The Long and Winding Road

Keith Raffel here for the first time in a while.

I live in Palo Alto, California and worked in high tech for a quarter century. That makes me a Silicon Valley guy.

What does that mean?

That means I’m almost always willing to try something new. If it pays off, fine. If not, well, that’s fine, too. I’ll just try something else.

Getting into novel-writing was something new. I was a little bored at my job so I signed up for a mystery-writing class at UC Berkeley Extension. When my work life heated up, I threw a half-finished manuscript into a drawer. A few years later I pulled it out and finished it. I found an agent who sold Dot Dead to Midnight Ink. Twenty months after signing the deal the book came out. Midnight Ink bought my next book, too. (I am skipping over the trials and tribulations of querying agents and publishers – another time.)

The reviews on my first two books were encouraging, and the second even showed up on a national bestseller list. Okay, good. Now it was time to see if I could support myself at this writing gig: what I was making with a traditional publisher wasn’t going to cut it. So I decided to try something new. I self-published my next two books, Drop By Drop and A Fine and Dangerous Season, and put them up on Amazon and BN.com. Somewhat to my surprise, I sold more copies and made more money than I had on my first two books. Another few steps down the road to making a living.

Amazon has its own publishing arm for crime fiction called Thomas and Mercer who were impressed enough with A Fine and Dangerous Season’s sales to offer to buy rights to it and bring it out under its own imprint. Sure, why not give it a try? It was a great ride. On one glorious day this past March, I saw my book ranked as the #5 seller on all of Amazon.com. But I still wasn’t making enough to support myself, let alone pay for another two kids’ worth of college tuition.

So I was ready to try something new to move the ball down the road. I decided to raise money via Kickstarter, the crowd-sourcing site, for my fifth novel, Temple Mount. Why? Two reasons. First, I wanted to get buy-in from my fans. There’s an old Silicon Valley saying that when you eat a bacon-and-egg breakfast, the chicken participates, the pig commits. I wanted commitment from my fans (but I did want to keep them alive, too). And I think I got it. They were co-publishing right along with me and had a stake in the venture. They’ve helped the spread the word and 50 of them even helped edit the book. (Paying for the privilege to edit? That made me feel like Tom Sawyer.) I’ve been blown away by their enthusiasm and generosity. Second, the money raised spurred me to try something new, or maybe old, to publicize Temple Mount. Starting next week we’re running an ad for it on Bay Area cable stations. (You can see the ad below.) I’m keeping my fingers crossed on how it does.

So here I am, getting closer to my goal of making a living as a writer, but still not quite there. When I started at this game, I went the only way I could: signing with a traditional publisher. Now an author can also self-publish, publish via a publisher with a new model like Thomas and Mercer or Polis or Brash, or even crowd-publish. Any one of them might be the right one for an aspiring author or even an old hack like me. It just depends what she or he wants.

I do feel lucky to be writing in a time where authors have choices.

Cheers,
Keith 

Before turning to writing full-time, Keith Raffel watched over the CIA, supported himself at the racetrack, founded a software company, taught writing to Harvard freshmen, ran for Congress, and sold DNA sequencing to medical researchers. He became a published author in 2006 with Dot Dead, which the New York Times said was “worthy of a Steve Jobs keynote presentation.” These days he can usually be found tapping his laptop’s keys and power-drinking green tea at a café around the corner from his home in California’s Silicon Valley. His latest novel Temple Mount ("a terrific battle of wit and wills" -Steve Berry) came out this month.

Morning Pages

Cricket McRae

It’s still dark outside, and the morning star – which is really the planet Venus – precedes the sunrise. It’s very close to earth right now, a bright, shiny beacon hanging at the end of night. I stepped outside to take a look while the kettle heated on the stove, breathing in the crisp air and listening to the deer – or perhaps raccoons – rustle through the dry grass on the other side of the fence.

Back inside, I brewed a pot of Earl Grey. I am the only one awake in the house, save for a purring orange cat. We’re both curled up in a blanket on the sofa while flames dance in the fireplace, and the scent of honey rises from my cup of tea. The computer screen is the brightest thing in the room.

Soon I will put aside the computer and write in my morning page notebook. Remember morning pages? Julia Cameron introduced them in The Artist’s Way, but Dorothea Brande suggested the same thing in Becoming a Writer back in 1934 (still one of the best books out there for beginning writers or anyone who is having trouble sustaining a writing project). The idea is to get up in the morning – every morning – and write without stopping until you hit three pages. The devilish editor on your shoulder doesn’t have time to engage, you develop a habit of writing every single day, and I, at least, find the process ferrets out a surprising number of truths.

Morning pages can be a kind of self-therapy. At the same time, they can lull you into thinking you’ve written for the day. It’s also possible they could sap some of your writing energy, much as I’ve heard some people say blogging siphons off a portion of their creative mojo. How it affects you really depends on how you view the process.

For a year or more in the mid-nineties I faithfully wrote my morning pages as Cameron describes. But over time, I’ve tweaked them to suit my own needs. Doing them first thing in the morning still works very well, but I don’t do them every day. Or even every week. And though on occasion I just want to brain dump or need to work out a problem that requires what I refer to as “thinking on paper,” more often I try to focus morning pages on something in particular. As a result, they’ve turned into a stepping stone that then propels me into my other writing.

Today I plan to write a scene in which a woman encounters a girl she thought she knew in a place she’d never expect to find her. I need to know how that feels – for both of them. I want to think about how this meeting sets the tone for their relationship throughout the rest of the story. It would be a good idea to play with how a recurring theme in the story can flicker through this scene. And finally, I simply don’t know enough about the girl and her background. Focused free writing will help me find these things out.

Sometimes it's a better thing to simply sit down and write. To allow that magical thing to come out of nowhere and flavor or twist what you’ve planned to put on the page. Or even not to plan at all. But this is a brand new character for me, and an important one. In this story, I’m working in a different fictional world than the one I’m used to.

Being able to write about the upcoming scene will afford back story that right this moment I’m unaware of. It’s the same kind of magic, finding the answers to questions and, more than likely, finding more questions to ask. It’s an aspect of getting to know the story that’s invisible to the reader – not simply research, plotting, or character development, but all those and more.

Do you use free writing as a tool either in your writing or in your life? Do you find journaling useful?

Sunshine and Free Time

Vacation. Oh, that word. I just returned home from seven days at Fern Resort in Orillia, Ontario. This is the view that greeted me when I opened my hotel room’s drapes every morning:









And every morning after breakfast, I sat by the lake and wrote. This was my writing view:









For a change of pace, I wrote by the pool or the other side of the lake:

Writer's Heaven.

Okay, I also did other vacationy things like bocce ball, swimming pool games, billiards, trivia, long walks in the evening with my husband (everyone say “awwwww”). I didn’t need to cook a meal, make a bed, clean anything, or do laundry for seven days.

And that made me think of famous writers in history: Mary Shelley. Tolkien. Jane Austen. Lewis Carroll. CS Lewis. Beatrix Potter. For the most part, they had servants to cook, clean, wash, shop for groceries. Their Day Jobs (those who had one) left them time to write, write, write. (Pardon me while I check my skintone. It may be taking on a greenish tinge.)

A week of vacation increased by about 10Kthe word count of Book 2 of The Falcone & Driscoll Investigation series. It’s all longhand—the fruit of my fountain pen, sunny days, and lots of time. Thus my twinges of envy over great writers who had money and a staff to take care of the zillion little details of keeping the home together.

Am I alone in this? When other writers go on vacation, does their word count increase exponentially? Fellow Inkspotters, do you get bit by the “time” bug? Do you wake up some mornings thinking, “If I'd been born into a landed gentry family, this book would only take me 2 months to write.”

Of course, all the grunt jobs I’ve worked in my life have given me great fodder for my books. Did someone call me a cockeyed optimist?

Guilty.

Book Brain

The deadline for getting my fifth Home Crafting Mystery to the publisher is approaching. I'm at that stage of the game where I'm editing and proofing, looking for continuity mistakes, and getting feedback from other people.

The whole book is in my head. It pushes a lot of other stuff out.

Yesterday I momentarily blanked on my cat's name. The coffee mysteriously appeared in the vegetable drawer instead of the cupboard. My ability to construct a meal is rudimentary, and we're eating a lot of leftovers out of the freezer. I am a less than scintillating conversationalist.

The book in my head opens at night, and the characters escape into my dreams. They do things they wouldn't normally do. I wake up in the morning and briefly wonder if I really wrote it that way. Or if I should have.

Sometimes I lug the book around with great fondness, like a sweet-smelling baby. I don't want to let it go. Other times throwing it out altogether seems not only like a good idea, but utterly necessary.

At the same time, I'm working on promotional activities for Something Borrowed, Something Bleu which will release on July 1. (You can preorder it now, though.) See, I wasn't kidding about the promotion. But there's no room for the plot of that book in my brain right now. There will be by the time I'm actually out there talking about it, though.

I hope.

The Worst Promotional Ideas Ever, by Jess Lourey

There are roughly 200,000 books published in the United States each year, and if you’re the author of one or more of those, you know what it’s like to be a dust mote. Those of you who are savvy take promotion into your own hands—setting up interviews and signings, buying trinkets to remind people of your book. I did that with May Day when it came out in 2006. I made a $1500 advance for that book and spent $3500 on t-shirts and book bags with the May Day book cover on them, color-changing pens with my name, ISBN, and my web address on them, postcards that I mailed to every library and independent mystery bookstore in the U.S., and, of course, bookmarks.

I’ve never read a book because I liked the bookmark or received a pen with the author’s name on it, but that didn’t stop me from salting the world with my paraphernalia. As new authors, we’re told we need to do that, in addition to starting a blog, setting up a blog tour, arranging booksignings, writing articles for publications, appearing on panels at conferences, etc. All this got me to thinking, what’s the most outrageous thing you’ve ever heard of an author doing to promote her/his novel?

I’ve seen authors give away homemade cookies next to the ballot box at a conference for which their book was up for an award, and I understand why they do it. You either draw attention to yourself or get drawn into the literary undertow. I committed my BSP faux pas in 2007. I was registered for Left Coast Crime, the conference at which the Lefty for best humorous novel is awarded. I considered which promotional items to bring but decided that instead of spending $1 apiece on a pen/bookmark/flashy candy combo, I’d cut to the chase and send any interested registered participant whose email I could easily track down a copy of my latest book. They were my target audience, so why mess around?

Because it’s tacky to send copies of your books to the people who are the judges for the awards for books (every LCC registrant gets to vote for the Lefty recipient). It looked like a bribe, and I got emails from two people who were deeply offended by my offer, and there were likely others who didn’t bother to tell me. I also got very kind emails and was nominated for a Lefty that year, but I’d never go that route again. I hate the feeling of offending others, accidentally or not.

My good friend, Chuck Zito, assured me that within a year my move would be christened the Half Lourey (the Full Lourey if you managed to get your book to everyone at the conference) and everybody would be doing it. I don’t think anyone is. Most authors I’ve met are decent people who don’t want to trod on other’s toes. But there’s always the few out there, and so, I ask you, what’s the worst promotional idea you’ve ever seen? No need to use names, but you can if you want. Oh, and any amazing effective promotional ideas that really work (no changing your name to Stephen Kink)? Our readers wouldn’t mind hearing about those, either.

The "eep" Factor

Back when I was a weird grade-schooler in a dinky inner-city school, I wrote cute little poems that my grandparents loved. Is there a grandchild’s scribble grandparents through the ages haven’t loved? (Rhetorical question #1.) Then I hit high school and created a notebook filled with angsty teenage love poems that I entered into contests. Won a few, too, and somewhere in the basement are a few tarnished vase/bowl/water dish thingys to prove it.

But at the same time, I stopped showing my “real” writing to anyone. That would be the bizarre horror short stories and the scenery-chewing D-R-A-M-A. (Teenage girl, remember? What did you think I’d be writing?) (Rhetorical question #2.) This was the “scardey-cat” factor: What if I show it to my BFF and they hate it? Or worse, laugh?

So my fiction languished in desk drawers for years. (Yes, any whippersnappers reading this post, I mean “before PCs.” Now pull up your pants and get off my lawn.) I took it with me when I went into the convent and kept it with me for the next 20 years. The “cold feet” factor, perhaps.

The stack grew, the plots and pace and storylines improving. No more blue zombies re-fleshing themselves from garden dust—the incinerator got that one years ago. No more drama-laden unrequited love stories. (You’re welcome.)

Until the day I looked at the rut I’d dug for myself: Work, cooking, laundry, cleaning, chauffeuring the kids,. Lather, rinse, repeat. Watching people act now that I didn’t have six weeks to dedicate to a community theater production. Reading books I liked rather than writing one. I’d become a bystander.

Not for long. Also known as the “in a pig’s eye” factor.

Fast-forward several years. MI just had my book launch meeting. They discussed cover designs, suggested some minor edits, confirmed the title. My book is going to be sold on the Net. In bookstores. Bought and read by total strangers. Oh, wow. Did that weird grade-schooler writing cute poems for her grandparents ever dream of this? Maybe.

Unlike some versions of the Cinderella story, no fairy godmother dropped this in my lap. I worked my tail off for this, always hoping, always with a tiny, nagging doubt that it would happen. Yet it has.

Eep.

Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie

by G.M. Malliet

For years now, my husband and I have talked about leaving, moving away, just packing up and going, like the footloose hippies we are.

That was a joke. The last thing you'd find either of us doing is packing a knapsack and suddenly heading out in some devil-may-care fashion for the Wild West. We'd need to check the GPS first for hotels, museums, hospitals, coffee shops, shopping areas, and all-night diners.

We are planners. We are researchers. We are ditherers, in fact, and the Internet has given us the excuse to ponder our options endlessly. The pros and cons of America's small towns and large cities? A spreadsheet waiting to be born. Forbes Magazine with its endless "Best Places to Live" articles is pretty much a nightmare for people like us. Their World's Best Places to Live analysis sparked endless debate on passports, visas, housing, exchange rates, political climate, and so on.

With the whole world to choose from, how could we ever narrow it down?

A traffic jam where we actually live is often the catalyst for these wishful-dreaming discussions. We are on the outskirts of DC, which means we basically live in a parking lot with a roof. An expensive parking lot. We don't have a dog, much as we want one or two, because a) we travel a lot and b) we don't have space on the patio for a dog to run. We don't have space on the patio for a hamster to run. A garden where we grow our own food (another fantasy) is out of the question. It is truly bad some days: We feel hemmed in, and the thought of selling up for a few acres, an apple orchard, and a houseful of pets is very tempting. Heck, we could even raise goats and sell goat cheese! If only we had a clue how to do that!

When we do move away, I strongly suspect it will be to another urban setting, albeit a smaller and more manageable one. Unless I switch gears entirely and become a nature writer, which would be a sad, sad effort, because I always have to ask other people the names of trees and things, and I can barely tell a squirrel from a chipmunk. No, it would be another urban setting because I need to look out my window, as I just did, and see people repairing the neighbor's chimney. People talking, walking, laughing, quarreling. People doing things that I can write about.

My real fear is that if you stuck me too far out in the suburbs, in the country, or in a house on the prairie, I would not produce The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit or Little House on the Prairie. I would instead go mad, ever so slowly, like Stephen King's Jack in the Overlook Hotel. "All work and no play," endlessly repeated, formatted in every possible font and color that Microsoft sends.

But the escape fantasy--the longing for a Thoreau-like house in the woods (or by the ocean, even better)--never quite leaves. It is a common fantasy among authors, I think. As much as we know ourselves, as much as we know it would not (in my case) work out, the desire to find some perfect place to write is always there.

I know some MI authors are in fairly remote circumstances, so it must suit you. You're probably not afraid of bears, either. Are you happy there, or are you dreaming of finding a spot where you can choke on exhaust fumes all day?

If Forbes would only come up with a top ten best places for writers list, we might get somewhere.

Photo of Blacktail Prairie Dogs taken from NPS.gov.
Photo of folk at Walden Pond taken from Mass.gov.

Guest Blogger Elizabeth Zelvin: Where do stories come from?

{G.M. Malliet}
Our guest today is Elizabeth Zelvin, a New York City psychotherapist whose new mystery, DEATH WILL HELP YOU LEAVE HIM, features recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends. Also out in October: Liz's story, "Death Will Trim Your Tree," in the holiday crime anthology, THE GIFT OF MURDER, to benefit Toys for Tots. Another short story was nominated for an Agatha award. The first book in the series, DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER, is up for an Anthony award for cover design. Liz's author website is www.elizabethzelvin.com. She blogs on Poe's Deadly Daughters, and today she shares with us a funny, powerful story of a writer's progress:

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“Where do you get your ideas?” is one of those questions that most authors wish readers wouldn’t ask (along with “I’ve got a great idea for a best seller; will you write it?” and “Why don’t you go on Oprah?”). But in fact, stories do have to come from somewhere.

Since I started hanging out online and in person with other mystery writers, I’ve been pleased to find that, like me, they experience characters springing to life and talking in their heads, ideas that come tapping on the inside of their skulls demanding to be let out, and lines bubbling up from deep within and streaming out onto the page or screen.

The source of these experiences is what in my profession, ie the shrink trade, we call the unconscious. Nineteenth-century poets called it the Muse. In spiritual or religious parlance, it’s being a channel for a Higher Power. And we all know a perfectly good word for it: inspiration.

Whatever you call it, what it casts up still has to come from somewhere. The raw material consists of our own experience (“Write what you know,” we’re told), the experience of others, whether it’s stories we’ve heard or headlines “ripped from the news” (“Use everything,” we’re told), or the stuff of our dreams, our reading, and our fantasies constantly reshuffled like bright bits of color in a kaleidoscope (“Use your imagination”).

An old friend recently unearthed and sent me a short story of mine that was published in our high school literary journal fifty years ago. I read it with interest, especially since I had no recollection whatever of writing it. It was about a college boy who dies after getting what seems to be just a bad cold, told from the point of view of his roommate.

Write what you know? I didn’t know anything when I was in high school, although as a bit of a smart-aleck with a high IQ, I thought I knew a lot. It had a horrible, pretentious title: “Finitude.” (I suspect high school kids in general don’t have much sense of humor. It took decades of increasing maturity to come up with the novel and short story titles of my current mystery series: Death Will Help You Leave Him, Death Will Get You Sober, “Death Will Tie Your Kangaroo Down,” “Death Will Clean Your Closet,” “Death Will Trim Your Tree.”) It wasn’t a badly written story overall, though I used one word incorrectly, “balmy” for “barmy,” and one sentence made me cringe when I reread it: “He was in labor with a novel.” (After an additional half a century of writing, I’ve learned that one of the greatest tools of revision is embarrassment: If it makes you cringe, delete it, preferably before anyone else sees it.)

So why did I choose to write this particular story? I wasn’t a guy or the girlfriend of a guy. I wasn’t in college yet, and I had certainly never been to the kind of drunken party I described. I had never lost a friend or family member. My parents were so protective that I’d never even been to a funeral. None of the characters seemed to be based on anyone I knew. (They might have been better differentiated and more interesting if they had.) What on earth could have brought this story into being? I read all the way down to the last paragraph before I found the clue I needed.

“In the hall, I met a friend of Sam’s and mine. She looked at me mutely, her eyes begging like those of an anguished puppy. It was the hardest thing I had ever done, but I put my hand briefly on her arm and nodded reassuringly.”

Okay, two sentences that made me cringe. I’m sorry I didn’t delete the “anguished puppy.” But that moment in the story rang truer than the rest, and a vague recollection stirred. That minor character was me, and the reassuring hand and nod were real. Our “crowd” in high school had a charismatic leader, a big, paternal teddy bear of a guy who played guitar and sang as well as Pete Seeger. He was a year ahead of us, so it must have been in my junior year that his older brother died, of leukemia if I remember correctly.

As I said, I had not yet learned to deal with death. I must have met him in the hall in school right after it happened. I didn’t know what to say. He must have needed comfort, but true to his role in his circle of friends, he tried to comfort me. And I, just old enough at fifteen to recognize the authenticity of that moment, made it the germ of my story.

Settling in

by G.M. Malliet

I am at the part of the writing process I call "Settling in."

I'm at the very beginning of my tale, and really I'm just noodling about on scraps of paper with character names and place names and a very rough idea for a setting and a plot. I'm drawing maps and schematics and, most of all, just trying to get a feel for the story--waiting for that feeling of contentment to arrive, a feeling that is hard to put into words. I only know that when it's there, I'm on the right track. There's an atmosphere that feels right, and that, I hope, will translate into making the reader happy.

The Washington Post used a quote from William Butler Yeats just the other day that nicely describes this:"Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round."

I suppose I'm aiming to surround the reader in a cozy atmosphere--a restful feeling, much like that created by the photo illustrating this blog.

There is a selfish motive behind all this conjuring effort. (This effort that looks suspiciously like procrastination but is, I've come to realize, integral to the whole crazy business of writing a book.) Apart from trying to make the reader happy, I know I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the coming year with my head inside my story, and I want that place, whatever it is, to be a good place to go. A fun place that I can't wait to visit each day. If I can visualize this place in my mind - the house or village or castle or whatever it is - and clearly bring up its colors, sights, and smells, then I know the story will at least keep me entertained for the long haul.

The characters come as the "real" writing begins: I only know that I first have to set the stage for them to appear.

And as Cricket pointed out the other day, the weather and time of year are integral to the story. That, in my case, also has to be decided before the characters can take the stage.

Question for the scribes: Do you plunge in and see what develops, or do you set the stage first?

Image of The Lee, Buckinghamshire copyright Aurelien Hayman - from the comprehensive and full-of-eye-candy-for-the-Anglophile Midsomer Murders Site.

Eat Your Hearts Out on Yom Kippur

Keith here.

Let me generate some envy among my friends and fellow Inkspotters. While you are heading to Baltimore for four days of schmoozing, drinking, and carousing at Bouchercon, the world’s largest crime fiction conference, I am getting ready to spend a day meditating and praying and fasting. Eat (don’t say that word to me tomorrow) your hearts out.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, starts this evening and the fasting that goes with it is supposed to encourage introspection, I guess. The rules are tough in one respect – no liquid or food from sundown tonight till darkness tomorrow – but reasonable in another: the young, elderly, nursing, pregnant, or sick are absolved from fasting. As regular readers of this blog know, I am a tea addict. The hot green liquid fuels my writing engine. Part of being an addict is craving. The other part is a physical reaction when your addiction goes unsatisfied. I qualify on that score, too. If I don’t have tea, I end up with a whopper of a headache. An iron band closes around my forehead, while the top of my head is used as an anvil by an invisible blacksmith. Several years ago a rabbi-friend told me that God doesn’t want me writhing in agony during services. So once or twice tomorrow, I’ll swallow a couple of Excedrin, a dry cocktail of aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine.

Living amidst the riches of Silicon Valley requires a level head and good balance. (One daughter had her locker next to a classmate’s whose father made more than $250M in salary and bonus in a single year.) Otherwise, one would spend all his time bursting with envy. An underestimated factor in garnering Silicon Valley wealth is luck. There used to be an eTrade billboard on 101 that said, “Someone will win the lottery. It just won’t be you.” Exactly. In the middle of a wall in my office, I have a piece of framed parchment with a quote from the ancient sage Ben Zoma. In Hebrew it asks, “Who is rich? The person who rejoices in what he has.” I keep trying to remember that as I watch my savings evaporate. I have my family, friends, colleagues, writing, and more – despite the confounded stock market, I need to rejoice more. A worthy resolution for year 5769 on the Jewish calendar, don’t you think?

May you all be sealed in the Book of Life for a good and sweet year.

Sign of the Times

by G.M. Malliet

This sign appeared Tuesday on the remaining Olsson's bookstores in my area. Hard to imagine sadder news for book lovers and writers, not to mention all the people who counted on the store's success for their livelihoods.

Olsson's was in business for 36 years. If you don't live in the DC area, you may not have heard of it, but it was an institution here. It was where you went when you had an hour to kill and didn't quite know where else to go. In Alexandria, there was a coffee shop upstairs with a gorgeous view over the Potomac, and you were free to sit there and dream or scribble in your notebook uninterrupted. It was not uncommon to find people asleep up there in one of the easy chairs. No one bothered them. It was that kind of place.

A small chain to begin with, Olsson's had recently dwindled to five stores. Even when they filed for bankruptcy protection in July, we figured they'd weather the storm. But no. They'd been Amazoned and iTuned, as the Washington Post said. They're not the first and sadly, they won't be the last. But they were really great about supporting this newbie author and I want the staff there to know: I will miss you guys. Thank you.

Amazon is convenient, but it doesn't have a river view.

Survey Says IV

By Joe Moore

In Survey Says I, I summarized a member's survey taken by Novelist, Inc. on how many writers with bestsellers and multiple books published could make a living writing. The answer was, not many. In Survey Says II, I covered some of the highlights of a Zogby International/Random House poll on how and where readers shop. With that one we found out among other things that word-of-mouth is the best advertising and cover art really does count as one of the first reasons table browsers pick up a book (or don't). In Survey Says III, I reported on a Sisters In Crime Publishers Summit that, among other revelations, told us that our book cover art is critical, paranormal is hot, thrillers are hotter, and the use of social networks is a great way to promote your books.

This time around, I’m posted some statistics found in Publishers Weekly. The source is the National Endowment for the Arts study--Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005

185,276 is the total number of authors and writers, 2005

I had a feeling everyone was writing a book.

39% is the increase in authors between 1990 and 2005

Apparently the glamour of a writer’s life has leaked out.

51.9% of authors work full-time writing

This one surprised me, in a good way.

$50,800 is the median income for full-time authors, 2005

Combine this with a part-time job at Dunkin' Donuts and you’ve got a decent salary.

$38,700 is the median income for entire civilian labor force, 2005

That’s the Dunkin' Donuts job I was talking about. Of course you have to be the owner/manager.

$38,800 is the median income for all authors, 2005

May have to combine the Dunkin' Donuts and a Subway sandwich gig.

$47,300 is the median income for male authors, 2005

James Brown sang "it’s a man’s world."

$33,300 is the median income for female authors, 2005

OK, I was joking around about the James Brown lyric. Plus my wife saw what I wrote and whacked me.

54.9% of authors are female

Exactly the same proportion as the famous writing team of Sholes & Moore.

10.8% of authors are minorities

This is sad it’s not more.

26.8% of authors are under age 35

Maturity must count for something.

83.1% of authors have at least a bachelor's degree

If we're so smart, why aren't we all on the bestseller list?

45.9% of authors are self-employed

At least we’re employed.

50,000 is the estimated number of writers living in California and New York

Sort of like a set of national bookends.

No 1 is the rank of Santa Fe, NM, among cities, authors per capita

That’s a lot of laptops using Starbucks hotspots.

So why do so many people want a job that pays little, has no medical benefits, requires us to work 24/7 with no paid vacation or sick leave? I guess it beats that Dunkin' Donuts idea.

Tune in next time for Survey Says V. If there is a next time. My wife is still pissed.

Feed Yourself

Cricket McRae




I had coffee with some local Sisters in Crime the other morning, and Knitting Mystery maven Maggie Sefton was telling us about her upcoming trip to Florence. She said she’d been running ragged lately, and needed to refill her well.


My thought was only a quietly resounding aaaaaaaaah. Sounds lovely. Juggling my new writing, the already contracted writing, the marketing, and real life – well, it’s good, it’s hard, and it’s a lot like everyone else’s life, where you have to balance fourteen things at any given time, and you love them all.


Sometimes I forget to recharge, and I was grateful to Maggie for the reminder. We pour ourselves into our work. We give pieces of our psyche, our experience, our love to our creative children. We can’t do it forever. We simply must recharge in order to continue to do make art. Julia Cameron talks about this in The Artist’s Way.

There is something decadent about feeding our souls. And we all do it in different ways. So yesterday I went to the flea market, where, for a mere twenty-four dollars I picked up six cookbooks published before 1975, which I will pour over at my leisure, a pair of Ray Ban knockoffs, a pair of Thinsulate gloves, a tiny pair of silver-framed reading glasses, and a stained glass light bulb for the lamp in the corner of my bedroom.


Then I came home and made a caprese salad with tomato and basil from my backyard and homemade mozzarella, topped with truffled olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I ate it slowly, mindfully – and it nourished not only my body but my mind.


Not a trip to Florence, but good enough for now.


How do you recharge?

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!

I love to go out to breakfast at a little diner near home. It's got all the classic style, fry cook visible from the counter, eggs, bacon, pancakes and sausage sizzling continuously. Hash browns or home fries, big buttermilk biscuits. Mmmm, heart death. I love it. But owing to the fact that eating there is equivalent to mainlining cholesterol, I limit my visits to about once a month. Last Saturday was that day, and I arrived to duly absorb my 11,000 calories with anticipation.

And the place was closed. In the intervening month, the old fry cook had sold out and a new joint was opening. Alarums! They weren't quite ready, but said I should come back later. Or the next day.

Anxious, I fled to the French place down the street, where I had a perfectly good breakfast of eggs with tomato, cheese, and pesto. Turned out that's where our very own Jess Lourey had breakfast too, in town with Dana Fredsti for a signing, though I wouldn't know that until an hour later when we met up at Murder by the Book. But I digress. As I am wont to do.


So the next day my wife and I headed back to the new restaurant, filled with trepidation. I ordered my usual, chicken-fried steak, eggs over medium, potatoes and toast. Coffee with cream.

Everything was . . . different. I don't want to say bad, because if I were to analyze it objectively, I think the meal was nicely done. The sausage gravy was a different color, and the chicken-fried steak patty a different shape. The potatoes weren't my accustomed deep-fried and golden brown, but kinda fancified. The eggs were eggs.

But it was different, and I, um, well. I didn't like it. I think if I'd discovered it fresh, no clue what came before and no experience of the previous fare, I probably would have enjoyed it. Probably would have decided, "once a month in this joint would be nice. Not too much, but enough." But, no. It's different. Weird. I don't like it.

And then it hit me. Holy shit, I'm a serial eater. I like what I like and I don't want some fancy-pants restauranteur coming along and throwing the culinary equivalent of a standalone at me, or, heaven forbid, try to get me going on a new breakfast series. I want my old breakfast back, tried and true. Patty properly shaped, gravy properly hued, potatoes properly fried.

But I can't have it. The author has moved on, made a choice that was better for him, no matter how I feel about it. Crap, now what am I going to do?

---

As I type this, I'm imagining where I will be when my legions of fans finally get to read it (Hi, Mom!) Where I may be is standing in the security line at the Portland International Airport. Or maybe the plane has taken off, or maybe even landed in Los Angeles already. Maybe I've arrived at the Los Angeles Convention Center, maybe I have my badge and am standing in amazement at Book Expo America. Maybe it's evening already and I'm drinking. Wherever I am, I will have left my computer behind. I figure it will be a busy weekend and in all likelihood the laptop lid would remain closed, so I'm just leaving the sucker home. That means I won't be able to check in on discussions here until Monday, but I will. In the meantime, have a great weekend. I suspect I will.

Money for Nothing

by G.M. Malliet

An author with a book due out begins to divide the world into two categories of people.

The first category will say, when you tell them about your book, "That's great! When and where can I buy it?" One friend of mine was actually sensitive enough to ask, "Where should I buy it so you get the bigger royalty? Online or in the stores?" These people are going straight to author's heaven.

The second category of person (and this is rare, fortunately) will say, when you tell them you have a book coming out: "That's great! When do I get my free copy?" While you are tempted to think they're kidding - they must be kidding - they're not.

Now, think about it. Would you ask me to paint your house for free? Alter your jacket? Wash your dog? But writing a book also involves actual labor, possibly spanning many years.

I'm still working on a snappy comeback to this. After all, I think this request for a free book has everything to do with ignorance of the writing biz and nothing to do with greed. I think the request is even meant to be flattering ("I am curious to read your book, just not curious enough to pay for it" may be the subtext). But the fact is, I would rather take $14 out of my purse and set fire to it than give my work away - to treat it as something of no value.

The belief that authors receive all the free copies of their books they want may play into this. But MI authors get only ten copies of their books, and mine are long since ear-marked for people who, like, saved me from drowning. I got ONE free copy from the publisher of an anthology in which my short story appeared.

It's a simple equation: Books cost money. Selling books is how authors pay the bills. Please don't ever ask an author for a free copy of his/her book.

And don't even think about asking to borrow the book so you can read it.

Thank you. The rant has ended; go in peace.

It's the little things...

As some may have noticed, I often wear a tan vest. It's an outdoorsy thing with lots of pockets and zipper and snaps, and typically gets me asked if I'm fisherman or a hunter. Alas, no, I explain -- I just like all the pockets, and wouldn't know a fishing pole from a thirty-aught-six if you goosed me with one. Or the other.

Anyway, this vest is handy because it's got a pocket for my phone, and another for business cards, and another for a notepad, and another for jelly beans, and . . . well, you get the idea. One of the pockets holds my iPod, which I own in order to prove how "hip" and "with it" and "now" I am. Groovy, man. That said, I do also use my iPod for listening to stuff, but I have this problem. Whenever I want to use it, I reach into my cool vest pocket and fish out the tangle of ear bud wires. And they're ALWAYS tangled. It doesn't matter how carefully I wrapped them them, or how long they've been in my pocket. They're always a freaking mess. Plus, once I get done untangling them, the buds ALWAYS end up situated with my left in my right hand and the right bud in my left hand.

Now, sure, this probably seems like a little thing. But, come on, shouldn't random chance provide me with the buds properly oriented about half the time, post tangle? Is that too much to ask? (Here is where I shake my fist dramatically at the heavens. And then a bird poops on me.)

In the big scheme of things, this is nothing. But this is the kind of thing I'll write down in my little notebook and, who knows, maybe in some future story some character will get so frustrated by his iPod Ear Bud Misalignment Syndrome that he wigs out and commits acts of dramatic, plot-advancing mayhem. Or maybe not. I have tons of these. Small details which may illuminate character. Sometimes they make it into a story, more often not. Still, they're one of the fun things about being a writer. In a way, they make me a kind of collector. Here are some other items from my collection of weirdnesses, pulled right from the notebook as is. (Not all of these are MY weirdnesses; use of the word "my" could be anyone. Really.)

• The song "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult stuck in my head for over a month.


• That cowlick . . . Never. Settles. Down.


• Even my missing finger likes Starbucks.


• Woman with wavy, dark hair, highlighted in red, wearing a black leather biker jacket, while capri pants, and carrying a purple parasol on a sunny day.


• Green velour floor-length cloak, hood, leather clogs peeking out from underneath, in line at the hotdog stand.


• Bald head as knobby as a blackberry. (The fruit, not the electronic device.)

So let's hear about weirdnesses from your collection. And I don't assume for a minute that only writers make note of such idiosyncratic elements of human minutiae. We've all seen 'em. Hell, we all have 'em! So let's have some fun.

(Oh, any by the way: yes, I actually can tell a fishing pole from a rifle. I ain't THAT daft.)

Balance

Writing and promotion. Work and fun. Family, job, creative pursuits. Home crafts, research, gardening, friends. House renovation. Volunteer work.

Just a few of the things we all have to juggle. Lately I’ve been thinking about how to keep a sense of balance in the day-to-day. It's an ongoing challenge, but at least I'm getting better at it.

At least I think so.

I love my life, which is very full and extremely varied. I make time for what’s important, but often I have to pull back and objectively reassess what's important. I want it all, but know better than to think I can have it all NOW. Sometimes priorities change. Sometimes sacrifices are necessary. So far it’s never it's been my writing, and I can’t imagine that it ever will be.

How do you balance the demands in your life? How do you make sure there’s always time for writing? Is it easier for men than women? What sacrifices do you make?

What Not To Wear

by G.M. Malliet

I was fascinated to read that the new Newseum in D.C. features a pair of glamorous turquoise slippers worn by the Wonkette as she wrote her blog. Fascinated, and more than a little jealous. No one is ever going to ask me to donate my giant black furry writing slippers, which look like something one might wear to compete in the Iditarod. Still less, I imagine, would anyone, including me, want my yoga pants on display for posterity. But this, topped off with either a T-shirt or a sweater, is my writing uniform.

I also sometimes wear a baseball cap that says "Writer" across the front. This honestly helps when I get stuck for inspiration.

Since I can't find an image of the Wonkette's slippers, and I am not about to provide a photo of the real me at work, I will illustrate this blog with another interesting fashion statement - the Pope's red shoes, which are generating more press than any other aspect of his visit. (We saw him yesterday in his Popemobile [which is very cool], travelling down Pennsylvania Avenue.) I am trying to convince my husband that he really needs to own a pair of red shoes like these. Once seen, never forgotten.

Ok, the truth now. What stylish writerly apparel would you be forced to donate to the Newseum?

(Photo by Reuters)

Night and Day

by G.M. Malliet

Photo: bbc.co.uk

Can we really have reached the Spring equinox already? Looking at my small garden, I notice plants pushing through the earth, and flowers dotting the trees, long before they make their usual appearances. (I am reminded of a bumper sticker I saw the other day that read, “Is the planet getting warmer, or is it just me?”)

It took me awhile to notice that the planet was getting warmer. I think this is because we moved around so much when I was a kid—we were in the circus. Just kidding. We were a military family. So I had no benchmark for what was normal for spring, summer, fall, or winter. It just depended on where we were that year. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I settled in one place long enough to start taking stock of my surroundings.

So when it comes to descriptions of the natural world, I’ve had to train myself to observe and take notes and research, probably more than most, and there is still a danger I’ll get it wrong. I tend to notice people and their behaviors more than I notice what kind of tree they’re standing in front of. This may be another legacy of military life: Being injected into different surroundings every few years, you have to learn to pick up on the mores as quickly as possible.

I’ve noticed other writers deal with the “natural world” dilemma by having a character say something like, “There was a vase of some kind of spiky blue flower on the table.” Sometimes that’s enough to know. Long descriptions of trees and plants, listed by their Latin names, can be pretty boring anyway. And that phrasing tells you a bit about the character: This guy is no gardener.

What about you? What descriptions come easiest for you: animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Rewritosity

by Cricket McRae




I’m in rewrite mode on my third Sophie Mae Reynolds Home Crafting Mystery, tentatively titled Spin a Wicked Web. My deadline looms, and I’m tweaking everything from pacing to word choice to sentence rhythm. It’s tedious, exacting, and requires that I alternate between tiny detail and big picture decisions several times each hour.

My vision is blurry from staring at the computer monitor, I have a college ruled binder full of scribbled notes with priority numbers assigned to each one so I don’t forget anything (a holdover from the bug lists of my computer software days), and if it weren’t for the elliptical trainer in the room next to my office, my butt would be the same size as my desk chair.

The desk chair’s pretty big.

BUT

I absolutely love it. There’s something about the rewrite process that obsesses and sooths me at the same time.

The first draft? For me it’s all about making footprints on that pristine snowy field. Clomp, clomp, clomp. Not all that pretty, but progress nonetheless. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott says you have to be willing to write a shitty first draft. Apparently I’m not only willing, but able.

Rewriting is fun, though. The book feels like a whole different being, full of life and intensely real potential. The first draft is making the clay: dirt and water and hope. Rewriting is fine tuning the details of the sculpture.

Oh, I know. Everyone else writes perfect prose from the get go, polishes minor glitches as they write, and could publish any piece of their book with five seconds notice once they’ve moved on to the next bit.

Right?

Okay, maybe not everyone. But I do know people who work very successfully like this. I’m friends with them despite that.

Are you a rewriter, creating and editing mulitple drafts? A perfectionist from page one? What’s your favorite part of the writing process?