One Writer's World-Building Tools

By Barbra Annino

On my desk I have a notebook, a folder, pens and three books.

On my wall I have a whiteboard scribbled with text and a storyboard pasted with pictures.

Why?

Because I’m beginning a new series filled with brand new concepts, characters and storylines. In essence, I’m building a world and these are my tools.

World building is one of the most exciting aspects of the writing process. You get to research, brainstorm and basically make stuff up. What’s not to love?

So let me breakdown how I use these tools and why they are necessary.

The notebook is the bible for my series. This is where I jot down ideas, research notes, dialogue snippets, plot points, character sketches and anything else that hits me along the way. Eventually, most of the stuff from the notebook gets recorded into my writer’s word processing program. I use WriteWay, but Word and Excel work great too. I use the same notebook for the entire series.

Next is the folder. It's a different color for each book. The folder holds news clippings I may find interesting that tie into the theme, internet research, loose paper with notes I made when I didn’t have my notebook, photos, sketches and anything else I stumble across that rings of my story.

Pens and post-its are what I use to mark pages in research books I buy or borrow. The research books help tremendously when building a fictional world, even in the paranormal, sci-fi, or fantasy genres.

There are at least 20 authors I can think of off the top of my head who write about vampires and most of them differ greatly, but they all know the myths of the traditional vampire stories. That doesn’t mean they adhere to them, but they know what they are -- and if the garlic, sunlight and stake issues are ignored, you bet readers notice. Not to mention Fae, witches and weres. Real research comes in handy even in the mythical genres. In fact, employing lore makes for a more realistic storyline. A truer fantasyland.

To the whiteboard goes the brainstorming ideas. The 'what ifs?' of the plotlines. And the ‘rules’ of the world. What do I mean by that? Here’s an example:

Sookie Stackhouse can mind-read. But only if she’s in the room with the person. And only if the person is human.

These are rules. You can’t have a character who is all-powerful or all-knowing or the story wouldn’t be much fun to read. So even if you have a demon hunter, a werewolf, a sprite, a medium, or a ghost in your story, there must be restrictions to their capabilities. Figure out what they are, then figure out ways around them and be consistent throughout the story. If that sprite only has a 20 year life-span, he'd better be dead by book three.

Last, the storyboard. This is fun. I get a poster board and clip images from magazines or websites that pertain to the story and glue them on. Right now, the board has photos of my protagonist, my villains, the setting and a map. It’s a great way to visualize the story before you start writing. It also helps if you’ve been away from the work for a while, to guide you back to it.

So there you have it. How do you plan a new novel?






Top photo: Tobacco & Mule Exchange in Apex, NC. Photo by Heather.
Bottom photo: Fernandina, FL. Photo by Kathie Felix.


Barbra Annino is the author of Opal Fire, a Stacy Justice gemstone mystery. A Chicago native, she freelances for a variety of publications, writing about health, food and travel.

Small Town Settings, Part 2 of 2 Parts

Sandra Parshall

[originally published at www.poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com]

In these days when many people don’t even know their next door neighbors, there’s a certain nostalgia in reading about residents of a community going through a crisis together. The impact of murder in a small town creates an immediacy that is often missing in big city settings.

“It’s a place where everyone knows your name, knows what you’re up to -- and talks about it,” Lorna Barrett says of her village of Stoneham. “When something like a murder happens, the citizens take it personally, whereas murder in an urban area is just a fact of life.”

To emphasize the unique qualities of a small community, many mystery protagonists are outsiders -- either newcomers to the area or natives returning after a long absence. Some series, such as Julia Spencer-Fleming’s, have both. These characters can view a place with fresh eyes and provide perspective for the reader.

Setting a story in a small community can allow the writer to focus more on human relationships and less on technical details. If the police force is small, the investigating officer is likely to know both victim and suspects and may be caught in the emotional crossfire. If there’s no forensics lab on site and evidence has to be sent elsewhere for testing, developments can be driven by personal revelations before the lab’s report comes in.

Cozies may come to mind first when we think of crime novels set in small places, but authors like Julia Spencer-Fleming, Margaret Macon, and Nancy Pickard, whose traditional mysteries have more of an edge, also mine the riches of communities where both loyalties and enmities have deep roots.

Then there are the small towns where no reader in her right mind would want to visit, much less settle down. Karin Slaughter’s dark, violent Grant County series, which has a police chief and a medical examiner as protagonists, uses a fictional Georgia setting far from the bustle of Atlanta. Gillian Flynn’s brilliant and disturbing debut, Sharp Objects, takes place in a hellish little town called Wind Gap, Missouri.

Val McDermid’s modern gothic masterpiece, A Place of Execution, is set in a tiny English community so isolated that it might be a medieval village in the thrall of a devilish overlord. McDermid’s chilling tale of twisted desire, decades-long conspiracies, and shocking secrets brings to mind Sherlock Holmes’s observation in Copper Beeches: "The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

For all its creative possibilities, the small community setting does pose challenges for the mystery writer, especially in a series. “Anyone new to town will be automatically suspected,” Mary Ellen Hughes notes. “Plus, we can't have the town population shrinking as the series goes on and murders continue, can we? Or have the town looking like too dangerous a place to live in? That's the tricky path the author of a small-town mystery has to navigate.”

The author won’t be alone on that path. She’ll have plenty of readers eager to keep her company.




Top photo: Miss Tula's house in Apex, NC. Photo by Molly Weston.
Bottom photo: Koi pond in Kernersville, NC. Photo by Erin Weston.


Sandra Parshall is the author of the award-winning Rachel Goddard mysteries; the most recent title in the series is Broken Places. Sandra also serves on the SinC/national board as Chapter Liaison.

Small Town Settings, Part 1 of 2 Parts

By Sandra Parshall


[Originally published at www.poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com]

Agatha Christie didn’t have a lot in common with Grace Metalious of Peyton Place fame, but both ladies understood one thing well: the placid surface of a small community can hide some wickedly entertaining secrets. Christie ensured her own immortality by adding murder to this eternally intriguing milieu.

We may joke about Cabot Cove syndrome – an astronomically high murder rate in a tiny community such as Jessica Fletcher’s home in the Murder, She Wrote series – but readers are more than willing to suspend disbelief in exchange for likable characters, an appealing setting, and lots of juicy small town secrets.

“If I had to choose a favorite sub-category in the mystery field, it would have to be small town mysteries,” DorothyL regular Kaye Barley told me. “I get completely caught up in the intricacies, entanglements, and complexities that exist under the surface in simple, small town living. And if it happens to be a small town in the south -- oh my, that can only ratchet things up. I'm a complete push-over for eccentric southern characters found in small town mystery novels.”

The village has always been a favored site for British mysteries, and M.C. Beaton and others continue that tradition, but U.S. and Canadian cozy writers are probably more successful at making readers fall in love with their settings. From coast to coast, North America is dotted with tiny fictional communities so charming that readers long to set up residence despite the crime rate. “If I thought for one minute that this place really existed,” a reviewer wrote of Louise Penny’s Three Pines, Quebec, “I’d be packing the car.”

Most small towns in mysteries are invented, but writers inevitably draw on their fond memories of actual places.

"I've set the Orchard Mysteries in a small town that is based on a real one I know,” Sheila Connolly says, “although I take liberties with some details like where the highway is. Using this place helps me visualize the story, but I chose it primarily because it is a classic New England town (a town green, big white church, old houses), and the town itself plays a major ongoing role in the books. Now I'm having fun populating the place, a few characters at a time. This parallels my newcomer heroine's process of getting acquainted with her neighbors. So far I haven't created any evil residents--in fact, the ‘real’ police chief wrote me to say he was flattered by my depiction."

Lorna Barrett, who writes the Booktown Mysteries, has also consciously created a setting that readers will find welcoming and soothing, even in the middle of a murder investigation. “My little village of Stoneham is like a character itself,” Lorna says. “From its brick storefronts to its little park with gazebo, it’s a throwback to better times.”

The physical charm of the place is only one plus for writers and readers, though.

“The benefits of a small town setting are bountiful for a cozy-style mystery,” says Mary Ellen Hughes, author of the Craft Corner series. “The suspects are, for one thing, right there, conveniently available to be questioned or watched. Then, your on-going characters get to be familiar and (hopefully) enjoyed, which can bring interested readers back for updates on their lives.”

Denise Swanson, author of the Scumble River series set in Illinois and featuring school psychologist Skye Denison, loves to explore what lies beneath the pretty surface.

“In most small towns there is a tacit agreement to live as an insular society,” Denise says. “Vital components of this agreement are the secrets, assumptions, and shared background knowledge of the citizens. The interrelationships are more intense, because often entire extended families live within the town's boundaries. For story telling, this setting provides both the mystery and the solution. There is a golden opportunity for a story within a story plot, and the public versus the private details are an ideal way for the amateur sleuth to be a credible part of the investigation.”

To be continued....


Top photo: Debnam garden in Apex, NC by Molly Weston.
Bottom photo: Downtown Purcellville, VA by Kathie Felix.

Sandra Parshall is the author of the award-winning Rachel Goddard mysteries; the most recent title in the series is Broken Places. Sandra also serves on the SinC/national board as Chapter Liaison.

Shameless Plug for "Shameless Promotion for Brazen Hussies"

By Roberta Isleib

Everyone knows that the days of typing “The End” on the last page of a manuscript and then turning it over for the publisher to sell are over. Every author is expected to participate in promotion. But what kind of promotion? And how much time and money should a writer spend? What do the publishers expect? How can a writer promote herself without appearing overbearing or unprofessional? And what works best in a business that’s changing so quickly even the publishers’ minds are boggled?

Luckily for all of us, the newly revised version of Sisters in Crime's Shameless Promotion for Brazen Hussies is being released today. In its pages, 28 talented, generous, and multi-published women share their expertise and experiences on the subject of book promotion. The material covers book tours, bookstore visits, library events, blogs, group blogs, blog tours, television, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, website development, e-book marketing, and more. You’ll find a little of everything here. If one kind of promotion doesn’t suit your personality or your budget, another should.

In addition to these essays, SinC president Cathy Pickens talks about the 2010 Publishers Summit and offers tips for using the technology tools discovered on that trip. And Triss Stein reviews the results of the SinC/Bowker Pubtrack survey on mystery readers’ buying habits, "The Mystery Book Consumer in the Digital Age," which was commissioned by the Sisters in Crime Board of Directors in 2010.

Thanks to all of the SinC members who contributed their experience and ideas, and to Marcia Talley, immediate past president of Sisters in Crime, who managed the formatting and publishing.

The book is available at this time to SinC members only in two editions, trade paperback ($11.99) and e-book ($1.99). If you are already logged on to the members-only area of the SinC website on this computer, you can order your copy here:

Paperback version
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/shameless-promotion-for-brazen-hussies/14847372

Ebook
http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/shameless-promotion-for-brazen-hussies/14848330

You may also order the book by going to sistersincrime.org, clicking on Resources and clicking on Publications. This will lead you to the "Shameless Hussies" order screen.



Clinical psychologist Roberta Isleib, the author of eight mysteries, is a past president of Sisters in Crime. Her newest book, A Taste for Murder (NAL), featuring a Key West food critic, will debut in 2012, written as Lucy Burdette. http://www.robertaisleib.com.

The Benefits of a Library Card

By Kathie Felix

I heard a story this week about the unexpected power of a library card.

During a fierce winter storm in northern Virginia, a library patron found herself locked out of her car after the library closed. She was offered a ride home to pick up a second set of keys, as well as a return ride to her car.

A month later, she received a phone call that her keys were being held for her at a library -- but not at the library where her car had been parked.

The call gave her two mysteries to solve. The first was resolved rapidly. The library was able to locate her because of the library card tag on her key chain.

The second mystery was a bit tougher. Eventually, it was discovered that the local snow plow patrol had moved mountains of snow around town. Her keys were found in a gutter in front of a church. The library card tag led to the return of the keys to the nearest library.

Do you have a library card on your key ring?

And do you have any stories about the power of a library card?

Representing Gender: The Vida Count

By Kathie Felix

Sisters in Crime has been joined in the review-counting trenches by Vida, an organization of women in the literary arts. The group was founded in 2009 “to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversation regarding the critical reception of women's creative writing in our current culture.”

Vida’s 2010 review census was released at the beginning of February. Titled “The Count,” the study examines a group of publications in terms of their overall representation of women and men and a count by gender of book reviewers and reviewed authors.

The publications in the Vida project included The Atlantic, Boston Review, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, London Review of Books, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Times Literary Supplement and Tin House.

As might be expected, the news wasn’t good for women – as authors or as reviewers.


The New York Review of Books was home to the most unsettling statistics. In terms of overall coverage for 2010, the numbers revealed 79 women and 462 men. In terms of reviewers, 39 were women and 200 were men. The count of reviewed authors was 59 women and 306 men.

The New York Times Book Review offered better numbers, with 295 women and 438 men reviewing books in 2010. The number of reviewed authors included 283 women and 524 men.


One publication, The Atlantic, actually reviewed
more women writers than men. The count there was 19 women and 13 men. Overall, however, the magazine featured writing by 55 women and 154 men.

In the discussion following the release of The Count, many factors have been mentioned as possible considerations for the disparities, among them the number of published books written by women vs. the number written by men and the availability or aggressiveness of men vs. women in seeking editorial assignments.

Whatever the reason or reasons, the bottom line for many may be tied to U.S. Census figures that indicate that, as of Oct. 1, 2009, there were 155.8 million females and 151.8 males in the United States.

For others, the discussion goes much deeper than equal representation for statistical purposes. A world of unspoken expectation is shared with every generation when a spotlight shines on only one gender.

There are a variety of ways to deal with a disproportionate gender representation in the media. Studies like the SinC review project and Vida’s count can help bring awareness to the issue.

It’s also important to remember that sometimes advertiser-supported media can clearly hear the voices of its advertisers, even when it’s having trouble remembering who makes up more than half of the country’s population.

SinC board member Barbara Fister weighed in on the conversation with a comment on the Vida website following the release of the study: “Sisters in Crime, an organization founded 25 years ago to support equality for women writers in the crime fiction genre, has been tracking reviews of mysteries in the press for years. This is sadly nothing new nor something that book review editors have ever taken very seriously.”

It may be time to start thinking about an information campaign directed to targeted advertisers.

A closer look at the Vida study can be found online here.

What do you think?



Kathie Felix is the managing editor of the SinC blog. Previously, she spent 12 years as the managing editor of a technology magazine published for the education market. In an intentional match to reader demographics, the majority of the product reviewers she hired – and published – were women.

Starting a SinC Chapter: Central Virginia

By Meredith Cole

About four months after I moved back to Virginia from New York, I spoke on a mystery panel in Richmond with Emyl Jenkins, Donna Andrews and Andy Straka. It was so much fun to be with mystery writers again! I had not attended a Sisters in Crime or Mystery Writers of America meeting since moving south. It was difficult for me to get from Charlottesville, Va. to Washington, D.C. on a regular basis (2 ½ hours away), where the nearest chapters were located.

At the end of the presentation, a retired librarian, Nancy Newins, came up to the stage. “Why isn’t there a Sisters in Crime central Virginia chapter?” she asked. I didn’t have a good answer, but it sounded like a good idea to start one. I missed having a community of other writers, and I knew there were many mystery writers and readers in central Virginia.

Nancy and I started to plan an exploratory meeting in April 2010 to see if there was enough interest in the area. I pitched it at the Virginia Festival of the Book (before a panel I moderated) and talked it up to all the aspiring and published mystery writers I met. We sent notices to the Sisters in Crime/Chesapeake chapter, the Mystery Writers of America Mid-Atlantic chapter and to James River Writers. We eventually assembled a group of interested people at the Tuckahoe Public Library.

At our first meeting, in April 2010, we collected email addresses and explained the history and mission of Sisters in Crime to the group. No one there was currently a member of SinC/national. There were a quite a few pre-published writers attending who wanted a critique group. Mary Theobold organized one with the interested writers and they began to meet regularly at the library. I was asked to be president at the meeting and Nancy Newins volunteered to be the secretary until we held elections. We were off and running.

Nancy created a Google group to share announcements and information, and organized a programming committee with Heather Weidner. Our first event was a trip to the Department of Forensic Science in Richmond in July. I couldn’t attend, but the nine members who did said it was a fascinating field trip.

In September, author Ellen Byerrum and I gave a presentation at the Tuckahoe library on writing a series. In November, Dr. Evan Nelson gave a talk about his job as a forensic psychologist on many high profile cases. All of our events have been well attended and enthusiasm for the chapter has been growing. I’ve been impressed by the energy and great ideas.

At our November meeting, we voted on our bylaws (we were able to borrow a template from other chapters, and then a committee hammered out the finer points) and plan to hold our first election and collect dues in February.

We’re about to become an official chapter. Our new plans include creating a website, planning more events in 2011 and finding more ways to spread the word locally about our events.

In February, author Donna Andrews will be speaking to our chapter; we have a workshop with Chris Roerden scheduled for April.

It’s been exciting and rewarding to introduce local mystery lovers and writers to Sisters in Crime. I’m delighted to now have a group that’s closer to my home. Starting a chapter has not been easy, and it would never have happened without the dedicated volunteers and writers in my area with a desire to see it happen.

[Editor's note: The hard work of the members of the Central Virginia chapter-to-be has encouraged some D.C. area members of the SinC/Chesapeake chapter to think about traveling to central Virginia on a regular basis to attend the new chapter's meetings.]


Photo of the Richmond, Va. skyline, courtesy of the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Photo of Meredith Cole (left) and Ellen Byerrum (right) at the Tuckahoe library, courtesy of E. Byerrum.

Meredith Cole is the author of Posed for Murder and Dead in the Water. She teaches writing at the University of Virginia. Her website is www.culturecurrent.com/cole.

Love is Murder - and a Whole Lot More!

By Barbra Annino

In my opinion, the Chicago Love is Murder conference is the best bang for your buck for any mystery conference around. This was my third time attending and I have to say it gets better every year. Here’s a brief run-down of some of the panel discussions, the behind-the-scenes takes you won’t get on a roster, and those ‘you just had to be there moments’ as Tweeted and Facebooked by attendees.

Registration and Meet and Greet

Hard-working volunteers spend lots of time putting this stuff together. You get a nice big book bag filled with different goodies every year. This year, it was lots of bookmarks, Mystery Scene Magazine, a packet of seeds and the booklet that explains the conference activities, times and locations. Then you pop in on a panel, wander around, shake hands, introduce yourself, grab a drink and chit chat until dinner.

The Facebook post that sum it up by screenwriter for House/author, James Strauss:

Love is Murder. The biggest day of the convention. Lots of Jon Land, Joe Finder, and F Paul Wilson. It is great fun to hang out with such notable writers. Here, at this convention in Rosemont, Illinois, they are available and will discuss almost any topic you might bring up. Plus they will autograph your books (for free, not like actors from hit television series!) Get to the Intercontinental and get some culture.

Panel Discussions

"Love, Sex & Death – Why We Can't Look Away… Or Stop Reading!" (with panelists Sherrill Bodine, Laura Caldwell, Patricia Rosemoor, Tom Schreck (M), J. L. Wilson)

The tweet that sums it up by agent Barbara Poelle:.

@schrecktom just said,” Do you have to be in the mood to write a sex scene or do you just bang it out?" the crowd went wild - he's crimson.

A big focus this year was on e-publishing. The panel, "Get E Life! Publishers Share Tips on Accessing the Brave New World of E-Books," (Robert Brown, Rebecca Crowley, Angela James, Morgan Mandel, Sharene Martin-Brown, Marja McGraw, Terri Stone (M), Karen Syed) provided a fascinating discussion on how authors can and should take advantage of this medium. Larger-than-life e-book advocate J.A. Konrath opened a lot of eyes to the fast-moving world of electronic media and self-publishing. (For those who don’t follow his blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, the summary is that readers have become the gatekeepers, the consciousness of the book industry - and not only will they decide what they read, but how they will read it and at what price.)

There were Pitch-a-Palooza sessions where authors make appointments to pitch to editors and agents, master classes taught by Carolyn Haines and Joan Johnston, expert forensics panels, and publishers and agents dishing on what they want in a manuscript.

Fun Stuff

The hilarious quiz show is probably my favorite part. Veteran authors with more books to their name than I have teeth in my head sit side-by-side on a stage and are asked by Joe Konrath to identify their own passages. Of course they rarely get it right, which results in good-natured jabs and jokes that even the audience members participate in.

You might also catch a glimpse of several authors, with drinks in their hands, harmonizing in the lobby after the bar closes.

The tweet that sums it up by Marcus Sakey:

Award-winning novelist Bryan Gruley won't stop serenading me with Mac Davis's "You're Having My Baby."

Lovey Award Winners, Part One.
Best First Novel: Hal Ackerman for Stein, Stoned.
Best Traditional/Amateur Sleuth Novel: Julie Hyzy for Grace Under Pressure.
Best Historical: Tasha Alexander for Dangerous to Know.
Best Series: Rhys Bowen for the Royal Spyness series.
Best Romantic Suspense: Laura Caldwell for Red, White, and Dead.
Best Thriller: Jamie Freveletti for Running Dark.
Best PI/Police Procedural: Michael Black for Hostile Takeovers.
Best Short Story: Carolyn Haines for "The Sugar Cure" in Delta Blues.

Rhys Bowen's tweet on the whole experience:

Love is Murder was great! And I won the Lovey award for best mystery series. Going home happy!

Hope to see you there in 2012!


Barbra Annino is the author of Opal Fire, a Stacy Justice gemstone mystery. A Chicago native, she freelances for a variety of publications, writing about health, food and travel.

A Day at Digital Book World, Part 2 of 2 Parts

By Rosemary Harris


The Role of Publishers

Get books on shelves, paying up front (advances) royalties, publicize and market books, but they have to prove they're worth it. Some panelists said new and midlist authors will eventually question the necessity of traditional publishers as the intermediary between themselves and readers. (Bestselling authors will probably not, since they are the ones getting big advances which will most likely never earn out.)

Publishers doubt whether most authors will want to do all the work necessary to be self-pubbed. A Random House spokesperson (and others) believe publishers are the curators of content and will continue to be essential.

Print publishers are not going away for the foreseeable future.

Marketing

The publishers who spoke pointed to marketing success stories, but the examples were either already bestselling authors (James Patterson, Lee Child), juvenile titles or non-fiction.

With the exception of Harlequin romance, there were no genre fiction examples. In that instance, the brand was bigger than any individual author and had been for so many years that it was virtually impossible to point to any specific activity on the part of the publisher that helped generate sales.

The Dover Publications spokesperson cited examples of frequent outbound marketing to young parents, but cautioned that it was a "privilege" to be allowed to communicate with consumers (I heard this word from a few different panelists), so outbound marketing should be handled carefully to avoid inundating the consumer.

A Harlequin executive and a consultant to National Geographic mentioned cover surveys, premiums and contests as ways to engage readers online. All recommended free content as a way to build and maintain relationships.

Everyone talked about how authors were now required to participate in the marketing of their books through the use of social marketing, Facebook, websites, Twitter and mailing lists -- although all agreed that not everything was right for everyone and it was preferable to do a few things well than to spread oneself too thin.

The S&S and Harlequin reps said their houses gave tutorials and webinars to their authors to guide them in learning how to do these.

All of the panelists referenced direct marketing practices from the 80s and 90s. Not that much has changed, except the way we find the consumer. A 2% response to a mail campaign is still the gold standard.

Amazon

An Amazon VP came, rattled his Kindle and left without taking any questions. Basically, it's the company's goal to have every book in every language available to anyone within 60 seconds. He repeated anecdata on who wants e-readers -- specifically the Kindle, of course -- and why they are the way of the future.

He cited increased backlist sales when a new release was digitized and available on Kindle (this is also true in print.) He suggested out-of-print titles could have a new life on Kindle.

Most interesting, he talked about Kindle Singles, works from 5,000-30,000 words which Amazon is marketing/planning to market from $.99-$4.99. There is/will be a dedicated store for these on Amazon and Kindle.

He talked about Print-on-Demand, which he thought made sense for titles that were either out of print, temporarily out of stock or for those titles that were smaller (i.e., niche) and not likely to sell more than 2,000 copies.

He reiterated that price is key and again mentioned (it's been cited elsewhere by Amazon execs) the stat that a $2 increase in price can result in a 40% drop in sales.

The Future

Some speculated that by 2015 e-books would represent 50% of all books sales. The recent firings of buyers at B&N were used to illustrate this point. Others qualified that by saying yes, but only for certain subjects, genres, etc.



Rosemary Harris is the Anthony and Agatha Award-nominated author of the Dirty Business mystery series. The most recent title in the series, Slug Fest (available April 2011), is set at a Northeast flower show where more than just the plants are dying.

A Day at Digital Book World, Part 1 of 2 Parts

By Rosemary Harris

The day I spent at Digital Book World (day three of the conference) was approximately 7 1/2 hours of opinions, polls, surveys, charts, predictions and conflicting information. The one thing everyone agreed on was that the existing business model for book publishing was being seriously challenged, both in terms of print versus e-book sales and the sales of print books online. The differences arose in how those challenges would be met, and how fast and who would still be standing when they were.

The day started with a quote worth remembering all day long:

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." --Albert Einstein

Some conventional wisdom at the show:

Hardware

Kindle currently has close to 30% of the e-reader market share, followed by B&N at 15% and Sony at 14%. Other formats make up the balance. B&N's Nook was rated highest in consumer satisfaction.

Use of MFDs (multi-functional) devices, i.e., iPads, phones, tablets and other devices was growing. Experts believe that MFD growth will continue and fewer people will be reading books on their home computers.

Consumers

27% say they buy from indies, statistics say the number is closer to 10%.

The core e-buyer is the same as the core print buyer -- female, suburban, over 40 years old. The power e-buyers (as it sounds) were suburban women, 30-44. Convenience, price and pass-along ability are important to these buyers.

E-buyers are proving to be hybrid - most are not eliminating print purchases.

E-buyers would buy from independent bookstores if pricing were competitive.

Online reviewers are important to e-buyers.

Seeing the book in a brick-and-mortar store first is important.

All surveyed said they read more now that they own an e-reader device.

46% of e-reader/MFD owners say they are inspired to read more print.

Marketplace

50% of all downloads were free books. Anecdata (anecdotal data) says "free" can be a gateway to future purchases. Free is not a business plan, but it can be a marketing plan. Hachette Book Group rep suggested free for a limited time. S&S recommended "open book" - web view only - for freebies.

Word of mouth still spurs print buyers. 47% of purchases at B&N brick-and-mortar stores are impulse buys, versus 26% at Amazon.

Most panelists claimed e-books drove print sales, although it was admitted that the surges in e-book sales (units) did not currently offset the revenue loss to publishers in lost print book sales.

Royalties

The agents and publishers polled did not submit comparable information regarding e-book royalties. More than 1/3 of the agents said they were getting 50% royalties for their authors; the publishers claimed it was 25%.

It was suggested that legacy (which I took to mean pre-existing) contracts, special deals with smaller publishers, ambiguous backlists (questions as to whether or not, or how long publishers would have e-rights, etc.) were most likely responsible for the discrepancy.

Yes, you can get a higher royalty from an e-publisher if there is no print edition of a book. Print pubs can't offer the same deals because of overhead.

--To be continued...


Rosemary Harris is the Anthony and Agatha Award-nominated author of the Dirty Business mystery series. The most recent title in the series, Slug Fest (available April 2011), is set at a Northeast flower show where more than just the plants are dying.

Notes from Digital Book World, Part 3 of 3 Parts

By S. J. Rozan

Session Nine: Sales Department in Transition

Here again, a lot of talk about how publishers are now running two businesses, the traditional one and the e-one, and the rules for each are different and still shaking out.

There was discussion about publishing becoming more nimble and able to produce "drop-in titles," about catalogs and seasons disappearing. It was widely agreed the hard-copy catalog was soon to vanish, and a central online system would replace it. Although the indie booksellers' panel agreed unanimously that sending sales reps is the single most important thing a publisher can do for a bookstore, sales forces are being cut and salespeople who remain are working more by phone and email. On the good news side, technology is helping publishers be more efficient, so stores don't have to carry as much inventory.

(SJR note: Also mentioned in passing on this panel, though it would have been of interest to hear about it in depth on the indie panel, too, is the group of stores which are not bookstores and not affected by the e-market. These are places like Urban Outfitters, where books are sold along with other impulse-purchase items. There's an interesting echo here of the "mission-driven organization" partnering discussed above.)


Session Ten: Author branding

(SJR note: in the interests of full disclosure, the agent on this panel was my agent, Steve Axelrod.)

Points made:

• "Branding," as used here, refers to a commitment from a company to a customer about the nature of the company's product. Authors are the company and our books are the product.

Readers like to feel included in the author's world, like to feel there's a real communication. An author's "brand" can be said to be the nature of the emotional connection between author and reader. To be successful with social media (Facebook, Twitter, one's own website, posts written for other people's websites, etc.) an author's voice must be consistent and her presence can't feel forced. Unless an author invents a genre, what sets one author apart from another is voice. One panelist said voice is like a regional accent: you don't know you have it but everyone else can hear it.

(SJR note: This doesn't mean you can't change your voice from book to book, as the book requires -- think Margaret Atwood -- but the author's online voice must be consistent.)

• All panelists agreed that the days of an author creating a work and handing it off to the publisher are gone. It's now at least as much, and often more, the author who's responsible for publicizing her book. The good news is, social media makes use of strengths writers already have -- the ability to use words well -- to reach readers. One of the panelists called social media "a gift to the shy."

• To the question of whether publishers are/should be focusing resources on creating an online presence for a writer, the panelists agreed the answer was no. This is at least in part because an online presence is author-specific, not book-specific. Because an author can leave a publisher after any given book, it's not cost-effective for a publisher to build an author brand. Publishers will build their own brands. One question from the audience called this new time commitment from authors "indentured servitude." The response was call it what you will, it's necessary, and authors who don't work this system will fail.

• There was a warning sounded about the wide reach and permanent nature of online activity. Talking back to reviewers, etc., is as wrong-headed on line as it would be in a traditional venue, but the informality of the Web makes it an easy trap to fall into.

• In the end, it was agreed, authors who are successful with social media are the ones who

-- understand the available tools;
-- define themselves clearly and consistently; and
-- understand their audience.

How to do the first two is largely up to the writer. About the third, it was suggested that writers communicate with their audiences and see what seems to strike a note with them. Questions, quizzes, conversations; looking at where readers come to your books/blogs/Facebook posts from; seeing which of your blog/Twitter/Facebook posts get the most responses and what the responses are; all these things should help a writer create a "brand" and a loyal readership.


(SJR final notes on Day One: A lot of confusion and scrambling in the industry. Author branding is essential. Know your readers, be real and, at whatever level makes you comfortable, be accessible. It may also be useful to look for a way to use/help out your local indie, if you have one. Self-pubbing is something to keep an eye on. New technologies not developed yet could change the game.)



S.J. Rozan is the award-winning author of 12 novels, including the mystery series featuring private investigators Lydia Chin and Bill Smith. Her most recent work, On the Line, finds Bill in a high-stakes chase to locate the kidnapped Lydia. For more information about S.J., go to www.sjrozan.com.


Photo of S. J. Rozan with the God of Wealth by S.J. Rozan.

Notes from Digital Book World, Part 2 of 3 Parts

By S. J. Rozan

Session Three: Organizer Predictions

Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Co. made some predictions about issues publishers will need to address in the next year or two:

• Sooner or later, brick-and-mortar bookstores will disappear -- the chains sooner, the indies later.

• Publishers have always been dependent on intermediaries to reach their customers. Now the nature of the intermediary is changing. Publishers should not try to sell directly to consumers, but they should have a two-way street going, to reach out to consumers to make their products visible, and to gather names.

• Agents, who traditionally "cureate" before publishers do, will see their roles change mightily in the e-world.

• Ease of e-delivery world-wide will eventually make the concept of foreign sales for English-language books obsolete.


Session Four: Enhanced Content

This was a largely technical talk about multimedia and displaying across multiple platforms. The important fact for the writer is that a new set of standards is about to be released, called "epub3," that will make it much easier to provide content to all e-devices: not only written content, but photos, graphics, video and sound. (SJR note: I give smell about five years...)


Session Five: e-publishing in Europe

The gist of this session was that English-language e-publishing in Europe is a very confusing situation, while translation e-publishing of books written in English is controlled differently in different countries -- both the publishing itself, and the distribution channels. (SJR note: this is an area where an agent is absolutely essential, I think.)


Session Six: Presentation from Google

(SJR Note: This was an irritating mix of platitudes and generalizations. Google claims to see its mission, now that it's in the book business, as "reading unbound." Readers can choose what to read, where to shop, and what e-device to read on. All that was possible before Google, but they've integrated the experience. The two facts writers might want to consider are: one, that Google is "partnering" with independent bookstores -- it's a little unclear what that means right now but it's something to keep an eye on; and two, that their third largest-selling category is "thrillers." Since in the rest of their top 10 there was nothing about mystery or suspense, I think Google lumps crime and mystery all in that category.)

Session Seven: The Future of Brick-and-Mortar Bookstores

This panel of financial analysts was focused on the chain stores, which means largely B&N, with some attention still paid to Borders, and some to Books-a-Million. They raised some interesting questions, while making only one statement: brick-and-mortar bookstores will continue to exist for another two decades, if not longer. They'll exist in changed form, though. Points made:

• The big box was never a good business model for bookstores. Certain business practices exist for bookstores that don't exist for other retailers: discounts, returnability, agency pricing. All function against big boxes.

• Amazon right now is willing to make no profit, even take losses, on ebooks to gain market share. This, among other things, makes the financial future hard to predict for B&N, which sells both hard-copy and ebooks. Amazon does, too, but doesn't devote the huge square footage to the hard-copy books.

• There's a lot of talk about B&N "re-purposing" a chunk of square footage in each store, but for what new or sublet purpose, no one's sure.

• Google is aggressively pursuing local indie bookstores (see more, below) for its own purposes; for whatever reason, though, indies may get an online presence from this that will further cut into B&N's advantage of scale.

• What may be outmoded is the idea of "bookstore." While the selling function will take a back seat to e-commerce, the physical experience of being among books, authors and people who can make informed recommendations might end up being provided by something/someplace else. This might, for example, be an aspect of the industry that publishers take over, as part of the "added value" they bring. (again, see more, below)

• Bottom line: industry analysts are not recommending their clients invest in any of the bookstore chains at this time. (SJR note: given the generally optimistic nature of much of what I'd heard so far, this was a bucket of cold water.)


The above morning sessions were all-conference. In the afternoon -- after a decent box lunch -- I went to three breakout sessions.


Session Eight: The Future of Independent Bookstores

(SJR note: this session had a true-believer quality that made it hard to judge the realistic nature, or lack thereof, of what the speakers were saying.)

Points made:

• Indie bookstores have long been doing direct-to-consumer targeted marketing.

• One viable option for an indie bookstore is to partner with a "mission-driven organization with a constituency." The example on the panel was a bookstore within a museum, which began as a museum giftshop but has grown to be a destination in itself, a store with the added advantage of a connection to the art on the walls.

• Another indie talked about curation and recommendations online, with online ordering and a pick-up-in-store option. This store depends to a certain extent on signed copies, which ebooks just can't provide.

• Mentioned also was the idea of a small-bookstore bank, extending credit to indies. Right now, the burden of bookstores' undercapitalization is borne by publishers in the form of credit and returnability. Small publishers can't afford these, which keeps the very products out of indies that they're best suited to "curating."

• Google, as mentioned above, is aggressively pursuing partnerships with indie bookstores. What this does for the store is provide a channel through which to sell ebooks, to keep customers from "migrating" to Amazon, etc. What it provides to Google is a source of local customers to whom they can then target ads from local businesses.

• All panelists were optimistic -- as some of the publishing execs had also been -- that we might be entering a new golden age of indie bookstores, as ebooks take away the big boxes' cheap-and-quick part of the business, leaving the specialization and curation in the hands of stores educated and nimble enough to do it.

--To be continued...


S.J. Rozan is the award-winning author of 12 novels, including the mystery series featuring private investigators Lydia Chin and Bill Smith. Her most recent work, On the Line, finds Bill in a high-stakes chase to locate the kidnapped Lydia. For more information about S.J., go to www.sjrozan.com.

S.J. Rozan photo by Marion Ettlinger.

Notes from Digital Book World, Part 1 of 3 Parts

By S.J. Rozan

The second Digital Book World conference was held last week in New York. The organizers, F&W Media, a publisher of magazines and books, founded this meeting a year ago to bring publishers together to discuss the impact of the digital revolution on the industry. My guesstimate of the crowd was around 2,000, mostly publishing company professionals, some bookstore owners, agents, very few writers. I'll give a precis of each session I attended and then a wrap-up. My two-cents notes on each session are in parentheses.

The morning sessions were for the whole convention; breakout sessions were in the afternoon.

First, some terms:

Form factor - refers to the shape/size/physical configuration of an e-device.

Dedicated device - the Kindle, Sony Reader, etc., whose purpose is reading e-books; also referred to as an electronic ink device. This is in opposition to a tablet.

Tablet - the iPad and others like it that have many e-uses beyond books.

Ecosystem - sync-ed or sync-able devices: laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc.

One-to-one vs. one-to-many marketing - self-explanatory, but terms rattled off when discussing the marketing potential of social media.

Vertical communities, a.k.a. verticals - geographically spread but interest-focused groups.

Drop-in title - a book not scheduled or in a publisher's catalog, but published because timely or otherwise thought worthwhile at a particular moment.

Bizdat - business data; self-explanatory, here only because I was astonished to actually hear this spoken.


Session One: The results of a 2010 publishing executive survey commissioned for this conference.

The survey has industry insiders seeing huge growth in the e-book segment of publishing. With the choice of e-readers expanding, readers will be able to find an alternative with which they're comfortable at a price they can afford.

All the execs surveyed expect e-sales to be a progressively larger part of the market, with a concomitant decline in print sales. They think e-books will be 50% of the market in book numbers (though not, significantly, in income, since they're priced lower) by late 2014. If this is true, then presumably sometime in 2015, e-books will begin to surpass print books.

Many execs expressed optimism that this will ultimately mean people will be reading more, especially as e-books are lower-priced and instantly available with a click. However, they also say 2011 will be a "bumpy ride" as publishing company personnel will require "significant re-training" and publishers will need to re-focus. No other industry, the survey taker pointed out, has had to move this quickly to react to the effects of the digital revolution in its area.

(SJR note: Remember, this is only what publishing executives think will happen this coming year. They may be wrong, but since it's what they're planning for, writers might want to take note.)


Session Two: CEOs

A lot of positive-sounding statements from this group, but as you listen closely, they're more tempered.

One exec said the explosive growth of e-publishing isn't a storm that's engulfing traditional publishers, it's a tsumani they can surf to reach new heights.

Another said, in some ways, we're entering a golden age of publishing: e-devices create a "frictionless delivery system" to get content to readers. He cautioned, though, that a golden age of publishing is not necessarily a golden age for publishers. New skills sets, some known but not widely learned, some not yet known, will be needed to do the publisher's job of connecting creative people to their audience.

A third: digital publishing is about lowering barriers, making it easier and more seamless for books with smaller natural audiences to reach their readers. Connecting Tom Clancy to his readers, he pointed out, was never the problem.

All agreed they're now running two companies, one producing print books and one e-books. Some insist the difference between these two companies right now is less of an issue than understanding the changing nature of the distribution of print books.

Three major issues emerged from this panel.

• One was the question of the role of publishers in this changing landscape. If e-readers and digital packagers can connect writers seamlessly to their audiences -- self e-publishing, in other words, now available on a monumental scale -- what added value does a publisher bring? The answer was widely agreed to be "curation," which can take two forms: the traditional gate-keeper plus editorial-improvement element; and the possibility of discovering what an audience wants and then finding a writer to produce it. This second role is one step beyond the previous point about connecting writers to smaller natural audiences.

• The second was the issue of "discoverability." In the bookstore model, whether chain or indie, people strolled through displays of books. They might have come in for one thing, but they found others. Publishers paid for different kinds of shelf space in the chains; indies that hand-sold shelved accordingly. For e-books, with no physical place to go to make that first discovery, how do you reach the target audience?

(SJR note: The 800-pound gorillas in that room, of course, are the demise of newspaper reviews and the shaky future of B&N and Borders, about which see tomorrow's blog entry. If the chains go under, the question becomes the same for print books, too; it's almost there anyway, now that newspaper reviews have all but vanished. The touted social media -- overwhelmingly Facebook and Twitter, for now -- allow access to vertical communities, but once you find them, what do you do? Take an ad, try to start buzz? Word-of-mouth is amplified by the thousands of online review sites, but whom do you trust and how do you find them?)

• Third is the pricing question. Publishers are still in wild flux, trying to figure out not only what skills they need in the e-world, but the true overhead cost of an e-book and therefore the pricing structure needed to make a profit. Meanwhile, authors e-pubbing their own reverted works are pricing them low, and Amazon is willing right now to price e-books for the Kindle at a loss to grab a massive market share, fighting off the tablets. These phenomena could fix consumers' expectations at a price point so low, publishers (especially the "Big Six") won't be able to afford to make new books.

--To be continued.


S.J. Rozan is the award-winning author of 12 novels, including the mystery series featuring private investigators Lydia Chin and Bill Smith. Her most recent work, On the Line, finds Bill in a high-stakes chase to locate the kidnapped Lydia. For more information about S.J., go to www.sjrozan.com.

What I Wish I'd Known

By Nancy Martin

This year marks the 30th year I’ve been writing and publishing books. What do I wish I’d known when I first sat down at a keyboard to write?

Lots of things. But there’s one biggie that jumps out at me: I spent the first 12 years writing by the seat of my pants — that is, I made up the plot as I wrote the book. At the end of every chapter, I asked myself, “What happens next?” And I wrote whatever I dreamed up. I enjoyed writing that way. My readers seemed to like my books, too. (I wrote romances back then.) But I firmly believe I would have gotten a lot further in my career if I’d done my homework.

I wish I had immersed myself in my craft much earlier than I did. I wish I’d learned everything about how to plot a story much sooner. It’s not that I’d have stopped writing by the seat of my pants — at heart, I’ll always be a bit of a “pantser”— but I wish I hadn’t resisted learning about more technical approaches to writing stories. Yes, I feared I might lose my “muse,” or that the magic might leave if I learned too much.

How wrong I was. My first real instruction about plot came from the late Gary Provost, who taught a wonderful workshop based on fairy tales. Learning to see a story in terms of goal, motivation to reach the goal and the consequences of failure was eye-opening for me. I went home and applied his thinking to my next romance novel — and I received my first starred review! Next up? Dean Koontz’s early how-too book, How to Write Bestselling Fiction, was equally helpful. (Put your characters into “terrible trouble” right away and keep making the trouble worse and worse.) His theories weren’t as complicated as I thought they’d be. As I put Koontz’s information to use, suddenly my own books got a lot more entertaining!

“Why haven’t I learned this stuff before?” I cried to myself.

Syd Field’s book, The Screenwriter's Workbook, taught me about story structure in very basic terms — nothing that really threatened my seat-of-the-pants approach, but certainly enhanced it. At the recommendation of a fellow Sister in Crime, I read Christopher Vogler’s The Writer's Journey — and I discovered how the mythic storytelling elements work not just for The Lord of the Rings-style of books, but for mystery novels, too.

Encouraged by the critical success of the books I wrote using Vogler’s theory, I traveled to New York City and took Robert McKee’s three-day course based on his book, Story. That weekend was life-changing! Okay, McKee had more to say about screenwriting than writing novels, but there are gems in his method that work for book-length fiction, too.

I finally realized the more I knew about writing stories, the better a storyteller I became. To my great relief, I wasn’t killing the magic by learning about my craft.

Since then, I think I’ve memorized parts of Jane Smiley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. And lately, I found the Save the Cat books about screenwriting. I admire Alexandra Sokoloff’s blog, "The Dark Salon." The Snowflake Method breaks plotting down into so few steps that even the most dedicated pantser can’t be intimidated.

I wish I hadn’t waited so long to learn everything I could about how to do my work. I was foolish to be intimidated. It was silly to be worried I’d spoil things for myself. Instead, by learning about plotting, I’ve become a better writer. I only wish I’d done it sooner.

I'm always looking for more ways to learn about my craft. What's your favorite writing-related resource? Please share!



Nancy Martin is the author of nearly 50 popular fiction novels, including the Blackbird Sisters mystery series and the Roxy Abruzzo mysteries. She teaches writing workshops around the country and blogs at The Lipstick Chronicles. Nancy currently serves on the board of Sisters in Crime, editing SinC Links and helping with the Sisters in Crime/Bowker reader research project. Her most recent books are Foxy Roxy and Sticky Fingers (in stores March 30, 2011). For more information, go to www.nancymartin.com.

Women of Mystery: Gypsy and Craig

By Jeffrey Marks

Two women in the 1940s likely had more names than most of their era -- Craig Rice (also known as Georgiana Craig Rice Follows Lipton DeMott) and Gypsy Rose Lee (also known as Rose Louise Hovacs.) They had much more in common as well. Both were fixtures in Chicago. Both loved the nightlife and weren’t too concerned about married lovers. Both were also mystery writers.

Craig had written a string of mystery novels in the early 1940s, beginning with 8 Faces at 3, her first novel, in 1939. She’d published several by the time that Gypsy decided to write one as well.

The rumor has long run through the mystery community that Craig ghostwrote Gypsy’s two mystery novels. Craig mentioned Gypsy in her Time magazine interview. There was correspondence including Craig distributed as part of the publicity campaign for The G-String Murders. And Craig did write a mystery novel for George Sanders, which was a poorly kept secret.

The situation became even more complicated when Craig worked on the screenplay for "Lady of Burlesque" starring Barbara Stanwyck, which was based on The G-String Murders. Craig told Time magazine that she had worked as Gypsy’s publicist, which only fueled the fires.

The relationship between the two authors does cause some suspicion about collaboration. I did my best to debunk the myth in my biography of Craig Rice, using the laws of physics that a body cannot be in two places at once. During the times in question, Craig and Gypsy lived nowhere near each other.

Two recent biographies have shed additional light on the writing of Gypsy’s books.

At the time that she was writing The G-String Murders, Gypsy was living in Brooklyn at a home with W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers and other well-known authors. Harper’s Bazaar’s fiction editor, George Davis, helped Gypsy during this time. He helped her write the first chapters of the book and edited the following chapters as she took over the creation of the work.

Abbott’s biography of Gypsy, American Rose, goes so far as to detail how Gypsy managed to use a typewriter with those long fingernails. Abbott does intimate that Gypsy might have had another kind of literary assistance, however, reporting a rumor that Gypsy and Simon & Schuster editor Lee Wright might have carried on a lesbian affair during the creation of the first novel.

In Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee, Noralee Frankel has located information on the relationship between Craig and Gypsy. This correspondence is most telling. Rice wrote that The G-String Murders left her breathless, hardly the word to describe one’s own work. She asked Gypsy for tips on how she did it. Rice also offered any assistance she could in quashing the rumors about the authorship of Gypsy’s two mystery novels.

These new biographies, while approaching the subject in different ways, both agree on one point: Gypsy wrote her own novels. Her son, Erik Lee Preminger, was able to verify that his mother wrote her own memoirs, so her literary talent cannot be denied. Hopefully, now these two literary titans can stand separately but as friends.



Jeffrey Marks is the award-winning author of "Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: Queen of the Screwball Mystery," "Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s and 1950s," and the Anthony Award-winning "Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography." He is also the author of the U.S. Grant mystery series that includes "The Ambush of My Name" and "A Good Soldier." Marks lives in Cincinnati.

Finding a Good Story Everywhere

By Jackie Houchin

Originally posted published at www.writersinresidence.blogspot.com

[Editor's note: Jackie's blog entry today provides insight into the world of a working journalist. It can also as serve as a mini-handbook in character creation for the working novelist.]


I'm not a fiction writer, but I still get asked the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" What they mean is, where do I find interesting people and events to write about. My answer, like yours, is "everywhere."

Editor Assignments

When I first started writing for a local newspaper, the editor sent me out on specific story assignments: a quadriplegic who'd lived 20 years on life support (that actually turned out to be his mom's story), a man who built model airplanes, a sculptress who made marble look sensual, a window muralist, an orchestra conductor, a trailer park scandal, a middle school with security issues, burglaries at a church and a neighborhood market and my recent 3-part story on women in the LAPD.

He also assigned profiles on local businesses (including a medical "pot" dispensary) and a variety of ethnic restaurants. Easy, right? Just go where I'm told. Yes, that's true, and I did get some "spin-off" stories from those assignments.

Observation

But what is interesting is that I began to "see" my own stories everywhere. A man in front of me at Starbucks had a crossword puzzle on his T-shirt. I remarked on it and we started talking. I learned he created personalized puzzles for businesses, individuals and magazines. He and his business made a great story!

Driving from Costco one day, I saw a man walking a giant tortoise along the sidewalk. I slammed on the brakes and pulled to the curb, utterly fascinated. He agreed to an interview and photo shoot, and after spending a delightful morning with the two friends, I wrote "Walking Newman." It was featured in the Daily News newspaper – front page, "above the fold!"

Browsing in the Flintridge Bookstore one morning, I watched the barista make a latte for a customer. He showed an unusual amount of pride as he handed over the cup. Turns out, he was a "latte artist." He agreed to show me how he did it. I took notes (and photos) on each step of his creative process, including the foam artwork atop the brew. They still have a faded copy of the newspaper story in a frame on their counter.

While pumping gas one afternoon, I noticed a small faded sign across the boulevard that read "Adventure in Postcards." I investigated, and found a little shop crammed with antique and collectible postcards, thousands of them all categorized and labeled in shoeboxes on shelves. The reclusive woman gave me a fascinating interview and photo for my story.

Friends & Family Referrals

Friends are also great resources for story ideas. From their suggestions, I wrote a series on a local Toastmasters chapter, two stories on a pet detective who uses her bloodhounds to find lost pets, an exciting account of a young swimmer's experience in the "Escape from Alcatraz" competition and the story of an elderly couple's 75 years together (with several pithy observations on marriage).

Collectors & Hobbyists

"Crafty" people always make good subjects. I discovered a woman who made sweater-coats for dogs and vintage (1920's) dresses for women. Another had collected almost 2,500 Santa Claus ornaments.

My hubby is a hot-rod enthusiast. His contacts netted me stories about car clubs (one donates generously to the City of Hope, another collects toys for kids at Christmas). A man stopped by to admire our flashy red roadster and began talking about the vintage airplanes he restores. I got some terrific photos and a story about his current plane (and the ones he's crashed).

Unusual Occupations

A local alpaca rancher, a magician who encourages kids to read books, a man who drives a cesspool pumper truck (Oh the things they find in those portable potties!) and a team of hunky lifeguards with life/death rescue stories were all great subjects.

A family-owned art glass company promised to be an interesting profile, but the grandfather's tale of how he'd earned his apprenticeship restoring the ancient glass in England’s Canterbury Cathedral after WW II made a better story.

My horseshoer and veterinarian were fodder for interesting equine stories. The artsy photo I took of the shoer ended up in Country Magazine; the equine dentistry shots on the good doctor's website. (Note: it helps to be able to "shoot" your subjects.)

Event Notices

Pay attention to the signs and banners announcing upcoming events. An official "flag-burning" ceremony hosted by the American Legion, a holiday musical at an elementary school and a horse trail dedication (with local politicians present) got ink, too.

I also scope local newspapers and newsletters for upcoming events that sound interesting. An announcement about an FBI agent speaking on identity theft resulted in one story, a local newsletter on pets (and two brief interviews) resulted in "Pet Scanners" and "Protecting Pets in Hot Weather."

These are only some of the places you can find story ideas. Use your natural curiosity, your observation skills, your contacts and various announcements/notices. Soon you will have more articles than you have time to write, and a whole slew of happy editors.


Jackie Houchin is a freelance writer, book reviewer, and theatre critic. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and California Writers Club.

Time Flies -- or Crawls -- In a Series

By Sandra Parshall


[Originally published at poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com]


How old is your favorite series character? What year does she/he live in?

I won’t be surprised if those questions have you stumped.

Sometimes I think even the authors are a little vague about these details. The question of how to – or whether to – age a protagonist over the course of a series is one that a lot of writers wrestle with. That problem goes hand-in-hand with the dilemma of passing time.

A year or more usually goes by between publication of books in a series. A year has passed in the lives of writer and readers. But has a year passed in the characters’ lives? Or have they cruised out of one dangerous mess and right into the next? Sue Grafton took the latter route, with the result that her Kinsey Milhone is still living in the 1980s, when the first books in the series were published.

If we want our characters to move ahead in real time, that means we have to address their ages. Or do we? Janet Evanovich thinks not. She has declared that Stephanie Plum will be 31 forever. Ed McBain published his first 87th Precinct novel in 1956 and the last one in 2005, but although the times changed in the stories, Carella, Hawes, Meyer, Kling and the rest of the gang stayed on the job at pretty much the same ages. If sales are the best indication, I’d say readers didn’t mind at all.

It’s easy enough to pin down the year if the books are historical and make use of actual events, but those of us who set our stories in “the present” often avoid naming a specific year because we’re afraid future readers will feel they’re reading old news. So the actual year may be kept vague, and we walk a fine line between sounding current and sounding dated. Slang and technology are our banes. In this fickle society, what’s in today may be out and forgotten by the time the book is published.

We also have to be careful about dropping real national and international events into our stories. Many series characters live in a little bubble, as if the outside world doesn’t exist. Sometimes, though, an event changes the world so profoundly that we can’t entirely ignore it in fiction. The multiple-front terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, doesn’t have to be mentioned by name, but we must acknowledge the hassle our characters now face when they travel – no last-minute dashes to airline counters for tickets, followed by quick boardings – and the security cameras and metal detectors in many public buildings.

If the development of a romantic relationship is a major part of a series, the writer has no choice but to slow things down. Readers want the details, they want to share the experience. They don’t want to suddenly jump ahead a year and discover the hero and heroine are now an old married couple with a baby. Deborah Crombie has handled her characters especially well, letting Duncan and Gemma fall in love and create a life together in more or less real time. Their constant involvement in crime is believable because they're police detectives. With amateur detectives, slowing down the personal life leads to a variation of Cabot Cove Syndrome on the crime front: why is this woman falling over a dead body every three weeks?

I’ve faced all these problems (except the marriage and baby) in my Rachel Goddard books.

I didn’t write The Heat of the Moon with the thought that it would be first in a series. The story took possession of my heart and imagination, and all I thought about was following Rachel through her journey of discovery. Selling it took several years. Then I discovered that, whether I had intended to or not, I was writing a series. The Heat of the Moon has one reference in it that firmly sets the story in a particular year, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I’d killed that darling. I’ve had to be vague about years and ages in the subsequent books, although when people ask how much fictional time passed between the first and second, I always say about three years. Then they ask why I didn’t write a book (or two) about those years in Rachel’s life. You can see the kind of trouble writers create for themselves when they’re too specific.

Do you think about the passage of time when you read a series? Does it bother you if you don’t know a character’s exact age? Which writers do you think have handled these issues especially well?

And all of you writers out there: How are you handling your characters' ages and the passage of time in your books? Why did you decide to do it that way?



Sandra Parshall, the author of the award-winning Rachel Goddard mysteries, serves on the SinC/national board as Chapter Liaison. The most recent title in the series is Broken Places.

Random Acts of Book-Giving

By Kathie Felix


I had the best surprise the other day when I opened my mailbox. The first thing I saw was a brown cardboard box that seemed close in size and shape to a hard cover book. I immediately assumed that it contained a book – and then remembered I hadn’t ordered anything lately.

As I walked to my front door, I began to wonder about the package. This turned out to be great fun; the cascade of possibilities – in terms of the contents and the sender – genuinely appealed to the mystery lover in me.

Once indoors, I thought about spending more time in speculation. I took a few steps toward the living room, enjoying the anticipation – and then decided it might be even more fun to know what was inside the box.

It was a treat to open the package and find a copy of Chicago Blues, edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann.

If you haven’t encountered the book yet, it’s an anthology of crime stories about “the real windy city,” with selections written by Chicago authors including SinC founding mother and 2011 MWA Grand Master Sara Paretsky.

It turned out that a longtime friend, Keith Fort, a Chicago resident for most of his adult life, was reading the book and thought that it was something that I would enjoy. He was absolutely correct.

My good fortune at the mailbox reminded me that a few months earlier I had received another unexpected package. That mailing, from my sister, contained a copy of The Murder Room by Michael Capuzzo, a look into the secret investigations of the crime-fighting Vidocq Society. She had been inspired to send the book to me after hearing about it on National Public Radio.

The two surprise packages led me to develop a plan to send another book out into the world to an unsuspecting recipient. I won’t reveal the title or the recipient, but I will offer some questions:

Have you ever received an unexpected gift of a book? Who sent it – and what book did they send?

Would you send a book that’s a perfect fit to an unsuspecting recipient this week? Would you ask an independent bookseller to handle the transaction for you? (And, if you like the idea, would you pass it on?)


Kathie Felix is the managing editor of the SinC blog. She also writes a weekly column for the Loudoun Times-Mirror, a newspaper based in Leesburg, Virginia.