This Week I Saved a Darling 

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I write thrillers. That means I major in action. But I do have a lead character who is wont to share an opinion every now and then. That’s one of the things I like about John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. There are times, briefly (which is the key), when McGee takes a moment to let loose on something. Here’s a bit from The Quick Red Fox:

And so we drove back to the heart of the city. San Francisco is the most depressing city in America. The come-latelys might not think so. They may be enchanted by the steep streets up Nob and Russian and Telegraph, by the sea mystery of the Bridge over to redwood country on a foggy night, by the urban compartmentalization of Chinese, Spanish, Greek, Japanese, by the smartness of the women and the city’s iron clutch on culture. It might look just fine to the new ones.

But there are too many of us who used to love her. She was like a wild classy kook of a gal, one of those rain-walkers, laughing gray eyes, tousle of dark hair –– sea misty, a little and lively lady, who could laugh at you or with you, and at herself when needs be. A sayer of strange and lovely things. A girl to be in love with, with love like a heady magic.

But she had lost it, boy.

Some object to these passages as “stopping the action.” I call it controlling the pace and deepening our bond to the lead character. 

So I wrote a paragraph of my next Mike Romeo thriller expressing an opinion. A bit later I came back to the scene and wrote another paragraph in a similar style. When I edited the first draft I saw that these two bits overloaded and overwhelmed the story. 

But they were so well written! (I humbly thought). I loved them! Which is the first clue that you have a “darling” on your hands. And we’ve all heard the old saw, “Kill your darlings!”

To me that always sounds like “Destroy your delight” or “Drown your puppies.” Yeesh! I mean, if something is your darling should your first instinct be to kill it? Sounds positively psychopathic.

A darling is at least owed a fair trial!

The phrase has its origin in a lecture on style delivered by the English writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch back in 1914. He said:

To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament … [I]f you here require a practical rule of me, I will presentyou with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

At least Sir Arthur was honest enough to call it murder! But murder requires malice aforethought, and that is a terrible way to think about a darling.

Darlingcide should be outlawed, not encouraged!

Stephen King strikes the right balance. In his book On Writing King says the whole idea behind “kill your darlings” is to make sure your style is “reasonably reader-friendly.”

Thus, your darlings may be the very thing that distinguishes your voice from the vanilla sameness of so much writing these days, especially in the omnipresent AI epoch which we now inhabit. 

Which means sometimes a darling stays, sometimes it goes, and sometimes it gets a skillful edit. In my case, I did remove one of the paragraphs in its entirety. The other I clipped a bit, but it remains largely intact. 

It pleases me to write darlings. I do not summarily execute them. I let them sit, I look at them again, I have my wife render an opinion, and then I decide if they must go, stay, or get a loving manicure. 

And I know I’ve done good work when I can finally say, “Darling, you look marvelous!” 

Comments welcome.

Conference Words of Wisdom

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Conference and conventions can be an important part of a writer’s development, helping with craft, connecting with both readers and other authors, and recharging your creative batteries.

Last week my wife and I attended the 83rd World Science Fiction convention, held in Seattle this year. World Cons run for five days, and are packed with programming, including a writing and publishing track. Around 7700 people attended. I moderated a panel on crafting a sustainable writing career, and was also on the “Writers Workshops: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” panel, and sat in the audience for a number of other panels, including an excellent one on the state of the science fiction magazine market in 2025 and another on British mysteries and what makes them different from American ones.

While I’ve been to numerous science fiction conventions and several writers conferences, my one mystery conference so far was Left Coast Crime 2024, also held in the Seattle area, which I found to be equally engaging. I had the privilege of moderating a panel and being on another one, and also met a number of fellow authors and also avid readers.

Today we revisit three posts by Michelle Gagnon, Laura Benedict and Terry Odell that provide advice on attending conferences. All three are worth reading in full and, as always, are linked from their respective dates.

  • What do I hope to get out of it? Mind you, I love hanging out with fellow writers and fans, but it’s hard to justify spending a thousand dollars over a weekend to do that (especially in this economy). So ideally, I hope to get on at least one good panel, and to network with people I haven’t met yet. There’s always a lot of debate on the lists about which conferences are worth attending, and I’m certain that everyone has a different experience. You might sell more books at smaller regional ones where you’re one of a handful of authors, whereas at larger conferences you might get lost in the shuffle. Yet at those big conferences there’s an opportunity to meet domestic and foreign editors, booksellers, and agents, and to get your name out to a larger cross-section of mystery fans.And sometimes the regional conferences are skewed toward local authors, so if you’re not from the area, you might find yourself relegated to the panel on bug detectives (not a well-attended one, in my experience). So it largely depends on what your career goals are at that given moment. Personally, I’m doing the same thing with conference attendance that I do with my financial portfolio: spreading it out between smaller conferences like Left Coast Crime (they had me at “Hawaii”) and big ones like Bouchercon (which I always seem to get a lot out of).
  • Is it a fan conference, or a writing one? Not that writers aren’t fans- we all are, obviously. But some conferences specialize in helping new authors hone their craft and pitch agents- which is invaluable for them, but I’ve discovered that at those conferences, I spend most of my time dodging requests to pass a manuscript on to my agent. I’d much rather go to a true fan conference, where most of the attendees are readers who want to meet their favorite bestselling authors, and who might be persuaded to try a new one as well.
  • Which genre does the conference emphasize? I’ve gone to a few romance conferences, and so far haven’t had much luck with those (although I know my friend Alex Sokoloff has had a much more positive experience). For me, going to RWA felt like starting over again; I didn’t know the lingo, and since romance isn’t a major component of my books, I drew a lot of blank stares. I’m considering giving Romantic Times a shot when it lands a bit closer to home, but flying to Orlando isn’t a possibility for me this April.

Michelle Gagnon—February 5, 2009

Here are some things to keep in mind if you decide to pop out of your writing cocoon and go to a conference or other gathering of industry folk:

Be confident.

This sounds difficult, I know. Sometimes you just have to fake it until you feel it. The NYT bestselling writer waiting in the coffee line ahead of you sits in front of the same blank page that you do every day, thinking, “What comes next?” You have that in common. You’re there for a reason, so act like it.

Be professional.

This is part of your job. Be sure you note the name of the person you’re talking to. It’s okay to ask, and asking is far preferable to ending up halfway through an impromptu lunch, petrified that you’ll be called on to perform introductions if someone else shows up. If small talk is required, talk about a panel or interview you just attended, or a book you recently read. Not your gallbladder, kids, or most recent tooth implant.

Be ready to learn.

Immerse yourself in the conference agenda. People who are interested in the same things you’re interested in put the panels and events together. It’s not all about networking.

Be curious.

Most people love to talk about themselves. Ask questions about their work, their pets, their hometown, their (professional) passions. Most wildly successful authors are good at making other people feel special in a short space of time. Really.

Be modest.

We’ve all gotten the FB messages: “Hey, we’re friends now. Buy my book!” Every writer wants other people to know about their work. But don’t make that your main goal. Your goal is to learn things, make new friends, and reconnect with old friends. There’s always a good time to exchange cards or bookmarks or websites. Name-dropping is a bit gauche, but allowed in small doses if it’s relevant to the discussion—or makes a better story.

Be gracious.

Be as nice to the mid-list or self-published writer standing beside you as you are to the editor you would kill to have publish you. Chances are you’ll have far more contact with that writer in your career than you will the editor. Not everything is about getting ahead. It’s about being a decent human being. Few things are uglier than people who spend their professional lives sucking up and kicking down.

Be generous.

You didn’t get to where you are as a writer all by yourself. I guarantee that someone around you has less experience. Introduce yourself to someone who looks as uncomfortable as you feel. Make them feel special. It won’t cost you anything, and the benefits are precious.

Laura Benedict—September 21, 2016

Left Coast Crime is a reader-based conference, which means the focus is on connecting writers with readers. The panels will be aimed more at “tell us about your book” and they’re a great way to meet readers and let them know what you have to offer. In a writer’s conference, a workshop on setting would tell you how important it is, and would give you a “lesson” in how to develop setting in your book. At a reader’s conference, the panel will be a discussion of where each author sets his or her books, and why they chose that setting. Same goes for characters, or genre, or anything else.

This year, I’m on a “Romance in Mystery” panel and who knows where that one will go! Ultimately, the goal is to entice readers to pick up the books, and also to let them know you’re a real, live, person. It takes a different mind-set when you attend a conference like this as an author. You’re wearing a marketing hat, not a writing hat.

However, no matter what kind of a conference you attend, there are some “survival” techniques I’ve picked up over the years, listed in no order of importance.

  1. Have copies of your receipts. Nothing like finding out they’ve lost your registration or meal choices or room reservation to start things off on a stressful note. Better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them.
  2. Bring your own tote if you have one.Although most conferences hand out tote bags, they all look alike. If you bring one from a different conference, you’re less likely to have it picked up by mistake. (I also bring my own badge holder—the kind with compartments from another conference, just in case they give you a simple plastic one. This way, I’ve got a secure place for my badge, meal tickets, a little cash and other vitals—like business cards or bookmarks.)
  3. Don’t be afraid to meet people.It’s not required that you travel with a glued-to-the-hip companion. Take an empty seat, smile, hand over your business card, bookmark, or simple swag, and introduce yourself. This is one place where there’s an immediate conversation starter: “What do you write?” Or, in the case of a readers’ conference ‘read’? On the flip side, be polite and invite people to join you, include them in conversations. There’s a popular author who ignored me at a conference lunch table, and I haven’t bought any more of his books. Another good way to “mingle” is to volunteer. Most conferences are always looking for help.
  4. Bring comfortable clothes, especially shoes.You’ll be doing a lot of sitting, and a lot of walking, depending on how far apart the meeting rooms are. Also, bring layers. Regardless of the outside temperatures, meeting rooms can be meat-locker cold or steamy hot.
  5. Pace yourself.You’re not obligated to participate in every single event. Take breaks. Hide in your room for an hour if you need to. I long ago stopped feeling guilty about crawling into bed with a book at a decent hour. A lot of action takes place in the bar, so think about leaving some time for a visit there. Prioritize. Returning home with “conference crud”, or these days, the nasty virus, isn’t the souvenir you want.

Terry Odell—March 15, 2023

***

  1. Do you attend writing / genre conferences? Do you have a favorite?
  2. If you attend a conference, what do you hope to get out of it?
  3. Any advice on getting the most out of your conference?

Reader Friday-Let’s Go To The Oscars!

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Here’s your Reader Friday assignment for today…

Pick your favorite character in your favorite book—one that has not yet been made into a movie—a book written by you or by another author.

 

Now pick an actor to play that character in the upcoming movie. Give us the name of the book, the character, and who gets the part.

And, inquiring minds want to know: Why did you choose that book, that character, and that actor?

Bonus question: Name the actress in this photo, the movie, and the year she won this Best Actress Oscar. Should be a slam-dunk for most of us…

 

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Dead

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Sad news to report: After 42 years, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which showed how hilariously horrible the English language can be, is no more after its founder decided to retire it. Founded in 1983, the contest was to compose the most atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written.

If you think Edward Buller-Lytton’s opus, “It was a dark and stormy night…” was a masterpiece of pukable purple prose, you should check out some of the beauts and treasures housed at the BLFC website. I spent time scrolling through the list of winners and runners-up for each year. In no orchestrated and orderly organization, here are some spectacular and stunningly-silly specimens spewed by competent, creative creatives.

“Gwendolyn, a world-class mountaineer, summoned the last of her strength for one more heroic haul on the nylon strap (for she was, after so many failed attempts, dangerously close to exhaustion) and looked heavenward with resolve, aware that, in spite of her fatigue and anguish, she must breach the crevice in one well-coordinated movement, somehow cleave the smooth fissure with the flimsy synthetic strand even though she was chaffed raw by her repeated efforts, or more sensibly, just give the heave-ho to this new-fangled (and painfully small) Victoria’s Secret thong and slip into her well-worn – and infinitely more roomy – knickers.”

“Emile Zola wandered the dank and soggy streets of a gloomy Parisian night, the injustice of the Dreyfus affair weighing on him like a thousand baguettes, dreaming of some massage or therapy to relieve the tension and pain in his aching shoulders and back, and then suddenly he thought of his Italian friends and their newly invented warm water bath with air jets and he rapturously exclaimed that oft misquoted declaration — “Jacuzzi!”

“She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.”

“Ulysses Simpson Grant, having just finished a meal of Virginia ham, stretched out in his underwear of Mississippi-grown cotton, puffed on a Georgia cigar, swilled straight Kentucky bourbon whiskey, and thought just how good it was to be in the Union Army.”

“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

“A small assortment of astonishingly loud brass instruments raced each other lustily to the respective ends of their distinct musical choices as the gates flew open to release a torrent of tawny fur comprised of angry yapping bullets that nipped at Desdemona’s ankles, causing her to reflect once again (as blood filled her sneakers and she fought her way through the panicking crowd) that the annual Running of the Pomeranians in Liechtenstein was a stupid, stupid idea.”

“Gerald began–but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them “permanently” meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash–to pee.”

“Seeing how the victim’s body, or what remained of it, was wedged between the grill of the Peterbilt 389 and the bumper of the 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT, officer “Dirk” Dirksen wondered why reporters always used the phrase “sandwiched” to describe such a scene since there was nothing appetizing about it, but still, he thought, they might have a point because some of this would probably end up on the front of his tunic.”

“Through the gathering gloom of a late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracked paving-stones slick from the sputum of the sky, Stanley Ruddlethorp wearily trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister, brother, and three children were all buried, and forced open the door of his decaying house, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to completely devastate his life.”

And this one wins the Christmas turkey…

“Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago.”

Kill Zoners — Who feels creative and wants to take a crack at competing for a Bulwer-Lytton even though the contest is officially closed? If you don’t feel creative, there’s always ChatGPT.

Short Stories Don’t Count On Your Permanent Record

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By John Gilstrap

Close to a year ago, when I presented my short story, “All Revved Up and No Place to Go,” to the Rumpus Writers, the critique group of which I’ve been a member for roughly 15 years, the ten or fifteen seconds following the final passage were dominated by a heavy silence. I believe it was Ellen Crosby who spoke for the group when she said, “Oh, my God, I hate everybody in this story.”

To which I replied, “Thank you.”

“All Revved . . .” is, hands down, the darkest story I’ve ever written. You can find it in the recently published anthology, Bat Out Of Hell, edited by Don Bruns, and the story is inspired by the title of one of the songs on the famous Meat Loaf album from the 1970s. The story tells the tale of Ace Spade, an off-duty firefighter and search and rescue operator who’s trying to impress a young lady with his four-wheeling skills in the back woods of West Virginia when things go terribly wrong. After he wrecks his Jeep in the middle of nowhere, the man who they think is there to lend assistance turns out to be a killer who wants to hunt them down and kill them.

As regular Killzoners know, I don’t outline, so even I was surprised by the lengths to which our characters would go to stay alive. I don’t want to give to much away, but let’s just say that in the end, everyone acts in his or her best interests.

As a writer who’s carved a niche for myself by writing stories with moral clarity where good triumphs over evil, it was kind of refreshing to clean the creative pipes with a story where there really are no good guys–just . . . survivors.

Here’s my take on short stories: They’re not really part of an author’s permanent record, in the sense that I think they don’t necessarily reflect their true storytelling sensibilities. In a short story, I can feel free to kill a cat or cavort with vampires. I could even write a romance–even though I don’t think I’m actually capable of doing that.

This is why I cringe when I hear writerly advice given to newbies that they should cut their teeth writing short stories before they take on the burden of a novel. To me, that’s like telling a budding cook that they need to perfect the art of scrambling eggs before they bake Thanksgiving turkey. One has nothing to do with the other–or where the skill cross, the intersection is so tangential as to be meaningless.

It’s equally important to note that novel-writing skills can get you in trouble when crafting a short story. I was fortunate that submission rules asked for an approximate submission length of 8,000 words for Bat Out of Hell. If I’d had to turn in flash fiction, or anything under, say, 3,000 words, I would have considered myself unqualified from the start.

What say you, TKZ family? Are you a fan of short stories? Do you like to read them? Write them? Where do you go to find them?

“Heed this advice!” she said desperately

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By PJ Parrish

I was sitting in my favorite breakfast place, dipping my rye into my sunny-side-ups and reading an old paperback that I had found at a yard sale. It was by a mega-bestselling author, and frankly, I was smugly happy that I had paid only 50 cents for it.

I looked up to see a familar face. It was Tom S., one of my pickleball peeps. He’s sort of annoying, on court and off, the kind of guy who slams the ball at your head and then disingenuously apologizes for almost taking out your eye. So when he asked if he could join me, I was dearly tempted to go with the truth. But no…I try to play nice, on court and off.

“Sure, have a seat,” I said cordially.

He sat down, his eyes slipping secretly to the paperback lying wantonly by my coffee mug. “I see,” he said insightfully, “that you are reading a book by XX.”

“Yes,” I said affirmatively, nodding energetically.

“Do you like it?” he asked inquiringly.

I wasn’t sure how to answer. See, Tom’s trying to write a book and my kind-hearted sister Kelly had recently offered to give him a quick critique. His WIP was a hot mess but she patiently offered Tom some some good tips about plot structure, the differences between thrillers and mysteries, and character building.

Tom wisely picked up on my silence. “So,” he said interrogatively. “I take it you don’t like the book?”

“It’s sort of meh,” I said flatly.

“In what way?” he asked inquisitively.

“Well, I can’t quite put my finger on it,” I said perplexedly.

“How is the plotting?” he asked ploddingly.

“The plot was okay. But it’s sort of falling apart toward the end,” I added brokenly.

“That’s too bad,” he said sympathetically. “Anything else?”

“The characters were okay but kind of cardboard,” I said woodenly.

“Really?” he said shockingly.

“Yes,” I acknowledged.

“But this is a New York Times bestseller,” he interjected suddenly, jabbing at the book pointedly with his extended right index finger. “It got great blurbs. And all the reviewers loved it.”

“Well,” I said deeply, with a exhalation of a sigh. “I just don’t know what it was about the book that I found tiresome but there was something.”

Tom gave me a nod of his head, shaking it up and down, and then added a small, understanding smile, displaying his Chiclet teeth. “Well,” he said philosophically. “Some books are just like that.”

And with that, Tom rose and sauntered away, slowly and casually, slipping out the door, sidling across the parking lot, and disappearing into the almost rainy, slightly foggy, early morning Michigan mist.

I was left with my bad book and my thoughts. I was thinking about all the good advice I had heard over the years at all the writers conferences I had attended. Thinking about all the great panels I had sat on, even a really special heated one about talent versus technique. I was thinking, too, about all the wonderful posts here at The Kill Zone that tackle such a wide range of topics on our craft — everything from yanking yourself out of the muddy middle to the sins of the semi-colon.

Gina the waitress refilled my coffee and I returned to my mega-bestseller. Only a couple chapters to go, and even though I knew in my heart I should have tossed the book aside a long time ago, I was determined to finish it. Maybe I just wanted to get my full 50-cents worth. Then it came, this sentence:

“I could have saved her,” he whispered quietly.

I turned the book to its cover and looked at the author’s name. It was in huge block letters and bright neon pink, the name bigger than the title.

I flashbacked to a panel I moderated years ago at Sleuthfest. Robert Crais was our guest of honor and he was waxing eloquent about our craft. But it was one sentence he said in his keynote address that I was remembering at that moment: “Adverbs are not your friend.”

He didn’t say it lightly. He didn’t it dramatically. He didn’t even say it succinctly. He just said it.

 

How Writers Are Like Backyard Chickens

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After caring for six adult chickens for over a year, a friend and I bought six baby chicks to start our own flock. A lot of thought went into buying chicks.

  • What breeds produce the most eggs?
  • Which ones egg during a harsh New England winter?
  • Temperaments?
  • Is there a bully breed?

The six adult chickens have a bully in the coop who never misses a chance to pick on the others. We didn’t need another problem child.

  • What will the chicks look like as adults?

Good looks weren’t as important to us as egg production, but why not shoot for both? Also, if certain breeds don’t like human interaction, we’d never be able to love on them. Neither of us could handle that.

Once we chose the perfect blend of breeds, we brought home the babies, which we kept in the living room of my friend’s house. Yes, the living room. We wanted the chicks to imprint on us and feel like part of the family, just like we did 34 years ago with our pet turkey.

When the chicks grew into gangly teenagers, we built onto the existing coop to create a duplex. Six adults on one side, our babies on the other and safely out of reach of the bully. The original owner of the six adults got tired of them, so we adopted them as well. Twelve chickens can be chaotic and challenging if you don’t stay one step ahead, but they’re never boring!

My sweet angels. The crookedness of the photo seems to fit their goofy personalities. LOL

While watching both flocks forage, grow, and play, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between chickens and writers.

Believe it or not, we have a lot in common with these intelligent birds.

Foraging for food: Chickens spend a significant part of their day foraging for food, pecking and scratching at the ground to uncover earthworms and insects. Writers also forage for ideas, observing, researching, and exploring to gather material and inspiration for plots.

Structure and organization: Chickens exhibit a pecking order, a social hierarchy that dictates access to resources like food and nesting spots. Writers also engage in structuring and organizing their work, arranging ideas, outlining, and refining their work to present a coherent and engaging storyline.

Hatching: Just as a chick emerges from an egg after development, writers develop their ideas and create a first draft, which is later refined and polished, much like a chicken preening its feathers for optimal health and function. They also want to look nice. When the teens first saw their reflections, you should’ve seen them hamming it up. Hilarious!

Social interaction and learning: Chickens are social creatures who learn from observing other flock members. Writers learn and develop their craft by observing the works of other authors, studying their techniques, and adapting elements to create their own style and refine their voice. 

Communication: Chickens use a variety of vocalizations to communicate with one another, such as alarm calls, contentment clucks, and honks. Writers also use various literary techniques and stylistic choices to evoke emotions in their readers.

Molting: The molting process likens to the challenges and discomfort associated with personal and creative growth. 

I’m not the only author to find inspiration in chickens, either through direct observation or by using them as characters and/or metaphors.

  • The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker

The acclaimed author and poet found inspiration in her flock of backyard chickens, using them as a lens to explore themes of nature, community, and spiritual discovery. 

  • Jackie Polzin’s Brood

This novel uses a flock of chickens to explore grief and miscarriage, demonstrating how even seemingly simple creatures can carry profound emotional weight.

  • The Chicken Books by John Spiers

Inspired by his own flock, Spiers writes fiction for children and blogs about his chickens, offering quirky takes on “chicken economics” and “chicken religion.” 

  • Jan Brett, another children’s book author, keeps chickens to aid her artistic process, using them as models for her illustrations.

Chickens are highly intelligent, sentient birds with unique personalities, and like fellow writers, deserve our respect and kindness.

Where are my chicken lovers? Have you ever raised chicks? It’s a rewarding and fun experience. What other traits do chickens and writers share?

 

“Your Book Deserves To Reach a Larger Audience”

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“Everybody talks about the weather,” Twain wrote, “but nobody does anything about it.”

Yes, and everybody talks about Artificial Intelligence, and nobody can do anything about it. It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere. It’s Skynet, it’s HAL, and soon it may be telling you, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”

Today I won’t revisit the pros and cons, complaints and commendations, misgivings and infatuations writers have with AI. Rather, I refer to a recent report from Microsoft on the professions most and least susceptible to disruption from generative AI.

Writers, we made #5!

  1. Interpreters and Translators
  2. Historians
  3. Passenger Attendants
  4. Sales Representatives of Services
  5. Writers and Authors

The professions least likely to be impacted are manual jobs like phlebotomists (people who draw your blood), highway maintenance workers, plumbers, massage therapists, roofers, and embalmers (stiff competition for this job).

First question is: what the heck’s the difference between writers and authors? It’s subtle.

A writer writes stuff (you’re welcome). But they may not own the stuff. A writer can be someone who produces content for someone else, a writer-for-hire, e.g., a ghostwriter. Clearly, AI is replacing them.

An author owns the stuff (and can therefore license it), and AI is replicating them. The big issue for us fiction writers is whether AI can produce more than soulless trope rearrangement. And whether authors who’ve spent years learning the craft and developing a singular voice can compete with AI in the marketplace.

This is not to say that authors should avoid all things AI—things like copywriting, book descriptions, marketing materials. For these AI is good and fast, freeing up time for writing more fiction and playing Connections. It’s free, too. Pro copywriters are out of a job. Trad publishing doesn’t use them anymore, not to mention any other business that produces sales copy—which is every business.

Series writers can upload pdfs of their books to Google Notebook, press enter, and boom—series bible. Need a recall all the plots in in your 15-book series? Ask your notebook for summaries, and there they are. Need to recall how recurring characters were described in every book in which they appear? Presto. Those are all good uses of the tech.

There’s a dark side, of course A big new scam is targeting authors via AI-generated phishing emails. These are slick (gone are the good old days of scam emails from Nigerian princes rife with shoddy grammar). They purport to be a from an actual person who works for an actual marketing firm. This person just loves your book and wants to help you reach more readers!

What they’re doing is scraping info about you from the net and using high-praise buzzwords to give you a dopamine hit.

I got one of these just the other day. It begins by saying she (a female name) recently “came across your book” (one dead giveaway is when it doesn’t give you the title. But other emails do). She was “truly struck” by the “raw emotion and depth of storytelling.” And I “deserve” to have my book reach a wider audience. Dopamine!

The email goes on to promise higher book rankings on Amazon and a “customized campaign” to increase exposure across “key global markets.” She has “just worked with an author in a similar genre” who experienced a measurable increase in sales (but doesn’t tell us who the author is). She invites me to receive a “complimentary review” of my current Amazon presence and “explore” how the company can help me out. The email signs off with Warm regards, followed by the name…but no link to a website (which, of course, does not exist).

I laughed then trashed it. I should have labeled it “spam,” for two days later I got a follow up, hoping that I and my family “are doing well” (that’s so nice!) and understanding that “life can get busy” and reminding me “I have a specific idea for a campaign that I’m confident could get your book in front of a huge number of new readers who are actively looking for exactly this kind of story…I’d love to share the details with you in a quick 10-minute chat or call this week. No pressure at all, just a conversation to see if it’s a good fit.”

The ultimate goal of this “good fit” is to get my money and access to my KDP account. What could possibly go wrong with that? (You can read about this scam at the invaluable Writer Beware website.)

This con feeds off our bottom-line desire—we all want new readers. Well, the anecdotal evidence suggests that many readers sense when a book is AI-generated (and consider it “cheating”) versus having a unique voice and style, which only comes via the hard work of learning the craft, writing, getting feedback, and writing, writing, writing.

Yeah, we have to concede that AI is getting better at plagiarizing generating competent commercial fiction that can provide a quick escape. But will it create a rabid fan? I don’t think so. Only blood can do that.

So does your book really deserve to reach a larger audience? Not if AI writes it for you. Do the work. Be the author. Bleed. Get better. And if you need a side hustle, learn embalming.

Comments welcome.

Deadlines

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Deadlines.

Brrrr.

A line not to be crossed without consequences.

All writers bow to them, and for some, looming deadlines are also an electric jolt to get authors off the stick and in front of the keyboard. I confess. I do my best work right up against deadlines.

The dreaded word originated during the Civil War, referencing a defined line around prison camps that prisoners weren’t allowed to cross under the guarantee of being shot by guards. Some sources say it began at Andersonville, a Confederate prison camp notorious for its horrific conditions and high death rate among Union prisoners.

“Before noon, we were turned into the pen which is merely enclosed by a ditch and the dirt taken from the ditch thrown up on the outside, making a sort of breastwork. The ditch serves as a dead line, and no prisoners must go near the ditch. ­–––Robert Ransom, Diary of Robert Ransom, Nov, 22, 1863.

You get the picture.

Over time, as memories faded, the term softened and shifted from a literal physical boundary to a time limit. In the early 1900s, newspapers used the word to indicate the last possible moment for submitting copy for publication. Meeting a deadline is the mark of a professional, or one who refuses to be late.

Now, to soften that a bit, some writing deadlines are fluid. Life can get in the way of meeting those obligations, and most editors and publishers understand, to a point. Your family, health, and all those insane troubles that sometimes swirl around us like tweeting birds circling a cartoon character’s head should take precedence.

Simply missing a specific date because you can’t get off the stick is unforgivable and sets back a publisher’s schedule. Titles are lined up on the calendar for print and missing those dates might put your manuscript back at the end of the line, or pulled completely, damaging the writer’s reputation, and also that of their agent.

Other things happen, too. I got a little lazy in writing my fourth novel, Dark Places, and my agent took me to task, setting back my delivery date.

“Rev, I love the manuscript, but you missed an entire plot line.”

“What!!!???”

“Pepper ran away from home, and you didn’t follow her. She’s almost forgotten until the end.”

“But….”

“Follow her.”

I did, and it gave the book an entirely different quality. However, I missed that deadline in the sense that we had to ask for more time. The publisher gave me a month, but my subconscious, knowing I’d become lazy, had already written the material and the story poured out in only two weeks.

Besides the book deadlines mentioned above, (and I’m free of those for the first time in several years because I’ve turned in three novels in my new series and have some breathing room), I still have a weekly newspaper column and magazine columns…plus this blog.

Book deadlines, short story deadlines, column and magazine articles, blog posts, well-established newsletters, and paid Substack posts all require razor sharp attention. If you sign either a physical, agreed upon contract, or a personal goal to get your work on a particular date or day, they should all be met.

It’s your professional reputation that’s on the line.

Reader Friday-One Book

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I’ll bet a paycheck (if I had one…) that everyone reading these words today has more than one book on the bookshelf.

More than twenty? Or a hundred?

So…I have a question for you.

If you were allowed only one, 1, uno, une book on your shelf, what book would you choose?

 

 

If a wicked, wicked genie popped up in front of your face and said, “Choose only one book or die a thousand deaths”, what would be the title of that book?

Cue Deb’s fingers drumming . . .

(My answer in the comments–wouldn’t want to give you any ideas!)

🙂