As The World Turned

By C.L. Phillips

We sat in the living room, I at my grandmother's knee.  We each held a mess of green beans plucked straight from the garden.  Grandma said, "Let's clean up these beans while my story's on."

I couldn't have been more than nine years old, but I was an expert at television.  We watched shows, not a story.  The music came on and the twirling globe introduced my grandmother's favorite soap opera.  Have you guessed which one?  Yep, As the World Turns.  She never missed a day.  From six a.m. to six p.m, the only time my Grandmother sat down was during her story.  The story.

Over the course of ten summer visits to Grandma's house, I learned to care deeply about fictional characters.  I shared their hopes, dreams, and despair.  Every day, Grandma and I would do some type of chore that could be completed in front of the television while we peered into a world of rich business people, doctors, lawyers, heroes and villains.  First for thirty minutes, and then later for a full hour, we rooted for our favorites.

Afterward, Grandma would editorialize about the day's show.  "Lisa should know she can't trust that sneaky John Dixon.  When will she learn?"  And then she'd go off on a story from her life, drawing parallels between the real and fictional worlds.  She told me, "Honey, you don't have to make every mistake in the world to learn from it, you just have to watch other people."  Every day, she could take the main conflict and relate it directly to her life.  You see, in our world, there were no rich business people, no lawyers or doctors.  In our world, you didn't get dressed up to dig coal or potash.  But we watched and  I learned.

The first time I had to write a book report in elementary school, I didn't know what to do.  Then I remembered how Grandma could always explain her story.  She'd dig into the conflict immediately.  She could always distill  a show down into one simple sentence.  It always started the same way.  "Honey, the problem is somebody wants something they can't have."  Is life really that simple?  Sure worked for book reports.

One day, I squeezed into the middle seat on a crowded flight from St. Louis to Newark.  The guy seated next to me asked, "What do you do?"  I gave him a polite, yet evasive answer.  "And what do you do?" I asked.  "I'm a writer for a television show."  Now I'm interested.  "Which one?" I asked.  Yep, you guessed it.  As the World Turns.  Can you see the look on the guy's face when he realized I was a certifiable fifteen year fan?  Over the next several hours he shared how the show came together every day, every week, every month, and every season.  Teams of people working together.  A common goal.  Shared accomplishment.  "Boy, you must really love your job".  His eyes traveled to some far away place.  "It pays the bills," he said.

I didn't have the courage to tell him that his writing not only paid the bills, but it changed my world.  Altered my vision of what I could become.  A quiet voice said, "You could write a story.  You could do that too."  It was the first time I thought seriously about becoming a writer.  The seed took hold.

One of the great mysteries of being a writer, an author, is the knowledge you will touch lives you will never know personally.  You will change the way people think, what they imagine, who they become.  May you have the courage to create a world where you start a conversation with the quiet voice inside your reader.

Last December, CBS canceled As the World Turns after fifty four seasons.  The last episode aired September 17th.  My DVR was ready.  I watched the last episode with a mess of green beans that needed cleaning. As I broke off the end, pulled the string along the side of the green bean, and snapped the bean into smaller pieces, I'll was thinking about the hundreds of writers who touched millions of lives over fifty-four years.  And I thanked them for Grandma.
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C.L Phillips writes mystery novels while nestled under a hundred-year live oak tree in downtown Austin. Except in August. C.L writes about the the gap between what people want and what they actually do. Broccoli or chocolate chip cookies, anyone? Check out her web site: http://www.clphillips.com/ or find her onTwitter: @clphillips787

Two Steps Up, One Step Back -- My Road to Publication

By Lisa Black

My writing career began one night when my mother, who had apparently exhausted her repertoire that particular evening, told me to make up my own bedtime story. It involved a prince, a princess, and a bat (as in the animal). It was my first thriller, the suspense of danger and, of course, the all-important romantic subplot.

Later on I became a prolific letter-writer, and in letters to my favorite cousin I would always include a story—storyboarded with little stick figures (I couldn’t draw). I don’t know how old I was, but I remember that a first-class stamp was 8 cents. It wasn’t until I saw Star Wars in high school that I began to write serious stories—serious meaning they didn’t include pictures. Today they call that fan fiction. To me it was simply another artifact of my serious crush on Harrison Ford.

However, also in high school I visited Washington DC and fell in love with the city, meaning I loved the monuments and the buildings and the marble, not what people did there. What people actually did there bored me silly. I should have been an architect but instead I majored in political science, so that I graduated with no marketable skills whatsoever except typing. I became a secretary, which meant I sat in front of a word processor all day. So what the heck, I’ll write a novel.

I wrote six.

By the third book I actually deigned to offer it to an agent, though I felt sure I didn’t really need one. (I opened my query letter with “I don’t think I need an agent….” I’m sure that scored two points in the circular file in record time.)

After the sixth book I decided I not only needed an agent, I needed a new day job, so I went back to school and got a degree in biology, specifically to go into forensics. I wound up with a pretty cool job but no time to write until my husband shanghaied me to southwest Florida. Now I had no job, no friends and no family. I started writing again just to stay sane, and sensibly applied my new forensic expertise to my mystery stories.

I kept querying. I was quite organized about it—former secretary and all—and had a 6 page single spaced Excel spreadsheet of agents, addresses and pertinent facts along with columns for date mailed and any response returned. With my 9th book—Trace Evidence—I decided to mix it up and start with the Z’s instead of the A’s. Just for fun. Meanwhile, back at the ranch: CSI premiered. Everyone began to look for the next Patricia Cornwell.

Then one momentous day my agent—a K—called and asked to represent me and I said okay, without discussion or negotiation. (I had already vetted via Google.) I did not know her, I had no sort of ‘in’ with her at all. I was just another query letter she received. We hashed out Trace Evidence for eight months before she auctioned it to Hyperion in a two-book deal.
And I lived happily ever after?

Yes, to some extent. But there was still the occasional pothole. 

I wrote most of the second book while we were still working on the first one, and, naive soul that I am, assumed the public had had enough of serial killers killing beautiful young women. What was to be my second published novel involved a dead child and a suburban household. It did have problems, I’m not denying that. So finally the publisher said we really need you to write something else. I had been gathering ideas for what became Unknown Means as the third novel, so I simply moved it up to the number two slot. I wrote the first draft in 3½ months, 4000 words at a time. It was grueling. Unknown Means got great reviews but it was too late. I was not to be the next Patricia Cornwell.

I trod on. I’d already written the next book and my wonderful agent and I loved it, but we knew that even if publishers loved it as well, they would make decisions based solely on the sales figures from Trace Evidence.  Upon her advice I changed my name (from Elizabeth Becka to Lisa Black) and the names of my characters. She sold it to William Morrow (Harper Collins) and I couldn’t be happier with them.

Takeover got a big push, Evidence of Murder has held its own, and Trail of Blood is looking good. But what would have been the sixth book? My agent didn’t like it. The plot didn’t come together as well as it needed to, and she didn’t think meth addicts made sympathetic victims. (After all, everyone in a book has to be young and rich and sexy or no one will care that they’re dead!)

So I threw it out, and started over. Again.

Because even with two steps up and one step back, I’m still moving forward. 
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Lisa Black spent the five happiest years of her life in a morgue, working as a forensic scientist in the trace evidence lab until her husband dragged her to southwest Florida. Now she toils as a certified latent print analyst and CSI at the local police department by day and writes forensic suspense by night. Her books have also been published in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain and Japan. Her fifth book, Trail of Blood, involves the real-life Torso Killer, who terrorized Cleveland during the dark days of the Great Depression. For more information visit her website: www.lisa-black.com.

Create Your Own Yellow Brick Road

By C.L. Phillips

Is there only one yellow-brick road to publication? Methinks not. Just as there is a title for every reader, a car for every driver, there is a path to publication for every writer...who doesn't quit. Sylvia Dickey Smith, winner of the Barbara Burnett Smith Mentoring Authors Foundation Sage Award Winner for 2010, proves where there's a will, there's a way.

Starting in 2006, Sylvia queried a hundred agents. Not one nibble. In 2007, she found an agent who subsequently went out of business. Weary, discouraged, and determined never to be self-published, Sylvia reset her sights on small publishers. She landed a deal, sans agent, with LL Dreamspace. Fast forward three years, and she's published three mysteries - Dance on His Grave, Deadly Sins Deadly Secrets, Dead Wreckoning, and one cookbook Sassy Southern Classy Cajun.

What's unique about Sylvia's journey is how her writing evolved. She's moved into women's historical fiction with her latest book, A War of Her Own, a project she started during NaNoWriMo 2008, soon to be released in September 2010 by CrickHollow Books (www.crickhollowbooks.com). Again, she didn't slow down to find an agent. Instead, she targeted small publishers, negotiated her own contract, and pushed forward with the zeal of a tiger on steroids. Sylvia said, "I came into this world feet-first and left-handed. I'm not waiting for anybody to tell me what to do." Sylvia attacks the writing business like a business, and she is her own entrepreneur.

What I admire about Sylvia's journey is her ability to make decisions that are right for her, and her ability to execute. She created a plan. When the plan didn't work, she changed. When the changes spurred personal growth, she trusted her inner guidance and a new voice emerged. She's following this new voice into a new area, women's fiction. Like any artist, she's experimenting, letting each project or novel play a role in the growth of her craft, her self, and her dreams. When asked why she created A War of Her Own, Sylvia said, "In the 1940's, women were left on their own when they had problems. And women do what they have to do come hell or high water. I wanted to write about that kind of woman." In War of Her Own, the main character, Bea Meade gives a new meaning to personal strength as her life evolves from that of a young, sheltered wife and mother to a divorced working woman, meeting the world on her own terms with a pragmatic view of men, family, and religion.

There are many ways to measure success. Sylvia creates her own measures. Do you? On your path to publication, do you have a plan for evolving your command of craft? Are you building the internal self image to sustain you during difficult times? Do you nurture experiments that could be the key to your future success? Sylvia taught me that the answers will be different for every writer. What's important is that you honestly ask the questions of yourself, and Write Down the ANSWERS. Make a plan. Get out there. Engage the market. Make adjustments. And as always...

Write on!

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C.L Phillips writes mystery novels while nestled under a hundred-year live oak tree in downtown Austin. Except in August. C.L writes about the the gap between what people want and what they actually do. Broccoli or chocolate chip cookies, anyone? Check out her web site: www.clphillips.com or find her onTwitter: @clphillips787

A Brief Talk with Tamar Myers

By Norma Huss

Tamar Myers was born and raised in the Belgian Congo (now just the Congo). Her parents were missionaries to a tribe which, at that time, were known as headhunters and used human skulls for drinking cups. Hers was the first white family ever to peacefully coexist with the tribe, and Tamar grew up fluent in the local trade language. Because of her pale blue eyes, Tamar’s nickname was Ugly Eyes.



In 1964, four years after Congo became an independent nation, and after living through retribution and civil wars, the family returned to the United States permanently. Tamar survived the culture shock of high school and began submitting books, unsuccessfully, while still in college. She persevered and now has 37 published books in two mystery series (all still in print) and stand-alones. The cozy mystery community recognizes her as one of the best. Along the way she’s given hilarious workshop lectures (and I can personally testify to that). In 2003 she was chairperson of the Edgars committee that selected the Best First Novel of the previous year. Her website is http://www.tamarmyers.com/

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First, I think our members would like to know how a girl who grew up in the Belgium Congo and only learned how to dial a telephone at the age of sixteen managed to keep writing for 23 years before being published.  

Ironically, I started college as an art major. (My real desire was to be a painter.  I wanted to attend the Dayton Art Institute but my parents wanted me to get a degree in teaching from a "real" college.)  Anyway, my first art assignment was to do a drawing of my choice, but it was so severely criticized by my professor in front of the class, that I changed my major that day from art to English.  I thought that by becoming a writer I could live in seclusion and never have to be criticized again!  Wow, what a naive dumkopf I was!

At any rate, I began to write in earnest, and I tried every genre, and for 23 years before getting that first sale!  To answer your question, there were two things that kept me going.  1.) In a high school creative writing class I'd written a longish short story/novella that was good enough to make the teacher, by his own admission, weep with envy.  He said, about himself,  "I'll never be able to write that well."  2.)  The loving support of my husband, who would prop me up every time a returned manuscript would knock me flat on my butt.  My husband, Jeffrey, read a great deal and always reminded me that I was "just as good a writer--even better--than" so-and-so.     

I agree!  The titles of the books in your two series are delicious!  Which comes first, the title or the story? 

I sell my books by the titles alone!  The plots and synopsis come later.

You have these two mystery series with more books scheduled to come out this year and next.  Still, you write other books as well.  Tell me about your latest one, The Witch Doctor's Wife.  There is mystery in this too, is there not?

Yes, The Witchdoctor's Wife is a mystery, although frankly I think of it as just a good story that is told through the eyes of people living in another culture in another time and place.  I have retired the other two mystery series, and this is my time to concentrate on writing the stories of my childhood.  The mystery part provides a framework for telling these stories.     

How about a Nuts and Bolts type question.  What is your daily schedule like?  (Or weekly.) 

 I have an office inside my home.  It is upstairs.  It is painted Chinese red, to provide me with energy, and has white French doors that open out on to the loft.  On the walls I have hung framed photos of exotic places I have lived or visited, and famous people I have met, etc., so that when I die, my children won't think that I was a nobody (because by then all of my books will have been remaindered--believe me!).  My desk is a massive wooden desk with three deep drawers on either side and pull out leaves as well, plus a center drawer.  It came from an industrial office sale--and it would be impossible to buy one this large in a retail store.  I have written 35 books on this one, and lugged it around to many houses and three states.  To me it has become sacred by virtue of so much creativity happening atop it.  In a similar vein, i don't allow any computer games to be played on my PC.  This is a sacred spot, an altar--a place for reverent behavior.

I believe as Einstein did, that time is not a sequence of events.  That is a man-made construct.  The past, present, and future are all happening simultaneously.  Therefore my "future" books have already been written.  So why should I struggle to write them?  Well, I shouldn't!  That is why I begin each day asking the Universe to give me my daily portion of creativity (I hold my arms skyward), and then sit down and write a thousand polished words--five days a week.  After seventy days you have a book.  You don't need to plan it out, because the book has already been written!  All you have to do is receive it!   Just be open each day and let your subconscious mind receive what the Universe wants to give it.  It is that simple!  It has worked for 35 books!

Tamar, thanks so much for visiting the Sisters in Crime blog today.
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Norma Huss has been writing mystery for years, but only had her first novel published last year. YESTERDAY’S BODY was published by Wings ePress, Inc. Another mystery, DEATH OF A HOT CHICK is ready to make the rounds of agents. She’s a wife, mother, and grandmother as well as an advocate of a local bloodhound search and rescue unit. Visit her at http://www.normahuss.com/

Escapist Fare

by Gillian Roberts

It should be relatively easy to write about murder, especially when a perfect premise is given to you. Without such a ‘gift,’ I’ve done it in sixteen novels and a few dozen short stories. I’ve even written a how-to-write-about-murder.

Here’s what I know now: It is (relatively) easy--as long as it’s a mystery.

And it’s fictional.

The resulting puzzles or pulse-racers are called escapist fiction. It’s suggested we read such works on a plane where anything that makes travel less onerous is a plus, or at the beach (what on earth are we escaping there?).

“Escapist” is generally not a compliment. There’s a small sneer in the term, as if the crime isn’t on the page but within us. Our brows are low. Nobody gave us permission to escape. It’s a critical form of Mean Buddhism: Be Here Now--Or Else.

But we do escape, even when we aren’t flying or sunbathing and return to the pleasures of crime as readers and writers.

I did or thought I did. And then real-life murder hit home, almost literally. A gentle woman--who was active in the library, who wanted to write, who had been a career counselor, who had dreadful back problems about which she didn’t complain, whose husband, a lawyer and wildlife photographer died of Alzheimer’s a few months earlier, who had fine sons and grandchildren--was killed.

Early one early-summer morning in this quiet town she was murdered a few feet from her front door, with a point blank shot to her skull.

Nothing was taken from the house.

Nobody heard the shot.

The local weekly just won a national prize for their coverage of the crime, but a year later, it remains unsolved. And a year later, I find myself still thinking of her on a daily basis, and looking at life differently. I was a casual friend. What is her best friend feeling? Her children and grandchildren? Her next door neighbors? Everyone in this small town is changed in many ways. One gunshot echoes forever.

“You ought to write about it,” more than one person said. “You’re a mystery writer and here it is--a real life mystery in our own town.”

True. It has every element the crime novels I most enjoy reading and have written. It’s a classic mystery.

And yes, I spent a lot of time puzzling who could have, why anybody would have, done such a thing, and I have a working, if unprovable idea. I also know that to a writer, ‘everything is material.’ I have borrowed shamelessly from news stories that gnawed at me. The books that resulted weren’t of the ‘ripped from the headlines’ type because big headlines interest me less than small, human stories. Like this one.

But when I think about borrowing this woman’s death--even though it haunts and mystifies me and feels important in ways I can’t yet articulate--I feel as if I’d be dishonoring her because of what a writer must do in order to turn her story into mine.

Everything I know about her is benign, loving, wry, kindly. She was ordinary, in the nicest of ways. That’s what gives her story such power--it makes no sense.

But what we demand in a mystery is to go beneath smooth surfaces and find fissures, secrets, and dark places, a handful of enemies--suspects--who have cause to have wanted her gone. I couldn’t do that to that good woman, but then I’d have no plot, no story, no motives--no book. I’ve been trying to think through this, about why I never felt this queasiness and revulsion when I’ve borrowed bits from real events and real people’s behavior and turned them into something new. We say we want believable stories, and believable characters, but we don’t, not really. We want art. Escapist art, if you will.

Only since my friend was killed did I consider what, precisely, we’re escaping. I know our books can help us assuage grief and anxiety. I’ve heard from readers who said my books got them through long sieges by or in a hospital bed, or sleepless nights, or just plain bad times, and I am so grateful that is so.

But after a year of thinking about the unfathomable insanity that took a good life, about real crime and its aftershocks, I think that we turn to fictional mysteries to escape the terrible lack of a plot in “real” life. We’re escaping the randomness and meaningless of the evil we cannot escape in the ‘real’ world by diving into a book where loose ends are woven together, motives are clear and maybe most of all, we’re given an ending, a conclusion, a meaning--whatever that might be.

It’s a good thing. Thanks be for the magic and the solace escapist fiction provides. Without it, life in its amoeba-like shapelessness might smother us. So while I won’t ever ‘use’ the one murder story I know, I will keep writing escapist fiction and consider “escapism” a necessary blessing and a term of praise.
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Gillian Roberts is the author of the Anthony-award winning Amanda Pepper mystery series, the Emma Howe series, and the how-to guide You Can Write a Mystery. All's Well That Ends is the fourteenth and final Amanda Pepper novel. For more information on Gillian and her novels, check out her web site.

A Writer’s Journey: Say Cheese!

By Avery Aames (a.k.a. Daryl Wood Gerber)

Getting published is hard work. It takes tenacity. It takes passion. It takes friends who won’t let you give up. J.A. Konrath says: "What do you call a writer with perseverance? PUBLISHED!"

Are you just about to give up? Don’t!

Over the course of fifteen years, I wrote a number of books, both traditional mystery and suspense thrillers. I submitted these books to agent after agent and received a number of comments like, “This is so close, but it’s just not for me.” [Sound familiar?]

Two years ago, when I was ready to give up, a critique partner suggested I write to the market. ‘Cozies are selling,’ she said. With nothing to lose, I decided to give it a whirl.

But before I wrote another full book, I wanted to make sure that the cozy hook that I’d chosen was a good hook. I approached agent Jessica Faust at Bookends, whom I had met a writers’ conference. She had given me encouragement on previous work. I asked if I could submit cozy ideas to her to see if they would fly with a publisher. She agreed. I submitted professionally crafted bibles, [my bibles included sample chapters, an overview of the series, character sketches, and a basic outline], but none captured her fancy. After a few tries, we agreed that maybe we weren’t of like mind, so I asked if she’d be upset if I approached her fellow agent, Jacky Sach, who I had also met at a conference. Jessica gave her blessing.

I approached Jacky with the same request. Jacky agreed. I tried three, but she didn’t think any would appeal to a publisher, so I tried three more. Mind you, each of these took me a while to write, and mind you Jacky was such a good sport! Again, I received encouragement from Jacky, but none of the ideas were “just right.” Because I knew of people who had been “hired” to write books based on a bible created by the publisher, I asked Jacky if she would keep me in mind if she heard of an opportunity. [Note: I used to write in Hollywood. I created the format for a series on TV called “Out of this World.” I had no qualms about writing somebody else’s idea.] Jacky said she would.

I didn’t waste another moment thinking about the possibility, and I returned to what I had been writing before I changed track – a suspense thriller. Note: I was still considering giving up writing, but I hadn’t decided what I would do next with my life, and sitting on the couch day in, day out was out of the question (for me). I polished my new novel and started the quest again to find an agent who would think it was the most brilliant piece of writing ever. I received requests for full manuscripts and was feeling pretty sure that something was going to break for me this time…soon. [Perseverance requires that you see the rainbow behind the clouds!] At the same time, I took a cozy writing class and a suspense writing class. I polished new chapters and ideas through my critique group. And, yes, I had the occasional mini-pity party. [Note: Don’t let pity parties last longer than twenty-four hours. It takes grit to stop a pity-party, but you can do it.]

And then one day, out of the blue, I received an email from Jacky. She had a work-for-hire possibility. Would I be interested in auditioning for A Cheese Shop Mystery series? Of course, I would! A cheese shop sounded tasty, fun, and felt like a perfect fit for me. I loved to cook. I used to cater. I almost sold wine and The Cheese Shop, per the publisher’s bible, had a wine annex. Last but not least, the grandmother who raised the protagonist was a sassy character who managed the local theater. It just so happened that I had acted in local theaters and on television and in film.

To audition for the job, I was asked to provide three chapters. I set to work, researching, tasting, and writing. Working within the publisher’s parameters provided a freedom I’d never felt before. I was writing something that had a strong hook and was already “wanted” by the publisher. In a matter of weeks, I turned in the chapters.

But I didn’t kid myself that I would be hired. I’d been rejected before. So I returned to my regular job of writing the next book.

When I was offered a three-book deal, I just about fell off my chair. I was going to be published, writing something I truly enjoyed!

In the future, I hope to sell one of my own stories, but for now, I write as Avery Aames, author of A Cheese Shop Mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime, and I’m thrilled and proud.

My advice: If opportunity knocks on your door, open it and: Say Cheese!
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Avery Aames (aka Daryl Wood Gerber) is a long-time member of Sisters in Crime and the author of The Long Quiche Goodbye, first in the Cheese Shop Mysteries.  Avery blogs every Monday with Mystery Lovers Kitchen.  Check out her web site at www.AveryAames.com.

(This article originally appeared on the Bookends Blog.)