As usual, the writers at my publisher, Oak Tree Press, are busy. With such a diverse group of writers and genres, it's no surprise that their promotional events and activities are just as diverse. Here is a link to the Friday Roundup, which lists what some of the writers are doing for promotion just this week. http://otpblog.blogspot.com/
Most people have no idea how much work a writer needs to do after the book is published. Yes, writing a book takes a lot of time and hard work. Whether the writer is a panster or plotter, nobody can just sit at a computer and have a novel or short story mysteriously appear. Not even a mystery.
Long hours, tears, cursing, coffee, maybe whiskey or tequila, depending upon the writer, may go into the first step of the writing process. That first step is getting the thing on paper. Despite the agony that may sometimes be involved--the birthing process is never easy--writers enjoy it. This is what we love to do. It isn't work, no matter how difficult it may become.
Can't figure out the next step in the plot? Realize the ending lacks focus? The beginning doesn't have a hook? Another character is needed? Doesn't matter. Writers work through it, because we love writing too much to give up. Would a mom give up on weaning her child from a bottle just because it's hard? Or potty-training? Of course not. If that were the case, the world would be full of adults drinking beer from baby bottles while wearing adult diapers.
Then more hours, but maybe a few less tears and cursing, go into the editing process. If the writer already has a publisher, the next step, waiting for the manuscript to be returned for edits, can be a painful couple of weeks or months. If the writer doesn't have a publisher, the wait for answers to queries can be a painful couple of months or years, or in some cases, a wait for something that never happens. Not every publisher bothers to respond.
A good publisher will also ask for a marketing plan around this time. That's the business end of writing, the part most of us don't enjoy. I'm a FICTION writer. Marketing is NON-FICTION, something I have no interest in writing. Too bad for me. The marketing plan is the first step of promotion.
This tells the publisher how and to whom the writer plans to sell the book. The publisher wants to know that the writer has a target audience, knows who that target audience is, and how the writer plans to reach that target audience.
This is the point where the work truly begins.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Endings
ENDINGS
In the last few weeks, I’ve read several novels that were thoroughly enjoyable– until I got to the endings.
The novels were well-written. Each one started off with a bang, did a great job of introducing the characters, had an appropriate amount of back story and description, and flowed well. The plots were compelling, the characters drew me in, and I was all set for a great, satisfying ending.
And then the unthinkable happened. The endings were poorly constructed. In the first of four such novels, the ending itself was adequate, but the story just, well, ended. There was no closure. The protagonist solved the mystery in one sentence, explained what he would do with the information as to who the killer was in a short paragraph, and that was it. Although the mystery was solved, the ending fell completely flat.
In the other three works, the endings weren’t even adequate. The mystery was solved, but I had a “so what” feeling after I finished.
When a mystery is solved, many novels have that Scooby-Doo moment where the guilty party has to explain a few things, maybe why he did it or how he did it. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable, and if done well, it doesn’t stick out. It gives the reader that a-ha moment, where everything suddenly fits in together– all those clues, all that foreshadowing, remembering back to those few pages where the killer was alone with the protagonist and getting the subtext of the conversation, realizing his words had a completely different meaning. Getting that final chill, what my 11-year-old daughter calls, “the feels.”
When it’s not done well, however, instead of the chills, that moment of explanation seems like a lazy way of passing the information on to the reader. One of the books I read did not do this well, and it felt like an info dump. I think it was most surprising because the rest of the book was well-written. The villain went on for pages upon pages explaining the why, the how, the when, and by then I didn’t care any more. I just wanted the book to end.
The next of the disappointing, inadequate endings just didn’t make sense. I completely didn’t believe the person whodunnit actually dunnit. It was one of those came-out-of-left-field killers, with little in the novel to hint to his identity and even less to let me believe he could do it. The writer offered no clue that this individual could possibly have had the skills necessary to pull off the murder, and I did not buy him as the killer.
In the last of these books with poorly written endings, the exact opposite occurred--the killer was exactly who everyone thought the killer was going to be, including the protagonist. The book was compelling up until then, because I just knew at the last minute, the killer was going to be revealed as someone else. Only he wasn’t. There were other suspects, but the this one was so obvious and so suspicious I knew one of the less obvious suspects had to be the bad guy. When he wasn’t, the whole book seemed silly. It’s not really a mystery if everyone knows who did it.
Which begs the question of whether the books were any good at all. While that is a totally subjective question, I have to say it’s difficult for me to answer. Up until the blown endings, I would have given these books 7s or 8s on a 1-10 scale. After the endings, I had to rethink my enjoyment level. Is a book still enjoyable if 92 percent of is pretty good, and then the last 8 percent sucks? Resolutions are so important, especially if the writer wants the reader to read the next book he or she writes. But on the other hand, up until those last few pages, I had enjoyed the journey. Is the destination just as important as the trip itself?
I guess the real question is whether I’ll take a chance and buy another book by these writers. I’m thinking I’ll read the reviews before I do, and if any of my criticisms are repeated by other readers, I’ll probably take a pass. Life is too short to be disappointed by bad endings.
In the last few weeks, I’ve read several novels that were thoroughly enjoyable– until I got to the endings.
The novels were well-written. Each one started off with a bang, did a great job of introducing the characters, had an appropriate amount of back story and description, and flowed well. The plots were compelling, the characters drew me in, and I was all set for a great, satisfying ending.
And then the unthinkable happened. The endings were poorly constructed. In the first of four such novels, the ending itself was adequate, but the story just, well, ended. There was no closure. The protagonist solved the mystery in one sentence, explained what he would do with the information as to who the killer was in a short paragraph, and that was it. Although the mystery was solved, the ending fell completely flat.
In the other three works, the endings weren’t even adequate. The mystery was solved, but I had a “so what” feeling after I finished.
When a mystery is solved, many novels have that Scooby-Doo moment where the guilty party has to explain a few things, maybe why he did it or how he did it. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable, and if done well, it doesn’t stick out. It gives the reader that a-ha moment, where everything suddenly fits in together– all those clues, all that foreshadowing, remembering back to those few pages where the killer was alone with the protagonist and getting the subtext of the conversation, realizing his words had a completely different meaning. Getting that final chill, what my 11-year-old daughter calls, “the feels.”
When it’s not done well, however, instead of the chills, that moment of explanation seems like a lazy way of passing the information on to the reader. One of the books I read did not do this well, and it felt like an info dump. I think it was most surprising because the rest of the book was well-written. The villain went on for pages upon pages explaining the why, the how, the when, and by then I didn’t care any more. I just wanted the book to end.
The next of the disappointing, inadequate endings just didn’t make sense. I completely didn’t believe the person whodunnit actually dunnit. It was one of those came-out-of-left-field killers, with little in the novel to hint to his identity and even less to let me believe he could do it. The writer offered no clue that this individual could possibly have had the skills necessary to pull off the murder, and I did not buy him as the killer.
In the last of these books with poorly written endings, the exact opposite occurred--the killer was exactly who everyone thought the killer was going to be, including the protagonist. The book was compelling up until then, because I just knew at the last minute, the killer was going to be revealed as someone else. Only he wasn’t. There were other suspects, but the this one was so obvious and so suspicious I knew one of the less obvious suspects had to be the bad guy. When he wasn’t, the whole book seemed silly. It’s not really a mystery if everyone knows who did it.
Which begs the question of whether the books were any good at all. While that is a totally subjective question, I have to say it’s difficult for me to answer. Up until the blown endings, I would have given these books 7s or 8s on a 1-10 scale. After the endings, I had to rethink my enjoyment level. Is a book still enjoyable if 92 percent of is pretty good, and then the last 8 percent sucks? Resolutions are so important, especially if the writer wants the reader to read the next book he or she writes. But on the other hand, up until those last few pages, I had enjoyed the journey. Is the destination just as important as the trip itself?
I guess the real question is whether I’ll take a chance and buy another book by these writers. I’m thinking I’ll read the reviews before I do, and if any of my criticisms are repeated by other readers, I’ll probably take a pass. Life is too short to be disappointed by bad endings.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
SNEAK PEEK SUNDAY- LAGNIAPPE NIGHTS
This week for Sneak Peek Sunday I have posted ten sentences from a work in progress tentatively titled LAGNIAPPE NIGHTS. It's a mystery novel, but lighter than my Crescent City Mystery Series. It is still in its infancy, mostly because of time issues, but I do have the whole thing outlined. Like Gumbo Justice and Jambalaya Justice, it features a female prosecutor, but Josephine Badon is more of a misfit than my other protagonist. At least when the book begins.
It all started with a black leather thong. Not mine, and not even a fresh one, if you want to know the God’s honest truth. So not only was my husband cheating on me, he was cheating on me with a skank.
It came to light Tuesday afternoon, while I was at my desk reading through a homicide file. It wasn't a particularly interesting homicide, but even the boring murders demanded attention.
In its favor, the case was pretty standard in the way of New Orleans murders. Wanna-Be-Drug- Dealer-A shoots Wanna-Be-Drug-Dealer-B sixteen times. A low level rock head on Dealer B's team by the name of Tyrone “Skinny Man” Smith, who made Biggie Smalls and 50 Cent look like altar boys and was unfortunate enough to be the only witness to the shooting, had changed his story every time I spoke to him.
That was part of the reason I didn’t bother to read the police reports until right before trial. One fact you can bank on is that police reports rarely help the prosecution in murder cases.
For more snippets from other authors, please go to http://sneakpeeksunday.blogspot.com/
and click on the links.
It all started with a black leather thong. Not mine, and not even a fresh one, if you want to know the God’s honest truth. So not only was my husband cheating on me, he was cheating on me with a skank.
It came to light Tuesday afternoon, while I was at my desk reading through a homicide file. It wasn't a particularly interesting homicide, but even the boring murders demanded attention.
In its favor, the case was pretty standard in the way of New Orleans murders. Wanna-Be-Drug- Dealer-A shoots Wanna-Be-Drug-Dealer-B sixteen times. A low level rock head on Dealer B's team by the name of Tyrone “Skinny Man” Smith, who made Biggie Smalls and 50 Cent look like altar boys and was unfortunate enough to be the only witness to the shooting, had changed his story every time I spoke to him.
That was part of the reason I didn’t bother to read the police reports until right before trial. One fact you can bank on is that police reports rarely help the prosecution in murder cases.
For more snippets from other authors, please go to http://sneakpeeksunday.blogspot.com/
and click on the links.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Sneak Peek Sunday- Chocolate City Justice
As part of Sneek Peak Sunday, I have posted the first ten sentences from Chocolate City Justice, the third in the Crescent City Mystery Series scheduled for release by Oak Tree Press this summer. The mystery series revolves around a female prosecutor in New Orleans, Ryan Murphy. The first two novels, Gumbo Justice and Jambalaya Justice occur pre-Katrina, while Chocolate City Justice takes place during the hurricane, as Ryan gets trapped in the city when she misses the window to evacuate.
The boom-boom of the bass from the tricked-out orange Hummer creeping through the New Orleans Ninth Ward should have served as a warning. The Hummer was jacked up from the tires, with spinning rims and a gold chain vanity frame around the license plate that said just as much about its owner as the music selection did. If a song whose only lyrics repeated kill the po-po two hundred times could be considered music.
An abandoned lot on the corner was set up with a portable turkey deep fryer, a boiling pot of crawfish on a hot plate, and a fold-out card table displaying a hat-box size pink and white birthday cake with a black Disney princess figure on top.
The children jumping in the purple castle-shaped spacewalk in the lot continued to laugh and scream, oblivious, but the adults should have noticed and been on alert as the boom-boom grew louder, the Hummer pausing at the intersection before making the corner. The forty somewhat people hanging out, peeling crawfish, and drinking liquor out of green bottles and silver cans must have thought they were safe during the day.
Gang members were like vampires–even the Ninth Ward Warriors couldn’t kill in the daylight.
A black woman who could have been anywhere from 20 to 40 called, “Come see here, Tanisha, and show your teeths before we do your cake.”
A girl of six with a head full of braids was instantly at the woman’s side, smiling wide, exposing four missing front teeth. A split second later, a smaller version of Tanisha edged her way next to the woman and tugged on her arm with an even bigger smile than her sister’s.
The orange Hummer stopped.
For more previews by other authors, visit http://www.sneakpeeksunday.blogspot.com/ and click on the links.
The boom-boom of the bass from the tricked-out orange Hummer creeping through the New Orleans Ninth Ward should have served as a warning. The Hummer was jacked up from the tires, with spinning rims and a gold chain vanity frame around the license plate that said just as much about its owner as the music selection did. If a song whose only lyrics repeated kill the po-po two hundred times could be considered music.
An abandoned lot on the corner was set up with a portable turkey deep fryer, a boiling pot of crawfish on a hot plate, and a fold-out card table displaying a hat-box size pink and white birthday cake with a black Disney princess figure on top.
The children jumping in the purple castle-shaped spacewalk in the lot continued to laugh and scream, oblivious, but the adults should have noticed and been on alert as the boom-boom grew louder, the Hummer pausing at the intersection before making the corner. The forty somewhat people hanging out, peeling crawfish, and drinking liquor out of green bottles and silver cans must have thought they were safe during the day.
Gang members were like vampires–even the Ninth Ward Warriors couldn’t kill in the daylight.
A black woman who could have been anywhere from 20 to 40 called, “Come see here, Tanisha, and show your teeths before we do your cake.”
A girl of six with a head full of braids was instantly at the woman’s side, smiling wide, exposing four missing front teeth. A split second later, a smaller version of Tanisha edged her way next to the woman and tugged on her arm with an even bigger smile than her sister’s.
The orange Hummer stopped.
For more previews by other authors, visit http://www.sneakpeeksunday.blogspot.com/ and click on the links.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Jambalaya Justice Excerpt for Sneak Peak Sunday
Below is an excerpt from Jambalaya Justice, the second in the Crescent City Mystery Series, for Sneak Peak Sunday:
Assistant district attorney Ryan Murphy let the jumbled thoughts brew in her mind like the coffee and chicory that once percolated in the battered silver pot on the dead woman’s stove.
She fought the urge to close Cherry’s eyes. Regardless of whether the cause was biological or chemical, the woman couldn’t see anything now. She was smiling, though, or so it seemed, dying the way she lived, with a gold-capped grin spread across her ebony face.
Ryan remembered that smile and the way Cherry called everyone baby. She also remembered Cherry’s help, which had saved Ryan’s ass on more than one occasion.
And now Cherry was dead, her pit-stained tank pushed up to reveal a bloody, makeshift tattoo.
If anything would salve Ryan’s conscience, it was that crude smiley face, cut just above Cherry’s right breast. The bodies of two other prostitutes had recently been found bearing the same mark, making Cherry’s lifestyle the more likely reason for her untimely death than Ryan’s tenuous connection to her.
Either way, Ryan doubted she would get much sleep tonight.
For more excerpts from other writers on Sneak Peak Sunday, please visit http://www.sneakpeeksunday.blogspot.com/
Assistant district attorney Ryan Murphy let the jumbled thoughts brew in her mind like the coffee and chicory that once percolated in the battered silver pot on the dead woman’s stove.
She fought the urge to close Cherry’s eyes. Regardless of whether the cause was biological or chemical, the woman couldn’t see anything now. She was smiling, though, or so it seemed, dying the way she lived, with a gold-capped grin spread across her ebony face.
Ryan remembered that smile and the way Cherry called everyone baby. She also remembered Cherry’s help, which had saved Ryan’s ass on more than one occasion.
And now Cherry was dead, her pit-stained tank pushed up to reveal a bloody, makeshift tattoo.
If anything would salve Ryan’s conscience, it was that crude smiley face, cut just above Cherry’s right breast. The bodies of two other prostitutes had recently been found bearing the same mark, making Cherry’s lifestyle the more likely reason for her untimely death than Ryan’s tenuous connection to her.
Either way, Ryan doubted she would get much sleep tonight.
For more excerpts from other writers on Sneak Peak Sunday, please visit http://www.sneakpeeksunday.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Prioritizing
My friend and fellow writer Marilyn Meredith recently did a post on her blog about prioritizing. This is something I find myself doing constantly, but not always doing successfully. (Definitely not as successfully as Marilyn, anyway.)
I lead what I consider a boring, somewhat mundane life. There are days when I don’t have to leave the house. That doesn’t mean I don’t always have STUFF to do.
I work from home, which I know puts me in a category of lucky. My job also involves writing, which puts me in the double lucky category. Although my job involves brief writing for criminal appellants and not fiction writing, it also involves story-telling, deciding the best way to present the facts to the appellate court to get the best results. Rote recitation of facts the way they occurred is generally how my clients got convicted in the first place. I have to look for the injustice in the conviction, those things that went wrong, and make those my facts when I tell my story. It is definitely an exercise in creativity.
In addition to my day job, I also have a family, pets, carpool duty, house cleaning, laundry, PTO, book writing, and occasionally I squeeze in time to read. My kids are already smarter than me, and helping them with homework and projects is time-consuming. Sometimes I feel like I need a math tutor myself just to help my kids with middle school math.
I also am physically handicapped from a head-on collision with a drunk driver in 2008. I am full of titanium and still missing pieces of bones. Some days this means almost nothing, and other than sore knees and a stiff ankle, I’m like everyone else. Other days I can barely walk around my house. Every day is kind of a crapshoot.
Regardless, there are things that need to get done. My usual process is doing what absolutely needs to get done, such as things on a deadline, and then squeezing in whatever else I can. Which brings me to today, where I am working on something due at the end of the month. It’s a spec script for a contest, which if I am one of the winners I could get a one year paid gig as an intern at a production company in Los Angeles.
Some people might think it would be crazy to uproot my family and relocate from New Orleans to L.A. for a one year position, but I would. Of course it’s easy to say that when it’s so unlikely that I’ll be one of the winners. I haven’t written that many scripts, and I’ve never written a t.v. comedy spec script, which is what they require. But I figure even if I don’t win, I’ll at least have a spec script in my repertoire which I can always use to pitch in the future.
If it wasn’t for needing the script at the end of February for this contest, I probably would never have gotten around to writing it. I would have thought I was too busy doing the daily things that need to get done and it would have been on the back burner like so many other things I never get around to doing. It would have been easy to ignore the contest announcement, but that is part of my prioritization process, finding things with deadlines that force me to step outside of my comfort zone and write more. It’s kind of like tricking myself into writing, but it’s a system that works for me so far.
So I am spending this week writing a spec script, knowing I don’t have much time left if I want to enter my very best into the contest.
Now if I could only get to the laundry and dishes...
I lead what I consider a boring, somewhat mundane life. There are days when I don’t have to leave the house. That doesn’t mean I don’t always have STUFF to do.
I work from home, which I know puts me in a category of lucky. My job also involves writing, which puts me in the double lucky category. Although my job involves brief writing for criminal appellants and not fiction writing, it also involves story-telling, deciding the best way to present the facts to the appellate court to get the best results. Rote recitation of facts the way they occurred is generally how my clients got convicted in the first place. I have to look for the injustice in the conviction, those things that went wrong, and make those my facts when I tell my story. It is definitely an exercise in creativity.
In addition to my day job, I also have a family, pets, carpool duty, house cleaning, laundry, PTO, book writing, and occasionally I squeeze in time to read. My kids are already smarter than me, and helping them with homework and projects is time-consuming. Sometimes I feel like I need a math tutor myself just to help my kids with middle school math.
I also am physically handicapped from a head-on collision with a drunk driver in 2008. I am full of titanium and still missing pieces of bones. Some days this means almost nothing, and other than sore knees and a stiff ankle, I’m like everyone else. Other days I can barely walk around my house. Every day is kind of a crapshoot.
Regardless, there are things that need to get done. My usual process is doing what absolutely needs to get done, such as things on a deadline, and then squeezing in whatever else I can. Which brings me to today, where I am working on something due at the end of the month. It’s a spec script for a contest, which if I am one of the winners I could get a one year paid gig as an intern at a production company in Los Angeles.
Some people might think it would be crazy to uproot my family and relocate from New Orleans to L.A. for a one year position, but I would. Of course it’s easy to say that when it’s so unlikely that I’ll be one of the winners. I haven’t written that many scripts, and I’ve never written a t.v. comedy spec script, which is what they require. But I figure even if I don’t win, I’ll at least have a spec script in my repertoire which I can always use to pitch in the future.
If it wasn’t for needing the script at the end of February for this contest, I probably would never have gotten around to writing it. I would have thought I was too busy doing the daily things that need to get done and it would have been on the back burner like so many other things I never get around to doing. It would have been easy to ignore the contest announcement, but that is part of my prioritization process, finding things with deadlines that force me to step outside of my comfort zone and write more. It’s kind of like tricking myself into writing, but it’s a system that works for me so far.
So I am spending this week writing a spec script, knowing I don’t have much time left if I want to enter my very best into the contest.
Now if I could only get to the laundry and dishes...
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
GUEST BLOGGER J.L. GREGER
Today, I am excited to feature guest blogger J. L. Greger, who tells us how she came to write COMING FLU, an extraordinary medical thriller recently published by Oak Tree Press.
TURNING SCIENCE INTO COMING FLU
By Guest Blogger J. L. Greger
Several readers have asked how I turned what they considered dry scientific facts into a fast paced novel. After thanking them for the compliments, I tried to answer their specific questions, which are summarized below.
Isn’t rationing of medications a little extreme? Preparation of effective flu vaccines is tedious and expensive. Often vaccine manufacturers cannot keep up with the mutations in viruses. That’s what occurs in Coming Flu and rationing is necessary. Although scientists have developed antivirals for treatment of HIV and herpes infections, they have not tested antivirals successfully with flu patients, as tried in Coming Flu. Again these drugs are in limited supply.
Quarantine is no big deal. Is it? I think most Americans don’t understand how quarantine (the enforcement of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and associated legislation) could affect their lives. At least not in personal terms – like standing in line for food, not being able to go to work or to shop, and being afraid to come in contact with anyone lest they have the flu.
One of my friends Judy Leavitt wrote the biography of Mary Mallon, better know as Typhoid Mary (Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health). Mary Mallon was a cook, who harbored the bacteria that caused typhoid fever in her gall bladder without getting sick herself. She refused to stop working as a cook because she knew no other trade. Accordingly, the New York City Health Department quarantined her on an island in New York harbor from 1915-1938. This is, of course, the extreme case, but quarantines can be nasty.
So that’s how science became Coming Flu.
Find out more about J.L. Greger and her work at http://www.jlgreger.com
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