Ageless Fiction?

My son Nate came home for a visit in June and was surprised to learn that I've never read The Fountainhead.

Truthfully, I couldn't really believe it either. It's one of those books everyone has read at some point or another, right? One of those books I'd always planned to tackle, along with War and Peace.

"You really ought to read it." It's funny when your kids start talking like this. Echoes of all the things you've told them for the past twenty-one years circle back. You want to do a little happy dance, because here is your middle kid -- the one who was a wee bit challenging there for a while -- and he wants to discuss a book with you.

Nate went back to Burlington, Vermont, where he goes to college (and works in the summer) and a few weeks later I found myself there unexpectedly. We had dinner together and he again asked me about The Fountainhead. When I confessed I didn't have it yet, he insisted on making me a copy of the first ten chapters to listen to on the ride home to Maine. "This will get you started," he said, handing me a disk.

The next morning I began my journey east on Rt. 2, the sounds of The Fountainhead filling my Toyota. Ten minutes into it, I was hooked. I listened for the whole six hour ride and then grabbed the book out of the library the minute I got home.

I'm only about halfway through, but I can safely agree with Nate's assessment -- The Fountainhead is astounding. I could probably blog about nothing else for several years and still have plenty to say about the strongly drawn characters, riveting story lines, and complex philosophical themes. The language is rich (these are the kinds of sentences you want to read out loud to someone else, just to savor how finely crafted they are) and I can't begin to describe the author's use of metaphor. Clearly Ayn Rand was a masterful storyteller.

What fascinates me (and Nate as well) is how Rand managed to write in such a timeless style. Despite the occasional reference to a "speakeasy" or a "switchboard," her story of two architects struggling to succeed in Manhattan feels as if it is happening right now. Granted, no one is using a cell phone, writing a blog, or stopping at a Starbucks, and yet the setting seems contemporary and fresh.

Why is that?

Is it precisely because there is so little technology integral to the story? Or is it because she focused on universal human truths and questions? Do we, as writers, care about how our novels age? Is that even something you can think about while writing a book?

How will your mysteries age, and does it matter?

Spoilerville

Today I'm announcing my participation in a new project called Spoilerville. It's a website created by mystery author Jan Burke to provide a place for authors and readers to discuss books without fear of causing riots on lists and blogs, and without spoiling the fun of those who haven’t read those books yet. In these discussions, we can talk about who died and why and reveal all the secrets, including "whodunnit," while asking and answering questions about the plot, characters, themes and other issues in books.

Spoilerville is just getting off the ground and new authors and their books are being added every day. If you're an author and would like to be added to the site, go HERE. If you're a reader who has just been dying to know why an author did X in book Y or what other readers think about it, go to Spoilerville and see if the author has signed up yet.

I've signed up, and I'll periodically check the topics put in place for my three published mystery books, including Deadly Currents, the first book in my Rocky Mountain Outdoor Adventure series starring whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner, and the first two books in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer series, A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket.

So, if you have a question you've been dying to ask me or other readers about one of these books that reveals something that happens in the book, ask away! That's what Spoilerville is for. I'm hoping this project succeeds and provides a safe place for some interesting discussions. I've started the ball rolling by posting one comment each on the topics for A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket.

The Little Things

My stint in the publishing world is short (three years) and my novels are “critically acclaimed” as opposed to “bestselling”, but I’m satisfied with this venture. It’s the little things that make me feel this way.

Earlier this year, my son’s third grade teacher phoned me. When she identified herself, she paused after her name, as though waiting to see if I recognized it. While it’s been five years since my son left her class, I never forget someone I’ve met and certainly not if I liked them. She was calling because she’d seen my books written up in the local newspaper. She’d run out and purchased them, and she wanted to know if she could come over to our house to have me sign them. Heck, yes. Come to find out, her son works for Harlan Coben’s publisher, and she’s learned a lot about publishing, including how important it is to support new writers.

A couple months ago, my husband suggested I contact Life in the Finger Lakes magazine to ask them to review my second book, For Richer, For Danger, which was set in the region. Before I had a chance, the magazine’s editor contacted me and asked if I could send a copy to their reviewer. Heck, yes. The review came out last month: “A most entertaining tale.”

Over the last few months, I’ve spent a few minutes a week friending people on Goodreads and asking them to check out my books. I always wonder if people find being approached in that manner more annoying than friendly. But in May, two reviewers specifically said they were “so glad” I contacted them.

A family friend doesn’t read often, okay, almost never. But she purchased my first book and read it within a couple days. Her husband said she just finished the second within a day and can’t wait for the third.

When I entered the publishing world, my only goal was to write a book that a recognized publisher would buy. Everything else has been icing on the cake.

So, care to share any of your own warm fuzzies? What little things of late have made your life choices that much more satisfying?

WILL THE REAL (UNREAL) CHARACTER PLEASE STAND UP

Darrell James

One of the greatest joys of being a writer is to see a character you’ve created jump off the page and come to life. It’s something you can’t always plan, can rarely predict, and sometimes can’t explain even after it happens. It’s simply characters taking on a life of their own, turning in an award wining performance. And it often comes as a complete surprise to the author.

What a great feeling to have been the one to breathe life into them.

For a character appearing for the first time, then, the story becomes something of an audition. A screen test. A pilot episode that can either leave the character in relative obscurity or propel them into a very real life that will see them recur time and time again. Though not every character wins the Oscar, if an author is lucky, a handful of characters go on to story stardom.


To date, I’ve written and had published close to thirty short stories, my first novel in the Del Shannon series, Nazareth Child, is forthcoming in September, book two in the series is completed and has been turned in to the publisher, and my latest short story has been chosen for inclusion in the Lee Child anthology, Vengeance, slated for publication in April-May next year. All told, I estimate that I have created more than 150 primary and secondary characters (maybe another 100 walk-ons). Several of whom have become so real to me that I have taken them on more than one story journey.

They are all part of the fictional world that I inhabit as an author. And what great fun it is to see one of them continue down the path of life. Even more so, to see one stumble onto the landscape of another character’s story. It’s like running into an old friend at the bank (although, in this case, the old friend is probably there to rob it.)

Elmore Leonard does this superbly. I came to know Raylan Givens from the Leonard novels "Pronto" and "Riding The Rap". Later, I thrilled again to the character in the short story, "Fire In The Hole," appearing in the Leonard collection "When The Ladies Come Out To Dance." I’m now a devout follower of Raylan in the FX television original series, Justified, based on the character. I feel as if I have known Raylan (and, in some respects, Elmore) personally, for a very long time.

What about you? As an author, have you created characters that have demanded their own life and space in your fictional world? As readers, how does it feel to recognize a character from the past? What’s one of your most befriended recurring characters?

Free Book Winner!!

I am feeling good today so I picked two winners for the Wined and Died contest.  And the winners are:

Shannon

and

Susan



Sales rep Katie Kane picking the winners!  :)

Shannon and Susan - email me your mailing addresses!  submissions @ midnightinkbooks.com

(remove the spaces!)

Have a great day and talk to y'all tomorrow!

Cozy Fare?

Okay, first we have to talk about FREE STUFF.

In celebration of the recent release of my fifth Home Crafting Mystery, Wined and Died, you can enter to win a FREE Author Website ($900 value!) from the creative folks at Bizango Websites for Writers until July 29, 2011. The winner will also receive 2 years of FREE hosting. For more details and information on how to enter, please visit my Hearth Cricket blog.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

My books are billed as cozies, but I get kind of squirmy every time I say that. Not because I have any problem with cozies – love ‘em, actually – but because mine aren’t. Not really.

But they’re crafting mysteries. I was on a panel at Left Coast Crime once that discussed exactly this issue. One of the questions was, “Do the subjects of your books make them cozy?” The idea was that if you’re writing mysteries about crafts (me), antiques (Jane Cleland), or gardening (Rosemary Harris) then they must be cozies. Two panelists were unable to attend, and Reed Farrell Coleman stepped in to balance out the panel (because of the wine connection in his Moe Prager mysteries, I assume). It turned out that despite our subject matter and the fact that we were all considered cozy writers (well, all except for Reed), none of us particularly related to the cozy label.

There’s outside evidence that I color slightly outside the cozy lines. There was that cozy author I asked to write a happy little blurb for one of my books who refused to be associated with it because it featured a stalker, a possible rapist, and an elderly woman was attacked. For a (very) brief moment there I felt like Hunter S.Thompson or Harry Crews. Another blurber was somewhat taken aback by the untraditionally fast pacing.

By the way, that thing about the pacing will make my writing buddies crazy, because they’re always telling me to speed things up. “But it’s a cozy, “ I say. Even if I only kinda, sorta mean it.

“What does it mean to know someone in the biblical sense?” is the opening line of Wined and Died, and it comes from an eleven-year-old girl. Throughout the series, serious issues like alcoholism, clinical depression, cancer, suicide, abuse – oh, and murder, helllooo – keep cropping up. In Wined and Died we’ve got us a little problem with some backwoods marywanna growers, drug dealing, and addiction.

Not terribly cozy fare, though it’s generously sprinkled with soap making, herb craft, gardening, how to make dandelion wine and ginger ale, information on mead, cooking, plenty of recipes, and, I hope, a bit of humor. There isn’t any explicit sex but two main characters are recently married, so there’s reference to their sex life. There was before the wedding, too. Wined and Died doesn’t have a lot of gore, but others in the series have had their share. Now that I think about it, the then acquisitions editor asked me to tone down the first page of the first Home Crafting Mystery because the description of the dead body was too graphic. (She was right, too – I totally went overboard on the ick factor.)

Yet middle school librarians stock my books. I rate them as PG 13 on Authors Den. At nearly all of my signings, at least one teenager buys a book, and I always tell the parents that there’s some mildly bad language and references to adult behavior. “Worse than television?” And I have to shake my head and offer them another molasses-oatmeal signing cookie.

So now I call my books contemporary cozies, because I guess that’s what they really are – a little faster, a teensy bit more edgy, not – as Robin put it in her recent post – “pink.” But they’re still about colonial home crafts, and that is cozy fare. Kinda sorta. Pretty much.

There are a lot of books out there that I’d call contemporary cozies. Or do you think “cozy” has been redefined over the last decade and that modifier is unnecessary?

Going, Going, Gone?

by Kathleen Ernst

One of the great things about writing novels is having the opportunity to explore interesting topics along the way. Since my Chloe Ellefson mysteries are set at historic sites, I have all kinds of opportunities to introduce readers to aspects of the museum world.

When planning book 2, The Heirloom Murders, I decided to shine a light on the role historic sites play in preserving old agricultural traditions. Interpreters at living history sites help perpetuate not just old methods, but historic livestock breeds and antique varieties of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

It’s a pretty big deal. According to the USDA, we’ve lost ninety-seven percent of the vegetable varieties once grown in the United States. People have gotten out of the habit of saving their own seeds, passing them along, swapping with neighbors. Large seed companies have overtaken small local ones. Vegetables grown today are largely chosen for their ability to look good after being shipped long distances. Luscious-tasting varieties that didn’t look pretty were discarded. We’ve lost a lot of flavor and diversity along the way.

Even worse, some of those old varieties might have been the only type to withstand the onslaught of some new pest or disease. In The Heirloom Murders, Chloe explains the situation to cop Roelke McKenna this way:

Chloe tapped her pencil against her clipboard. “You’ve heard of the Irish potato famine, right? Mass starvation, mostly because a blight hit the potato crop?”

“Yeah. Lots of Irish people came over here.”

“Right. All the potatoes in Europe succumbed to the disease. But in the Andes, people were growing hundreds or thousands of potato varieties, and some of them proved to be resistant to the blight. If that hadn’t been the case, we wouldn’t be eating mashed potatoes for dinner every Thanksgiving.”

I didn’t know anything about heirloom gardening until I went to work in the historic sites biz myself, way back when. Now I grow heirlooms in my own gardens. Mostly vegetables, but a few flowers too.

My first goal for any novel is to tell a good story, about characters that readers will come to care about. But if a couple of readers get intrigued by old varieties of vegetables, fruits, or flowers too…well, that would be pretty darn cool.

All photos were taken at an agricultural fair held at Old World Wisconsin, which has an extensive historic agriculture program. For more information about heirloom seeds, check out Seed Savers Exchange.