Is touring worth the tsouris?

Posted on by
By P.J. Parrish
Yesterday we wrapped up the Michigan Fingers Tour. Those of you from Michigan might get what this means. The rest of you just need to know that we Michiganders locate our place on earth by holding up our hand and pointing to the spot on our palm from which we hail.
The “fingers” of the Michigan mitt is the northwest area of the state up near Traverse City. It’s home for my sister and co-author Kelly – the lovely village of Elk Rapids. I, who have been rooted in the south Florida sand for 35 years now, have been “up north” for the last two weeks as Kelly and I wended our way through the great little towns of the fingers, promoting our latest book HEART OF ICE.
Our book is set in northern Michigan, so heading up north here was a no brainer. But the experience also left us going back to an old question: Is touring – and its lesser kin, signings– still worth the time and effort?
We authors debate this question endlessly. In these days of diminished expectations and budgets, only the big guns get the promotional blastoffs. And with all the social networking options (you can even do virtual signings now), does a writer still have anything to gain from taking his act on the road?
Touring used to be one of the essential tools of promoting your book. The “national tour” was a benchmark of arrival in the traditional publishing world. Even if you didn’t have enough clout with your publisher to have them pay your way, we authors often planned and paid for our own tours.
Kelly and I have done it both ways during our career. For our fourth book, A KILLING RAIN, our publisher sent us on a big-time tour that had us crisscrossing the country for two weeks. It was the full treatment, complete with escorts greeting us at airports holding up our covers, nice hotels with room service, and even business class on the last leg coming home. It was fun, exciting, rewarding. It was also disappointing and frustrating. Some stores had healthy crowds waiting for us; a few had none. By the time we hit our final Barnes and Noble (I think it was in Nashville?) we were numb with exhaustion but grateful for the crowd who turned out in what should have been a killing rain.
Now, I can hear you saying, “What’s she bitching about? At least she GOT a paid-for tour!”  Well, yes we did. But every other tour we have done, like the huge majority of authors, came out of our own pockets. Those tours have been exciting, rewarding, disappointing and frustrating. The point being: There doesn’t seem to be much difference whether our pub paid for it or we did. The effort and time invested – and results achieved – seemed to be the same.

There’s a difference, of course, between whether you are doing an “event” where you are speaking, and a signing, where you are just meeting and greeting for two hours. Sitting behind the old card table isn’t nearly as demanding, of course, as giving a full-scale talk. (That’s me above signing at the Island Bookstore on Mackinac). On our current tour, we had a big adoring crowd at Saturn Books in Gaylord, a town in the middle of the state that no one would expect to worth the time. But the owner, Jill Miner, is a genius at cultivating readers; she could give indie owners lessons. Here’s the great folks at her store:
On Mackinac Island, we did a ticketed author event and had an enthusiastic crowd. Here they are. Plus the view you get if you go out the library’s back door.
Sometimes, you just can’t predict what you’re going to get. Two days after Mackinac Island, we were dreading a signing at a Books a Million because our past experience with this chain had been sort of meh. But we sold out all our stock.  At one other store that we thought would draw well, only two people showed up. (We discovered later the store had done nothing to promote us.)
The nadir was a store that, when we arrived, told us they had none of our books because they had sold out for days ago. Hello? A phone call or email would have been nice before we drove two hours. We had an emergency box of books in the trunk but the owner told us she couldn’t figure out how to charge them against her inventory. We went down the street, had a glass of wine and drove the two hours back home in the dark woods, me watching for deer the whole wretched way. (I’m paranoid about hitting a deer and wrecking the car.)
Before this, we hadn’t toured in a long time. But we did this one because our book is set in Michigan (on bucolic Mackinac Island) so we knew we’d get the regional bump. But we also did it because northwest Michigan is rife with really top-notch independent bookstores. These stores have owners who cultivate their readers and treat visiting authors like royalty. They don’t just set up a table in the back of the store and leave you to fend for yourself. They send out newsletters, pre-stock and hand-sell your backlist, do email blasts and get you local media interviews.
If you are ever in Michigan on tour, here are some of the stores you should never miss (plus most of them are in pretty towns):
Saturn Books, Gaylord. 
McLean and Aiken, Petoskey
Island Bookstore, Mackinac Island
Schuler’s Okemos/Lansing
Bookman, Grand Haven
Book Nook and Java Shop Montague
Cottage Bookstore  Glen Arbor
And downstate: Aunt Agatha’s in Ann Arbor.
So was the Michigan Finger Tour worth it?
In the plus column: we met a lot of great bookstore owners whose hand-selling helped us immensely. And we met some terrific readers, and gained many new ones. Is there any better feeling than meeting face-to-face a person who tells you they love your books? Touring gives you an infusion of confidence and affirmation that you can never duplicate on Facebook.
In the minus column: It’s tiring, often deeply discouraging, expensive, and unless you are one of those writers who can crank out chapters on a plane, you lose valuable writing time.
One final thought: They say indie stores are making a small comeback. If the ones we saw are any indication, there is, indeed, hope. And maybe hope is what is really the most important thing we get from going out on the road these days.
Just watch out for the deer.
p.s. The picture leading off this blog is in the old Paradise Pines hotel in Kelly’s hometown of Elk Rapids. We did not stay here while on tour.

The Stars Are Out at ThrillerFest

Posted on by

by Boyd Morrison

I would love going to an actors’ convention where I could have dinner with Sandra Bullock, take an acting class from Michael Caine, audition for a role in the next Spielberg movie, and share laughs at the bar with the cast of Castle. Won’t ever happen. It sounds too good to be true because it is. But that kind of dream conference does exist for thriller writers and fans. It’s called ThrillerFest, which will be held in New York City on July 10-13, 2013.

The attendees this week include writers who live on the New York Times bestseller list. The five spotlight guests alone–R.L. Stine, Anne Rice, Michael Connelly, Michael Palmer, and T. Jefferson Parker–have sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million books. And everywhere you look at the conference, you’re blinded by the star wattage: Lisa Gardner, Steve Berry, Lee Child, Catherine Coulter, Douglas Preston, Heather Graham, Brad Meltzer, Joseph Finder. It’s as if you could get into the Oscars merely by paying a registration fee.

But the really amazing thing about ThrillerFest is that you get to meet and talk to these people, not just ogle them from afar. When I was a newbie unpublished author at the inaugural ThrillerFest in Phoenix seven years ago, I didn’t know a soul. At the opening cocktail reception, I spent most of the time ambling about, listening in on snippets of conversation as I tried not to spill red wine down my shirt. Then I spotted Jon Land, an author I’d been reading for years. I gathered up my courage and nervously introduced myself, telling him that I was a huge fan. To my shock he asked me to join his group for dinner, where we had a fantastic time. In what other entertainment medium could that happen?

While I’ve mentioned some of the big names you can hobnob with, there are also plenty of up and coming writers who attend, some of whom will be household names in a few years. Imagine getting to know Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer just before they hit it big. And because I’ve gone to the convention every year, I’m lucky to count many of these future publishing phenoms as friends.

ThrillerFest is also a great deal for unpublished authors looking to break into the business. Through an event called AgentFest, aspiring writers can pitch their novels to a who’s who of the biggest agents in publishing. I was fortunate enough to find my own agent there. Before I met her my manuscripts barely got a nibble. Now I’m the director of AgentFest, my sixth thriller, THE LOCH NESS LEGACY, has just come out, and my novels are published in 22 languages. If I hadn’t attended ThrillerFest, who knows what I’d be doing?

For those looking to hone their writing skills, CraftFest offers a wealth of knowledge that is available nowhere else. You can actually take writing classes from legendary authors like Connelly, famed for books such as THE POET and THE LINCOLN LAWYER, and David Morrell, the creator of Rambo. The biggest problem is the information overload you might experience trying to cram every nugget of wisdom into your brain.

The best part of the conference is hanging out with these authors at the bar, the central gathering place. At first you’ll regard them with awe that they have descended from the heavens to walk amongst us. Then when you’re introduced to them, you’ll realize that they’re just people, too–although extremely talented, friendly, fascinating people. They’re happy to greet fans and share their insights about the business. Buying them a drink doesn’t hurt, either, though this being New York you’d better hang onto your wallet for a bumpy ride.

If you do get some of these writers liquored up, don’t be surprised if you laugh yourself silly as they spin wild tales of publishing wackiness, crazed fans, and book tours gone wrong. After all, these people know how to tell a story.

The Magical Midpoint Moment

Posted on by

 

Being a structure guy, I’ve always been fascinated by how story works. When I was first learning the craft, I spent a year studying the 3 Act structure, taking my cues primarily from Syd Field’s classic, Screenplay. In that book, Field talks about plot points, the hinges that lead the plot into Act 2 and Act 3. But I found frustrating a lack of definition of how these plot points worked. What was supposed to be in them? Field knew something happened, he sensed it, but wasn’t quite able to define it.
After watching movie after movie and charting their structures, it came to me. Especially that first plot point, which I began calling “the doorway of no return.” That’s because something has to happen to thrust the lead character into the dangers of Act 2. When you know this in your plot, and put it in the right place, it keeps your novel from dragging and gives it the momentum it needs to carry it to the end. It’s crucially important. 
Then, a couple of years ago, I decided to do more in-depth study on what many writing teachers call the “midpoint.” If you do a search about midpoint on the Internet, you’ll find all sorts of ideas about what is supposed to happen here. Some people talk about “raising the stakes.” Others talk about this being the point of commitment. Still others say it’s a change in the direction of the story, or the gathering of new information, or the start of time pressure.
So once again I started watching movies with the midpoint in mind. And what I found blew me away. Even though the writers may not have been conscious of it, they were creating something in the middle of their stories that pulled together the entire narrative.  The name I gave it is the “look in the mirror” moment. My workshop slide looks like this:
At this point in the story, the character figuratively looks at himself. He takes stock of where he is in the conflict and, depending on the type of story, has either of two basic thoughts. In a character-driven story, he looks at himself and wonders what kind of person he is. What is he becoming? If he continues the fight of Act 2, how will he be different? What will he have to do to overcome himself? Or how will he have to change in order to battle successfully?
The second type of look is more for plot-driven fiction. It’s where the character looks at himself and considers the odds against him. At this point the forces seem so vast that there is virtually no way to go on and not face certain death. That death can be professional, physical, or psychological.

These two basic thoughts are not mutually exclusive. For example, an action story may be given added heft by incorporating the first kind of reflection into the narrative. This happens in Lethal Weapon when Riggs bares his soul to Murtaugh, admitting that killing people is “the only thing I was ever good at.”
A few more examples may help.
In Casablanca, at the exact midpoint of the film, Ilsa comes to Rick’s saloon after closing. Rick has been getting drunk, remembering with bitterness what happened with him and Ilsa in Paris. Ilsa comes to him to try to explain why she left him in Paris, that she found out her husband Viktor Lazlo was still alive. She pleads with him to understand. But Rick is so bitter he basically calls her a whore. She weeps and leaves. And Rick, full of self disgust, puts his head in his hands. He is thinking, “What have I become?” 
 
The rest of the film will determine whether he stays a selfish drunk, or regains his humanity. That, in fact, is what Casablancais truly about, in both narrative and theme.
In The Fugitive, an action film, at the very center point of the movie Dr. Kimble is awakened in the basement room he’s renting, by cops swarming all over the place. He thinks they are after him, but it turns out they are actually after the son of the landlord. But the damage is done. Kimble breaks down. He is looking at the odds, thinking there’s no way he can win this fight. There are too many resources arrayed against him.
 
 
Then I went looking for the midpoint of Gone With The Wind, the novel. I opened to the middle of the book and started hunting. And there it was. At the end of Chapter 15, Scarlett looks inside herself, realizing that no one else but she can save Tara.
The trampled acres of Tara were all that was left to her, now that Mother and Ashley were gone, now that Gerald was senile from shock . . . security and position had vanished overnight. As from another world she remembered a conversation with her father about the land and wondered how she could have been so young, so ignorant, as not to understand what he meant when he said that the land was the one thing in the world worth fighting for.
Scarlett wonders what kind of person she has to become in order to save Tara. And the decision is made in the last paragraph:
Yes, Tara was worth fighting for, and she accepted simply and without question the fight. No one was going to get Tara away from her. No one was going to send her and her people adrift on the charity of relatives. She would hold Tara, if she had to break the back of every person on it.
 
And that is the essence of GWTW. It’s the story of a young Southern belle who is forced (via a doorway of no return called The Civil War) to save her family home. 

Also, notice how this is different from other definitions of the midpoint you’ll see. Virtually all books on the craft approach it as another “plot” point. Something external happens that changes the course of the story. But what I detect is a character point, something internal, which has the added benefit of bonding audience and character on a deeper level.

In preparing for this post, I grabbed three of my favorite movies and went to their midpoints. Here’s what I found:
 
In Moontstruck,right smack dab in the middle, is the scene where Loretta goes into the confessional, because she has “slept with the brother of my fiancé.” The priest says, “That’s a pretty big sin.” Loretta says, “I know . . .” And the priest tells her, “Reflect on your life!” He is actually instructing her to look in the mirror! 
There’s a perfect mirror moment in It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s the moment where Mr. Potter offers George Bailey a well-paid position with his firm, a job that will mean security for George’s growing family. In return, though, George will have to give up the Building & Loan his father started. Potter offers George a cigar and George asks for time to think it over. He is actually requesting look-in-the-mirror time, and is seriously considering this move. Then he shakes Potter’s hand, and the oily exchange suddenly clarifies what’s at stake for him as a person.  “No,” he says, “now wait a minute here. I don’t need twenty-four hours. I don’t have to talk to anybody. I know right now, and the answer’s No!” George had to make a decision as to what kind of man he was going to be. And he chose not to become another Potter.

Finally, in Sunset Boulevard, in the middle of the movie to the minute, Joe Gillis also has to decide what kind of man he is. Norma Desmond, his benefactor and lover, has tried to kill herself because Joe found a girl his own age that he wants to start seeing. When Joe hears about it he rushes back to her mansion with the thought that he’ll finally tell her it’s over, that he’s leaving. But she threatens to do it again. And Joe sits down, literally, next to a mirror. In that moment he makes his fateful decision, the one that drives the rest of the movie.

Could the reason these movies are classics, and others not, be that the writers understood the power of the look in the mirror? Whether instinctive or purposeful, they knew exactly what to do.

Books:

In the middle of The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice is alone in her room, having just heard of Chilton’s betrayal of Lecter, meaning she won’t get any more information from him, meaning the certain death of the kidnapped girl she’s been trying to save. The odds are now firmly against her and the FBI. In the shower, Clarice reflects back on a childhood memory which symbolizes loss for her.

At the midpoint of The Hunger Games, Katniss accepts the fact that she’s going to die. The odds are too great: I know the end is coming. My legs are shaking and my heart is too quick . . . . My fingers stroke the smooth ground, sliding easily across the top. This is an okay place to die, I think.

And, if I may, in the exact middle of my thriller, Try Dying, Ty Buchanan’s home has just been firebombed. His fiancée has been murdered. And he reflects on two kinds of people, those who keep driving toward something, and those who have “given up the fight.”
 
The question I had, and couldn’t answer, was which kind was I?


Of course, not every film or book will have a “mirror moment” like I’ve described. But the ones that do have a depth about them, a better cohesion and focus, and a satisfying arc. That’s the sort of thing that makes a reader search out more of an author’s work.

 
Since I incorporated “look in the mirror moment” into my workshops, students have reported it has been incredibly helpful in discovering what their novels are really all about. The nice thing is you can explore this moment at any time in your writing process. You can play with it, tweak it. Whether you are a plotter or pantser, just thinking about what the “look in the mirror” might reveal will help you find the real heart of your novel.
That’s why it’s a magic moment (cue The Drifters)
UPDATE: Since this post first appeared, I’ve written a book on the subject called Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between. 

GOING BACK: THE ANGRY PLANET

Posted on by

Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits. I was sitting and thinking yesterday when a book that I last read around fifty-five years ago, when I was but a wee lad, popped unbidden into my head. It was a science-fiction novel, now long out of print, titled THE ANGRY PLANET and it was written by a British author named John Keir Cross. I can remember exactly where I got the book — the Lane Avenue Shopping Center branch of the Upper Arlington, Ohio Public Library system — and why I picked the book up. There was a movie that was heavily advertised at the time titled The Angry Red Planet that was making the rounds of the drive-ins at the time, and I thought that maybe the film was based on the book. It wasn’t, and as it turned out the book THE ANGRY PLANET was much better than the similarly titled movie could have ever hoped to be. It was, in fact, the first book that really and truly grabbed me by the lapels and made me a reader.

THE ANGRY PLANET was aimed squarely at the youth market in general and boys market in particular, and was originally published in 1946. The basic plot concerned a couple of teenagers stowed away on a rocket to Mars and had a number of adventures. There were two species of Martians at the top of the food chain which naturally were at mortal war with each other. One type was tall and thin and benevolent and friendly and resembled a  celery stalk;  the other type was short and squat and evil and resembled a mushroom without the stem. The nice Martians had these long, thin razor-sharp swords which they used to dice the bad guys up; they needed them, because the bad guys were much stronger, and possessed these powerful tendrils which they used to pick the nice guys up and snap them in two like a Slim Jim or a…well, like a celery stalk. The book ended with the Earth guys escaping from Mars by the skin of their teeth just as it looked like the nice Martians were going to lose a huge battle with the nasty ones. I read that book several times; at some point after the fact learned that there was a sequel to the book titled RED JOURNEY BACK, which I never saw or got to read. Remember, this was in the very early 1960s,  when the only “Amazon” was Wonder Woman or a river in South America, take your pick, “computers” were what we called people who could operate slide rules or adding machines, and “kindle” was something you did to keep the fire going. Things moved on. I discovered detective fiction and paperback books on those revolving wire racks in the drugstore. But I never really forgot THE ANGRY PLANET. Sure, it got buried in my subconscious under birth dates and telephone numbers and learning how to drive, but I never truly forgot that book.  Cross really had a talent for writing battle scenes, and the story was illustrated here and there with black and white line drawings that were somewhat disturbing for reasons that I couldn’t quite identify then but undoubtedly could today, if I had a copy of the book in my hand.

Just for grins I thought I would see if RED JOURNEY BACK was available on any of the e-book platforms. It isn’t. Along the way, however, I did some research and learned that Cross, back in the day, was somewhat renowned as a writer and editor of adult horror fiction. Some first editions of his work, including THE ANGRY PLANET, trade hands for a pretty penny. I also discovered for the first time that I’m not the only one who read THE ANGRY PLANET; there are any number of bloggers out there with memories better than mine who also have an actual copy of the book and still take time to re-read it.

Accordingly, I’m wondering…what is the first book that really and truly made you a reader? Do you have a copy of it? Is it still in print?

Reader Friday: Why the Flops?

Posted on by

Looks like Disney’s $259 million reboot of The Lone Ranger is headed for Flop City. It follows another major disappointment, Sony’s $150 million White House Down. What do you suppose is going wrong? 


On the positive side, what recent movies do you recommend? 

Interface: A Critique

Posted on by

INTERFACE (a thriller)
First Page Critique

Tom Faraday awoke feeling like he had been sleeping forever, and immediately struggled to recall where he was, or how he had got there. Some nights, he reflected, you hope you remember. Others you hope you forget. Tom was not sure which category the previous night would crystallise under. Right now he was just feeling the after effects of what must have been an evening of extraordinary excess.

He rolled over in the hotel bed and blinked repeatedly. The alarm clock read 8:30 a.m. Next to the clock was his watch, and next to that an electronic card key for his room. Picking it up he saw he was at the Western Star Hotel, in Waterloo, central London. This seemed vaguely familiar, but a stabbing pain deep in his head was making it hard to think clearly. He slipped on his watch, a present from his mother, slid out of bed and padded across to where his suitcase lay open. From a small zipped compartment he retrieved paracetamol and swallowed them down with gulps from a bottle of mineral water. He then stumbled into the bathroom, and was greeted by a tired visage in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, hair unkempt, stubble unusually obvious. He stroked his chin distractedly, thinking he must have forgotten to shave the previous day.

Back on the desk he found an elegantly printed invitation, and as he read it his memories started to return. The card bore his name in calligraphic handwriting, and was to the launch party for CERUS Technologies’ new office building. Tom rubbed his eyes and thought hard. What did he know?
He knew his name. He knew his age: 26. He remembered his job. He was a lawyer at CERUS Technologies. And he remembered the party.

He remembered getting there by taxi, late on Friday night. He remembered William Bern’s speech. And he remembered drinking a few beers. And then a few more. Perhaps a lot more. Of the trip back to the hotel, he remembered nothing. Friday night had come and gone.

He stretched slowly and looked for another bottle of water. Apart from the headache he did not feel too bad. Hopefully no harm done, and the rest of the weekend to recover. The noise of a mobile phone ringing broke him from his thoughts. His phone. He retrieved it from his pocket, noticing the battery was nearly dead.

<><><>

Critique by Nancy J. Cohen

The opening line is great. It immediately draws me in, wondering the same thing as the character. Where is he, and what is he doing there? I would delete “he reflected.” We’re in his viewpoint, and that qualifier is unnecessary.

Crystallize has a “z” not an “s”.

Delete the “just” before “just feeling.” This is one of those overused words. For more info in this regard, please see my review of a fabulous self-editing program at http://bit.ly/12iU9nZ. The Smart-Edit software points out all the words and phrase you overuse and much more.

What kind of drug is paracetamol?

I’d separate into a new paragraph, “The noise of a mobile phone…”

The cell phone is in his pocket? Is he still wearing his clothes from the night before? Or did he get dressed in them?

So the guy is hungover from a workplace party. I’m intrigued, but I am wondering where this is going. Hopefully the caller will inject more information. You do point of view very well, and I have no problems with the pacing especially if a dialogue ensues.

At first, I thought Tom had memory loss and couldn’t remember how he got where he is. But he does seem to recall everything, except maybe the cab ride back to the hotel. Then again, where does he normally live? My questions tell you I am hooked and would read more. I’d be hoping, though, that something happens to tell me all isn’t right and things are going to get hairier from here on in. Good job and Happy Fourth of July!

Writing Contests

Posted on by

Nancy J. Cohen

Writing Contests for Published Authors

Being a finalist in a writing contest can lift your mood, while not earning any kudos can depress you. So why enter them at all?

One reason to enter a contest for published authors is to expose new readers to your work. A judge might become a new fan. It’s another way to get your name out there. Plus, if you win, you’ll be able to call yourself an Award-Winning Author. That looks good on your book cover and in your professional biography. If you’re a finalist, you can get mileage out of that term as well. The ensuing publicity can broaden your readership.

On the other hand, low scores can totally strip you of confidence. In the mystery field, there aren’t a whole lot of contests to enter. If you write humorous cozies like I do, there’s no sense in entering the Edgars. You have to be nominated for most other awards like the Agatha, and that becomes a popularity contest as conference goers vote for the winners. There’s little judging with feedback or specific criteria like in the romance field.

Thus this past year I entered both my paranormal romance and my mystery into separate contests sponsored by RWA chapters. I did enter Shear Murder in the Florida Book Awards, even knowing a work of serious crime fiction would be more likely to win. My purpose was to gain the attention of whatever librarians might read my entry, although with the $50 entry fee, the cost of four print books (over $50), and the $15.41 postage, I might not bother again.

My romance didn’t garner a single nod in the myriad of contests I’d entered. I could understand this reaction because my mixed genre story might not appeal to the standard romance fan. My paranormal romance stories have a humorous touch and blend elements of science fiction and fantasy with mythology.

I’d had better hopes for my mystery, Shear Murder, but this title didn’t make the cut at the Daphne award sponsored by RWA’s Kiss of Death chapter. I’d entered it into the mainstream category because romantic suspense is more the cup of tea for this group. And then I got my scores back. Talk about demoralizing!

My heart sunk at the first score, 44 out of 88. Is my writing that bad? Does my series only appeal to a select group of fans? But as I read the comments, I realized that maybe this judge didn’t read a lot of cozies. Her final remark was, “A struggle to complete the reading.”

Oh, wait, there were two more scores. My spirits lifted. The next one was 72 and the last one was 87 out of 88! The last judge said, “This book is superb; masterfully written.”

So who am I to believe? Judge number one or Judge number three? Might I have finaled if not for that one judge who obviously didn’t get my work?

It doesn’t matter. The point here is that judging is subjective. One reader might love our book and another might say it should never have been published. I went for the goal and didn’t make it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try again. I did, once in my lifetime, win the HOLT Medallion Award. If it happened once, it can happen again. You just have to grow a thick skin to keep trying and weigh the investment of time and money against the possible benefits.

Do you consider writing contests for published authors to be worthwhile?

Writing in cold blood

Posted on by

Like many people, I’m fascinated by sociopaths. In particular the violent, physically attractive ones–think Ted Bundy and Jodi Arias–make me wonder: What makes them tick? How did they become monsters? How do they behave when they’re flying under the radar, before revealing their violent natures?

As writers it’s our job to dissect what motivates our characters. Many writers fall into the trap of writing psychopaths (a term that is interchangeable with sociopaths) as cardboard, two-dimensional characters. Evil requires a special effort to make it believable. And even to make it, ugh, sympathetic. 

Science gives us some clues about ways that psychopaths reveal themselves in speech and mannerisms.  A computer analysis of interviews with 52 convicted murderers who tested positive for psychopathy showed that all the men spoke with little emotion, used cause-and-effect statements to describe their crimes, and emphasized basic needs such as food and money.

That finding poses a problem for writers: Unemotional characters who speak in cause-and-effect statements can be boring on the page. So when we’re creating a psychopath, we need to reach beyond the typical behavior. We might choose to make them charismatic and larger-than-life (Hannibal Lecter and the Batman villains, for example). Or we might decide to make them more human. After all, there are lots of murderers who aren’t psychopaths. They might be driven by revenge, a sense of mission, or even a warped value system (Dexter).


This topic has been on my mind because I’ve been reading The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry.The book offers a fascinating insight on psychopaths, as well as the psychiatric industry that treats and categorizes them. The book includes the standardized test, the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, to analyze whether a person exhibits sociopathic traits. Here’s an online cheat sheet to the test. Let us know how you score, if you feel like sharing! Disclaimer: It takes a trained professional to administer the actual test and analyze it, so we won’t start shunning anyone in the grocery aisle who comes back with a high score!

Truth is way Better than Fiction

Posted on by

bu Clare Langley-Hawthorne

The recent Edward Snowden affair reaffirms my belief that a) nothing in fiction is any where near as strange as reality and b) a good spy/traitor (is he/isn’t he) story is even more compelling in real life as it is in a story. As a mystery writer I love contemplating ‘what if’ scenarios and recent events such as these always make me look back at history and consider how I would craft a story based on some of the key events and people involved in ‘exposing’ state secrets or engaging in various levels of subterfuge or espionage. 

No matter what you might think of the current Edward Snowden affair, it’s hard not to argue that it doesn’t have thriller appeal. It has a potentially unreliable narrator, the disclosure of secret and classified material, a desperate flight to an old cold war enemy, and the likely involvement along the way of various secret service agencies. It reads just like a thriller – no?

And with all this going on, I got to thinking about some of the more notorious spies and potential traitors in history and how it would be interesting to explore their stories. Indeed the inspiration for my third Ursula Marlow novel, Unlikely Traitors (due out in late fall – more on that later in the summer!), was Roger Casement, who was hanged as a traitor in 1916 for inciting rebellion in Ireland (and involving a possible collusion with Germany). I would also love to explore the story of another spy of the same era, Sidney Reilly, the so called “Ace of Spies”, because the ‘truth’ behind both these stories are so elusive. 

So for all you thriller writers, which spy (or alleged spy) would you most like to write about and why? What era/personalities intrigue you the most? Is there any real life story that you are itching to tell because, as with Edward Snowden, the truth is even more bizarre than fiction?

We Are All Long Tail Marketers Now

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The traditional book publishing industry, God bless it, is hacking and wheezing its way toward the uncertain future. At the moment, the digital transition has given the industry a revenue infusion. Where a hardcover sale has been replaced by an e-book sale, the publisher makes more per unit (under the current industry-wide royalty structure. See also the discussion led by Porter Anderson here). Challenges remain, of course, as authors and their agents press for a larger slice of the electronic pie, and more and more authors head straight for the self-publishing forest. 
But for all who are in the book biz (be they traditional, indie or hybrid) now is the time to understand that we are entering the age, permanently, of the “long tail.”
What is long tail marketing? Very simply, it holds that the profitability of a business (usually small business) is directly proportional to the number of products it has for sale over time. The more products—factoring in quality, of course—the longer the tail. Instead of looking for the next, big thing, a business may sell “less of more.” The term Long tail marketing was popularized in a 2004 article in Wired magazine, and looks like this:

Old school thinking focuses on the red zone of the diagram. The frontlist. The blockbuster. The big roll out. Backlist is largely left alone.
Self-publishing writers, the ones who are making some good money at it, go at it the other way. Volume is the key. That’s what wags the long tail.
Traditional publishing is beginning to recognize this, and thus is asking its A list writers to produce more, faster, and even to supplement front list with shorter works.
In other words, we are all long tail marketers now.
Many self-publishing writers miss something, however. I hear and read laments from writers just starting to self-publish and who haven’t seen substantial sales. They think that means failure, or that the game is really about “luck,” or that there’s no way through the “discoverability” barrier. But that’s old school thinking. The long tail is not about a title or two spiking its way up the Kindle list a month after release. That’s nice when it happens, but the real meat is quality product added over the course of time.
As I put it in my book on self-publishing, the final “law” of success is to repeat the production-publication cycle over and over for the rest of your life. Why not? If you’re a writer, this is what you do until you can’t do it anymore, right?
Yes, you need quality control. That’s a law, too. But here’s another aspect of the long tail: single title “duds” are not fatal to a career. All writers in the traditional world know that they are only a dud or two away from being unemployed. Innumerable are the tales of authors getting nice advances, having the books disappoint the sales department, getting dropped by their publisher and not being able to find another (or having to go to with small, niche publisher) because of lousy numbers.
Self-publishing’s tail is the reverse of that scenario. If a book or two is a “dud” it doesn’t mean that you can’t produce a better book next time. It doesn’t mean “career over.” It is just another opportunity to get stronger. 
Further, you can try out new niches for a spot on the long tail. In old school thinking, you are tied to a single brand. In the new school, you can play. You can create works of any length. You can start a series based on a lark and let the readers decide if it continues. And know this: even something that doesn’t sell all that well can still make you Starbucks money. No harm, no foul!
Some other things the long tail means:
You don’t need to win awards.
You don’t need the approval of critics.

You don’t need co-op or front of brick-and-mortar store placement.

You don’t need blurbs from star authors.
You don’t need to be #1 on any list.
You don’t need a movie deal.
What you need is optimism, a work ethic and consistency. Then you will grow an audience that is fitted for you. You might even make a living at this eventually. But even if it’s only a supplemental stream of income, that’s a nice thing to have feeding your bank account every month.

If you are a traditionally published author, you need to at least set up a footprint in self-publishing. Talk to your agent and editor about this. Think in terms of non-competitive and complementary short-form work. That is platform building of the best kind. 
That’s why all authors need to think long term, long tail. And keep writing. 

[I’m teaching all day today, but I’d love to hear your comments. Have at it!]