With All Undue Respect

Zoë Sharp

“From what I've seen of you, Zoë, you treat people with a respect you somehow do not expect to receive yourself.”

This was said to me a month or so ago by someone I’ve known for a long time, if not closely. I had no idea he’d observed me well enough to form such an opinion one way or another.

My first instinct was denial. Or not quite denial but certainly qualification. Respect is not something that can be expected—not in the present world.

It has to be worked for, earned.

And once you have it, you can’t simply hang it above the fireplace like a dusty stag’s head trophy and expect admiration from all comers. It has to be carefully maintained or the moths will turn it into little more than a memory.

“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking of me … All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”―Jackie Robinson

Respect is a living entity, always shifting, always in motion—much like the stag before someone shot and stuffed it.

One false move, and it’s gone.

I respect someone who has a no-nonsense competence without allowing their ego to enter the equation. It should be possible to be good at what you do without making yourself thoroughly unpleasant in the process.

But it seems to me that modern society will break down not because of some great catastrophe, but because of a series of tiny personal injustices. How many times recently have you experienced the following?

~Watched someone pick up a piece of litter they did not drop?

~Been let out into traffic by someone who had to inconvenience themselves to do so, rather than because they had to stop anyway?

~Been thanked by someone you’ve let out into traffic when you had to inconvenience yourself to do so, rather than because you had to stop anyway?

~Have a door held open?

~Had a car slow down to pass you walking along a wet road so you weren’t splashed?

~Been invited to go ahead by the person before you at the supermarket checkout because they’re shopping for a siege and you have only a few items?

These may seem like trivial examples—and indeed they are—but they are also the niceties of civilisation that make us human.

So, ’Rati, what petty injustices have you witnessed recently, or what random small acts of kindness?

Instead of a Word of the Week, this time round I have a selection of quotations on the subject of respect—or lack of it.

“You should respect each other and refrain from disputes; you should not, like water and oil, repel each other, but should, like milk and water, mingle together.”―Buddha

“They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.”―Mohandas K. Gandhi

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.”―Richard Bach

“Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”―Malcom X

“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”―Winston Churchill

“I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I would be honest.”―Rodney Dangerfield

“Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.”―Marilyn Monroe

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”―Lao Tzu

“I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.”―Edward Gibbon

“To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”―Voltaire

“In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.”―Salvador Dali

“I do respect people's faith, but I don't respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.”―Javier Bardem

“Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.”―Laurence Sterne

“I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts.”―Martin Ritt

“I respect my limitations, but I don't use them as an excuse.”―Stephen R. Donaldson

“If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.”―Mario Vargas Llosa

‘“With the greatest respect,” I said. Always a nice phrase to use when you intend to speak without any.’―Charlie Fox

And on a slight note of BSP, <cough> this week saw the US publication of DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten.

"Zoë Sharp is one of the sharpest, coolest, and most intriguing writers I know. She delivers dramatic, action-packed novels with characters we really care about. And once again, in DIE EASY, Zoë Sharp is at the top of her game."—New York Times best-seller, Harlan Coben

The mental lightbulb

Zoë Sharp

Well, the disruption of Christmas is just about all over. I say that without any edge to the words. But for the past three days I’ve had the house filled with strangers—strangers I just happen to know well.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I love my family, but I’ve been living away from them now for far longer than I ever lived with them. As an individual I have grown to fill the expanded corners of my own existence in such a way that we somehow no longer quite fit together as the close family unit we once were. I daresay they feel much the same way about me.

And yet, this Christmas, I have appreciated my family more than ever.

But I know that Thursday—the day after St Stephen’s Day, or Boxing Day—marks a return to normality. And that brings with it more questions than answers.

Because I’m not sure I know what classifies as normality any longer.

It was only when I flicked through a favourite book before loaning it to a friend that I realised what probably lay behind this recent feeling of malaise.

The book is THE WINTER OF FRANKIE MACHINE by Don Winslow, one of the writers I admire most and a master of present-tense narrative. The passage in question comes at the start of chapter four:

All Frank’s days are busy, what with four businesses, and ex-wife and a girlfriend to manage. The key to pulling it off is to stick to a routine, or at least try to.

He has tried—without conspicuous success—to explain this simple management technique to the kid Abe. “If you have a routine,” he has lectured, “you can always deviate from it if something comes up. But if you don’t have a routine, then everything is stuff that comes up. Get it?”

“Got it.”

But he doesn’t get it, Frank knows, because he doesn’t do it.

And I realised—doh—that I don’t actually have a proper routine.

For years I wrote fiction in the cracks of the day-job, but my day-job also did not involve any kind of set routine. As an example, few years ago I did two particular photoshoots on consecutive days. The first took place on a bitterly cold disused airforce base just outside Warrington in the northwest of the UK where the temperature was minus ten degrees. The next was on the sands of Daytona Beach in Florida in baking hundred-degrees-plus heat.

The unexpected nature of the job was one of the things I loved most about it. Through my photography work I met millionaires and criminals, the titled, the notorious, the hilarious, and the downright insane. But I never quite knew, from one day to the next, what it would bring. I suspect that was one of the reasons I clung to the day-job long after I could probably have let it go.

Now I am free to put all my effort into writing. And it’s tougher than I thought it would be.

Which brings me back to having a routine.

I need to create some more defined structure to my day. After all, I love writing. It’s all I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. I have more ideas and plots and stories than I know what to do with, but if I don’t develop some organised method of working I’m going to burn myself to a frazzle inside a year.

Not only that, but I suspect I would soon start to resent the demands of the very job I always dreamed of.

So, taking the advice of Don Winslow’s retired hitman, Frank ‘Machine’ Machianno, I need to get myself a workable routine. One that fits in all the essential daily elements, including some time for simple domestic tasks—like doing laundry, keeping my accounts updated, and going to the supermarket—with all the other Stuff that’s an inevitable part of a modern writer’s life, like social media and marketing.

Oh, and a bit of time for writing, too.

And quite honestly, ‘Rati, I’m open to suggestions.

Do you have a daily routine or is it more loosely based than that? What are essentials for you—what do you try to do every day without fail, even if all other good intentions fall apart?

A couple of other points I’d like to mention today. The first is an appeal by Mary Andrea Clarke who is in charge of the CWA Debut Dagger competition. If you’ve never heard of the Debut Dagger and you are an as-yet unpublished author, it’s a brilliant way to get the start of your crime in front of top editors and agents. Past winners and shortlisted authors have gone on to great success.

Mary has asked for writers to provide for the next bulletin, one writing tip, and one criminal thought for the Holiday season. Suggestions welcome!

As well, I hope you don’t mind me mentioning that both the trade paperback edition and the US hardcover edition of DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten are now available to order. Thank you to everyone who’s said such wonderful things about this latest outing for Charlie—fighting it out with the bad guys in New Orleans.

This is my last Murderati post of 2012, so I wish you all health, luck and happiness for the coming New Year, and I’ll be back on Jan 1^st with a Wildcard round-up.

The consequences of violence

Zoë Sharp

The violent events of this week in Manchester, which led to the deaths of two female police officers, have once again raised the debate in the UK about the routine arming of the British police.

At the moment, most branches of the police in the UK do not carry firearms and most, it would seem, prefer it that way. The president of the Association of Chief Police Officers has issued a statement saying he’s not in favour, that it distances the police from the community, and that officers lost to firearms incidents in other countries often do not get a chance to draw their weapons in any case.

In other words, if criminals know the police are armed, they tend to shoot first and ask questions later.

If you look at the figures provided by the National Police Memorial Day organisation (NPMD this year is September 30^th), since 1945 a total of 256 police officers have been shot and killed in the UK and 21 have been stabbed to death. None of these deaths happened in Wales; four were shot and two stabbed in Scotland; 51 shot and 19 stabbed in England. But in Northern Ireland, where the police service IS routinely armed, 201 officers were shot dead.

In real life, I can see the advantages of allowing officers better means to protect themselves and the public, and equally I can see that arming the UK police as a matter of course is probably not the answer.

In fiction, though, it’s another matter.

One of the reasons I took Charlie Fox to work as a bodyguard in the States is that she is able to carry—and use—a gun, but I did not do this lightly. Yes, she has been forced to use a firearm in anger on numerous occasions. That ability to act with extreme violence when the need arises—both armed and unarmed—is part of the fabric of the character. She comes from a military background rather than from the police, and she’s working in an atmosphere where her opponents are likely both to be carrying and to be prepared to use all kinds of available weaponry against her.

More than that, she knows that when someone prepares to attack a target who has close-protection personnel the first rule is to take out the bodyguard. Her fast reactions, and her willingness to use whatever means necessary to defend her principal, is at the heart of her job. In FIFTH VICTIM: Charlie Fox book nine, I even have her throwing a horse at somebody. She is nothing if not inventive …

But although I was once accused of having a somewhat casual attitude to violence in my books, I feel I don’t treat the subject in a cavalier fashion. Violence has consequences, and that’s the way it should be. When Charlie gets injured, it damn well hurts. And it continues to hurt long after the event.

A broken sternum in one book still troubles her in the next. And when she is shot twice halfway through SECOND SHOT: Charlie Fox book six (and I’m not giving away too much there—the clue is kinda in the title) not only does she spend the rest of that book severely handicapped by her injuries, they have serious repercussions into the story that follows. I did not want her to take a round in the shoulder and leap up crying, “It’s just a flesh wound!” before beating the bad guys into the floor.

But at the same time I was aware that she was becoming reliant on having a gun to hand. So for the latest instalment, DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book seven, she wasn’t going to have that luxury. This is my tribute to the Bruce Willis movie, Die Hard, which is one of my all-time favourites—mainly because of Alan Rickman’s inspired performance as the bad guy. So, I put Charlie into a situation where she is unarmed, cut off from support, and trying to make life hard for the bad guys while working out a way to rescue the hostages.

Although I had a ball writing it, all the time I was trying to keep the reader aware that violence has consequences. Not everybody will survive. Those that do will carry the reminders for a long time afterwards. This is not quite real life, but it’s not a cartoon either.

I know there’s been a trend in recent years for ultra-violent crime fiction—stuff that’s almost gore-porn. I want to make you feel it, but not to the point where you squirm. For me this is escapist entertainment, maybe with just a little hint of an underlying message.

So, where do you stand on violence in fiction, fellow ‘Rati? Should it be toned down, ramped up, or don’t you care if it fits with the story?

This week’s Word of the Week is verbivore, meaning someone who has an enjoyment of words and wordplay. From the Latin verbum meaning word, and vorax from voro meaning devour. It was coined in the 1980s by Richard Lederer, following along the same lines as carnivore and herbivore.

By the time my next ‘Rati blog comes around I shall be at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Cleveland Ohio. I hope to see many of you there. If you spot me before I spot you, please come and say “Hi!”. I’m on a panel at 11:30am on Friday morning—‘I Am Woman Hear Me Roar’ on protagonists that are kicking butt and taking names—moderated by Nora McFarland, with Sara J Henry, Jennifer McAndrews, Meg Gardiner and Taylor Stevens. Should be fun!

And finally, a little gentle BSP, if I may be so bold. I was honoured to be asked to contribute to the excellent MAKING STORY: Twenty-one Writers on How They Plot, available on both Amazon UK and Amazon.com. Editor Timothy Hallinan has done a wonderful job of pulling all this disparate information together, and it should prove an invaluable resource.

More bang for your buck

Zoë Sharp

September marks the end of the first year of my Great e-Book Experiment. I can hardly believe that only twelve months ago I had none of the backlist Charlie Fox books out there in digital format. Now I have five of the books and a short story e-thology out on Kindle, and am just about to launch into all the other e-pub formats, plus my first foray into printed editions.

It’s been a hell of a year.

For me as a writer, the real joy has been to see Charlie’s story available again right from the beginning. So many readers wanted to start at book one, and I could see their enthusiasm waning when they discovered that only collector’s first editions were available, often at mind-boggling prices.

The first e-book I put together was FOX FIVE: a Charlie Fox short story collection. It was a huge, huge learning curve, during which I have many people to thank for putting up with my innumerable stupid questions. In many ways, it still IS a steep learning curve, but more on that later.

A short story anthology — which in e-book form I refer to as an e-thology in an attempt to bring the word into common usage! — was very different proposition from the first of the books themselves, however.

One of the things that immediately struck me was the layout. A traditional book often has a pre-title page (with just the book’s title on it), then the title page itself, copyright page, list of the author’s previous publications, a dedication, acknowledgements, maybe even the author biog. Only THEN do you reach the story itself.

With an e-book, where a prospective reader might well download a sample first before deciding to buy, those intro pages all eat into the sample. So I put the dedication on the title page, shifted the copyright, acknowledgements, and an extended author biog to the back of the book, but instead added a short synopsis — what would be the jacket copy on a printed book — so the reader is reminded of the story as soon as they open the file.

In addition, some brilliant writers were generous enough to do swap excerpts with me — Brett Battles, Blake Crouch, Lee Goldberg, Timothy Hallinan, and Libby Fischer Hellmann. I put a taster of one of their books in the back of one of mine, and they did the same for me. Plus, of course, an excerpt from the next book in the Charlie Fox series, just to whet your appetite for more.

And in KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one, I was also able to include the amazing Foreword by Lee Child, and my own Afterword, as well as two previously deleted scenes that I felt helped to fill out Charlie’s back story for what was to come. There’s also a short biog of the character, and the jacket copy for the other books in the series with suitable links.

In October, the next book in the series will be ready to go. Called DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten, it sees Charlie facing her toughest challenge.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, a celebrity fundraising event should have been the ideal opportunity for Charlie to piece together her working relationship with Sean, who has woken from his gunshot-induced coma with his memory in tatters. But the simple security job turns into a nightmare when an ambitious robbery explodes into a deadly hostage situation. Charlie is forced to improvise as never before, and this time she can’t rely on Sean to watch her back.

I’m already putting together the extras for the e-book version. And my question is, what else would you like to see in an e-book that there isn’t the space or opportunity to include in a printed book?

I’ve always loved the extras available on a DVD, and an e-book is now the literary equivalent. So, would you like insights from the author about the writing process, or asides about continuing characters giving you a little of their back story, or research notes that didn’t make the final cut? In DIE EASY, for example, I did an enormous amount of research about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, but only a fraction of that made it into — or was relevant to — the actual story. Would you like a bonus article on that?

I’m open to suggestions and fascinated to know what you all think! And I hope you’ll forgive for continuing to ask stupid questions — it’s how we learn :)

This week’s Word of the Week is epeolatry, meaning the worship of words. It comes from the Greek epos meaning word, and -latry meaning to worship.

I’m away this week, doing some very serious and labour-intensive research on a boat in the Mediterranean, but I’ll try to get to comments as soon as I can!

What you bring and what you take away

Zoë Sharp

It’s the goal of any writer to engage the reader in the story to the point where they forget just about everything else. One of my biggest thrills has always been receiving emails or comments from people that go something along the lines of: “You cost me a night’s sleep—I just couldn’t put the book down!”

Trying to create characters that readers can sympathise or empathise with, be repulsed or engaged by, is what we strive for. People tell me they’ve cried over some of the things that have happened in my books. I confess I’ve shed a tear or two myself while reading something that I can really connect to on an emotional level.

But it seems there’s much more to it than that.

Research by the Ohio State University has recently identified what they call “experience-taking” from works of fiction. Basically, this is what happens to people who find themselves closely identifying with and responding to the emotional thoughts and beliefs of characters. In the right circumstances, experience-taking may lead to real changes—albeit temporary—in behaviour and attitude.

In one study carried out by the university, seventy male heterosexual college students were asked to read a Day In The Life Of story about a fictional student. There were three versions of this story—one where the character was revealed to be gay early on in the narrative, one where this reveal happened late in the story, and one where the main character was heterosexual.

The results showed that these test readers reported higher levels of experience-taking from the version in which the sexual orientation was revealed later rather than earlier. It seems that if the students knew almost from the beginning that the character was not like them, it prevented them from really identifying with that character and experience-taking. But those who learned this fact late were just as likely to experience-take as those who read the heterosexual version.

And not only that, but they also reported what is described as “significantly more favourable attitudes towards homosexuals”. Similar results were recorded if the character was of different racial background to the student readers.

Experience-taking can have other subtle side-effects, according to Ohio State. Another experiment involved a story about a student encountering various obstacles—such as car problems, weather, long queues—on his way to vote. The different versions varied by having first-person or third-person narratives, as well as having the student attend either the same university, or a completely different one.

It possibly won’t surprise you to learn that the first-person account by a student from the same university had the highest level of experience-taking.

But it may surprise you to hear that this experiment was carried out on the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections. The participants were all eligible to vote, and when questioned later it was revealed that sixty-five percent of those who read that first-person/same-university story voted, compared to only twenty-nine percent who’d read a different version.

But experience-taking doesn’t happen every time you sit down to read. It only happens when the reader is able to fully immerse and lose themselves in the story, including to a certain extent putting aside their own identity while they’re doing so.

In one example, students were unable to experience-take if constantly reminded of their own self-image by the introduction of a mirror in the cubicle where they were reading. In these instances they were more likely to “perspective-take” instead, meaning they could understand what the character was going through, but without losing sight of their own identity.

Nevertheless, the university concluded that experience-taking could be very powerful because it was an unconscious process.

This information was particularly interesting to me as I write a first-person narrative with my Charlie Fox books and people have always told me how much they identify with the character. Charlie is a survivor, who’s come through some nasty experiences and developed inner strength from them.

I’ve always written primarily to entertain. But if people can take something of this inner strength of character, this determination not to be a victim, to walk tall and equal in an unequal world, then my work here is done.

What about you, ‘Rati? Have you ever found yourself experience-taking or perspective-taking from books you’ve read? Or books you’ve written, for that matter?

This week’s Word of the Week is eidolon, meaning a phantom or apparition, a confusing reflection or reflected image. From the Greek eidos form, from idein (aorist) to see. Also with the same derivation is idol, which has the archaic meaning of a phantom or a fantasy.

Finally, just to let you know that fellow 'Rati PD Martin has a brand new book out today. HELL'S FURY, book one in her new spy thriller series. Buy it today for $3.99 or £2.55