Tag Archives: John Gilstrap

Series Words of Wisdom

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A great mystery or thriller series can have lasting popularity. But how do you create a one that will go the distance with readers?

Today’s Words of Wisdom has you covered. James Scott Bell provides five qualities in the best series characters. John Gilstrap discusses planting fodder for a future series in that first book even as each book can stand on its own. Finally, Sue Coletta assembles advice from several other Kill Zone authors on building series.

All three posts are well worth reading in full, and as always are date-linked at the end of their respect excerpts.

I see five qualities in the best series characters. If you can pack these in from the start, your task is half done. Here they are:

  1. A point of uniqueness, a quirk or style that sets them apart from everybody else

What is unique about Sherlock Holmes? He’s moody and excitable. Among the very staid English, that was different.

Jack Reacher? Come on. The guy doesn’t own a phone or clothes. He travels around with only a toothbrush. Funny how every place he goes he runs into massive trouble and very bad people.

  1. A skill at which they are really, really good

Katniss Everdeen is killer with the bow and arrow.

Harry Potter is one of the great wizards (though he has a lot to learn).

  1. A bit of the rebel

The series hero should rub up against authority, even if it’s in a quiet way, like Miss Marple muttering “Oh, dear” at the local constabulary. Hercule Poirot is a needle in the side of Inspector Japp.

  1. A vulnerable spot or character flaw

Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian has a vicious temper that sometimes gets the better of him.

Sherlock Holmes has a drug habit.

Stephanie Plum keeps bouncing between two lovers, who complicate her life.

  1. A likable quality

Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe has some of the greatest quips in the history of crime fiction. We like them because Marlowe is also vulnerable—to getting beat up, drugged, or otherwise manhandled by forces larger than himself (like Moose Malloy).

Wit is one of the great likability factors.

Another is caring for others besides oneself. Stephanie Plum has a crazy family to care for, not to mention her sometime partner Lula.

James Scott Bell—August 13, 2017

A series is more episodic.

My Jonathan Grave thriller series is not a continuing story, but is rather a collection of stand-alone stories that involve recurring main characters.  Jonathan Grave’s character arc over the course of eleven books now is very long and slow, while the arcs of the characters he interacts with are completely developed within each book.  There are Easter eggs for readers who have read all the books in order, but I am careful to make each episode as fulfilling for a reader who picks up  Book Ten as their first exposure to the series as it is for a reader who’s been with me from the beginning.

Writers like the always-fabulous Donna Andrews write series that are driven as much by place as by characters.  The people in her fictional town of Caerphilly, Virginia, are a hoot, even though an extraordinary number of people are murdered there.

Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme solves a new crime by the end of every book.  While Rhyme’s medical progress as a quadriplegic is continually evolving from book to book, as is his relationship with Amelia, a new reader is well-grounded in any story, without benefit of having read the previous ones.

A stand-alone, well, stands alone.

When I finished Nathan’s Run, the story was over.  There was no place I could feasibly have taken Nathan or the other characters to tell a new story.  That was the case with each of the following three novels and, of course, with my nonfiction book.  I think the primary characteristic of a stand-alone is that “The End” means the end.  The character and story arcs have all been driven to ground.

A series takes planning.

When I was writing No Mercy, the first book in the Grave series, I knew in my heart that I had finally landed on a character who could support a series.  What I didn’t know was whether or not a publisher would buy it, and if they did, whether they’d support the idea of developing the one story into many.  Still, I made a conscious effort to plant as much fodder as I could for potential use in future stories.  For example:

  1. Jonathan is a former Delta Force operator, leaving the potential for stories dealing with his days in the Unit.
  2. His hostage rescue activities are a covert part of a legitimate private investigation firm that does work for some of the largest corporate names in the world.  This sets up potential stories set in the world of more common private investigators.
  3. Jonathan is the primary benefactor for Resurrection House, a school for the children of incarcerated parents.  When every student has parents with lots of enemies, there’s lots of potential for future stories.
  4. His home, Fisherman’s Cove, Virginia, is the town where he grew up.  This puts him in the midst of people who already know the darkest secrets of his childhood and accept him for who he is.  Or they don’t.  This sets up the potential for small  town conflicts.

John Gilstrap—November 21, 2018

From Jordan Dane:

  1. Create a large enough world to sustain a series if it gains traction by planting plot seeds and/or character spinoffs in each individual novel. With the right planted seeds, future stories can be mined for plots during the series story arcs. An example of this is Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole PI series where his main character Cole is plagued by his past and his estranged father until THE FORGOTTEN MAN, a stellar novel in the middle of the series that finally provided answers to the mystery.

Crais often plants seeds that he later cultivates in later books. It takes organization & discipline to create these mysteries and track the seeds to save for later.

  1. Endings of each novel in a continuing series are important to readers if your book release schedule has long lags in time. A major cliffhanger can be frustrating for readers to discover at the end of a book before they realize the next novel won’t be released for 6 months to a year.

If your planned series isn’t limited to a certain number of stories (ie Hunger Games – 3 novels) where the overall story arc will be defined, an author might consider writing series novels that read as standalones with a tantalizing foreshadowing of the next story to hook readers. Creating an intriguing mystery to come will pique reader’s interest, rather than frustrate them with a huge cliffhanger they may have to wait a year to read.

See these tips in action in Jordan’s Mercer’s War Series.

From James Scott Bell:

  • Give your series character one moral quest that he or she is passionate about, to the point where it feels like life and death. For example, my Mike Romeo series is about the quest for TRUTH. This is the driving force for all he does. It gives both character and plot their meaning. A quest like this will carry from book to book.
  • Give your series character at least one special skill and one special quirk. Sherlock Holmes is a skilled stick fighter (which comes in handy). But he also shoots up cocaine to keep his mind active. Mike Romeo has cage fighting skills. He also likes to quote literature and philosophy before taking out a thug.

From Joe Hartlaub:

Sue, I love Jordan’s suggestions, particularly #2, about the works being standalones with a foreshadowing of what is to come. Who among us read Stephen King’s Dark Tower trilogy and got to the end of The Dark Tower III; The Waste Land to find the cast aboard a sentient, suicidal choo-choo heading toward oblivion? That was all well and good until we all had to wait six friggin’ years to find out what happened next in Wizards and Glass. 

  • I have one suggestion, which I call the Pop Tart model. Pop Tarts started with a basic formula; they were rectangular, were small enough to fit into a toaster, large enough to pull out, used the same pastry as a base, and started with a set of fillings and slowly added more and different ones over the years. So too, the series.
  • Design a character with a skill set consisting of two or three reliable elements, decide whether you are going to make them a world-beater (Jason Bourne), a close-to-homer (Dave Robicheaux), or something in between (Jack Reacher), and bring in a couple of supporting characters who can serve as necessary foils (Hawk and Susan from the Spenser novels) who can always be repaired or replaced as necessary. Your readers will know what to expect from book to book but will be surprised by how you utilize familiar elements.

From Laura Benedict:

The best series do a good job of relationship-building, along with world-building.

  • Give your main character …
  1. someone to love and fight for,
  2. someone to regret knowing,
  3. someone to respect,
  4. someone to fear.
  • Be careful about harming your secondary characters because readers get attached. If you’re going to let a beloved character go—even a villain—make the loss mean something.

See these tips in action in The Stranger Inside.

Sue Coletta—January 14, 2019

***

  1. What do you think of Jim’s five character qualities for series characters, as a writer or a reader? Any additions?
  2. When it comes to series, again as either a writer or a reader, what do you think of the easter eggs and ongoing “fodder” John mentioned?
  3. What do you think of the advice Sue shared? Anything especially resonate with you?

Reader Friday-King of the Mountain

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Happy New Year, TKZLand!

Simple question today:  What book is King of the Mountain on your TBR pile?

 

 

 

Meaning, what is the first book you intend to read in 2025?

For me, it will be to finish Against All Enemies and start the next in the series, Friendly Fire, by our own John Gilstrap. Great stories!

So, how about you? Do tell . . .

 

 

Whew! We made it…

 

 

See You Soon!

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Today commences our annual two-week hiatus here at TKZ. This blog has been hale and hearty since 2009, which is a testimony to the quality of our writers and commenters over the years. 

Blogging began back in 1994 when Justin Hall, a student at Swarthmore College, started publishing personal content on his website. He called it “Justin’s Links from the Underground.” This was his “log” on the web. A web log.

The term “weblog” came from Jorn Barger, a bearded James Joyce fan. Later, tech billionaire Evan Williams coined “blog” as both noun and verb, and “blogger” to designate one who blogs. As co-founder of Pyra Labs, he helped design the site Blogger which went public in 1999. (Williams would go on to co-found a micro-blogging site called Twitter.)

In 2004, “blog” was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year.

Blogs took off in the 2000s, with professional and monetized blogs like TechCrunch, Gawker, and Huffington Post becoming major players in media, offering insights into technology, gossip, and news.

Writers started blogging, too. One of the most influential blogs was Joe Kontrath’s A Newbies Guide to Publishing, which gave practical advice to writers trying to break into traditional publishing. At the end of 2010, however, his blog morphed over into leading the charge for indies. 

On August 7, 2008, a date that will live in fame, a group blog for writers called Kill Zone made its debut. Of its original cast, only our great founder and admin, Kathry Lilley, and a fellow named Gilstrap remain. I looked up John’s first post and saw this:

I faced a storytelling crisis last weekend. Staring down the throat of an August 15 deadline for Grave Secrets (coming in June, ’09), I needed an ending. 

So the first Jonathan Grave thriller was coming. It came (with a title change to No Mercy).

I mean, I already had an ending from the initial drafts, but I needed an ending. A kick-ass final sequence that would leave the reader exhausted and satisfied. The one I already had took care of the satisfaction part, but it didn’t have the roller coaster feel that I wanted.

So I shot one of the characters.

What a great tip. It’s another side of Raymond Chandler’s advice: Bring in a guy with a gun.

And that’s what we’ve always been about here. Tips and techniques and advice and encouragement for our fellow writers. God willing and the crick don’t rise, we’re going to keep on trucking (Okay, Boomer) in 2025.

While you, dear writing friends, keep on writing.

Merry Christmas and Carpe Typem. See you soon!

How to End a Scene

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

John Gilstrap, r., with aspiring writer

Had a great last week with Mrs. B. We traveled back east to visit my big brother, whom I hadn’t seen in years. We also visited some old friends. Our final stop was at a house in the woods of West Virginia, where a writer named Gilstrap and his lovely wife Joy make their home, along with guard dog Kimber. As we relaxed and chatted, listening to the breeze in the trees (as opposed to the sirens on the streets), the talk naturally turned to writing. One of the topics was the perennial question: Can someone learn to write a novel by studying the craft?

You all know my answer to that, because that was my experience. I related that it was something I read in Jack Bickham’s book Writing Novels That Sell that set off paparazzi light bulbs going off in my head. It had to do with what a scene is, and especially how to end it so a reader must turn the page.

Now, a scene has three component parts: Objective, Obstacles, and Outcome.

Objective

A novel is about a character using strength of will to attain a crucial objective. For example, in The Fugitive, the wrongly convicted Dr. Richard Kimble must avoid being captured, or he’ll be sent to Death Row for a murder he did not commit. To exonerate himself—and get justice for his murdered wife—he needs to stay free long enough to find the one-armed man who killed her.

Each scene in the film has a sub-objective that connects to the big one. Thus, early on, the wounded Kimble has to sneak into a rural hospital and treat himself, without arousing suspicion. Later he poses as a janitor in a hospital in Chicago with the objective of gaining access to the records of the prosthetics wing. Why? So he can get a list of one-armed men to track down.

Obstacles

Conflict and tension are the lifeblood of a scene. When the viewpoint character is confronted with obstacles to gaining his scene objective—in the form of opposing characters, physical barriers, time pressure, or all three—things get tense.

In the rural hospital scene from The Fugitive, Kimble must sneak past the loading dock and find a treatment room. After stitching himself up, he needs to shave off his beard and steal some clothes. He does this in the room of a patient who is out like a light. But a nurse walks into the room! And a state trooper has arrived because Kimble might be in the area! The tension mounts as we worry about his cover being blown at any moment.

Outcome

A scene has to end at some point, and needs to answer the question: did the viewpoint character realize his objective?

Bickham lists four types of endings: Yes, Yes But, No, No and Furthermore! 

A NO answer is always a good default, because it makes the character’s situation worse. When a character is set back in his quest, the reader’s worry mounts. And that is what readers want to do: worry about characters in crisis all the way to the end.

A YES needs to happen on occasion, but when it does, brainstorm how it can lead to more trouble, turning it into a YES BUT. For example, in the scene in The Fugitive where Kimble poses as a janitor, he is temporarily stuck on a crowded trauma floor. He spots a little boy in distress. When a doctor tells him to take the boy to an observation room, Kimble has a scene objective: Help this boy! As he pushes the gurney Kimble sneaks a look at the X-rays and the chart, and starts asking the boy diagnostic questions. He determines the boy needs surgery right away. In the elevator he changes the orders and takes the boy to an operating room. He alerts a doctor and shows her the orders. The boy will be saved! That’s a YES answer. However, his earlier look at the X-rays was seen by the doctor who asked him to help. She confronts him and calls security. Now Kimble is outed and has to get out of there! He’s in worse shape because of his good deed. That’s a big BUT to the YES.

The “but” in a YES BUT and the “furthermore” in a NO AND FURTHERMORE can also be a portentous question hanging over the proceedings, a hint of something worse yet to come. You leave the situation temporarily unresolved (a “cliffhanger”) and cut to another scene (perhaps with another viewpoint character). If you write in First Person POV or Limited Third Person (meaning one viewpoint character throughout the book) you can end a chapter on a cliffhanger and finish it up in the following chapter.

Now, to some aspiring scribes this might seem overly technical, perhaps with the reaction, “I don’t want to think about what I’m doing, I just want to do it!” Which is sort of like an apprentice plumber saying, “Don’t fill my head with how to use an augur, a pipe wrench, a drain inspection camera, or plumber’s putty. I’ve got my plunger, now get out of the way!”

Those few pages in Bickham’s book were easy to understand and put into practice. Which is when my fiction began to get favorable attention and, eventually, a publishing contract.

Bickham, like his mentor Dwight Swain, also writes of the “sequel” portion, which is generally about emotion (regarding the setback), analysis of what’s happening, and a decision on what to do next. But that’s a subject for another time.

And here is how you end a blog post: Comments are open.

What Fuels Your Writing?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.” – Thomas Berger

So how can you get gas these days for under $4?

Eat at Taco Bell.

Ba-dump-bump.

And where do you get fuel for your writing? That’s today’s question.

Some of the ways are as follows.

Caffeine

Not everyone begins the day with a cup of joe, but it has been a mainstay of many a writer, starting with Balzac. He overdid it, of course. Drinking up to 50 cups of heavy-duty mud during his writing time, which was generally from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m., he produced nearly 200 novels and novellas before succumbing to caffeine-induced heart failure at the age of 51.

But the benefits of moderate coffee intake are now well known. It wasn’t always so. I was looking at a 1985 edition of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which had a headline about how a couple of cups of coffee posed a danger of developing heart disease.

Which reminds me of that scene in Woody Allen’s Sleeper, where a health-food store owner is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and wakes up 200 years later.

There he sees doctors smoking and talking about the benefits of tobacco, steak, and hot fudge.

“Those were once thought to be unhealthy,” a doctor explains. “Precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.”

That’s coffee for you. In moderation, caffeine boosts alertness, powers up short-term memory, accelerates information processing, and increases learning capabilities.

I have a multi-published friend who favors diet, decaffeinated Coke. To which I say, “What’s the point?”

And to you I ask:

Do you have a favorite beverage to sip when you write?

There is also inner fuel that motivates writers.

Something to Say

There’s an old axiom in Hollywood: “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” Meaning story comes first. A “message picture” can devolve into preachiness or propaganda if one is not careful.

Same for fiction. If you’ve got an issue you want to write about, go for it. But don’t let your characters become one-dimensional pawns in a hobbyhorse chess game.

My advice is to give your hero a flaw, and your villain a justification. Remember, a villain doesn’t think he’s pure evil, except for this guy:

Write a “closing argument” for your villain, as if he’s arguing to a jury to justify everything he’s done. This is great psychological backstory, and you can drip some of it in. Believe me, this will make your villain more chilling and the reading experience more emotional, which is your goal.

Fun

Brother Gilstrap has said on more than one occasion that he is tickled he gets paid to “make stuff up.” That’s not a small matter. When you have joy in writing, it shows up on the page.

“In the great story-tellers, there is a sort of self-enjoyment in the exercise of the sense of narrative; and this, by sheer contagion, communicates enjoyment to the reader. Perhaps it may be called (by analogy with the familiar phrase, “the joy of living”) the joy of telling tales. The joy of telling tales which shines through Treasure Island is perhaps the main reason for the continued popularity of the story. The author is having such a good time in telling his tale that he gives us necessarily a good time in reading it.” – Clayton Meeker Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction (1919)

A Healthy Brain

Another reason to write is to fight cognitive decline. This has been mentioned here several times, by Sue and myself.

When you exercise your head through the rigors of writing a coherent and complex story, you keep it in fighting trim.

Last Friday was the 98th birthday of Mel Brooks. He and his partner, the late Carl Reiner (who died in 2020 at age 98) were trained in the Catskills style of improv comedy. Always on, always with the word play. At parties they started doing an improv skit about a 2000-year-old man, with Reiner as the interviewer. It got so popular they made a comedy album that became a huge hit, and they did their skit well into their 80s. Here’s a bit:

That’s why I’m skeptical of letting AI do your creative thinking. Every time it makes a decision for you is a time when your brain is lounging in a hammock, getting fat.

Money

Yes, some people write because they want to make money. It’s a hard gig for that, but if you treat it as a job and approach it like a business, you have a shot.

The old pulp writers knew this. They had to approach writing for the market like going to work each day, because they needed to put food on the table during the Depression.

But to do it, they had to know how to write stories that pleased readers. It’s a simple, capitalistic exchange: the product (a good story) sold to a customer (the reader) who is looking for a respite from the angst of the current moment.

“In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape, moments of delight and forgetfulness.” — Dean Koontz

Legacy

Mr. Steve Hooley has talked about writing for his grandchildren. My grandfather on my mother’s side was like that. He loved history, and wrote historical fiction that didn’t sell to publishers, so he published it himself for his family and friends.

He was especially interested in the Civil War. One of his stories was titled, “The Civil War Did Not Necessarily End at Appomattox.” Yeah, he need to work on his titles. But I’m glad to have the stories!

Without fuel, our writing is flaccid, uninspiring, boring. So I ask:

What fuels your writing?

Do People Still Buy Books?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There’s a post on Substack that’s been making the viral rounds, titled “No One Buys Books.” It’s the author’s summary of lessons gleaned from the DOJ v. Penguin Random House trial, two years afterward. Elle Griffin sums it up this way (this all refers to traditional publishing):

I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

And:

The publishing houses may live to see another day, but I don’t think their model is long for this world. Unless you are a celebrity or franchise author, the publishing model won’t provide a whole lot more than a tiny advance and a dozen readers.

Jane Friedman, in her Hot Sheet newsletter (subscription required), emphasizes that this is the way things have pretty much been for quite some time. Her words followed by my comments:

  1. Most books don’t sell in significant numbers. This has not changed recently; it has always been the case. But if you share book sales numbers with the general public, they are generally shocked because they simply don’t know the typical sales of an average book.

JSB: According to Bookstat.com, in the traditional industry in 2020, 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies.

  1. The majority of authors, at least early in their careers, can’t survive on book advances or book sales alone.This has been the case throughout history. It’s challenging to make a living from your art, and it has always been so.

JSB: No argument there.

  1. Big publishers pay high advances to celebrities, politicians, etc. Big publishers want authors with visibility in the market. I can’t imagine this is news to anyone.
  1. Publishers do not adequately support the titles they publish with marketing and promotion. This has been a complaint of authors since I started working in the industry. I do think the problem has become worse over time, and the issues at play are complicated, to say the least. More titles are published than ever before (up to 2 million per year if you count self-publishing), media outlets and media coverage for books has dwindled, book discovery has changed in the digital era, etc.

JSB: Back in the 90s, when I started out, there were some huge advances paid to new authors, with subsequent marketing roll outs, in the hopes of establishing the next “big name.” What happened to most of these authors was that the debut novel failed to catch on, the second book in the contract was published with the least amount of attention, and the author was tagged with the “damaged goods” label—meaning no more Big Pub contracts. I can think of at least half a dozen authors this happened to. One of them wrote a PI novel that garnered a great blurb from no less than Sue Grafton. The publisher paid a ton up front. There was a big marketing push. But the book tanked, the second contracted book was released and forgotten, and the author has never written another book. (If you want to read the account of an author who went through this, survived, fought back, and thrived, I suggest you read this post from one Mr. Gilstrap).

As for discovery in the current climate, it’s certainly possible to get TikTokked to the top, or some other digital analogue, but only if the book is real quality vis-à-vis its genre. Some authors get bollixed up writing a book, maybe their first, self-pubbing it, then spending scads on ads. “Why am I not getting any clicks? Or sales?” Because first efforts are usually not top notch. Save your money and write more and better books. If you write good books, you can build a readership, because one thing hasn’t changed. The best marketing is and always has been word-of-mouth.

  1. Authors and smaller publishers have been gaining in market share since at least 2010. This is a good thing, and it’s partly due to Amazon, ebooks, and print-on-demand technology. But big publishers aren’t going anywhere, and they’re starting to partner in new ways with authors—self-publishing authors especially—and they remain powerful in the market.

If you self publish, you’re a small publisher. Act like one. Learn to think like a business. (I have a sample business plan in my book How to Make a Living As a Writer.)

So, yes, people still buy books. And if you write with consistent quality, they may even buy yours.

Do you still buy books? What portion of what you buy is in hardback, paperback, ebook, or audible? Do you still go to physical bookstores to browse, or are you mostly online now?

Visual Branding

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Forty years ago this month, three significant events took place.

First, George Orwell’s novel, 1984, hit its mark. It’s the story of a totalitarian government keeping an eye on everyone, eradicating free speech, forcing group think, and cancelling those who resist. (Luckily, nothing like that could ever happen here.)

**Clears throat**

Second, Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire during the shooting of a Pepsi commercial. A pyrotechnic explosion sent embers into the singer’s mane, setting it ablaze. At first he didn’t notice and kept right on dancing. But then he collapsed and, as one witness described it, “All his hair was gone and there was smoke coming out of his head.” He was rushed to the hospital and eventually recovered, but later said the accident got him addicted to pain killers.

Third, Steve Jobs gave the Macintosh to the world. It was famously introduced during the Super Bowl, in what is arguably the most famous commercial ever made. Directed by Ridley Scott (of Blade Runner fame) it riffed off the Orwellian Big Brother theme. The idea, of course, was that the staid, colorless world of personal computing was about to be disrupted by a bold new way of doing things. In the off chance you’ve never seen it, here it is:

For me, it was love at first sight (which meant sorrowfully leaving my first love, the KayPro. But such are the machinations—pun intended—of the heart). The day it came to a local store I went to see it. So small, yet…you could paint hello and any other word on it. The screen wasn’t black with green characters. It had a mouse for point-and-click (cool!). And I knew I wanted to be on the hammer-thrower’s team, not a gray conformist. (No disrespect to you PC users out there. Some of my best friends are gray conformists.)

It’s been me and Mac ever since, through all the ups and downs, the firing of Steve Jobs, the bringing him back. There was a time many of us thought the Mac might fall into a niche category, overwhelmed by the power of Microsoft. Although when Windows came out, looking suspiciously like the Mac interface, I recall a cartoon that had Bill Gates sitting under a tree, a la Isaac Newton, with the Apple logo falling on his head.

What saved Mac was what I consider the best ad campaign ever (Apple ads always seemed winners). That was the “I’m a Mac. I’m a PC” series. The branding was so perfect—a cool kid (Justin Long) as Mac, and a stodgy schlub (John Hodgman) as PC. You can watch ’em all here. But I have to share my favorite. It was when the ill-fated Vista operating system came out for the PC and had all sorts of issues:

So the foundation of the Mac brand is visual. The hammer thrower…the screen with hello…the cool kid. A print ad in a magazine captured the exact vibe I wanted for my writing life. I cut it out and taped it up in my office so I could see it every day  (click  to  enlarge):Happy to say I made it (albeit without the penthouse view of New York and the cat).

So when we talk about an author brand, we usually start with books and genre. Those are, of course, essential parts of the branding package. But I suggest starting with Mac logic—the visual.

A few years ago our own Terry Odell wrote about being at SleuthFest with her Triple-D Ranch series. When on a panel, she wore a cowboy hat. But when strolling through the hotel lobby, hatless, she was summoned by a “top gun” at Penguin Putnam, Neil Nyran. “Terry. Where’s your hat?” She was floored that he even knew her name. Terry said she wasn’t on any panels that day, so the hat was in her room. He responded, “It’s your brand. Wear it.”

Visual.

Even when walking around in a conference. (See, e.g., Reavis Wortham. You’re not going to catch him in a homburg.)

Start with your author photo. What does it “say” to the world about you as writer? James Patterson is all business. His photos say, “I write books that you won’t be able to put down, so there.” Harlan Coben, on the other hand, laces his thrillers with a bit of humor. Thus, in his author photos he always has the start of a wry smile.

You can go too far with this. Years ago a popular writing couple came out with a big historical mystery. On the back of the hardcover this couple was dressed as the characters. That struck me as a gimmick. It was trying too hard, plus it applied only to that one book.

So take some time to sit alone with a cup of joe and visualize yourself as a successful author, someone a reader wants to get to know, who writes the kind of books they want to read. What should you look like? What do your covers look like? How would you dress at a conference?

And speaking of conferences, where much of the important interactions take place at the bar or in the lobby, how is your personality? This is also visual in the sense that it gives off an impression. Don’t try to be something you’re not. Work with yourself. You can be soft-spoken and be classy. Or if you’re outgoing and love a crowd (a la Brother Gilstrap sipping his signature Beefeater martini) lean into it. Just remember the most important piece of advice of all, something that can sink your brand faster than the Lusitania. John gave it in his post in response to Terry’s: “Don’t be an a-hole.” (Applies to all your social media, too. I’ve chucked several authors off my to-be-read list because of ill-advised tweets…I mean Xs.)

So, to paraphrase Olivia Newton-John, “Let’s get visual, visual, let’s get into visual.”

Thoughts?

 

Thoughts on Publishing in 2022

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

So here we are on a toboggan hurtling down the snowy mountain called 2022. Seems like a good time to take a look at the current state of book publishing, the better to avoid the rocks, tree stumps, and cliffs scattered all over the slope.

What do we see?

The Forbidden City

Looming large, as always, is traditional publishing by the Big 5. Prophecies of their demise, which were legion in the early days of the indie boom, have not come to pass. Not even a global pandemic could take the trad biz out. Yes, there have been mergers and acquisitions, the paring down of staffs, and other moves that market-wide disruption demands. But as explained by Jane Friedman in The Hot Sheet (subscription required; quoted with permission):

In 2020, traditional publishing celebrated its best sales in a decade, and 2021 will come in at even higher levels, with 8 percent growth projected by NPD BookScan. HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray claimed the book “pie” has grown by about 15 percent, and thus the company has been aggressive in their acquisitions and release schedule. HarperCollins profits were up 42 percent by mid-year, while Penguin Random House saw its best profits in 19 years, up by a whopping 55 percent during the first half.

Undeniably it has been an extraordinary and historic period of sales in the industry, with no particular books responsible; publishers are seeing strong performance across their entire lists. (Keep in mind that, for traditional publishers, the print-to-digital sales mix remains about 75-25.) The latest report from the Association of American Publishers shows that consumer (trade) publisher revenues are up 14.1 percent through October 2021 versus last year.

Publishers Lunch, which has tracked dealmaking trends for more than 20 years, saw a surge in dealmaking in 2021. Volume for the first half of the year was about 20 percent higher than in 2020—remarkably in line with the increase in US print unit sales, which were up 18.4 percent during the first half of the year, according to BookScan. Major deals and six-figure deals remain strong.

Who would have predicted this? Perhaps your humble scribe, who opined back in 2013 that traditional publishing was like a boxer who just won’t go down.

Now let us consider this from the writer’s perspective. For while the industry is still humming, the tune may be less than melodious for fledgling fiction authors. Yes, deals are still being made, but with fewer “slots” for new writers the competition is fierce. Unless one is a celebrity (who is paired with a ghost or co-author), or has written what a pub board considers a “can’t miss” debut (they’re only right about this maybe 50% of the time) advances are not hefty. In many cases they aren’t even, strictly speaking, advances. As agent Kristin Nelson explains:

In the early 2000s, every contract I negotiated specified advance payments in halves: half on signing and half on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript. An agent earns the commission at the same time a client is paid. Publishers are now citing “corporate mandates” that payments must be structured in four or five installments—and some of those payments aren’t coming in until after publication…which makes it no longer an “advance” … Not only does this structure impact an author’s financial well-being, it impacts an agent’s ability to earn a living. Imagine negotiating a contract today and knowing that a portion of your commission won’t be paid for two years.

As far as acquisitions, there is a “blockbuster mentality” in big publishing. Nice if your book is one of them and hits. If it doesn’t, your prospects for another contract with the same publisher, or another of the Bigs, dim considerably.

Over the course of the last thirty years I’ve seen a strikingly similar scenario happen over and over again. It goes like this:

  1. Big advance from a big publisher. A two-book contract! Huzzah! Everyone is celebrating, popping champagne, hosting the author at conference pub parties.
  2. Book #1 fails to live up to sales projections. Author starts getting night sweats. There is no further marketing push from the publisher.
  3. Book #1 is deemed a “failure.”
  4. Book #2, per the contract, comes out, but without robust support from the publisher or large orders from the bookstores. If the book is hardback, publisher may decide not to do a paperback print run. Instead, it “remainders” the hardcovers in the warehouse by selling them cheaply to wholesalers (and for which the author gets no royalty).
  5. Author is not offered another contract from the big publisher, nor from any of the other Bigs.

(A first-hand account of such a scenario can be found here.)

I must add that I do know some writers who have managed to keep long-term relations with a big publisher without being in the “mega” category. Such writers used to be called “midlist.” But that designation is rapidly disappearing. It’s more “feast or famine” now, and if you aren’t feasting in the Forbidden City, you will likely be shown the drawbridge.

Cast into the dark forest again, what is an author to do? Fortunately, there are two roads diverging in that wood—independent/small publishing and indie publishing.

Independent and Small Publishing

Many independent and small publishing concerns are doing a fine business, and more have been added over the last several years. (I note, however, that business failures happen regularly in this sector and can really mess up the author getting monies owed.) They fall into roughly two categories: those with a traditional model and those that are hybrid.

One of the biggest independents is Kensington, home of our own John Gilstrap. It operates traditionally and pays advances. Elaine Viets is with Severn House. Reavis writes for Poisoned Pen Press.

When you get down into smaller sizes, it’s most likely there is no advance, and contract terms vary wildly. Which means doing your due diligence—you can start by reading this article. You’ll likely be your own agent, so learn all you can about publishing contracts and get help before you sign anything. The Authors Guild has a contract review benefit. You can also fork over dough to a lawyer to review the contract, but make sure said lawyer knows the ins and outs of book publishing contracts and specializes in Intellectual Property Law. The general practitioner in the strip mall at the corner is not the one to consult.

I won’t say much about “vanity” publishing, which usually requires big fees along with faux guarantees like “Your book will be published everywhere on the internet! And it will be available to all bookstores, too!” (Yeah… available… thank you so much). Some even say they will make you a “bestselling author” which means playing algorithm footsie on Amazon so your ebook, selling thirty copies, makes it to the top of some obscure category. And if you want their ultra-terrific marketing package, all you have to do is pony up more dough…four figures, sometimes five.

Yeesh.

I will say, however, there is an exception to the fee-up-front model that may be right for an author of a particular sort. I counseled just such a one. He was referred to me by a family member. He is a recently retired lawyer who had written a novel and wanted advice on how to get it published.

We went back and forth with emails. I laid out the two paths—traditional and indie—and explained the formidable barriers to the former. But that’s what he wanted to go for. So I told him what to do to get his novel shipshape (beta readers, freelance editor) and showed him how to put together a proposal and begin the search for an agent.

After about eight months he wrote back saying he was ready to go indie. I told him what that entailed, the various tasks he’d have to perform. I also said he needed to think of it as a business. But he was not interested in running a business, he just wanted to get his novel published and made available.

So for such a person (i.e., one not interested in writing as a career, vocation, or serious hobby), there are companies that will take care of things like cover design, formatting and all the rest, for a reasonable fee. One of these is BookBaby. After due diligence, that’s what he chose.

Indie Publishing

As we all know, an ever-growing number of authors—several of whom you’ll find right here at TKZ—are successfully publishing on their own. Some have gone indie from the jump, while a multitude of former trad writers have transitioned over, attracted by benefits that include full creative control, generous royalty rates, and seeing their book published as soon as it’s finished instead of a year or 18 months down the line.

But to do this successfully you have to think like a business (a simple business plan is presented in my book How to Make a Living as a Writer), consistently produce quality work, and be patient. One decision you’ll need to make early is whether to “go wide” or “go exclusive.” The nice thing is your choice is not irrevocable. Being indie means you can try new things, experiment, and make better decisions as you grow.

So where are we, O writer? Recognizing that there are exceptions to every publishing generality, let me offer a few words of advice.

  • If you are an author who desires acclaim from established venues of literary acceptance and a chance to break out into the rarified air of mega A-List writers, traditional is your shot. Just know that the odds are steep—98% of books published traditionally sell fewer than 5,000 printed copies. It’s a gamble and it may take you years to get a chance at the table. Yet people still play 22 in roulette, and you are certainly free to try. Once your chips are gone, however, you will probably find it impossible to get staked again for another turn inside the Forbidden City.
  • A good, independent publisher is an alternative—so long as your monetary goals are modest. The key word is good. Do your research.
  • Big or small, fight for a fair reversion clause in your contract. By fair I mean tied to a minimum number of dollars (not “copies available”) in a royalty period. Shoot for a high three figures.
  • Also get a fair non-compete clause.
  • If you decide to go indie because you think it is a fast road to riches, think again. It will take several years to get a good income flow, and even then it may not be a raging river of green. Still, you own all rights to your hard work and you can’t be fired. If you love to write (and you should if you want to make a go of this) then even a modest side income is frosting on the cake.
  • Whatever your choice, make it your goal to get better every time you sit at the keyboard. Study the craft, write, get feedback, write, study, try things, get more feedback, write.
  • Find your productive sweet spot. Figure out how many words you can produce comfortably in a week. Whatever that number is, up it by 10% and make that your goal, breaking it down into daily production, six days a week. Take one day off each week for rest and recharging.
  • Have a regular creativity time. Be like a movie studio and have several projects “in development.”

That’s how I see the publishing biz in 2022. Let’s open up a conversation on all this. How do you see things? What decisions are you contemplating? What lessons have you learned over the past few years?

Your Guide to a Weekly Creativity Time

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

If I may riff off Brother Gilstrap’s recent post, I think there are generally two types of writers. There are “natural” storytellers. John is one of them. I think he’s shared this here on TKZ, but I remember him telling me about getting virtually the entire story for Nathan’s Run while on a long drive. How’s that for nice?

Other writers have to dig in hard ground to find, stimulate, and coax ideas. Then take the good ones to the workshop and figure out the best way to develop them into stories. That would be me. When I started out on this writing journey I dove into study of the craft. I devoured writing books and subscribed to Writer’s Digest. I read popular fiction analytically to unpack how successful writers did things. I studied movies with an eye toward learning structure.

And when it came to finding ideas worth turning into full-length fiction, I found I couldn’t sit there waiting for one to show up. I had to follow Jack London’s advice: “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”

Early on I read How to Write Best Selling Fiction by Dean Koontz. He has a section in there on finding story ideas. Among his suggestions:

Read widely. Newspaper stories can present the germ of an idea. Nonfiction on various subjects, too.

Write narrative hooks. Just sit at the keyboard and type hooks (first lines) until “you find one that is so intriguing that you simply must find out what happens next.” One day Koontz wrote:

“You ever killed anything?” Roy asked.

He had no idea who Roy was or what he meant. But he sat there looking at it and it came to him (“out of my subconscious mind”) that Roy should be a boy of fourteen. From there his imagination started chugging and he wrote two pages of a conversation between Roy and a boy he named Colin. When he was finished he knew the book was going to be about the duality of human nature (good and evil), that Roy was the villain, and that the book would be fast-paced and suspenseful. Indeed it was, and became an early bestseller called The Voice of the Night.

Titles. Write out titles by the bunch until one of them tickles your fancy.

Characters. Start writing about an intriguing character and pile on backstory details. When one starts to take on life, ask:

  • What does the character fear more than anything else in the world?
  • What would be the very worst thing that could happen to him?
  • What event would throw his life into complete turmoil?

So I scheduled a weekly creativity time. A half hour to an hour sitting in a local coffee joint doing these exercises, just letting the ideas flow. After a few weeks I noticed that my creativity muscle was growing stronger. Indeed, it began working “on its own.” I’d be driving down the street and see a billboard and suddenly I’d be asking What if? What if that happy couple clinking champagne glasses is about to be blown up by a bomb?

I kept all my ideas in a file. When one of them cried out for further attention I put into “development.”

My first step in the development process is what I call a “white hot document.” This idea comes from Dwight Swain’s classic Techniques of the Selling Writer. You start a document that is an exercise in “focused free association.” You just start writing what comes to mind, go off on tangents, explore rabbit trails. Ideas for scenes, themes, characters, plot developments—write them all down without any intrusion from your inner editor.

You put this aside and come back the next day to edit and annotate. You take what’s most emotional and exciting for you and develop it further with more free association. Do this for several days and you’ll have a solid foundation for a plot. Swain wrote: “The important thing, always, is not to sit idly waiting for the feathers to grow. Don’t just hope for ideas. Hunt them down! Find a springboard! Develop a plan of action!”

So unless you are a natural storyteller, make it a point to exercise your imagination on a regular basis. Play games. Go wild. You’ll find good ideas soon enough and your creativity synapses will grow stronger.

Then all you have to do is write the novel. And the one after that. And the one…

What kind of storyteller are you—natural or a digger in hard ground? Where do your ideas come from? Do you wait for them to show up or do you light out after them with a club?

Writing in a Point of View Not Your Own

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Last week I wrote about hardboiled fiction and the pedigree that began with a writer named Carroll John Daly. I focused on the First-Person PI narrator.

But a hardboiled series can be told in Third Person, too. Frederick Nebel wrote a hugely popular series for Black Mask featuring police captain Steve MacBride and a reporter named Kennedy. These were done in Third-Person POV. More currently there’s a fellow named Gilstrap who writes about a guy named Grave in Third Person. Likewise Coletta’s Sheriff Niko Quintano, Langley-Hawthorne’s Ursula Marlow, Odell’s Chief of Police Gordon Hepler, Viets’s Helen Hawthorne, and Burke’s Tawny Lindholm

We’ll get to P. J. Parrish in a bit.

So what POV did I choose for my series about a crime-fighting nun, Sister Justicia Marie of the Sisters of Perpetual Justice?

I’ve written here before about the genesis of this character. How my son, who loves plays on words, said I should write about a nun who fights crime with martial arts skills. “You could call it Force of Habit.”

He smiled. I smiled. And then I said, “I think I’ll do it.”

“I was only kidding,” my son said.

“It’s a great concept,” I said. “Original, great title, and I think I can do something with it.”

That was back in 2012. Since that first novelette (about 16k words), four more followed, and quite to my delight has built a loyal following.

Now I’ve put the whole series in one collection, and added a sixth, never-before-published novelette. FORCE OF HABIT: THE COMPLETE SERIES is up for pre-pub. If you reserve your copy now you’ll lock in the $2.99 deal price (and this puppy is 90k words worth of action) before it goes to the regular price of $4.99. The titles are:

FORCE OF HABIT

FORCE OF HABIT 2: AND THEN THERE WERE NUNS

FORCE OF HABIT 3: NUN THE WISER

FORCE OF HABIT 4: THE NUN ALSO RISES

FORCE OF HABIT 5: HOT CROSS NUNS

And for the first time anywhere: FORCE OF HABIT 6: NUN TOO SOON

Allow me just a few horn toots from verified reviews:

“This first book was so good that within minutes of reading it, I downloaded book two.”

“Action packed with both internal and external conflict, I was riveted the whole way through.”

“Sister Justicia is kicking butt and taking names! She knows how to clean up L.A. but good!”

“James Scott Bell seems to be able to put more events in a 50 page novella than you’re likely to find in some 300 page novels.”

“Highest possible recommendation! Five Stars!”

“Honestly, they need to make a TV series about Sister J.”

Now, back to the choice of POV. Having never been a nun…or a woman…I gravitated toward Third Person from the jump. That does not mean I couldn’t take a stab at First Person. Unlike some of the “wisdom” of the age, I say let a writer do what he or she will and let the market decide. I just felt more comfortable in Third.

So what about the nun-woman part? Well, friends, there’s a little thing I like to call RESEARCH. It really works! I have a friend who is a former nun, who helped me tremendously with this series. I also made contact with some Benedictine nuns online for further insight.

As for the woman part, I have the greatest research assistant of all—Mrs. B. She reads all my stuff before anyone else, and offers me invaluable editorial advice.

[And if I may be allowed a side note: Today marks the 40th anniversary of the best decision I ever made. It involved the lovely Cindy, a minister, a packed church, and me.]

Once again, here’s the link for the deal pre-order.

For those of you outside Amazon U.S., you can open to your Amazon site and plug this into the search box: B091DRDWRJ

I will note that Michael Connelly is currently writing a series from a female Pacific Islander POV. And our own Mr. Gilstrap’s new series stars a U.S. Congresswoman who is also a single mom, both of which (if my research is accurate) John has never been.

And leave us not forget the sisters P. J. Parrish writing from the POV of one Louis Kincaid.

It can be done!

Do you agree?