OOOHHHH, SCARY VILLAINS!

October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween!

Lest I be accused of writing about something non-writing related for once, I thought, in the spirit of Halloween, I would talk—briefly!!!—about villains. And who better than Frankenstein’s monster (or is Dr. Victor Frankenstein the real villain?), Count Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

After all, these are three villains who have clearly stood the test of time. Archetypes, after all.

What makes them last in our psyche, why are they such delicious villains? And how—if we can at all—apply them to our own bad guys?

Frankenstein’s monster probably represents the monster from beyond. In espionage fiction he may be the enemy terrorist, the leader of the country we’re fighting. And yeah, sometimes they’re created by us. Look at an in-depth history of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, who created these monsters, anyway? Well, let’s not get too political or heavy here. Just ask yourself this question though: Is there humanity in this monster?

Count Dracula, or the vampire. We’re really talking evil here, the devil, Satan. The legendary Count Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) was the son of Count Dracu (nicknamed The Devil, for being such a charmer; Dracula, then, translates as Son of the Devil). Dracula’s a personification of evil and rarely seems all that human. He does, however, often come off as sexy and charismatic, larger than life.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You know what we have here? We have the werewolf. We have the serial killer. We have the every day, ordinary suburban guy who hides the evil inside, but sometimes it comes out to play. Why yes, little Jeffery seemed like such a nice man, quiet, unassuming. Until we find out he’s got body parts in his freezer.

There’s a fourth category: the ghost.

I’ve never quite gotten over an exchange in Peter Straub’s “Ghost Story” where one of the characters has problems understanding what the woman is saying. Did she say: “I see a ghost”? Did she say, “I am a ghost” or did she say “You are a ghost.”? Part of the house of mirrors in “Ghost Story” is that ghosts are reflections of those seeing them, perhaps vanity incarnate.

I’ll let you do the dissembling. Who are you favorite villains in fiction and which of these four archetypes do you think they fall under. Anybody want to start with Hannibal Lechter? Is he a vampire or is he a werewolf?

Happy Haunting!
Mark Terry

Ya Gotta Have Sass

by Nina Wright

Now and then I tend toward the blunt and cynical.Example: On a recent occasion when I may have been more...ahem...emotional than usual, my significant other, whom I fondly call Coach, asked why I was being "such a girl." In response, I asked why he was being such an a--hole. He calmly observed that I sound like the character I write.

"Which one?" I demanded.

Whiskey Mattimoe is hardly the girliest of girls, but she does have a mouth on her. Since she runs a real estate agency, however, she can't afford to piss everyone off. My teen protagonist Easter Hutton is more likely to let flip responses fly.

"Pick one," Coach said. "They all say what you want to say."

I started to protest, then reconsidered. Before long we were engaged in a lively discussion. Allow me to summarize:

Esprit de l’escalier. French for “staircase wit.” In everyday life, that’s the sparkling remark you wish you had thought of when you needed it but were too slow-witted to produce. In writing, it’s the power to give your characters the verbal snap and crackle you lack. Or not. Sometimes we make them mis-speak for humor, humanity, or plot activation. Both Whiskey and Easter frequently open mouth and insert foot.

Author-Protagonist Identity Fusion. No, this is not a new listing in the DSM-IV, although perhaps it should be. Authors, especially authors of series fiction, grow weary of being asked if they are their protagonists. Sue Grafton has admitted that she conceived Kinsey Milhone as a younger, braver, fitter version of herself. That’s partially true of me and Whiskey: she’s taller, braver, more athletic, and certainly more affluent than I am. But in all fairness, she lacks my brains and sophistication. Faraway friends with whom I used to spend lots of face time insist that reading the series is the next best thing to hanging out with me. I can only imagine that’s because Whiskey has a few of my questionable charms. Frankly, it’s the differences between us that keep me intrigued. My teen protagonist Easter Hutton is nearly the complete opposite of the sunny sixteen-year-old I used to be. That’s what makes her fun to write. I get to relive teen angst as a dark personality in a high-risk, paranormally charged world.

Author Personality Projection/Adjustment. Again, not a disorder. I contend that we infuse every character we write with pieces of ourselves, often neatly twisted. Although I’m inspired by real-world folks and frequently borrow dialogue or other details, I’m the final filter. Confession: my villain may be more like me, or more like what I fear, than my protagonist.

Author’s Voice. Finding our own is hard work for most of us. Reshaping it as needed for the various books (and genres) we choose to write may be even tougher. My signature voice, though distinctly different for Whiskey vs. Easter, is breezy, irreverent and direct, not unlike the way I talk. (There. I admitted it.) Yet that’s hardly the way I’ve always written. Back in grad school I believed that my future lay in writing literary novels. Oh, the poetry I churned out. I was the sensitive, articulate type. What happened, besides waking up to the reality of commerce? I dropped all pretense and wrote my essence. But I’d like to believe that I could still find the voice needed to write that literary or gothic novel. Without going back to grad school.

Although I aspire to weightier pieces, I swear sass beats class for readability and sheer entertainment. What’s your Author Voice? How did you find it? Where do your characters come from? Happy writing and Happy Halloween from this occasionally rude writer.

http://www.mrfairlessrules.blogspot.com/
http://www.whiskeymattimoe.blogspot.com/

Clutter or creativity?

So, what happened?

A few Christmases ago, this was the question posed by a concerned relative while standing in my messy office. Her hand swept over the theatre-shaped cardboard collage with its montage of magazine cutouts, plastic squirt guns, and stuffed latex gloves. It swung past the big bulletin board and over quotes by Thoreau, notes from authors, and photos of Sarah Paretsky, Dave Barry, Elmore Leonard, and Ray Bradbury, not to mention scraps of paper with dangling notes-to-self. From beneath her crumpled brow, she peered at the grease board with its hand drawn map of Mudd Lake, the imaginary Michigan town that is home to my Kate London Mystery Series.
And speaking of the Kate London Mysteries, did I mention the reams and reams of paper, a.k.a. work-in-progress, that littered the surfaces?

What? What's the problem?

Then I got what she meant.

My office used to be somewhat, err---neat----at least she thought so.

A light went on behind her eyes.

Ohhh. The book!

Now, I've always been a messy worker—I shoved papers off camera to shoot the above photo for a curious reporter. I wanted her to at least see I had a desk, but in the past, I made big efforts to hide the major clutter.

Not so, any more. A book-in-progress is not something that likes to be shoved into a closet. Collages don’t fare well in the dark, and creative notes seem to like dangling at odd angles to grab your attention.

My fictional writing seems to need a physical space—I need the visuals around me to work—not that I can't do so at Starbucks or the library, but home base requires the stuff of a writer—the nest if you will.

So, what happened? Creativity? Or maybe I just got tired of hiding it all in the closet.

What does your writing space look like? Are you a neatnik? A clutter-lover? Somewhere in between?

InkSpot News - 27 October 2007

Midnight Inker Sue Ann Jaffarian will be the guest blogger today at The Writers Plot blog (www.writersplot.typepad.com). Drop on by and say hello.

Oooh ....those librarians...

Tom Schreck, author of "On The Ropes, A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery"

In On The Ropes Duffy has a minor obsession with librarian Debra Speakwell.

Her shoulder length red hair, her constant need to moisturize her page-worn fingers and that confident mastery of the Dewey Decimal system...

Man, talk about hot.

I love librarians.

I love the glasses they wear and the way their eyes search behind them finding exactly what you want, what you're looking for. Those eyes, those glasses looking out and gathering what you need.

Oh my...

It's not just the glasses or the hair tied neatly in a bun --man, that smoldering look, that control, that, that, that....that way they hold a single finger to their pursed lips and exhale "Shhhh..."


I think it's their total sense of control that gets to me. Their books, on their shelves in that special order that only they really understand.

They have the information you want. They know how to get it and if you ask in the right way--they'll help you.

But it's the way they lend a hand. Quietly, never rushed--librarians take their time, they do it right, they do it thoroughly and when they're done, well, perhaps a half smile, a nod and that knowing look letting you understand that they are the only ones for this kind of work.

I spent last weekend at the New York Library Association Convention and in two weeks I'm hosting a panel at Murder and Mayhem in Muskego--a library sponsored event.

I also found out this morning that some library way out in Portland, Oregon just ordered six copies of On The Ropes.

It's not just the glasses.

Writing on the road

When I first started writing novels I had a set routine, a specific time when I would pound away at the keyboard in hopes of getting something memorable on the page. The ritual of sitting down at the same time in the same place brought a certain discipline to the process of writing that I desperately needed. For the first book writing time was every night after my wife went to sleep, from ten to two in the morning, which suited my nocturnal nature. Then we had our first daughter who was also a night owl and my schedule had to change, so I wrote the second novel every morning from six to eight, sitting in a local restaurant, pancakes on one side of the table and laptop on the other.

But with two kids at home and in the midst of a tour to promote the new novel, any sense of discipline I once possessed has gone straight to hell. I’ve had to train myself to write on the road, to pick up the narrative thread wherever it left off, even if that was somewhere three time zones ago. Lately I’ve been doing most of my writing on airplanes or in hotel rooms. Tonight I’m in a hotel just north of San Diego, tomorrow it will be Chicago, and then on Saturday it’s a quick tour through Wisconsin before heading east to Ohio. I thought that staying focused on the road would be damn near impossible, and it took a while to get the hang of it, but in some ways the constant state of change has been a great catalyst for unexpected plot twists and random bits of dialogue that would never have occurred to me if I were sitting in my office at home.

Ready for My Closeup

by G.M. Malliet

My most recent stop on the publishing trail was having my author photo professionally taken. I had been getting by for a few years with rather hazy digital vacation snaps taken by my husband. It was explained to me by Midnight Ink that for their catalog, I'd need a headshot taken by a real photographer. They sent a sheet of rather daunting and specific instructions ("Please do not lay your head in your hands on a table" - I wasn't entirely sure what that meant but I vowed to keep my head off any tables), and off I went on my quest for the perfect photographer.

I had never had my photo done professionally before and I faced the whole thing with a certain amount of dread. There were high school and college graduation photos, but those were more assembly-line productions. Then there were my wedding photos, which were largely a matter of capturing everyone on film before they were too drunk to stand. This would be the real thing with various costume changes and a stylist(!).

But it all turned out to be a fun experience which I would highly recommend to anyone. Any excuse will do - birthday or anniversary or whatever. You will probably find you really, really like being fussed over like Oprah for two hours.

I got many good recommendations for photographers from the various writers' listserves I belong to, but I went with Michael Collins, who has a studio near Annapolis. His stylist/makeup artist, Laural Hargadon, also works for national and regional beauty pageants. Just imagine. Just. Imagine. I can think of a few more pressure-cooker jobs, but not many. I must have seemed relatively low-maintenance, since I was not, merciful God, facing a swimsuit competition.

For weeks before my appointment, I studied various author photos on the backs of book covers to figure out what kind of "look" I wanted to aim for. I found an awful lot of mystery authors in raincoats and/or fedoras and/or leather jackets, and I'm still not sure what that is about. It would be a great topic for someone's master's thesis. These authors looked dark and sinister and intriguing but since my books are more satiric than anything, figuring out what a satiric author of traditional mysteries might wear was the biggest challenge. A deerstalker hat? In the end, I packed half of what I owned into a suitcase and set off, hoping for the best. (This was where Laural came in handy, in helping me choose.)

Anyway, don't hesitate...the whole process is a hoot. And you, too, can be Diva for a Day.

p.s. For those in the Mid-Atlantic region, the Dying to Write conference still has openings. Registration information here:http://www.mwa-ma.org/events2.html

Research sucks...

Photo Credit Don Reiland

...but somebody's got to do it.

Yeah, okay, that might not be exactly accurate. See, I write about a guy that lives in the Caribbean so I need, on occasion, to travel to said Caribbean to do a bit of "research." Yeah, that's the typical response I get. That bobbing of the head; that grin and wink. But please, if my accountant calls, go with the story eh?

I'm off to sail the British Virgin Islands with a couple buddies. These first few months as a newly minted author have been quite a whirlwind. I could use a bit of time to off gas. And for me, research is one of my favorite things about writing. I've got a license to learn. Tell someone you are a novelist and you've got a couple questions about what they do, you are more than likely to get a positive reaction. This research thing has introduced me to a bunch of very interesting and intelligent people - people I would have never met otherwise. Hell, I wouldn't have had the reason to.

So you see, that's why I HAVE to go the Caribbean. I have to do research; I have to make my stories as real as possible. It just so happens that a lot of my stories take place in a beach bar in the Caribbean.....