That Editing... So Hot Right Now

by Bethany Maines

It's that time again. The editing time.  The time when I get back all the stupidy stupidy line edits and have to go through and approve them. That's the worst part.  I have to approve them.  OK, I don't absolutely HAVE to, but the truth is about 8 out of every 10 line edits are the correct decision. Of the other two, one is probably a matter of preference and the other is absolutely right the way it was the first time. Why don't you understand my genius you piddling moron who is merely paid to sift through the words and divine my sheer awesomeness?

It's possible that the last sentence there was a bit of an overstatement.

But my secret internal Mugatu doesn't think it was.

Mugatu, for those who haven't watched the hilariously improbable Zoolander, is the fashion designer / evil genius, played by Will Ferrell, who is attempting kill the prime minister of Malaysia by brainwashing male model Derek Zoolander. Many writers, myself included, seem to yo-yo between the states of modesty (I write pretty well), ego (I'm a genius!!), and self-hatred (why would anyone read the crap I produce?). I picture modesty as the quiet saintly type – a Buddhist nun (who secretly knows kung fu) and self-hatred as the goggly-eyed guy from the Maltese Falcon who says the worst things in the sweetest voice.  And nowhere are those states of being more quickly cycled through than the editing rounds. Each tweak of the text from the editor is like some sort of judgement from on high that can send me off into a Mugatu-esque rage or goggly-eyed shame spiral.  It's up the the Kung Fu nun to bring balance and harmony. Although, admittedly sometimes the nun needs a little help from a glass of wine and a jog around the block.

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of Destiny and An Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

To Prologue or Not to Prologue

by Marjorie Brody

I need your opinion. In my next psychological suspense novel, That Night, an event occurs when the protagonist is five years old. The story is told from two points of view, the daughter's and the mother's. It's the daughter's story of discovery about what happened that night.

Normally, I'd start the story with the inciting incident, the trigger that pushes the now-grown daughter to pursue what happened, and if I needed backstory, I'd sliver it in, in teeny-tiny pieces. But in this story, it's crucial for the reader to experience the whole scene of what occurred so they will understand the characters' interpretations about the event that sets up the whole novel.

The main scene seems too much for a prologue. I could jump back and forth from past and present (labeling the years), or I could divide the book into two parts. Part I would begin twenty-two years earlier, be told from the mother's and the daughter's points of view. Part I would span several years. Part II would only be told only from the daughter's perspective--although the mother would be involved--and would all happen within one month in the present.

I'm sure you've read, and/or written, stories where there is strong action in more than one time frame. (Most novels contain significant backstory or prior character wound, but the reader doesn't need immediate exposed to all those details, just how it affects the protagonist in the present.) When you've read those types of novels, what style of transition feels most comfortable as a reader? Or doesn't it matter as long as the time frames are clear and the story is compelling?

To give you a flavor of what I'm writing, here's an excerpt.

THAT NIGHT

Twenty-two years earlier

The Daughter

There had been fights before, but never this loud, never this scary.

When Daddy Trey slammed Mommy onto the bed and Mommy kicked him in the pee-pee, Angelina came out of her hiding place, scooped Baby Brother off the pillow and ran from the bedroom. She grabbed his cuddly blue blankie off the floor in the hall and darted out the trailer.

Late afternoon air blew its frosty breath at her, but she was in too much of a hurry to go back inside and get her coat or change her bunny slippers for leggings and boots. Mommy had said they could stay in their nightgowns for the whole day. Now she wished they had gotten dressed.

She placed the blanket in her Red Flyer wagon, set Baby Brother in the middle of it and tucked the rest of the blankie around him.

“Good baby,” she said, relieved Jamie wasn’t making a fuss. She didn’t have time to hold him and rock him like she did when Mommy yelled, “For God’s sake, Angie, keep that kid quiet. I’m trying to sleep.” She needed him to be good, and he was. He didn’t cry. He didn’t squirm.

“Thank you, Baby Brother. I love you.”

How could anyone not love Baby Brother? He had such a cute face, and the tiniest  fingers and toes. Angelina didn’t even mind that Daddy Trey liked Jamie better than he liked her. Mommy said she liked them both the same, but Angelina knew better. Baby Brother was special. He came out of Mommy’s belly way before anybody ‘spected him to—which explained his being so tiny and all—but he came out on Mommy’s birthday, so he was Mommy’s present, even if sometimes she wanted to take him back. She liked to take things back. She’d buy a new dress to go dancing with Daddy Trey at the Joint, and the next morning she’d put the tag back on and take the dress back to the store. But Jamie didn’t have a tag, so Angelina hoped Mommy wasn’t allowed to give him back.

More than Mommy, and even more than Daddy Trey, Angelina loved Baby Brother, and he loved her. She could tell. He liked it when she rocked him. He would smile his baby smile at her, with his perfect little lips flickering up at the corners. Mommy said it was gas and not a real smile, but what did she know? Babies didn’t have gas. Cars had gas.

The rest of the scene continues to shows what happened that night.

So, let me know what kind of organizational style you enjoy reading when there are significant events in two time frames and they link in life-altering ways. Maybe then I can stop organizing and reorganizing this novel and get That Night into the hands of the agent and editor who are waiting to read the final version. Thanks.

Marjorie Brody is an award-winning author and Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her short stories appear in literary magazines and the Short Story America Anthology, Vols. I, II and III. Her debut psychological suspense novel, TWISTED, was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2013 Great Midwest Book Festival and won the Texas Association of Authors 2014 Best Young Adult Fiction Book Award. TWISTED is available in digital and print at http://tinyurl.com/cvl5why or http://tinyurl.com/bqcgywl. Marjorie invites you to visit her at www.marjoriespages.com. 

Guaranteed to Bleed

About a year ago, I got THE CALL. I went from a woman who alternated between typing and keeping her fingers crossed to a woman who…well, one of the first things I learned was I still needed to keep my fingers crossed.

Truth is, no one really knows why one book catches on and another doesn’t.

Is it the cover? Timing? Luck? Crossed fingers?

The only things I can control are how tightly I cross my fingers and how good the next book is.

Which brings us to the next book. You’ve heard of the sophomore slump? I might have worried a bit...

So far, five people outside of my agent and publisher have read Guaranteed to Bleed. Three of them are critique partners—they don’t count.

So…two people. This in contrast to the veritable army who read The Deep End before publication. One of those people is a friend who would lie to save my feelings. The other is a friend who doesn’t pull her punches. One said fabulous, the other said amazing. I think—hope—they’re both telling the truth.

You could be the third person to read Guaranteed to Bleed.

This week I’m giving away an ARC on Goodreads.

You should ENTER. You might win.

 

 

Julie Mulhern is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean—and she’s got an active imagination. Truth is—she’s an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions. She is a 2014 Golden Heart® Finalist. Visit her at www.juliemulhern.com.

Men Who Take on Other Men’s Children

by Linda Rodriguez

My stepfather coaching my little brother's Litlle League team

When I look back on my life, I realize I’ve been lucky enough to be closely involved with three men who had the ability to take on children who weren’t their own genetic children and love and care for them as fathers. It will be Father’s Day soon, and I want to say a word or two about these kinds of unsung heroes.

My birth father was a brutal, unpredictable man. I suspect he would now be diagnosed as a clinical sociopath. After my parents’ scandalous, highly contentious divorce and all of the violent, ugly fallout afterward, my mother settled in a small college town in Kansas and met a quiet man she married when I was fifteen.

My stepfather immediately tried to be a good father to me, which meant, among other things, setting limits and being protective. My birth parents had both been irresponsible and sometimes dangerous children, so from my earliest memories I was the pseudo-adult in the house, the one who worried about all my younger siblings and tried to protect them and care for them so they could have as normal a childhood as possible. No one had ever looked after me or tried to take care of me, so I resented my new stepfather’s efforts tremendously.

As the next few years went by and I observed my stepfather’s treatment of my younger siblings, for whom I still felt so responsible although I’d left home at sixteen, I warmed to him. He was doing his best to be a real dad to them, taking them camping and fishing, making them toys, coaching Little League teams, etc. In time, like my younger siblings, I came to call him Dad. When I gave my parents their first grandchildren, he was a doting grandfather, and when he finally died, he died in my sister’s and my arms with all my brothers and the grandchildren around his bed.

At the time I married my late first husband, I already had a baby, whose father had died. My late first husband loved my oldest as much as either of the two children we had together, and that was one of the things I loved about him, that capacity to open his heart to a child who wasn’t his own genetically just as much as to those who were.

Later when I was a single mother of two teenagers in the final years of high school and my youngest was only four years old, I met and married a man who’d never been married or had children. He had enough sense not to try to be a father to my teens, who would have only resented him for it, but he loved and raised my youngest as his own. This gentle, totally urban intellectual did the zoo safari, even though he was embarrassed that everyone else had to help him put up the huge tent he’d rented, and when our little one left the tent open to the depredations of peacocks and collapsed the whole tent on his stepfather when they were packing up to leave, he was so kind that he earned a hand-printed, hand-drawn certificate of membership in “The Loyal Order of Peacock Fathers.” My youngest and my husband to this day have a close, loving father-son relationship, and because he was so patient, he and my older two children have a warm relationship as well.

My sister has two sons. One father is a deadbeat, missing in action because he’s never wanted to be financially responsible for his child after the divorce (just as he hadn’t for all of the other children he had that my sister didn’t know about when they married). The father of the youngest paid support but simply refused to see his own son. For these boys, my current husband has been a father-figure. The younger one clung to my husband and waited eagerly for our visits and his to us. My husband used to shake his head on the way home and wonder at the idiocy of the men who refused to have any contact with their gifted, charming boys. At Christmastime, these two nephews, now grown, delight in finding eccentric books and other gifts that will please my husband, often keeping an eye out for them all year.

I’ve seen firsthand what a difference men like this can and do make in the lives of children whose fathers are gone, sometimes dead, sometimes by choice. So here’s a toast to the men who take on other men’s offspring and give them love and a true father’s care, even when it isn’t easy, even when those other men have left emotional damage behind. To Dad, to Michael, to Ben, and to all of the other men out there like them, you are the true salt of the earth!

Linda Rodriguez’s third Skeet Bannion novel, Every Hidden Fear, was a selection of the Las Comadres National Latino Book Club and a Latina Book Club Best Book for 2014. Her second Skeet mystery, Every Broken Trust, was a selection of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club, International Latino Book Award, and a finalist for the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize. Her first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition and an International Latino Book Award. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” has been optioned for film. Find her on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites, and on her blog http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

 
REPLIES TO COMMENTS (because Blogger still hates me):

Thank you, Pam!

The Best Job in the World

by Sparkle Abbey

We are about to see the release of our 7th book, Downton Tabby, and we'd just like to say it's been an incredible journey.

We sold the series in 2010 and the first book, Desperate Housedogs, came out in 2011.

From our very first Malice Domestic and Bouchercon conferences, where we had tons of excitement and enthusiasm, but little to no publishing experience (and come to think of it no books yet), the mystery community has been crazy welcoming and supportive.

We've met so many wonderful writers and readers of the genre via various conferences and events. These are brilliant, savvy, fun people, many of whom we are privileged to now call friends.

It's an amazing experience to walk into a bookstore, whether a Barnes and Noble, BAM or a small indie bookstore, and see our books on the shelf. It's a thrill that we hope never gets old.

And then there are readers. Wow. It's impossible to explain how much it means get an email or a letter from a reader who has read one of our books and was moved to write to us. To know that something we wrote provided an escape for someone who was going through a tough time, made someone laugh out loud, or was simply an opportunity relax after a long day at work. So. Cool.

In addition to all that there's the writing itself. We get to think up twisted plots, give birth to quirky characters, and put them in impossible situations. Of course, then we have to figure out a way to help them solve all the problems we've created for them. That's when the fun begins!

Being a writer is just plain the best job in the world and we feel so lucky to get to do it.

Our newest book, Downton Tabby, comes out in a few days and is currently available for pre-order. To celebrate we're giving away an adorable Paul Cardew teapot and a canister of Downton Abbey tea. All you have to do to enter the contest is pre-order the book and then send us an email letting us know you have.

We love to connect with readers and other writers!
You can find us online in the following places:

Website: www.sparkleabbey.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sparkleabbey
Twitter: @sparkleabbey
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/sparkleabbey/

They Didn't Have to, But . . .

by Marjorie Brody

I’m honored to be asked to sit in for colleague and friend, Kay Kendall, as she galavants around Vienna, Austria with her honey of forty years. She and Bruce have been through a lot this year. I hope their excursion is everything they hoped it would be—and more. 

Weather often appears as a character in novels. Tornados and flash floods provide conflict and strong opposition. In the state of Texas the last couple of weeks, weather has proven to be a formidable foe. Homes blew--or floated--away. An inflatable bouncy house lifted three stories into the air and dumped the children playing inside onto the ground. Cars turned upside down or dangled from tree tops, although many trees were torn up by their roots. One man was dragged seven miles in raging water from where his floating house hit a bridge and cracked apart, his wife and two children, disappearing in the flood. 

Confronting the devastation, normal, non-heroic folks stepped up to help, pulling passengers from sinking vehicles, clearing away debris and shoveling foot-high sludge from stranger’s homes. One laundry opened 24 hours to clean clothes for survivors, free of charge. Other people sent donations to the Red Cross. But unlike our protagonists, many of these people weren’t personally facing obstacles. In our books we pile on conflicts so our characters can show us what they are made of. The volunteers who came forward and helped, like many during 9-11, or Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake, or the tsunami thousands of miles away weren’t being directly affected by opposition and yet their actions showed their character too.

I happened to catch a part of a TV show called The Briefcase. Two families received a briefcase with one thousand dollars in it. They had the choice of keeping all the money or sharing part—or all—of it with another family the producers chose. The husbands and wives initially differed about how much money to keep or split. The wives wanted the money for their own families, knowing how desperately they needed that financial help, but when they visited the home of the other couple and saw how the other couple lived, saw the troubles the other couple faced, they changed their minds. Both couples decided to give away ALL the money in their briefcase—and were happy to do so. 

The two families met to hand over the money that would make their lives easier and they discovered that they were the recipients of the other couple’s choice to do the same. 

In the midst of such polarization and lack of acceptance occurring between people in this world, these heroic actions make me proud to be part of the human race. 

It also makes me wonder about characters in books—perhaps not the protagonist, who must undergo conflict—but for supporting characters, can we make them change by stepping outside of themselves and doing something to help another in need? Certainly the couples who gave away the money transitioned through a character arc. They changed. And maybe the struggle to assist or not assist a person in need is conflict enough for some people. I imagine for others, it’s merely a way of being. 

Anyway, I hope Kay is having beautiful weather wherever she is. 

I’ll be delighted to hear your reflections on my reflections. 

Marjorie Brody is an award-winning author and Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her short stories appear in literary magazines and the Short Story America Anthology, Vols. I, II and III. Her debut psychological suspense novel, TWISTED, was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2013 Great Midwest Book Festival and won the Texas Association of Authors 2014 Best Young Adult Fiction Book Award. TWISTED is available in digital and print at http://tinyurl.com/cvl5why or http://tinyurl.com/bqcgywl. Marjorie invites you to visit her at www.marjoriespages.com. 

How Much Longer Are you Going to Do All This?

That's a question I get a lot--from family and friends who are not writers.

They don't understand why I sit at the computer for so many hours a day, or why I take off on trips to promote my books. After all, I'm old, why don't I just relax, stay home and enjoy myself?

Even my answers don't seem to satisfy them, they don't really understand.

So I'm going to do this here where I know a lot of you are writers and will know exactly what I'm talking about.

I write because I love doing it. I have a great time creating characters and problems for them to solve. I enjoy visiting the ongoing characters in my series and seeing what they're up to. Plus, I'm sure it keeps my old brain working the way it ought to. What else would I do if I wasn't writing?

I'm not interested in joining the social clubs in town and going to meetings to merely take up my time. (Besides, I did plent of that way back when my kids were young.)

As far as being social, that's taken care of when I'm off to an event where I'm talking about and selling my books. Satisfaction comes from meeting readers, those who love my books, and those who are anxious to try one. While I'm doing that, I'm usually in a new place I haven't been before or one I like to visit.

My age has caught up with me when it comes to flying though--I no longer enjoy it and am not capable of running from one place to another to catch a flight. This means that I don't go to many conferences or conventions anymore unless they are in driving distance, or only require one flight with no changes.

So the answer to the quetion really is, I'm going to be doing all this until I can't.

I just finished writing my latest Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery and once I've read it to my critique group, made any changes needed, and gone over it one more time, I'll send it off to the publisher.

I'm only a few pages into the next Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery--and have lots more planning to do.

I've made hotel reservations for two book fairs--yes, within driving distance. (I will admit that I now take my daughter along so she can do most of the driving and help me haul my books.)

Being much older than my fellow members of the Stiletto Gang, I'd like to know if they get some of these same kind of questions.

Marilyn aka F.M. Meredith

Dressed to Kill -Releases June 23rd

Hey Gang,

Dressed to Kill - sounds like a book someone on the Stiletto Gang would write, doesn't it? Dressed to Kill is book #4 of The Tourist Trap mysteries with my amateur sleuth-slash-coffeehouse-bookstore owner, Jill Gardner.

I adore fashion, but like Jill, you're more likely to see me in a pair of cotton capris and a tank top, especially in the summer. I've given up the fight to be fashion forward, now, comfort is higher on my priority list, especially since I spend a lot of time in front of the computer, sitting. And my bottom is beginning to mold to the shape of my office chair.

So when Jill finally meets her new boyfriend's ex-wife, she's shocked at how much Sherry looks like she's running for Miss California rather than just running a small town clothing store. The girl knows her fashion, and she's not afraid to use it. Or wear it, even when South Cove is more California casual.

Which puts my yoga pants (which I LOVE) to shame.

So what about you? Are you comfortable in heels and pearls? Or would you rather be in flip flops and a cute charm necklace?

I think you know where I stand already. :)

Lynn

BTW - if you like your books in paper format, you're in luck. Dressed to Kill is already available for your reading pleasure. But the Kindle version releases on June 23rd.

Dressed to Kill

Jill Gardner—owner of Coffee, Books, and More in the tucked-away town of South Cove, California—is not particularly thrilled to be portraying a twenties flapper for the dinner theater murder mystery. Though it is for charity…

Of course everyone is expecting a “dead” body at the dress rehearsal…but this one isn’t acting! It turns out the main suspect is the late actor’s conniving girlfriend Sherry…who also happens to be the ex-wife of Jill’s main squeeze. Sherry is definitely a master manipulator…but is she a killer? Jill may discover the truth only when the curtain comes up on the final act…and by then, it may be far too late.