LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO ONE OF MY FAVORITE AUTHORS

By Brett Battles

I seldom do interviews here at Murderati. Okay, that’s a lie. I have never done an interview here yet that I can remember. But when I looked at the calendar and saw that a book I really love by a very good friend of mine was coming out this month, I contacted him and asked if he’d like to share some time with us. So today I bring you the immensely talented Tim Hallinan.

Tim writes a series of thrillers set in Bangkok. His main character is Poke Rafferty, a travel writer who has created a new life with a patched together family that have come to mean the world to him. Rose, a former bar girl, is the love of his life, and Miaow, a girl who spent her first several years on the street, is the adopted daughter he will do anything to protect. If you have not picked up one of this books (A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART, THE FOURTH WATCHER, BREATHING WATER), you need to do so now. They are, quite simply, outstanding.

Tim’s latest is THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, and it is…well, you’ll quickly see what I think about it. Let’s get started:

THE QUEEN OF PATPONG has just been released. First, congratulations! Now down to business. The book is a very ambitious work in which you've done something that many writers would have balked at even trying. The fact that you not only pulled it off, but pulled it off in a way that has helped you create one of the best books of the year (my opinion) is an amazing achievement. Did you ever have any doubts as you were writing this story?  How did you overcome them?

Well, thanks for being so nice about the book, and thanks also for the great blurb. 

It’s easy to blurb a book that I love. So…doubts?

I was all doubts.  My doubts were so deep-seated that when I turned the book into William Morrow I more than half-expected them to reject it. 

I was worried about two things.  First, and less of an issue, was the way I was screwing with the thriller form.  The first 30,000 words set up a thriller in an efficient way.  Probably gives the reader the expectation that he or she is in for a fast-moving, tightly focused wham-bam story.  A nightmare figure from Rose's life as a bar girl suddenly materializes, placing the family under physical threat and also revealing up all sorts of emotional fault lines among them: Rose has lied about her past; Miaow, on the verge of becoming a good little bourgois in her fancy school, is horrified that her mother's life as a prostitute is reasserting itself; and Poke is finding that there are some secrets he may not be able to accept.  So the action intensifies and the emotional conflict comes to a boil and just the family is on the verge of flying apart, Rose sits them down and says she'll tell them what happened. 

And the reader turns the page expecting the story to continue and instead finds himself or herself in a dusty little Thai village a dozen years or so earlier as an awkwardly tall, tremendously shy teenager named Kwan, which means “Spirit,” spends her last hour in the life she knows, because she's just about to learn that her father has contracted to sell her into prostitution.  That's the beginning of the longest section of the book, almost 45,000 words, as Kwan runs away to Bangkok, goes to work in a bar, is befriended and betrayed, and gradually reassembles herself as Rose, the worldly woman whom Poke fell in love with and married, and who quit the bars to be with him and Miaow.  When this section is over, we've learned where Rose came from and why she is what she is.

That was definitely taking a chance, but it worked out beautifully. In fact, I could have read even more of Rose’s story. And your second worry?

In one word, women.  This part of the book takes place in a world of women, and I've always been nervous about writing women.  I wrote eight published novels before I had the nerve to put two women in a room without a man present, and that scene was as short as I could possibly make it.  And there I was in QUEEN, not only writing women all over the place, but women at an intimate juncture of their lives.  It's a story about female friendship and enmity and trials.  The men in the story are mostly customers, faceless, like walking ATMs.  They're just shadows – the characters are all women.  Scared me to death.  I can't tell you how many times I almost junked the whole book.

It's funny.  When I started that section I had no idea how to tell the story – and then, out of nowhere, one character threw a sapphire earring to another.  And the whole story of those earrings came to me as a single piece, and it helped me lead Kwan into this strange new world where she would be merchandise and where everything has a price and where there's no way to tell what's real and what's an imitation.  Writing is the single most interesting process I know of.

One other thing that scared me about this section was that I had to do it right – it couldn't cheapen what the women go through.  I'm part of a small group that tries to keep at least some girls out of the sex trade by paying their families to maintain them in school rather than selling them down to Bangkok.  The very day I started to write the Rose section, I got a long e-mail with a picture of a 16-year-old girl whose grandmother had been going to sell her until the local school teacher got wind of it and called one of the other people in the group.  And they went up north and had a sort of intervention, and grandma accepted the offer, and the girl is still in school.  The photo broke my heart, and the intervention went straight into the book, where it happens to Rose (or Kwan, as she's called then).  Knowing what that little girl was almost  put through made it extra-important for me to try to get things right.  And I kept remembering a quote from David Sedaris: “Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.”  So I decided that if anyone was going to read this book looking for titillation, I was going to make it very difficult for them to find it.

Anyway, after the long section/novella about Rose, we're suddenly jolted back into the present and the world of the thriller, through a long action scene that I will say with complete immodesty is the best action scene I ever wrote.

This is your forth Poke Rafferty novel - and in my opinion, the best so far (which I seem to have gotten into the habit of saying after each book you finish) - is there anything you set up at the start about Poke, Rose, Miaow and the others that you wish you'd done differently now? If yes, what?

No.  In my first series, the Simeon Grist PI mysteries, I wrote Book One, and three weeks later I had a three-book contract.  I was stuck with everything in the first book, including some unsatisfactory relationships and a few crappy ideas.  That series lasted for six books and I kicked myself a dozen times, every time I wrote a new one, about the decisions I'd made in the first.

So before I did anything with the Poke series I wrote a whole novel, Bangkok Tango, just to make sure I'd asked myself all the questions that seem so obvious later.  The mistakes I made in Bangkok Tango surfaced in the second book, A Nail Through the Heart, which was the first one I submitted for publication, and I was able to fix them as they arose.  If I ever write another series, which I doubt I will, I'll write another “drawer book” first to get the kinks out.

And I've cannibalized Bangkok Tango for everything that was good in it.  I feel like one of those guys who rips copper wiring and wooden molding and hardwood flooring out of old buildings.  Poor old Bangkok Tango has been stripped pretty bare. 

Well, it served its purpose. Don’t know if I could write a book knowing ahead of time that it was just going to go into the drawer. But what a great idea. So is there anything you did set up in the books that did come out that has paid off unexpectedly in later novels?

You know how it is.  Everything pays off eventually.  Probably most conspicuous is the street kid named Superman who took care of Miaow before the books begin and who's a main character in the first book, A Nail Through the Heart.   I got hundreds of e-mails asking what happened to him after the end of Nail, and two books later, in Breathing Water, when Poke came up against the most powerful people in Thailand and I wanted to show the other end of the scale – the most powerless people – there Superman was with his army of street kids.  And in The Fourth Watcher, a very shady former CIA guy, Arnold Prettyman, takes Poke to a bar where old spies hang out.  A bunch of those superannuated spooks will be Poke's main allies in The Fear Artist, which might be the next book. 

Sooner or later, everything seems to come back.

So I guess that semi-answers the what’s next for Poke question…well, sort of. But that brings up a larger view question…since this is a series, I’m wondering if you have an end point in mind? Not so much as the plot of the last novel, but an idea where Poke, Rose and Miaow end up when you’re done. Is this something that you think about? Or maybe you haven’t even let your mind go there yet.

I'd like to write this family until Miaow gets married.  And then, who knows?  Maybe I'll write a much older Poke and Rose, enduring the perils of thrillers and empty-nest syndrome at the same time.  Maybe they'll split up and Poke will have to deal with being alone.  I have no idea, but I want to stay with them.

One thing I hadn't realized about the series until I got to the third book was how much attention Miaow was going to require.  Children change all the time.   In four books she's gone from being a former street child who still can't believe she has more than one pair of shoes to a burgeoning teen who's desperate to leave her old identity behind and  be more like the kids in her semi-snotty school.  My God, she's got a budding boyfriend now, a stuffy little Vietnamese 12-year-old who has no idea what he's getting into.  As much as I've loved everything about writing these books, Miaow has been a total gift of the universe, a joy to write from start to finish.

In addition to THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, I understand there are some exciting things happening with your first series, the Simeon Grist books. First can you give those of use who are not familiar with them the quick low-down on what they’re about, and then share what’s going on?

Odd you should ask.  This hardly looks prearranged at all. 

Simeon Grist is a Los Angeles private eye with a useless string of UCLA diplomas; he stayed in college because he knew how they graded people in college but he wasn't so sure how it worked in the outside world.  He finds his vocation by accident when someone throws a friend of his then-girlfriend, Eleanor Chan, off the roof of one of the UCLA residence halls and Simeon solves the case.

There are six books in the series, which one critic called “One of the great lost series of the 90s,” which I guess is a compliment.  They qualified for cult status by getting great reviews and zero sales. 

The first two books series, The Four Last Things and Everything But the Squeal, are now available on Kindle for the – are you sitting down? – amazing price of $2.99.  That's practically cheaper than free.  And I'm writing Simeon again right now, for the first time in fifteen years, but in a book that's very different from the first six. 

But if I have a message here, it's that everyone in the world will approach life differently – be taller, happier, better looking, richer, more popular, sexier, and more like the person in the world they most idolize – if they buy and read The Queen of Patpong.  And I can say that completely impartially.

_____

Thanks so much, Tim, for stopping by! Just wanted to tell all of you again how fantastic Tim’s new book is. Seriously, it is stunning, and, as far as I’m concerned, a must read. Tim mentioned above that I provided him a blurb for the book. Here’s what I said:

Queen of Patpong is simply outstanding. Compelling, heart-wrenching, and oh so satisfying. I didn’t think there was any way Tim Hallinan’s Bangkok Thriller series could get any better, but it has. Hallinan has once again proved to me why he is one of my all time favorite authors.

I meant every word of that.

If you have anything you’d like Tim or any comments you’d like to make, go for it! I’m traveling today, so I’ll check in when I can, but Tim will be in and out. Otherwise you can learn more at Tim's website.

Things I Learned At RWA

JT Ellison

Last week I ventured down to Orlando for the RWA conference. For those of you unfamiliar with the acronym, RWA is Romance Writers of America. RWA is to romance writers what ITW eventually could be for thriller writers, and I say eventually because RWA has 10,000 writers on its rolls, 145 chapters, and a conference that quite simply smokes everything I’ve ever been to. That’s not a knock on ITW – I adore the organization, have bled, sweated and cried for them, and thought this year’s Thrillerfest was the best yet. Pretty impressive considering they’re only 5 years old.

But RWA is… different.

After the event was moved to Orlando from Nashville after the Flood™, I had my doubts about attending. A – I was terribly upset that they’d pulled out (*more on that later). I felt like if they’d given us a chance, we could have worked out the conference, and the hotels, etc. But I was doing a workshop with Allison, and didn’t want to shirk my obligations there. B – it was my husband’s birthday. Birthdays are a big deal in the Ellison household. We’d planned around RWA, with so many of our friends coming to town, we were going to have a lovely little party. Suddenly, all that went up in smoke. C – it’s been a BIG travel year. Another plane, another hotel, another five days away from work, just rang my bell (and my wallet. This is a pricey con, the most expensive out there. BUT ALL INCLUSIVE – so it really saves you money.)

If it had been anywhere but Orlando, I would have bailed. But we’ve got family in the central Florida region, so I planned to go ahead. Big mistake. One I won’t make again in the future. Traffic, driving unfamiliar roads, and being walloping sick with some sort of plague we caught in New York that necessitated two rounds of antibiotics (which I’m still on) made it a real pain in the ass. And I couldn’t do any of the big events, because driving 90 minutes at midnight seemed like a bad idea.

So I stuck to the days, and attended the lunches, and some workshops.

And found out that all my preconceived notions about RWA were wrong, wrong, wrong.

I'm honestly not sure where to begin.

Let’s start with the Literacy Signing. 600 authors. Lines of people that numbered in the thousands. $60,000+ raised for literacy. Holy Smokes, right?

I went in planning to watch and learn, and was shocked and surprised to find that several people knew me, came to see me, and were sharing me with their friends. Those are the finest, most uplifting words an author can hear – “I loved it so much I had to tell all my friends to read it.” Sharing is good. It makes us happy.

Or the Harlequin signing, where I signed for 90 minutes without a break (granted, I was next to Heather Graham) and came out just rocked with excitement - that's a lot of new readers to touch in one sitting.

Revelation number one: Alex and Allison and Toni have been preaching it for a while now, but the literacy and HQN events proved it. Romance readers READ, and not just romance. They read everything. Ignore them at your own peril, I’ll tell you that. I think it sometimes takes seeing something with your own eyes for it to register fully. Well, if you have any trust in me whatsoever, listen to what I’m saying. If you’re a writer,  published or not, you should go to RWA at least once. It’s a magnificent display of publishing – still in its glorious hey dey, still reaching millions of people, still the coolest, craziest and most uplifting job in the world. Anyone who thinks books are dead needs to go to this conference.

And the girl power was unmistakable. Alex and I met a sweet girl from Germany who has the soul of a poet (you can read it in people’s eyes, truly) and when she asked how we knew each other, and Alex said we were probably burned together at the stake for being witches in a past life SHE GOT IT. Hoo-rah! Sometimes the boys look at us, well, strangely is the best term. It was fun to swim in the estrogen ocean for once.

Revelation number two: I learned that the umbrella of “romantic suspense” is much, much broader than I’d originally thought. I have an ongoing love story. It’s not predominant, and I’ve always heard that for RS the rule is the romance must predominate and the suspense must come second. Well, I figured out this weekend that that’s all a matter of very subjective taste. I’m a thriller writer, no doubt, but I’m probably just one orgasm away from being solid romantic suspense.

Therein lies the rub – the boy books have sex, and no one’s calling them romances. John Sandford has Lucas Davenport get it on with his wife (and in previous books, an indiscriminant amount of women) and no one would ever think to call him RS. So why does a woman writer have to be labeled that way? Because women won’t pick up a Sandford book knowing they’re going to get some hot sex? What about Barry Eisler? Lee Child? Vince Flynn?

Revelation number three: I guess it’s safe to say that though I read and enjoy romantic suspense and straight romance, I’ve always avoided the label so I could maintain a base of male readers. Which is kind of stupid thinking, but you know, I’m new, and I’m going to make mistakes. Coming out of RWA, I’m not even sure that the genre labels matter. I’m realizing we get ourselves pretty twerped out over exactly where we fit into the pie, and that’s just not as vital to know anymore, because the genres are melding anyway. Write the best damn story you can possibly come up with, and you'll attract readers. Their gender doesn't matter.

Revelation number four: What’s important is branding. I think the brand is the key. After a great deal of thinking, here’s what I came up with (with a major nod to Alex Kava for planting this thought…)

People know that if they pick up a novel by JT Ellison, they’ll get a strong female lead, a fast-paced story centering on a crime, and a glimpse into Nashville, Tennessee. Three little things that are very brand specific, and none have anything to do with genre labels.

I’ll tell you something else. I started reading JD Robb’s SEDUCTION IN DEATH on my way home. That book is as dark and nasty – possibly even more so – than any of mine. I’d always thought it was romance heavy, and boy was I wrong. I see how a master makes this work – you can have sex, and violence, and ruminations on love and relationships, all against the backdrop of a futuristic world, without it having to have a label. It’s simply a great story.

Lightbulb. Over. Head.

Revelation number five: RWA is what this is all about. There are so many different kinds of writers there. I walked away inspired, scared, confused and eventually inspired again. I am already making plans to go to #RWA11 in New York next June. And this time, I’m going to take in every little bit this conference has to offer, whether I’m feeling up for it or not.

I realize I haven’t even scratched the surface of what I took away from RWA. But I’ve detained you long enough. So next post, I’m going to talk about one of the workshops I attended, given by Donald Mass, and the bizarre revelation I had about what voice really is.

So let’s talk about labels today. I’d love to hear from some of our industry professionals on just how much they should matter to the writer as he/she are writing, or whether it’s a marketing tool for the publishers more than anything else. And for the readers: is there a genre you won’t pick up and read because you have a preconceived notion of what will lie therein? Any revelations you’ve had about different writers or genres?

Wine of the Week: Villa Pozzi Nero D'Avola - this wine was truly spectacular. Dark, jammy, smoky - one of the finest nero d'avolas I've ever had, and ridiculously inexpensive.

*A note about the RWA move from Nashville to Orlando. After seeing the massive scale that this conference covers, from all the attendees to incredible organizers and goodies and workshops and dinners and lunches and parties and awards and even the incredible conference program, I now completely understand WHY they had to move. And had to move they did – to be honest, that the conference ran as smoothly as it did was a feat of Herculean proportions, and my hat is off to RWA for pulling it off. I rescind any previous snark about pulling out of Nashville. But I do hope y’all will think about coming back. We have a lot to offer.

No sex, please, we're mystery writers

by Alexandra Sokoloff

When my first book came out I didn’t read my reviews all that often, except the biggest ones.    Maybe that was mostly because I was so deep in the middle of the second and it was such an intense experience that I blocked out most of what else was going on around me.   I know some authors don’t read reviews at all.    I don’t avoid them, but I don’t try to hunt them down.   But you do get a lot of them by osmosis, and it is useful to have an overview, because by the fourth book I am getting a sense of some patterns of response, here.  

And one of them I find really amusing, always from men, of course, is the “unnecessary romance” gripe.    Usually phrased as “unnecessary sex”.  

Now, the first thing that comes to mind is, “Unnecessary to whom, exactly?’   Because I know these characters I’m writing pretty well, and I can assure you that they don’t feel sex is unnecessary.  As a matter of fact, if you asked them, they’d probably say it was about !%@#&* time by the time it finally happens.    I myself would be pretty unhappy if I had to go the whole length of a book without sex.

But it’s really interesting how some genre puritans – I mean purists – just do not think sex belongs in a crime thriller, or a horror novel, or a mystery. 

Maybe I’m just coming from a different frame of reference.   I’m sure Steve, Rob and Toni can back me up on this – the love subplot is just de facto in Hollywood, except in the most extreme cases, and so you learn to weave it in as an essential part of your plot.  

But I still can’t understand why people would be so put off by sex in a thriller.   If you’re not getting off on the sex, doesn’t that mean, basically, you’re getting off on the violence?   Worrisome.

Anyway, long rant to get to what I really wanted to talk about.   I am not going to be taking sex out of my books (in fact, having done a paranormal, now, coming out in November, people who read me better be bracing themselves for more than usual).     But I do feel very strongly that the love plot has to be essential to the action, and thematic, not just a throwaway.

It’s sort of a monumental task to take on the structure of romance, so I’m been starting to break it down into elements one at a time, to see what I can learn about what makes a great love story.   I talked about how crucial theme is in a love story before, and today I’m focusing on a particular dynamic between characters that I’ve noticed lately.

There’s a saying I’m sure you’ve heard that in a relationship there is always a Lover and a Loved One. Whether that’s actually true in life, I’m not sure I want to know; one would hope these things would be somewhat equal. But I know this Lover/Loved One dymanic tends to be the case in romantic comedy (the romance readers/writers will have to tell me if it’s the case in romance fiction, I’d love to know your thoughts.). Either way, it’s a useful model for writing romance, and I think for a love subplot, too.

In most stories, for most of the story, there’s an imbalance between the hero and heroine, or hero/hero, or heroine/heroine… the two lovers, whatever gender and orientation they may be. (I’m not going to get into the subgenre of ménages today, sorry.)

At first what this looks like is that there’s a Pursuer and a Pursued - but the pursuer might not be the one who loves most deeply. The pursuit might be ego-based, or to win a bet, or obviously, just sexual conquest - any number of things.
Now, the two characters might equally hate each other at first: as in WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, YOU’VE GOT MAIL.

But pretty quickly in most romantic comedies, one of the characters becomes more interested in the other, and becomes the pursuer.

Note that the protagonist can be either the pursuer or the pursued. In NOTTING HILL, Hugh Grant is the pursuer (in that diffident English way, of course...). In IT’S COMPLICATED, Meryl Streep is the pursued.

In WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, Harry is the pursuer. In YOU’VE GOT MAIL, Tom Hanks is the pursuer. In PHILADEPHIA STORY, Katharine Hepburn is the pursued. (arguably in these three films there is no true protagonist; the hero/heroine characters are about as equal as characters ever get in a story)

Hmm, do we see a pattern here? Male pursues, female is pursued. Maybe biology really IS destiny. No, wait - in BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY, Bridget is the pursuer. In BRINGING UP BABY, Katharine Hepburn is the pursuer (but not the protagonist). And I’m sure you can think of a lot of other examples.)

But the pursuer is not the same as the Lover, necessarily. In NOTTING HILL, Hugh is both the pursuer and the lover (he is definitely the one who feels most deeply in the tentative dance going on between him and Julia Roberts). In IT’S COMPLICATED, Alec Baldwin is very much the pursuer, Meryl Streep is the pursued, and Steve Martin is the lover (also a pursuer, but overwhelmed by Alec Baldwin’s intense pursuit. But in this trio, Steve Martin is most clear about who and what he wants.).

In WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, Harry is the pursuer, but not the lover. At a certain point, it’s Sally who realizes that she wants more than friendship. She becomes the lover.

In PHILADELPHIA STORY, Cary Grant is the pursuer and also the lover, but interestingly, he’s coming from much more of a position of strength than the lover usually comes from; from the beginning, he has no intention of compromising.

Pursued and pursuer, lover and loved one, different combinations of and variations on those dynamics. 

And once I noticed that dynamic, I also noticed that there’s a very typical scene, usually in the very last part of Act II:2, but sometimes in Act III, that I’ll call “The Lover Makes a Stand” (Takes a stand? Makes a stand? Looking it up. Okay, it’s “makes a stand.”).
 
And in this scene the Lover, or whoever has become the Lover by this point, the one who loves most deeply, basically says to the Loved One - “I’m not going to take your bullshit any more. Make up your mind. Either commit to me or don’t, but if you don’t, I’m out of here.”

Steve Martin tells Meryl Streep that she’s not done with Alec yet, and he doesn’t want to see her while she’s still emotionally involved with him. Hugh Grant tells Julia Roberts in the bookstore that between her “vicious temper” and his far more inexperienced heart, he doesn’t think he would recover from being discarded again, and turns down her offer to date. Sally refuses Harry’s offer to go to the New Year’s party as his “friends with benefits” date because “I’m not your consolation prize, Harry.”

Cary Grant – well, in PHILADELPHIA STORY Cary makes his stand at the very beginning, in action, not words. The whole movie is about him creating a situation that will force Katharine Hepburn to look at herself clearly and choose what and whom she really wants. Cary never begs. He manipulates, then stands back and watches until she falls, and in falling becomes the whole woman he always knew she could be, but he will not accept less than.

(And that, btw, is the sort of thing that makes a person Cary Grant...)

In all of the above scenes, the Lover’s Stand forces the Loved One to step up and commit just as deeply as the Lover is committed. But it seems that very, very, very often, it’s one character, the Lover, who has to force the issue.

It’s such a common scene, I’m going to have to stick it in my Story Elements Checklist, right around Sequence 6 or Sequence 7.

Now, sometimes there’s a different scene at this juncture, which I will call The Declaration. A very good example is in BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY, when Bridget races to the party to tell Colin Firth she loves him, only to find that his parents have thrown the party to announce his engagement and departure for America. Then she makes her Declaration – a mangled sort of toast that Colin understands is her desperate confession of love. It’s not the same as a Make a Stand scene because it’s not saying, “I’ve had it, I’m walking.” But it does put the cards on the table so the Loved One will have to make a decision, one way or another.

The more I look specifically at the way love plots work, the more these elements seem to be the natural – or unnatural, if you want – rhythm of courtship.    For better or worse, but that’s the way the game plays out.    And that’s an interesting thing to know, whether your book or script is all romance, or whether you’re working on a love plot for your mystery or thriller.

What do you think, all you romance writers out there who are far more qualified to write this post than I am? Am I on to something, here?

Any examples of Pursuer/Pursued, Lover/Loved One? Or examples of The Lover Makes A Stand scenes or Declaration scenes for us?   Or other essential elements of romance/love plots that you’ve found?

Or am I wrong, and sex really doesn’t belong in a mystery/thriller?

- Alex

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I'm teaching a 2-week online Screenwriting Tricks For Authors workshop this month - details here.

AT PLAY IN THE FIELD OF THE WRITTEN WORD PART 3

by Brett Battles

I hadn’t actually intended to write a Part 3 of the saga, mainly because I thought the saga was all played out. But given what’s happened since posting Part 1 and Part 2 (and what’s happened is, well…just wait till you’ve read the whole post), I felt it was necessary. In fact, I think I might just continue this series until the book is done, reporting in every once in a while as to what has happened.

So, let’s begin. When I last talked to you about the stand alone I was writing, I said that I had written proposals for three different directions, and that my publisher had chosen one. With that I was off to the races!

And the races I hit. For the next two weeks I wrote my tail off.

(Aside: we all write at different speeds, and approach writing a book in different ways. My way is to write a first draft pretty much non-stop, warts and all, then go back and rewrite until it is presentable. What that translates into is that I plow through the pages. And given the fact that I’m doing this fulltime, it means I plow through A LOT of pages.)

At the end of this two-week period, I had a sizeable chunk of the draft done, and was excited about where things were going.

Then I did something we all do. I randomly visited a bookstore.

No. Wait. I need to back up a moment.

For my stand alone I chose a very specific location. One that was personally important to me, and one that has some very specific attributes. There is only one other writer I know who has written about the area in the past several years.  Just to be safe, I read one of this person’s books to make sure we didn’t overlap. We didn’t. So I moved on, a happy camper.

Let’s flash back to that bookstore. While browsing around, I started looking around the thriller section, and came across more books by the author I mentioned above. (An excellent author, BTW, who writes equally excellent books.) On the shelf were four books from this person’s series, the first of which was the one I had already read. I was curious where she went with the series, so I picked up the other three books one-by-one to see what they were about. The first two were both set along the California coast, no where near where their first book and my new manuscript were located, and, even better, had nothing to do with the plot I was writing.

Then I picked up the last book. This one WAS set in same place as mine. Okay, no problem. Lots of books share similar locations.

Then I started reading the synopsis on the back.

“Uh-oh.” Though it was not entirely clear what the story was about, what was there sounded familiar. Immediately, I knew I needed to read the book. Still, I wasn’t too worried. I mean, how close could it be to what I was writing? When I got home that evening I started reading.

By 1 a.m., my eyes were wide, and my brain was reeling. What I discovered was that there WERE several things that were not just vaguely similar, but WAY too close to what I was working on. I got out of bed, and shot off a quick email to my agent saying I wanted to talk to her first thing in the morning New York time (I’m west coast.)

When I woke up…okay, I was already awake, unable to sleep for long…When 9 a.m. ET came around, I called. I explained to my agent what I discovered, and think I actually could hear the blood draining from her face. “Call your editor.”

That’s exactly what I did. Surprisingly, she was very calm about it. “Have you read the whole book?” “Not yet.” “Well, maybe it turns out that things are different.” “Maybe, but I doubt it.” “Read the book, then send me a short synopsis, and where the similarities are between the two.”

I spend the rest of the day (that would be two weeks ago last Monday), reading and doing a cross story analysis. And I came up with one very definitive truth – I could not write the book I’d been writing.

Similarity included: the triggering event, the fact that this event happened around 20 years in the past, the villain, deaths of old friends, and, of course, the location. I’m just being general here. Trust me, the core elements of the stories were very similar.

Granted, the way I was telling the story, and the way the other author told their story were different, but it didn’t hid the fact that there was too much the same.

I sent my notes off to my editor, and then realized I had a choice to make. I could just sit around and feel miserable, or I could be proactive and keep myself moving forward.

Those who know me know that being miserable is not a trait I know how to do well. I’m not of the “why-me?” variety, I’m of the “what-do-I-need-to-do-to-keep-moving-forward?” variety.

So in that vein, I took the finding of this book to be a fortuitous discovery. My God, how horrible would it have been if I hadn’t found it? The author had already agreed to read my book when it was done. Can you imagine if I had finished it and sent it off to them? (Rob suggested that if the author were to give me a blurb it may have been, “It’s was a great book…when I wrote it!” Hilarious, in a tragedy averted kind of way. But I have a feeling this author is too kind to ever write something like that. But they might have pointed out the similarities to me, and boy would that have been embarrassing!)

The next day (Tuesday), I returned to my favorite coffee shop determined to come up with an alternate plot that could save some of the elements from the original story. You might be wondering why I didn’t just suggest I do one of the other ideas I had proposed…well, my publisher really liked many aspects of the story they’d chosen, as did I, so I wanted to preserve what I could. Especially, for personal reasons, the location.

With the help of good friend and author Bill Cameron via iChat, I was able to brainstorm a new story. And guess what? It was even BETTER than the old one. Tons better. I wrote up a new synopsis and sent it off.

By Wednesday morning, I hadn’t heard back for my publisher. So, again, I had a choice. Sit around and wait, loosing time, or dive in and write like the new proposal was approved. The only downside there would be if it wasn’t approved I’d have to toss everything out, but if it was I’d be ahead of the game.

I’m not a sitter.

I wrote the opening two chapters that Wednesday, and sent those to my editor so she’d see the direction I was going. Then I wrote on Thursday and Friday. On the following Monday, I was expecting to hear from her, but she gotten busy so needed more time. I wrote on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday. I wrote like a madman, hitting daily word totals that I seldom ever hit.

The only other communication I had with my editor that week was an email apologizing for the delay, but would need more time. That was fine. I was in a groove, and I was afraid to push her in case it jinxed things. (Yes, sometimes I worry about that.)

When this past Monday morning came I was ready to dive in again. Then, before I even started, I received an email from my editor. I was nervous to open it, but did so.

She LOVED everything. She also thought it was better than what I had been working on. And the chapters I sent? “Powerful and horrifying.”

That big PHEW!!! you heard Monday around 8 a.m. PT was from me just in case you were wondering.

Now that I had closure, I emailed the author of the other book to let them know what had happened. And, as I would have expected, the response back was completely understanding and supportive.

So everything’s on track again. And, as I write this, I have already written more pages of the new direction than I had of the original one.

Can I say phew again? PHEW!!

Similar stories happen all the time. There is no getting around it. As writers we can’t worry if someone has told a story like the one we’re working on…most of the time. But there are instances when things get so specific that you might have to adjust. I ran into one of those instances, Big Time.

But the real lesson here is that no matter how small or large a problem is, you can either wallow in your own self-pity, or you can do something to put it behind you. If that means you have to throw away 150 pages, 250 page, or even a whole book, then that’s what you do. Because option two is ALWAYS the way to go if you want to succeed.

Okay, ‘rati. What kind of hiccups have you experienced in your life that have required a change in direction? What was your response?

AT PLAY IN THE FIELD OF THE WRITTEN WORD PART 2

by Brett Battles

When we last left off after part 1, I was finishing my proposal and about to send it to my agent. If you recall, I mentioned that I was doing something different that neither my agent nor my editor was expecting.

Now I can tell you what I did…instead of giving them a single, stand alone book proposal, I gave them three completely different ones.

Yes, I said three…individual…story proposals.

Each included the following: A) a ten to fifteen page outline, and B) sample chapters of around thirty pages for each idea.

I know. You’re thinking, What? Are you crazy?

Perhaps. After all, I turned in approximately 120 pages of written material…for a  proposal!

(Wait. I am crazy.)

Here’s how it happened. Earlier this year I was at a point with the book I was working on that I had a break of a few days, and, as luck would have it, an idea for a stand alone came to me. In a two or three day period I typed up nearly forty pages of the beginning of the book. Then I saved the file (we’ll call this idea #1), and went back to the manuscript I was working on.

When August came around, my publisher and I agreed that the next proposal should be for a stand alone instead of the fifth in the Quinn series. Almost immediately I had a new idea (idea #2) that I was excited about. I worked on it for several weeks, spending a lot of time just thinking things through. I ended up devoting a lot of time on the trip I took in late August working on it, and had things pretty much had it all figured out by the time I got on the plane to fly home.

Funny thing about flying, often I’m struck with random ideas that momentarily consume me. (Many times they involved planes, for obvious reasons. One such idea occurred on my trip to Bouchercon last week.) This moment of inspiration happened to me on the first leg of my journey back to the States, and for three hours I wrote long hand in my notebook the first couple chapters of a new book (you got it, idea #3). When I got home I still had a few weeks before my proposal was due, so I allowed myself some time to flesh out this new idea and see if it was worth sending in. I’m sure my initial thought was that if it was better than idea #2, it would be the proposal I’d submit.

As I continued on it, I definitely liked where it was going, but I also found that I still really liked idea #2. That’s when the scandalous thought hit me: why not send in both and let my publisher decided.

And seconds after that thought crossed my mind I remembered the story from earlier in the year.

Knowing I probably shouldn’t, I went back and reread it anyway. Damn if I didn’t liked where it was going.

Okay, fine, I told myself. I’ll send them three. Because I knew I’d be happy to write any of them. Let my editor weight in on which one should be next.

As a side note, I should say that this method of giving multiple choices was also ingrained in me during my working days in television graphics. The thing was, if someone wanted a main title for their show…let’s say TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORIES (one of the shows on E! I rebranded)…if you show them one idea they won’t like it. But if you give them choices, they’ll feel like you really put thought into it, and will pick one.

In the case of my proposal, reason behind given multiple ideas didn’t equate to my time at E!, but my thinking was definitely influenced by my process there. The real reason I sent all three was because I was happy with all of them so it didn’t really matter to me which one I did.

The last Friday of September, I emailed the proposal to my agent without any warning about what she would receive. Was she impressed? She sounded like it to me. That following Monday, she send it on to my editor.

Since my proposal was rather bulky, and my editor also had other things on her plate, it took a couple weeks for her to get back to me. She finally did the Friday after my last Murderati post (two weeks ago tomorrow.) Thankfully, she was very happy with all the material, and while she liked aspects of all three idea, she went with idea #2.

(Funny tangent…the down side of doing this (besides all the extra work) was that once I sent the proposal in, one of the ideas started to pick at my mind. And since I had nothing else to do, I put in a little time on it, developing it further. And, you guessed it, that wasn’t the one chosen. Oh well, it’ll be the next one if I have any say in it!)

So I’m back at the daily writing thing now, working on making idea #2 into a finished, kickass stand alone. I’m pretty excited about it, too, because I’m using a lot of my personal past in it…(the book is largely set in my hometown.)

Now, would I advise doing your proposal in the manner I did? Ah…no. What works for one person, doesn’t necessarily work for all. I will say I don’t plan on doing multiple ideas for future submissions, though, I guess, you never know.

Questions for today:

Brett…crazy/not crazy? (Perhaps we should skip that one.)

For writers, how much thinking to you put in before you start a new book? (Not talking necessarily about outlining, just working the idea and characters in your mind.)

Readers, does this behind-the-curtain stuff even interest you?

And finally…and this is most important…I would love to hear any ideas on topics you like me, or other Murderati contributors, to discuss!

A special hello to all the new friends I met at Bouchercon, and to the old ones I got to spend time with and get to know better. It was an excellent conference and I can hardly wait until next year. If you weren’t there, try to come next time. Hell, it’s in San Francisco! Who’d want to miss that?