Hitch and Me

Keith Raffel here.

It’s a little embarrassing when I’m asked which writers inspire me. Now, I love mysteries and have been reading them since I picked up my first Hardy Boys book decades ago. Like so many crime fiction authors I count Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, Chandler’s Philip Marlowes, and Macdonald’s Lew Archers among my all-time favorites.

But here’s the thing. All three of that Holy Trinity write about private detectives who solve mysteries and rescue maidens as part of their job. One of Chandler’s books is even titled, Trouble is My Business. When it comes to my own scribbling, I like writing not about someone who seeks trouble, but someone whom troubles ambush. You know, a poor schmuck whose comfortable existence is shattered by an unexpected crisis. I find inspiration for that kind of story not from any particular book, but instead from movies, from Alfred Hitchcock movies, in fact.

In a prototypical Hitchcock film some unsuspecting soul (often Jimmy Stewart) gets embroiled in a crisis. (Here are five of my favorite examples: A tourist stumbles upon the key to an insidious spy ring, ("The 39 Steps"), a tennis pro strikes up a conversation with a psychopath ("Strangers on A Train"), a small town woman discovers her uncle is a serial murderer ("Shadow of a Doubt"), an invalid sees a murder across the courtyard ("Rear Window"), an advertising executive is mistaken as a secret agent ("North by Northwest").) By the end of the last reel, no matter what initial reluctance has been shown, the protagonist has discovered unexpected resourcefulness and courage in doing the right thing.

I think the power in the Hitchcock formula is that the audience can identify with the protagonist. “Hey,” we might think, “I wonder how I would react if caught up in a spy ring or if the target of a serial murderer.” I know when I submerge myself in writing, it’s this idea of testing whether the main character has what it takes that drives the story forward.

In the private detective novel, main characters don’t change much; they do their job. In the Hitchcockian crime novel, main characters may lead a boring life at the outset, but by the end they have grown and become heroes.

InkSpot News - 8 December 2007

Tom Schreck will be signing On the Ropes, A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery Saturday at The Bookhouse in Albany.

Wilbur, his 85 pound basset hound will be there in a Santa suit...and he won't be happy about it.

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One week remains in Bill Cameron's Give A Dog A Home For The Holidays Sweepstakes. To win your copy of Lost Dog, or just to learn more, visit Give A Dog A Home. Contest ends December 15, 2007.

Deadlines, Schmedlines

By Sue Ann Jaffarian

It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not referring to Christmas or the New Year. I’m referring to my annual deadline of January 2nd to submit the latest Odelia Grey novel to Midnight Ink. For the past three years, that deadline has loomed as bright as the New Year’s Eve ball in Times Square and has fallen just as heavy and with as much anticipation, not to mention the occasional swig of alcohol.

I’m often asked if my career as a paralegal has prepared me in any way for my career as a writer. The answer is absolutely and in many ways. As a paralegal, I am trained to research, to write effectively, to organize materials and thoughts, to be flexible and to manage time. But the major skill I’ve learned has been to work effectively under pressure and produce the best possible work under almost impossible deadlines. In law, deadlines are both calendared and unexpected. It’s not unusual for a boss to walk into my office and drop something on my desk and say it’s needed in two hours. And it’s not unusual for more than one boss to need a project in the same time frame. You don’t quibble, you just do it, no matter what hoops you have to jump through or sacrifices you have to make.

It’s the same with writing. To not nail a deadline would be unthinkable to me. The only time I’ve not met a writing deadline was two years ago when I found myself in the hospital in mid-December for emergency surgery. My editor graciously granted me a two week deadline, but no more. Even recovering from surgery, I hit the extended deadline.

Several months ago, I was on a panel with an author who talked about missing her deadlines. She didn’t seem concerned about it, but at the same time she whined about how sloppy the editing had been on her book and how it almost didn’t get released on time. Well, duh! What did she expect?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about publishing in the past few years, it’s that, unlike law, it moves like a snail with a hernia. Deadlines aren’t given arbitrarily. The publishing house requires that long lead time to complete everything they need to insure the timely release of a book with all the bells and whistles that go with it, like reviews and publicity.

It’s a fact that I do some of my best writing under looming deadlines. My brain seems to get lazy and lose its edge if it has too much time to think about what I’m doing. Whether it’s writing fiction or legalese, my creativity is definitely sharper when I feel alligators snapping at my ass. It should be downright ecstatic next year when I begin juggling two series and producing two novels a year with deadlines six months apart.

I’m 24 days away from my deadline for Epitaph Envy and still have about 80 pages to write. Piece ‘o cake! I might even have it done early.

Storytelling

By Cricket McRae

This time of year always feels frantic to me, and this December is no exception. My deadline for the third book in the Sophie Reynolds Homecrafting Series is looming, I’m editing another manuscript, and the marketing for the first book in the series, Lye in Wait, fills hours every day. Still, keeping my head above water would be manageable if it weren’t for all this holiday business.

The problem is that Christmas can get so out of hand. This year, out of desperation, I put my foot down. One day for shopping (it was a very long day, but still). Only three kinds of cookies (okay, two kinds, plus peanut butter fudge). We aren’t throwing a party this year, and only attending three. And the decorating: I gave myself four hours. No outside lights…and no tree.

So it’s festive, but pretty simple around our house. It feels good. It’ll take less time to undo come January. And that’s less time away from my desk, all over again.

However, believe it or not, I’m not just griping about how Christmas is interfering with my precious writing schedule. I am doing that, of course. But not just that. Because when I was power pawing through the bins of ribbon and lights and various geegaws that only see the light of day once a year, if that, I found this:

I don’t even know what it’s called. Ever since I received it as a Christmas present when I was eight years old, I’ve called it the candle-twirly thingie. My parents knew what I meant. The heat from the candles (I could only find one) rises and turns the windmill, and the little scenario turns round and round. Two of the windmill spokes have broken over the years. But I’ve hauled it around with me for thirty-five (gulp) years.

See, when I was a little kid, my Dad would tell me stories. Mom and I always said he should write them down, but he never did. These stories featured a little boy and a little girl and their adventures with a witch who lived in the woods. The witch was named Dame Dustinschniffin, and she had a cat named Hapsel. Every time Dame Dustinschniffen sneezed, which she did with great frequency due to terrible allergies combined with an almost OCD tendency to clean, her cat Hapsel changed colors.

That was the very simple structure in which dozens of tales were developed, first by my father alone, and then I joined in and helped to make up the stories. “What if…” he’d say, and off we’d go. “And then…and then…” It encouraged my imagination, but I had to keep to the rules of the world we’d created. The characters stayed the same, but they had understandable arcs as they learned new things in the course of their adventures.

It was my first series, and I loved it.

As for the candle-twirly thing in the picture. Christmas morning, eight-year-old me hurried out to the tree in my jammies, only to find this contraption. I had no idea how it functioned, but I immediately recognized the characters from our stories. My reaction was to demand where my parents had found such a thing.

Santa, I was told, with a grin and wink. It was very irritating. I was sure no one but my parents and I knew about Dame Dustinschniffen et al, and Santa was a myth. I bugged them for days. Did you have someone make it? Was it something you found that just happened to fit the characters? Did you make it yourself? Have you had it for a long time and made up the characters to fit the thingie?

To this day, they won’t tell me. I still wonder, and I still don’t have a clue. It’s a mystery.

Turns out I love mysteries, too.

It's Time For Parties: Here's Your Hostess Gift Guide

I know we often blog about writing, but lately, the holiday season has invaded my writing time and I've been willing to surrender to its glittering lure. The cards have started arriving in my mailbox and so have some party invitations. I always give people books. Along with the gifts of Midnight Ink books I plan to give several friends, here are some suggestions for biblio-themed host/hostess gifts.

It’s holiday party time again. You’re dressed to the nines, your shoes are shined, hair in place, and have told the kids not to wait up. On your way out the door, you realize that you’ve forgotten to buy a hostess gift! Digging through your pantry, you decide that the $5 bottle of red wine you bought for cooking purposes only or the box of chocolates from the drug store are not going to cut it as a gift. Now, you’re going to have to stop and buy flowers or a plant or something expected like that. Instead, here’s a list of books you can give as hostess gifts.

For Hosts With Young Kids – Wrap up The Sneaky Chef by Melissa Lapine. I’m not up on the scandal, but the rumor mills claims that her book and Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious have similar recipes. In that case, I’d opt for Lapine’s as she’s a nutritionist.

For The Couples Party– How about combining the movie Love, Actually with Dinner Dates: A Cookbook for Couples Cooking Together by Martha Cotton

For The Hostess Who Loves to Bake – Wrap up Bubby’s Homemade Pies by Ronald M. Silver, Jen Bervin, and Elizabeth Zechel. Recipes from Bubby’s in NYC along with Crate and Barrel’s Pie Spice Trio (comes with Pumpkin Pie Spice, Apple Pie Spice and Finishing Sugar in cute glass jars for $10.95)

For The Macho Host – The Sopranos is on DVD, but the killer cast could be on the hit list of your friend’s stovetop with Entertaining with the Sopranos by Carmela Soprano, Allen Rucker, Michele Scicolone, and David Chase. Give them this book with a bottle of Italian red and you might be invited to a future mafia dinner – yo!

For the Hosts With Little Time – This one’s easy. These folks need Barefoot Contessa at Home: Everyday Recipes You’ll Make Over and Over Again by Ina Garten or Giada’s Family Dinners by Giada De Laurentiis. Wrap these with some pasta tongs or a vintage pair of salad servers and you’re good to go!

For The Grill Master – Let them dream of summer with a jar of BBQ sauce or some meat rub from Williams Sonoma. Pair one of these goodies with Weber’s Real Grilling (Weber’s) by Jamie Purviance and Tim Turner or How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques by Steven Raichlen. They’re both great!

Presentation – I love to give away cookbooks wrapped in a beautifully patterned dishtowel. (See photo from Real Simple in which they use this technique for wine) I then get a wired ribbon and attach a wooden spoon, red rubber spatula, or holiday-hued measuring spoons to the gift. A handwritten note written on the back of a recipe card makes the perfect finishing touch.

Peeves

It’s Tuesday, which strikes me as the perfect day of the week to talk about a topic of momentous import to us all: pet peeves.

But since this is a blog post and not the Oxford English Dictionary, I’ve decided to limit myself to my two peeves. I want you all to have a chance to get out of here before lunch, after all.

So here they are: first-time sex and hackers. One of them has to be about sex, because that way people will find us on Google who had no idea they were even looking for us. It’s a marketing thing, really. In fact, some may assert that’s a peeve of their own. “Hey, are you marketing at me? I came to read a blog post and here I am being lured into reading books by a big long raft of writers. (Help, help, I’m bein’ repressed.)” Something like that.

But that’s not my peeve. If it’s your peeve, you’ll get a chance at the end of the post to give me my comeuppance, especially if you arrived here via a Google search for “magnificent man-thing.” Look at it this way, at least I’m not marketing to you via spam, such as the one I got this morning from “Counterfeit Diamagnetic Deerkskin” (who would name their child such a thing? Besides Tom Cruise, I mean?) Counterfeit offered to make me a “pornstart,” which was a compelling offer, but had nothing to do with my pet peeves. Except maybe the sex part. And that’s what I’m talking about here.

I think.

Okay, so what’s the deal with sex scenes in novels? Particularly first-time sex sex scenes.

I was reading a novel recently, a very good novel in fact, when suddenly I was confronted with a mighty, tumescent, sweat-soaked computer hacker. This guy could hack anything. And when I say anything, I mean not only banks and the NSACIAFBI, but also (probably, since this wasn’t specifically mentioned) into the picture and movie section of dozens of porn web sites offering you instant access for only $24.95 per month. Which, if that’s what you came looking for via Google, sorry, but we’re not talking about porn. We’re talking about pet peeves and crime fiction. Serious business. But you’re welcome to stay. And buy our books. (Help, you’re being repressed.)

Now, you probably have many questions, the first of which is, “Bill, are you drunk?” and the answer to all those questions is yes. But you’re probably also wondering about the hacker thing and what it has to do with first-time sex. As if hacking a porn site wouldn’t explain it.

The thing is, the super hacker reminded me of another book I read recently, one which had another thing which, like super hackers, seems to appear just a tad too often in novels — if you ask me. Which you might if I gave you the chance to get a word in edgewise.

And that’s this.

Where were we?

Oh yeah, first time sex. So I was reading this book a few months ago, and He and She have an “encounter” on an “island” and performed an “act.” Okay, they hooked up in a bar, went back to the dude’s hotel room and went at each other like folks might have done in a movie called “Snakes in Elaine.” * tick, tick, tick * (Sheesh, they had sex.) And the moment of consummation arrived, as they so often do. And it was great. I mean, it was incredible. The man? He had the stamina of a marathon runner and the self-control of a zen master. The woman? She moved in perfect rhythm with her partner and was able to communicate without words just the right moment so the man knew to release the hounds (as it were) for utter and perfect simultaneous bliss. It was as if they had known each other for years, knew each other’s every need and nuance. It was as if they were born already a synchronized, well-lubricated machine. I mean, this couple had been humping since the dawn of time and by golly we were gonna read about it.

And the thing is, that happens all over the place. Every time I encounter a first time sex scene in a novel, it’s almost always cosmically great sex. At first I thought it was probably a guy writer thing, but then it occurred to me that like 8 of the last 10 mysteries I’ve read have been by women. Now, not all of them had sex scenes, but those that did had the basic theme nailed. The man “takes” her. (Where? To the movies? Dairy Queen?) He’s a turbo stud. She’s multi-orgasmic. They wonder how they lived without each other for so long.

And half the time one of them is a super hacker. Hack into anything. Now, I happen to be a hacker myself. Not too long ago I hacked a hole in the back yard with a pick axe to plant a butterfly bush, which promptly died because it turns out our soil is made of ceramic. Hence the need for a pick axe. But the point is I know about hacking, and I know that you don’t just dial 4-1-1 on your wireless telephone and ask for “hackers.” They’re not everywhere, certainly not as ubiquitous as the “magnificent man-things” (go Google!) which penetrate so many “she-holes of bliss,” or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

So here’s my question: what’s up with that anyway? Aren’t mystery novels allowed to have ordinary first time sex? Bad first time sex? Awkward I-can-never-face-you-again-and-oh-crap-where’s-my-wallet sex? Why is it always “he took her and their lives would never be the same” sex? And what if you need access to someone’s secret computer files but there wasn’t a hacker to be found for five hundred miles (because they’re busy surfing porn)? Would that be so bad? Maybe you have to just take your pick axe in there and bust the bad person’s computer open the old fashioned way? It’s not like you have to worry about being caught. The bad person (note that I am using gender neutral language to allow for the fact that even women can be eeevil) is off having great first sex with some stranger they met at a beach bar on a Caribbean Island while . . . well, anyway, you know where I’m going with this. And am I peeved.

Writer = Indiana Jones

December 3, 2007

Stephen King came up with what I think is probably the best description of the writing process. He said that it’s like being an archaeologist. The writer sees something sticking up out of the ground. Maybe it’s the leg bone of a dinosaur. Maybe it’s a potsherd. Maybe it’s a brick wall.

It’s probably a vague notion, an outline of an object, whatever. But the writer can see that there’s something there and he starts digging.

Sometimes, King said, it’s a full-blown novel. Sometimes it’s a short story.

And sometimes, King noted, the writer breaks it while trying to get it out of the ground.

As I mentioned last week in one of my comments, over the years of writing I’ve had some projects that either wouldn’t come out of the ground, or I broke them getting them out of the ground. Sometimes I think they were just broken. I went after a dinosaur bone (yeah, I know, the archaeologist metaphor has shifted to paleontology—sue me!) thinking I had a complete skeleton of a T. Rex and what I actually had was, well, a bone. And maybe not a dinosaur bone at all. 

I rarely have problems writing 50 to 100 pages on a project. If it dies before page 50, I was just fooling around and it was never meant to be written (by me, anyway). But when I work on a project for 100 to 150 pages and it dies (broken, to belabor the metaphor), well, that’s a pain in the posterior, no doubt. I hate that.

I think there might be a variety of reasons for it, though. I’m ambitious as a writer and sometimes I bite off more than I can chew. I’m a guy who’s only traveled to Canada, but sometimes I want to write some country-hopping thriller or adventure and I get bogged down in research. This was most notable in an adventure novel I tried to write twice, which was stillborn both times when the main characters hit the Congo.

Does that mean I should travel to the Congo to research the novel? Not necessarily. I’m open to travel if the money was there, but I’m not sure I would venture into the hellhole of Congo.

Sometimes some stories just don’t work for you as a writer and I think these stillbirths are the reasons. You just don’t have the skill to get them out of the ground in one piece.

I also think it is sometimes just part of the process of being a novelist. Sometimes you just have to try an idea and see if you can make it work. And sometimes if you abandon a project and it’s still calling to you, you can go back to it and complete it later at a time when you have more skill, insight or, perhaps, the time is just right.

Case in point, my novel, DIRTY DEEDS, my first published novel. It died somewhere around page 100. I gave up on it. I don’t even remember why. Lack of faith, maybe. About six months later, fishing around for some project to start, I picked up the uncompleted manuscript, started reading, got caught up in the story, and finished it off in a couple months and it was published by the second editor to see it.

These days, I’ll do what I call “boring drills.” In other words, I’ll intentionally start a project to see if it takes off (see if I get bored with it—get it?). If it does, great. If it doesn’t, eh, I’ll know by page 15 or 25 if it’s capturing my attention. None of them are bad ideas and none of them are poorly written, but if there’s one thing I’m slowly getting the hang of, it’s that just because it’s a good idea for a novel doesn’t mean I’m necessarily the right person to write it. Or that I’m the right person to write it at that time.

How about you guys? Any incomplete stories that you’re just waiting for the “right time” to work on? Sad little unfinished manuscripts that from time to time make a little bleat from the hard drive or filing cabinet: “I’m lonely, won’t you come finish me? Please!”

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. One aspect of King’s metaphor that he didn’t mention. Sometimes you abandon a dig site because your funding dried up. Shit happens, Kemosabe.

Cheers,

Mark Terry

InkSpot News - 1 December 2007

Give a Dog A Home for the Holidays. Bill Cameron is giving away FIVE copies of Lost Dog this holiday season. To learn more and to enter to win, just fill out the form at Give A Dog A Home by December 15, 2008. Five winners will be selected at random and the puppies sent out the following week. Other prizes are also available.