It's like making sausage...

My holiday wishes and a gift for you...

2011-12-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Christmas and it's still Hanukkah and Kwanzaa starts today, so I'm thinking that most of you have been spending time with your friends and family, just like I have. I hope these have been warm and happy times for you, as they have been for me. I'm looking forward to a 2012 in which the Mayans were wrong and the world does not end. I also look forward to a year in which all things tend toward more peace, happiness, and harmony. We live in an imperfect world and entropy works, so I do not expect us to achieve perfect peace this year, nor in my lifetime, but I am an optimistic sort and I do think that we can work toward those goals.

I'm wrapping up a lot of small personal writing projects, preparing to begin another Faye Longchamp mystery, so my professional "new year" coincides with the calendar, for once. Until then, I've got some holiday gifts for you. Some of them are on a short-burn schedule, so act quickly.

Through tomorrow, the Kindle edition of my short story, "A Singularly Unsuitable Word," is free on Amazon. If, like me, you don't have a Kindle, you can read it on your computer.

Through midnight tonight, I'm running a contest on my Facebook Author page. The prize is your choice of a Kindle or a $100 gift certificate to an independent bookseller, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. All you have to do is go to the page and hit the "like" button. And if you read this late and miss the deadline, hit the button anyway, because I'm going to be giving away more stuff.

My wonderful publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, has marked down the ebook editions of all my Faye Longchamp mysteries. Artifacts is only $0.99 and all the others are at $4.99, so this is a huge discount off the regular ebook price of $6.99 apiece or $14.95 apiece for paperbacks. I'm not sure how long this will last, maybe till the end of the month, so you might want to grab those now. They're available on the Poisoned Pen Press site, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble:

Because of all this cool stuff going on, I've got books on a couple of bestseller lists on Amazon, and indications are that sales are going well everywhere else. I'm blessed and grateful. Along with loving relationships with friends and family, there are few things in life more satisfying than having a profession that you love. I'm grateful to all my readers and I wish you the 2012 of your dreams.

Happy reading--
Mary Anna

Sometimes you can go home again...

2011-10-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

I'm going home to Mississippi next week. I haven't lived there since 1984, but they still consider me one of their own, because they're giving me this year's Mississippi Author Award. (Actually, it's the Mississippi Library Association who's doing the award-giving, but they're Mississippians, so please forgive the semantic softness.) I've known about this for a month or two, but I'm still flattered, touched, and, frankly, flabbergasted. They're flying me in for an awards banquet and everything. Usually, I haul myself to personal appearances in my well-worn Toyota, so this feels rather like getting the royal treatment. I'm grateful.

I've lived in Florida since April 1987. How long is that? More than 24 years? It hardly seems possible. By contrast, I lived in Mississippi for nineteen-and-a-half years, moved away for the last two years of my undergrad degree, then returned for a little more than a year for graduate school. Let's be generous and call it twenty-one years. Since I ain't sixty, I guess it's safe to say that I've now lived in Florida for longer than I've lived anywhere else. Why don't I see myself as a Floridian?

Maybe it's the accent that I'll apparently never lose. (I sound like I've got a mouthful of magnolias.) More likely it's the six generations of my family that lived in the Magnolia State before I came along. We were there before Misssissippi became a state. We were there before it even became a territory. We were there before the steamboat that would eventually take cotton north and bring money south was even invented. We were there for the near-obliteration of the native peoples and for the Civil War and for Reconstruction and for the civil rights movement. I'm not saying we participated in those things, for good or ill. I have no idea. I just know that we were there. Since I'm pretty sure some of us were native peoples, I have a good idea that all of us weren't too keen on the Trail of Tears, but otherwise, I just don't know. As is true of most human history, I'd guess my people's feelings and actions were...complicated.

My own feelings about that history are complicated enough that it took me three books before I got up the nerve to write a book about the place. I was afraid I'd never be able to go home again.

Instead, that book, Effigies, got a full-page feature article in Mississippi Magazine, and the magazine has covered every book I've written since. I should have known that my undeniably racially themed book would receive a far warmer welcome there than an outsider might have expected. My series character, Faye Longchamp, is multiracial, so there is some degree of racial theme to all of my books, but they've been warmly welcomed in my home state from the first. I have not heard the first discouraging word from the folks in Mississippi, not in the eight years since Artifacts first came out. I would say that this renewed my faith in humankind, but I've never really doubted humankind, nor the good people at home.

And now they've given me this wonderful award, and I'm so deeply touched. It's one thing to get a nice review from somebody in New York City, but it's quite another thing to know that the people who live down the street from the house where you spent your childhood appreciate what you do. There will be an award banquet next week and I'll get to rub elbows with some of the nicest people in the world--librarians and Mississippians.

I can't wait.

Why mystery fiction matters

2011-07-26T11:09:00.001-07:00

I'm on Day Two of my blog tour, guesting at John Hartness's blog and opining on why mystery fiction is important. Join me...

http://johnhartness.com/2011/07/26/guest-post-mary-anna-evans/

Look for me all over the internet this week...

2011-07-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a blog tour this week, spreading wisdom hither and yon. Here's the schedule, but I will obviously keep reminding you of where I'll be.

Today is a two-fer, because Speak Without Interruption has posted an excerpt of WOUNDED EARTH (and isn't Speak without Interruption a glorious title for people who have things to say, but don't always feel like they get heard?), as well as my usual bi-weekly post at The LadyKillers, where I'm talking about technology in mysteries. Check them out!

Today's posts, with links:
July 25th: Speak Without Interruption
The LadyKillers

I'll post links as these blogs go live:
July 26th: John Hartness.com
July 27th: Bards and Sages Group
July 28th: Word Pursuit
July 29th: No Trees Harmed

A guest post from Camille Minichino--DO THE MATH

2011-07-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a guest post from my friend and fellow physics-and-math person Camille Minichino. She's starting a brand-new mystery series featuring Sophie Knowles, a college math teacher, and you know I'm gonna love that one. Even better, she's talking about a relic--her old slide rule--and I love relics so much that I wrote a book called Relics. Listen as Camille tells us why doing the math is so important...

Do the Math
By Camille Minichino, aka Ada Madison

Here I am with a relic—the slide rule I bought at the MIT store. It cost me a week's pay—$35—sometime in the middle of the last century. It got me through a mathematics major and a few graduate physics classes before an enormous, clunky IBM 1620 came in and took over.

My newest protagonist, Professor Sophie Knowles, math teacher at a small New England college, probably wouldn't know which end is up on the foot long slide rule, nor would she have the patience to sit for hours entering her data on error-prone punch cards.

Math education has changed since my college days. Whew. Welcome, technology!
We've also come a long way since Sophie's namesake, eighteenth-century mathematician Sophie St. Germain, had to hide behind a man's name to get the math community to pay attention to her. Or since nineteenth-century German university policy allowed Emmy Noether only to audit classes in mathematics and then, once she passed doctoral exams anyway, allowed her to teach only without pay.

The real Ada, Countess Ada Lovelace, was another story entirely. To keep her from going the creatively manic route of her father, Lord Byron, Ada's mother encouraged her to study mathematics. Ada went a little too far, trying to use her math skills to win at gambling, and . . . didn't.

So we've made some progress along gender lines, but women are still underrepresented in engineering, science, and math.

And not much has changed as far as the perception of math. It still gets bad press, from both genders. Math is thought of as a difficult subject, requiring a special brain typically belonging to boring people. Even in educated circles, math illiteracy is often worn as a badge.

The same person who would never say, "I hate reading," or "I can't do words," doesn't hesitate to say, "I can't do math," and sound proud of it.
Where does this attitude start? Maybe with dolls that say, "I don't like math." Or with celebrities like Angelina Jolie, who tells a little girl struggling with her homework, "I hate math" ("Salt," 2010). Or with the Michigan teacher I heard about who told her middle school class, "If you behave yourselves this morning, you won't have to do math this afternoon." (AAARRGH, if I knew her name; I'd make her a slimy villain in my next book.)

What can we do?

Enter Professor Sophie Knowles. I can't fix everything that's wrong with the levels of science and math literacy among our citizens, but I can certainly use my writing skills to present another option: a smart female mathematician who loves puzzles, beads, has a hot boyfriend who's an EMT pilot and an ice climber, and who applies her flair for logic to solving murders.

Here's my hope: that readers who would otherwise shun a book with math in the title will be attracted to Sophie and enjoy her stories.

Another title aimed at reaching non-math-lovers and helping them see the beauty of the subject is Mathematical Literacy in the Middle and Secondary Grades by my gracious blog host, Mary Anna Evans, coming in Spring 2012. Mary Anna and her co-author Dr. Faith Wallace have teamed to create a book that brings into the math classroom things kids love to read and do--things like computer games, social media, and popular fiction like Mary Anna's and mine--so that their teachers can help them relate mathematics to their own world. Tell all your math teacher friends to give it a look.

If you need more prompting to go all John Lennon and Give Math a Chance, consider this endorsement, uttered by no less a figure (so to speak) than Agatha Christie, in her An Autobiography:

"I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hours. I found it quite enthralling."

If it's good enough to enthrall Dame Agatha, it's good enough for me.

Camille Minichino is the author of three mystery series. Her akas are Margaret Grace (The Miniature Mysteries) and Ada Madison (The Professor Sophie Knowles Mysteries). The first chapter of ‘The Square Root of Murder,” debuting July 5, is on her website: http://www.minichino.com

Don't ask me about writer's block...

2011-07-11T04:32:00.001-07:00

The topic today at The LadyKillers blog is one that I generally avoid at all costs, but I've made an exception today. See what I have to say about writer's block:

http://theladykillers.typepad.com/the_lady_killers/2011/07/from-mary-anna-dont-get-in-your-own-way.html

Guest blogger Tracey Alley tells us what it's like to be a writer...and gets it right

2011-07-08T05:24:00.000-07:00

Listen to my friend Tracey Alley, author of many books, including The Witchcraft Wars series and the Kaynos History tales, as she gives you the scoop on what a writer's life is like. And isn't that what we're all about here at "It's Like Making Sausage...?"

Check out Tracey's books here:
Books by Tracey Alley

There are usually three things most people assume when you tell them you’re an author. One, that you must be rich – sorry, see J.K. Rowling and co for that, most writers consider themselves lucky to make a living out of writing and the rest of us work for less than peanuts.

Two, that you must know a lot of celebrities – well again, see the big names for that. Your average writer is a solitary creature, rather like a spider, who weaves their webs inside the confines of their own little nests and rarely venture out to meet any real people let alone celebrities.

Three, that it’s an easy profession. Whoa! You could not be more wrong. Yes there are those who are born with a creative imagination – that’s only the start, not, by any means, the whole story. I can come up with thousands of ideas, that’s never been a problem, but can I craft them into something that is readable? Do I know enough of the mechanics to make a decent story into something that is not only entertaining but well written, well edited, well put together? Most of us use beta readers, editors and critique groups because the simple fact is that very, very few of us are capable of doing the entire thing from word one to the end without some help along the way.

Quite simply writing is not the simple task that many people assume it to be and it is becoming ever more complex as so many writers choose to go the independent route rather than stick with a traditional publishing house. It’s not enough to just have talent, assuming that you even have any, but you also have to have hard work, determination, perseverance and humility. You have to be able to craft a story well and take criticism with class and dignity when you’re failing in that task. And let’s not forget – just because you’ve had a great idea that doesn’t necessarily mean it will translate into a great book. I would estimate that for most writers probably 95% of their ideas end up as nothing more than that, an idea.
Then once you’ve had the great idea and managed to craft it into a well-written book now you have to try and sell it. This may mean querying agents or publishing houses directly or, if like me, you’ve chosen to take your book to the marketplace independently, you have to sell it directly to the public. That’s the hardest job of all.

Very few, if any, writers that I know are, by nature, natural salespeople. Thus the task of marketing and promoting your book is not an easy one but essential if you ever want to sell even a single copy. You have to learn the intricacies of social media and how to use that effectively without alienating potential readers but still letting them know about your product. You have to find reviewers who are willing to look at your work, and cross your fingers each time that you’ll actually get a good review. All in all it’s a tough business. Simply promoting and marketing your book can take up an enormous amount of time in your day and of course, by now, you should also be working on the next book.

At any rate you get the idea. Writers aren’t automatically rich or famous, we don’t necessarily know any celebrities and it’s not easy. However, having said all that, if you are a writer, and I truly believe that some of us are just born that way, then you love every single minute of it. All the hard work, all the editing and reworking of your novels, all the criticisms and praise and even all the marketing and promotion. As a writer I love all of it, well, maybe not the marketing and promotion side, but I love to be able to do what I love and have people actually read my work – no matter how much hard work that might take. So to every reader – thank you. To every reader who actually liked the book – thank you even more.

American history, walking around on two legs...

2011-07-04T10:50:00.001-07:00

As luck would have it, I am the Independence Day blogger over at Poisoned Pen Press's website. How fitting, considering that I write about a woman of European, African, and Native American descent who I have described as "American history, walking around on two legs."

Come see what I have to say about Faye and the Fourth of July and the pursuit of happiness:

Back to the salt mines soon, but not yet...

2011-06-22T18:14:00.000-07:00

As I continue my little series of posts on the things we writers do after we turn in our manuscripts, I see a little blot of work approaching on my calendar. I got an email from my editor with some overview-type comments on Saturday. She said that the edited manuscript was in the mail to me. This means that there's some work winging its way in my direction, but it ain't here yet.

So what did I do today? I took my daughter swimming. I've lived in this town since 1987 and I've never been to the big public pool at Westside Park. So we pulled on our bathing suits and drove over there. (No, there will be no photodocumentation.) I swam a few laps. (Very few.) We laid out in the sun, which is a pointless endeavor in these cancer-sensitive times when even the weakest tanning oil is SPF 8, but we did it anyway. It was fabulous.

I've been too busy luxuriating in the feeling of finishing two books to actually blog about how wonderful it is, so maybe I'll stretch this series out through next week, when I'll be working on those edits. Maybe it will assuage the pain if I take occasional breaks to reminisce with you people about time spent frolicking and carefree.

Since I elected not to burn your retinas with photos from our pool jaunt, I'll close with photos of something else pleasant with which I've occupied my time: my little granddaughter. :) In the meantime, I think I'll do something pointless like organize the sheet music that I've been accumulating since I was eight...

Mary Anna

A sample of WOUNDED EARTH

2011-06-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

Wounded Earth
Available for $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, the Apple iStore and many other outlets

Babykiller was meticulous in all things. It was his defining quality. Attention to detail was the key to longevity in his chosen profession, and Babykiller had been in business a long, long time.

Most of his competitors from the early days were dead or in prison, and he couldn't claim responsibility for all their misfortune. No, they had simply chosen a dangerous line of work. He was well on his way to outliving a second generation and he was considering retirement. At least he had been, before the oncologist's verdict. Retirement planning seemed so futile when death was certain.

Babykiller had created a life out of certainties. He left nothing to chance. He made no mistakes—at least, he made no mistakes that were obvious to the cretins who purchased his services. He had built a seamless organization that ran like a Volvo. It was reliable. It required little maintenance. It was safe. It was boring as hell. Even if his organization survived him—and he cared very little whether it did or not—it was a plain-vanilla sort of legacy for a man of his caliber.

Babykiller had more money than he could have spent in a normal lifetime. He had more than a fair share of cunning. And he had a long list of scores to settle with the world before he took his leave of it. It was time to retire and focus his considerable attentions on something more interesting. Or someone more interesting.

Babykiller had kept extensive files on his target for years, ever since he began thinking of retirement. He had videotapes and audiotapes. An accordion file labeled "BioHeal Environmental Services" held her company's annual financial reports, one for each of the twenty years she'd been in business. His clipping file bulged with articles dating to her first appearance on the cover of New Orleans Business News.

Larabeth McLeod had enjoyed good press from the start, for the usual reasons. She was an easy interview. Her field, environmental science, was red-hot. She was witty and down-to-earth. Her strong jawline made for good photographs. Reporters loved her.

She smiled out of the manila folder at him, wearing her success like a crisply tailored suit. He replaced the clippings in reverse chronological order and closed the file over her elegantly sculpted face. He remembered that face. He had cherished it long before the photographers fell in love. He had seen it contorted in pain, spattered in blood.

He would like very much to see it that way again.

I'm still not working! This is great!

2011-06-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

Gardening is one fun activity that I didn't set aside in order to finish Plunder. I have a suburban back yard that's small but sunny, and this is my fourth summer to have a garden. Every March, I get cocky and make it bigger. Every July, Mother Nature expresses her amusement by sending me pickleworms and weeds and powdery mildew and bacterial wilt and just enough tasty vegetables to make me want to keep trying.

I planted a lot of tomatoes, because they're my favorite, but I'm just getting a small but steady stream of them. The zucchini and yellow squash plants look horrible and disease-ridden, but they're managing to make a few fruits a week and I just can't bear to yank them out of the ground when they're trying so hard. For the third year in a row, I've got a beautiful crop of peppers, both sweet and hot. The pole beans and okra are producing so little that I've got a bag of both kinds of pods in the refrigerator. I'm hoping to collect enough of them to cook before the oldest things in the bags die of old age. The black-eyed peas and eggplant are starting to come in, and they're delicious. But the surprise has been the cucumbers. I've got two measly little cucumber plants, but they're making more than my tiny household can eat.

So I made pickles! Bread-and-butter pickles, to be exact. I'm not buried in cucumbers, so I didn't have enough to make a great big pile of pickles. Just six jars. But they're good! I used the standard recipe that shows up in all the southern cookbooks, but I threw in some sweet and hot peppers, because I had some in the garden. And nobody at our house likes celery, so I left out the celery seed and increased the mustard seed instead.

I learned that making pickles at midnight is way more fun than editing your own manuscript for the fifth time at midnight. Here's the photographic proof. (Minus the jar that's in the refrigerator, because we already opened it and started eating...)

Back from the great beyond...though perhaps temporarily...

2011-06-11T05:34:00.000-07:00

I submitted the manuscript for Plunder late Wednesday night. Yay!

I've either been working on that book or thinking about working on that book or feeling guilty about working on that book since...well, I'm not sure how long. Stress and terror tend to make one lose one's sense of time, so I can't tell you exactly. I signed the contract over a year ago...I think...and kablooie. Daily crises erupted for the entirety of 2010, and all of a sudden it was June 2011 and I was looking at a deadline that was pushed back twice. I'm obsessive about deadlines and asking for extensions made me absolutely nuts.

Compounding the problem was that I signed another contract more than a year ago, to co-write a book on math literacy. We turned in the manuscript in April but, you guessed it, that deadline had already been shoved back when we did so. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to know that I have two completed manuscripts, and that they're both on their editors' desks. And not mine.

They'll both be coming back for final edits. And again, for me to review the copyedits. Still it's easier to fix something than to create it from scratch. For good or ill, those books are written. Until they come back, my time is my own.

So what did I do to celebrate? Well, I spent all of Thursday cleaning off my desk and filing the paperwork that had accumulated in a towering mound on top of it. The fact that this felt fantastic, kinda like scratching an itch, is a symptom of my mental state for the past year.

What? You were expecting drunkenness and debauchery. Clearly, you're reading the wrong blog. But if you can do without drunkenness and debauchery, I'll keep you posted on what I'm doing to enjoy my brief window of freedom.

In that spirit, would you take a look at this desk???

For Apple...

2011-04-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

This is a special post for a special person. I have a friend called Apple who has managed to work and take care of a family and make music and make a home, all while battling serious illness. She has had a bad week.

Apple's friends are pooling their funds to help her family with housekeeping or food or whatever else will make this tough time easier. Some of this blogs followers know Apple and this just seemed to be a convenient place for them to donate to this effort. If you know her and would like to forward this link to some of her friends, please do. All our hopes and prayers go out to Apple and to those who care about her. Thank you for your donations.

If only ebook pricing were an intuitively obvious task...

2011-03-23T18:22:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a little mid-month accounting. I'm on track to sell fewer books than I did last month, but I have already made more money, and there are still eight days left in March. I think I'll make significantly more money than I did in February. When it comes to keeping score, I'll go with money every time. This is a business, after all. If I wanted to give my work away, I'd post it here.

It's not a slam-dunk that I'll make this month's goal: to gross enough money through sales of my self-published e-books to pay my cell phone bill with its obscenely priced data plan, but it's very possible. So how did I accomplish this marked improvement? By doing...um...not very much.

That's not true. I've posted on message boards and offered some free books on sites frequented by readers. A friend is letting me run a banner ad on her site. All of these things were free. All of them might be expected to generate a few impulse buys, but not all that many.

I didn't place any ads. I offered no special prices this month. This last thing is significant, because lowering the price of my biggest seller, Wounded Earth, costs me big-time. Its regular price, $2.99, is the minimum price that qualifies me for Amazon's 70% royalty. Lowering it to $2.98 would drop me to a 35% royalty, decreasing my income per book by half. Lowering it to the price that popular wisdom says will attract attention, $0.99, decreases my income per book by a factor of six. This bargain price had better generate some serious sales, or it is very expensive for me. I tried it last month, and I can't say that the results were worthwhile.

People say that you have to drop the price and leave it there for a while to get results. I'm not saying that I won't try that at some point, but it will be part of a carefully considered plan, and it won't be soon. I want to try some other marketing strategies first, because I'm concerned that bargain-basement prices devalue my professional work. And I am a professional, with six books in print that people routinely pay more than $0.99 for the pleasure of reading. The improvement in my income this month, which occurred while maintaining my prices at a level that seems to be becoming established as a professional rate, encourages me to think that I can build a bigger following without slashing prices.

Yes, I know cutting prices can increase sales and improve that coveted Amazon ranking, driving yet more sales in that very desirable upward spiral. Therefore, I am not saying that I won't give it another try. My short-term plan, though, is centered around two things--buying ads and getting more reviews. I've been giving away review copies in selected venues. (See, I'm not against free books when there is a business-related reason for giving them away. I just don't want to devalue my work unnecessarily.)

I have also bought some ads, most of which will hit in April. I'm lucky enough to have several books already out there earning money, so that I can afford to do this. I've decided to take advantage of that opportunity. I saw marked results from ads purchased last month, but they hit while my price was at $0.99, so the income was low. I guess I'll see whether those ads will attract readers at a $2.99 price point. It's a gamble, but so is any business venture.

How will this all work out? I guess I'll find out soon enough.

End-of-the-month accounting

2011-02-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

Okay. A month ago, I boldly set a sales goal for February.

I had just barely missed January's sales goal, to earn enough royalties on my self-published e-books to pay my cable internet bill. It is possible that I'd have made this goal if I hadn't experimented with dropping the price to $0.99 for part of the month on Wounded Earth.

Maybe I'd have sold fewer books if I'd kept the price at $2.99, but you know...$2.99 doesn't sound all that exorbitant for a full-length novel. And I couldn't tell that the lower price helped that much. So who knows? All I know is that I came darn close to meeting my goal, but I missed it. Still, it was my best month ever, so I didn't shed any tears. I just set a new goal.

So did I set a conservative goal for February? Oh, heck no. I set a goal to more than double January's record sales, thus earning enough royalties to pay this month's bill for my fancy-shmancy smart phone and its associated not-cheap data plan, with some left over for...oh, I don't know...taking my daughter out for sushi.

So how did I do? Once again, I had a great month, the best ever. And once again, I snookered myself by setting an ambitious goal and by lowering my price on my most expensive book for part of the month. Also, the calendar snookered me. I forgot that February was a short month. If this weekend's sales trends had continued, the extra two or three days in a regular month would have made the difference. Urgh. Nevertheless, February's unit sales were better than January's by more than 50% and I made more money by about 30%. February's royalties may have been short of my goal, but they were sufficient to pay my cable internet bill with enough left over to take my daughter to McDonald's. I really like it when my writing pays my bills and funds luxuries. (If a trip to McDonald's qualifies as a luxury...)

So what's my goal for March? Should I swallow a dose of realism? Or should I take note of my ever-increasing sales and continue with the current strategy of letting my reach exceed my grasp, which does seem to be working?

I've decided to hang tight with March's goal. I aim to pay this month's cell phone bill with my royalties. If I overshoot those sales, I'm sure I can find a way to spend that money. Here's my rationale for not ramping up the goal. My biggest sales in January and Febrary came on days when I placed ads in places where people read e-books, and I don't have any of those scheduled for March yet. (This could change, if I identify a desirable place to advertise.) I do, however, have a couple of important ads scheduled for April.

Thus, it makes sense to me to use March to build. I'll submit the book to carefully selected reviewers, and perhaps reviewers to whom I've already submitted will post those reviews. I'll continue building a web presence here and as a guest blogger and as a commenter on various sites, and I'll hope that these activities will keep sales growing steadily through March, resulting in royalties that will pay my cell phone bill. Since I don't like being less than bold, I'll go ahead and set my goal for April, which will be to sell enough books to pay my cable internet bill and my cell phone bill.

I sure hope I make that April goal, because once I hit that level, the obvious next goal is to pay my utility bill, and I'd far rather hit that level in May than in August. I live in Florida, for pete's sake. Do you know how much it costs to air condition this house? I've really got to build my sales up, if I hope to pay my utility bill in the summertime.

Amid all this gnashing of teeth over missing neatly quantifiable sales goals, I really need to tell you my unquantifiable good news. As you may or may not know, Amazon began giving authors access to some limited sales data a few weeks ago, which is coincidentally when I began this project to promote my self-published e-books. This information is tantalizingly qualitative, in that it only applies to sales in some venues and, at any one time, you can only get data on your three bestselling titles. I have eleven titles, so this isn't nearly enough information, but it's good enough to see trends.

I see unmistakable evidence that sales of all six of my traditionally published books, the Faye Longchamp mysteries, have gone up since I began promoting my self-pubbed stuff. Sales of the Kindle editions of those books have increased, which is perhaps unsurprising. The people to whom I'm promoting Wounded Earth and my short stories could logically be expected to pick up my mysteries if they like my work. But--and this is the surprising part to me--sales trends on all my print books are noticeably better. I think I'm even seeing improvement on my newest hardcover, Strangers.

These trends can't be quantified, though I'll get some inkling of what's going on when my next royalty statement arrives from Poisoned Pen Press, but I'm not going to argue with improved sales. You know, I may actually have earned enough extra royalties on those books to have paid that cell phone bill, after all, but I'm not going to change my accounting method in mid-stream. I'll hang tough, and I won't give myself credit for making my goals unless I see hard, quantifiable numbers on the self-pubbed e-books.

Still, if those royalty checks from my print publisher are bigger because I've been promoting my e-books, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to think of a way to spend the money.

Mary Anna

Things I've learned about selling books of both the print and electronic variety

2011-02-28T06:30:00.000-08:00

My first book, Artifacts, was published in 2003. I've spent the intervening years trying to figure out how books get sold. I've learned some things. Some things remain a mystery.

I've learned that being on TV sells books. My marketing plan for the first three books included a lot of promotional travel, and I did my best to leverage those travel dollars by getting media coverage whenever I could. I turned out to be pretty good at that, getting TV interviews in Top 100 markets like Birmingham and radio interviews in the number one market of them all, New York City. Whenever I did radio, I'd get emails from listeners afterward, so I knew people were listening and, presumably, buying. When I did TV, the first few people in line invariably said, "I saw you on the morning news." So I saw those people buy books, which is the most satisfying result of a promotional effort you can get.

But the time and effort spent getting myself to Birmingham, so I could be on TV and sell a few books, just wasn't worth it in the long haul, unless I was going there for some other reason. (Radio, which you can do by telephone, is a different beast.) I, like every midlist writer in the world, am looking for a way to sell books that generates less wear-and-tear on the body and on the pocketbook.

One thing I learned from making all those promotional appearances was that, when I give a talk, people buy books. When I give a talk to a large crowd, people buy a lot of books. I don't yet have the kind of name to draw a large crowd, so my ideal gig is a luncheon speech to a group of people who were going to come to that luncheon anyway. If somebody else can put butts in the chairs, I apparently give a pretty good talk. People laugh. They ask questions. When I'm speaking to an educational group and I drag out my stories of being an engineering student back in the days when engineering buildings were designed without ladies rooms, women bring their daughters up to meet me. And they buy my books.

Why am I talking about this today? Because I did two gigs this weekend that were only okay, as far as sales go. I spoke on Saturday and the percentage of attendees that bought books was quite good--nearly half--but the crowd was small. Then I did a bookstore signing on Sunday and sold a little better, but attendance still wasn't what I'd hoped. But this is not my point today. My point is that attendees at both events came up to me afterward to tell me that they owned e-readers and that they were going to go home and buy my books. In one case, the person had already downloaded the book while I was speaking. In two other cases, people bought my latest book and had it signed, because they wanted an autographed book for the souvenir aspect, but then they planned to go home and download the rest of them. And why wouldn't they? The ebooks are cheaper and they don't take up room on their bookshelves.

When I got home, I checked my sales info on Amazon. Lo and behold, I sold more ebooks this weekend than I did print books, despite the fact that I hauled my weary carcass to two booksignings that were intended to sell print books. This tells me that my days of grueling and expensive promotional travel are not as nearly over as I might have hoped. People still crave human contact, and they are far more likely to buy a book from somebody that they feel like they know...whether they read that book on paper or on an e-reader screen.

Skilled internet promoters are using social media to make those connections, which is tiring and time-consuming, but it's not nearly so hard on the pocketbook and the weary carcass as promotional travel is. I'm doing my best to learn how to let the internet do my traveling for me, but it has taken me nearly eight years to learn how to sell books in person. It's going to take some time to learn how to do it remotely.

Here's one thing I think I already know. When people read my work, they like it. They come back for more. Over the past month of exploring ebook promotion, I've come to believe that I need to focus on getting samples of my work out there. Therefore, I'm posting an excerpt of my frontlist ebook, Wounded Earth right here. If you'd like a copy of the ebook, here's the link:

And if you prefer print books, here's that link:

I hope you enjoy this sample of Wounded Earth.

.......................................

Babykiller was meticulous in all things. It was his defining quality. Attention to detail was the key to longevity in his chosen profession, and Babykiller had been in business a long, long time.

Most of his competitors from the early days were dead or in prison, and he couldn't claim responsibility for all their misfortune. No, they had simply chosen a dangerous line of work. He was well on his way to outliving a second generation and he was considering retirement. At least he had been, before the oncologist's verdict. Retirement planning seemed so futile when death was certain.

Babykiller had created a life out of certainties. He left nothing to chance. He made no mistakes—at least, he made no mistakes that were obvious to the cretins who purchased his services. He had built a seamless organization that ran like a Volvo. It was reliable. It required little maintenance. It was safe. It was boring as hell. Even if his organization survived him—and he cared very little whether it did or not—it was a plain-vanilla sort of legacy for a man of his caliber.

Babykiller had more money than he could have spent in a normal lifetime. He had more than a fair share of cunning. And he had a long list of scores to settle with the world before he took his leave of it. It was time to retire and focus his considerable attentions on something more interesting. Or someone more interesting.

Babykiller had kept extensive files on his target for years, ever since he began thinking of retirement. He had videotapes and audiotapes. An accordion file labeled "BioHeal Environmental Services" held her company's annual financial reports, one for each of the twenty years she'd been in business. His clipping file bulged with articles dating to her first appearance on the cover of New Orleans Business News.

Larabeth McLeod had enjoyed good press from the start, for the usual reasons. She was an easy interview. Her field, environmental science, was red-hot. She was witty and down-to-earth. Her strong jawline made for good photographs. Reporters loved her.

She smiled out of the manila folder at him, wearing her success like a crisply tailored suit. He replaced the clippings in reverse chronological order and closed the file over her elegantly sculpted face. He remembered that face. He had cherished it long before the photographers fell in love. He had seen it contorted in pain, spattered in blood.

He would like very much to see it that way again.

If you're going to be in north Florida on Sunday...

2011-02-23T19:51:00.000-08:00

I'm signing at Books, Inc., in Gainesville, Florida, on Sunday, February 27 at 12:30 pm.

They'll have copies of all the books. I'll be chatting with people individually or as a group, depending on how many folks are hanging around. The Book Lovers Cafe serves really a really tasty lunch and great desserts. And I've never been bored in a bookstore, have you?

Come see me!

#Sample Sunday

2011-02-20T05:07:00.000-08:00

I'm participating in a project called Sample Sunday. It involves tweeting samples of books hither and yon. Since I'm a Twitter newbie, I can't tell you much more than that. Anyway...here's a sample of Wounded Earth. Enjoy!

.......................

Babykiller was meticulous in all things. It was his defining quality. Attention to detail was the key to longevity in his chosen profession, and Babykiller had been in business a long, long time.

Most of his competitors from the early days were dead or in prison, and he couldn't claim responsibility for all their misfortune. No, they had simply chosen a dangerous line of work. He was well on his way to outliving a second generation and he was considering retirement. At least he had been, before the oncologist's verdict. Retirement planning seemed so futile when death was certain.

Babykiller had created a life out of certainties. He left nothing to chance. He made no mistakes—at least, he made no mistakes that were obvious to the cretins who purchased his services. He had built a seamless organization that ran like a Volvo. It was reliable. It required little maintenance. It was safe. It was boring as hell. Even if his organization survived him—and he cared very little whether it did or not—it was a plain-vanilla sort of legacy for a man of his caliber.

Babykiller had more money than he could have spent in a normal lifetime. He had more than a fair share of cunning. And he had a long list of scores to settle with the world before he took his leave of it. It was time to retire and focus his considerable attentions on something more interesting. Or someone more interesting.

Babykiller had kept extensive files on his target for years, ever since he began thinking of retirement. He had videotapes and audiotapes. An accordion file labeled "BioHeal Environmental Services" held her company's annual financial reports, one for each of the twenty years she'd been in business. His clipping file bulged with articles dating to her first appearance on the cover of New Orleans Business News.

Larabeth McLeod had enjoyed good press from the start, for the usual reasons. She was an easy interview. Her field, environmental science, was red-hot. She was witty and down-to-earth. Her strong jawline made for good photographs. Reporters loved her.

She smiled out of the manila folder at him, wearing her success like a crisply tailored suit. He replaced the clippings in reverse chronological order and closed the file over her elegantly sculpted face. He remembered that face. He had cherished it long before the photographers fell in love. He had seen it contorted in pain, spattered in blood.

He would like very much to see it that way again.

Beyond the pilot test:: Upfront costs

2011-02-14T08:41:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog series last week, it seemed to catch the attention of people who never noticed me before. This is a good thing. One of the people who noticed was Paul Biba, whose website is the go-to place for information on the e-book industry. He asked permission to reprint my first entry in this series, which I granted. Apparently, plenty of people get their news from Teleread, because a quick self-google showed me that a number of other sites have picked up the blog. In other words, I'm now syndicated.

Paul reprinted some of my other articles during the week then, on Friday, he included my blog as an Editor's Pick of the Week, for which I'm ever grateful. Paul and his readers like facts, figures, dollars, and cents. So do I...hence, today's column.

I'm an engineer, so I considered the first few months of my e-book enterprise to be a pilot test. I created the e-books and made them available for sale, presuming I was working on a small scale. I kept the production costs minimal, doing the book design and cover design myself. Then I dropped into data gathering mode, doing a little promotion but spending more of my time watching how other people promoted, before I invested large quantities of time and money in things that didn't work.

Last month, I decided the pilot test had been successful. I'd sold some books and learned a great deal. It was time to invest more time and money. I hired a professional book designer to do a new layout for my frontlist title, Wounded Earth. (I used Hitch at www.booknook.biz . She does fabulous work and so does her subcontractor, Rickhardt Capodimente. They both get my highest recommendation.) This cost me the princely sum of $100. I had made it back within two weeks, just in time to drop some change on advertising. (Which I'll be reporting on later.)

As for the $300 print book design, I make $2.04 per full-price copy of Wounded Earth, so 50 copies will pay for the redesign. I don't expect to ever have to do a full redesign again, so that seems like a reasonable payoff period.

About this time, it occurred to me that, as an author with a track record of six paper books, I have a following that includes a certain percentage of people who are just not into e-books. When Amazon's CreateSpace offers the opportunity to make a book available in print for very little upfront cost, taking their payment as a cut of sales instead, it just makes very little sense for me not to publish a print version of Wounded Earth. So I did.

CreateSpace's site claims to have a user-friendly template to help you lay out your own book's interior. I found it impossible to use, so I got back in touch with Hitch. I also asked her if Booknook could design a cover for me, because I just wasn't sure that my homemade graphics would stand up to being printed on a book cover measuring 5.5x8.5. I also had no idea how to calculate the width of the book's spine or how to insert the text on the back cover or...well, I needed professional help. For $300, I got a professionally designed book and a professionally designed cover. I think this is an eminently fair price.

I can also use the new cover for the ebook edition. Bonus! It poses an accounting difficulty, though, in terms of how to look at the costs on this blog. Should I charge some of the $300 book design to the ebook? Or should I set a goal of paying off the print book design through sales of print books only? I decided to go with the second option and make the print book pay for all of its own design. The print book should be available for sale within a few weeks, and the new e-book cover will be visible on all the internet sales portals within days.

I'll make varying degrees of royalties from the print book, depending on where they're sold, but let's presume most of them will be sold on Amazon. I'll make $4.55 on each book, so it'll take 66 books to pay off the redesign. I spent a few bucks with CreateSpace on things like an ISBN and expanded distribution. Rather than chase every last one of those pennies, let's just say that selling 75 books will put the print book in the black. I've got two bookselling events scheduled this month. If the books arrive in time, I can knock out a big chunk of those seventy-five books. And after I alert my e-newsletter subscribers and other interested parties, I may be nearly there. We shall see.

Because everybody likes pictures, I thought I'd close by posting the new cover. I think it's just gorgeous. What do you people think?

Face time with readers: more dollars and cents

2011-02-10T07:25:00.000-08:00

I spent the last weekend in Alabama with readers and fellow writers and my charming daughter. I had a wonderful time. I sold a goodly number of print books, and I promoted the heck out of my ebooks. Nevertheless, if the net income that I can directly attribute to this trip turns out to be better than if I'd worked a minimum wage job all weekend, I'll be astonished. I'll give you details on that minimal income below, since you people love dollars and cents so much, but first let me tell you what I did to earn it. In short, I worked really, really hard.

Why do we writers do such things? Because without the marketing oomph of a major publishing house that has decided to make you a star, the only way for a writer to get the attention of readers is to get out and meet them. It is my impression that authors who are only published in ebook form are doing less of these meet-and-greet things than authors who are published in print. I'm watching closely to see whether this changes. A booksigning for an ebook feels strange, when you don't have a physical book to hand attendees, but the book is not the point of a personal appearance. Personal contact is.

When people meet an author whose work they enjoy, they go home and talk about the experience. Maybe electronic contact--emails and blogs and websites and forum conversations--meets the psychological need for human contact, but I'm not sure about that. So whether my sales continue to skew toward my print books, or whether my ebooks begin to dominate, I'm not ready to stop going out to meet people quite yet.

So what does a weekend of two personal appearances in another state look like? First, I drove to Birmingham, arriving after 11 pm, because I had to leave at 3 pm to avoid taking my daughter out of school. Color me exhausted. We rose early the next day and went to the first event, Murder in the Magic City. This is one of the best-run events in the mystery world--thank you, Margaret Fenton--and they treat their authors well. They can't afford to pay an honorarium or travel expenses, but they feed us and transport us and, most importantly, they showcase us well to attendees. And this is why we go, to meet people who will read our books and tell others about them.

I moderated a panel, so I spent an hour helping my panelists showcase their work without neglecting my own. People seemed to enjoy it, so I think we did well. Here's my panel: Vicki Lane, CJ West, Jeri Westerson, and me.

I signed a bunch of books afterward and was gratified to see that the bookseller sold out of a couple of my backlist titles. We went back to the hotel and the conference provided us a nice dinner. I collapsed into bed at 9:30.

We were up early again the next day so we could drive to the next event, two hours south. Murder on the Menu is another of the best-run events in the mystery world--thank you, Tammy Lynn. It's a luncheon during which authors circulate among the tables being entertaining, after which we sign books. Think of it as speed dating for writers. This is what it looks like:

After we finished speed dating, books are sold. I sold a lot of them. The bookseller didn't have all my backlist, so a lot of the books we sold came out of the trunk of my car. (This will be important in a minute.) Then I crawled in my car and drove home, arriving at 11:30 pm and falling right in bed. Color me exhausted again.

Before I lay out the numbers for you, think a minute. I make royalties on my books that range from 9% to 12.5% of a retail price of $14.95. So call that $1.50-$2.00 per book. My travel costs included gasoline, food, and two nights in a hotel. It would take sales of 150 to 200 books to cover those costs. I did not sell that many books. How did I manage to pull down that minimum wage salary?

Here's how. The IRS helped. (And my accountant says this is all perfectly acceptable, but please check with your own before you file your own taxes.)

The per diem rate for a hotel in Birmingham is $88, which is about what I paid. Assuming a tax rate of 25%, then my hotel only cost me $66 per night, or $132.

The per diem rate for meals and incidentals in Birmingham is $56, but they only let you deduct half of that, because they presume you would have spent something on food at home. (I think that's the rationale.) I was on the road three days, so $56 x 3 is $168. I can deduct $84. Assuming a 25% tax rate, that nets me $21. But the event organizers fed me all weekend, so I get to keep that $21. Bonus! (I'm not going to count the ten bucks I spent on garbage food at McDonald's on the road, because I *would* have spent money to eat at home.)

The IRS allows $0.51 per mile for travel by car, which is way more than it costs me to put gas in my little bitty car. The lesson for starving writers is this: Never fly when you can drive. Your tax deduction for a flight is only about a quarter of the actual cost, but your mileage allowance can actually pay for travel with a little left over. I drove 920 miles this weekend, for a mileage deduction of 470. In the 25% tax bracket, that's a net of 117.50, but I get 32 miles per gallon, so I only spent $86 on gas, netting me $31.50. Bonus again! (Yeah, I know I'm ignoring wear and tear on my car. Humor me.)

So let's tally up my travel costs
Hotel: $132
Meals: -$ 21
Gas: -$ 31.50

Total: $79.50

Fortunately, I sold some books to soak up that eighty bucks, about 50 of them. These are excellent sales. I'm not sure anybody other than the guests of honor at these events sold more. However, if all I'd collected on any of them were the royalties, my whole weekend would have been a wash. Remember that I get $1.50-$2.00 in royalties per book. However, 20 of the books sold were mine, because the bookseller ran out. (I told you I sold well.) I made about $4.50 on each of those books. So let's say I sold 30 books at $2 a book and 20 books at $4.50 a book. Subtract the 80 bucks in travel costs and lets call it seventy bucks...for a weekend of work.

Do you know how long it would take me to earn seventy bucks as an engineer?

However...there are unseen profits to these events, and this is why I keep doing them. For example, every one of my books showed a bump in its Amazon ranking last weekend. My guess is that people come see me speak and they don't care if they get my autograph. They go home and order the book from Amazon, where they can get a 25-32% discount. That's fabulous, since I make the same royalty no matter where they buy the books, but from a businessperson's standpoint, I can't track it. I have to presume it's happening and hope for the best.

And then there are the big payoffs. After my last trip to Murder on the Menu, I got a call from an attendee offering me $1500 to come speak at her school. $1500! This one gig made the entire trip to Alabama more than worthwhile. I saw the same woman last weekend and she's trying to get funding to bring me back and hand me another big check. Score!

Almost every short story and essay I've sold has been to someone I met at a conference. I'm co-writing a math literacy book with someone I met at a conference. This is why I think ebook authors will eventually find that they've got to go out and meet people in person, even though it costs big bucks.

You've got to spend money to make money. But that doesn't make it fun.

You asked for dollars and cents...

2011-02-09T07:50:00.000-08:00

The last two days have had the highest readership since I started this blog, by quite a bit. Talking about ebooks in particular, and the book business in general, seems to have struck a nerve. Based on comments and private correspondence, though, what really interests people is money. (And also sex, but there are plenty of other places on the internet where you can get that, so you don't need my help.)

I'm on a learning curve with this project, so I unfortunately can't magically dump an MBA-level report about starting an ebook-publishing business on you. The situation is changing so fast that I don't think anybody can. I can tell you that I've sold 56 copies of Wounded Earth since I bought an ad in Kindle Nation Daily on February 2. It cost me sixty bucks. (It has since gone up to a hundred bucks.) Wounded Earth was marked down to $0.99 when the ad hit, because I'm told that this is a good way to generate sales. However, at the lowered price, those 56 copies did not pay for the ad. At the regular price, $2.99, I would have made a tidy little profit. But would I have sold as many copies? I don't know. You tell me.

Nevertheless, the flurry of sales generated by the ad partially paid for the ad, and they shot my Amazon ranking from the 50,000s to the low 2000s. I'm happy I did it, and I'll probably do it again. The price is back at $2.99, and I think this experience suggests that $2.99 is a reasonable price. The marketplace, driven by Amazon's payment structure, seems to be headed toward $2.99 as a minimum price for professional work. We'll see if that price holds.

Since my readers are so into money, my next post will reveal my tricks for making money while doing promotional travel. And perhaps I shall explain why buying my own books from my publisher at my 50% author's discount isn't always preferable to buying them from Amazon at the 32% discount offered to everybody in the world. I may be an artistic writer-type, but I didn't spend all those years in engineering school for nothing. I like numbers. When those numbers are in my account and when they're black, instead of red, it makes me very happy.

Mary Anna

Amazon: The Gorilla in the Library

2011-02-08T06:58:00.000-08:00

I love bookstores. I really love independent bookstores. I estimate that I've signed books in more than 75 independent bookstores since Artifacts came out in 2003. I'm heartbroken to report that at least 25 of those stores has gone out of business. I will do all I can to help independent stores survive, because they are champions of my books and of other good books by non-famous authors, and because I believe that they're important to our communities. But I also can't afford to ignore online sales, because I can't imagine that they won't continue to be a large portion of books sold. And when you're talking about online sales, Amazon is the gorilla in the library.

This is even more true in the ebook world. Authors who independently publish their books have access to sales figures that traditionally published authors do not, and they are almost unanimously telling us that Amazon/Kindle represents the largest fraction of their sales. The question for any author hoping to sell on Amazon is this: "How do I get my book noticed when there are more than a million others clogging up this site???"

I've got both authors and readers reading this blog, but it's been my experience that devoted readers are fascinated by the process of making a book. (Hence this blog.) Today, we're going to talk about the interesting relationship between Amazon and the authors who hope to sell lots of books there. There have been books written on this topic, and if anybody knows of one they can recommend, please post it in the comments below. Here's a quick overview:

Sales and sales ranking.
If somebody buys your book, your ranking goes up. (And your ranking is calculated by a secret formula that takes into account how many sales your book has had, how recent they were, and how close together those sales occurred. I have seen analyses that purported to explain the ranking system, but I'm not convinced that anybody really knows how it's done.) The higher your book's rank, the more likely it is to be recommended to other shoppers. You've seen this. You're browsing through Amazon and you see a box that says, "You might like this book," or "Others who bought similar books bought," or whatever. Amazon's computers used that book's ranking, among other things, to choose which book to show you. This is free advertising, folks. I wonder how much it would cost you to pay Amazon for it. Egad.

Sales ranking also determines where your book appears in search results, and I presume it's a factor when Amazon sends out emails promoting books. (I just love it when somebody tells me they got one of those with my book in it.)

Unfortunately, you can only buy so many of your own books, so you can't influence your sales rank too much.

Tags
I've only recently become aware of tags. You have to scroll waaaayyyy down a book's page to find them. They're simply a way for anyone with an Amazon account to describe a book to other shoppers. You'll see books tagged with words like "mystery," "thriller," "legal," "historical," and so on. You also might see one tagged with an author that might be considered similar. Then, when a shopper is searching for that author, the tagged book can be included in the search results, or it might be recommended to someone who has already bought books by that author. As you can imagine, being tagged as similar to Stephen King or John Grisham or J.K. Rowling is like money in the bank.

Reviews
Amazon reviews are a hot topic of conversation among authors. They are very important, but we don't really understand why. Just because SuzieQ really liked a book and gave it 5 stars doesn't mean I'll like it. Because I don't even know who SuzieQ is! However, it appears that many shoppers do care what SuzieQ thinks and that her 5 star reviews sell books. Even more important, unprovable (I think) scuttlebutt says that Amazon uses 5-star and only 5-star reviews to decide who gets those priceless recommendations on the site. So if you loved a book and give it a 4-star review because you're a reasonable person and you didn't think it was perfect, that review doesn't help that author nearly as much as you might hope. It doesn't make sense, but I'm told it's true. And I know for a fact that a particular website that promotes ebooks will not promote a book until it has 5 5-star reviews.

So...what does this all mean for readers and writers? Heck if I know. Let's talk about it and see what we can figure out. In the meantime, if you're the kind of person who likes to game systems, let's look at what we've learned about how to help a book achieve greatness on Amazon. If there's a book or an author (and maybe that author is yourself) that you'd like to help, here are some options:

1. Buy it. (Duh...) Unfortunately, this costs money.

2. Review it and give it 5 stars. It costs nothing, and it only takes a minute if you've already got an Amazon account. It doesn't have to say much more than, "This book rocks." Sadly, you don't even have to have read it, which takes me back to the question of why shoppers pay attention to those reviews. The important thing is the 5-star rating.

3. Tag it. This costs nothing, and it only takes seconds. Click on tags that you think describe the book. Create tags, especially the names of bestselling authors of similar work.

At this point, I'm tempted to give you links to my entire ouerve, but I've got eleven titles on Amazon. So I'll just post one link to my new environmental thriller, Wounded Earth, which is currently available on Kindle and which will be available as a trade paperback sometime this month.

Yesterday's blog post on ebooks was my most-read ever, by a factor of two, so there are a lot of you out there. If I wake up tomorrow and find that Wounded Earth has acquired a host of reviews and tags, I'll know that you all read this far. And if there are people reading this who would like to post links to their own books in the comments below, go to town. I won't stop you.

Oh, and if you look to the right, you'll see Amazon links for every one of my mysteries... :-D

Happy reading,
Mary Anna

Reporting on the ebook revolution...

2011-02-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

This blog is about the process of getting a story out of an author's brain and into yours. That's what the subtitle says--"sometimes you don't really want to know how books are made" and we all know that the purpose of a subtitle is to explain what the catchy main title actually means.

Anybody who has been paying attention to the publishing world, even peripherally, is aware that ebooks are coming on strong, print publisher are struggling, and behemoth bookstore chains are having trouble paying their bills. Where is all this headed? Are we moving toward the day when paper books are anachronisms?

Well, yes, we probably are. If you watch an episode of the original Star Trek series from the 1960s, you'll see that paper hasn't fit into our image of the future for more than 40 years. (Except for that one episode where Captain Kirk whips out a piece of paper and reveals that his writers were born during WWII, or before.) But I don't think any of us expected books to go out of style within our lifetimes, and now I'm not so sure.

Watching my own young adult children, I see them socialize on the internet. I see them get their entertainment and news on the internet. And then I see them pick up a paper book to read for pleasure. We may be a generation away from Captain Kirk's paperless world. And I don't think you can read an ebook in the bathtub or during the fifth day of a power outage after a hurricane. (Yes, I live in Florida.) Still, if economic forces bankrupt bookstores and print publishers, we may be forced in that direction quicker than we think.

Since I make my living by shoving words around on the page, I've decided to shift my laserlike focus to the world of electronic publishing, and I'm going to take you people with me. If you know people who'd be interested in this little tour, please tweet the link or Facebook it or whatever, because I'd really like to see some conversation between writers and readers and, hopefully, publishers and agents and other industry professionals.

I'll start this process by revealing some of my own sales information. I self-published five electronic books in April of last year--a thriller called Wounded Earth, a mini-collection of three of my previously published short stories called Offerings, and three individual stories, "A Singularly Unsuitable Word", "Mouse House", and "Starch."

I had a lot on my plate last year, so I did no promotion for the ebooks at all. A handful of them sold each month, generating about enough income to cover my Hershey bar habit. Actually, it probably wasn't even that much money.

Last month, I decided it was time to promote the things and, coincidentally, Offerings was recognized by a prominent book blogger as the best anthology of 2010. I sold more ebooks in January through Amazon than I sold in all of 2010. January numbers aren't in yet for Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony, and Apple. I expect to see some sales, but far fewer than on Amazon. Based on that, I estimate that my ebooks paid the bill for my cable internet in January. Others are reporting that their ebooks are paying their mortgages, and I plan to get to that point (narrating the process to you people as I go), but any day when my writing is paying my bills is a good day. If I wanted to be a starving artist, I'd have been a musician.

This month, I am putting my money where my mouth is. I hired someone to do a professional redesign of the cover and interior of Wounded Earth, and I bought some ads on sites and newsletters that cater to ebook readers. One of them hit on February 2 and I sold more books that day than I sold in all of the month of January. Recall that I sold more in January than I did in all of 2010. This is what one calls a geometric progression. Please pray with me that it continues...

The businesswoman in me says that I should report net income. I spent money on those ads and that redesign, so I will likely go in the hole for February. However, as I read other writers touting their ebook success, it appears to me that they are mostly reporting gross income, so I shall do the same. And the beauty of ebooks is that, once I recoup the cost of that redesign, they cost me nothing to sell and distribute, so any losses are temporary.

With that in mind, I boldly project that I will gross enough this month to pay the bill for my pricey iphone data plan. February's a short month, so we'll see how it goes. And we'll see how long it takes me to get to that coveted status where those ebooks are paying my mortgage.

The voices in my head...

2011-01-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's my day to blog over at The Lady Killers, and our topic this week is "Voice."

When I was writing Wounded Earth, I took a correspondence course, so that I could get the story development and editing help of a published author. (This is a step that I highly recommend.)

I still remember getting an assignment back from her. After I'd made a particularly bold narrative statement, she'd written in the margin in orange ink, "What a voice you have!" Now she didn't say it was a great voice, and she didn't say whether or not it was to her taste. But I took her comment to mean that I sounded like myself.

Hop on over to The LadyKillers and see what else I had to say on the subject: http://theladykillers.typepad.com/the_lady_killers/2011/01/from-mary-anna-you-just-need-to-sound-like-yourself.html

Because if nobody's over there reading it, then I'm just listening to the sound of my own voice...and all those other voices in my head...

Mary Anna

While I wasn't blogging, the world was changing...

2011-01-21T09:01:00.000-08:00

...and it's still changing.

I've been a dormant blogger for a few months, because I've had a death in the family and a birth in the family and because both of my book deadlines have been moved. Twice each. I'm a little shellshocked. I hope to get back to blogging regularly, because my topic--how books get made--is a target that just won't sit still. I've missed you guys.

If you were awake during the Christmas season, you know that Kindles and Nooks and all the other e-readers were the hot gift of 2010. For those of us whose livelihood depends on generating text for the rest of the world to read, it doesn't really make that much difference where you read it. In a book or in a magazine or on an e-reader screen...as long as we get paid, it's all the same to us.

It's the "getting paid" part that scares us about this strange new electronic world. How are people going to find our deathless prose in the deluge of text that is erupting because it is just so easy to publish your work these days without the aid of a publisher? And it's cheap, too.

I'm still trying to figure out how things are going to work in the publishing business this year, but I know it will be different from last year. And I know next year will be different yet again.

I've been stumbling around the book biz since late 2002, and I've seen some astonishing changes. Some of them are tragic. I estimate that I've signed at 75 independent bookstores in that time, and I also estimate that at least 25 of them are gone.

The rise of ebooks and ereaders has been staggering, as well. I feel that I should be spending all my time tracking that trajectory and trying to figure out how my books and I fit in, but there is the problem of needing to write the next book. In fact, I should be writing that book instead of doing this. It is a conundrum.

The emergence of book bloggers as a powerhouse in the publishing industry, however, is what is on my mind today. All those voices, all those individuals who are promoting books just because they want to, not because they're employed by a review journal--they're starting to add up into something I don't think we've seen before.

My traditionally published books from Poisoned Pen Press get good reviews from both traditional reviewers and the book blog community, and that's great. My sales show it. But I have a some ebooks that I published myself for the sheer love of it--a thriller called Wounded Earth, a mini-anthology called Offerings, and several short stories. They're not going to get the attention of traditional reviewers but, this week, Offerings got the attention of some influential book bloggers and the results are remarkable.

Red Adept named OFFERINGS the #1 Short Story Collection of 2010, and my sales took a noticeable bump upward, dipping in and out of the Top 100 mystery anthologies on Amazon. (And that's in all books, not just Kindle books.)

Then, today, the ladies at Dailycheapreads.com featured OFFERINGS on their blog. Its monthly sales had doubled before breakfast, and I woke up to find it ranked as the #20 mystery anthology on all of Amazon. Since breakfast, it has risen to #10. Amazing.

Is this making me rich? No. It will probably generate enough income enough for me to take my daughter to McDonald's a few times this month, which would be terrible for our arteries if I actually did it. But today's events show me the potential that is out there, if the right blogger champions my work at the right time.

How am I going to make that happen? Heck if I know. But it's encouraging enough that I'm willing to keep trying.

Mary Anna

Weather or not...

2010-11-15T07:29:00.000-08:00

It's my day to post over at The LadyKillers, and we're talking about the weather this week. This sounds boring, until you realize that the weather in my books includes Category 5 hurricanes and cataclysmic floods...

Check it out:
http://theladykillers.typepad.com/the_lady_killers/2010/11/from-mary-anna-weather-or-not.html

Guest blogger Vicki Delany on learning from our literary past...

2010-11-12T06:14:00.000-08:00

I have a guest blogger today, my friend Vicki Delany. This post, on using the history of the detective novel to hone your own fiction, should be of particular interest to those of you who started following It's Like Making Sausage back in June and July, when I was doing my thirty-writing-tips-in-thirty-days marathon. Actually, I think it's of interest to anyone who enjoys crime fiction, because delving into the history of something you love will almost always uncover information that will make you love it more.

The fourth book in the Constable Molly Smith series, Negative Image, was published by Poisoned Pen Press in November 2010 . Kirkus Reviews said Negative Image “…combines the crisp plotting of the best small-town police procedurals with trenchant commentary on such universal problems as love and trust.” Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com

This post, on using the history of the detective novel to hone your own fiction, should be of particular interest to those of you who started following It's Like Making Sausage back in June and July, when I was doing my thirty-writing-tips-in-thirty-days marathon. Actually, I think it's of interest to anyone who enjoys crime fiction, because delving into the history of something you love will almost always uncover information that will make you love it more.

The fourth book in the Constable Molly Smith series, Negative Image, was published by Poisoned Pen Press in November 2010 . Kirkus Reviews said Negative Image “…combines the crisp plotting of the best small-town police procedurals with trenchant commentary on such universal problems as love and trust.” Visit Vicki at http://www.vickidelany.com/

The Detective Novel – Making the Tradition Your Own
By Vicki Delany

I’ve recently finished reading a very interesting book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale. It’s a true story about a sensational murder in the town of Road, in England in 1860. Mr. Whicher is Jack Whicher, one of the very first detectives on the London police. One night in July of 1860, a three-year-old boy was removed from his bed, taken outside, had his throat cut, and was stuffed into an outdoor privy (aka outhouse). As the house was tightly locked that night, and there was no sign of break and enter, suspicion immediately fell on inhabitants of the house, family and servants. After an initial incompetent investigation by the local police (which refused, for matters of delicacy, to question the family) a detective from the brand-new Scotland Yard was called.

And, not incidentally, the detective novel was born.

Summerscale explains that Wilkie Collins’s great book The Moonstone was influenced by the Road House case, and Collins’ detective, Sergeant Cuff, is considered to be a fictional version of Inspector Whicher. The Road case contains the staples of mystery fiction as we know it today: the large family with hidden passions and secrets, the nosy villagers, the incompetent (or just outwitted) local police, the big-city detective.

The Moonstone is, arguably, the prototype for all detective fiction being written today.

Including my own, the Constable Molly Smith Series, of which the forth, Negative Image, is being released by Poisoned Pen Press TODAY.

I am a great lover of British Police Procedurals (Ian Rankin, Susan Hill, Peter Robinson, Aline Templeton, Stuart Pawson are among my favourites). When I decided to switch from writing standalones to a series, I wanted to write the sort of book I love to read: the traditional police procedural.

One problem – I have no law enforcement experience whatsoever. None. Zip. Nada. I used to be a computer programmer and then a systems analyst with a big bank, not much police work there. (Although I am qualified to identify potential money laundering and terrorist banking activity!)

As a Canadian, writing a Canadian series, I’m in a somewhat difficult position regarding policing, as most of what I read is either British or American. And Canadian policing can be very different.

Here’s an example. Canadian police are not allowed to carry their guns when off duty. Most Americans, I believe, are required to do so. The British police don’t carry guns normally, and have to take special steps if they need one. At the end of In the Shadow of the Glacier (the first book in the series), Constable Smith isn’t in uniform when she comes up against the bad guy and thus she has only her cell phone, stiletto heels, and considerable wits with which to defend herself.

I’ve heard it said: Don't write what you know. Write what you want to learn. Where could I go to find out about Canadian policing?

I wrote to the police force of the town that’s the inspiration for the fictional village of Trafalgar B.C., explained who I was and what I was trying to do. To my considerable surprise, and delight, they wrote back and said they’d be happy to help.

Over the next months, my contact answered all my questions - he even went around the station taking pictures to send me - and when I arrived in town he gave me a tour of the station (including the cells complete with prisoner), introduced me to everyone, and arranged for me to go on a couple of walk-alongs with the beat constable. I met a female officer who was happy to talk to me about the special difficulties women face on the job.

Later, I met a senior police officer for the town near where I live at a book signing and she arranged for me to accompany one of their officers on a ride-along. I have since been on ride-alongs, observed in-service training, been to the firearms training course (you’ll be pleased to know I wasn’t allowed to touch a weapon), interviewed a dog handler, taken step-by-step though fight moves, and borrowed books on police psychology.

On the other hand, I wrote to the police in the town where I used to live asking for help and got a very terse note back, basically telling me to get lost. I’m sure if that had been my first attempt to get police help, it would have been the end of my writing career.

When I told a writer friend about that, he suggested that in my book I have a character transfer in from said town because he couldn’t stand the incompetence and corruption. I resisted the urge to do so.

I wonder where Wilkie Collins got help for his books.

NEGATIVE IMAGE is published by Poisoned Pen Press. If you’d like to read the first two chapters, please go to: www.vickidelany.com. Most of Vicki’s books are available in Kindle and other electronic formats as well as hardcover and trade paperback, large print and audio.

About Vicki
Vicki Delany writes everything from standalone novels of psychological suspense such as Scare the Light Away and Burden of Memory, to the Constable Molly Smith books, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior, including In the Shadow of the Glacier and Winter of Secrets which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, (“artistry as sturdy and restrained as a shaker chair”), to a light-hearted historical series, Gold Digger and Gold Fever, set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush.

Having taken early retirement from her job as a systems analyst in the high-pressure financial world, Vicki is settling down to the rural life in bucolic, Prince Edward County, Ontario where she rarely wears a watch.

Why do mystery writers write the things we do????

2010-11-11T01:29:00.000-08:00

Today, I have a guest blog from Kathryn Casey, whose book The Killing Storm is hot off the presses. She's seen the dark side of life, writing true crime books, and now she's crafting her own murder stories, instead of letting the real-life bad guys call the shots. Why are we mystery writers drawn to the things we write? Well, I think I tell my stories because they give me the power to set things right. In my little world, justice is done, even though we all know that in the real world, this just isn't always so.

Let's let Kathryn tell us the inspiration for her fiction herself. And if you'd like to see a trailer for her book, you can do that at the end of her post.

Happy reading!
Mary Anna

Fictional bad guys are better
By Kathryn Casey

When Singularity, my first mystery, came out, I noticed a couple of distinct reactions from family and friends. Before reading it, they seemed delighted that I wasn’t hanging around courtrooms and prisons as much as in the past, during my more than two decades as a journalist, writing true crime books and covering real murder cases. “It’s good for you to not see such a depressing side of life,” my aunt said one day, patting my hand. “It’ll give you a more optimistic view of the world.”

I didn’t argue. First, my parents raised me to not contradict my elders. Second, it can get pretty intense covering real murder cases, sitting with the victims’ and defendants’ families, watching their reactions, listening to the evidence, often grisly, looking at disturbing crime scene photos, and then, later, interviewing the killers.

My family and friends relief, however, was short lived. When they’d actually read the book, some eyed me rather warily. “You know, Kathy,” a friend said over lunch in a crowded restaurant one afternoon. We were out celebrating the new novel, and we’d both sipped a couple glasses of champagne. I was feeling rather effervescent when she said, “Some of the girls have been talking, and we’re wondering if we should be concerned with the ideas you have floating around in your mind.”

I put down my fork, looked at her eye-to-eye, thought briefly, and then said, “You know, you really shouldn’t bother. I’m pretty sure, I’m okay.”

“But those murder scenes in your book,” she said, growing ever more adamant. “They were, how should I put this, unusual. Do you often think about such things often?”

Again, I took my time, considering the scenes she’d referred to. My main character, Sarah Armstrong, is a Texas Ranger/profiler. She doesn’t get the run of the mill murders. Instead, she’s kind of like that TV doc House, the one they call on to weed through all the clues when they can’t crack a case. In that first book, the one my friends had just read, Sarah hunted a serial killer and the death scenes were indeed unusual, in fact, ritualistic might have been a better word.

“You know, I do think about such things,” I told my friend, who shook her head slightly at my confession. “But you don’t need to worry, because the beauty of fiction is that none of it’s real.”

As my aunt had hoped, the transition from fact to fiction has been invigorating. After all those years covering real cases, I do have rather strange things floating around in my head, and, for the first time, I’m letting them out to play, resulting in plenty of plots and characters to draw on.

For instance, in the second book in the series, Blood Lines, I wrote about a deadly cyber-stalker circling a pop star and an oil company exec found shot through the head with a farewell note beside her body. Was it suicide? I’m not telling, but I will say that both plot lines tied back cases I’d heard about but never wrote about back in the early nineties. So their roots are real, even though they’re thoroughly fictionalized in the book.

So is it any surprise that in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike hitting my hometown, Houston, I wrote a book entitled The Killing Storm? The African symbols and the sugar cane plantation in the book? All modeled after real places and archeological finds within an hour of my house. The location where the book builds to a climax? You guessed it. Real.

Yet everything else materialized when I let my imagination take over, freed from worrying about sticking to the facts, able to mold the best plot, scene, and characters. What’s the most delightful thing about writing mysteries? For me, it’s that when it comes to the killer: pure fiction.

Kathryn Casey is the author of six highly acclaimed true crime books and the creator of the Sarah Armstrong mystery series. Learn more about her at www.kathryncasey.com

My mother

2010-11-07T05:42:00.000-08:00

I've been a less faithful blogger lately, because my mother has been very ill. We lost her last week. Being a writer, I felt a need to set down some of my memories of her, so I hope you don't mind if I stray from the topic of this blog, just for today.

As we were planning her funeral service, the minister asked my sister and me some questions about our childhood and about our memories of Mama. Then he asked for something brief that captured her spirit, perhaps something that we could imagine carved on her tombstone. I really couldn't think of anything to tell him, except for the word, "Mother."

Since I am a novelist, any effort to expand her description beyond a single word naturally metamorphosizes into many, many words. Since she was a singularly beautiful woman, that description naturally includes photographs. Here are those words and pictures.

My mother Lillian was born in January 1937, almost exactly one year after her sister. Two years later, their mother was dead of one of those things that don't kill healthy young women any more, pneumonia. I'm told that someone was driving frantically to Mobile, hoping to find one of those miraculous new antibiotics, a sulfa drug, but he didn't get back in time. She was 26.

Before their mother died, she made two special little dresses,one pink and one blue. I've never seen any like them. They were made of maybe 30 triangles of silk that were connected by flat strips of white insertion lace to make the dresses' skirts. The strips of lace extending from the skirt were sewn together at the top to form the dresses' bodices. I'm told that my grandfather helped her make them. She basted them together while he, being a mechanical engineer and thus handy with things that had motors, ran the sewing machine.

This picture of the girls wearing the dresses was probably taken after their mother died.

By the time I was born, the dress was too fragile to wear, so my mother copied it in pink cotton batiste. My sister and I both wore the copy. When my girls were born, Mama gave it to me, and they both wore it. I think it's still in good enough shape for my granddaughter to wear after she's born in January, but I have a hankering to see if I can engineer yet another copy. We'll see if I work up enough nerve to give it a try.

As a Mother's Day gift a few years ago, my sister and I had the original dress cleaned and mounted in a shadow box, along with photos of all the girls who wore it or the copy, as well as the grandparents who made the original. We included our sons' photos, not because they wore the dress, but just because we kinda like them. :-) Here's a crummy photo of the contents of that shadowbox.

Maybe I'm losing my mind, but look at this photo. I just propped the frame against the wall, sat on the floor, and snapped the shot with my phone, so you can see the reflection of everything in the room in the glass.

Look for my reflection. You can see my white shirt and dark hair. Do you see the reflection of someone else wearing a slightly darker blouse partially obscuring mine? It looks an awful lot like the blouse we buried my mother in. I've always had the traditional engineer's skeptical approach to the metaphysical, but I really can't think of anything to explain that picture.

Here's a photo of the last little girl to wear the current copy, my younger daughter, along with her mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and godmother.

It was perhaps destined that my mother would be an operating room nurse, because there is a story that she and her cousin had a big fight over a worm they found, because she wanted to cut it open and see what was inside, and he wasn't sure that was a good idea. She told me that she'd read everything in her high school library before she graduated, and I know that she was blessed with determination, because Daddy told me that her Daddy took him aside before the wedding to warn him that she "butts with her own head." So I am not surprised that she was at the top of her nursing school class, graduating with an RN license that was a lifelong source of pride. She was in charge of the OR by the time she was 25, and the doctors liked working with her because she was cool, and because she was smart, and because she taught herself to cut sutures with her left hand the very night after she saw that it was a useful skill to have. I love this photo of her as a student nurse in the mid-1950s, especially the open door on the nursing dormitory behind her.

Many years later, I was asked to contribute a story to a very noir publication. Since modern noir connotes a bit more blood-and-guts than I typically write, I pondered a while on this story. Then I decided that I didn't have to take this story onto mean streets that I knew nothing about. It stood to reason that there should be plenty of blood-and-guts in an operating room. And I thought a 1950s-era OR would be even more noir. Mama was so enthusiastic in helping me get the setting of the story right, to the extent of mailing me her old textbooks, that I gave her co-author credit for "Starch," which you can find here:

http://www.amazon.com/Starch-ebook/dp/B003EEN1EQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1297702260&sr=1-3

While in nursing school, she met Daddy. Since people are at their most beautiful when they're in love, I'm including two photos from 1956, one of the two of them at a Christmas party and one that he took of her at Audubon Park in New Orleans while she was training at Charity Hospital.

They married immediately after her 1957 graduation in a small ceremony at the parsonage. Afterward, she was an OR nurse and he did sales for a tobacco company until he finished college, thanks to the GI Bill. Daddy got a job at the Kaiser Aluminum plant where he was eventually plant manager until he retired at age 52.

A sympathy note I received this week mentioned that my father "had personality coming out his ears," and he did. I'm told that the brass at Kaiser Aluminum didn't know what to do with this slow-talking man who would say absolutely anything he pleased to them and who could get away with it, because he had the charm and looks of a Hollywood star. And because he knew he could run his plant so that it was eternally profitable. And also because he knew that nobody else wanted to go live someplace obnoxious like Mississippi and they'd have to do that if they fired him. And the final reason he never kissed up to his bosses was because he had no interest in moving further up in the company, not if it meant that he'd have to move his family someplace obnoxious like New Orleans or Oakland or Gary, Indiana.

My father never met a stranger, and he liked to tell about the time he was dressed all slick in a suit and tie, flying cross-country to a corporate meeting in Oakland. He chatted with the Yankee lady in the seat next to him for the entire flight, and he used his college English and his company manners and everything, but she apparently never got past the accent. As the plane landed, she asked, "Pardon me, sir...but are you a hick?"

He just grinned and said, "Yes, ma'am. I are."

Mama stopped working and commenced mothering when I came along in 1961. This picture was taken in 1963, while she was pregnant with her second and last child, my sister. So, technically, we're all three in the shot.

Mama made virtually everything we wore during our growing-up years, and I'm still spoiled by the experience of strolling into a fabric store, picking out a dress pattern and asking if she could put on a different sleeve, then picking the fabric and color that suited me. She cooked a hot meal and we ate as a family every night. And we washed every meal but breakfast down with her iced tea. Everybody loved her cooking, but there must be something on the y-chromosome that responds to southern cooking. It didn't matter where he came from, if a man sat down at my mother's table, he drank a gallon of that tea and he ate her potato salad until he hurt himself. She passed those recipes on to me, and I've handed them on to all three children. Her interest in sewing seems to have stopped with me and my sister, however.

Here are two pageant gowns she sewed for me. The first one was made from fabric we bought at a fire sale. The other girls had department store dresses, but I won the pageant and the evening gown competition. For the state pageant, we found a photo of a dress we liked, then she copied it, using a pattern that really didn't look much like the original dress at all. Notice how perfectly the bodice fits and know that one of my shoulders is lower than the other and one hip is higher than the other and that I weighed ninety pounds at the time. Have I mentioned that I am spoiled when it comes to shopping for clothes?

It became apparent early on that my sister and I...um...weren't ordinary. There were no gifted programs in elementary schools back then, but she'd heard about such things being offered through the university education department. She consulted with our pediatrician, Dr. Mary Clark, who probably knew quite a little bit about being unordinary, since she was already middle-aged by that time and there couldn't have been many women in med school with her.

Dr. Mary showed the southerner's typical disdain for hiring experts to do things that can be addressed through common sense. She told her to encourage any interest we showed and to fill the house with books. She took us to the bookmobile in the summers and all three of us left with stacks of books. The archaeology books passed through all of our hands, and they are probably the reason I write what I do. That, and the fact that my mother excavated some really cool stuff out of the trash pit left in the woods behind our home by the residents of a long-gone house. Also, she found some arrowheads and the quarry where their stone was dug in those very same woods.

My mother was there for me during all the little bumps in my road, and the biggest of those was probably my second child's premature birth. She and Daddy took my little son to their house and brought him to see me on weekends. Every week, Mama would go to the hospital, check out the baby, and pronounce that the doctors were wrong. (My sister and I have always said that if she'd been born in 1967, instead of 1937, she would have been a doctor herself.) She declared that this baby was going to be fine. Here she is, holding my daughter when she was three months old and nearly ready to leave the hospital. She kept stretching her arms out and waving her little hands in the air. The doctors said it was a reflex and maybe a sign of brain damage. Mama said that the baby was just saying, "Look at my pretty hands!" Mama was right. And my daughter's hands really are pretty...

After my daughter got out of the hospital, my father liked to carry her around and introduce her to strangers by saying, "See this little thing? She weighed a pound and ten ounces when she was born! Just look at her!" He was also ridiculously proud of his daughters, bragging about my sister's PhD in chemistry and my master's in chemical engineering by saying, "All my boys was girls." (He frequently dispensed with the college English when he thought Mississippi talk did a better job of getting his point across.) He died of lung cancer at 58 in 1992.

Mama carried on alone, though it must have been hard. After they'd been married about 25 years, one of his friends asked my father if he'd seen the really beautiful woman who'd walked into church that morning. Daddy said, "Really, I think my wife is the most beautiful woman there is." I wish they'd had more than 34 years together.

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998. When the biopsy came up positive, I carefully packed my suitcase for the trip to Mississippi...then left it on my living room floor. I had to borrow underwear until her surgery was over and I could take time to run to Walmart.

After the diagnosis, I told her we'd take a trip when she got finished with her chemo. Because we loved archaeology and science so much, I found us a cruise that started in Athens, went to ruins in Turkey and Romania, then stopped in the middle of the Black Sea to view a total eclipse of the sun. Here we are embarking on our adventure and viewing the eclipse in our matching flamingo shirts.

She went on to have many years of remission and then manageable disease until the cancer took her last week, but it was on that trip that I first sensed that responsibility was being passed to me. It was a strange feeling.

Before my son's wedding in March 2009, Mama's doctor told me that she would not see my daughter's wedding in September of that year. She made him into a liar, then she lived more than another year, just to show she could. Her father did say that she butted with her own head. Here she is, making her entrance on my son's arm at that wedding she wasn't supposed to see.

I think the greatest gift our parents gave my sister and me was the fact that they never once suggested that there was anything we could not do. When you realize that I'm talking about 1960s Mississippi, a place where few people considered that girls might want to do much of anything, I think that their attitude was extraordinary.

To sew a lovely bit of trim on all this remembering, here is a photo from Christmas 1963, when I got my first piano and my infant sister lay on a blanket under the tree and Daddy caught Mama in her flannel pajamas. All Christmases should be like this one, and all childhoods should be like mine.

25 years ago today...

2010-10-25T03:36:00.000-07:00

Today, Stacy Juba is graciously hosting me on her blog, 25 Years Ago Today, where I'll be talking about...um...let me think...what I was doing 25 years ago today. Fortunately, I know pretty much what I was doing way back then, because my firstborn entered this world on Halloween 1985. Coincidentally, I just wrote a book wherein the viewpoint character is weeks away from giving birth for the entire length of the book. Visit Stacy's blog to see how one experience informed the other:

http://bit.ly/bW1CdN

More from Key West...

2010-10-18T17:56:00.000-07:00

I promised more tales from the very remote and exotic Key West. Sometimes I think we all forget how remote it really is. It's just Florida for heaven's sake. Everybody's been to Florida.

Well, folks, I'm not even in the northernmost part of Florida, but it took me about nine hours to drive from here to Key West. It's a heckuva a long way. That means that if you're talking about the Orlando theme parks when you say, "Everybody's been to Florida," then you're talking about a place that's still seven hours from the spot where US 1 ends in downtown Key West.

Speaking of Key West's status as the really-and-truly-I-mean-it end of the road, when I started on my trip, I got my GPS out of the glove compartment and started to set it. Then I thought, "Um...I drive south to where the Florida Turnpike starts. Then I drive south for the turnpike's entire length. Then I get on US 1 South and I drive until I run out of road. If I can't find Key West without a GPS, then I really shouldn't be driving a car."

That last 125 miles of Highway 1 is so spectacular and unique that I think it should be on everyone's bucket list. It follows the route of the Overseas Railroad constructed by Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway in 1912, which was considered a wonder of the world in its day. When the railroad was destroyed in the great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, the route was sold to the federal government for the purpose of building a highway. Over the years, the old bridges have largely been replaced, but some of them still stand, adding a sense of history to the drive. Here's a picture of the Bahia Honda section of the old bridge. It's been cut, so that no one will continue using it, but it was left in place for use as a fishing pier. The new bridge is roughly parallel and to the right of the bridge as you're looking at it. As you drive across the new bridge, on the dividing line between the Florida Straits and the Caribbean, you feel like you're driving on top of endless water in every possible shade of blue and green. You can't help cranking up the radio and rolling the windows down.

On the other side of Bahia Honda Key is a world-famous beach. It's frequently on one of those Top Ten beach lists that show up in magaziens and on the internet, and it's just spectacular. It's not one of those carefully groomed and raked stretches of beach. No, I've been there three times now, and the fine sugar white sand always has a pretty decent coating of dried seaweed. This isn't surprising, because you can see dark patches of seaweed beds under the clear water. When there's a good bit of surf, as there was on the times I visited, the water is heavily laced with seaweed and murky with white sand. All these things only serve to make the beauty feel natural.

Check out this photo to see just how crowded Bahia Honda's beach was on a beautiful September Saturday. I walked down past the furthest point you can see in the picture, to the end of the island, and I found a large area of clear and seaweed-free turquoise water where I could walk, thigh-deep, far from shore. I just floated in it, practically alone, except for a handful of other folks who were far away and minding their own business. It was a little slice of heaven. (I'm sorry, but I cannot seem to make the graphics program turn it 90 degrees and keep it there. It turned the Bahia Honda Bridge photo properly. It actually turned this one properly, but when I post it, it flips over again. There are many things about computers that I don't understand. Sigh.)

On that note, I'll sign off, promising you more Key West stories and pictures soon. If you want to hear my thoughts on music and mystery writing, today's my day to post over at The Lady Killers. Hop over there and you can see a picture of my piano and everything. How cool is that? (Okay, it's not all that exciting to most folks, but it is a wonderful piano.) :)

Happy reading!

Mary Anna

Making sausage elsewhere...

2010-10-12T02:00:00.000-07:00

I'm guest blogging today for Lelia Taylor at Buried Under Books. It's the traditional Columbus Day, which is the official release date for Strangers. I'm blogging about the reasons why I chose that date, so hop over there and see for yourself.

Some of you may remember Lelia's mystery and science fiction bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, Creatures 'n' Crooks. She has turned from bricks-and-mortar book sales to online book sales, so if you'd like to shop for books while you're there, you'll find the kind of service she gave face-to-face at her store.

Here's the link:
http://www.cncbooks.com/blog/2010/10/12/history-hauntings-and-murder/

I'm headed west...

2010-10-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

...but not very far west. I'm going to Mississippi.

I'll be in the Florida Panhandle on Monday, speaking to the collegiate high school of Northwest Florida State College, then I'll be sleeping in Alabama.

Early Tuesday, I'll be off to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where I'll be speaking at Main Street Books in Hattiesburg at noon, and at Oak Grove Public Library at 5:30 pm.

On Thursday, I'll be at the Purvis Public Library, in Purvis, Mississippi, at 5:30 pm.

And on Friday, I'll be at the Laurel-Jones Public Library, in Laurel, Mississippi, at noon.

Or, if you prefer, you can check out my schedule here.

I'll be back here with more tales from Key West and Mississippi but, first, I've gotta go celebrate Columbus Day week in Mississippi. Because there are few books more suited for a Columbus Day release than Strangers...

(Gorgeous cover, huh?)

If you're near any of those stops, please come see me. I love to put faces with email addresses...

Homesick for Key West...

2010-10-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day I'm really trying to get back to work since my fabulous writer's residency with The Studios of Key West. These wonderful people gave me nine days in an apartment in the heart of Key West's Old Town historic district. And what did I have to do in return? Nothing but write.

Now, remember that I have spent the past quarter-century rearing three wonderful and adorable children, writing when they were in school or asleep ~~or locked in a closet with a bowl of water~~. How often have I had nine days with no responsibilities other than to keep myself fed and avoid burning down the house and make up stories?

I'll tell you the answer to that question. Never.

And I'll tell you something else. It was great!

I am woefully behind on the seventh Faye Longchamp mystery, Plunder, but I have never missed a deadline in my life and I don't expect to miss one now. So even though I was sitting in the middle of a tropical paradise, I set myself a daily goal of ten pages a day. As long as I hit that mark, I could go out and play. Since life experience is part of the work of a writer, even that play time wasn't wasted. (And really...is play time every wasted?) The next book after Plunder will be set in Key West, which is what prompted me to write a proposal for this residency in the first place.

It was important that I spend some of this time getting to know the island, so I walked all over the historic section, just to look at the pretty houses in their sherbet colors and white gingerbread trim. I watched sunset at Mallory Square twice. I had dinner at a harborfront restaurant and at Margaritaville and several other places. I grocery shopped and cooked my own tropical fare--shrimp salad, guacamole from local avocados, lots and lots of sliced mango. I got lunch and cafe con leche at the neighborhood Cuban restaurant and consumed it on the deck outside my bedroom, located beneath one of the biggest mango trees on Key West.

I'll post more photos and tell more tales later in the week, but here are a few to tide you over until then. And I'll probably say this a few more times, but thank you to The Studios of Key West!

Mary Anna

My apartment's private patio and, behind it, the trunk of one of the largest mango trees in Key West.

This is why they call the apartment "The Mango Treehouse"

Sunset at Mallory Square--Key West's daily end-of-the-day party

Chaos...how appropriate...

2010-09-20T04:29:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging today over at The LadyKillers: http://theladykillers.typepad.com/the_lady_killers/

And what's my topic? Chaos. Why do I feel that my fellow LadyKillers were thinking of me when they picked that theme????

Mary Anna

Dove World: An interesting week in my hometown

2010-09-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry to go dormant on you, my faithful readers. Among many other time-eating factors, my mother's health took a significant downturn recently, and I'm frankly not getting much done. If anybody wants to come down here and do my laundry and mop my kitchen floor, I won't argue with you. :)

Never fear, I'm not going to stop making sausage here. The excitement of a new book's publication is right around the corner, and I wouldn't miss sharing it with you. This past week, however, I witnessed some things here in Gainesville that played out on the world stage and I thought I'd share them with you.

Usually when worldwide media outlets focus on this town, they're talking about the antics of large young people on the football field or baseball diamond or basketball court or lacrosse field. Not last week.

I do not believe that a single media organization on the planet failed to send someone to report on the antics of a single idiot with 30 congregants and a loud mouth and a book of matches. The population of Gainesville, minus 30 benighted members of Dove World, was remarkably unified against Terry Jones and his inflammatory behavior, and I'm proud of that.

My minister has always been socially and politically active, and he was very involved in the organization of an interfaith worship service held earlier this week. He and several other ministers and rabbis and priests signed a letter printed in a full-page ad protesting the planned Koran burning. Some of the flock of media folk found him on Thursday, and he was interviewed in three languages that apparently included English, since he appeared on CNN Friday morning.

Everyone I encountered last week was talking about this brouhaha, from tbe conservative wealthy elderly white folks at my mother's assisted living facility to the probably-less-wealthy African American nursing assistants taking care of them. I didn't hear the first person support Dove World's plans, which gives me hope for mankind.

On Sunday, I attended our church service, and plans to feature readings from the New Testament, the Torah, and the Koran had been widely publicized.
The media kept a low profile. It was, after all, a church service. Representatives of various newspapers, CNN, and the ACLU sat quietly in the congregation. Al-Jazeera sent a cameraman, and I hope that their viewers see that Dove World has 30 people who wish them ill, but just across town from them, we have 300 who are reaching out.

I've never been much of a rabble-rousing protester, choosing instead to express my political views by rearing three children with strong moral values, but I was glad to be part of this event. And I hope we all one thing away from the response to one man's actions: We live in a small world, and we're not that different from each other. It's really important to love each other.

Mary Anna

Talking about the bad guys...

2010-08-23T04:59:00.000-07:00

It's my day to blog at The LadyKillers , and the current topic is "villains." I had fun talking about the villains in my Faye Longchamp books, but only in passing, because I don't want to spoil the books for you. However, my ebook, Wounded Earth, is a thriller, meaning that the villain is front and center for the entire book. And when the villain has a name like Babykiller, you know from the beginning of that book that this is a bad man.

I talk a bit about Babykiller on The LadyKillers today. I hope you'll hit that LadyKillers link up there and join me.
Mary Anna

You knew I'd dip into the Beatles songbook, sooner or later...

2010-08-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

I'm back with another popular song that can teach students of fiction a thing or two. I'm fascinated by music--by any art, really--that transcends the passage of time. I recognize a sister in Jane Austen when I read her sharp and usually affectionate skewering of her own society, and I am always astonished to remember that she was writing 150 years before I was born.

If I'm looking at popular music for examples of this phenomenon of art for all time, I'd be an idiot not to look at The Beatles. They arrived on the scene just as mass media made it possible set the world afire in a way that had never happened before and likely can never happen again. I was born in the 1960s, so I barely remember The Beatles' phenomenon, but I appreciate their work a great deal. My 14-year-old daughter can't even imagine life in a world of dial phones and untrammeled smoking in public places, but she is a huge Beatles fan. The Summer of Love is receding far into the past, but "Yesterday" has a timeless quality that lives on.

Today, there are just too many channels and stations and blogs and websites and media venues for one artist to dominate the culture so completely. Still, Beatlemania would not have survived for a half-century if those lads had not been exceptionally talented songcrafters. You probably think that I'm going to whip a mega-hit out of the Lennon-McCartney songbook to talk about tonight, but you're wrong. George Harrison was a writer of delicate masterpieces, but he was laboring in the shadow of his larger-than-life friends, so he gets overlooked. Let's look at one of his finest songs: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

First, take a moment to admire that title with me. I could actually point to that phrase as an example of great writing and quit writing this post. This title, which is the song's hook, speaks of the love affair between a musician and his constant musical companion. It speaks of the emotion that pours out of that musician so freely that it seems to come out of the guitar itself. And the image of someone gently weeping reaches right into my heart and twists it. Well done, Sir George.

I look at you all...see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it need sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps

The singer is just sitting there, looking at someone he loves, and he's grieving. It's a timeless, still moment that extends while he looks around the quiet room and sees the dust on the floor. He is as far from picking up a broom as a man can be. He can't do anything but hold his guitar gently and let it speak for him.

Is there a fancy word in this stanza? There's hardly an adjective or an adverb here, and one thing I almost always do with beginner manuscripts is to take a light saber to three-quarters of the adjectives and adverbs. Flowery modifiers tend to suffocate the message. Harrison has excised them, and the adverb "gently" shines so brightly because he did.

I don't know why nobody told you
how to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
they bought and sold you

Someone--I presume it is a woman--has made a mistake in love. She--and I presume he loved her--has been betrayed by someone who treated her as a thing of value to be bought and sold. He doesn't blame her for this tragedy. He blames them. And he has told us so, again, without a single flowery descriptor.

I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

He's taken a step back from noticing the dust on the floor...a big step back. He's so detached that he notices the world in its turning. Nothing is moving but the earth on its axis and his fingers on that guitar. He indulges himself in an extraneous adverb--"surely"--but it's needed to drive that third line's rhythm hard, and he wants to move on from this mistake as inexorably as the world turns.

I don't know how you were diverted
you were perverted too
I don't know how you were inverted
no one alerted you

Excuse me, Sir George, but what are you saying here?

Well, I know what he's saying. It's the same message as the last stanza. Someone fooled this woman into a betrayal, turning her upside down, and nobody warned her. You can sing this trippy stanza if you're George Harrison, but if I were covering the song, I'd have to leave it out. I also couldn't pull off the Liverpool accent to properly sing "divuhted," "purvuhted," "invuhted," or "aluhted," but it sounds great when he sings it.

(This is akin to my difficulty with the song I dissected three posts back, "Dream On." I can sing along with the recording. I can do that monster slide. I can do those bluesy vocal tricks. I can even hit the high notes on those shrieking "Dream on"s at the end. But I can't do those shrieks with a straight face, so no one but my kids will ever hear me do it. Only the original artist can pull off such shenanigans in public. Trust me on this.)

And then, on the original Beatles recording, he repeats the chorus and quits. However, the internet gifted me with these additional lyrics from the original Harrison version:

I look from the wings at the play you are staging
While my guitar gently weeps
As I'm sitting here doing nothing but aging
Still my guitar gently weeps

I simply adore this, and I would absolutely include it in any cover of this song. Our singer is still the motionless observer, watching the drama the nameless woman has staged and playing a mournful guitar accompaniment as that drama ends. He has watched the dust pile up on the floor and he has watched the world turn and these things are just reminders that time has passed. Nothing has happened. But this isn't true. He's getting older. Maybe he'll heal and maybe he won't. Maybe he'll never do anything but sit there and play. But his guitar, his first love, sits with him and weeps.

Go ahead and break out The White Album, whether you listen to it on your ipod or a CD or a cassette or...does anybody still own an eight-track?...or on vinyl. You know you want to.

Happy listening...
Mary Anna

Some cool news...

2010-08-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break from my literary appreciation of rock lyrics to share several bits of good news with you people.

First, my Faye Longchamp novels--Artifacts, Relics, Effigies, Findings, and Floodgates--are all now available on Kindle and for the iPad. With the daily flood of news stories on the growth of the ebook market, this can only be a good thing.

Second, my co-writer in the educational work, Faith, and I received word that an article of ours will be published in a prestigious literary journal. It's called "Reading Geometry: Text Options and Reading Activities," and it will appear in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' journal Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. One of the reading activities included in the article is based on an excerpt from Artifacts, so my work will get some nice exposure to people who might want to use it in their classrooms.

Third, I've been selected to do an artist's residency at The Studios of Key West. (If I've told you this already, forgive me.) I'll be going down in September to spend a week in a cottage called the Mango Treehouse, apparently because my bedroom is situated upstairs in such a way that I'll feel like I'm sleeping among the branches of the largest mango tree in Key West. I have two deadlines coming up, so I'll be working like a slave in that magical treehouse, but Key West is a pretty wonderful place to experience self-imposed slavery.

And last, Faith and I have another article in a professional journal this summer. Florida Readers Journal is a very scholarly publication, and our article is actually quite scholarly, but it does have a tongue-in-cheek quality that I think is what prompted Faith to list me as first author. This is very generous of her, since she's the one with the PhD, but she said, "This one was your baby." And it was. It's called "Exploring Strange New Worlds: Across-the-Curriculum Lessons from the Star Trek Franchise."

I have a picture to go with this last news item that is so appropriate for the topic and so ridiculous that I shall post it. Live long and prosper!

A very literary rock star...

2010-08-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I dissected the meter and thematic development of a pop song, and I felt positively schoolmarmish. So I thought I'd dig up a picture of myself in my glasses, just so I could look the part.

The schoolmarm is in.

Today, we're still looking at the ways our modern troubadours are following in the footsteps of Homer and the Bard of Avon, and I've chosen one of my favorite lyricists, Sting. Yes, sometimes he stomps onto the wrong side of that slender boundary between literary and pretentious, but the man has written some most elegant songs. I'd rather risk being pretentious than spend all my time penning predictable tales in single-syllable words, and I imagine that Sting feels the same way.

As of last week, I am the mother of the a two-time National Junior Classical League mythology champion. In her honor, I want to talk about The Police's hit, "Wrapped Around Your Finger," which draws from the mythological themes that she so loves. I saw The Police perform this song in 1984, during their Synchronicity tour, and I continue to admire their work, particularly Sting's songwriting abilities.

This song is as classically inspired as they come, from the opening sentence:

You consider me the young apprentice
Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis.

Scylla and Charybdis were a pair of monsters who terrorized sailors back when the Greek gods walked the earth. Scylla had a bunch of heads, bobbing on very long necks, and she would reach those heads out to a passing ship and snatch sailors right off the deck. Charybdis took the form of a gargantual whirlpool that didn't bother with snatching individual sailors. It just sucked the whole ship down into the depths. Scylla and Charybdis make a famous appearance in The Oddysey.

Saying one is "caught between the Scylla and Charybis," is a whole lot prettier and fancier than saying that one is "caught between a rock and a hard place," but it means pretty much the same thing. And what's our young apprentice doing in this precarious spot? Why, I do believe that Sting has induced a state of dramatic tension in a mere 12 words. We should all make it our goal to be equally economical.

Hypnotized by you if I should linger
Staring at the ring around your finger.

Until I started writing this post, I was certain that I understood this reference. I was under the impression that the sorceress Circe wore a magic ring that she used to enchant Odysseus. I can almost see the book where I read this, an adaptation of The Odyssey. And I thought she used it to turn people to stone, which will come up again later in this post. But I can find no evidence of these things on the internet and, as much as I love you people, I don't have time to re-read The Odyssey for you. So I'm going to regard this line as referring to a generic sorceress's ring. Or maybe she's not a sorceress. Maybe she's a married woman who's got the young apprentice's attention. This song has been out 27 years, but there are still people talking on the internet about this question.

I have only come here seeking knowledge,
Things they would not teach me of in college.

Sting has a way with feminine rhymes, doesn't he?

I can see the destiny you sold
turned into a shining band of gold.

Back to the sorceress/married woman question.

I'll be wrapped around your finger.
I'll be wrapped around your finger.

And the hook...repeated, of course. Because it's the hook. :)

Doesn't it oh-so-elegantly mirror that mysterious ring?

Mephistopheles is not your name,
But I know what you're up to just the same.

Faust sold his soul to Mephistopheles, so now we know exactly what's at stake.

I will listen hard to your tuition,
And you will see it come to its fruition.

Tuition/fruition. Another feminine rhyme, maybe the prettiest ever...because the words work with the story. "Tuition" and "fruition" would be the perfect words here if they didn't rhyme. Never force the wrong word into your story, just because you want to use it.

As a schoolmarmish word-person, I think that "tuition" and "fruition" look pretty and sound pretty, and they even feel good in the mouth.

I'll be wrapped around your finger.
I'll be wrapped around your finger.

And the hook again...is he just using an old saying here, or is he talking about a wedding ring, or is he talking about the spell this woman has over him? The line works because we care about the answer. We know nothing about this apprentice, except that he is trapped in a power struggle, but Sting tells his story in a way that drags us into the young man's viewpoint. We're all wrapped around her finger...whoever she is. Circe? An unnamed modern woman? We really don't care.

Devil and the deep blue sea behind me

In a neat bit of songwriting legerdemain, this sentence fragment harks back to Faust's deal with Mephistopheles and to Charybdis the sea monster, and to the unnamed singer's struggles with those two beings.

Vanish in the air you'll never find me.

And the apprentice has harnessed his magic! Don't you want to applaud?

I will turn your face to alabaster,
Then you'll find your servant is your master,

It bugs me that I remember a story of a sorceress who used a ring to turn men to stone, but I can't find a reference for that story. If anybody knows it, please write me. But even without it, this couplet is simply awesome. It functions like the final couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet, requiring the observer to re-evaluate everything that came before in light of the surprise now being revealed.

The multisyllabic feminine rhyme, master/alabaster, emphasizes two important words. "Master" is obviously a central image to the power struggle being detailed in this song. And turning someone's face to alabaster, knowing that alabaster is a stone and is also synonym for "white," opens the mythology of the song to interpretation. Is the student's master (or mistress) white-faced in shock, or was he or she actually turned to stone? In this mythic land, either are possible. Poseidon turned Odysseus' ship to stone, and Medusa's glance could turn anyone to rock. I've always thought that the choice to use "alabaster" in this context was simple genius.

And you'll be wrapped around my finger.
I'll be wrapped around your finger.
You'll be wrapped around my finger.
I'll be wrapped around your finger.....

And the turn keeps turning. Who really is the master in this relationship? And does it matter when the two people are so inextricably bound? This power struggle is going to continue as long as both parties are still breathing. And it's entirely possible that this song will have fans as long as human beings can see themselves in that struggle.

Keep on rocking...
Mary Anna

Every time that I look in the mirror...

2010-08-09T19:42:00.000-07:00

As I promised yesterday, we're going to take a good look at some timeless words. No, they're not excerpted from a novel or a short story. No, they're not even fiction, though I do think they tell a story. They're song lyrics, that special kind of poetry that is consumed by the masses because it comes wrapped in ear-pleasing, visceral rock-and-roll.

I had a nostalgic good time on Saturday night, enjoying an excellent Aerosmith concert in the company of my 14-year-old daughter, who appeared to be enjoying it as much as I was. See--don't we look happy?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is art that crosses generations. (Pop art, it's true. We're not talking Mozart here. But I write popular fiction, and I happen to believe that popular art that strikes a chord with millions of people is probably saying something important about the human condition. Steven Tyler just makes his social commentary in a much raunchier way than, say, Maya Angelou.)

I remember hearing "Dream On" on the radio when it was first released. When Aerosmith launched into that song, I heard thousands of people squeal like the little girl I was then, and I thought "We wordsmiths can learn some things from Aerosmith. I'm gonna deconstruct that song." I tell my fiction writing students that they should write poetry, just to practice the precise and practical use of words. Well, when you write a pop song, you know you're gonna have to repeat that hook many, many times...so you have to be even more selective about the words you do use. Let's look at the words Steven Tyler chose in boldface. I'll comment in regular old Times New Roman.

Every time that I look in the mirror,
All these lines on my face getting clearer.

I thought this was a heroic couplet, but alas, heroic couplets have five iambic feet. Rock-and-roll lends itself more to four feet--tetrameter--and those look more like trochees than iambs, so let's call it trochaic tetrameter. Shakespeare used that meter. So did Edna St. Vincent Millay. So I guess it's worthy.

Whatever you call it, I think the back-to-back rhyme of a couplet has a strong, definite sound. And the feminine rhyme scheme--two rhymed syllables instead of just one--makes it even stronger. It can be risky. It can sound like a bad limerick. (There once was a man from Nantucket/ who...oh, never mind.)

I think it works here. And these opening lines strike right at the heart of anyone who has ever contemplated age and mortality. (This is fairly amazing, considering that Tyler was what...25?...when he wrote those words.) But it's a perfect opening for a song that's aiming a little higher than the average blues song that begins, "I woke up this morning, a day older than I was yesterdaa-aa-ayyy...)

The past is gone.
It went by like dusk to dawn.
Isn't that the way?
Everybody's got their dues in life to pay.

And again, "Everybody's got their dues in life to pay," rubs our face in the hard parts of life, but it does the job with a little more style than "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen." And it differs a bit from the blues, in that there is a whiff of hope here. Will things get better after we get those dues paid?

Yeah, I know nobody knows,
Where it comes and where it goes.
I know everybody sins.
You got to lose to know-oh how to win.

And again, we're dealing in sin here, and sin leads to death, and well, there's the mortality thing again. But maybe we've got a fighting chance to win while we're still kicking.

Half my life's in books' written pages,

So's mine, Steve. :)

Live and learn from fools and from sages.
You know it's true.
All these things come back to you.

Dusk/dawn, lose/win, fools/sages...are we getting it yet? What goes around comes around and what you give will come back to you.

Sing with me, sing for the year.
Sing for the laughter, an' sing for the tear.
Sing it with me, if it's just for today.
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away...

Laughter/tear, today/tomorrow...are we getting it yet? The good Lord has stuck us with this mortality thing, but we're doing our best to deal with it. And maybe it's just me, but this song sounds like it's written about a man who is utterly depressed--at rock-bottom, actually--but a man who believes he can turn it around.

Dream on, dream on, dream on,
Dream until your dreams come true.

And this is where he turns it around. This song's hook takes the jaded teenager's response to a cheerful statement, "Dream on...sigh..." and removes the irony. It seriously asks us to contemplate that dreams come true. Works for me. And because it's a radio-ready song, the hook gets repeated several (several!) times, turning it into a rock anthem.

So there you go. Look at your own writing and see if you can use any of this wisdom: Simple words. Strong rhythms. Timeless longings. And the rebellious, shaken-fist refusal to succumb to depression. We could all do worse, don't you think?

Dream on, dream on, dream on,
Dream until your dreams come true.

Rock on!

Mary Anna

From TV to rock-and-roll...

2010-08-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

Today's my day to blog over at The LadyKillers, and it was a tough assignment. They wanted me to write about TV crime shows, and I just don't watch a lot of TV. However, I managed to wrestle the topic into submission by morphing it into a writing tip. So if you're one of my writing tip collectors, you're going to have to hit that LadyKillers link and go over there to see it.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to make you all jealous by telling you how my daughter and I heard Aerosmith play a fabulous concert last night. I'll make your misery worse by posting a photo of us being rocker chicks. Then I think I'm going to deconstruct the lyrics to "Dream On" and tell you why they work. (Weeks ago, one of my writing tips was to learn from the masters. Well, a song that can still make a stadium full of humans squeal like little girls was probably written by a master, doncha think?)

I have not written this post yet, so I'm tiptoeing way out on a limb. What if I find I have nothing to say about "Dream On"?

Oh, be serious. I am a novelist. I can find something to say about laundry lint, but I'd rather talk about Aerosmith. Check back tomorrow, when we'll all know what I decided to say.

Mary Anna

Just a Little Gift from Me to You: Writing Tips from the Pros

2010-08-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

I spent most of last week in the company of people who make their living as writers--the faculty of the Anhinga Writers Studio Summer Workshops. I was the conference's faculty coordinator, so I picked these people and you'd better believe I picked their brains when I had the chance.

Here are some gleanings of wisdom from the best. Use them. Incorporate them into your work life. You can thank me later. Better yet. Next time you see me, bring me chocolate. :)

A Poet's Advice on Revision...Which is Pretty Applicable to Non-poets, As Well
I think sometimes students who workshop a lot get the idea that revision is synonymous with streamlining, and so all you have to do to get your writing to shine is cut the fat. Cutting when possible is definitely critical. But there's more to revision than that. Sometimes a poem is missing information, or has no hook. Sometimes it needs to change direction because the way you began isn't the way it wants to go as it evolves.
- Lola Haskins, NEA Fellow, www.lolahaskins.com

Is Success as a Writer Any Different From Success In Any Other Field? Probably Not...
Question: How do you make a bunch of money with your book?
Answer: Don't focus on making a bunch of money with your book. Start with a fundamental respect for your potential readers.
- Peter Bowerman, Author of The Well-Fed Writer and The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book Into a Full-Time Living, http://www.wellfedwriter.com/

How Do Agents Do What They Do?
While the author is revising the project and rounding up supplementary materials, the agent is busy too. She’s making her preliminary “hit list” of likely editors, often in consultation with her colleagues in the agency. She’s also writing her own cover letter for the project – a pitch not unlike an author’s initial query. She may even be doing a bit of pre-selling, dropping tantalizing hints about the book at lunches or in chance telephone conversations with editors. Finally, the agent has to decide the best time to schedule the submission, ideally a week when editors won’t be out of town because of sales conferences, book fairs, or holidays.
- Anne Hawkins, Senior Literary Agent with John Hawkins and Associates, www.jhalit.com

Writing Good Characters is Like Dating, Sorta...
Think of your main characters and your readers as developing a relationship in your manuscript. When you first introduce your character, think of this as a first date with the reader. (If the reader isn’t intrigued, there won’t be a second date; that is, the reader won’t keep reading if she or he is bored, thinks “yeah, so what?” or is not otherwise engage with the characters.) But, if you hook the reader on that first date, then as the story evolves, the relationship between the characters and the readers similarly evolves. If you are writing a series, then your characters and your readers form a kind of marriage—or long-term relationship. And, as in a real relationship, what the characters say, think, and do over time (the duration of the book or books) reveals more and more about who they really are and what they are capable of doing. In order to keep your characters/readers’ relationship healthy, you must offer the readers some of the same things a healthy real-life relationship offers — interest, intrigue, respect, and pleasure.
- Claire Matturro, awardwinning author of Florida-based legal mysteries featuring the sassy Lily
Belle Rose Cleary, www.clairematturro.com

A funny story...

2010-08-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

One of our students at the Anhinga Writers Studio Summer Workshops told me a hilarious story, and I told her she should write it down. It turned out that she already had, so she forwarded it to me today. I enjoyed it so much that I thought I'd share it with you. Enjoy...

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The Double Surprise

by DJ Towles

During the year Mr. Hayden and I talked business over the phone, we had become quite relaxed with each other. Sharing tidbits from our personal lives resulted in our discovery that we would both be in DC's Georgetown section on the same day the following week. It seemed natural to take the opportunity to meet for lunch, and, as Mr. Hayden said, "put faces to the names." Since my schedule was the iffier of the two, the plan was for the reservation at the Four Georges to be for one o'clock in Mr. Hayden's name. I would join him as soon as I finished my client calls.

My preparations were intensive, extensive, and most of all, expensive. No suit in my closet seemed fashionable enough. No dress seemed to work. No shoes seemed stylish enough for this lunch, this meeting which was just to "put faces to the names." Hundreds of dollars spent, not just on clothes, but on a salon coiffure for hair normally treated to a shampoo in the shower and a half-hearted finger fluff during the air dry process. A manicure. I hadn't had a manicure in years and years. The pedicure was the most ridiculous decision. A pedicure for toes that were going to be hidden in shoes, new, fashionable shoes, under the table while we're having the business lunch to "put faces to the names." Why am I so nervous? It isn't even a date. Well, maybe it seems like a date to me, but I'll bet he doesn't think it's a date. No. He probably really means it's just to "put faces to the names."

For all my attempts to calm myself when I walked into the Four Georges I was a nervous wreck, a well dressed, coiffed, manicured, pedicured nervous wreck, but still, a nervous wreck. I had rushed through my morning appointments and arrived only minutes after one o'clock.

The maitre d' ushered me to a banquette table set for four. There was only one occupant, a very attractive lady. No Mr. Hayden. Perhaps he had gone to the mens' room. Was this his secretary? His wife?

I extended my hand to the raven-haired lady in a typical business greeting. "Hello, I'm DJ Towle."

Was there just a moment of hesitation before she clasped my hand in greeting?

She flashed a smile and in the husky/sexy voice I knew so well from the phone said, "Hello, DJ, I'm Elizabeth Terhayden. I'm so glad to meet you."

Elizabeth Terhayden. Miss Terhayen. Not Mr. Hayden. Miss Terhayden!

While sipping coffee after our meal, my need to confess could no longer be contained. I revealed to my new girlfriend that she was supposed to have been my new boyfriend. She hooted with laughter. "You were my new prospect, too. I even bought a this dress."

"I bought this suit."

"I had my nails done."

"My hair, as well!"

The Four Georges is a pretty upscale place with a quiet, reserved atmosphere. The rest of the diners must have thought the two of us had consumed too much juice of the grape. The heck with what they thought. We two husky voiced young professional women with names that could be male or female, each gussied up to meet a business associate with hopes of establishing a long term heterosexual relationship, hooted with laughter at the double surprise.

It's been decades and decades since Liz and I did business together. We don't even keep in touch like we once did. However, when either one of us retells this story we always let the other one know. I'll end this now. It's time to e-mail my friend, Miss Terhayden.

I haven't been AWOL. I've been flying with the Anhinga...

2010-07-31T07:24:00.000-07:00

I promised you guys I'd blog from the Anhinga Writers Studio Summer Workshops, and I am. It has taken me four days of radio silence to find time to do so, though, and for that I hope you'll forgive me.

During those four days, I have taught writing sessions and done manuscript reviews and conducted one-on-one consultations and tried to assist faculty members who got lost on their way to Gainesville. I've scheduled reviews and consultations for a faculty of 13. I've sold my books and the books of others. I've toted my books around. (Also my computer and my printer and anything else that needed me to tote it.) I've done a bunch of other stuff, too, but it's a blur, so I'm not even going to try to tell you what it was. And I've had a good time doing it.

It's a lot of fun to watch people learn how to improve their writing and how to spread their wings as a published writer. I dearly love to brush elbows with the other faculty, many of whom are old friends. Though it's hard to find the time for quiet conversation, I do try. It's energizing to bond with people who understand the highs and lows of an author's life. And I defy anyone to find a more interesting group of folks than a group of writers.

Sooner or later, I'll make a list of things I learned from my peers this week. It will be a nice postcript to my "Thirty Writing Tips in Thirty Days" marathon. Today, though, I thought I'd post a few photos from a most hectic week. I hope yours was as pleasant and productive!

Giving feedback on a manuscript review

Teaching a session on "What is a Story?" with

Jeanne Leiby, editor of The Southern Review

Enjoying some social time with students and fellow faculty

Happy reading and writing!

Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #30: Talk to me

2010-07-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

Here we are at the end of our marathon journey through 30 writing tips in 30 days. Thank you for taking it with me!

Does this mean I'm going away? Oh, heck no...not unless you people rise up and tell me to go away. And what would be the point? All you have to do is stop reading or stop talking back to me. Google Analytics will tell me you've all gone away, and I'm not real big on talking to myself. :-)

So what's today's writing tip? Actually, it's a continuation of Tip #29, which was Reach out. Today, I'll be specific. Reach out to me.

I work like a serf. (That's one of the things about the publishing business that you probably didn't want to know.) I enjoy taking a break to visit with friends. And I love to talk about writing.

Some of you have been already been reaching out here, or by email, or on Facebook. Some of you are probably reading it via the Amazon feed, and I'm not even sure there's a way to comment there or whether there's even a link back to this page. Therefore, I shall confuse the webcrawling bots and post a link to this blog on this blog, putting them into an endless self-referential do-loop: http://www.maryannaevans.blogspot.com

Drop me a line and tell me which writing tip(s) have been the most helpful to you. If there's a topic you'd like me to ~~thrash within an inch of its life~~ explore, let me know. If you have your own writing tips you'd like to share, have at it, and let me know whether it's okay for me to discuss them further in the blog.

Beyond responding to the feedback that this shout-out generates, I have several other plans for material with which to fill this space. First, I will be teaching and organizing a major writing conference this week called the Anhinga Writers' Studio Summer Workshops. I will be working on this project from daybreak till long after dark, but I'll have my smart phone and laptop with me. Unless unremitting disaster strikes, I plan to post the gems of wisdom I learn from my fellow instructors. And since my life seems to consist of careening from one ridiculous situation to another, I'm sure there will be funny stories to tell.

After I recover from the workshops, I'll be returning for a while to the behind-the-scenes stories of publishing weirdities implicit in the title of this blog: "It's Like Making Sausage: Sometimes you don't really want to know how books are made..."

Then, as October approaches, you can vicariously experience the highs (good reviews) and lows (booksignings where nobody remembered to order books) of a book release. Don't make me do this alone...

Mary Anna

Making you wait a bit...

2010-07-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

It's time for that 30th and last Writing Tip for the Practical-Minded, but it's also time for my biweekly post over at The LadyKillers. This fortnight's topic is how we name our characters, and that's not how I want to wrap up my 30-day marathon. So I'll save your 30th writing tip for tomorrow.

In the meantime, hop over to The LadyKillers and read my post there, entitled: "Characters: Call them what you like, just don't call them late to dinner."

Then come back here tomorrow and see how I'm going to wrap this up. It would be helpful if I knew how I was going to wrap this up...

Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #29: Reach out...

2010-07-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

I'm winding down to the end of my 30-Writing-Tips-in-30-Days marathon, and I'm thinking about the reason I started it. (And please don't worry that I'll leave you lonely when it's done. I have plans for you...)

I love to teach, and this was my warm-up to a big week of teaching next week at the Anhinga Writers' Studio Summer Workshops. I'll be leading four 90-minute workshops and meeting personally with a double-handful of students, as well as just spending time socializing and talking writing with about seventy-five people who are soon to be among my dearest friends. :-) We Anhingas are a very tight group.

My goal when I teach is to tell aspiring writers the things I wish someone had told me. Some of these things aren't easy to hear. "You need to do some revisions before you start submitting this thing to publishers and agents," is chief among them, but the advice is always delivered with love and with the belief that hard work can get people where they want to go. Fortunately, some of the advice I have to give is very pleasant to put into practice. Tonight's Writing Tip for the Practical-minded is one of those. Here 'tis:

Writing is a solitary activity. Balance yourself by reaching out to other writers.

Did I do this when I was an aspiring writer? Heck, no. During all the years I was learning my craft, I was very, very busy. How busy?

Well, I took my first serious writing class in graduate school when I was 21. I wasn't really supposed to be taking that class, being as how I was pursuing a master's degree in chemical engineering as fast as humanly possible, but I needed something in my life besides coursework in fluidized bed heat transfer and advanced transport phenomena. I wrote in spare scraps of time during the year I was taking classes, then I took a job teaching community college math and physics during my last semester, as I finished my thesis.

A year later, I had my first child, dropped back to teaching part-time, and wrote when he was napping. Just over a year later, I had my second child, moved to Florida, and wrote whenever I could get them both to nap. Just over a year later, I divorced, took a full-time job as an engineer, and wrote when my kids were asleep at night.

What is conspicuously absent here? Um...publication. And contact with other writers.

A couple of years later, I remarried and found some time to attend occasional meetings of local writer's groups, but publication still eluded me. A couple more years later, I was on bedrest for most of my third pregnancy, so I split my time between continuing my work as an environmental consultant and writing an environmental thriller. Because I'd never written anything book-length before and I wasn't sure I could, I took a correspondence course in novel-writing, and it's one of the best decisions I ever made. I couldn't leave my house to get companionship from other writers, per medical orders, but I could do it by mail. (And yes, in 1995, I took that course by snail mail. If you take a similar course, it will be online and your life will be much easier than mine was.)

That third baby was three before I finished the environmental thriller, but I did finish it, and it got me my agent, Anne Hawkins. Having had Anne's literary companionship for 12 years has made my writing life a lot less lonely and a lot less scary. She not only believed that my work was good, but she was willing to risk her valuable time on it, because she thought that it would one day make her some money. How cool is that?

Anne and I were together five years before we sold Artifacts , but the sale brought me more literary companionship--an editor, a publisher, and the folks at the publishing house who make things happen. The need to publicize the books took me to writers' conferences and readers' conferences and bookstores and libraries, where I met the people who read my books, as well as other writers who were hoping to publish theirs. Wonder of wonders, I also met anthology editors who have since published my short stories and essays.

Now, listen closely. I learned that my agent Anne and my editor Barbara attend writers' conferences, looking for new talent. I learned that they had both been at conferences that I could have attended but didn't because...well, look back a few paragraphs and tell me when I would have had time. Still, if I'd gone, my work might have seen print years earlier than it did...if I'd had time to write it. Yes, I know that lack of time is a vicious cycle. All we can do is the best we can.

So if anybody reading this will be with us at the Anhinga conference this week, welcome. You're doing a wonderful thing for yourself.

If any of you would still like to come, well, it's almost too late but not quite. Drop me an e-mail, like...now.

If you're interested, but this is just not the time, watch this space for developing news. We're streamlining our programs for the upcoming year. Instead of one monster conference, we'll be doing several "lock-ins," where a small number of attendees will spend an intense weekend with just one instructor, with the goal of walking away with new skills and a significant piece of writing done. If you want face-time with someone who can kick-start your work, plan to join us. And if you're a fiction writer, know that the someone doing the kick-starting will be me. :-D

Reach out to other writers because you can learn from them. Reach out to them because they might soon be reporters who can cover your work or editors who can get your words out into the world. Reach out to them because it will feed your soul.

You'll be glad you did.

Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #28: Get a cat.

2010-07-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I told you about my brief conversation with Corbin Bernsen, and I mentioned that on the day he and I were on the same television show (!), three of the other guests were representative from the humane society--a human and two dogs. Or, you know, maybe it was her two cats, because the humane society was promoting their two-for-one cat promotion special.

I think I saved a few kitty lives that evening when I spoke to the local Sisters in Crime chapter about how to start a career as a mystery writer. I told them that I had pursued publication for many years. (Many, many, many years. So many years that I'm pretty sure my sanity should be in question.)

Mystery readers and writers, I reminded them, are notorious for loving cats, yet I had always been a dog person. (Do you know how to distinguish a woman who loves her cats from a crazy cat lady? Crazy cat ladies kiss their cats on the mouth. Or so I'm told...I limit myself to nuzzling my kitty on the top of his adorable head and behind his sweet little ears.) When my daughter turned seven, I finally caved to her badgering for a pet. We went to the pet rescue place and brought home a gray tabby cat who had been born on the street and who now, many years later, still retains some of that bad-boy, streetwise attitude.

One month later--just one short month after I acquired the mystery writer's archetypal companion--I sold Artifacts to the wonderful folks at Poisoned Pen Press. Coincidence? I think not. I told the lovely folks at the Sisters in Crime meeting who were hoping to sell their books to run, not walk, to the Humane Society and get a cat. Or even to get two, because the second one was free! I hope there are kitties living in lovely homes even now as a result.

My kitty loves it when we start a nice writing day. I feed him, stopping to pet him frequently because he's more interested in the petting than in the food and water. Then I get in the recliner where I always work, put my computer in my lap, then wait for the 14-pound cat who I know will launch himself into my lap and stand there, purring and blocking my access to the keyboard. I pet him for awhile, then he remembers that he's a cat and he's supposed to be aloof, so he jumps onto the floor and stalks away to do whatever it is cats do.

So let me take this opportunity to save a few more kitty lives. If you want to get published, go adopt a cat. Preferably two.

Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #27: Get advice from people you trust

2010-07-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

Publishers Weekly weighed in on Strangers this week. They said lovely things, so I cannot resist copying them here. I have deleted one phrase, because it gave away too much plot. (And if you care about such things, do not read the dustjacket blurb.)
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From Publishers Weekly--Strangers: A Faye Longchamp Mystery
Mary Anna Evans, Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (322p) ISBN 978-1-59058-742-3; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1-59058-744-7
Evans explores themes of protection, love, and loss in her absorbing sixth Faye Longchamp mystery (after 2009's Floodgates). [Faye and Joe], who have started an archeological consulting business, are excited by their first big job--excavating the rear garden of Dunkirk Manor, a historic house in St. Augustine, Fla., that's now a bed-and-breakfast. When Glynis Smithson, the manor's attractive manager, goes missing, a note for Faye and several artifacts in her abandoned car are found. Blood on the front seat suggests foul play. The local police consult Faye about the artifacts, and her research skills provide important clues to Glynis's disappearance. Compelling extracts from a 16th-century Spanish priest's manuscript diary that Faye begins translating lend historical ballast. Determined that old mysteries see the light of day, the feisty Faye never gives up until justice is done. (Oct.)
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Ah...absorbing and compelling. I can live with that. I'm enabored by that first sentence, because exploring "themes of protection, love, and loss" suggests a book that should be taken seriously. And yes, Faye really never will give up until justice is done. That quality is simply central to who she is. I've always considered mystery fiction to be the literature of justice, just as some people say that science fiction is the literature of ideas. Faye's tenacity in the search for truth reflects my views on the matter.

But what if they'd said that it was flimsy trash that wasn't worth the ink used to print it? Well, what's done is done, and that flimsy, trashy book would be landing on bookshelves this October, regardless. I could pretend like the review never happened, but I'd be forced to ignore a publication I respect. One of those moments when I thought, Oh, good Lord, this is really happening, struck me when PW reviewed Artifacts. (They said nice things.) That review meant that the industry whose approval I'd been seeking for years had finally noticed me, and they had deemed that I'd said something worthy of that notice.

I hear actors and writers and dancers and musicians and artists of all kinds say that they don't read their reviews. I'm not actually sure they're serious about that. And perhaps an artist with an unusually fragile ego (and a few of us have those) really can't work without fear after reading a negative opinion of that work. I guess my position on that issue is that you should read them if you can. You just might learn something.

Reviews of my work in large publications aimed at the publishing industry--PW, Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews--have generally been very good. At worst, a couple of them were lukewarm. There were a few scathing reviews online and in small-circulation publications that were written by people who seemed to be angry that I was breathing, but I made myself read them and consider whether their criticism was valid.

And that is my point here today. If you can get a critique of your work, take advantage of it. Try to determine in advance whether this critique is coming from someone whose good opinion you care to have. As you read the review, keep this question in mind: At the end of the day, do I care what the person who wrote this review thinks?

I care deeply what Booklist thinks, but there are a couple of reviews posted on my books' Amazon pages that make me shake my head. After considering whether the reviewer's opinion is one I cared to have, I move on. If a valid criticism helps me to see something lacking in my work, then I use it as a prompt that shows me how to improve.

Seek out respected friends for feedback. Seek input from other aspiring writers whose work you enjoy, and consider forming a writers' group with them, but always remember that your work is your own. Just because a reviewer doesn't like it doesn't mean that your work is worthless...no matter who the reviewer is.

Everybody's a critic, but if you can find a good critic whose advice helps you burnish your book into something better, then you've uncovered a real treasure.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #26: Lost in time and space

2010-07-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me recently if I storyboarded my books. No, and I only have the dimmest idea of what storyboarding is. I do write those long, involved, for-my-eyes-only outlines that I've described to you, but stories evolve between outline and finished book. If they don't, then maybe we writers are working too hard. Maybe we should just publish our outlines and be done with it.

I've learned to take a stab at a timeline when I'm outlining. I try to have some idea of the passage of time, so that I'll know when Faye has done enough for one day and she really needs to sleep. I don't record the consumption of every single meal, figuring that you'll presume she grabbed fast food or slapped together a sandwich if I don't tell you specifically that she ate. And I do not inform you when anybody goes to the bathroom, unless there's a darn good plot-related reason. If it's not part of the story and it doesn't drive the plot, then it is omitted in the name of streamlining.

The roughed-out schedule that's implicit in my outline shifts as I write, but I'm just not rigid-minded enough to force myself to think out the plot on a minute-by-minute level at this point. At some time in the process, usually as I'm finishing the first draft, I am so lost in time that I am forced to sit down and page through the manuscript, making notes on when this day ends and that one begins. The editor of Artifacts made me write her a scene-by-scene timeline. I'd guess that I have hundreds of scenes in a 300-page book, so this was an arduous undertaking. My natural style is tight third-person with multiple viewpoints, so this means that one scene may be taking place simultaneously with the next one, as two or three or even more people observe the same thing at the same time.

This exercise taught me that I was using the multiple-viewpoint technique to manhandle time itself. By letting one character point a gun, then having another watch in horror, then having another see that she is in the line of fire, then letting the second one try to take the bullet for the woman he loves, I can spend a nice leisurely page or so exploring this turning-point moment in short rapid-fire scenes, without losing the tension necessary for such a situatioin.

But it was really hard writing a timeline for that sequence.

While I was writing Findings, I came to the point that I had no idea what day it was any more. This became a problem, because I needed for Faye and Joe to go to the rare books library, which would ordinarily be closed on Sunday...so it was really important to know whiether it was Sunday yet. Time to write a timeline...

Then I wrote the climactic scene and I realized that I had three boats floating around those Gulf islands, and it was essential that I remember where they were all parked...moored...docked...whatever. I had to do a boat location log as part of the timeline, because when one particular boat blew up and left Faye stranded, I did not want to hear from somebody after the book was published, saying, "If she'd have just walked down to the beach where Joe dragged his john boat ashore, her problems would have been solved."

I found that I needed to do some tweaking to make sure I wasn't sending them to the library at a time when it would be closed, and I had to move some action to Wednesday, because Joe and Faye going many more places on Tuesday than was humanly possible. If I hadn't done the timeline, I wouldn't have known that.

Of course, if I'd planned the passage of time in more detail when I started the book, all this fussing around could have been avoided, but I am only half-engineer. I am also half-artist, and I work the way I work.

Now, go map out the timeline of your own work-in-progress, before your characters start meeting themselves, coming and going.

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #25: Get to the point

2010-07-20T06:27:00.000-07:00

When I review manuscripts for aspiring writers, there is a problem that I see time and again in books that are right on the brink of being publishable. These writers have put some effort into the mechanics of their work, so there are very few errors of punctuation or grammar or spelling to point out. They've worked hard to develop their characters and plot, and they've written a complete manuscript.

(I find that actually completing the manuscript often translates into a writer who does everything else better--characters, setting, mechanics, and plot--probably because the discipline necessary to actually finish a huge project like a book carries over into all aspects of the work.)

The final hurdle that must be crossed to generate professional-level work is high, and it's hard for students to wrap their minds around, because it isn't as easy to point out as a misspelled word. Almost-publishable work generally lacks pacing. It isn't tight. And tight copy is like pornography...I know it when I see it.

So how is that helpful to you, who are so intimately entwined with your book that you can't see the forest for the trees? Well, first, you need to set it aside for a few days. Then you need to read it as if you just checked it out of the library on a whim. Read it for pleasure. If you're honest with yourself, you'll recognize that it feels flabby, somehow. You will be fighting this feeling throughout the editing process. Every time you read that book, you should be identifying useless adjectives and prepositional phrases that say nothing. Deleting such things should give you a feeling of great power!

On a larger scale, you must make sure that dry, boring exposition is not dragging your story down. Look at the opening chapter, in particular. How long does it take for something to happen? Beginning writers feel that they need to introduce each character and describe the setting and set up the action, all in the first chapter. Wrong! How many people would have watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, if the screenwriter had opened the film at the university where Dr. Henry Jones was teaching, then described the Ark of the Covenant, then put us on the airplane with him to get to the jungle where he wanted to find a golden idol? Oh, and the unrepentant scene-setter-upper who wrote this engrossing flick would have probably spent that plane ride describing the idol and the booby traps that awaited Dr. Jones when he found it.

Yawn.

Instead, we moviegoers were plunged into danger and mystery and tarantulas and a honkin' big rolling rock before ever really meeting Indy. It felt like we were dropped out of an airplane. And we loved it.

When do you introduce your characters to your readers? After they're hooked. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what flashbacks are for.

I was still learning this when I wrote Artifacts and Wounded Earth. Their opening chapters morphed into something complete different as I edited. Most notably, while editing both books, I reversed the first and second chapters, then I slashed the bejesus out of the original opening chapter. As you develop in your craft, you will find that you almost always need less exposition than you think you do.

Please, please, please do not describe your alien villain's elaborate military uniform to me before he whips out a blaster and threatens somebody with it.

Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #24: Use your pain

2010-07-18T20:16:00.000-07:00

Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions with your writing? Does it seem like you're pushing your characters around like pawns on a chessboard, but you're not really connecting with them? Well, if they're not real to you, they won't be real to your readers. And if you're just going through the motions, your readers can tell.

So where do you look for the raw material that you can hone into a story that feels completely real? In the end, the only place you can go is inside yourself. Everything else is second-hand. If it's not your emotion, how do you know whether it's true?

When I wanted my readers to feel Faye's pain at being ostracized for her race, I thought back to my years as a teenager in the 1970s South. I knew in my head what she would have experienced, but how could I bring that experience into my heart? Well, everyone has their own memories of feeling ostracized and embarrassed and wounded during their growing-up years. (You can tell me you were Prom Queen and you never lost a boyfriend and you always wore the right clothes and you always said the right things, and you can tell me that your life was so perfect that you are not carrying those wounds around with you. You can tell me, but I won't believe you.)

Overlaying my own hard memories atop Faye's experiences gave me the emotional depth that I needed for her character. In a later book, she believes that she has lost Joe forever. He survives, but others in that book do not. The survivors suffer monumental losses, and Faye herself steps right up to that abyss and stares down into its depths. You have to have loved somebody and truly feared losing them to write scenes like that. If we're honest, most of us have felt that fear. If we're honest, we can write about it.

Some of us have soft spots so tender that we really can't write about them. I don't think you'll ever see me write about the suffering or death of a child. When one book's plot required a very young character to die, I could only fool myself into writing it by making the victim over eighteen. Even so, I got a phone call from a horrified friend yelling, "I can't believe you killed that child!!!!" I don't like to read the scene where his mother learns of his death, and I wrote the thing.

Writing stories that ring emotionally true is not easy, but there is no better way to reach out of the pages and connect with your readers. Perhaps there is no other way at all.

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #23: Fiction in a Nutshell

2010-07-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

Wow--my hundredth blog post. I'm starting to feel like the real thing.

Remember my post about the "I Write Like..." website, where you can compare your own prose to the masters'? Well, I just saw an article describing how that site has gone viral...but I told you, my cherished readers, about it two whole days ago. Do you feel hip and cool and cutting edge? I know I do.

So what shall we hipsters talk about today? Well, I've recently been reminded that I have a short story in an anthology coming out in a few weeks called Florida Heat Wave. (It's easy to lose track of these things when you wrote it and turned it in a year ago.) It's a rather noir collection, filled with stories from illustrious writers who have written bestsellers and won awards, but you know it's set in Florida when you hear that one of the authors wrote a hit song with Jimmy Buffett.

Why, you may ask, am I in a noir collection? My books can be dark-ish at times, but the world view is probably not sufficiently bleak enough for them to function as noir. Yet this is my third story for a noir collection, and my second for editor Michael Lister, so he must have been happy with the first one I sent him

There are two lessons for aspiring writers in my mini-semi-demi-hemi career as a noir story writer. The first lesson is to network, network, network. I met Anthony Neil Smith at the first mystery conference I ever attended. He was editing Plots with Guns at the time, a noir publication if ever there was one. At my second mystery conference ever, I saw Neil again and he said he had read Artifacts and liked my work. Would I send him a story?

I stammered a bit, because I wasn't sure I could write something he'd like. He said, "Don't worry about it. Just make sure there's a gun in the story. That's our schtick at Plots with Guns. Have Faye dig up a musket."

Well, I wanted to do better than a silly musket, and I knew noir was heavy on blood and guts. After a bit of musing, I realized that there was a heckuva lotta blood and guts in a hospital operating room. The Fifties were some noir-ish years, if you ask me, so I made it a period story and created a starchy and starched-uniform-wearing nurse to narrate the story. Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind said "Starch" was "twisted." That still makes me feel incredibly hip. I believe I can die happy.

Soon after that, I met Michael Lister at another mystery conference. When I saw that he was editing some anthologies, I wrote him and asked what he wanted. He said, "The anthology's called North Florida Noir." This was a problem, since I'm still not the most noir writer around and I'd just written two stories set in north Florida. I wasn't sure I had that much left to say about the place. (So says the woman who just wrote a book set in north Florida. Apparently, the material in this little piece of creation is endless.) Michael, God love him, said, "Oh, okay. You can stretch north Florida down to Orlando."

My storyteller's heart skipped a beat, because I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to kill somebody at Disney World (or someplace very like it...I'm not big on being sued.) So I did. The story's called Mouse House, and I had a blast throwing my victim off a castle that is notably not named after Cinderella.

So last year, Michael was looking for stories again for Florida Heat Wave and he asked me for one, meaning that I needed to go all noir again. I harked back to the mid-twentieth century and killed somebody during the filming of a movie very like The Creature from the Black Lagoon. And I had a blast doing it...which brings me to the second point I want to make for aspiring writers.

Short stories give you an opportunity to try a new style or a new voice or a new narrative technique. They give you a chance to strut your stuff. Even if you have no intention of selling it, it's excellent practice to choose a technique you're not so good at yet--like, say, dialogue--and write a short story that's told entirely in dialogue. Writing a novel means committing yourself for months or years. Writing a short story means committing yourself for a few days.

So take a chance. If a fairly dainty Southern belle-type grandmother like me can write twisted stories, you can write whatever you darn well please.

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #21: My imaginary friends

2010-07-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

People...okay, women...ask me all the time whether Joe Wolf Mantooth is based on a real man. I don't like to dash their hopes, but the truth is that he is a total figment of my imagination. Otherwise, I would not, at this point in time, be a single woman. ;-)

And I'm not Faye, either, though people seem to confuse us at times.

I know writers who take a personality trait from one person and the facial features of another and the profession of a third, and they put them into some kind of mental blender. Out pops a fictional character, ready for adventure. It works for them, but if I tried it, I think I'd get something like the mythological sphinx--the head of a woman, the body of a lioness, the wings of an eagle, and a serpent headed tail--and I think that sphinx-y character would stick out of the narrative like a sore thumb.

My characters grow out of the setting or out of their situation. As always when developing a story, I ask myself questions. Who would live in this ramshackle old plantation house? What would her problem be? If she had a male best friend, where would he come from? What are his passions? Why aren't they lovers? Or, if I'm developing a murderer, I might imagine someone who, in this particular place and this particular time, would kill out of a sense of shame.

I once had an interesting encounter while waiting to do a television interview. It was one of those shows where the other guests are usually about as famous as me--Little League coaches, Humane Society volunteers, and the like. We were all sitting in the green room watching the show, and the host said, "And today, we have Corbin Bernson of LA Law fame here with us." I turned around and there he was, dressed in a rumpled white linen suit and politely begging his handlers to take him to his hotel after the interview so he could get a shower.

When the Humane Society lady and her two dogs got up out of the chair next to me, he dropped into it, looking exhausted, and asked me about my book. There followed a brief but entertaining conversation where I learned who he likes to read: Michael Connelly, among others. Just as he was being called back for his interview (and before I got a chance to tell him there was a helluva part for him in Artifacts), the conversation had turned to our respective arts. I was telling him that there is an bit of acting in what I do. I have to know who my character is and where he/she has been before I can know how he/she will react in a given situation.

There is an element of empathy in what writers and actors do. I'm sure Corbin Bernsen has never been a cocky, hotshot lawyer, but he had to imagine he'd lived that life in order to play Arnold Becker. I was never a woman of color growing up in the South in the 1970s, but I was there and I can imagine what it was like for Faye. The big difference is that Corbin had somebody to write Becker's dialogue for him, and I have to put words in Faye's mouth.

I have been writing Faye since 2001. Her stories total more than a half-million words, and I hope I get to write a half-million more. Or maybe a million. She's a deep, rich character, and I'm lucky to have her in my life. My life is so full these days that I can't see next week, but I wouldn't mind if I were still writing Faye when I'm 70 and she's 61. She can be my multiracial American non-virginal Miss Marple.

I'll write other stuff. I already do. I have a short story coming out next month in Florida Heat Wave, I'm writing that math literacy book I keep telling y'all about, and I've got a couple of stand-alones in my head that will erupt sooner or later. But I love looking at American culture through the eyes of somebody who'll always be one step outside it. (And I love Joe, but you knew that.)

When I start a new book and I spend that period of weeks or months doing research and brooding over the plot, I know that it's time to start when I hear Joe and Faye talking to each other. (And yes, I do know that they're not real. I'm not schizophrenic. I'm a novelist, although I guess that may not speak too loudly of my stability.)

When you write your own characters, do whatever it takes to get to know them beneath the surface, or they will never be more than a laundry list of character traits. And if you know Corbin Bernsen, would you please let him know that I've got a helluva part for him?

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #20: I apologize for sending you this time-waster

2010-07-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

There is a popular link floating around the internet, and I'm one of those people who never take that kind of bait. Almost never.

I don't have time to take those quizzes that tell me what kind of cheese I am or which superhero I resemble most. I can tell you those things without taking any silly quizzes. I am blue brie. This lovely cheese is sweet and soft like brie, and I think the blue veins are very pretty but, like any blue cheese, the taste is unexpected and not everybody is going to like it. And if you have to ask which superhero I most resemble, then you are clearly unaware that I am Wonder Woman.

This new timewasting link, however, is irresistible to any writer. It's like a chunk of blue brie sitting unprotected atop a mousetrap. It's called "I Write Like..." and it purports to digest a chunk of your writing and spit out a judgment as to which famous writer's prose yours most resembles.

No, I'm not going to give you the link yet, because I don't want you to run off and play with your own writing instead of reading what I have to say. ;-)

I just happen to have vast chunks of my own writing on this computer in the form of book manuscripts. So I posted the opening paragraphs of the first chapter of Strangers, and this machine told me I wrote like Oscar Wilde. Sweet!

Then I fed it a piece of the prologue of Strangers, which was quite a challenge for the little machine, I feel sure. It is supposed to be an English translation of a journal kept by a Spanish priest during the founding of St. Augustine and subsequent massacres in 1565. The "I Write Like..." website thought I sounded like James Joyce. Another literary lion! Sweet, again.

Anxious to see how my writing might have developed over the years, I posted the first paragraphs from Faye's point-of-view in Artifacts and got the result: Dan Brown. Too bad. The man can make readers turn the pages, but I'm not a fan of his prose. I'd love a tiny fraction of his sales, though. The prologue to Artifacts seemed about right: Raymond Chandler, a classic mystery writer with a literary style.

Then I reached back even further to see what the machine thought of Wounded Earth. I hadn't tried any passages with dialogue, so I pasted in the first lengthy conversation between the protagonist, Larabeth McLeod, and the love interest, J.D. Hatten. Surprise! I got Dan Brown again. Maybe there's hope that I can someday achieve a tiny sliver of his sales. The opening paragraphs, though...the passage that caught the attention of my hotshot Manhattan agent...those paragraphs read like Vladimir Nabokov. Yet another literary lion. I love it.

And then I stopped this nonsense and came over here to talk to you. After I press "Publish," I will turn my attention to today's twin tasks: organizing the Anhinga Writers' Studio's upcoming writing conference and working on my math literacy book.

There is nothing wrong with wasting time, and Lord knows that the fertile and active minds of writers like us need distractions at times. So I'm going to give you that time-wasting link: http://www.iwl.me/

Spend some time there, then get back to work. Because the sausage is not going to make itself...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #17: You are an artist. Write like one.

2010-07-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

If the fact that I'm writing Writing Tip for the Practical-Minded #17 confuses you, because you are utterly certain that you read Writing Tip for the Practical-Minded #19 yesterday, rest easy. I looked back and saw that I skipped #17. Slipping it in out of order is just easier and less confusing than re-numbering the old posts.

I love to teach writing, and I'll be doing that soon at the Anhinga Writers' Studio Summer Workshops, July 28-31. If you like this blog, you'll love our conference. I'm in charge of the faculty, so I've assembled a crackerjack faculty that is stacked with my friends. This means that they are talented teachers and they are fun. My agent, Anne Hawkins, will be there. So will Jeanne Leiby, editor of The Southern Review, NEA fellow and Florida Poet Laureate Peter Meinke, and a bunch of my other buddies. I myself will be blathering for six hours over the course of two days, and I'll be doing one-on-one consults with students, as well. Look here, if you'd like to get your Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded in person. (I was going to say, "...if you want to learn to make sausage in person," but that just sounded icky.)

When I teach, I want my students to think of new ways to express their art, writing. Sometimes, I suggest that they look to other art forms to get another lens on the creative process.

Thinking about melodies and how they move people's souls will help you listen to the music in your prose. Song lyrics or poems will open your ears to your own rhythms.

A mental picture of dancing bodies will give your words motion and lightness. You want your words to leap across the page. Your readers' eyes should never plod.

A painting can be viewed as a whole in an instant, and a book can't. Even poetry can't be perceived at a glance...not even haiku. But to truly appreciate a painting, it's necessary to stand in front of it and look at the details. The brush strokes, whether they be feathery and precise or whether they be great gobs of paint ladled on with a knife, were applied for a reason. Spend some time in front of a painting and ask yourself where the artist spent the most time and attention. Ask yourself why he or she made that choice. Then apply the answer to your own work. What visual detail is so important to your story that you must spend precious words describing it? Because words are precious. Don't splatter them all over the page. Set them down gently, like diamonds in an antique brooch.

To me, the very definition of an art must involve the notion of communication. Artists communicate emotions that we all experience, but we're not all able to express them. That's why artists and their work have been valued since the first handprint was painted on a cave wall. Take yourself seriously as an artist, and consider how you will use the words that are your medium.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #19: There's got to be a writing tip in here somewhere...

2010-07-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have been with me since early June will remember my epic trip to south Louisiana to research Faye's 2011 eventure, Plunder. (And let us pause for a moment to hope that the newly installed cap we've been reading about suceeds in stanching the leak long enough for those relief wells to provide a permanent solution.)

One of the more dramatic moments in that trip came when I was issued twin citations for fishing without a license and for committing this crime in waters that had been closed to fishing because of the oil spill. Let me insert a picture to refresh your memory:

That's my cousin Cheryl, who was also fishing without a license in restricted waters. She lives in Louisiana, so although I am an interstate criminal, Cheryl is merely an intrastate criminal. The gentlemen behind her were very courteous individuals and, as you can see, they are working hard at writing up our citations. There were five--one each for fishing in restricted waters, issued to Cheryl, me, and her friend Kenny who was our boat captain, and one each for Cheryl and me for fishing without a license. Kenny had a license, so he missed out on that one, but being the captain and the experienced fisherman, don't you think he should have known that there was something wrong when we had a vast swath of water all to ourselves? I was ignorant enough not to question it--there's a lot of water around there, so I guess I thought the fisherpeople were spread pretty thin.

The drama in this story arose when I found out that the penalty for fishing license-free is over $250. Gulp. And I still don't know the penalty for fishing in restricted waters, because that infraction requires the infractor to appear personally before the judge. Big gulp. This is not a small effort nor expense, when the infractor lives nine hours away in Florida and she has a book coming out three days after the court date.

This morning, I decided it was time to ~~beg Plaquemines Parish for mercy~~ deal with this problem. First, I needed to decipher the phone number written on the citation, but I was denied. It was unreadable. I still don't know what it said.

I looked up the parish govenment's phone list and started calling people, asking sweetly for help. After talking to six people in six departments, including two judge's offices, I found myself talking to a nice lady at the District Attorney's office. I told my story for the sixth time. (I live far away, my mother's very ill, I'm a single parent...all true.) She asked if I'd ever been convicted of a fish and wildlife violation. I said, "I don't even fish." And I don't. This was one of those peer-pressure mistakes that you warn your children about. "But everybody else was doing it..."

Then she said I might qualify for a diversion program. I'm a little foggy on the details, but I have to pay something to be in the program, but it's less than the fine would have been. Then I fill out some paperwork, follow some instructions carefully, wait for some probationary period, then my record is wiped clean. I'll be as innocent as a newborn babe.

I cannot tell you how happy I am not to be folding a quick trip to New Orleans into my autumn, as much as I want to go back there sometime soon.

So how can I slap this experience into some kind of shape that will make it look like a writing tip? Hmmmm.

Spending my morning navigating Plaquemines Parish's government felt a lot like doing book research. Sometimes, you ask somebody a question and they send you to someone else, who gives you a half an answer that turns out to be wrong. This stage can go on a long time, but it's important not to quit. While I was writing Effigies, it took me a long time to track down some Choctaws who were willing to talk to me, but it would have been a much poorer book without their input.

Whatever it is that you need to know, somebody knows the answer. Crawl over the internet, make some phone calls, check out some library books, and know that a labyrinthine path to that answer is common. Sometimes you have to earn your answer. Sometimes you learn important things while you're on the path.

And sometimes, you find somebody who's willing to put you in an amnesty program that will wipe your permanent record clean of any evidence that you were ever an interstate hunting and fishing criminal.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #18: You have five senses for a reason

2010-07-12T13:24:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging today over at The LadyKillers, and the topic there is food. But my topic here is writing tips. Hmmm....how can I marry those two disparate topics?

I chose to do my LadyKillers blog entry about chocolate, which will be no surprise to anyone who has seen the stash of Hershey bars in my freezer. I've given Faye very few of my own traits, but she shares my love of chocolate, in general, and Hershey bars, in particular. I've given Joe a notable knack in the kitchen and around the campfire. The man's an exceedingly fine cook, so I write occasional scenes that occur at the dining table. I try to refrain from describing every bite that goes in their mouths, because that would be boring, but I do like to use those scenes to engage my readers' sense of taste. At other times, I try to appeal to their noses. And at yet other times, I want them to hear and feel what my characters hear and feel.

It is very easy to fall into the trap of describing how a scene looks, then moving on. When I'm editing, I try to ask myself periodically, "When is the last time a viewpoint character has done anything besides look at the world?"

Let your readers feel the sand under their feet. Let them hear the sound a shovel makes as it shushes through that sand and makes the dead clink of bone-on-metal. Let them smell the rain as it approaches. And when your character unwrappes a slab of chocolate, let your readers experience that first blast of nothing but sweetness, before the chocolate melts on their tongues, only to leave that faint gritty texture of cocoa behind.

And if you want to know what else I have to say about chocolate, check it out at The LadyKillers here.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #16: Thank you, Strunk and White

2010-07-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

I'm getting in the car in half an hour for an overnight trip to visit my son and daughter-in-law. What does this mean?

It means that I'm going to have a heckuva time providing you people with your writing tips for the practical-minded today and tomorrow!!

While pondering this conundrum, I remembered how much I learned from those two estimable men, Strunk and White. (And if you do not have their slim volume, The Elements of Style on your shelf, get it. It's cheap--$7.95--and it is the purest distillation of advice to practical-minded writers that I know.) E.B. White, of Charlotte's Web fame, edited his professor's book of aphorisms like "Omit needless words," and "Be clear," into an easily assimilated guidebook for scribblers everywhere, and I'd like to thank him for it.

Here is an article written last year in celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Elements of Style--
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103140512. Read it, and you will have gotten your daily dose of writing advice, even in my absence.

There. That's all I have to say, and I think I've followed Strunk and White's dictum to "Be clear," so I believe I shall quit.

Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #17: Omit needless words

2010-07-10T05:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I directed you toward Strunk and White's timeless guide for writers, The Elements of Style. The most famous dictum in that book, and one that most beginning writers of my acquaintance need to assimilate, is "Omit needless words."

Continuing to type after making that point would be oxymoronic, so I shan't.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #15: Please don't force me to read about a namby-pamby weakling...

2010-07-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

I'm nearly finished ruminating on Gone with the Wind, but bear with me as I use it as a springboard to talk about a larger issue for writers hoping to create memorable characters.

How interesting would this story have been if Scarlett had said, "Fiddle-dee-dee. I just can't figure out how to grow enough food for my starving family. And keeping the books for my bumbling husband's business is just beyond me because math is hard. Ashley? Could you fix these problems for me? No? You're as big of an incompetent fool as I am? Oh, whatever shall we do? I think I'll just sit down and quit."?

How interesting would Melanie have been, if she hadn't been the kind of woman to rise from the bed where she lay, near-dead from complications of childbirth, and grab her dead brother's sword before staggering downstairs to save Scarlett from rape?

When my agent marketed my first novel, an environmental thriller called Wounded Earth, it got a lot of interest from some very prominent publishers and editors around New York. There were nibbles from Hollywood. I thought it was the beginning of my career as a writer, but I had to wait three more years before Artifacts eventually sold. So what happened to Wounded Earth?

The feedback we got was that the editorial committee at an unnamed publisher loved it. They loved the story, they loved the evil villain Babykiller, and they loved the heroine, a brilliant environmental scientist named Larabeth McLeod with an Achilles' heel in the form of the daughter she has never met. Unfortunately, they thought she was too intelligent and strong and edgy for their readership. In other words, only smart people like themselves could appreciate this book.

Is it just me, or do you as a reader feel a little hurt by this?

As I began writing Artifacts, I asked myself if I wanted to write a meeker heroine. Then I asked myself if I wanted to live with a wimp for 90,000 words. The answer was a resounding no, so Faye Longchamp was born. People seem to like Faye, and I do, too. What is more, I respect her.

My current publisher does not do thrillers, so Larabeth McLeod has been sitting on my shelf for ten years. But now, thanks to the wonders of e-publishing, I've been able to make Wounded Earth available to anybody with a computer or ereader or smart phone or ipad. Just to make it easy for people who are interested in purchasing it, here are links to Amazon and Smashwords:

Smashwords edition of WOUNDED EARTH

If you're a writer, consider classic characters like Laura Ingalls of the Little House books and Anne of Green Gables. Do you remember the passion that those two little girls put into being first in their classes? If Victorian children were drawn to Anne, who certainly did not fit the prescribed standards for girls of their era, and if children ever since the Depression have been drawn to Laura, and if children ever since the Civil War have been drawn to Louisa May Alcott's little women, I think we can safely say that our readers are looking for female characters with fire in their bellies...characters like Scarlett and Melanie. And they are looking for male characters who are their equals.

Nobody remembers the characters in those books who hewed to society's expectations, so remember that when you draft your characters. Give them a passion for something they cannot have, like my Larabeth McLeod's lifelong grief for the daughter she gave up for adoption. Give them Jo March's need to be a published author, even if she had to write trashy stories for tabloids. Give them Anne of Green Gables' longing for a home.

And if you have ever met anyone whose favorite character in Gone with the Wind was the namby-pamby Ashley Wilkes, please drop me a line...although I'm not sure I'll believe you.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #14: Scarlett and Melanie have more to teach us...

2010-07-08T06:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I write a post here and fling it out into the world, then spend the rest of the day thinking about more things I should have told you. Fortunately, I am queen of my domain here, so I'm free to sit down the next morning and revisit a topic that has turned out to be more rich than I'd expected.

For those of you who are novelists, I'll point out that this is the beauty of our art form. We can spend a whole year exhausting a topic that interests us. (Or even more!) If we find out we have more to say, and if we said it well enough that our publisher would like to hear more, then we can write another whole book on the subject. This is heaven for the long-winded.

I had no idea when I wrote Artifacts that I would write another book about Faye, and now I'm working on her seventh adventure. Fortunately, I find her endlessly interesting. Her family background, rooted in both slaves and their owners, gives her an inner complexity that will never go away. Her intellect and thirst for knowledge allows me to dive deep into things that fascinate me and, hopefully, my readers. And her love for...um...somebody (can't spoil the later books for those who haven't read them all) goes so deep that Faye herself is astonished sometimes.

So where do these indelible characters come from, and why am I still talking about Scarlett and Melanie and Gone with the Wind? Because when I set out to write a book centered on the faded glory of an old plantation house, I knew that I was treading on heavily traveled territory. In other words, Gone with the Wind had already been done, and I needed to find something new to say about the history of the American South.

When the house on the cover of Artifacts popped into my mind, I did my usual plotting thing and asked myself who would live there, and what would be her problem. Here's the image, so you can walk through the process with me:

In some ways, Faye is the anti-Scarlett. She did not grow up surrounded by wealth. She was not accepted by high society, because of the color of her skin. She and Scarlett do share the trait of intelligence. (In the book, one of the reasons Scarlett was rejected by Atlanta society was that she was better at business than the men. Particularly shocking was the fact that she could "add a double-column of numbers in her head.") Faye does have Scarlett's tenacity, and after Scarlett loses her wealth, she is as driven to save her ancestral home as Faye is driven to save Joyeuse. But Faye lacks Scarlett's ruthlessness. She will break the law to save her home, but she will not hurt other people. At the beginning of Artifacts, she has withdrawn from the society that rejected her, but she has not lashed out in revenge.

Faye's ancestor Cally, a freed slave, is like Scarlett and Faye in her drive to keep Joyeuse, and she is like Melanie in her passion to save her baby. When Cally faces the Yankee soldiers down on the staircase of Joyeuse, her baby in her arms, she shows Melanie's quiet passion. Only Cally gets to live.

My other Civil War heroine, Viola Bachelder, appears in Findings only in the form of love letters that passed between her and her husband Jedediah. She is yet more like Melanie, in that she poured her life into tending wounded soldiers, Yankee and Rebel and white and black, in her own home, and it cost her everything. But unlike anyone in Gone with the Wind, Viola used her quiet strength to convince her husband to free their slaves. Her commitment to abolition, and Cally's passion to be free, and Faye's refusal to bow down to the pressures of growing up in the South in the 1970s as a woman of color, are the things that I think set my stories and my characters apart from the stories that we've all heard before.

When I first had the idea for Artifacts , I could have discarded it, figuring that Margaret Mitchell had gotten there first 70-plus years ago. Instead, I asked myself, "What would be a story in this setting that would be right for 21st-century audiences?" Seven books later, I think I did the right thing.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #13: Learn from the Masters

2010-07-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

After several months of arm-twisting, I convinced my 14-year-old daughter to watch Gone with the Wind with me. She is generally very tolerant of Mommy's ancient movies and overwrought 1970s progressive rock, but she was balking on this one. Finally, I said, "Remember that I was right about When Harry Met Sally? Do Kansas and Aerosmith not rock? Sit down and look at the TV. We're watching the movie."

At some point during the second half, she posted a Facebook status that said merely, "Rhett Butler!" Styles and tastes change, but the virile appeal of Clark Gable and Rhett Butler will never fade.

As we watched, she periodically bleated, "She's so awful!" as Scarlett plunged through a dying civilization, trailing her swaying hoopskirts and the disapproval of every unreconstructed rebel in Atlanta. Scarlett did some absolutely awful things, but she shouldered the responsbility of caring for her destitute friends and relatives and former slaves who didn't have her brass and determination. And she found room in that flinty heart to completely love her father and her mother and her daughter and Ashley and her Mammy and, though it took her way too long to figure it out, to love Melanie and Rhett, too. This, my cherished readers, is what one calls a memorable character. And so is her husband Rhett, the rogue who is burdened with just a little too much romanticism to be a convincing scalawag.

I've seen the movie and read the book many times, though not lately, so this was the first time I'd paid attention to the story from the perspective of a novelist. The first half of the movie is the epic war tragedy that we all remember, but not so the second half...the two hours that pass after Scarlett vows that she'll never be hungry again. I invite you to watch it, and pay close attention to the second half. The world is changing to something unrecognizable outside the walls of Scarlett's and Rhett's mansion, but it is their domestic tragedy that rivets our attention. The second half of Gone with the Wind is an unflinching portrayal of the disintegration of a marriage between two people who love each other.

Watch Scarlett's face when she welcomes Rhett home from a long trip, only to be rebuffed by a man who thinks she doesn't want to see him. Watch her strike back at him with hateful words, instead of running into his arms. And listen to Mammy tell Melanie about the brutal and wounding things they say to each other in their grief over their daughter Bonnie's death.

Then read the book, so you can enjoy the character details that couldn't be crammed into the four-hour movie. Did you know that Margaret Mitchell said plainly that Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but that she had the ability to make people believe she was? If you wanted to write about a character who was that strong and that dominating, how would you go about it?

It never hurts a writer to go back re-read something wonderful and familiar, if only to see how its author accomplished such a feat. Now I must resume my campaign to bully my daughter into reading Anne of Green Gables...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #12: Wandering in the Wilderness with J.K. Rowling

2010-07-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

I love starting a new project. When the project is short and manageable, like a short story, I usually just toss the idea around for a while, then plunge in. When the project is book-sized, I prepare. I spend a month or so reading for a living, searching out books and websites that tell me more about my setting or about my subject. Then I make an outline. And then I plunge in.

The first 75 pages or so of a new project seem to write themselves. In fact, if writing an exciting beginning didn't flow easily, I'd question whether I'd done my job during the preparation stage, and I'd go back to reading for a living for little while longer.

Similarly, the last 75 pages of a book seem to write themselves, with the words tumbling onto the computer screen as fast as my fumbling fingers can type. If they didn't come easily, I'd worry. The previous 250 pages were written expressly to set up those last exciting chapters. Difficulty writing a book's climax is almost certainly a sign that it's just not time to finish it.

But what about those middle 200 pages or so? For me, some of those pages are just back-breaking to write. (Mind-breaking? Finger-breaking? Whatever...you know what I mean.)

I was writing Findings when the last Harry Potter book came out. My son called to chat, and he mentioned that he was reading it. Then he asked how my book was going. I was bogged down in the middle of the action, and I said, "Awful. I feel like I'm wandering in the wilderness." He laughed and said, "So's J.K. Rowling. Wait till you read this one."

Within 24 hours of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, my younger daughter had finished devouring it, so I got a crack at reading it. After I raced through the slam-bang beginning, I found that my son was right. A goodly chunk of the middle of the book involved Harry and Hermione and Ron fleeing from one remote campsite to another, and not a whole lot was happening. In other words, they were wandering in the wilderness. I laughed out loud.

Now, maybe this wilderness wandering was completely calculated by Rowling. The woman is a storytelling genius, and I admire her work immensely. I find it amusing that her books have stirred religious controversy, when the entire series spins on the power of self-sacrificial love, even its ability to conquer death. (Do these concepts not sound just a little bit familiar to those of us who grew up in homes steeped in Christian concepts?) It is entirely possible that she intended those middle chapters to hark back to the 40 days and nights that Christ spent wandering in the wilderness.

Nevertheless, as a fellow writer, I cannot help but wonder whether Harry Potter's creator was slogging through her own wilderness, agonizing over how to get Harry and his friends from that slap-bang beginning to the eventual mythic ending. She pulled it off very nicely, and my hat's off to her.

So what's a writer to do when she finds herself in her own wilderness? I do two things: I rely on my outline, and I keep slogging.

The beauty of an outline is that you know where you're going. If you find yourself in a mushy spot, point yourself toward the next big scene in your outline, and do whatever it takes to get there. Push your characters toward the location of that scene. Write the dialogue that will get them ready for the action in that scene. Give them the knowledge that they're going to need when they get there.

Do these things, even if you feel like you're just pushing chess pawns into place. Do them even if the action feels clunky or limp. Write the transitional scenes that will get you where you need to go, even if you know in your heart that they are awful...because you can always edit them later.

When I come back to those awful transitional scenes later, a couple of things happen very frequently. First, I usually find that a lot of the narrative is unnecessary. I can just surgically remove ninety percent of the ugly and troublesome text, and the narrative still works. Still, I needed to write that ugly and troublesome text in order to generate the all-important ten percent. And second, I often find that the scenes that seemed so ugly and troublesome aren't really that bad. With some honing and polishing, they turn out to be good enough to stay in the book, after all.

Don't be afraid to write bad stuff. You can always fix it later. Sometimes writing the bad stuff takes you straight to the good stuff. J.K. Rowling knows that. And now you do, too.

See you at the Anhinga--
Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #11: Editing at the Scene of the Crime

2010-07-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you finish a book or a story or an article?

If I'm not smack up against a deadline, I turn my attention to another project, even if only for an afternoon. (And sometimes that project is laundry and vacuuming, because these things tend to get neglected when I'm deep in the flow with my writing.)

When I come back to my project, I usually just read it, front to back. I'm a compulsive editor, so I do a little twiddling as I go, but I try to keep it to correcting typos and grammatical errors. Wholesale slicing and dicing can wait till later. At this point, I need to see my story as a coherent whole for the very first time...and this read-through is a very good way to spot the ways in which the story is not yet coherent, because it is essential that my early editing strategies are directed toward writing a story that makes sense.

Once I feel that the story is near its final form, I begin looking at the way I've told my story. Today's writing tip is focused on this stage.

Most modern fiction is constructed as a sequence of scenes, each told from a single point-of-view. A story of a day in the life of a ten-year-old, for example, might consist of a scene at the breakfast table told from the student's point-of-view, then a scene from his mother's point-of-view as she waves good-bye to her son getting on the school bus, then a scene from his morning spelling class and another set in the school cafeteria, both told from his point-of-view. And so on.

When I'm editing at the scene level, I read the piece with a single goal in mind: making sure every scene really needs to be there. I ask myself whether a scene advances the plot or deepens characterization or injects an important sense of realism by improving the reader's perception of the setting. If a scene that shows our hero eating Rice Krispies does none of those things, then it has to go, no matter how well I described that nutritious breakfast's snap, crackle, and pop. I'm not really happy unless a scene accomplishes more than one of my goals as a storyteller.

Remember...if a scene serves no function other than to highlight the beauty of your prose, then it doesn't get to stay. Make your lovely prose work for you. Make it tell your story!

Happy writing!
Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #10: We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Edited...

2010-07-04T05:54:00.000-07:00

I read a tidbit in my friend Bev Browning's blog, onemoretimebev.blogspot.com/, that could not be more perfect for a writer's blog on Independence Day: Modern technology has revealed to us that Thomas Jefferson edited the Declaration of Independence down to the last individual word, even as the ink was drying.

Who among us is really surprised to hear that? Still, seeing a photo of the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, complete with Jefferson's edits and the comments of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, is enough to give this history buff cold chills. Check out this quote and link: "In an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote the word "subjects," when he referred to the American public. He then erased that word and replaced it with "citizens," a term he used frequently throughout the final draft." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38068227/ns/us_news-life/)

If Thomas Jefferson didn't get it right the first time, why should we be hard on ourselves when our first drafts aren't everything we'd hoped they'd be? Editing is an important part of our art form. In fact, it could even be viewed as an entirely separate art form, requiring the use of an entirely separate set of skills. To edit one's own work requires clarity of thought and the ability to take an unbiased look at a piece of work that was created directly from the heart and soul. Editing requires an unwavering belief that a story can made better, and it requires the judgment to recognize when a story has reached in its final form.

When Jefferson asked John Adams why Jefferson should be chosen, between the two of them, for the job of writing the Declaration of Independence, Adams said, "'Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can."
(http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/jefferson.htm The italics are mine.)

When you doubt the importance of typing letters onto your computer screen, day in and day out, remember what words can do. They can influence. They can convince. They can deceive. They can flatter. They can wound. They can heal. They can foment war. They can wage peace. And when an uncommonly brilliant writer finds himself standing at a turning point in history, pen in hand, words can change the world.

Let's revisit Jefferson's genius on this, the 234th anniversary of America's birth:

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
(http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/text.html)

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Happy Independence Day!
Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #9: Writer's Block, Revisited

2010-07-03T04:27:00.000-07:00

I talked about writer's block on Thursday, but it's difficult to exhaust the subject. Maybe this is telling. I can write all week about not feeling able to write. Perhaps the difficulty when a writer is blocked is that he or she simply needs to find the right subject, something that invokes passion or excitement, or in the case of writer's block, outright terror?

I was once on a panel with two other writers who had published many dozens of books between them, and another writer who was about as far along in his career as me and who was just as serious about it. During the question-and-answer period, the conversation kept veering toward the question of writer's block. People genuinely wanted to know what we did when inspiration didn't come.

We tried serious answers.

"Trust the process."

"Write whether you feel like it or not. The act of sitting down and beginning a project will trigger that mysterious part of the brain that sends you your stories.

"Write through the tough parts. Yeah, maybe you'll get a book that has a slam-bang beginning and a can't-miss ending, with a bunch of saggy parts in between, but you can always edit. That's what revisions are for."

These answers did not mollify the crowd, so we went for humor...black humor, which is usually quite truthful underneath the sarcasm:

"I have a contract. My contract has a due date on it. Every day, that due date gets closer; thus, I write whether I feel like it or not."

"When I need inspiration, I just look at my credit card bill."

Or, if your goal is to be a professional writer someday, perhaps your inspiration should be pretending you have a contract with a due date on it, or imagining that your royalties might someday make a dent in that credit card bill.

I don't think I'm done with this subject, so we may be talking about the quest for inspiration again before this month of Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded is finished. But I think I'll leave you with this thought today--

"Don't let your mind get in the way of your art. When the nattering voices in your head tell you things you don't want to hear, drown those voices out with the clattering of your computer keys."

For four straight days of inspiration, join me at the Anhinga Writers' Studio Summer Workshops!
Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #8: Because even I can't be practical-minded all the time...

2010-07-02T04:27:00.000-07:00

I have confessed to you people that I write in a recliner. And I had described the first month of writing a new book in these terms: reading for a living. And there's truthfully a good dollop of thinking for a living thrown into the mix, so when I saw this photo, I had to share it with you. I wish I had taken it, but no. I got it from icanhascheezburger.com. Enjoy!

TGIF!

Mary Anna

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #7: Trust the process

2010-07-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

When I teach, I am invariably asked questions about writer's block. Do I get it? How does one cure it? Is it inevitable?

I never know whether I should reach out and hug the terrified questioner, murmuring, "It'll be okay, really..", or whether I should just reach out and shake the person and say, "Get a grip!"

Sometimes I think that worrying about writer's block is a symptom of a bigger problem. I think that some people think of WRITING as something that is so deeply important and larger-than-life that it must be written in bold, italicized capital letters. Well, it is important. It's my chosen art, and maybe it's yours. But if I write something stupid today, or even if I don't write today at all, nobody will die. No civilizations will fall. The sun will not fail to rise or set.

Writing should be fun. It should be the thing that helps you shake the world's pettiness aside. It should be something you anticipate fondly while you're taking care of the boring, odious tasks of daily life. If you're like me, the stories pile up in your head while you're doing those boring and odious tasks. They're waiting to burst out when you finally...finally...get a chance to sit down and write.

When I was writing Artifacts, I was convinced that I was wasting my time. If, on the off-chance, I actually managed to write an entire book, I knew that it was not possible that I would ever have another idea big enough to support a book. Never, never, ever. There would be no career, because I had no other book in me.

As I was finishing the last chapters of Artifacts, the idea for Relics suddenly came to me, so I wrote that book. But as I wrote it, I was utterly convinced that I had no potential for a career as a writer, because I would never have a third idea big enough to support an entire book. Never ever. Ever. Yet as I wrote the final chapters of Relics, the idea for Effigies came to me.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is when I began to trust the process. All the things I've learned and all the life I've lived are bottled up in my head. I can trust that when I reach into the well for stories, something will be there. My late father always said, "No education is ever wasted," and my father was always right.

Feeling blocked as a writer doesn't mean that you have nothing to say. I think it means that you have let your anxieties tell you that you have nothing to say that is good enough.

The cure? Write anyway.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #6: Take care of your body

2010-06-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

We live in Stone Age bodies. Those bodies are beautiful, and they are astonishingly made, but they were designed for life in the Garden of Eden. I don't know about you, but I don't spend a lot of my time these days foraging for nuts and berries. And I sure as heck don't spend every waking hour walking around in search of my next meal.

I, for one, am very happy that I don't spend every waking hour afraid that some sabre-tooth tiger is hoping to eat me.

Owning a car means that I will never have the cardiovascular health of a Stone Age woman. Owning a whole bunch of chairs means that I could never crouch for hours on end, the way our ancestors did. And owning a computer means that I spend hours on end in one of those unnatural chairs, holding my head and neck and arms and hands in a completely unnatural position.

We all pay a price for our cushy 21st-century lifestyles. A writer's price comes in the form of neck trouble and carpal-tunnel syndrome and headaches. You are sitting at your computer now, reading this. Take a moment to listen to your body. Are you relaxed? Are any of your muscles crying out for attention? If so, you'd best listen, because time will only make it worse.

A few years ago, I was suffering from chronic neck and jaw pain caused by an accident that had nothing to do with my writing, but sitting at a desk typing on a computer every day was making the pain unbearable. I had to change my writing environment. I wrote Effigies on a laptop computer, while resting in a recliner.

After the book was finished, I had my neck and jaw surgically repaired, but I kept my self-indulgent writing style. My recliner supports my titanium-plate-reinforced neck, and it gives me a place to rest my arms so that they can stay relaxed as I type. I feel completely stupid for having written three books at a desk, before I realized that I had the kind of career that gave me ultimate freedom in my workspace.

Besides making sure your body is properly relaxed and supported, it's a good idea to get up periodically and walk around. Years ago, I heard David Morell, of Rambo fame, say that he did serious exercise in the middle of every work day. I believe he said he played two hours of tennis between morning and evening writing sessions. Dan Brown's website once said much the same thing. At the time, I had three children at home and my writing time was so short as to make this prospect laughable. But the message is clear. Get up and move your body now and then. If you're like me, you'll just be moving it into the garage so that you can shift the laundry from the washer to the dryer, but your body will thank you. It wasn't designed for the punishment you're dishing out. And it needs to last you a very long time.

Excuse me...I need to go put my laundry in the dryer.

See you at the Anhinga Writers' Studio Summer Workshops!
Mary Anna

P.S.--one of my readers commented that she sometimes worked on her sun porch. Here's my porch worksite. See the flowered pillow adorning the porch swing behind this lovely hummingbird-attracting rose? Sometimes I sit there to work. Writing is a really tough life...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #5: Verbs Rock!

2010-06-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Bev Browning has decided to write a novel without using verbs.

Bev is a brilliant writer, and you should check out her blog on training for a marathon at the age of...um...over twenty-one...at One More Time, Bev for sheer entertainment value. If anyone can write a novel without pesky things like verbs, Bev can. However, mere mortals like you and me, dear readers...we should leave such projects to ~~crazy people like Bev~~ true professionals.

I see a common flaw when I review manuscripts that are nearly, but not quite, ready for publication. The narrative feels flabby, and flabbiness often has its roots in the overuse of descriptors. Excess adjectives and adverbs are like fat. They obscure the lean muscularity of your prose. They jiggle when your story walks.

With that metaphor in mind, compare these two sentences:

"The saggy skin of her face hung loosely down her neck, floppy and pale."

"Her jowls jiggled when she walked."

Now, that first sentence isn't really terrible. It might even work, in the right story, provided the sentences in the immediate vicinity weren't equally flabby. It also might work if I cut out two of these four words: "saggy," "loosely," "floppy," or "pale."

But the second sentence jiggles. You can feel the motion of this large person. This sentence sets up a host of possibilities for characterization. Is she trudging through life, weighed down by burdens and by her very own body? Or is she upbeat, striding through this world and doing what must be done, aware that strangers sneer at her floppy jowls? I, for one, want to know.

When you edit your first draft, do a complete read-through with an eye toward word choice, particularly verbs and nouns. A sentence can exist without adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions, but it ain't a sentence without a verb and (almost always) a noun. (Despite what Bev says.)

Never miss the opportunity to trade a weakly modified noun like "saggy skin" for "jowls." And never miss the opportunity to trade a flabby verb for a verb that jiggles.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #4: The Love Interest

2010-06-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

For reasons I don't understand, this post that I thought I scheduled to publish this morning, did not appear on schedule. I only found out because one of my faithful readers noticed that I didn't blog today and she wrote a mutual friend to see if I was okay. Now that, ladies and gentleman, is what I call kindness and concern. As it turns out, I'm perfectly okay. I'm just inept at the handling of a blog schedule.

Here's this morning's post, which was actually just a reference to my other blog, where I posted today's Pearl of Wisdom for Writers. Are you confused yet? I am...

...................................................................................................
Today's my day to blog over at The LadyKillers. The LadyKillers theme this week is "The Love Interest." Hop over there to see my writing tip on keeping love interesting.

My, that is the eternal question, isn't it?

:)

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #3: I know you're busy, but...

2010-06-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

It happened again today. I was having a nice conversation with someone, and he mentioned that he had an idea for a book he was going to write someday.

Now there's nothing wrong with having a good idea and sitting on it for awhile, until both the idea and you are ready. And there's nothing wrong with having a cool idea for a book that you know you're never really going to write. The potential heartbreak in this situation is embodied in the word "someday."

If you truly hope and plan to write a book or a story or your memoirs or a poem, you must decide to do it, then you must make it so. If you're truly too busy now, then look ahead and make a plan. Say, "When school starts and the kids are on a regular schedule, I will get up an hour early and work on my poetry before I start my day." Or maybe you do have time now, if you tell yourself that you will have dinner with your family, but that they can then watch TV without you for a day or three per week.

Notice that these plans do not involve the word "someday." "Someday" is the enemy of dreams.

Before I wrote Artifacts, I wrote an environmental thriller called Wounded Earth. It took me four years, because when I began it, I had three children under ten. As I was finishing it, some dear friends introduced me to the legendary science fiction writer, Joe Haldeman, and his wonderful wife Gay. I was gobsmacked with awe, particularly when Gay took me aside and said, "Do you want to see the Hugos?" (Why, yes, I did. They were kept next to the Hugos and the Nebulas and the World Fantasy Awards and...) And I was mortified when my friends brandished the manuscript of my book, which they'd smuggled into the house with us.

I did not ask Joe to look at my manuscript. (He said they got so many unsolicited manuscripts from people hoping for his help that they could use them for insulation.) But I did take away something very valuable from that encounter, beyond a new friendship. When my friends said, "Mary Anna's a writer!", Gay said just one thing. "Do you write every day?" And I was happy to say that I did, unless my family responsibilities kept me from it. I found it very interesting to see that this was her criterion for whether an aspiring writer was really serious, and whether he or she had some potential for making it.

If you make time to write a single page three times a week, then you will have a draft of a 300-page book in 100 weeks...two years. A single page a day, every day, will give you a book in a year.

So...do you write every day?

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #2: Know where you're going

2010-06-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

Whenever I speak at schools, somebody always asks me if I outline. I always say yes. I always get the sense that the teacher wants to give me a big sloppy kiss.

I probably disappoint those teachers when I go on to say that my outlines are for my eyes only. Therefore, they display no Roman numerals or letters or fancy formatting. Essentially, I just sit down and tell myself a story, divided up roughly into chapters. Chapter 1 may say nothing except, "Faye finds a skull," because that may be all I need to call up the windswept and lonely island where that happens. I may be absolutely certain that I know how to describe the nearby windswept island where the killer stands, looking at the light on her boat and knowing that someone has found his handiwork and he now has to do something about it.

The outlines for other chapters may be ridiculously lengthy. I may have research notes I know I'll need, so I stick 'em right in the outline. I always know when it's nearly time to start writing when I start hearing Faye and Joe talking to each other in my head. (No, I'm not schizophrenic. If I thought they were real people, I might be schizophrenic, but I am quite aware that they are my well-loved imaginary friends.) Sometimes, I put snippets of those conversations into my outline, so that I'll remember where they go.

I have very successful author friends who tell me that they do not outline and, in fact, do not know how the book they're writing will end. They write mysteries, for goodness sake. How can they possibly lay clues when they don't know where the clues point? Yet they do it, and they do it well. I know that they are all brutal and efficient editors, and I do not know any published authors who are not, so they do have the option of tweaking the narrative and adding clues on the second draft. Still, this approach leaves me white-knuckled and terrified.

For Artifacts, I wasn't even sure I could write a full-length book. I crammed so many notes and descriptions and conversations and reminders and clues into that outline that it was 125 pages long. In retrospect, you could almost call it a very ugly first draft. The outline for Relics was about 50 pages long. All the rest have been about 25 pages, and I think that's a good level of detail for me and for the books I write.

I am just barely old enough to have typed on a typewriter in high school and college, but I ditched my typewriter for a TRS-80 Model 4 in 1984, and I have never looked back. The notion of typing multiple drafts, and doing it without the capacity to correct errors, absolutely terrifies me. I won the typing award in high school, which wasn't hard to do since I've been playing piano since I was 8. My eye-finger coordination is amazing. I probably type 80+ error-riddled words per minute these days. On a computer, I can fix those errors in an instant.

Also, and more to the point of this essay, a computer lets me type the final period on my outline, then scroll to the top and write my book in the same computer file. Oh joy!

I often take an important sentence out of the outline, cut it, paste it to the chapter where I'm writing, then I have it right in front of my eyes as a beacon, telling me where to go. Remember those snippets of conversation? I paste them where they need to go, then move on.

I once sent the first hundred pages of a new novel to my agent for review, and forgot to snip out the outline from the bottom of the file. She called me and said, "For a second, I thought, 'What in the hell is this????", then I figured it out.

Other than that one time, I don't think anyone has ever seen one of my rough outlines, and no, I'm not pasting one here. But now you know they exist.

Thirty days, thirty pearls of writing wisdom...

2010-06-25T04:55:00.000-07:00

I'm launching a new blogging enterprise today, in honor of the upcoming Anhinga Writers' Studio 2010 Summer Workshops. My pledge to you here at "It's Like Making Sausage..." is to give you an insider view of the publishing biz. Recently, this has included such esoteric things as an eyewitness look at the oil spill and some existential musings about why I woke up Wednesday and found a ladder in my kitchen. For the next month, I am resolved to give you straightforward advice on how to take your book idea and wrestle it to the ground. As someone who is an inveterate reader, as well as a writer, I think that this will be interesting even to those of you who have no intention of writing a book, or even a grocery list.
Fear not. I'll probably still sneak in off-topic musings on the oil spill and other engineering ridiculosities, but I also promise you a full month of useful writing tips.

How do you like that word? "Ridiculosity." I thought I had made it up, but I checked the miraculous internet. I found that it was listed as a word in various new-fangled sources like UrbanDictionary.com and Wiktionary.com and Answers.com. It wasn't listed in the online edition of the Merriam-Webster, but their website told me that if I wanted to pay a membership fee, I'd find it in their unabridged dictionary. How do you like that? Do you think it's possible that any word you want to use could be legit, if you were willing to pay enough? Hmmm.

This brings me to Writing Tip #1: Never bet your reputation on Wikipedia...or on any website or source that gives you any reason to doubt its accuracy or impartiality.

When writing Effigies, I talked to several Choctaws about elements of their culture that I was incorporating into the book, but it took me a while to track down individuals willing to be interviewed. In the meantime, I needed to write a book and I had a deadline. So I used the internet to give me some cool background info, knowing I could check it out later. And I'm so glad I did.

I had used a website of Choctaw names to name an important character. He was called Okshakla, meaning Deep Water. It suited him. I liked it. But when I asked a Mississippi Choctaw whether it really meant Deep Water, she said, "Um. Maybe in Oklahoma."

Oops. She told me how to say Deep Water in Choctaw, and a global search-and-replace fixed the problem, but in a part of my mind, Oka Hofobi will always be Okshakla. Too bad I don't know what Okshakla means...

Check your sources!!!!

Why is there a ladder in my kitchen?

2010-06-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

Tonight's post has nothing to do with writing or publishing or the ongoing tragedy of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico...although there were times this evening when my kitchen floor looked like an aerial photo of the gulf. I don't often stray completely off-topic, but this evening was a perfect snapshot of the life of a homeowning single mother who is neither burly nor handy.

If any of you are writing about such a character, I offer my experience to you as a freebie. Stick it in your book with my blessing. If you're not a writer, you can just read it, shake your head, and ponder the effects of entropy on the lives of unsuspecting human beings.

So I woke up this morning and found a ladder in my kitchen. Also, I found a kitchen stool. And a bunch of pantry goods that had been liberated from the pantry were sitting on the countertop. All of these things had appeared after I went to bed at the astonishingly early hour of 9:30 pm. I'm usually up and kicking until midnight, but let's think about what I did during the first 20 days of June:

I took a trip to Louisiana to see the oil spill.
I came home told you people all about it.
I chased my adorable 2-year-old grandson for a week.
I got pharyngitis. Quickly followed by bronchitis.
I got some antibiotics.
I flew to Arizona to see my daughter and return my grandson to his rightful parents.
I got some more antibiotics, since the first batch didn't work.
I flew home, and I found that the good fairies had not maintained my house and yard while I was gone.

This brings me up to last night, when I felt an incredible urge to go unconscious at 9:30 pm. So I did. And there was no ladder in my kitchen at that time.

I had to get up early this morning, because today's job was to supervise the people moving my mother's stuff to her new apartment. When I woke my daughter to tell her I was leaving, I said something like, "Ladder? Kitchen?"

She explained that she'd wanted some chocolate syrup for her late-night ice cream. It was on the top shelf of the pantry. While getting it, she'd knocked a shelf off its supports, and she was truly and deeply sorry. I said, "Fine. No problem. I'll fix it tonight."

I spent a full day dealing with the move. After supper, my daughter said, "I'll clean the kitchen like you asked, but you really need to fix that shelf first."

I'm not a very tall person, so I crawled up the ladder. (Which was conveniently in my kitchen.) I'm also not a very strong person, and that shelf was heavy. I wrestled with it. Some curse words slipped out. ("Mom!" she says, as if a person isn't allowed to curse when she cuts her finger while juggling something oversized.)

Then I lost control of the whole big slab of particle board. It crashed down on the shelf below, knocking off the peanut butter and the nonstick spray and, yes, a glass bottle of balsamic vinegar...that was completely full.

As you know, balsamic vinegar is near-black and sticky. This is the point at which my kitchen floor looked like the Gulf of Mexico.

So far, we have picked up big chunks of glass. We've used towels to soak up the vinegar and wipe up the minuscule shards of glass. She vacuumed. She ran the steam mop. Right now, copious quantities of hydrogen peroxide are fighting the near-black stains in my grout. If this fails, I may need to stain the whole floor with balsamic vinegar, just so all the grout matches.

What is the moral of this story, and why am I telling it to you?

It's simple. If you ever wake up and find a ladder in your kitchen...go back to bed. :)

Exhaustedly yours--
Mary Anna

First review of STRANGERS :)

2010-06-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

I just got home from my trip, so there will be no more reruns or pre-programmed programming here for a while. I had a great time, but what do you expect when you travel to the home of a trained pastry chef? :) She is also my daughter, which made the visit doubly wonderful.

While I was gone, the first review of Strangers came in, and they liked it! This is noteworthy, because Kirkus Reviews is known for pulling no punches when they don't like a book. Everybody I know reads their Kirkus reviews while squinting and closing one eye, just in case the critique is too painful to read with both eyes open.

Since they liked my baby, I'll copy the opinion here in its entirety, including the lengthy plot summary, which is almost, but not completely, correct. When you get to the very bottom, you will see that the reviewer used words like "excellent," so I am a happy writer today. :D

Happy Saturday!
Mary Anna
................................

The venerable historical city of St. Augustine, Fla., is the setting for the latest archaeological adventure of Faye Longchamp and her husband, Joe Wolf Mantooth.

With the economy in shambles, a heavily pregnant Faye is thrilled to have landed a job for the new consulting firm she and her husband have founded. The site of their investigation is Dunkirk Manor, a Gilded Age mansion run as a B&B by Daniel and Suzanne Wrather, whose garden must be excavated for historic objects before they can install a swimming pool. The team quickly discovers the remains of a former pool, several long-buried baby artifacts—and some even older items. But it is a book found in the dusty attic that most thrills Faye. Soon she’s staying up nights translating the diary of a Spanish priest who arrived in 1565 with the founder of St. Augustine. When lovely young Glynis, who works at the Manor, brings Faye priceless artifacts, refuses to reveal where they were found and then disappears, Faye goes into sleuthing mode. The discovery of Glynis’s boyfriend, whose body is found in the river, leaves her wealthy developer father frantic for leads, and the police soon hire Faye as a consultant. An unsolved 1920s murder, dead babies, illegal building and the reputedly haunted mansion all play a role in Faye’s dangerous search for answers.

Evans’s excellent series (Floodgates, 2008, etc.) continues to combine solid mysteries and satisfying historical detail.

A Very Timely Tome

2010-06-17T03:39:00.000-07:00

I just learned that a group called The Red Hills Writer Project has published an anthology called UnspOILed: Writers Speak for Florida's Coast. It was originally conceived as a way to speak out against the threat of drilling off our coastlines here in Florida. Recent events in the Gulf have put quite a different spin on the project.

The list of illustrious contributors includes my friend Lola Haskins, a well-known and accomplished poet who will be on the faculty of the writer's conference I co-organize, The Anhinga Writers' Studio Summer Workshops.

UnspOILed looks like a moving and timely collection. You can find out more about it here.

Elegance at Galatoire's

2010-06-16T03:04:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I made a research trip to New Orleans as I prepared to write Floodgates . Since I'm getting so much positive feedback from my posts about last week's research trip to south Louisiana in preparation to write Plunder. I remember being shocked to see how much of the city still looked like a war zone. And I remember being very pleased to see that the historic French Quarter had survived intact, so I urged my readers to take their vacation dollars to New Orleans and have a really good time.

Not being the type to drop a lot of cash in the Bourbon Street bars, I did my part for the local economy by eating very, very well. This post about my scrumptious meal at Galatoire's caught the attention of the restaurant's historian, and she asked my permission to quote from it in the next edition of her history of Galatoire's. I said yes, of course, and I hope maybe I'll get an extra-nice table on my next trip to the Big Easy. :) I'm re-posting special articles from the past this week, while I'm traveling. I hope you enjoy this one.
...........................................................
Elegance at Galatoire's

Last week, I spent some time grieving about the unresolved state of the restoration of New Orleans. This week, I think I'll change to focus to a more positive part of the story. I'll tell you about a lovely evening I spent there, an evening that reflected the best parts of an old and rich culture. I had dinner at Galatoire's.
I've always wanted to eat at Galatoire's ( http://www.galatoires.com ), ever since I was a little girl and my parents would get dressed up and drive to New Orleans for elegant events my father's company held there. A couple of years ago, my yen to try the place grew even stronger when I made a dish called Eggplant Galatoire's from one of my favorite cookbooks. It was probably the most fabulous thing I've ever made--eggplant stuffed with crabmeat and breadcrumbs and onions and seasonings and topped with a luscious sauce. I was seized by the need to eat Eggplant Galatoire's at Galatoire's, but it took me until this month to make it happen. (It was delicious, too.)
I learned that eighty percent of the Galatoire's experience--and it is an experience--lies in the atmosphere and service. This is not to diminish the food, which is fabulous, but I've had fabulous food in other places. I've never, however, been asked as I was seated whether I had a favorite server I'd like to request. I've never sat in a restaurant that had been owned by the same family for its entire 103-year history that's still serving some of the original dishes from a long-ago Victorian era. (In fact, the whole experience put me in mind of Ann Parker's ongoing guide to Victorian manners, elsewhere in this blog.) I've never seen emerald-green wallpaper, handblocked to match the wallpaper that has always hung on those walls, because--well, because it just can't change.
Everywhere I went in New Orleans, I was reminded of the special character of the people who work in the hospitality industry there. They know how to make you feel pampered, but that's true in many cities. Nowhere else, however, have I ever encountered such a well-defined balance in demeanor. At Galatoire's, as in so many other places in the city, the waitstaff was attentive without being obsequious or snooty. The attitude seemed to be, "We're professionals and we're glad you're here. How can we help you have a good time?"
Somehow, they conveyed the feeling that, provided the men in your party showed up in a coat and tie (because some standards can never be lowered), then there would never be a velvet rope at the door or a bouncer deciding whether you were good enough for Galatoire's style of pampering. Considering that I got a three-course meal for roughly what I paid for my entree at another, less old-school, restaurant around the corner that I'm almost certain you've heard of, then I'd say it was a rather egalitarian experience. And I think everyone deserves a little elegance now and then.
Stay tuned next week for more of my nattering about New Orleans. I want us to remember what they've been through, and I want people who have vacation dollars to spare to go down there and have a good time. It's the most pleasant way to do the right thing that I can imagine.

It's like making sausage...

My holiday wishes and a gift for you...

Sometimes you *can* go home again...

Why mystery fiction matters

Look for me all over the internet this week...

A guest post from Camille Minichino--DO THE MATH

Don't ask me about writer's block...

Guest blogger Tracey Alley tells us what it's like to be a writer...and gets it right

American history, walking around on two legs...

Back to the salt mines soon, but not yet...

A sample of WOUNDED EARTH

I'm still not working! This is great!

Back from the great beyond...though perhaps temporarily...

For Apple...

If only ebook pricing were an intuitively obvious task...

End-of-the-month accounting

Things I've learned about selling books of both the print and electronic variety

If you're going to be in north Florida on Sunday...

#Sample Sunday

Beyond the pilot test:: Upfront costs

Face time with readers: more dollars and cents

You asked for dollars and cents...

Amazon: The Gorilla in the Library

Reporting on the ebook revolution...

The voices in my head...

While I wasn't blogging, the world was changing...

Weather or not...

Guest blogger Vicki Delany on learning from our literary past...

Why do mystery writers write the things we do????

My mother

25 years ago today...

More from Key West...

Making sausage elsewhere...

I'm headed west...

Homesick for Key West...

Chaos...how appropriate...

Dove World: An interesting week in my hometown

Talking about the bad guys...

You knew I'd dip into the Beatles songbook, sooner or later...

Some cool news...

A very literary rock star...

Every time that I look in the mirror...

From TV to rock-and-roll...

Just a Little Gift from Me to You: Writing Tips from the Pros

A funny story...

I haven't been AWOL. I've been flying with the Anhinga...

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #30: Talk to me

Making you wait a bit...

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #29: Reach out...

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #28: Get a cat.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #27: Get advice from people you trust

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #26: Lost in time and space

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #25: Get to the point

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #24: Use your pain

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #23: Fiction in a Nutshell

Writing Tips for the Practical-minded #21: My imaginary friends

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #20: I apologize for sending you this time-waster

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #17: You are an artist. Write like one.

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #19: There's got to be a writing tip in here somewhere...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #18: You have five senses for a reason

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #16: Thank you, Strunk and White

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #17: Omit needless words

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #15: Please don't force me to read about a namby-pamby weakling...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #14: Scarlett and Melanie have more to teach us...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #13: Learn from the Masters

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #12: Wandering in the Wilderness with J.K. Rowling

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #11: Editing at the Scene of the Crime

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #10: We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Edited...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #9: Writer's Block, Revisited

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #8: Because even I can't be practical-minded all the time...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #7: Trust the process

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #6: Take care of your body

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #5: Verbs Rock!

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #4: The Love Interest

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #3: I know you're busy, but...

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #2: Know where you're going

Thirty days, thirty pearls of writing wisdom...

Why is there a ladder in my kitchen?

First review of STRANGERS :)

A Very Timely Tome

Sometimes you can go home again...