And the Beat Goes On: Creating Characters with Legs, Part 1 of 2 Parts

by Mary Kennedy

[Originally published in the February issue of The Heartline Herald, the newsletter of the New Jersey chapter of the Romance Writers of America.]

Recently, I sat down with four best-selling authors and asked for advice on creating characters that will go on forever. My own character, Dr. Maggie Walsh, has starred in three Talk Radio Mysteries, but naturally I want her to have a very long life! Denise Swanson (the Scumble River series), Carolyn Hart (Death on Demand series), Avery Aames (the Cheese Shop Mysteries) and Krista Davis (the Domestic Diva Mysteries) shared their secrets and gave me some intriguing answers.

Q: How do you keep your characters fresh and interesting?

Carolyn: Dead by Midnight, the 21st in my Death on Demand series, will be published in April. Are Annie and Max Darling still fresh? I hope so. If readers find them lively, the answer may lie in my relationship with Annie and Max. Some years ago my daughter drew my husband aside and said quietly, "Daddy, I'm worried about Mother. I'm afraid she thinks those people are real." He looked at her in surprise and said, "But they are."

Krista: The motivations of the murderers and the other characters drive the books. Sophie usually gets involved to help someone, which isn't a driving force, it's more of a reaction. The other characters are the catalysts for the plots! It's interesting to come up with new characters whose lives drive them to murder.

Q: Does your main character change and evolve over the course of the series?

Denise: Definitely! It's extremely important for the protagonist to grow and learn from his or her experiences. In the first book of my Scumble River series, my sleuth, Skye, is forced to move home after losing her job, maxing out her credit cards, and being jilted. Her original plan is to slip into town, save some money, get a decent job reference and leave Scumble River as soon as possible. I'm now on book #13, Murder of a Bookstore Babe, and she's learned to appreciate the town and her family, while still not always being happy with them.

Krista: Yes. Sophie doesn't have a major breakthrough or a great epiphany, but she does evolve, particularly in her relationships with other people.

Q: Do her core values remain the same?

Krista: Absolutely! Sophie is a very well-grounded person. She has her insecurities, like we all do, but her core values are quite strong and don't shift.

Avery: Absolutely. First and foremost, Charlotte is about family and friends. When her cousin and his twin girls need a roof over their heads, she takes them in. When her grandmother is accused of murder, she comes to her defense. When others think her friend is involved in a murder plot, she surges forward to get to the truth. When another friend writes a play that many think is offbeat, she stands by her side.

Denise: It is essential that the character's core values remain the same so that, although that character has grown and evolved, he or she is still the same person the reader originally met and liked.

Carolyn: That is at the crux of the mystery novel. The protagonists want to live in a good and decent world and always strive to do the right thing.

To be continued...

Mary Kennedy is a psychologist in private practice and the award-winning author of The Talk Radio Mysteries. Her latest release is Stay Tuned for Murder.

Dorothy B. Hughes: Ghost of Honor

By Jeffrey Marks

This year, one of Left Coast Crime's Ghosts of Honor is Dorothy B. Hughes, one of my favorite authors. The conference is being held March 24 - 27 in Santa Fe. I’d love to be leaving the cold behind to head for New Mexico but, alas, I’m going to be admiring from afar. I sent off a basket of books to the conference, mainly novels by Hughes.

Hughes and I share bonds in the mystery world. First, she so very kindly offered her assistance to me when I was writing my biography of Craig Rice. I corresponded with her about Craig and their common bond of being women authors in the 1940s. Hughes shared stories of sitting on the front porch with Craig and Anthony Boucher, drinking lemonade and talking about books and reviews. She was generous with information that helped to round out Craig’s character.

After her death, I wrote about Hughes in Atomic Renaissance, devoting a chapter to her works, her Hollywood career, and her decision to give up writing to care for her family. Her last novel, The Expendable Man, is a work of art. For 50 pages, we see the nervous energy of the protagonist as he picks up a blonde who is later murdered. His anxiety is so palpable that you wonder as a reader why he’s so paranoid, until Hughes lets you in on his secret. I can’t tell you the secret, because it would spoil the novel, but it’s definitely worth reading for yourself. For a last novel, it was a wonderful way to go.

I was amazed at some of the fantastic works (Dread Journey, The Blackbirder and others) by Hughes that hold up 50 years after their publication. Of course, she is best known for In A Lonely Place, a masterpiece that is overlooked too often. It covers the anxiety and darkness of the men who have been taught to kill in World War II and who must return home to fit into a society that no longer appreciates that skill. If it wasn’t for the Bogart film, the book would likely not be remembered at all.

Finally, Hughes and I have one more bond in common. We’ve both written a biography of Erle Stanley Gardner. Her book in 1978 used significant parts of Gardner’s own memoirs, while mine is hoping to cement Gardner’s place in the genre with more analysis of his work in the field. Hers is done — and I am immensely jealous of that! I’m still writing the 1950s, but working to finish that decade in the next few weeks. And off to Mississippi in a few weeks for more research!



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.

Writing: Time to Hang it Up or Time to Ignore the Voices of Doom?

By Ellen Byerrum

[Originally posted at http://ellenbyerrum.livejournal.com]

The times are changing for writers and they are dire. You might as well hang up your pen and paper, shut off your computer and go wait tables -- at least according to news reports swirling all around us.

These are some of the tidbits I keep hearing:

• Women’s books are not getting reviewed as often as men's books.

• Women are not being published as often as men.

• With Borders closing hundreds of stores, it will be murder on the mystery midlist, and many writers will have no (or one less) champion in their corner.

• With e-books making their mark and publishers afraid to take chances (unless of course there is a high celebrity bimbo quotient), the ground is rapidly shifting beneath our ergonomic writing chairs.

• Publishers will continue to look for blockbusters and celebrities and not take a chance on "smaller" books and lesser-known writers who take time to build an audience.

• Writers must have a website, they must relentlessly tweet and blog and Facebook and Skype and make video book trailers for YouTube and hand out bookmarks and postcards and dance on the high wire of publicity (not to mention the head of that pin) and attend every conference and meeting they can find all over the country. At their own expense. They must be able to entertain a crowd and drop one-liners like a pro on the comedy circuit because nobody wants a boring, or heaven forbid, a shy writer. The only thing they don't have to do is make balloon animals. Not yet anyway. But writers must also keep up the high quality of their work. However, that’s really secondary, hardly important at all. It's all about successfully navigating the endless sea of social media.

Is that all? Really? Phew, I’m exhausted.

Was it really any different in the past? Aside from the relentless social media chores, has publishing ever been anything but a ship of disaster and heartbreak ahead? Full of cautionary tales for anyone who wants to be a scribe, or for that matter, an artist, a musician or a dancer? Hasn’t it always been a tricky proposition for women? Seriously, is it becoming harder, or is it just transforming into something new, easier in some ways, but harder in new and unexpected ways?

It seems to me that writing a book has always been daunting and difficult, the Impossible Dream. When I started writing my first book about Lacey Smithsonian, mixing fashion and crime, a little mystery, a little comedy, a little romance, a little snarky social commentary, there were no books like mine out there. No heroine like Lacey. I had no idea whether anyone would publish me or read me, I only knew that this was the book I had to write, because it was the book I wanted to read. I also had to shut my ears to my critics, both external and internal. Yet that book, Killer Hair, was published and is on at least its tenth printing. And the seventh book in the series, Shot Through Velvet, was just released in February. All seven are still in print and on bookstore shelves, and I'm up to my ears in writing Book Number Eight.

Maybe it takes a bit of idealistic innocence (or sheer ignorance) and a stubborn spine to succeed; maybe it takes a belief that, no matter how ridiculous the odds, you might just be the one to make it, as crazy as it seems. The one to make it past the gatekeepers and past the pitfalls and find an audience and a home in the publishing market. On a fool’s errand, perhaps only the fools win.

And what will I do in this brave new publishing world? All I can do is keep my head down, square my shoulders, and march forward into the winds of change. And no matter how compelling it is, maybe, just maybe, I should stop reading every dismal prediction of doom that comes my way.


Ellen Byerrum is the author of the Crime of Fashion mysteries. Two of her books -- Killer Hair and Hostile Makeover -- were adapted for film by the Lifetime Movie Network. The seventh and latest installment in the series is Shot Through Velvet.

Recycling, the Literary Version

By Sandra Parshall

[Originally posted in April 2010 at poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com]


I was happy to hear Ian McEwan on the radio last week, describing his habit of saving deleted passages from his novels because they might contain “nuggets” he can use in later work. I don’t have much in common with this renowned writer, but we’re alike in one way: we both practice a literary version of recycling.

I don’t reuse only the nuggets, though. I recycle characters, subplots, whole scenes. Like one of my cloth tote bags, many elements of my books used to be something else.

When Disturbing the Dead was published, I wrote about the transformation of a character who first appeared in a manuscript titled Outside Agitators, a story about young antipoverty workers and the Appalachian people they tried to help during the War on Poverty. I worked on that novel for years and never turned it into a coherent story with a proper ending. But I’ve been carving away chunks ever since and using them in other books.

One of those chunks was a teenage mountain girl with red hair and freckles and the unlikely name of Lana Turner. She longed to leave the poverty-stricken hollow where she grew up and move on to a better life.

When I wrote Disturbing the Dead, I kept Lana’s dreams but made her a little older and gave her a Melungeon – mixed race – heritage, which meant changing her coloring to olive skin, black hair, and bright blue eyes. My agent told me I would also have to change her name, because some editors disliked characters with famous people’s names. Lana became Holly Turner.

I wasn’t finished cannibalizing my old unfinished manuscript. In the original, I wrote about antipoverty workers as young idealists, well-intentioned but naive about their power to effect change in a region where gigantic energy corporations control the economy and politics. When I began working on Broken Places, I asked myself what some of these people would be like decades later, if they had stayed on after their government service ended and tried to continue their activism on behalf of the poor. Maybe they would have had some small successes over the years. Most likely, they would have experienced far more failures and been forced to swallow a bitter dose of disillusionment.

I plucked Cameron and Meredith Taylor from the pages of Outside Agitators, fast-forwarded to the present, and made these two disappointed idealists my murder victims. Meredith, I learned for the first time, had a secret ambition to be a writer, and her final – unfinished – manuscript was titled (ta da!) Outside Agitators. In its pages, Captain Tom Bridger of the Mason County (VA) Sheriff’s Department discovers clues to the motive behind the murders.

Mrs. Lily Barker, the self-educated woman from Disturbing the Dead who believes she has “the sight” (that’s what Appalachian natives call the ability to see beyond the tangible world), wasn’t lifted from any earlier work of mine, but she was inspired by a minor character in Outside Agitators who was too colorful to discard. Mrs. Barker proved popular with readers, and a woman who attended one of my library events made me promise to bring her back, so she returns in Broken Places and also shows up in the book I’m currently writing.

Mason County, my invention, is similar to the mountain community in the original Outside Agitators, but it’s in southwestern Virginia rather than West Virginia, and even the coal companies have largely deserted it by now. In my work in progress, though, Tom will pay a visit to a mountaintop mining operation. Other writers may favor idyllic small communities, but I’d rather write about places where sudden gashes of ugliness mar the natural beauty and decades of lies and rivalries and betrayals simmer just under the surface, ready to erupt and bleed all over the present.

All those years I poured into Outside Agitators, with no end in sight and little hope of ever seeing it published, have paid off richly, and I suspect I’ll use still more chunks of it before I’ve exhausted its possibilities.

When I delete a passage from a work in progress, I’m careful to stash it in a file rather than throwing it out. There must be some reason I wrote it in the first place, and if it doesn’t seem to fit now, it might be just what I need to fill a hole in a future story.



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.

Breakfast at Malice Domestic

Sisters in Crime hosts its annual breakfast at Malice Domestic at the Hyatt Regency in Bethesda, Maryland on Sunday, May 1, from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m.

The event offers a chance to toast the 25th birthday of Sisters in Crime, meet new friends – and even win a fun door prize.

Advance reservations are required. The cost is $20 for members and $30 for non-members. You can register online at www.sistersincrime.org.

Will you be at Malice Domestic this year? We hope you'll join us for breakfast!

SinC into Cyberspace: Re-launching the Internet Chapter

By Nan Harrington

Internet chapter? I didn’t even know we had an internet chapter! And, for that matter, why do we even need such a chapter?

Sisters in Crime does indeed have an internet chapter and it fulfills many vital purposes that no local chapter can achieve. The internet chapter exists to offer support, information, activities, interviews, resources, and interaction for all those who live where there are no local chapters; for those who are unable to attend because of illness or bad weather (remember this past February?!); or for members of local SinC chapters who want a “SinC supplement” between their local chapter meetings.

After nearly “closing our doors” in November, we realized that we offer crucial services that are valuable and unique to our SinC community.

As I live most of the time in Cuernavaca, Mexico where, needless to say, there are no local chapters even remotely close, having a cyber-community is of utmost importance to me. But, one doesn’t need to live in Outer Mongolia to choose to become a member of the internet chapter! We exist for some, not as a replacement for their local chapter, but as an addition to it.

In the next few months, we will launch our “new-and-improved” web site. We plan to include: guest interviews (authors, agents, editors, experts, booksellers); monthly member profiles; critique groups; guest blogs; weekly activities and tips; “soon-to-be-published” books by our members; a calendar of upcoming events, contests, retreats; a resource library; links to booksellers; and most importantly… information on how to join!

Now comes the Audacious Appeal for Aid! Anyone who has launched a new chapter, assumed the presidency of a local chapter, or revamped the format of their current chapter is well aware of the initial – and often quite daunting – impediments to dazzling success. We do need your help. Please consider offering yourself as a potential interviewee, blogger, expert, or participant for our internet chapter!

Since we exist in cyberspace, you don’t need to leave the comfort of your home to render assistance and encouragement! I should have mentioned that in addition to being audacious, this call for support is quite blatant. But truly needed!

My email address is: nan.harrington[at]gmail.com.
Our “in-process” web site will be: www.sinc-ic.org.



Nan Harrington, President of the Internet Chapter of Sisters in Crime, is a 5th generation Texan, a retired university professor, a wanna-be crime writer (her new passion!), and an inveterate traveler. She lives in Dallas and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Celebrating 25 Years of Sisters in Crime

Beginning this month, Sisters in Crime is celebrating more than a year of milestones marking the organization’s 25 years of promoting the professional development and advancement of women writing crime fiction.

The seeds were sown in March 1986 at the first conference on Women in the Mystery organized by B.J. Rahn at Hunter College. During the session, Sara Paretsky spoke on the growing use of graphic violence against women in mysteries.

“Remarks I made at the conference set off a firestorm around the mystery world,” she said. “Women began calling me from all over the country with their personal histories of treatment/mistreatment.”

Later that year, Phyllis Whitney turned up the volume for the voices of women writing mystery and crime fiction when she wrote a letter to Mystery Writers of America pointing out that women authors weren’t being nominated for awards.

The group that would become Sisters in Crime made its debut in 1986 at the Baltimore Bouchercon when Paretsky convened the initial meeting of women interested in the project. During the session, she pointed out that books by women crime fiction writers weren’t being reviewed at a rate matching their participation in the publishing industry.

Nearly six months later, during Edgars Week in the spring of 1987, a breakfast meeting at Sandra Scoppettone’s New York loft brought women in the mystery and crime fiction industry together for additional discussion and the formation of the organization.

The first mission statement of the organization was “Sisters in Crime is committed to helping women who write, review, buy or sell crime fiction. Our ultimate goal is to become a service organization to address issues of concern to everyone involved in the mystery field.”

The initial steering committee members were Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Susan Dunlap, Betty Francis, Charlotte MacLeod, Kate Mattes, Sara Paretsky and Nancy Pickard.

The organization’s first elected President was Nancy Pickard. Margaret Maron served as Vice President.

Founding member Carolyn Hart created the backbone of the organization’s communications program by creating and compiling the Sisters in Crime mailing list.

“Some of my best memories are of the true support that grew from nothing to a nationwide network,” Maron said.

Plans for the 25th anniversary celebration will be discussed at the Sisters in Crime Presidents’ meeting next month at Malice Domestic in Bethesda, Maryland. If you’d like to attend that meeting, contact Chapter Liaison Sandra Parshall.



Historical information originally compiled by Lora Roberts.

The Prison Warden's Job: A 'Mentor Monday' Report

Today’s blog post provides a look at a past Sisters in Crime Mentor Monday conversation with Ms. Tekla Dennison Miller (pictured at left), former warden of a men’s maximum security prison and a women’s maximum/close custody prison near Detroit. She is a national speaker on women’s issues and criminal justice and the author of two memoirs – The Warden Wore Pink and A Bowl of Cherries – and two novels – Life Sentences and Inevitable Sentences.

The complete Mentor Monday session can be found archived on the SinC listserv. If you are writing about prisons, this file offers some extraordinary detail in terms of warden insights, sociological perspective, prison employee and prisoner motivation, substance abuse issues in prisons, statistics and additional resources for more information.

Access to the listserv is a Sisters in Crime membership benefit. For information about the listserv, go to www.sistersincrime.org.

Below are a handful of questions and answers from the day’s session:

Q: How does a woman maintain control over a group of male prisoners Is being female a plus or a minus in that situation?

A: Sadly, I – as most women working in prisons – had more difficulty with the male staff than the prisoners. Although great strides have been made by women in this field, corrections remains the most gender-biased, sex-segregated and male-dominated component of the criminal justice system.

I encountered this when I became the warden of the men’s maximum security prison. The male deputy warden, my subordinate, told me that no woman should or can run a men’s max. Also several male employees felt like they had been demoted because they had to work for a woman warden.

… Of course, not all the men who worked in the prison felt that way. Some even were glad that I came aboard because the culture changed to a more tolerant one for everyone. This brought about less violence. Those who just couldn’t work for me I helped transfer to other prisons. By the time I retired, the men working at the facility asked me to stay.

As for the inmates, a study done in the mid-90s showed that the presence of women working in a men’s prison reduced assaults against employees and other inmates.

Q: If this [location and setting] isn’t realistic, could you tell me why and make a suggestion as to how to still get her dead as needed within the confines of typical prison routine?

A: In your scenario, having the victim in an isolated area is realistic. Sadly, many assaults take place in the bathrooms. Even more take place on the yard when the attack is obscured by all the other prisoners milling around. The shank normally used in the attack is usually dropped on the ground once the prints are wiped from the handle. That way, no one can identify who had the shank or who assaulted the victim. Too many inmates present and no prints.

Q: I frequently drive past both the private prison, Corrections of America, and the U.S. federal prison in Leavenworth. I’m curious, what determines whether a convict is sent to one or the other?

A: Corrections Corporation of America is the largest company that builds and manages prisons for corrections in both states and federal systems. They also manage the largest prison transportation system.

Private prisons became popular when the number of prison beds available could not keep up with the incarceration rates. Not all states have private prisons. However, most are medium custody or lower. Each corrections department develops a contract that controls how the private prison will be managed.

Q: … We had an escape a few years ago that was a bit of a comedy of errors. The friend who had arranged to pick up the escapee on the highway near the hospital got pulled over for drunk driving, so didn’t make it. The guy jacked a car (luckily not hurting anyone) and drove to Kansas City. When he saw himself on TV, he asked the bartender to turn it down. He’s back inside now.

A: In regard to the escape and comedy of errors, this is not uncommon. One case I know of is – when an armed robber approached a bank teller and demanded money, the teller asked for ID, stating it was policy. The robber showed her his ID. Another robber was found because he left a trail of candy (he also stole) wrappers.

Q: Do women end up in prison because of abuse situations in their lives?

A: Most of the women in prison who have committed murder are there because they have murdered their abuser. Defense attorneys and many judges are trying to change the way we handle/prosecute such cases. But little has changed. Physical or sexual abuse statistics are below:

57% report being abused
69% of those reporting said the abuse occurred before they were 18
Most were abused by male members of the immediate family or a partner
56% committed a crime to please an abusive partner
45% committed a crime to get drugs for an abusing partner

Women prisoners basically see no hope in their lives and feel they either deserve a life of abuse or that there is no alternative.

Nine Must-Have Clauses for Digital Rights Contracts

By Michael Stackpole

Originally published at:
http://www.michaelastackpole.com


I knew it would happen. It had to happen. There is money to be made and, whenever there is money to be made, people will rise up to make it.

I don’t, in this instance, refer to hardworking authors, but the parasites who are looking to make a fast buck by making low-rent investments in properties they believe they’ll be able to exploit. To what am I referring?

Digital rights to authors’ backlists. There are a variety of individuals — traditional publishers included — who are buying up the rights to backlists for little or no advances against royalties, with no firm schedule for publication, with no distribution deals in place, and with little or no expertise in how to actually create an ebook. And yet, writers who have complained for eons about how badly they are used and abused by publishers are turning around and selling off these assets for a pittance.

This is what the landscape looks like right now:

Traditional publishers are offering 25% of the NET on electronic sales, zero for advances, with no pub dates attached. If any publisher made such an offer for a paper publication, they’d be laughed out of the marketplace, pure and simple. While the royalty might sound great, the lack of an advance and the lack of a publishing window means the publisher has zero investment in getting the product out in a timely manner. They’re snagging the rights so they’ll have something to sell at some point.

By way of example, three of my novels are now available for the iPhone: A Secret Atlas, When Dragons Rage and The Grand Crusade. Random House sublicensed the electronic rights to those books to ScrollMotion, Inc., the creators of the Iceberg reading apps. The App itself has several screen shots to help sell it, the first being a picture of the cover of my book. The next three screen shots show the interface and provide glimpses of text which I did not write — and would never have written on my worst day on the job. I hope no one mistakes it for text from the book.

The pre-2009 contracts with publishers grant authors 50% of the NET, which is a better deal, but this is still the NET. Let’s look at A Secret Atlas for a breakdown here, shall we? The App costs $6.99. This means that ScrollMotion, Inc. is paid $4.89 per copy sold (70% of retail price). I don’t know exactly what ScrollMotion, Inc. is making on the deal, but let’s assume 10%. They send $4.40 on to Random House. And then Random House sends half of that, or $2.20, on to me.

Under the new 25% royalty deals, I’d only be getting $1.10.

In three to nine months after the sale.

Conversely, selling the same book for $5 myself off my website, I’d make $4.55 per copy. Immediately. Selling it myself via the Kindle, I’d make $3.50 in 60 days. Selling through the iBookstore directly, I’d make the same as the Kindle deal and, selling through third parties, I’d pull at least $2.50. So, by controlling the rights myself, I’m going to make out better than the best deal anyone else is offering me.

Authors are now being faced with choices that are not easy, but they need to ask one question whenever offered a backlist deal: “If it is that valuable to them, how valuable is it to me?” By way of example, last month alone, ebook sales for Talion: Revenant via the Kindle, earned me over $400. That may not seem like much, but if someone is offering a token amount of money, like $1K, to snap up the rights to books, and yet one can turn around and make almost half that in a single month, you have to be crazy not to think about doing this stuff yourself.

If your reply to the above is, “But I don’t know enough about computers to be able to make an ebook,” stop and think about it this way. Making ebooks isn’t rocket science. It’s easier than dealing with copyedits on a novel, and you’ve done that. And this is a job that will pay you back. Instead of being happy someone is giving you a fish, this is your chance to learn to fish; and who’s going to be more motivated than you to let your fans know your books are available again?

If, on the other hand, your reply is, “I don’t want to learn how to make ebooks,” well, fine. Just don’t turn around and complain about how you’re being handled in the ebook realm.

Realistically, here are the things to demand in any ebook contract:

1) A cash advance equal to an estimate of the first two years royalties. (If this amount cannot be calculated because “this is a new market,” then don’t go for the deal. This person is speculating. Let them do that with someone else’s work.)

2) A six-month window for publication of each book under contract. (Estimated time to prepare a book as an ebook is 20 hours from scan to publication. If they do not have the staff or equipment for this, don’t go for the deal. It’s a hobby for them, not a business.)

3) A sunset clause on the contract, preferably two years, after which the contract will be renegotiated at the author’s option. (The technology is changing too fast for you to be locked into a long-term contract without hope of renegotiation.) It is a seller’s market and will continue to be so, as new formats and platforms develop, royalties to authors will increase, not decrease. Do not get locked into a longterm contract for peanuts.

4) Clearly define which formats are to be used. At this time there are three: Epub, Kindle/Mobi and PDF which should be provided. All other formats, including smart phone apps and gaming console applications, should be treated differently and negotiated for in good faith. (Think of formats as foreign languages and this all becomes very clear.)

5) Copies of all files, including source files, are to be delivered to the author for his use beyond the life of the contract. Copies of the books should be DRM free, and the author has the option to make “review” copies of said books available for the purpose of publicity.

6) Electronic rights to the books are limited to one language only (i. e. English). Translations and electronic publication of translations are to be negotiated separately.

7) Where there are multiple books in a series, the negotiations should include royalties on a per volume basis and on an omnibus basis, with the publication of an omnibus edition being mandated.

8 ) Royalties should be calculated and paid every 60 days (within the Amazon and Apple pay windows).

9) The files will be made available to the author to sell from his own webstore, with him paying the publisher the equivalent rate as Amazon, with accounting every 60 days. (Because electronic sales are inherently immune to audit, only by selling work directly can an author have any idea of a) true sales figures and b) failure-to-deliver rates which might address why bandwidth-per-file figures do not match sales perfectly.)

I’m sure I’ve missed out on a couple of provisions that should be included. I know many of these will be considered dealbreakers by publishers. So be it. If they want to sell ebooks, they have to have ebooks. I know they can get them from someone else, but if they want mine, they’ll find I’m not giving them away.

And, quite frankly, no other author with enough neurons to form a synapse should either.


Photo by: Michael C. Pearo

Michael Stackpole is a New York Times bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy and a game designer. He is the author of BattleTech and Star Wars novels, as well as original fantasy novels such as Talion: Revenant, the DragonCrown War series and the Age of Discovery series.

Writing in Paradise

By Marcia Talley

My friend, mystery novelist Elaine Viets who lives there, says that Ft. Lauderdale is the farthest south you can live and still get meaningful work done.

I’ve checked the maps, and my present location — 26° 35.51 N, 77° 00.36 W to be precise — is exactly 28 minutes of latitude (approximately 32 miles) north of Elaine’s condo in Lauderdale, so as a novelist, I figure I’m safe, but it’s not always easy writing while living in paradise.

We’re in a rented house on Dickie’s Cay, a tiny strip of land that forms the harbor that protects Man-o-War Cay, a settlement of boat-builders and church-going people with a year-round population of approximately 150. There’s a hardware store —“if we don’t have it, you don’t need it” — where items that went on the shelf 20 years ago are still for sale with their original price tags. There’s one sit-down restaurant — best bacon cheeseburgers in the world at the Dock-n-Dine, my husband says — a couple of gift shops, a sailmaker’s shop where four ladies sit at ancient sewing machines turning out the most beautiful and practical canvas bags, and two groceries that don’t sell cigarettes or booze. No law against it, they simply don’t.

Albury’s Harbour Market, where I shop, is the size of your average two-car garage, but I can’t think of anything that Phyllis doesn’t have — even half-and-half! — in that tiny, neat-as-a-pin store. Yesterday, just as I was leaving with my purchases, her husband, Jeff, came in with some fish he’d just caught; an immediate change in dinner plans! I shop, Phyllis puts it on our tab, and we pay up at the end of the month. With a tab, I feel like I really belong.

No TV, no daily newspaper. There are no ATMs. The bank is open on Tuesdays from 10 to 2. And few cars; rush hour is two golf carts meeting on The Queen’s Highway, an eight-foot-wide strip of concrete that bisects the narrow island.

There are no roads where we are on Dickie’s Cay, and our family “car” is an Avon dinghy. To go shopping or to eat out, we walk out to the end of the pier, climb down a wooden ladder, fire up the outboard and putt-putt across to Man-o-War.

I couldn’t resist setting my eighth Hannah Ives novel, Without a Grave, in these islands, although I took the very great liberty of sandwiching my fictional islands between Scotland Cay to the north and Man-o-War Cay to the south while pushing Fowl Cay a bit further out into the Atlantic Ocean. I must apologize in advance for an inconvenience this will cause to cruising sailors.

My office is in “Lookout,” a cottage that’s cantilevered out over the Sea of Abaco. Across the water you can see Sandy Cay (occupied) and Garden Cay (unoccupied, but with a neat little cove and a house abandoned, Mary Celeste-like, as if the owners simply walked away leaving pots on the stove, beach towels draped over chairs, and dirty laundry in the corner). I feel a novel coming on!

On the screen of my laptop right now are the page proofs for A Quiet Grave, Hannah’s 10th adventure. My last chance to make changes!

Counter-clockwise from my ‘return’ key is a yellow pad with the opening pages of a fourth “Marjorie Ann” short story, my iPad (including eight Edgar-nominated novels downloaded to my Kindle app), a folder bought at the Bodleian Museum Shop in Oxford following the St Hilda’s Crime and Mystery weekend last summer that holds important papers like my upcoming flight information for SleuthFest, a Roget’s thesaurus (the only true edition, IMHO, the one with numbered categories), a notepad where I’ve scribbled my grocery list and a Bahamian school notebook with a picture of Sir Milo Boughton Butler, G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., first Governor-General of the Bahamas on the cover. Inside this notebook are some disjointed ideas that may or may not turn out to be Book 11.

There’s a nice selection of paperback books, too, left at “Lookout” by visiting friends. The conch shell resting in the window is blown every day — with varying degrees of success, depending on how far we are into cocktail hour — at sunset. Hey, it’s always five o’clock somewhere!

A sudden rainstorm followed by a rainbow, a sunset that sets the horizon ablaze, a mysterious motor yacht anchored off the island (excuse me while I grab my binoculars), a hummingbird checking you out. Yes, there are distractions while working in paradise, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Top photo: Lookout Cottage hovering over the Sea of Abaco.

Middle photo: Marcia Talley at Hope Town Harbor, Elbow Cay.

Bottom photo: A writer's desk in paradise.

A longer version of this essay, “Hannah’s Excellent Vacation,” appeared in Mystery Readers Journal, Island Mysteries, Vol. 26, no.3, Fall 2010. http://www.mysteryreaders.org/Issues/island.html


Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of All Things Undying and eight previous Hannah Ives mysteries. The 10th book in the series, A Quiet Death, will be published this summer. Marcia's short stories appear in more than a dozen collections. She is the immediate past president of Sisters in Crime.

Have You Paid Your Dues?

Your membership in Sisters in Crime helps the organization to fulfill its mission to promote the professional development and advancement of women crime writers to achieve equality in the industry.

Please take a moment this weekend to make sure that you’ve paid your Sisters in Crime dues for 2011.

A two-tier dues structure is now in place; members may register in either the Professional or Active membership category.

A Professional member may be one of the following: an author pursuing a career in mystery writing, a bookseller, a publisher, a librarian, an editor or any individual with a business interest in promoting the goals and purposes of Sisters in Crime, Inc. The annual dues for Professional members: $40.

An Active member may be a fan, a reader or any member who does not have a business interest in promoting the goals and purposes of Sisters in Crime, Inc. The annual dues for Active members: $35.

Both membership categories have access to a range of membership benefits, such as:

• Local and Internet-based chapters (including an Internet chapter for members of all interests and a chapter that provides support and critique group options for unpublished members)

• A national members-only listserv that offers an ongoing online conversation – and special guests for “Ask the Experts” sessions on “Mentor Mondays”

• SinCLinks, a monthly digest of industry news from a range of sources

• The inSinC Quarterly, the Sisters in Crime news bulletin

• Access to the annual SinC Publishers’ Summit Reports
  

• An author-finder listing at www.sistersincrime.org

• Access to the SinC book club database

• Reports from the on-going SinC review monitoring project that watches media coverage to quantify the coverage of authors by gender
  

• Advance members-only access to SinC-published books on writing and other professional development topics, including Breaking and Entering: The Road to Success and Shameless Promotion for Brazen Hussies.

• Grants for special events

• Special conference programs/member discounts

• Networking and mentoring opportunities -- and fun

To pay your dues, go to SistersinCrime.org, look under the “Quick Links” menu on the right hand side of the Home page, select “Renew” and follow the prompts to renew your membership. You may also click here to renew.

We hope you’ll continue your journey in the world of mystery and crime fiction as a member of Sisters in Crime.

Write Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

By J. J. Murphy

I’ve always been outnumbered. I was the only boy in a family with four girls. I now have a wife and twin daughters, so my dog and I represent the male minority of our female-majority family.

For the last few years, I’ve been one of only a couple of men in the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. I’m a Mister with an overwhelming number of wonderful Sisters.

When I decided to write a mystery, it was natural to pick a female protagonist. (And not just any female protagonist, but legendary writer and wisecracker Dorothy Parker. More on her in a minute.)

But here’s the interesting thing: My choice to use a female protagonist was not only a creative decision but also a “business” one. Why? Because women read mysteries, and women readers naturally prefer women protagonists. If I was going to get published, I reasoned, I had to find a female sleuth.

But here’s something I didn’t count on: My editor asked me to use a “gender neutral” name. Huh?

“We don’t want anyone to have to think twice when they’re considering whether to buy your book,” she explained. And women readers might think twice about buying a book written by a man but featuring a woman.

All righty! Whatever it takes to get published, I thought. I’ll be a woman. I’ll be a platypus, if that’s what it takes.

We settled on using my initials. (Call me J.J.! I’m in good company. On Sunday mornings I get together for coffee with J.D. Robb and J.K. Rowling. And then I wake up.)

Now I face something else I didn’t count on: I’m lumped into the mystery subgenre of “cozies,” a category largely ignored by the literati and book reviewing powers-that-be. Meanwhile, it feels like James Patterson and Tom Clancy can pump out a book a week, which gets instant best-seller status, prime positioning in the book store, reviews in every newspaper, and an option for the movie rights.

What’s up with that? What separates those big boys from us? Our frilly book covers and lack of violence (and heightened vocabularies), that’s what.

Again, we’re in good company. My gal Dorothy Parker faced the same problem daily. She was one of the only women accepted into the boys’ club that was the Algonquin Round Table. (You know Dorothy Parker. Even if you don’t know Dorothy Parker, you do know her. She coined such phrases as “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” and “Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”)

We can take courage from Dorothy. She matched wits with guys from the Ivy League, yet she never went to college — never even graduated from high school. Now, 90 years later, she’s the most well-known of the members of the Algonquin Round Table. (Can you name any others?) Her collected works have never gone out of print.

So, I’m fine being a woman. I’m honored to count myself as a Sister. Just don’t ask to borrow my size 13 high heels.

And speaking of Dorothy Parker, which current actress would you select to play her in a movie? Vote here: http://www.roundtablemysteries.com/cast_the_movie.html.


Top photo: J. J. Murphy and spouse at the launch of Murder Your Darlings.
Bottom photo: A young Dorothy Parker.


J. J. Murphy is an award-winning health care writer in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Murder Your Darlings, a humorous historical mystery featuring Dorothy Parker, a dead body under the famed Algonquin round table and New York in the Roaring 20s. For more information on J. J., go to www.roundtablemysteries.com.

Blogging Bouchercon, Part 1

Greetings mystery lovers!

I'm Jon Jordan and I'm hosting this year's Bouchercon in St. Louis.

I've been a fan of the convention for a long time. I thought it would be nice to pay it forward and so, along with David Thompson, I decided to put in a bid. As you may know, David passed along last September. And while he can't be replaced, I'm making an effort to fill his shoes by bringing in a lot of people to help out.

A big part of the convention is the panel sessions. This year's panels will be put together by Judy Bobalik and my wife, Ruth Jordan. (Contact info here: http://bouchercon2011.com/programming.php)

To be considered for a panel, you of course need to be registered. We're also asking people to fill out a short questionnaire to make it easier to place folks on panels.

Many people seem to get into a comfortable zone when doing panels, always doing the same type with the same people. Our hope is to mix it up a bit and, hopefully, expose fans to authors they haven't read yet -- and expose authors to fans they may not have reached yet. Just because you may write books involving a lawyer, that doesn't mean there may not be other panels for you to do.

Judy and I have put together panels for a number of Bouchercons and have helped with other conventions as well. What this means is that we've heard a lot of feedback from fans -- and Judy, Ruth and I are getting really good at this.

We make an effort to play to individual strengths, but we also want people to do something a little different if possible. If you are on a panel, but at first glance aren't sure why, trust us, there is a reason. It's our hope to put panelists on a panel that will entertain the fans and bring new readers to authors.

Not everyone will get a panel; there are just too many authors signing up these days for Bouchercon for us to place everyone. Because of this, we will also be doing a number of craft sessions and the 20-on-the-20. To increase your chances, it helps to be available for all four days of Bouchercon. The more available you are, the better the chance of us finding a place for you.

I know that not all authors love the early morning panels -- but you know what? The fans are there and ready to go.

We know that authors love being on panels and we try to put as many authors on panels as we can. But panels aren't the only reason to come to Bouchercon. The sheer volume of attendees means connecting with fans, booksellers, other authors and any number of other people in the biz.

To sum up, I guess what I'm saying is that the panels are a big part of this, but don't hang your success at Bouchercon on a 50-minute panel you share with four or five other people. There's a lot more to it! Bouchercon is about celebrating the mystery genre, and we hope you'll be celebrating with us!


Photo: Jon and Ruth Jordan.


Jon Jordan is the publisher of Crimespree Magazine and the host of Bouchercon 2011. In the coming months, he will be "Blogging Bouchercon" on the SinC blog. For more information on Bouchercon, see http://bouchercon2011.com/. Jon can be reached at Jon@bouchercon2011.com.

Two More SinC Library Grants Awarded

The Folsom Public Library in Folsom, California, and the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base Library in Goldsboro, North Carolina, are the most recent winners of the Sisters in Crime “We Love Libraries!” book-buying lottery.

Each library was given $1,000 for the purchase of books of any kind for the library collection.

To date, the SinC “We Love Libraries!” project has awarded $1,000 to 14 libraries in the U.S. The library lottery program began in January 2010.

To Participate

Libraries may participate by completing the online entry form at www.sistersincrime.org and uploading a photo of one or more staff members with three books in the library's collection written by Sisters in Crime members. A list of SinC author members can be found by clicking here.

At the end of each month, a library winner will be selected in a random drawing from the entries submitted online. Libraries must be located within the United States to be eligible to participate in the program.

Only one entry per library is required. Once the entry is on file with Sisters in Crime, it will remain active in the lottery selection process for the duration of the program.

Previous Winners

The 2010 “We Love Libraries!” winners include:

The Kingstowne Branch of the Fairfax County (Va.) Public Library in Alexandria, Virginia (January 2010)
The Kraemer Family Library, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado (February 2010)
The Pineville-Bell County Library in Pineville, Kentucky (March 2010)
The Cresco Public Library in Cresco, Iowa (April 2010)
The Seminole County Public Library in Casselberry, Florida (May 2010)
The Bartram Trail Regional Library in Washington, Georgia (June 2010)
The Newton Falls Public Library in Newton Falls, Ohio (July 2010)
The St. Joseph Township-Swearingen Memorial Library in St. Joseph, Illinois (August 2010)
The Yuma County Library District in Yuma, Arizona (September 2010)
The Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts (October 2010)
The Lenox Township Library in New Haven, Michigan (November 2010)

Your Own Library Donations

And while we’re thinking about books for libraries:

Have you donated money or books for library circulation?
Do you have any tips to offer on the subject?

The Writer's Desk

By Dana Stabenow

[Originally posted at http://www.stabenow.com/2008/02/10/the-writers-desk]


Okaaaaay, five days after publication of Prepared for Rage, I have received the first email wanting to know when the next Kate novel will be out.

Laurie King and I were talking about this yesterday. We’re pleased and flattered that you Just Can’t Wait for the next book, but understand that while it takes you a day or two to read one, it takes us a year to write one. Have a heart! We’re peddling as fast as we can!

I am, in fact, even as we speak thundering to the end of Whisper to the Blood, also known as Kate16. Today’s photo is the disaster area that is my desk at this point in the process. Let’s look at it counter clockwise, beginning middle left, shall we?

• Phone off hook.

• Yellow pad with chapter number with page count. I’m always very conscious of the physical shape of the book, of its structure and its appearance when you read it. I try to keep the chapters roughly equal in length.

• Notes about events in book. Much crossing out and rewriting of chronology. When the hell did that third attack on the river happen, and to whom?

• Basket of unpaid bills. That’s right, don’t I have to go down to the bank tomorrow afternoon?

• Cup of pens and pencils and ruler and scissors and nail files and, very important, extendable back scratcher.

• Kleenex, also very important, not good to sneeze directly on keyboard.

• Can’t see them but peppermints, good for shot of energy when still writing late at night.

• Stand holding newspaper article to do with research for Kate16 (come on, I’m not going to give anything away), also copy of Robert’s Rules of Order, also notes about why Kate and Jim and the aunties are so pissy lately, constant visual reminder of prime character motivation.

• Open copy of A Deeper Sleep, the book immediately preceding this one in the series. Have to look up stuff that happened in it all the time. On shelf in back of chair are copies of the whole series, which have been wearyingly in use during the writing of Kate16 as it seems every single fricken’ Park rat who ever showed up in a book is determined to show up in this one, and I keep having to look up where they first appeared.

• Under the open book, a bunch of yellow sticky notes about characters and plot points. “Ruthe.” “More Dick” (heavily circled). “Kate–internal dialogue about her lie.” “The ‘Burbs.” “Helmets a giveaway.” “Why the river and not the road?” Most will be incorporated into the rewrite between rough draft and final draft. Maybe.

• Open atlas on printer, open to U.S., had to trace Johnny’s trip home for mileage and times, although Mapquest helps, too.

• On table at left, a mess, consisting of newspaper and magazine articles about the Pebble Mine, the Shooter’s Bible (need to get a new edition, this one is ten years old), and a stack of books, The Klondike Rush by Pierre Berton because I wanted a good stampeder’s name for a new character, The Riverside Shakespeare because I had to check on one of Prospero’s lines from "The Tempest" and to make sure that there really were that many bodies left on the stage at the end of "Hamlet," and Webster’s because I was looking up I forget what word to make sure it meant what I thought it meant.

• Danamaniacs sweatshirt (gift from ‘maniacs manager CathyO and husband Jim) on back of chair for when I get chilly.

• Open Alaska atlas on floor behind chair.

See. I’m working really, really hard on Kate16.


Dana Stabenow is the award-winning author of the 18-book Kate Shugak mystery series, the four-book Liam Campbell mystery series and the three-book Star Svensdotter science fiction series. The most recent title in the Kate Shugak series, Though Not Dead, appeared yesterday on the New York Times Book Review hardcover list at #16.

2010 Agatha Award Nominees

On Thursday, Feb. 17, Malice Domestic announced the nominees for the 2010 Agatha Awards.

The attendees of Malice Domestic 23 -- to be held April 29 - May 1, 2011 in Bethesda, MD -- will vote on the awards by secret ballot. The winners will be announced at the 2010 Agatha Awards banquet on Saturday, April 30.

The nominees are:

Best Novel:
Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews (Minotaur)
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard (Ballantine)
Drive Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Mira)
Truly, Madly by Heather Webber (St. Martin's Paperbacks)

Best First Novel:
The Long Quiche Goodbye by Avery Aames (Berkley)
Murder at the PTA by Laura Alden (Signet)
Maid of Murder by Amanda Flower (Five Star/Gale)
Full Mortality by Sasscer Hill (Wildside Press)
Diamonds for the Dead by Alan Orloff (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction:
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum (Penguin)
Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making by John Curran (Harper)
Sherlock Holmes for Dummies by Stephen Doyle & David A. Crowder (For Dummies)
Have Faith in Your Kitchen by Katherine Hall Page (Orchises Press)
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Best Short Story:
"Swing Shift" by Dana Cameron, Crimes by Moonlight (Berkley)
"Size Matters" by Sheila Connolly, Thin Ice (Level Best Books)
"Volunteer of the Year" by Barb Goffman, Chesapeake Crimes: They Had it Comin' (Wildside Press)
"So Much in Common" by Mary Jane Maffini, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - Sept./Oct. 2010
"The Green Cross" by Liz Zelvin, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - August 2010

Best Children's/Young Adult:
Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer by John Grisham (Dutton Children's)
Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus by R. L. LaFevers (Houghton Mifflin)
The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee (Candlewick)
Virals by Kathy Reichs (Razorbill)
The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith (Atheneum)

For more information on Malice Domestic, go to www.malicedomestic.org.

--Kathie Felix

Reading Without Borders

By Barbara Fister

The long decline of the Borders bookstore chain has been painful to watch. The impact on the book industry of their bankruptcy won't be easy to deal with, either. Though its market share had been falling, Borders still sold a lot of books to a lot of people.

I live in a town too small for any chain store to bother with, but since I'm only 75 miles and a phone call from two of the best mystery bookstores in the universe (Once Upon a Crime and Uncle Edgar's, both in Minneapolis) I haven't felt deprived. But I'm mourning the Borders I knew.

I will always remember the day I achieved nirvana in Ann Arbor. I was attending an intensive multi-day event at a conference center in nearby Ypsilanti and, after a few days trapped near a highway cloverleaf, several of us escaped into town to find a bit of civilization. Our conversation over a great Indian dinner was enjoyable, but what really blew me away was walking into an awesome bookstore. It seemed to have endless shelves filled with an amazing selection of books. I was working on a book about third world women writers at the time and was amazed and pleased to find so many of their books on the shelves, even those published by obscure small presses or imported from abroad. Whatever I looked for, it seemed to be there, along with an inexhaustible supply of books I didn't know existed but was delighted to discover. Though it was called "Borders," it seemed to transcend them.

Years later, John Baker, editorial director of Publisher's Weekly, told me the golden days of independent bookselling weren't all that golden, that the chains that were being blamed for killing the indies had increased the geography of reading by providing bookstores to communities that had never had them before and bringing more titles to more people than ever before in history.

A Brief for Bookstores

Though e-books are capturing people's imaginations right now, as well as a growing (but presently still small) market share, a traditional bookstore offers inspiring opportunities to browse and discover books, a chance to meet authors, a place to hang out while surrounded by the smell of paper and the silent hum of words, an endless number of stories yet to be discovered.

Borders will be missed by readers in the communities losing their stores. I personally believe we will always want some books on paper and will need bookstores to help us discover books we knew nothing about, and to support those beliefs I plan to tithe myself by spending money where my heart is -- though perhaps "tithe" is the wrong word for something that brings me so much pleasure.


Barbara Fister is the author of the Anni Koskinen mysteries. The most recent title in the series is Through the Cracks. She is an academic librarian and serves on the SinC board as Secretary.

Talking Writing with Elizabeth Lyon

By Kathie Felix

Elizabeth Lyon

The Sisters in Crime Mentor Monday sessions on the SinC listserv cover a lot of ground. The sessions’ online archives include question-and-answer “conversations” with literary agents, writers, booksellers, forensics experts, librarians, reviewers and other publishing business notables.

Book editor and author Elizabeth Lyon participated in one of these Q & A events, providing insight into a range of writing issues. A freelance book editor since 1988, she is the best-selling author of six books on writing fiction, nonfiction, revision and marketing to find agents and publishers.

The online Mentor Monday discussion began with an examination of “next book syndrome,” or the concern about being able to write a second book – or the next book, regardless of the number it is in a writer’s career.

Elizabeth, who has an advanced degree in counseling and is a former therapist, offered a five-step plan for dealing with this type of situation:

“Step one: Recognize the fear,

“Step two: Acknowledge that you’re not special; that indeed having anxieties or cold sweat fears about writing is universal,

“Step three: Know that nearly all fear is based on a 'what if,' which means that you are 'borrowing trouble' from an imagined future,

“Step four: Say 'no,' even chant 'no' in your head if you have to, to banish these thoughts,

“Step five: Plan and act, which means plan what comes next in your writing and do it, even just to be a monkey and sit in front of the keyboard and start hitting keys. You’ll know that is silly and voila, you’ll begin work on your current piece.”

Other subjects in the Q & A included prologues, the timing of the first murder in a book, critique groups, selling a novel, receiving contradictory comments from editors and which is more desirable – glowing reviews or big sales.

The archived session can be found by accessing the SinC members-only listserv, clicking on “Files” in the menu bar on the right side of the screen and selecting “Mentor Monday – Editors & Teachers.” If you are not a member of the listserv, directions to join are located on the SinC website at http://www.sistersincrime.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=12.

Elizabeth Lyon is leading a revision workshop for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction on Saturday, Feb. 26, from 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. in Portland, Oregon. The four-session workshop, titled “Diamonds in the Rough: Revise, Polish, Publish,” is based on her book, Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore. The working sessions include: Revise for Original Voice and Stand-Out Style, Revise for Strong Structure, Revise for Compelling Characterization, and Revise for Successful Marketing. The cost of the workshop is $65. For registration information, send email to sallyklehman[at]gmail.com.




Photo at left: Elizabeth Lyon, presenter, at the 2010 SinC Into Great Writing workshop held in San Francisco during the week of Bouchercon. Photo by Molly Weston.