Excuse My French

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By John Ramsey Miller

I’m tickled shitless the Presidential elections are over. I despise the process. As an old advertising practitioner I saw the election race as one big three card Monty game fueled by a billion plus dollars and piloted by armies of self interested suits. Call me cynical because I am. I used to get angry, but I’m older now, and I get to say, “I told you so” …a lot.

I hate the constant ads, the barrage of invasive robo phone calls from urging me to dislike this candidate, or to love that one, or to believe the worst or the best small minds could come up with to wrestle my vote from me by any means necessary. I resent the fact that a president is selected in what is no more than a long and tiresome beauty pageant. I resent that we are just buying one product over another based on largely inaccurate, untruthful, and manipulative ads. We are asked to choose a leader the way we are asked to decide between a Ford and a Chevrolet. And no politician ever does what he or she says they will do to get elected. “They” are all always going to give us “change”, but what we get is the same sack of wind spray-painted a different color.

My kids supported Obama because of his promise of affordable health care. I told them to listen to what he was actually saying. He said that he believes everybody “ought” to have it¬¬, never promising that he would “give” them affordable health care. I told them as soon as he was elected he would start explaining why he couldn’t come through on most of his “promises”. I told them that he’d say something like, “Due to the failed policies of the W guy, I can’t give you what I said I could. (This is always the case because a politician “never” admits they made a mistake or lied). Maybe I can do what I said I’d do in my “second” term.” And it would have been just as true with McCain. I’m not a psychic, I’ve seen it over and over. Politicians rarely make good on their promises because that old reality thing gets in their way. If you buy a product that doesn’t do what it advertised, you can take it back. With defective or non-performing politicians you’re stuck with them for years.

I’ve known quite a few politicians, and none are in danger of becoming my close friends. I think you have to be sociopathic to be a successful politician–-to want to rule supreme over some little corner (or large corner) of the world. And I don’t think it really matters all that much who the president is since they are all owned by the people they owe who are going to be calling the shots, or actually steering their course for four or eight years. It isn’t that they don’t do some good, because most do some good even if it’s incidental. After all it’s necessary to please some people in order to stay in office and keep gathering a power base.

The truth is I didn’t vote for Obama, but I am willing to support him as long as he doesn’t betray the people who did vote for him as well as those of us who didn’t think he was the right choice of the two we ended up with. I’m proud that we have a black President, and I’m praying he can impress this old cynic by governing in the best interests of all Americans, not to the detriment of those who didn’t support him due to philosophical differences. I am a centrist, which is a schizophrenic blending of liberal and conservative philosophies. I can live with, and even support, a liberal president. All I can say is I’ll be watching what he does and who he hangs with, and whether he can reach across the aisle and govern from the center, because he won’t have to do that unless he wants to be the president who’s better than the last one, not the same one in a different suit.

Yes we’re the greatest nation on earth, maybe in history, but I truly believe that America is great despite her leaders, not because of them.

Oh, yeah, this is suppose to be about writing. Okay–– All of this watching and listening to politicians gives us (authors) great material, insight into the human animal––especially villains, and into the human condition as well as the state of our country.

All I Need Is A Couple Of Words

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

So there I was on Tuesday—election day—giving a presentation to about a hundred people as part of my big-boy job when my cell phone buzzed. A casual glance at the caller I.D. revealed a 212 area code. New York City. The source of some of my life’s most exciting calls—and some of the most disappointing. But you can’t very well answer the phone in mid-speech, can you?

Maybe a minute later, the phone buzzed a second time, and I knew that the caller had left a message. Twenty minutes to go.

Applause. Questions. Finally, the phone. The message was from my editor. “We have a major problem with GRAVE SECRETS,” she said, referring to the book that comes out next June. “Call me.”

So much for another of life’s most exciting calls.

“We can’t use GRAVE SECRETS for a title,” she told me. “The name Grave—” It’s a reference to my protagonist, Jonathan Grave; it has nothing vaults for the dead. “—makes every cover concept we come up with look like a horror novel.”

Oh.

So all we have to do is change my baby’s name. No problem. Yeah, I’d been living with GRAVE SECRETS as a title for a couple of years, and yeah, I’d planned a franchise of similar titles for the series, but that kind of attachment is all emotional. It should be easy to overcome. Publishing is all business, after all, and nowhere do market concerns play a bigger role than with the title.

So change it already.

Right.

Hey, I stitched 120,000 words together to write the damn thing in the first place; how tough can it be to stitch two or three more to get a title?

Right.

But we need a title! It’s almost time to go to press with the advance readers copies. C’mon! Two or three lousy words!

Right.

Nothing.

I’ve got long lists of two-word phrases, but none that really work as a title.

I can do this.

Right.

A Tribute to Michael Crichton

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It’s been a tough few weeks for fiction. We’ve recently lost some of our greats, including Tony Hillerman, Elaine Flinn, and yesterday, Michael Crichton.

While I had never had the privilege of meeting Crichton, when I opened my Yahoo page and saw his obituary, I experienced the sort of shock you normally feel when you’ve lost an acquaintance.

May of 1993. I had just finished writing my senior thesis, a series of short stories based on my Grandfather’s WWI diaries. I actually finished the book a few days early, shockingly enough (and, as my editor would assure you, not at all true to form). Connecticut was in the full throes of spring, and on a warm, sunny day I brought a copy of Jurassic Park onto the lawn in front of the library and dove in. I generally didn’t read thrillers, but the back cover copy had lured me with the promise of a complete escape from the tomes I’d been struggling with for eight semesters.
And I was completely swept away. That book was such a breath of fresh air, I was riveted. What a genius concept: a theme park, with real dinosaurs created from ancient DNA preserved in amber. It hooked me, and from then on I was a devout thriller fan.

Despite the fact that I didn’t agree with all of his political stances, you have
to admire a man who never shied away from hot button issues. And Crichton undeniably possessed the Midas touch, prior to JK Rowling storming on to the scene he was the most successful author in the world. It can be argued that he not only revitalized the techno-thriller, paving the way for the success of Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, and James Rollins, but he also made medical dramas sexy again with ER. In addition to his novels, he collaborated on screenplays for films like “Twister.” He was remarkably prolific, once claiming to churn out 10,000 words a day. As someone who considers herself fortunate to clock 10,000 words in a week, that’s simply staggering.
Not to mention the fact that he was once chosen as one of People’s 50 Most Beautiful People, a title that few writers have possessed (shall we call it the “paper ceiling?”)
A remarkable writer, and a remarkable person. He will be missed.

Fair Winds

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bo1 There have been a number of significant events in my lifetime that personally changed or affected me such as the tragic losses of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lennon. And there have also been the joyful moments including seeing an American astronaut walk on the moon, my marriage, the birth of my two sons, and seeing my first book published.

Growing up as a son of the South, I witnessed bigotry and hate—I still remember signs declaring “Whites Only”. As an adult, I discovered that prejudice wasn’t exclusive to the Deep South. But as Mr. Dylan sang, “The Times, They Are A Changin’”.

At 11:00 PM on Tuesday night, an African American was elected to the highest office in America. Barack Obama was not appointed nor did he inherit the Presidency. He won it. And this may prove to be the biggest milestone in my life. Because it tells me that people can change. Countries can change. Times and thinking, and the world can change. It tells me that we have matured as a nation.

There was a time when I would have bet this day would never come. But it has. And if we can collectively change our hearts and minds like we did on Election Day, what other great things can we do?

President-elect Barack Obama is about to set sail on a great journey. Soon he will step onto the bridge, take command and set a new course. We are all passengers on this great ship of America. I wish him fair winds.

Stomping out your writer’s tics

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“Every writer has a writer’s tic,” a famous author once told me.

As a writer, you challenge is to identify your own writer’s tic, and stomp it out of your manuscript.

In my own case, when I’m writing my first draft, I give free rein to my writing tics. But in the second draft, I hunt them down and stomp them out.

Here are a few of my own writer’s tics that I have to wipe out in the second draft:

  • Worthless words.
    My first draft is always studded with superfluous words such as very, apparently, obviously, suddenly, and surely. In the second draft, I do a global search for these serial offenders. Out they go!

  • Ding-dong, the dash is dead. Also the ellipses.
    I have a bad habit of “dramatizing” the rhythm of sentences with dashes and ellipses, which have to be removed.In fact, you could me the Queen of Dashes—or the Empress of Ellipses…

  • Lazy-man’s time reference: “By the time.”By the time I get to Phoenix, I realize I need to delete all my instances of “By the time.”

How about you? What are your “writer’s tics” that you have to stomp out before you submit your manuscript to the editor?

Agents and Other Spooky Stories

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By Clare Langley-Hawthorne
www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com

With Halloween just gone and having faced my own agent transition I started thinking about the perennial nightmare for the unpublished (and often published) writer – getting, keeping and enjoying having an agent…Cue spooky music…

I have been incredibly lucky so far. I sat next to my first agent over lunch at the first San Francisco Writers Conference and it was sheer serendipity that she and I began working together. I had actually attended the ‘speed dating for agents’ horror-fest earlier that day where writers lined up at agent tables and had 2 minutes to pitch their work. Although I still get chills thinking about it, there truly is nothing like terror for concentrating the mind and by the time I finished I had my pitch down pat (even if my sanity was a little frayed). Funnily enough I didn’t select my agent to pitch to – she had said she represented literary fiction and I felt as though my work wasn’t literary enough (now that’s a whole other blog post!) but after we chatted over lunch we agreed that I would send her my work. When I realized she had been the original agent for Jacqueline Winspear while at the Amy Rennert agency and after I read Maisie Dobbs I couldn’t believe that I had sat next to her. When she read my manuscript she told me she couldn’t believe it either –Jacqueline Winspear is now the author I get compared to the most.

So after that fate-filled experience (and three years later) what was I to do when my agent told me she was hanging up her hat?! I immediately had visions of the nightmare agent stories: The endless queries, the unreturned phone calls, agents that disappear into the night… Cue spooky music again…

Luckily for me my agent had joined a boutique NYC agency about a year ago and the head of that agency had indicated an interest in continuing to represent me. I felt relief and trepidation in equal measure because I had forged a relationship with my agent and I wasn’t sure I’d find that same relationship again. This got me thinking again – what makes a good agent? Obviously selling your work and having great contacts in the industry but what else???

For me the answer was clear I wanted someone who loved my work, had experience in the industry but also someone who provided me with three things:

1. My severest critic – I had an agent whose advice I trusted – whose criticism I took on board each and every time and so I wanted to know that my new agent would provide me with the same level of feedback – the same sensibility if you will that would ring true to my ears. I was horrified by the prospect of getting an agent whose feedback made me scratch my head or worse, put my head in the oven!

2. A willing ear even if only via email. Unlike many writers I have spoken to, I communicated with my agent frequently. I cc’d her on most of my emails to my editor and publicist and I kept her in the loop on my publicity events/review etc. I felt as though we were partners in this whole publishing quest (or jest as the case may be!) and I needed to know that my new agent would be okay with this. I don’t demand any reply but I do want to know that my agent is watching, listening and looking out for me.

3. My strongest supporter – okay that’s not strictly true as my mother and my mother-in-law already fill those shoes! But I did need to be reassured that there was someone there who, even if things looked bleak, would be the one to tell me that my writing was terrific and that we would overcome whatever the hurdle might be. I’m as insecure as the next writer and prone to neurotic jitters and deep pessimistic depressions – any agent of mine would have to be able to cope with that (poor thing!) I recall my agent last year telling me (via email) “don’t you have anything better to worry about?! Go do the Christmas shopping!!” and I had to admit that she was right.

God, you must all be thinking what a nightmare client I must be but I think for many unpublished authors the ‘agent quest’ is one which they feel is all one-sided – that they must grab hold of whoever sends out the lifeline. That isn’t the case and I realize as I say ‘au revoir’ to one agent and ‘bonjour’ to another that the relationship aspect is critical. It is a partnership in a way that the editor-writer relationship really no longer can be (hey I’m on my third official editor!)

Luckily, so far so good with my new agent (so I don’t need to cue any spooky music this time…I hope!)

So what about you all – what do you expect from an agent? What horror stories have you experienced? What advice would you give to those in search of an agent? Oh no…hear comes that spooky music again…

Where do you get your ideas?

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by guest blogger Carla Neggers

neggers-carla1My latest book, COLD PURSUIT, just hit stores, and I swore this time I wouldn’t get caught by surprise when I’m asked: Where did you get the idea for this book?

It’s a natural, legitimate question that’s just not always easy to answer. I can’t always look back to a light bulb "ah-ha" moment and say, "There. That’s where I got the idea for this book."

cold-pursuitWith COLD PURSUIT, the main characters – Secret Service agent Jo Harper and Special Forces soldier Elijah Cameron – jumped onto the page for me. I could see Jo fixing up rundown, one-room cabins on a chilly day on a small lake in the heart of the Green Mountains, and I could see Elijah, home from the war. But what are they doing there? Are they from Vermont? Do they know each other? While these questions were simmering, I realized Jo and Elijah would be called upon to find a teenager missing in the mountains before a killer finds her first.

9780778324836_HC_SMP.indd And off I went. That answer isn’t as straightforward as saying the idea for THE ANGEL, my most recent novel, started percolating when I stood in the ruin of the Irish stone cottage where my son-in-law’s great-grandfather was born.

For me, the idea question is almost like an arson investigation digging back to the cigarette butt that started the fire. But even if we find the butt and know where the fire started, conditions had to be right for the cigarette to cause the conflagration. Toss it into a puddle – no fire. Toss it into dry kindling on a hot, dry, windy day – big fire.

Did I know a story had sparked when I was in the Irish ruin? No, but I can look back and see that’s where the creative fire that became THE ANGEL started. COLD PURSUIT is a bit different. I can’t trace that creative fire back to a specific spark, but I do know the conditions for it to catch were perfect. I live in Vermont, I know cold weather, I hike, I snowshoe and I was gripped by these characters, Jo and Elijah.

In his brilliant book, A Writer’s Time (W.W. Norton & Co., 1995, 1986), Kenneth Atchity puts it this way: "…the imagination helps us scout out where we’re going to be before we actually go there. It’s set up to do the advance work for us—feeling on all sides, trying to determine the best path before the rest of us becomes committed to, and endangered by, the multiple choice of available perils."

This helps to explain why the question of where we as writers get our ideas can be tricky to answer. The process often starts without our knowledge or our permission!

Michelle, John, John, Clare, Kathryn and Joe, thanks for this opportunity. Keep up the great work with the Kill Zone. So…where do you get your ideas?

Note: Join us on Sunday, November 9 when our guest blogger will be New York Times bestselling author, M.J. Rose.

There Goes October

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By John Ramsey Miller

I was in Muncie, Indiana last weekend attending Magna Cum Murder. If you have never been there, you are missing the best kept secret in Authorworld. It’s a great conference, a blind hoot, and where else can you see John Gilstrap with a lampshade on his head. Next year it is going to be part of Bouchercon because B’con’s in nearby Indianapolis. Do yourself a favor and make it to Muncie in 2010.

I went to a Halloween gathering of friends in my old neighborhood last night as a drunk farmer. Well, at first I was just a farmer, then I decided I needed another layer on the costume so I poured myself a stiff drink. The Scotch in the glass matched the golden canvas upland shooting jacket and the dried chicken poop in the treads of my Gokey boots.

I spent the past week thinking about a new book I’m working on, wondering how to promote my book that’s coming out in late December, and looking into making my web site more exciting and interactive. I have largely ignored my poor website for several years, thinking it was out there working for me. I found out that my trusted web site was slacking, and even telling lies to the readers who showed up. It was all my fault. My wife has been telling me for years that I needed to update it, and I should have, because now it just needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. I’m talking to designers and looking at all the sites I can pull up.

Elaine Flinn passed away this week and I’ve been thinking about her a great deal. We were not close friends, but we met up at three Thrillerfest because we were smokers, and last year we were co-judges on an Edgar Award category. We got along and saw eye-to-eye on most things and she was just funny as all hell. She worked all of my book titles into a paragraph in her Evil E column. We exchanged e-mails often during the contest judging and afterward, and I will miss her sharp-pointed and humorous e-mails, her Evil E webzine, and I suppose I’ll get around to dropping her off my address book one of these days. Losing her was a shock because I didn’t know she was sick. She had told me she was trying to quit smoking, and I quit myself months ago, and maybe her quitting and recommending I should look into sites such as Gourmet E-Liquid helped me make that decision. She was a great gal, a talented author, and I (and a multitude of authors and readers) will miss her terribly.

Well, that’s about all I have to say.

Welcome To My Store

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Hello, dear reader. Welcome to National Chain Bookstore, or, as we like to call it, NCB. Come on in and look around. Careful, don’t trip over the stacks of remaindered hardcovers there. Do you want one? They were all fairly successful a couple of years ago, and while they last, they’re cheaper than their paperback reprints.

No? Okay then how can I help you? A novel, eh? How about one of these titles here on the front table? Lots of good stuff there; in fact many of our customers never go any farther than that into the store. Must be why publisher pay us to display their books there.

No, no pressure. I’m anxious to put the perfect book for you into your hands. What kind of book were you looking for today? I see. Well, “fiction” is a big category. Do you like literary fiction or commercial fiction? Wow, I don’t really know how to answer that. You’re right, it is a subtle difference. I look at it this way: If you have to read it in school, or if the fact that you’re carrying it is likely to impress people, chances are we categorize it as “literature” and we put those titles on the shelves that line the outer wall. No, the other wall. That wall’s for Photography books. Hey! You two boys! Put the book down and quit looking for dirty pictures in my store! Sorry about that.

Okay, good. Commercial fiction. Science fiction? Romance?

Great. A Mystery, then. Do you prefer cozies, hardboiled or softboiled? Whoa, another good question. Well, as I understand it, as the body count goes up, the book is boiled more. If the lead detective is a cat, it’s definitely a cozy. Everything else is a gray zone. Maybe you can tell me an author you like to read.

Uh-huh. Michael Connolly . . . John Grisham . . . Jeffery Deaver. Goodness gracious, you don’t want a mystery at all. You want a thriller. Well, sure there’s a mystery in most of their books, but a thriller has more suspense. What’s that? Of course. I agree that there’s suspense in Moby Dick and Oliver Twist, but people respect those books, so those are literature. Were you not paying attention before?

I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I was indeed flippant. I meant no harm. You just ask very good questions, and I’m not answering them very well. Of course. I understand. Tell you what. If I may be so bold, you can never go wrong with a Gilstrap book . . .

Witches, Zombies, Vampires, and Everything Nice…

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So we’re coming up on my favorite holiday of the year: Festivus!

Oops, meant to say Halloween. And to celebrate the occasion, I’m offering a few novel ways (no pun intended) to pass the time until All Saint’s Day:

  • Sacrifice a goat. Or, read a book, depending on the availability of goats in your area. I recently hosted a witchcraft panel at a Book Group Expo, and consequently have three Halloween-appropriate recommendations. The Witch’s Trinity by Erika Mailman just came out in paperback, and it’s a terrifying tale of witch hunts in old Europe. The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent portrays the Salem Trials through the eyes of a young girl whose mother stands accused. And The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry (don’t you just love that name?) is set in a more modern day Salem, focusing on two missing women. All were amazing reads, and perfect to get yourself in top Trick-or-Treating form.

  • Burn a Wicker Man. Or, rent Shaun of the Dead, IMHO the best zombie flick of all time. Because it not only stays relatively true to the genre, it’s funny and presents a nice depiction of how many people are already zombies, they just haven’t realized it yet. Genius. And who doesn’t love a film where the heroes take refuge in a pub as their last resort?
  • Bob for Apples. Or, if this always seemed strikingly unsanitary to you (it certainly does to me, that bobbing pit is like a cold, nasty, water-filled petri dish teeming with disease) Rent Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Because it truly doesn’t get any better than Buffy. True Blood is okay, but let’s be honest: Buffy is still the gold standard. I never get tired of watching a young Sarah Michelle Gellar kick vampire butt. And the first season, when she’s still getting her sea legs, is classic.

And what will I be doing, you might ask? Well, here in the Gagnon household it’s eyeball pizza and grog night, where I simultaneously man the door against greedy little beggars who try to seize handfuls of candy while also valiantly guarding the well-being of my carved gourds. Wish me luck. And Happy Halloween!!!!