Guest Post: You are not in Control and You are not Normal.

Let's give a giant Inkspot welcome to Emily Kimmelman, author of the Sydney Rye mystery novels.

I want to start off by thanking all the authors at INKSPOT for inviting me here today to talk about writing... one of my all time favorite subjects :) For me, writing is the act of letting go of two things, control and normalcy.

I attended an event at The Center for Fiction in Manhattan last week for a friend’s book launch. During her talk, she spoke of how a story chooses the writer and that really, we have no control over it. After the reading, while the author signed books, I chatted with her husband, who admitted he never could understand what she was talking about when she said that characters often did unexpected things.

Most fiction writers will agree that your story chooses you and your characters do what they want. These are the most magical parts about writing and also the hardest to understand until you’ve been there. When I set out to write my first book, UNLEASHED (A Sydney Rye Novel, #1), I created a detailed outline that took months to complete. However, by the time I was a third of the way into writing my story I had to throw it away because none of my characters agreed with my vision. For the record, their version was a lot better.

What I learned is that I needed to trust my imagination and go with it. Which is not normal. Normal people don’t spend hours, weeks, years, let alone lifetimes listening to their imaginary friends and coming up with adventures for them to go on. I feel the constant need to remind myself of these facts, that I am not in control, and I am not normal, and that is the only way this thing works. At least for me.

Do you feel the same? Do your characters boss you around? Ever gotten half way through a novel and realized you should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque?

If you want to see where my out of control, non-normal writing ethos gets me, download a FREE copy of my mystery, UNLEASHED (A Sydney Rye Novel, #1). If you like it, which if you’re over 18, enjoy some violence, don't mind dirty language, are up for a dash of sex and can handle twists and turns that keep you reading late into the night, you probably will, then the second book, DEATH IN THE DARK (A Sydney Rye Novella, #2), is on sale for only $.99 through Tuesday.

Don’t have a Kindle but do have another reading device? Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you a free copy of UNLEASHED in whatever format you like. You’ll also be the first to hear about new releases and sales.

You can learn more about me on Twitter, Facebook and on my website.

The Devil in the Details

By: Maegan Beaumont

He rolled up the make-shift tarp he’d laid out on the kitchen floor and placed it in a trash bag along with the dress. Undiluted, he poured the ammonia onto the kitchen floor and chair. While ammonia didn’t destroy DNA, any evidence gathered there would be corrupted by the chemical and rendered useless. The ammonia was strong-smelling, so he opened a few windows for ventilation. The early afternoon breeze made the chore of cleaning up his mess almost pleasant.

—Carved in Darkness

It took me nearly three weeks to write this paragraph. It wasn't writers’ block or a computer crash that bogged me down—it was my almost obsessive need for accuracy.

And it wasn't just this passage I nitpicked. It was the entire novel. I scoured the internet. I read books. I logged onto forensic forums. I emailed cops and asked them what I’m sure they thought were inane and possibly dangerous questions. I spent what felt like an entire summer in handcuffs because I was trying to teach myself how to pick my way out of them. After cutting myself in a kitchen mishap, I soaked the wound in salt water (If you've read CARVED, then you understand the significance). I've even gone so far as to have a very distraught friend of mine drive me around in the trunk of her car... all so I could be sure that what I was writing was as close to the truth as I could get it. Don’t get me wrong, I ask my readers to suspend disbelief on a regular basis but I can do so because I know one simple rule: 
The most effective lies are found buried in the truth.  

So, yes... I do lie. I do make stuff up, I write fiction, after all... but readers are smart.  They know things, because they read, and they don’t like it when a writer is too lazy to do their research. I know this because as a reader, I feel exactly the same way. I don’t mind being lied to as long as I know the writer took the time and made the effort to make me believe the lie.

The key to great fiction isn't writing what you know--it's writing what you can make others believe that you know, and that takes work. Hours of research. Reading and reaching out to people who can lend authenticity to my writing, but when a reader asks me if I've ever tortured someone (yes, someone really asked me that... and the answer is no) or a reviewer mentions how impressive my attention to detail is, I know it's worth it.

So, my question is: How important is accuracy in writing to you? How do you feel about shoddy research? How do you feel about writers who don't take their research seriously?

"Prepare to be overwhelmed by the tension and moodiness that permeates this edgy thriller. Beaumont’s ability to keep the twists coming even when the answer seems obvious is quite potent."
 ~ Library Journal

Maegan Beaumont is the author of Carved in Darkness, book one in the Sabrina Vaughn thriller series, on sale now.

Memoir, Mystery, and the Muse

by Sheila Webster Boneham


I recently taught a six-week "Write Your Memoir" class through the Cameron Art Museum here in Wilmington, NC. I love teaching through the Museum School - we get terrific students. Writing is rather new to the Museum School's offerings and we are still building up that portion of the catalog, but things are looking up as people find out about the writing classes. 

Now that "Memoir" is finished, I'm back to focusing on the third book in my Animals in Focus Mystery series, tentatively titled Catwalk, and I've been thinking about some of the links between memoirs, mysteries, and that slippery character, the writer's Muse. Creativity, after all, works in similar ways regardless of the genre -- or even the medium -- in which we work.  

One of the tools I shared with my memoir students was a series of questions to ask of old photographs. We've all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a photo (or other visual image) may also help inspire and expand ideas. It's no surprise that photos can be used to bring up memories of places we've been, or people and animals we've known, or events we've experienced. 

What may not be so obvious is that  photos can be useful creative tools for  writers in other genres, including mystery. Images of settings, people, animals, or objects can serve to inspire short stories or scenes in longer works, especially when the narrator or a character answers the questions I pose below. An image might even provide the kernel for a longer piece of writing. For instance, one of my inspirations for The Money Bird, which will be out in September, was a photo of an escaped pet parrot in a tree in the Midwest. 

So if you're looking for a way to go deeper, or wider, or to find new ideas, try "interrogating" a photo or painting. Better yet, have one of your characters do it. Start with these questions:

• Where is this?
• When?
• Why are you there?
• Who else is there?
• Have you been there before?
• What is happening, or not happening?
• Is some object in the photo significant to you?
• Is a person or animal in the picture significant to you?

Now dig deeper:

• What do you hear?
• What do you smell?
• What did you eat or drink?
• What does it taste like?
• What’s the weather like?
• What time of day is it?
• What are you wearing?
• Who else is there?
• What do you feel with your hands, your feet, your skin….
• What emotions do you feel?

And so on....

Give it a try. Let me know how it goes. Send a picture! You can find me at www.sheilaboneham.com or on my Write Here, Write Now! blog. 

INKSPOT NEWS - June 8, 2013

Today, Saturday June 8th, from 3:00 - 5:00 PM, Midnight Ink author Beth Groundwater will sign copies of her brand new release, Fatal Descent, the third book in her critically acclaimed RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series. The event will be a fundraiser for the Gore Range chapter of Trout Unlimited, with 10% of the proceeds going to the organization. It will take place at the Next Page Bookstore, 409 Main Street, #101, Frisco, CO 80443.

As I Launch It

Hi guys.

It's great to be back at Inkspot on the day my Midnight Ink stand-alone AS SHE LEFT IT is published. What a long and winding road! But finally I get to make my little book a sandwich, check that it's got a clean hanky and send it off out into the world with a pat on the bottom and an almost soundless sob.

As you might guess from the jacket:

 

 

AS SHE LEFT IT is not about beautiful people leading glamorous lives.  Opal Jones is a twenty-five-year-old with a difficult past, who returns to the street where she grew up after the death (from drink) of her mother, and finds a neighbourhood in a permanent state of troubled mourning following the disappearance of a child ten years before.

She sets out to solve the mystery, but she also gets work in a supermarket, like people do.  Someone asked me why she has such a terrible job.  I answered politely but inside I was thinking: don’t watch any more Sandra Bullock rom-coms; not everyone is a paediatrician.

Also, the book’s set in a place that is not . . . how can I put it?  Okay, try this: when I moved from Edinburgh to Leeds, where the book takes place, one of my colleagues who was staying in Edinburgh took great pleasure in reading out two entries from a Guidebook to Britain. “Edinburgh is one of the cultural, historical and architectural gems of Europe.”  And  “Leeds is a large city in the north of England.”  Simon Kirby, this means you.  If you’ve ever seen The Full Monty, Brassed Off and/or Billy Elliot (and there’s triple feature for you!) you’ve got a fair idea of what Leeds looks like.

However, the people are the warmest and funniest in the world.  The accent feels like a cuddle.  And the fish and chips are to die for. 

 

 

 

Also, if I hadn’t had that five years in Leeds I wouldn’t have this book and I’m very proud of this book.  It’s not completely “light, bright and sparkling” but it’s far from grim.  My fondest hope is to make people laugh and cry (and maybe choke if they laugh and cry in quick enough succession).

The events in the novel take place during a heat wave.  So I thought I’d share an excerpt especially chosen for summer.

“That Saturday was the hottest day yet, the hottest day ever, since records began. Opal woke at five o’clock with the sun already throbbing in at the bedroom window and the air still thick and damp from the heat of the day before. She went for her bus and no one in the queue had a jacket over their arm or an umbrella folded up along the top of their handbag. Everyone – even the men – was wearing sandals. And out at the store two of the assistant managers were putting up parasols next to the doorway. Round in the warehouse, Dave and a supervisor from Wet Fish were dragging an open-front chiller on a trolley towards the flap doors.

‘Email from Head Office,’ Dave said. It’s going to the door for water. We’ve to fill it with chipped ice off of Fish and hand out bottled water.’

‘Whole bottles,’ said the Wet Fish supervisor. He was already in his white coat and trilby. ‘Not like samples. Not plastic beakers like a tasting.’

‘Because we asked them,’ Dave said. ‘Whole bottles. For free.’

That was the start of the day’s madness. The barbecue hordes came early. Usually it was gone eleven before they started drifting in, tattooed and topless, filling deep trolleys with charcoal and Polish lager, but that day the first of them arrived before nine and some of the very first bought all of the ice, then the later ones wanted to know where the chipped ice in the open front chiller by the door had come from and why couldn’t they get some too. And one of the assistant managers had to be beeped to come and explain that it wasn’t edible ice and couldn’t be used in drinks, but then Charlotte had a mother complaining that one of the girls giving out the water had said to her little boy that he could have a scoop of it in his empty slushy-cup and he’d eaten the lot.

And there was no cream in the dairy drop at ten o’clock – none at all: double, single, whipping, clotted, even Chantilly – and the UHT and aerosol ran out and after that everyone who had picked up strawberries on a twofer started putting them back again, only hardly anyone bothered to go back and dump them with the rest of the strawberries; they just shoved them onto the nearest shelf and the store started to fill up with cartons of sweating strawberries and Kate and Rhianne, detailed to seek them out and bring them home couldn’t do it because the warehouse boys had brought out more and there was nowhere to put them, so they got stickered down and piled up in Reduced but that only started the whole strawberries-cream-no-cream-no-strawberries cycle all over again until, as Rhianne said:

“I’m starting to recognise some of these buggers. This is the third time I’ve moved the carton with that big one like Santa’s nose.’”

If any of that makes you think you’d like to know more about Opal Jones and Mote Street and what happened to little Craig Southgate, I’m giving away a signed copy in celebration of publication day.  Just leave comment (I always say “Gimme a book” is fine) and I’ll put your name in the cauldron.

 

Not All Who Wander Are Lost (But some of us are)

by Shannon Baker

I met a Zen master on Sunday. At least, his business cards and bio listed Zen credentials all over the place. He acted very un-Zen-like, though, as he tried to do a hard sell on me to sign up for three to five sessions of meditation lessons for several hundred dollars. I did like the guy, though, and found him very interesting. He kept mentioning a personal My Favorites list consisting of favorite music, quotes, books, people, activities, food, places. He said everyone needs to generate this list and use it to help them find peace.

I don’t know about the whole list but I’ve always known what to do to make me feel better about life. Since I was seven years-old and Santa brought me my first Huffy, climbing on my bike and pedaling away always brings a smile.

Living along the Front Range in Colorado I’ve discovered another sure-fire way to bring me peace. Like Nora Abbott, the angst-ridden protagonist in my books, I love the mountains. So today, I said sayonara to revisions that are making me crazy. Adios to job applications and Linkedin. I strapped on my hiking boots, loaded up my pack and headed off to the trail.

I wanted to take you with me but you were all working so hard and I didn’t want to distract you. So I brought you back a bit of the mountains. Hope you enjoy!

Reviews - Love 'Em or Leave 'Em?

By Beth Groundwater

Do you read book reviews, either professional or amateur? Do you base your reading choices on them? As an author, I probably pay more attention to professional reviews than my friends do who are purely readers. There are some review publications and some particular professional mystery reviewers whose opinions I trust and who influence my reading selections a great deal. However, I also pay attention to what books my in-person reader friends recommend and what books my on-line Goodreads reader friends recommend. For a select few, almost every mystery book they rate 4 or 5 stars goes on my to-read list.

Also as an author, reviews are VERY important to me, because they are an important way for my books to stand out from the crowd of hundreds of thousands of books that are published every year.

With each new release, I wait with bated breath for that first professional review of the book, hoping that it's from one of the big four review publications (Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, or Publishers Weekly), or an equally respected source, and hoping that it's good. And I sweat a little. That's because, much like restaurant reviews, professional book reviews can make or break a new opening or new release. They can eat you for lunch ...

or they can enjoy reading your book so much they can't put it down, even late at night when they really need to go to sleep.

If that magical state happens and they write a good review, that can start the all-important word-of-mouth cycle that gets people reading the book, and if they like it, recommending it to a friend.

And if that friend likes reading it, too, he or she will recommend it to more friends and the fire spreads until soon whole crowds are reading your book. Or, at least that's the hope and dream of all authors I know!

Recently, I've been in this anxious state for my June 8th release, Fatal Descent, the third in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series starring whitewater river ranger/rafting guide Mandy Tanner. Instead of the usual setting for the first two books (the upper Arkansas River in Colorado), the murderous action in Fatal Descent takes place on the Colorado River in the remote Utah Canyonlands, specifically Cataract Canyon.The first breath of relief came in April with a review from Publishers Weekly (click on the link for the full text):

"The tension runs high in Groundwater’s absorbing third RM Outdoor Adventures mystery … Scenic descriptions and folklore add atmosphere to a suspenseful tale."

With that review, I could breathe a little sign of relief. The second loosening of tension came with news of a Fatal Descent review in Kirkus Reviews. But then the tension increased a little again when the review turned out to be more lukewarm than blazing hot like the Publishers Weekly one. Here's the pull-quote:

"A late-season rafting trip spells trouble for a river ranger doubling as an adventure tour guide."

Next in May came the first review, along with a 4-star rating, from an amateur reviewer on Fatal Descent's Goodreads page:

 "... Fast-paced, intense read where the personalities of the folks on the trip (and their interactions with one another) and the things Mandy learns about them make for a gripping puzzle. ... Highly recommend, as always!"

By that point, I was feeling pretty darn good. Then, two days ago, I felt like the girl who hits the baseball over the fence for a home run the first time when a very complimentary review of Fatal Descent came out in Library Journal. The book even merited its own sub-heading "River Tales," and who could complain about being compared to Nevada Barr!

"Groundwater’s third entry (after the Left Coast Crime Rocky Award finalist Wicked Eddies) is marked by an outdoorsy intensity and authentic sports chatter sure to resonate with Nevada Barr readers. Her methodical, gentle buildup mirrors the river’s course so that when the characters hit the rapids, life jackets are a must."

I had so much fun researching and writing Fatal Descent, and I hope that readers have as much fun reading it. You can order copies now from your local bookstore or favorite on-line retailer. If you enjoy reading it, I hope you'll tell your friends about it (and ask them to spread the word). If you hang out in Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, DorothyL or some other on-line reading community, I hope you share a review of the book. It's you readers who determine a book's (and ultimately an author's) success or failure!

Please share in the comments whether or not you are influenced by reviews, professional or amateur, and if so, where you read them.

INKSPOT NEWS - June 1, 2013

Here are the new releases from Midnight Ink for June, 2013. They're all phenomenal reads!

As She Left It by Catriona McPherson

"The creator of Dandy Gilver . . . has produced a stand-alone that is worlds apart, a fascinating, mysterious ramble you can't put down."—KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)

"...dark, absorbing, contemporary stand-alone..."—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Eternally 21 by Linda Joffe Hull

"A character whom readers will be pleased to follow." —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Maddie’s coupon-clipping tips are seamlessly incorporated into the well-constructed mystery, which provides a series of stunning twists that will leave readers eager to see what will happen to Maddie in the next installment.”—BOOKLIST

Deadly Currents by Beth Groundwater

“The tension runs high in Groundwater’s absorbing third RM Outdoor Adventures mystery … Scenic descriptions and folklore add atmosphere to a suspenseful tale.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Groundwater’s third entry (after the Left Coast Crime Rocky Award finalist Wicked Eddies) is marked by an outdoorsy intensity and authentic sports chatter sure to resonate with Nevada Barr readers. Her methodical, gentle buildup mirrors the river’s course so that when the characters hit the rapids, life jackets are a must.” —LIBRARY JOURNAL