5--no, 6--Things I Love About Launch Day the Third Time Around

By Lisa Alber

Path Into Darkness is out in the world now. My third novel, and I can't help but compare the book launch day experience for this novel against the same day for my debut novel, Kilmoon. There's nothing like a debut novel. I remember wiser novelists cautioning me to remember to enjoy the experience; it only comes around once.

So true! But, just to play Devil's Advocate with myself, in some ways, thank goodness the experience only comes around once! Here are the five ways that I enjoyed the book launch for Path Into Darkness.

1. It wasn't heady, loud, OMG everything is going to change BECAUSE I'LL BE PUBLISHED AUTHOR. So much stress and drama to go along with the thrill. Every year, the new batch of debut authors reveal themselves, and I so understand how big and new everything is, and I think, I was like that too; that was fun; but I'm glad I'm here now.

By contrast, what was launch day like this time around? Pleasant and relaxed because I had no expectations. I woke up and got my writing in for the day as usual before doing the online thing.

2. Not having a book launch party the week of book launch. The past two book releases I had the party at my local bookstore the week of. Ugh. I'm a stressed-out event planner anyhow, and I'm not exactly an extrovert who loves being the center of attention. I planned big parties in the local Irish pub and made a big production of them, especially for Kilmoon. I mean, you gotta for the first book, granted, but, man--too much stress!

So what am I doing this time around? My launch party is next week, a couple of weeks after book launch day. Best yet, it will be a joint event with two other author friends with books out now too. I'm so much more relaxed -- and I'm even looking forward to it! (That's mostly a joke, but not 100%.)

3. The little things that surprise me. Since I don't have huge expectations anymore, I found great pleasure in the little things that posted online. For example, I was the book of the day for Foreword Reviews. I enjoyed sharing that. Other mentions and reviews and hurrahs came through too. I appreciated every one of them.

4. I don't feel desperate. I have a way more relaxed attitude about the whole thing when it comes to readers. I remember for Kilmoon, I was so nervous. It was like my very existence hinged on whether people would like my book, and how many (sales!) of them there were. It's true that promotion is an important part of our jobs, but I now understand how little control I actually have. That's a relief. Honestly.

So what is it I'm really saying? I've returned to the love of process. I love writing. Just that. I'm writing the first draft of my next book now, and I'm having so much fun with it. Just gotta keep writing!

5. Holding the book in my hands. This is one of the few things that hasn't changed. I brought a copy to a few parties over the last month for show-and-tell, like I was showing off my newborn infant. I still take pride in my work. It's an awesome feat, to complete a novel all the way to the point of publication. I'm honored to be a member of the tribe, and I appreciate it so much.

On a related note, one of the things that was cool this time around was holding a book in which the flap copy says things like, "By the author of Whispers in the Mist, heralded by Library Journal as “a first-rate crime novel,” comes this haunting tale of family secrets, madness, and healing in small-town Ireland." It feels weighty in a nice way, like, yes, I have a track record now, and it's pretty darned good. I'm surprised by how good this feels.

And 6. This just came to me. There are people out there who have been looking forward to the next in my series. I didn't notice this so much for the second book, because it's a second--that's it own thing--but now? It's so--I don't know--heartwarming? It's like, Wow, I've written stories that people are telling me they're excited to read. That they CAN'T WAIT to read. I don't know what the word for this is, actually. Mind-boggling comes pretty close. :-)

When the Book Reviews Start Coming In ...

By Lisa Alber

There's this pause the occurs--at least for me--after handing off a manuscript to the publisher and before the book reviews start coming in (i.e. the reality of our stories out in the real world) that fills me with a combination of excitement and dread.

By the time I hand off a novel, I don't want to think about it for a long, long time. But this is impossible because I've gotta start thinking about marketing and promotion, and once that enters my head, I inevitably wonder about the novel's reception in the real world.

As I said to a friend last week, "I'm kind of curious about what Path Into Darkness's reception is going to be like."

"Curious?" C said. She's a fellow mystery novelist though on the lighter end of the spectrum.

I knew she was wondering about my word choice. "Curious" is a curious word to use, for sure. It might have been code for "worried" or "scared shitless," but ... hmm ... not entirely. I really was curious. Because I felt--and still feel--that I tend to stretch the boundaries of my chosen fiction genre.

Readers might think they're picking up a traditional mystery, but they're not. Not really. And, of course, this gets me thinking about expectations and disappointment. I've never thought about these two topics as much as I have since getting published.

Some readers' expectations stem from the way a book looks and the way it's marketed. And, see, I have no control over this. This is part of what the pause I mentioned above is all about: the moment I lose control of the story around my story. This is why I get curious. I know what I was about while I writing, but will readers get what I was about while writing? Some will; some won't. Some will like it; some won't. Nothing I can do about any of this.

I've decided that I'm going to create a new genre within the mystery category: psychological whydunits, which could also be called :psychological suspense," I suppose, except that I do use traditional elements. The plain truth is that the whodunit has never interested me as much as the whydunnit, but that may be because I adore psychology, in general.

But, all's well that ends well--for the moment anyhow. I received my first two reviews from reviewing entities. And they were good! Whew!

"A dark, compelling mystery with numerous plot twists and well-drawn characters interwoven with an involving portrait of life in a small, insular Irish village."   --Booklist

"Dark and haunting ... The author's complex and tightly-woven tale filled was filled with colloquial phrases that added an air of authenticity to the story."   --Books and Benches

Lisa Alber is the author of the County Clare mysteries. Her debut novel, Kilmoon, has been called "utterly poetic" and "a stirring debut." Her second in the County Clare mysteries, Whispers in the Mist, came out in August from Midnight Ink Books. Look for PATH INTO DARKNESS in August 2017. Ever distractible, you may find her staring out windows, fooling around online, or drinking red wine with her friends. Ireland, books, animals, photography, and blogging round out her distractions. Facebook | Twitter

5 Sure Signs That I Can Let Go of My Manuscript (Finally!)

By Lisa Alber

Over the weekend, I read a printed copy of my manuscript for WHISPERS IN THE MIST (August 2016). I read it fast, looking out for loose ends and moot remnants still hanging around from previous versions.

At this point in the writing process, I always know that I'll feel compelled to read the manuscript just one more time before hand off, and I know I'll still find things that need fixing, and I know I'll worry about whether the newest changes have themselves caused inconsistencies (or typos!) that will require me to re-read the manuscript AGAIN ... 

It could go on forever, but there comes a point when I have to let my baby go. Given that I can always continue improving my stories, when do I feel that "yes" feeling about letting a manuscript go?

1. The latest manuscript read-through was mostly clean. Changes were only for clarity, consistency, and pruning. Nit-piks.

2. I have no more questions to myself about nitty-gritty plot points. (My stories are kind of complex.) Yes, all the bits and pieces are there.

3. I've considered every piece of beta reader feedback. I've incorporated what my gut says "yay" about, and I've ignored what my gut says "nay" about.

4. I've gone through a copyedit (as best as I can since I'm not a copyeditor) on my own. I catch a lot of weird prose quirks when I focus on the line-by-line. We all have our easy-way-outs when we're writing. For example, I love m-dashes, but they can be used in place of properly crafted sentences.

This is also when I deal with rhetorical questions, such as this example from a previous draft of WHISPERS:   

Danny still couldn’t fathom why Malcolm had offered up the alibi unless it was to humiliate Danny. But why? Because he was pissed that Danny hadn’t prioritized the graffiti vandalism? Because he didn’t like Danny prying into McIlvoy’s life?

This is just lazy writing. Really. At least for me. A bunch of rhetorical questions in a row tell me I need to go deeper and get to the heart of the matter in a more precise fashion. This might mean adding word count, but that's OK. So now it's this:

Danny still couldn’t fathom why Malcolm had offered up the alibi unless it was to humiliate Danny. He hadn’t prioritized finding the phantom graffiti artist, true, but surely Malcolm understood that vandalism didn’t rate as high as murder.

No, the alibi had to be a good-old-fashioned diversionary tactic. Most likely to distract Danny from prying into Malcolm’s relationship with McIlvoy.

 
5. Last but not least, I've word-searched words I know to be problematic, such as the "just"s and "really"s. Excess adverbs. The verb "was," which could indicate a yucky passive voice sentence or a sentence that needs rewriting with a stronger verb. I have a word list that I keep handy for this tedious, final task.

It's not that I get rid of every "just," "really," and "was" -- but I do consider them carefully. It's so easy to fall back on them -- another easy way out. (Oh, look at that, falling back on m-dashes again!)

Also, during all of this, I'll have noticed other words -- not the usual "blah" words -- that I fell in love with for some reason. For example, while writing WHISPERS, I used "flicker" a lot. Everything was flickering, from candle and sconce light, to gazes, to birds in flight. It was a positive flicker-fest, enough to cause a migraine!

All of this may be tedious, it may add to my writing time, but in end, I love the satisfaction of knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I've done all that I can do.

There's no such thing as perfection; there's only doing the best we can.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE PROMOTIONAL BOX

by Lois Winston

As authors, along with writing the next book, we have to promote our current books, but promotion often feels like we’re shouting into a tsunami. Does anyone really hear us? How many people who see our social media postings will run out and buy our books? How many people show up at book signings and talks we give, let alone purchase a copy of our latest baby? How many people run out to buy a copy of our latest release as soon as it comes out? Sadly, very few. Whether an author is traditionally published, indie published, or both, competition for consumer dollars is stiff. And if your name isn’t King, Patterson, Rowling, or Roberts, it’s even stiffer. So we’re always on the lookout for new ways to get readers to learn about us and our books—and hopefully entice them to pull out their wallets and take a chance on us.

One of the newest promotional tools many authors are taking advantage of is the boxed set. Publishers have been producing boxed sets of a single author’s work for many years, especially if the books are part of a series. However, they’ve never done so with multiple authors. Recently some enterprising authors have begun to think outside the traditional promotional box. They’ve banded together to produce themed boxed sets rather than single author boxed sets. The price is set low enough to make the set an incredible bargain, which hopefully will entice readers to take a chance on authors they may not already know. If they like what they read, they might then buy more books by those authors.

Because this has proven to be such an effective marketing tool, I recently joined with nine other authors for a boxed set. Along with writing mysteries, I also write romance and romantic suspense. Because the other authors invited to participate are all romance and romantic suspense authors, I contributed Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception, one of my previously traditionally published romance suspense novels that had gone out of print. I had received the rights back to the book and several months ago published it myself as an ebook.

Our boxed set is titled Romance Super Bundle and is a collection of 10 full-length contemporary romance, historical romance, and romantic suspense novels. Along on the ride with me are authors Dale Mayer, Donna Marie Rogers, Edie Ramer, Amy Gamet, Linda McLaughlin, Kate Kelly, Pamela Fryer, Barbara Phinney, and Wendy Ely. Many of these authors are award-winners and bestsellers.

We priced the Romance Super Bundle at $5.99. That’s less than .60 cents per novel. However for a limited time the collection is on sale for only .99 cents. That’s mere pennies per book! Hopefully, it will entice readers to take a chance on us. Time will tell.

Buy Links:

Amazon 

Nook

Kobo

Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews dubbed it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” Other books in the series includes Death By Killer Mop Doll, Revenge of the Crafty Corpse and the ebook only mini-mysteries Crewel Intentions and Mosaic Mayhem. Lois is also published in women’s fiction, romance, romantic suspense, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name.Visit Lois at www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma at www.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. Follow everyone on Twitter @anasleuth.

The Capricious Nature of This Life We Live

by Lois Winston

Malice-Go-Round authors
(photo by Greg Puhl)

Malice-Go-Round Attendees

I recently attended Malice Domestic in Bethesda, MD and the Festival of Mystery in Oakmont, PA. As is wont to happen when authors get together at conventions and conferences, there is considerable discussion (and grousing) about the capricious nature of the publishing industry. It got me thinking about why one author will shoot up the bestseller lists when another author with an equally well-written book lingers in obscurity. Over the years, I’ve also seen too many poorly written books take off, climb the lists, and make gobs of money for the authors who wrote them (50 Shades of Crap, anyone?) while fabulous books that should have become bestsellers never caught on.

Mystery fans lined up, waiting to get into the Festival of Mystery

I used to think an author’s success was tied to how much promotion her publisher was willing to give her books and how much effort the author put into social media. But I’ve seen books that had huge publisher support never take off and books shelved spine out alphabetically (meaning, no promo dollars were allocated to the author,) become the book everyone was talking about.

Same for self-promotion. I know a debut author who became ill shortly before her book was to be released. She was too busy fighting her disease to think about flacking her book. Her publisher did nothing for her. Her book wasn’t reviewed anywhere. Yet that book sold and sold well. Six years later she was still receiving royalty checks twice a year from her publisher.

Another author I know had a debut book come out at the same time. Her publisher also spent no promo dollars on her, but this author hired a publicist. She received some pretty good press coverage for her book, including fabulous reviews and a huge write-up in a major newspaper. She barely earned out her paltry advance.

Some authors are phenoms when it comes to social media. Readers hang on their every Tweet and Facebook update. Other authors who do basically the same thing have next to no followers, even though the books are worth reading. Why do readers gravitate to some of these authors and not others equally worthy of having followings? Why does word-of-mouth favor one author’s book over another?

And it’s not just in traditional publishing where you find this. Indie authors experience the same disparity. I know indie authors who write equally good books in the same genre and sell them for the same price. One sells hundreds of books a day while the other sells maybe one or two books a week.

I don’t have any answers. I wish I did. The only conclusion I can draw is that publishing, whether in the traditional arena or as an independent author, is a crapshoot. And success at publishing is even more of one. Roll the dice!

~~~

Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Lois is also published in women’s fiction, romance, romantic suspense, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. In addition, she’s an award-winning crafts and needlework designer and an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers character blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

GIVING BACK AND PAYING IT FORWARD

by Lois Winston

I’ve always been a huge proponent of both giving back and paying it forward. Many knowledgeable people have shared their expertise with me over the years and helped me get where I am today. Without their willingness to share, I never would have learned what I needed to learn to become both a published author and a literary agent.

One of the ways I’ve given back to the writing community is by teaching. Over the past six years, I’ve presented workshops and given talks at conferences and to various writing groups, spoken at libraries, facilitated a writers’ group at a local bookstore, written articles on writing and publishing for newsletters and guest blogs, and taught continuing education courses. With few exceptions, most of this has been volunteer work. Occasionally, I receive a small honorarium for my time.

Often people who have taken my workshops or attended my classes have suggested I publish a book on writing. I never gave it much thought until a few months ago when I received an email from someone who had taken one of my online workshops. She wrote to tell me that she’d sold her manuscript, and it was all because of what she’d learned in my workshop.

This particular writer had previously received dozens of form rejection letters. After taking the workshop, she revised her manuscript based on what she’d learned. Then she began sending out a new batch of queries. Suddenly she was receiving requests for partials. Several months later, she received an offer of publication. She ended her email by suggesting I put the information from that workshop into a book.

As most of you know by now, the publishing world is changing. Authors now have more options, thanks to indie publishing and the phenomenal sales of eReaders over the last two years. I realized the time was right to give serious thought to publishing a writing book.

The workshop the writer had taken was Top Ten Reasons Your Manuscript is Rejected. I tweaked the title a bit and last week e-published Top Ten Reasons Your Novel is Rejected. I can only teach so many workshops. I hope this book helps many aspiring writers achieve their dreams of seeing their stories in print.

If you’re interested or know someone who might be interested in the book, you can find buy links at my website. 

Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, a January 2011 release, is the first book in the series and received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews dubbed it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum” Death By Killer Mop Doll was released this past January. Revenge of the Crafty Corpse will be a January 2013 release. Lois also writes romance, romantic suspense, humorous women's fiction, and non-fiction under her own name and as Emma Carlyle. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers character blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

NATIONAL BUY A NOVEL DAY

Christmas is less than a week away. If you’re like most of us, you probably still have last minute shopping, wrapping, decorating, and baking on your to-do list. And you’ve probably spent beyond your budget. What you haven’t done, most likely, is given yourself a gift.

Today, I’m giving myself a gift.

You see, Besides Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers, my own blog, I contribute to two other blogs. I blog approximately once a month here at Inkspot and every two weeks at 7 Criminal Minds (which is a total misnomer, since there are 14 of us, so I suppose that means we each only have half a mind.)

The 7 Criminal Minds blog poses a question each week, and the 7 authors scheduled to blog that week have to answer the question. This week we were tasked with creating our own holiday, and as luck would have it, today is my day to blog both at 7 Criminal Minds and Inkspot.

Remember how I mentioned above that Christmas is less than a week away? Remember that to-do list? And here I am stuck with two blogs in one day. Hence, the gift I’m giving myself: I’m telling all of you about the holiday I created over at the other blog.

Cheating? Perhaps. But I’m going to do it anyway because it’s also my gift to my fellow Inkspot authors.

I hereby declare today National Buy a Novel Day.

For the past several months, ABC World News has featured an ongoing series called Made in America. One of the points made is that according to economists they spoke with, if everyone in America spent just $64 on goods made in America, it would create 200,000 new jobs. Given that the average person will spend $700 this year on Christmas and Hanukkah presents, it should be relatively easy to budget $64 for gifts made in America. The show even has a map on their website for finding goods made in America by state.

I propose that we create a National Buy a Novel Day to be held in December. This day would encourage people to buy novels as gifts. Most books sold in America are written (and illustrated) by Americans. Many are published by small and medium presses headquartered in America. Those publishers that are now part of worldwide conglomerates still have offices in America and employ thousands of Americans. Although some publishers are outsourcing their printing and even their copyediting overseas, for the most part, books are still printed in America.

Think about all the people whose livelihoods depends on book publishing. Not only the editors, cover artists, publicists, marketers, and salespeople who work for the publisher, but the clerks and secretaries and switchboard operators. The accountants and bookkeepers. The cleaning staff. The people who work in nearby businesses that these people frequent during their lunch hour.

Then there are the people who work for the printers, the bindery, the warehouse. The truckers who ship the books. The booksellers who sell the books. Librarians. The journalists who review the books.

If everyone in America spent just $64 on books this holiday season, we’d create 200,000 jobs in publishing and publishing related industries. How cool would that be? So cross off those must-have tchotchkes you were going to buy as gifts. They’ll go the way of the Furby and Pet Rock by the end of January anyway. Join the National Buy a Novel movement and buy books instead. Starving authors everywhere will thank you, and so will a lot of other people.

Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series. The first book, Assault With A Deadly Glue Gun, was a January 2011 release and received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Death by Killer Mop Doll will be a January 2012 release. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

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?

Saying Good-Bye to My Baby

Writing an entire book is like running a marathon (not that I ever have or will run one) or finding out you're about to have a baby, where you start off fast and happy, hit a wall of fear, curse the gods for ever giving you the thought of pursuing this madness, but keep going until the end with renewed vigor, or as I like to think of it, "I made it this bloody far, I will not let anything stop me. I'll show them!" So you continue on until you get to write those two wonderful words, "The End," and make yourself a large drink. Your baby is here...now comes the hard part.

After the first draft coomes the first and second edits before you give it to your beta testers, who take their sweet time reading and editing. Then you take their suggestions, edit again, send it to your wonderful agent for her to edit, make the corrections she suggests, edit again, and finally it's ready to shop around. And if the publishing gods deign her worthy the publisher will have you edit it at least twice more. So "The End" is simply the beginning of a grueling process, almost like raising a child, where you will curse your characters for ever entering your imagination or life in the first place at least once or twice. But you love her regardless, and you solider on to do your best to help her grow.

There is so much else that goes into getting the book from the first draft to the last as I pointed out. But yesterday I started the final, final, final edit of "Mind Over Monsters." She has gone through so many changes since I started it seven(!) years ago I barely recognize her. The beginning chapter I started with is completely gone, characters names have changed, and I don't know how many paragraphs have been shortened or expanded. She (like all cars manuscripts are female) has grown from a seed in my mind to an infant as I did the first draft. All her parts were there, her personality, but she needed shaping to become a productive member of book society.

So through the years I did my best to trim her fat, improve her vocabulary, scream at her when she wouldn't listen to me, and make her the best she could be. (Those teenage years...shudder. I almost gave up on her when I was trying to sell her, but we soldiered through). Now it's as if she is about to graduate college. She's standing on her own two feet, but still needs her Mommy for a few last bits of advice. That's what I'm doing now with the final edit. Never again will I be able to change words, add to characters, plug in narrative holes, etc. She will forever be out in the world as is for other people to judge, enjoy, or just plain hate. She is her own entity now. I just hope my baby will become President instead of a bum. Regardless, I have to let go. I've done all I can to get her to stand on her two feet, and I am proud of her...though I never want to see her again.

Now onto her siblings.

Size Matters

Cricket McRae

My college ethics professor gave essay exams. When asked how long she expected our responses to be, she said, “Long enough to answer the question. If that’s one word, great. If it takes three pages, so be it. But if you try to fake knowing the answer by writing a bunch of B.S. I’ll give you a zero.”

I liked her.

Last month Craig Johnson spoke and signed at my local Indie. Mixed in among his usual amusing anecdotes and good ol’ boy humor was the revelation that when Viking signed him they asked him to cut down his first manuscript in the Walt Longmire series. Like, a lot. Enough reduction in word count to make me shudder.

A couple of my friends attended the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference in July. We were in frequent contact as they navigated the choppy waters of agent and editor appointments, not to mention bracing total strangers in elevators, hallways and bars. One has written a contemporary, humorous thriller. The other a historical romantic suspense. They’re both quite good and not in the least overwritten. But, over and over, their story concepts were less important than how long the manuscripts were. Both are over 100,000 words. Not by a lot, but that seems to be the magic number which nixes the possibility of publishing.

On my recent book tour in the Seattle area I spoke with a Sisters in Crime member who has more than one finished manuscript and is looking for an agent. A well-known name was on the verge of signing her, then changed her mind based on the length of my friend’s manuscript – which, again, was right around 100,000 words.

Everyone is cutting back. I get that. Frugality and cost cutting are my middle name. Names. Whatever. And genres do impose certain size expectations. Thrillers and romantic suspense used to be acceptable at 100,000 words, though. So did some mainstream mysteries. But while there are still some epic tomes of Wonder Boys proportions being published, (Neil Stephenson comes immediately to mind) they’re the exception to what appears to be an increasingly rigid rule.

Are publishers cheating readers by insisting on shorter manuscripts? Is it necessary to ensure their survival in this time of change and uncertainty in the industry? Or is short what more readers really want? Have sound bites, ten-second commercials and communicating via text, Twitter and Facebook updates altered our tolerance for stories that take longer to tell – and read?

OR: Is this just a situation where I happen to be hearing this same story over and over, like when you learn a new word and then suddenly you see and hear it everywhere?

Back from Bouchercon - October 2009

by G.M. Malliet

My apologies for the quality of the photo at left, which looks as if it were taken underwater. I have a few more from Bouchercon over here at Facebook, mostly featuring the lovely display of attending authors' book covers by the wonderful Sisters in Crime of the Indianapolis area.

I am generally too busy at Bouchercon to do more than race around and catch up with as many people as I can, and taking photos doesn't always happen. Running into people like Peter Lovesey, Sue Grafton, and Michael Connelly tends to make you forget you're carrying a camera in the first place--you're just too much in awe. But I did have the presence of mind to take the photo above, which is from the hugely popular agents and editors panel. From left to right are Joshua Bilmes, Michael Pietsch, Keith Kahla (M), Kelley Ragland, and David Hale Smith reporting on the state of the mystery genre.

Their news, I am happy to report, is on the positive side. I'll get to the negative in a minute. But editors Ragland and Pietsch (Minotaur and Little, Brown, respectively) report that, bad economy or no, they're still buying books to feed what seems to be the public's never-ending appetite for entertainment, mysteries in particular. Kahla (St. Martin's Press) and agent David Hale Smith agree--things are looking fine, and good books are still finding a home.

What no one is entirely sure of is the effect eBooks will have on the industry, but as one panelist mentioned, paperbacks were at one time viewed as the End of Publishing As We Know It, and we somehow survived that.

Joshua Bilmes, although agent to Charlaine Harris of the hugely successful Sookie Stackhouse vampire books, admits to being a bit of a pessimist nonetheless. He is more cautious than his colleagues, not only about how eBooks, when they really catch on, will affect profits, but the effect of illegal (or legal) filesharing on profits. If people can download a book for $10 and then share the same book with five or fifty friends, Bilmes wonders how that can fail to hurt the bottom line for authors and publishers. Is it different from or the same as friends in a book club, for example, sharing the same book to save money?

Your views on the pros and cons of the eBook revolution? (I used to think the fact that eBooks can't be signed would save us, until someone recently asked me to sign the cover of their Kindle reader.)

The Hell of the Unrelenting Synopsis

One of my favorite movies is Big Trouble in Little China. Aside from one great line after another ("Oh. My. God. What is that? Don't tell me!!") and delectably perfect over-the-top acting (Kurt Russell is incredible), there are constant and valuable references to various Hells. The Hell Of Being Cut To Pieces or the Hell of Boiling Oil. The notion of hundreds of Hells of varying specificities makes perfect sense to me. It seems the most apt way of describing life so much of the time.

At the moment, I'm in the Hell of the Unrelenting Synopsis.

My agent asked for a synopsis for Chasing Smoke last week. 500-1,000 words she said. She also said, "I know they're so easy to write (ow! Ouch! Lightning!)" Yeah. Ouch.

So here's my question. Does anyone like writing synopses? Raise your hand.
Nobody?

Zzzzt.

That's so, er, hard to believe. Ahem.

My synopsis is currently sitting at 2,000 words, and I've only covered about a third of the novel. At this rate, it'll be six times longer than she wants, assuming I actually finish the damned thing ("the damned thing" being what I call it when I'm in a good mood, i.e. when I'm not actually working on it or thinking about it or remembering that it's still not done).

I was bemoaning the damned thing conundrum to my daughter, and she observed, "the author is probably the worst person to write the synopsis. You're too invested in the details of your story."

Exactly. If I wanted to write a short version of the story, I'd have written a short version of the story. In a synopsis, by necessity you have to leave a lot out, skim the surface, focus on the highlights. Assign varying degrees of importance to different aspects of the story. But here's the thing. If I didn't think it was important, I wouldn't have written it, and if I didn't feel like the best way to tell the story was to dramatize the events, I'd have written an essay. The lesson that gets beaten into writers over and over again is show, don't tell. The synopsis is the very essence of telling, not showing. It's anathema! Get thee down, Synopsis!

Of course, I know I can do it. I did it with Lost Dog. I wrote an elevator pitch, two sentences. And I wrote a short summary, about three paragraphs. And I wrote a full synopsis, about two-and-a-half pages long. So, sure, it's doable.

But it's hell, lemme tell ya.

The Hell of the Unrelenting Synopsis.

The Procrastinator

by G.M. Malliet

I happened to catch Laura Lippman on the CBS Early Show on March 15, talking with Harry Smith about the writing life. She mentioned that she writes almost every morning in a coffee shop near where she lives. She doesn't do this for the ambience, nor even for the coffee. She does this to get away from her laundry.

"The thing about being a stay-at-home writer is that laundry becomes immensely attractive and seductive," she said.

I knew exactly what she meant. I think every writer in the world, famous or no, fiction or non, gets this.

I once heard a writer say her house was never so clean as when she had a looming deadline.

Faced with a blank page that you're supposed to be filling with type, almost any other activity starts to look really good. Closet cleaning, bathroom-tile scrubbing, venetian-blind dusting, even bill paying. Of particular fascination to me--rising to nearly the same level as the siren call of the laundry--is the dusty picture frame. You may have noticed that picture frames tend to collect dust along the top, a fact that--until I hit a rough patch in, say, Chapter 13--triggered no particular alarms. But suddenly, nothing would do but that I find a dust rag and furniture polish and get to work on every frame in the room. Chapter 13 be damned, and it probably will be.

There has, simultaneously (while the dusty frame emergency was growing to crisis proportions), been a dead moth "living" in my overhead light globe ( if there is a better expression for "light globe"I would be grateful to the person who supplies it) for at least a month, probably more. Probably years.

In my moments of communion with the Muse, as I cast my eyes heavenward, I notice the corpse of him/her. This poor moth. I am never, interestingly enough, as a crime writer, moved to do anything about this. Investigate it, or something. I just sit there staring blankly upwards. To do something about it would require getting out a ladder and stuff and I really don't have time: I'm busy staring into space.

I don't know what this says about me as a writer or as a person, for that matter. I should bury the poor moth, who, after all, has harmed no one, but somehow I never get around to it.

I guess it says that I don't procrastinate just any old way. I am highly selective about my choice of procrastination activities. Unlike Joe Moore, who is clearly a highly disorganized procrastination dilettante.

Blogging might turn out to be another, powerful form of procrastination for me, but I can tell already it's going to be wa-a-a-y more fun than dusting.