuscript delivery Nov. 1, 2016. Now things get more complicated. To over-simplify things:

The cover design is based on your delivery date. Ditto advance reading copies (which are important in getting bookseller buzz). Sales people start gearing up material for in-house and outside catalog placement. Marketing and publicity set a schedule of their own. And in the end, bookstores buy your book based on YOUR firm delivery date. And remember, this is happening for many other books at the same time — from your own publisher and everyone else’s. Every domino is in place.

Then you miss your delivery deadline. You’re two, three, four months late. Life intruded, the kid got sick, you wrote yourself into a corner and had to backtrack, you had writers block, there was that three-week hiking trip in the Cinque Terre you really wanted to go on…blah, blah, blah.

What’s the big deal, right?

That silence you hear is dominos NOT falling. You’ve lost your place in line, Bunky. And guess what? The world — and the process — will keep right on turning without you and your masterpiece. You’ve also been…unprofessional and made yourself a pain in the ass. Not something you want to have a reputation as being. Because publishing? — it’s a small world, after all. Once you’ve been labeled difficult, a prima donna, or unable to produce, that rep will follow you no matter how many times you switch houses.

This pattern is the same for eBook-centric publishers like Thomas & Mercer. For our most recent book, SHE’S NOT THERE, our T&M editor gave us a choice of two different manuscript-delivery dates.  They bought our book when it was about half finished. One deadline they offered was farther away but the editor was honest and said that meant a less aggressive marketing campaign.  The other deadline was pretty tight, but it meant they had more time before pub date and could do more to flog it.

Guess which one we chose? Guess which one we almost blew?

We finished the book by the hardest deadline (we missed by two days) but it about killed us. And to be honest, we weren’t happy with the ending. A week after we turned it in, I worked up the courage to email our editor and told her we thought the ending was rushed and we asked if we could add two or three more chapters.  She gave us one week. We made the extended deadline. The book came out on time.  But it was really close.

Okay, I’m self-publishing, you say. What does this have to do with me?

Everything.

Having the discipline to adhere to a set publishing schedule is just as important if you are self-publishing. Maybe even more so, because you won’t have anyone nagging you about a deadline. No one will be sending you emails asking, “How’s that book coming?” You won’t have a contract mandating that if you don’t produce, you’ll be facing some legal consequences. If you are self-publishing, having the self-discipline to make deadlines is probably even more crucial to your chances for success because you will be struggling to establish a foothold and claim enough real estate on the vast virtual bookshelf.  One book isn’t going to get you anywhere.  A whole shelf of good books that come out at nice predictable intervals? Well, readers will notice that. Again, as Jim said: Write a really good book, get it out there, write another really good book. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat…

I am not telling you this to scare you. Well, maybe I am. Because I got scared myself listening to the experts at Killer Nashville and by my experience of almost blowing it with SHE’S NOT THERE. See, I am not a fast writer. Writing is hard, even at times painful, for me. I try to worry each word into place, torture each paragraph into perfection. And that, my friends, leads me to paralysis.

Sometimes, you just have to sit down and let flow out. As the King says in Alice In Wonderland, “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Because, as the Queen tells us,

“In this country, it takes all the running you can do to keep you in the same place.”

By Kathryn Lilley

For those of us who still work (or aspire to work) in the land of traditional publishing, we all encounter rejection at some point. Most published authors get turned down by numerous agents and editors on the road to publication. Learning to deal with “No” is part of the writing process—I’d even say it’s one of the most important parts. You have to be able to handle rejection to stick with writing long enough to get better. And let’s face it: when we’re starting off as beginners, most of us have to become better writers in order to produce anything publishable. Agent, editors: those traditional publishing gatekeepers may be the dreaded Gorgons who spew fiery “No!” in boilerplate missives, but they have traditionally served a vital function. They force us to improve our writing.

“Sorry, not for us!”

But no matter how you rationalize it, being rejected feels like total crap. So whenever we get the dreaded “Not for us” email or letter in the mailbox, it can be comforting to recall the rejection-war stories of other writers:

In his book On Writing, Stephen King describes the wad of rejection notes he had stuck on a spike in his bedroom, and the encouragement he felt when he finally got one that said something along the lines of, “Not for us, kid, but try again—you’ve got talent.”

NPR’s Liane Hansen did a story that told the story of how soon-to-be famous writers, including Jack Kerouac and George Orwell, were rejected by the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Possibly the best of the lot was the one that rejected Kerouac’s On the Road, in which an editor reportedly stated, “I don’t dig this one at all.”

My most memorable rejection came from an agent who had requested to read my manuscript on an exclusive basis. (My advice? Never give an agent an exclusive. It’s a better deal for the agent than the writer.) After keeping me in suspense for a long while, she eventually sent me an email along the lines of:

“Dear Kathryn: I really wanted to like this story. But I just didn’t like the character; I didn’t like the story; I didn’t like the voice. In fact, I just didn’t like anything at all about this story at all.”

Ouch. Fortunately, the next agent who read the manuscript loved the story, agreed to represent me, and quickly got me a series contract.

What about you? What’s been your best/worst rejection letter thus far?

Via catwalker/shutterstock.com

by Larry Brooks

A cynic—probably not an experienced writer in this case—might offer this simple explanation: Well, that’s easy… the stories that get considered are the stories that work.

Sure kid, says the old geezer to the kid with the baseball glove… you want to pitch for the Yankees? Well, that’s easy, just crank up your fastball to 96 miles an hour and paint the black with consistency, and throw in some off-the-table breaking balls to keep ‘em honest… that’s all you need to do.

If you’ve ever played or watched the game, you know how naïve that is. And yet, with writing, far too many new writers, and even some writing teachers, advocate exactly the same clue-light approach.

It reminds me of an old Steve Martin joke: Want to know how to avoid paying taxes on a million dollars? Simple. First, you get a million dollars. Then…

Laughter ensures from those who get the joke. Those who don’t are left hanging in the silence of that imcomplete sentence, already lost.

There are too many writers out there who, relative to craft, don’t get the joke.

Best writing advice ever: never stop learning.

In his Killzone post yesterday, Jim Bell advised us to never back away from studying the craft of writing. Very powerful wisdom, that.

Here’s a subtlety to it: craft is the prerequisite to getting into the game at a professional level. With some odd exceptions (which the cynics latch onto like flies, thus inviting you to play the lowest possible odds in the writing game), nobody ever published a novel that didn’t exhibit some workable degree of storytelling craft (the lack of which is what gets you rejected).

Without it, your story won’t get through the door to the audition room. Agents will pass. Editors will fire off templated rejection slips after reading ten pages. Too many of the writers left out in the rain, wondering why their stories don’t work, haven’t yet encountered enough craft to understand why.

But we aren’t playing merely to get into the audition room.

If that’s your goal, you’re not shooting high enough.

Once inside this figurative audition room, things get even tougher. Because while there are stories out there that are fully-formed and cover all the bases… there is the occasional story that really works. That soars above the others on multiple levels.

And that’s the one they’re looking for.

The criteria for simple completion (enter NaNoWriMo if this is your only goal) is the same for both—in much the same way that every player invited to a pro tryout has a professional-level command of the game they are playing (trust me, because I’ve been there, the guys pitching in the minor leagues throw every bit as hard, and the home runs travel every bit as far, as the guys playing in the major leagues); the punchline is that only a fraction of them will go home with a contract.

You want to be the writer who goes home with a contract.

But beyond simply being considered, in writing the criteria for greatness is found in nuance, details, and the artful application of emotional storytelling power.

Which leaves us with this truth: it is the degree of comprehension—leading to, in rare cases, an elevated story sensibility—applied powerfully and artfully to a story, that separates the complete from the astonishing.

And thus, defines the difference between them.

Every professional in every arena operates from this perspective. They are striving to be the best, not simply to get a seat on the bus.

I know, get it… when you are one of those writers out in the rain (believe me, I have a closet full of umbrellas myself), a seat on the bus seems like success itself.  For the time being, it seems like enough.

But trust me on this, once you get there, you’ll want more.

Here’s the rub: the criteria for breaking in, and then, once published, breaking out (elevating above the midlist into the front window of the bookstore) is exactly the same. It is driven by identical standards and elements and essences of craft.

Agents and editors are looking for home runs. Not just another book to take up space on the B&N rack.

Which means that, as you sit alone at a desk hoping to write a story that will land you an agent that will land you a good publisher who will propel you onto a bestseller list… know that David Baldacci is sitting alone in his writing space working toward the very same end-game criteria and qualitative height that you aspire to.

The only difference, beyond the certainty that he will publish the book he’s working on, may be that he knows the focuses and benchmarks of craft and all its corners and nuances better that you know them.

But—this being the good news, the best news ever—you can fix that, over time.

The point of all of everything we do and learn as writers, stated simply, is to elevate the nature and power of our story sense.

Call it talent, if you prefer. Either way, it’s discerning a killer idea from a vanilla one, and knowing what goes where in the story, and why, to what degree and in what form, better than the other guy… or at least, at a high enough level to earn the respect and shock and awe of all who will read your story.

It’s knowing when and how to break the rules, rather than breaking them without an informed context that rationalizes doing so.

Talent is nothing other than a command of craft to an extent that it informs one’s story sensibilities.

Consistently successful authors, as well as those who break into the business in a big way, have all got it where story sense is concerned. (A caveat here, especially with newly successful writers, is that the book in question may have taken years of work and craft-building before it reached a break-in level of quality.) When you seek to understand what “it” is—a quest that you, as a new writer, absolutely should commit to—you will discover that “it” begins, grows from and depends on, a foundational context built upon the core, imprecise yet inflexible, universal principles of storytelling craft.

If you know what those are, keep going. If you don’t, stop writing and begin studying. Writing is practice and application… both of which require a base of knowledge from which to draw.

Some might wonder what principle-driven story sense even means.

And yet, it’s all out there, waiting to help you raise your game.

Jim Bell breaks the craft of storytelling down into seven primary categorical buckets (with several terrific books that deliver a deep dive into all of them):

1. Plot, 2, structure, 3) characters, 4) scenes, 5) dialogue, 6) voice, and 7) meaning (or theme).

This covers it nicely.

In my work as a writing teacher/speaker/practitioner, I break it all down into 12 categorical buckets (with three bestselling writing books that do the same):

1) concept, 2) premise (they are different essences; the sum of the two equals plot), 3) character, 4) theme, 5) structure, 6) scene execution, 7) voice, 8) dramatic tension, 9) optimal expositional pacing, 10) vicarious experience, 11) hero empathy (rootability) and 12) narrative strategy.

Randy Ingermanson, author of “Fiction Writing for Dummies,” packages it all within a model called The Snowflake Method, and guess what: it’s the same principles.

Because there really isn’t a variation to be found among people who know what they’re talking about.

There isn’t even a shred of contradiction, and very little variance, in these approaches. Each covers the full roster of the craft we are pursuing. You’ll notice that my list adds the forces that make a story better… and yet, those same forces reside at the core of the elements we have in common, as well.

The enlightened writer will be exposed to and engage with craft in all its various presentations.

When you experience these messages from a variety of credible sources (the person leading your critique group… maybe, maybe not), you’ll soon see the commonality and the overlap. Craft is craft… you don’t get to make it up as you go, and it isn’t different from teacher to teacher, even when the parts are labeled differently.

When you get it you’ll see that it’s the same basic core principles being examined and applied, every time. And that it’s the same stuff that all those famous authors and screenwriters you admire are using… and when rendered from an evolved sensibility driving it all to the page, it is what has made them famous in the first place.

Craft awaits you.

It’s like gravity… it doesn’t care what you call it. Yet it governs all that you do… just as it governs all that the nay-sayers do… and it will kill either of us if we forget to respect it.