Back to Basics by Diane Vallere

I'm delighted to have Diane Vallere, prolific writer and past-president of Sisters in Crime's national board guest blogging for me today. Diane juggles well, but occasionally even she needs to go back to basics. - Debra

Back to Basics by Diane Vallere

It should come as no surprise to learn that fiction authors sometimes have conversations with our characters. I once set up several chairs in my living room for each of the suspects in my then-work-in-progress to interview each character about his/her motives for murdering the victim. Silly? Yes. Made the neighbors doubt my sanity? Sure. Effective? Absolutely. I zeroed in on the killer and wrote the ending. But PANTY RAID gave me a different problem. I couldn’t even find the story.

A few background facts for context: 

1.     I’m a pantser.

2.     I start with a title and the loosest of concepts.

3.     PANTY RAID is book 8 in an ongoing series.

Heading into the first draft of this book, I knew it would feature the lingerie market, and it would take place in Paris.

My routine is to work Monday through Friday and write 2500 words/ day, but after weeks of working on the draft, I admitted there was a problem. I told one of my writer friends that my character was not cooperating, and my friend suggested I ask her what was wrong. I did, and details of that conversation are in this YouTube video. But the separate issue that I didn’t address there was this: I tried to plot that book.

We pantsers hear it all the time: you can write faster if you plot and know where you’re going. I’m always interested in improving how I do things, so I invested in a plotting course and gave it a shot. I even went so far as to break down four favorite movies into bullet points to better understand their structure. And still, I trudged, word by word, with a manuscript that was filled with “GO BACK AND CHANGE END OF CHAPTER 2” and “SOMETHING HAPPENS HERE—WHAT???”

I went for long walks. I dictated plot points into my phone. I deleted and rewrote and have entire sections of a manuscript that I love but that didn’t fit with what came before or after them. Of the seventeen days I spent working on that draft, I only hit my word count goal on three. 23,922 words of garbage.

On March 22, I stopped working on that draft.

On March 23, I had a conversation with my character.

On Marcy 24, I started writing a new version of PANTY RAID and bumped my daily word count goal to 3,000.

On April 15, I wrote The End.

In those nineteen days of writing, I discovered a whole story I never expected to tell. And I exceeded my new word count goal eleven of the nineteen days.

Do I regret trying to plot? No. If I hadn’t tried to, I’d never know my system works for me. Do I hate knowing I have a file of 23,922 words of a story with parts I love that may never get used? Yes. It goes against everything in my Capricornian nature to abandon projects mid-way. Is there a lesson in there? Absolutely. Sometimes you have to give up control in order to end up on top.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After two decades working for a top luxury retailer, Diane Vallere traded fashion accessories foraccessories to murder. In addition to the Samantha Kidd Style and Error Mysteries, she is responsible for the Madison Night Mad for Mod, Sylvia Stryker Outer Space, and Lefty Award-nominated Costume Shop and Material Witness series. She started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since. 

LINKS:

Website: https://dianevallere.com/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/DianeVallereAuthor/

Newsletter: https://dianevallere.com/the-weekly-diva

YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/DianeVallere

ABOUT PANTY RAID:

When amateur sleuth Samantha Kidd is assigned to cover the lingerie show in Las Vegas, her excitement is more visible than panty lines. Events in her hometown have made her a celebrity, and a romantic getaway with fiancé Nick Taylor is timely. But when a lingerie model—engaged to a college friend of Nick's—is found dead outside their hotel room, their escape turns brief. Cheeky designers, high class hookers, and secrets from Nick's past that don't add up make this gamble her most dangerous one yet. When push-up comes to shove, Samantha bares everything in order to save her future.

BUY LINKS:

https://dianevallere.com/panty-raid

The Stiletto Connection (with Sisters in Crime)

by Paula Gail Benson

Diane Vallere

What do stilettos have in common with Sisters in Crime (SinC)? They are both significant factors in current national SinC President Diane Vallere’s writing life.

For example, her first manuscript, Just Kidding, won the RWA Get Your Stiletto in the Door contest, then became Designer Dirty Laundry, the first novel in her Samantha Kidd series. Her upcoming release in that series will be titled Cement Stilettos. The hashtag in the header for her website is #shoescluesclothes. (I’m thinking Diane should feel completely at home here at The Stiletto Gang.)

When she visited by Skype with the SinC Palmetto Chapter (Columbia, S.C.) this past weekend, Diane said that she attributed her writing success to membership in Sisters in Crime. She joined SinC after she left a lucrative job in the fashion industry to write mysteries. Her first publication was a short story in the SinC Guppy Chapter’s anthology, Fish Tales.

Diane with SinC Seal

This year, it seems particularly appropriate that a person who credits SinC with helping her to attain her goals should be SinC’s national President as that organization celebrates its 30^th anniversary. For thirty years, SinC has been bringing media attention to all crime writers’ efforts, as well as providing grants to libraries and book stores to encourage mystery collections. Now, Diane continues that legacy of support and encouragement by emphasizing that SinC does not differentiate in manner of publication, but celebrates the different journeys of all authors in the mystery community.

The fact that she takes her own advice seriously is in clear evidence when you consider her body of work. She currently writes four series: Samantha Kidd (a designer shoe buyer who returns to the town where she grew up), Madison Night (an interior decorator who resembles and dresses like Doris Day), Material Witness (a business woman who inherits the fabric store where she was born), and Costume Shop mysteries (a former magician’s assistant who returns home to run her family’s costume shop--the first novel, A Disguise to Die For, has been nominated as Best Humorous novel at this year’s Left Coast Crime Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii).

Diane began her own press in 2011. Without her knowing, her novel had been given to an editor at Penguin. She turned down an offer to publish that novel with Penguin and went the indie route, then wrote a new series Penguin bought.

She continues to self-publish her Samantha Kidd books, while Penguin issues two of her series (Material Witness and Costume Shop) and Henery Press releases her Madison Night mysteries.  

One of the questions Diane received from the Palmetto Chapter members was about the following sentences found on her website:

She is also a firm believer in not just following your dreams, but in creating a roadmap of goals, tasks, and benchmarks to keep on track. She claims that being a textbook Capricorn accounts for her drive, though she's never been a big fan of being told there's something she can't do.

Diane laughed as soon as she heard the quote, because she had recently spoken to another group that had asked her about it. She said the most important thing about being a writer was finding ways to move forward and make writing a priority, because writing will be as important as you want it to be.

Another of Diane’s great talents is her ability to pack for a writing conference. Here’s a photo of her outfits for last September’s Bouchercon in New Orleans.

Diane's Bouchercon wardrobe

Don't you think her next project should be a coffee table book on how to pack fashionably?

Thanks, Diane, for writing excellent mysteries that also feature good fashion. And, thanks for your support of the mystery writing community, particularly in this special anniversary year for Sisters in Crime.