Left Coast Crime report

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I'm back from Left Coast Crime and I always try to do the con wrap-up for anyone who can't be there in person and so that I can sort out my own memories of the whirlwind that a conference always is. LCC is one of my favorite smaller cons, as laid-back as its name implies and one of the friendliest out there.

The actual conference was in Colorado Springs, but my con experience started in Denver, the night before, because mystery powerhouse and sweetheart Twist Phelan and her wonderful other half, Jack Chapple, were getting married and had arranged the wedding to coincide with LCC so that all their author friends could come (and also to say their vows on the Equinox, don’t think I didn’t notice that excellence of timing).

I’ll set the stage: Denver is a fairly good-sized city in a great bowl of plains, surrounded by a ring of very high snowy mountains. Gorgeous. Downtown is very funky – there’s a Gold Rush feel to it and an instant sense of eccentricity – in the layout of the streets (narrow and veering wildly all over the place, coming to strange triangles everywhere), in the buildings (many of which are built in strange triangles to fit the strange triangular intersections), and the overall dress is Wild West: lots of cowboy hats and boots and fur vests. The people – well, the people are a trip. As in San Francisco (another Gold Rush town – think about it), Denverites cultivate their eccentricities. One of my favorite sightings was a homeless guy perched on a bridge with a sign that read: SPACESHIP BROKE DOWN – NEED MONEY FOR PARTS. And from the look of him, he wasn’t kidding.

I shared a shuttle to the wedding with always amazing Guest of Honor Laura Lippman, superfun debut author Leslie Silbert, conference organizer/goddess Christine Goff, and the debonair Reed Farrel Coleman, who was liking the gender balance very much. Then the women somehow got into a appallingly detailed discussion of rape statistics and Reed had to explain to the suddenly very quiet male shuttle driver, “Crime writers, what can you do?”

The mood lightened immediately upon arrival at the Space Art Gallery. Knowing their friends, Twist and Jack had an open bar before the ceremony got started. The industrial style space was a great backdrop for all the red attire we had been requested to wear, which also matched the paintings. The latent production designer in me approved. And of course crime writers create their own special blend of drama everywhere they go: the vows and Twist’s dress got locked in an upstairs storage room- with a steel door. But that's where your law enforcement/author friends come in handy - the bride and groom had retired police detective Robin Burcell trying to break in to retrieve everything to get the wedding started.

I’m not usually one to cry at weddings (partly because I’ve often been the minister and that would be bad), but I shocked all my friends by starting in the moment Twist started down the stairs (to "Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night") in a shimmery pale gold dress that was worth breaking down a door for and being in every way the definition of radiance. I loved her little dance in the aisle. Then when minister Jan Burke (who was rocking her vestments) stepped up and opened the ceremony with a reading from The Velveteen Rabbit, well, it was all over for me – I don’t think I stopped crying, all through the speeches by Harley Jane Kozak and Reed Farrel Coleman, straight through the most excellent vows.  I think Jack actually might have outwritten Twist… he started deceptively simply and then killed it at the end (when I told him so after he said, “You do learn SOMETHING about structure, hanging out with you guys…)

It was all perfect loveliness, so wonderful to share an experience like that with the tribe.

As we moved on to Colorado Spings and the Cheyenne Mountain Resort, a storm front moved in.  Now, rational people understand that any conference in the winter is going to be dicey, but I am famous for forgetting that outside of California they have this thing called “weather.” As usual I showed up with a suitcase of clothes far better suited to the Bahamas than the Rockies. I had checked Weather.com, but too far in advance to have gotten the latest snow warning.

Still, there are worse things than being confined to a gorgeous resort hotel with stunning views outside and all your favorite people inside. This hotel was probably the best con venue I’ve ever been in as far as views go.  Every level of the place had floor-to-ceiling windows. Those of us from California were permanently parked in front of them; we could sit in any number of luxurious armchairs and sofas and watch the snow falling, or blowing, outside, while having conversations that ranged from comparing the storytelling intricacies of Stephen King and Ira Levin (with John Rector) to a howlingly funny discussion of toilet – um, etiquette (with Naomi Hirahara, Keith Raffel, and sparkling Catriona McPherson, who I'm pleased to say won the Bruce Alexander Historical Mystery Award), to the pleasurable challenge of deciphering the accents of designated Scotsmen Craig Robertson and Gordon Brown, Tartan Noir authors and organizers of Bloody Scotland, a brand-new international crime writing festival that is looking to be unmissable. And of course the inevitable ongoing e book marketing conversation (with LJ Sellers, Keith Raffel, and Elle Lothlorien).

There was work involved, too – I did a paranormal panel, the established author breakfast, and my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop, which I am thinking of retitling The Author's Guide to Great Climaxes. It was more of a challenge than usual - Denver is the Mile High City and altitude sickness is always a problem for me and it’s an actual miracle I got through the workshop without passing out. Just walking across a room was winding for a lot of attendees, not just me. Still, even though I had just 45 minutes to do what I have learned never to attempt in less than a two-hour block, it turned out to be one of the most rewarding workshops I’ve ever taught, on a multitude of levels. I was surprised by how many readers (non-writing) were in the audience and really got a charge out of it. One man I spoke to afterward said he had no interest in writing but he came to conferences, and workshops like mine, to improve his reading ability. I thought that was lovely, and heartening, and it answered a question I asked here on this blog just two weeks ago.

I was pondering how valid the conference experience is going to be in the future, now that authors can reach so many more people at once, and without cost, through online promotions, and Facebook has made it so possible and so much fun to have ongoing conversations between readers and writers. But obviously I had no idea what I was talking about.

A lot of people I know have been freaking out about piracy recently and panicking about how it will cut into authors’ royalties. Well, maybe.  And as was to be expected, panels like “The Future of Publishing” generated some friction (she said diplomatically) between authors, booksellers, and publishers.

But there is nothing like a conference to demonstrate that readers are savvy, loyal and intensely interested in preserving “their” authors’ welfares.  They know they have to buy us for us to keep writing for them. And we really don’t have to reach a million readers to make a comfortable living at this; a writing career can also be sustained by a much smaller, hardcore core, many of whom you meet and bond with at these conferences. It’s a symbiotic relationship that is fed by these magical encounters. We are a tribe, and I have every confidence that no matter how rough the publishing waters get, the tribe is going to have our backs.

Thanks a million to conference goddesses Christine Goff and Suzanne Proulx and all the fabulous volunteers for throwing a spectacular party!

In other news, as I’m sure people are hearing, Amazon has bought Goodreads, and everyone's atwitter (sorry...) Others here are far more active on GR than I am, so I wondered what you all thought.

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2013/03/amazon-buys-goodreads-twittersphere-upset

And on the subject of Amazon, there's this new wrinkle that authors need to be aware of.

http://janefriedman.com/2013/03/26/amazon-white-glove-program/

- Alex

WORDS MATTER

by Gar Anthony Haywood

"I can't believe I did that!" Harry shrieked horrifically.

"I can't believe it either!" Jane emphatically agreed.

"It was so stupid.  What was I thinking!"

"I don't know.  Two thousand exclamation points, and seven hundred adverbs!" Jane cried.  "What are we supposed to do with two thousand exclamation points and seven hundred adverbs!"

"Don't forget the twelve hundred replacements for 'said' and 'asked' the guy threw in for free.  I'm telling you, this was the telemarketer from hell!"

"I know what to do!" Jane exclaimed after a moment of thought.  "We could write a mystery, and use exclamation points in place of periods wherever the slightest bit of excitement needs to be conveyed!  Sometimes, we could even use them in place of question marks!"

"What!"

"You heard me.  And instead of all those boring 'saids' when people speak---"

"We could use the replacements and adverbs I bought instead!" Harry chuckled gleefully.  "And what a great read our mystery will be.  All that emotion and drama!"

"Which we couldn't possibly convey any other way..."

Okay, had enough?  I have.  In case you haven't already guessed, the subject of my post this week is dialogue, and I've led off with an example of the worst kind imaginable.

In this author's opinion, great dialogue, which both sings and moves your story forward simultaneously, has the following characteristics:

• It sounds like real people talking.  Over-stylized dialogue may win Tony awards on Broadway, but all it does in fiction is take the reader out of your story.  Go easy on the clever repartee and only use as much ethnic or professional jargon as realism demands.  Otherwise, every time a character opens his or her mouth, your novel will read like a playwriting exercise in Theater 101.

• It flows like fine wine.  Great dialogue hums with a natural rhythm, similar to a perfectly tuned car engine at idle.  To achieve this effect, it's often necessary to rewrite an exchange of dialogue over and over again, until every note sounds just right.

• It suits the situation.  I just read a thriller that was humming along just fine until a firefight broke out.  The two characters ducking for cover were facing almost certain death --- and one was talking nonsense while the other was cracking wise.  Neither was saying anything befitting someone afraid for his life.  Clearly, the author failed to ask (and adequately answer) a critical question before he opened his characters' mouths: "What would real people say to each other under these circumstances?"
  
  
• It's light on attribution and adverbs.  A simple "said" is fine here and there, if only to keep the reader straight on who's speaking, but that's it.  Anything else draws attention to yourself and what you're attempting to accomplish.

• It's consistent with the people involved.  A character who drops her Gs and says "ain't" instead of "isn't" on page eleven shouldn't abruptly start speaking like a Rhodes scholar on page 44.  Keep track of the speech patterns you assign every character and make sure they maintain them throughout your novel.

• It's lean and fast.  A long paragraph of unbroken speech coming from a single character isn't dialogue---it's a monologue.  And just as interminable, droning speeches cause your attention to wander in real life, so do they have the same deadly effect on someone reading a novel.  Ever hear of the KISS rule?  That's "Keep It Simple, Stupid."  Well, here's a new rule for you, strictly pertaining to dialogue: KISSS (Keep It Short and Sweet, Stupid.)

• It's almost totally devoid of expository information.  Believe me, I know how hard it can be to deliver 10,000 words of crucial data in only 400 pages so that your plot will make perfect sense to the reader in the end---but that's not your characters' problem, it's yours.  Charge the men and women in your book with the task of conveying the hows and whys of it through verbal exchanges and a reader will suddenly see them for exactly what they are: Not real people, but imaginary conduits for a writer struggling to lay the groundwork of his story.

• Not everybody sounds alike.  Patterns of speech are one of the most powerful devices with which to differentiate the people in your novel.  If you've given them adequate color in this area, you should be able to eliminate all attribution in a stretch of dialogue and still know who is saying what to whom.

• Not everybody sounds like you.  This is similar to the problem above, except that it's worse.  Don't ever kid yourself or anyone else who might ask: At least one character in every book you'll ever write is going to be you, in one thinly veiled disguise or another.  I mean, we don't invent the worlds we write about just so other people can walk around in them, do we?  So naturally, a character here or there is going to sound a lot like you when he speaks, and that's okay.  What's not okay is affixing this particular trait to your entire cast, especially if your pattern of speech happens to be jarringly distinctive.
  
  
• Not everybody is a comedian.  There's room for at least one smart-aleck in every story, especially if he or she is funny.  But invite more than one clown to a party and watch your guests start hitting the exits.  As noted in the previous two bullet-points, each of your characters should have their own set of personality traits, and among those traits should be a unique sense of humor (or total lack thereof).  Two people constantly trading wisecracks is a bore, but two people trading the same kind of wisecrack is both a bore and a crock.  Be careful here.

• Exclamations are practically non-existent.  Anything less than total outrage or sheer terror is insufficient grounds for an exclamation point.  Try to use them only when your character is responding to something along the lines of having just accidentally sliced his thumb off with a steak knife.

Question for the Class: What authors do you most admire for their dialogue, in particular?

THE 110% SOLUTION

by Gar Anthony Haywood

One of the things I have struggled with throughout my writing career is the nagging fear that I may not be working hard enough.  People who realize great success in this world tend to fight their way to the top, they don't simply ascend to it, so working extremely hard to get what I want has always been part of my great Master Plan.

For the most part, I think I have worked hard: I've put in long hours, rewritten my work endlessly, and cultivated relationships with dozens of people capable of moving my career forward.  I've done things to promote my writing that have forced me completely out of my comfort zone, and I've done scores of readings and signings for no other reason than to avoid the bad karma of declining.

But I don't work sixteen-hour days.

I don't Tweet.

I don't push myself to write X number of books in Y number of months.

I don't do cold calls seeking reviews or reads or meetings.

I don't blog on multiple websites.

I don't follow book-industry news on a daily basis just to keep up with the latest developments in e-publishing.

I don't attempt to sell myself to anyone I don't have reason to believe will be at least vaguely interested in buying.

I have my reasons for all these "don'ts," of course:

I'm a married father of two pre-teen children who needs his sleep.

I'm on a very limited budget.

Self-promotion makes me feel like an ass.

I have a low tolerance for rejection.

All of the above would be fine if I were selling my work in decent numbers regardless, but I'm not.  As I've alluded to here on occasion, I've been writing from the depths of a career downtrend for a while now, so if ever there was a time to pull out all the stops to get ahead, this would be it.  The trouble is, I feel like I am pulling out all the stops.  The effort I'm making now to grow my career feels like everything I've got to give, despite all the things I'm not doing that so many writers today are.

But maybe I'm just kidding myself.  Maybe I'm in denial.  Lazy slackers are always the last to realize they are lazy slackers, so maybe I have a lot more to give in terms of elbow grease than I've simply been willing to admit.

Maybe what feels like 110% effort to me is in fact only about 85 percent, relative to the real ass-kickers in our business.

If so, I've got to find that extra 25% somewhere, and fast.  Because my desire to succeed as an author is as strong today as it's ever been.  Despite all the seeming evidence of sloth and indifference to the contrary.

CAREER BUILDING(S)

by Gar Anthony Haywood

As I've mentioned several times recently, the family and I are the proud owners of a new home.  We moved into a classic "fixer-upper" in the Glassell Park area of Los Angeles last October, and I've been plenty busy ever since putting the Humpty-Dumpty its previous owners had reduced the place to back together again (with the help of a few fine contractors, plumbers, electricians, etc., of course).

Not long after we moved in, in keeping with a promise the wife and I made our two kids, we bought a family dog.   Our first family dog.  His name is Bruno, and he was just a twelve-week-old boxer-slash-fill-in-the-blank (Mastiff?  Pit bull?) puppy when we first got him --- but look at him now:

As the dog owners among you well know, owning a dog is a lot of work, and much of that work involves walking.  Lots and lots of walking.  I personally take Bruno out walking at least two times a day.  As Glassell Park is almost all hills, depending on the distance I choose to cover, these walks can be a real workout.  But I love them.  One, because I need the exercise, and two, because telling an author to go out walking his dog is essentially giving him a license to plot.  I solve more writing problems in Bruno's company than I do sitting at my computer desk.

But there's one other reason I enjoy walking the dog: Discovering my new neighborhood.  Exploring all its twists and turns, the "not-a-through-streets" and "no-outlets."  Seeing and meeting the community's diverse mix of people and marveling at its wild array of architectural styles.  In doing all this exploring two, sometimes three times a day, a curious thought has occurred to me: A house is a lot like a writing career.

Every author starts out here: On a vacant plot of land, peering into a future that seems vast and full of endless possibilities.

You sell a book, maybe two.  A foundation is built.  From that foundation, some authors --- good, lucky, or a combination of the two --- will go on to construct a veritable mansion . . .

 

. . . while others will build the foundation of a career and nothing more.

Some writing careers grow slow and steady, one floor at a time . . .

. . . and some either come to a screeching halt somewhere in the construction process, or simply peter out, like an old alarm clock winding gradually, inexorably down.

All too often, when a writing career falters before it can be made whole, it fades away to nothing, leaving little in the way of a mark behind to indicate it ever existed at all.

And then there are writing careers that wane but refuse to die.  Work picks up again, the once-dormant build site starts to hum with new life . . .

 

. . . and another mansion --- or comfy cottage --- eventually rises toward the heavens.

 

Or a new plot of ground is staked out upon which to start the construction process all over again.

Funny, the things a writer thinks about while walking his dog, isn't it?

THE FUN FACTOR

by Gar Anthony Haywood

The book I'm writing at present is not the one I should be writing.  The book I should be writing is one far more likely to sell.  A book with a high concept, or one featuring a new character around whom I could build a "franchise."  Instead, I'm writing the seventh book in my Aaron Gunner private eye series, a novel that fits the description of a can't-miss bestseller about as well I fit that of an Osmond brother.

Why?  Because I want to.

Sorry, but that's the only real reason I've got.  I haven't written a book about Gunner in ages and I miss the man.  I had a great idea for an opening that turned into a great idea for a Gunner novel and I simply couldn't find the will to put off writing it.  I've been far more calculating about my book projects than this in the past, on a number of occasions, but for the most part, this is how I've always operated: chasing the joy, not the dime.

I know I'm not alone in taking this ass-backwards route to success, but I wonder just how many bestselling authors have had it pay off?  Is anybody making real money and having fun writing at the same time?  Doing only what they want to do, without exception?

God, I hope so.

Because I can't write worth a damn if I'm not having fun.  I've tried writing like an adult, with the detached efficiency of a plumber running pipe or an insurance salesman hawking life-term policies, and I hate it.  Writing for me is a slog under the best circumstances, and having fun --- yes, fun --- is the only way I get through it.  My need to write is all about the stories I feel compelled to tell, not the bills I'm obligated to pay.  The long-term dream for me has never been as simple as to make a living writing; the dream has always been to someday have it both ways: to write exactly what I want to write, each and every time out of the box, and make a damn good living doing it.

Evidence to date would suggest I'm just kidding myself, but that's okay.   Hope springs eternal.

So I'm writing Gunner Number 7 and loving it.  It's hard work, and some days it feels like I'm trying to pull a cow on a leash through a field of quicksand --- but I don't mind.

It's my cow, and it makes me feel good.