Recollections and Lessons Learned On My Maiden Voyage

Recently I was thinking about my first book, how naïve I was , and the lessons that I learned. With the exciting news of my first sale, (then writing prehistoric fiction under the name Lynn Armistead McKee) I didn’t really give a hill of beans about the advance or anything other than the fact that Berkley was publishing MY book! (That’s the first naïve part) It was originally a horror/occult novel, but the editor requested I take all of that out so it would appeal to a broader audience—in other words change the genre. My immediate answer was, “Sure, no problem.” I had no idea what I was in for. This was no simple revision, but what did I know? (That's the second naïve part.)

A month later and deep into the revisions, I received a horrifying phone call from my agent’s assistant (my agent was on vacation in Turkey) telling me that my editor had left Berkley and I was orphaned. I had to ask what was the worst-case scenario. He sadly related that there was the possibility that the new editor might not like my book, and it wouldn’t get published. My first thought was that I had already told all my friends that I was going to have a book published. Yikes! Luckily, the new editor liked the book, and it continued along in the editorial process—which was another eye-opener. Didn’t a writer get a call on Monday that a publisher was buying the book, and then it was published on Friday—or something like that? Why would it take an entire year? Wow, see how uninformed and virginal I was.

Finally, revisions complete, final edits done, ARCs out, and then the big day. I had befriended a Waldenbooks store manager, and she called me when the books arrived. I gathered up all my family and headed to the mall with a video camera. I was going to surreptitiously capture the first sale. (Like I didn’t stand out in the crowd with a video camera stuck to my eye.) That’s about the time my stomach turned over and I felt like I was going to throw up. All this time I had been anxiously looking forward to seeing my “baby” on the shelf. I was so sure that I would be ecstatic. Now, through the camera lens I witnessed someone pick up my book, read the back blurb, thumb through it, then put it back on the table. For the first time I realized that not everyone was going to like my book—after all we don’t all like to read the same thing. But the worst was that I became acutely aware that some of those people who wouldn’t like my book were going to be my friends. I had never really considered that.

Amongst all the rude awakenings during my maiden voyage into the publishing sea, that was the rudest.

I heard Stephen King speak once, and he said his publisher spent tons of money doing a survey on why some people don’t read Stephen King. He said he told them it was because some folks just don’t read that sh--. The publisher went ahead with the survey anyway and King said that what they found out after spending many thousands of dollars was that some people just don’t read that sh--.

Authors have to have tough skin. It’s part of the package. I have switched genres and publishers, changed my pen name to Lynn Sholes (my real name—I had what I call a regime change—divorced and remarried), and now co-write thrillers with Joe Moore for Midnight Ink. Even though we have had wonderful feedback and great reviews, as every writer knows, from out of the fog a rogue reviewer sometimes emerges, or you occasionally get a flat response from a friend. Changing genres, publishers, and names hasn’t changed the bottom line that not everyone will love what I write. I can’t be offended by that or I’d never write again. Blowing it off is a lesson worth learning. When I don't get the fabulous comments from a friend that I wanted or when the creep from hell posts a less than super review on Amazon, I have to keep in mind what I discovered in the mall behind the lens of my video camera and also when listening to Stephen King-- some people just don’t read that sh--.

InkSpot News - April 7, 2007

SUSAN GOODWILL's debut book in the Kate London Mystery Series, BrigaDOOM, has made the March, 2007 bestseller list at Mystery Lover's Bookshop.

Mystery Lovers Bookshop is one of the largest specialty mystery book stores in the country and has been in business for seventeen years. Located in Oakmont, PA, Mystery Lovers sponsors the Annual Festival of Mystery, now in its twelfth year. 

The Festival will take  place Monday, May 7, 2007.

Are We All Nuts?

What do you call someone who is detached from reality and lives in a fantasy world? A schizophrenic? Delusional? How about a writer?

People have told me they think Ian, the main character in my book Dot Dead is really me. That’s flattering since he’s younger, more attractive, and smarter than I am, but it’s just not true. In fact, I think those people have the situation exactly backwards. While writing the book, I became Ian. I lived in an alternate world as Ian and made my way through that messy place as him. When he checks voicemail one day, Ian gets a message left for him by a person since murdered. A shiver went up my back and my scalp tingled when I wrote that. I was there. I was Ian.

Back in grad school when I was writing my thesis on British diplomacy just before World War II, I caught myself writing checks dated 1939. (No, I was not in grad school then. I’m old but not that old.) For ten or twelve hours a day, I time-traveled and became Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, and company trying to figure out how to deal with the Nazi menace. Putting yourself in another time and place, walking in another person’s shoes – isn’t that what writing is all about? And there’s no need to defy the laws of physics to do it. You just need a laptop and the ability to live in an alternate world.

Some writers do meticulous outlining before starting the first chapter. Not me. I write in the first person because I want to be in that alternate world and experience what the narrator is seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and thinking. So I can become him. Tess Gerritsen recently blogged about this: “I have no idea where my story will take me when I sit down to write the first page.” Me neither. Finding out where I'm going in an alternative world is what makes writing so exciting to me.

It all kind of reminds me of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter, hero of A Princess of Mars, who magically travels between two different worlds. (Same thing for the kids in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.) Don’t we writers escape from the workaday world and move to another, more interesting one while thumping on the keyboard?

So where do you draw the line between being a writer and being a little unhinged? As for me, I draw no line, but a circle. I’m both.

Keith Raffel

P.S. Just in case you were wondering what I had in common with Zach Braff, Marilu Henner, Bob Marley, Michelle Phillips, Billy Dee Williams, Merle Haggard, André Previn, James Watson, Walter Huston, Butch Cassidy, and Raphael.... We were all born on April 6!

Has this ever happened to you?

I could talk about writing. Everyone else is talking about writing. But I don't feel like talking about writing.

So I'm going to talk about something else. In fact, I'm going to talk about something that happened to me this morning.

The last few weeks, things have been rather hectic for me, the result being that there's been more than a bit of sleep deprivation in my life. So this morning, since I had an interview to do at noon (with Ashley, a very nice young lady from the Daily Texan) and I wanted to be able to form coherent sentences, after I dropped my kids off, I did NOT go and write. Which is highly unusual.

Instead, I went home, took a bath, read a book, and set the alarm clock for a reasonable time in case I fell asleep.

Well, the alarm went off, I got up, blew my hair dry, got dressed, couldn't find my keys, discovered the rabbit had fleas, and then accidentally left the front door open.

And then the alarm went off, and I woke up.

Now, maybe it's just me, but personally, I think life is busy enough that I deserve a little downtime when I close my eyes. I mean, you'd think my subconscious could throw a dragon or two in there, or maybe a trip to the south of France. Or at least a hunky guy in a kilt.

But no, I get lost keys and fleas.

If only there was someone I could complain to...

A Writer's Moment of Truth

by Julia Buckley

I remember waiting to find out whether or not I was going to be published by Midnight Ink. They had been discussing my manuscript and keeping my agent apprised of its progress; I got occasional e-mails saying “It’s still under consideration.” I was granted a lot of time, therefore, to contemplate how much I wanted it. I was about to turn forty. I saw this as my opportunity to accomplish something pretty big before leaving my thirties.

This is a pattern with me; a week before I turned thirty I bore my first child, so I got in just under the wire at the end of that decade, too. Now I can say that I had Ian “in my twenties,” but just barely.

The book, as I saw it, was another kind of baby, and I really wanted it to be born with Midnight Ink. It was December (my birthday is on the 30th), and I was waiting for a call from my agent, who was expecting word any moment. However, it just so happened to be my husband’s day off, and I had to go to work, so I told him to keep track of any messages.

My husband picked the boys up from school and then they came to get me at work. He didn’t say anything when I got in the car, so I assumed he had no news for me, good or bad. We drove for a time, talking about the day and wondering what we’d do for dinner. Then I noticed that Jeff was looking at me warily, out of the corner of his eye.

“If I knew something,” he said, “would you want to know that I knew?”

My heart began an uneven stacatto. “Do you THINK I might want to know what you know? Otherwise I’m not sure.”

He paused. He didn’t want to mess this up, for fear that later I would say, “You totally destroyed the moment!” (Which I might, in all fairness, have said). “I’m just wondering, if you had some kind of phone message, if you’d want me to tell you what it said, or if you’d want to listen to it yourself.”

The uncertainty was killing me, but I didn’t want to risk bad news. “Uh—do you THINK I’d want you to tell me the message?”

My children were getting annoyed in the back seat. They had long since left sweet, chubby babyhood and entered into a rather sarcastic adolescence that required them to ask “What’s your point?” on a regular basis.

“What’s your point, Dad?” asked my eldest with no small amount of scorn.

My husband caved in. “I’m talking about Mom getting published! Mom is going to be a published author!”

Burdened as I am with the German reserve, I didn’t hoot and holler, but I enjoyed a moment of quiet pride. “That’s good,” I said. That was the understatement of the year, but I never have been the screaming type. The boys congratulated me and asked if this meant we were going to be rich. I said no, and then, understandably, they sort of lost interest.

Still, it was a great moment, and I recall it with happiness, just as I do the birth of my babies. I made sure to tell friends, family and colleagues the news BEFORE the New Year, though, so that I could officially say I sold a novel while I was in my thirties. Now I have to decide what I must accomplish before I turn fifty. Seeing one of the books become a movie? Singing the National Anthem at the World Series? (Hey, it could happen). Feel free to leave your suggestions here. I will take them under advisement.

Is that a gun in your pocket . . .

by Joe Moore

. . . or are you just happy to see me? Mae West got our attention with one of the most famous opening lines in history. So how important is a first line? In life, some people call them icebreakers, and they can mean the difference between getting a date with that just-right person or nailing that dream job. It can set the tone for a relationship with your new end-laws or neighbors. The more important an event, the more importance we place on it.

In a novel, the first line can be a killer or a clunker. It can lay there like an overcooked piece of fish or fire up the imagination and demand that the second line be read and the third . . . It can produce a ho-hum yawn or cause a gasp. And it is probably the most overworked, over written string of words in a writer’s life.

Some first lines drift away like smoke on an autumn breeze. Others laser themselves in our gray matter to be remembered and recalled until the grave. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of time . . .” from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities comes to mind. The problem with that one is, back in school I was told it was a great first line. Admittedly it is, but what I’m talking about here are the ones that we discover on our own. The treasures in the attic or the gems buried in the bottom of the old dresser bought at a flea market.

When I was in high school, I picked up a novel and read the first line, and knew in an instant that I would never forget it. That I would be able to recite it anytime, anywhere for the rest of my life. And because of that line, I devoured the rest of the book and every other novel the author wrote. That first line was a black hole that sucked me in. It was an 11-word mixture of mystery, suspense, intrigue, darkness, and magic. As a writer, I aspire to someday writing a first line as good. For now that’s only a distant dream, but one I never stop working toward. Here’s that first line:

“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.” Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

What’s your favorite first line?

The Key to Writing Success

By Joanna Campbell Slan

“If there is a key to writing success, it’s this…You go into a room alone and leave behind those you love and you do your work without excuse,” said Randy Wayne White to a crowd of about 100 at a book signing event at the lovely Vero Beach Book Center in Vero Beach, Florida. The presentation coincided with the release of his latest (and greatest) thriller in the Doc Ford series, Harvest Moon.

Thanks to White, the rest of us have a succinct response when people say, “I want to write a book. But how do you start?”

Better yet, we can quote White when folks look at us balefully and say, “Ah, but I’ve got so many ideas. I can’t pick one.” The author of 14 books in this series suggested if you are dallying around trying to pick just one idea, you are coming up with excuses. After a pause, he added, “If you are waiting for that magic combination of events, (it won’t happen).”

Of course, most of us won’t find such dramatic inspiration for our work as White has. White found his central idea for Hunter’s Moon when a former president and his family spent New Year’s Eve with the author and his family. When White’s son needed a knife to open something, the former Chief Executive pulled one from his pocket and grinned. “One of the best things about being president is that I can carry a knife anywhere and never get searched.”

White admitted he felt chills when he wrote the final scene in the book. “It’s my favorite thriller of the group,” he said, as an almost-schoolboy blush colored his already sunburnt face.

Chills? I sat beside a pool surrounded by noisy children and cried as I lowered the book to my lap.

Seriously…it’s that good.