Murder She Writes

Sorry I’m late posting today. I am in bed with the PLAGUE (okay, fine, just the flu) but the fever is making me downright miserable, and the headache, body aches, and stomach pain and nausea is really a PITA.

Speaking of PITAs, on a writing list to which I belong, there is a certain individual who has been writing suspense/thriller fiction for years, and yet said person really should not be writing at all.

I am compassionate to unpublished writers, and especially those with special challenges, but this person simply REFUSES to listen to others, and really only wants to hear what SHE believes to be truth.

So, say, if she asks a question, and you answer it, and she doesn’t like the answer, she will find twenty five different WAYS to ask the question, hoping perhaps someone will validate her belief.

If you are patient, you are peppered with more questions, all the same question, really, reworded, jumbled and making no sense. If you get impatient, and tell her so, you are rewarded with long missives about her learning disabilities, and angry taunts about how you have no right to tell her what to do, and how she doesn’t have to listen to you.

This person will never change, and I realize this. But it got me thinking. How many people join writing groups, with little knowledge of writing, and actually GET something out of them?

I really didn’t know much about BOOK writing when I got started. Yes, I had written for the newspaper and edited, etc., but I had not studied the mechanics and process of writing a book, and so there were many things that I did not know. After a lot of writing rejections, I joined an online writing group, and I will NEVER, ever regret it.

The IWW, or Internet Writing Workshop, is one of the very best critique groups on the Net. Although I no longer belong, I will always remember the people I met there, and the growth that I saw in my OWN writing during that time. Deborah LeBlanc and I actually “met” on that writing workshop, and have maintained a friendship–both professional and personal–ever since.

Deb and I also found ourselves with publishing contracts at around the same time, which helped cement our friendship.

Other online groups are helpful with marketing, and answering questions, and some are just for support. As my career has taken off, I’ve found I now have little time for online groups, and offering support to newer writers, and this pains me some. I realize how much help it was TO ME when writers with more experience offered help to me.

So, with that in mind, I tried to help the above-mentioned person. And instead got smacked-down. I really should have known better, having past experience with this person. But having HAD past experience, I thought if I explained it succintly and in simple terms, the same question asked twenty-million-different-ways would stop. It did not.

I decided simply to remove myself from further discussion with said person. But I do want to help other writers. So, I’m wondering? What are the best ways to offer support and help to unpublished writers? Have you ever helped an unpubbed writer? If you are pubbed now, did you have a mentor?

My husband and I went to Sea World on Saturday, we had a blast. We were like kids all week waiting for Saturday to arrive so we could to Sea World. We got there before the park actually opened. Once we got our maps of the park, we sat down and plotted the important stuff so we wouldn’t miss out on anything. We saw Shamu first because Shamu rocks! We saw everything and had a fabulous time!

Sunday we got up to see the Simpson movie. Are you wondering why two adults would go see the movie? Because we KNOW our two older sons are seeing it and we have to be able to talk about it with them. We have to be in the loop. And just because we can.

See, we’re kids again. We’re free. My youngest is 18, and amazing. Okay, all my kids are amazing, the three boys (they’re men, but they are my boys) all interest me every time we talk. We don’t always agree, but I love hearing their take on life. I love that they care about people, have passion for issues, and yet they are learning to roll with the punches. I respect each of my sons as adults—something that’s hard to imagine when the small life is placed in your arms at birth.

Okay…life changes. It’s our choice if we change with life, grow, expand and become more interesting, or if we dig in and fight stubbornly to hold onto a time gone by. We loved raising our kids, and it hurts to let them go (the youngest is still at home, making me laugh), but we don’t want to hold them back. We want them to fly on their own…we’re here if they need us. But we always knew we didn’t get to keep our kids forever, that we would have to let them go and be relegated to a supporting role in their life.

So it’s a big change with the kids practically grown, but it means we get a whole new life. We can go anywhere we want, do anything we like, and we don’t have to be adults (parents have to be adults). We can be kids and go to Sea World by ourselves and see the Simpson’s movie. We’ve chosen to take the change that life has handed us and live it. Embrace it. I was just talking to my oldest son on the phone in the middle of writing this blog, and he said, “You guys just go do whatever you want now, we never know where you are!” There’s irony for you—now instead of me calling the check up on the boys, they are calling to check up on us!

So my point? Life changes and so do careers. If one stays in publishing long enough, there will be changes. Big, scary changes. Sometimes we’ll initiate the change, and sometimes, it’ll be thrust on us. What defines us as successful, in my view, is how we handle the change. Do we embrace the new challenge? Become an enthusiastic kid again and find the joy in the change?

Or do we whine, complain and do things like we always did? Do we develop an attitude about how we’re being picked on and taken for granted while refusing to change and try new things? Here’s a hint: If what we always did isn’t work any longer, then it’s time to change. Time to challenge ourselves, find a new path, do something different. It’s harder yes, but it’s also a lot more exciting.

My agent told me something a couple years back that has really resonated with me. I’m paraphrasing, but she said something like, “Don’t think of yourself as a mystery writer or a romance writer, think of yourself as an author. An author who, at the moment, writes mysteries and romances. Don’t limit yourself.” I think that applies to writing and to life.

In life, I never wanted to limit myself to “just” being a mom. I want to be a woman who is a mom, a wife, a friends, a sister, an author and much more.

As an author, I am a writer who writes mysteries, romances and has the potential (if I work hard enough) to write so much more. I just have to be willing to TRY, and keep trying. I have to recognize when something isn’t working for me anymore and try something new. By something new, it can be anything—from a different approach to plotting, trying a fresh character or working in a new genre. The point is the willingness to find what does work!

So what about you all? Are you facing changes in your life or careers? How do you handle it?

And seriously, how do they train those killer whales?

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What do you do? When a wrench is thrown smack dab in the middle of your spokes? Your momentum grinds to a halt, you look around for a rhyme, a reason, for help, but there is no one or nothing you can do.

My motto has always been the same as the USMC. Improvise, adapt and overcome.
Sometimes it is not so easy. There is it seems, always a price to be paid.

Such was the wrench thrown into our lives today when my husband and I took our youngest son to the ortho specialist today. For the second time in less than a year my son has injured the same shoulder playing football. The last time we took him to a specialist, had the x rays and MRI done, the doc told us, “Yes, there was damage, but it looked as if it had healed.” End of story.

My kid re-injured his shoulder when he hit the ground on said shoulder during passing league this week. We took him to a different specialist this time. There was something about the blasé approach of the last guy I didn’t care for. We find out from the new doc and new x-rays, not only does my son have separation of the shoulder, but he has a new fracture over the old fracture that never completely healed. And that he needed surgery. Major surgery. Surgery would mean no senior football season. When the doc told us the news you could hear a pin drop in the room. I felt faint. I nearly cried right there in the office. My husband was silent. I looked at my son and watched his jaw clench and the muscles in his cheek flex and unflex.

“What do I have to do to play this year, Doc?” my kid asks.

I’m sure some of you are cringing right about now.

But here’s the thing. I have this kid, a terror on the football field, a kid who lives and dies for football, who has more heart and passion on the field then ten football players, a kid who can play at the D2 level. To get him there he needs game film. You get game film when you play football. If he got the surgery now there would be no senior varsity football season for him. There would be no film, and so the colleges interested will look elsewhere. Again, I’m sure you’re all cringing. Thinking, what abut his shoulder? What about his health? Is football that important? To my son it is. As a parent, I kept my mouth shut and listened to the doctor. Hubby and I and my son asked many many questions. The bottom line is this: He has fractured his clavicle. It needs six weeks to heal. The separation will not heal without surgery. However if the fracture heals in six weeks, the doc has a harness type apparatus my son will wear under his shoulder pads and under the skeleton pads he has that will bring the separation together. It should, in theory, get him through the season. When the season is over he gets his surgery. We were assured if he does play, providing the fracture has healed, he can not damage the shoulder so much that even with surgery he would never be able to play football on any level again. He needs the surgery period. But. It can wait.

And so, when all was said and done, the doctor, me and my husband looked at my son and asked, “What do you want to do?”

There was no hesitation in his answer. “Play football.”

So we, as a team will do what we have to do to heal the kid and protect his shoulder, and hope for the best. As this has all settled in my brain over the last few hours, and I have had time to digest the news, it got me thinking about just how dedicated I was to my writing and other things in my life. What lengths would I go to, to stay in the game? Was I a worthy contender or just a flash in the pan? Would I, under the same circumstances make the same decision as my son? You see, he is good enough that if he were to have the surgery now, he could walk on somewhere next summer and, at 100% fight for a spot and most likely win it. But the kid wants to play now. He wants to stay in the game at every turn. He doesn’t want to give up one play, not one down if he doesn’t have to. I respect him for that.

I recommitted myself tonight to writing the best damn books I can. I’m willing to sacrifice. I’m willing to fight. To be brave in the face of adversity. I’m willing to improvise adapt and overcome.

What are you willing to do for the passion in your life?

To continue the thread started by Jen on Monday (scroll down because I’m too lazy to insert the link), I’ve been thinking a lot about reader expectations.

Apparently, there is a controversy surrounding one of my favorite authors. I haven’t read the new book, but from the discussion I guess I know what happens. (Will I still read it? Yes, when I have the time.)

But I think that anyone critical of the book–even though I haven’t read it–needs to take a step back and ask the following questions:

Is the book good? Is it a page-turner? Can you not put it down?

If those are all yes, then the author has succeeded, in my opinion.

Reader expectations are serious, and I take them seriously. But at the same time, stories are what they are–a slice of imaginary life and becomes real to not only the author, but the reader. We are invested in characters. We ache when they ache, cry when they cry, laugh when they laugh. Characters are real people. So when something bad happens to one of them–either death or another tragedy–we take it personally. Because we KNOW them.

And isn’t the author simply doing her job? Giving us a story with people we care about?

SPOILERS AHEAD

In FEAR NO EVIL, Lucy Kincaid is a victim. She doesn’t die, but she is brutalized. Patrick Kincaid is caught in an explosion and left in a coma. Sometimes, I wish he’d been killed him off. Seriously. Why? Because I’ve received HUNDREDS of reader letters wanting to know if Patrick gets out of the coma.

Answer: I don’t know.

If he were dead, I wouldn’t be having to answer these questions. I might get hate mail, but dead is dead (unless I’m writing supernatural stories, but that’s another story . . . )

Bad things happen to good people. In THE PREY, my villain killed a major secondary character. Some people were ticked off. As if I had killed him. But I didn’t–the villain did, it was in his character to do so, and that’s life. Well, life in fiction.

What does that mean for future books? Hopefully that people will continue turning pages wanting to know what happens next. Because of what happened in THE PREY, I know people were fearful that the killer in THE HUNT would do the same thing to another beloved secondary character. But Nick lived to star in his own story.

The romance genre promises a happily-ever-after. To have that, the hero and heroine must live (okay, in paranormal maybe “live” isn’t the right word–they must “be together”). And in romantic suspense, the villain must get what’s coming to him.

But in other genres that is simply not the case. The real question is reader satisfaction–is the story good, is the ending emotionally satisfying even when bad stuff happens? Was the book GOOD. In suspense, was it scary? In a thriller, was it a page-turner?

I read two books judging the Thrillers that didn’t make the top five, but were among my personal top five: TRYPTYCH by Karin Slaughter and A GOOD DAY TO DIE by Simon Kernick. Neither had the requisite “happily-ever-after” that is found in romance, but they were two incredible books that I literally could not put down. Possibly at gun point. They fulfilled the story promise of a thriller–they thrilled me. I had a physical reaction while I read them, I had to keep reading, I was IN the stories. They met–and exceeded–my expectations.

Romances? No, they were not. But they weren’t packaged or marketed as romances. If I was judging them for the Ritas, I would have given them 9′s but marked “Not A Romance.” But for the Thrillers? Perfect 10′s.

And that, my friends, is what I mean by reader expectations.

If a book is marketed and packaged as a thriller but doesn’t thrill me, I’m disappointed–even if it was a good book. If a book is marketed and packaged as a romance and doesn’t have a happily-ever-after, I’m disappointed–even if it was a good book.

One author who I have always enjoyed grew predictable. In every book, I knew who would die. It was always an important secondary character, sometimes likeable sometimes not, but it ALWAYS happened. What’s the excitement in that? It would be more exciting if you DIDN’T know IF someone would die.

I write romantic thrillers. I hope that they thrill people–and I hope that the ending is emotionally satisfying. The hero and heroine will live, and they will be together at the end of the book.

But, anything else goes. Anything. And from one book to the next, I hope you won’t know who will live . . . or who will die.

Sometimes, even I don’t know until I’m done with revisions.

TRIVIA: In the original version of THE PREY, Quinn Peterson died. It wasn’t until we decided to connect three books during the copyeditting phase that I resurrected him–giving him a flesh wound instead of a mortal wound, and making him the hero of THE HUNT.

I just returned from a two week stint of racing around the country from conference to ghost hunts to writing workshops and have been rushing to play catch up. Most of this morning was spent downloading pictures, some of which I’d hoped to share with you, along with short commentaries about the adventures. (No, didn’t see any REAL ghosts in Kentucky BUT, something came across my desk a little while ago that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. It came from the BBC. Get this….

The Simplified Spelling Society has been campaigning for a century to make the spelling of the English language easier and recently picketed a spelling bee in the U.S. to make their point.

Masha Bell, a member of the society and author of Understanding English Spelling, believes that reform of the spelling of the English language could help children learn to read and make life easier for some adults too.

SIMPLIFIED GLOSSARY
Learn – lern
Slow – slo
Beautiful – butiful

Prof Vivian Cook, a linguist, expert in second language learning and author of Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary, believes changing spellings would be unnecessary, expensive and could harm children’s ability to read.
We pitched the two, spelling reformer and spelling traditionalist, into a battle to persuade the other. Here they debate the merits of spelling systems, in the form of short e-mails.
Some of Ms Bell’s entries are partly-written in simplified spelling.

MASHA BELL: The Simplified Spelling Society believes that the spelling of English needs simplifying so children’s literacy can improve. The US spelling bee’s winner summed up the problem neatly: “Spelling is just a bunch of memorization.”

VIVIAN COOK: Obviously anything that can help children become literate in English is worth considering.

MB: If u hav a por memmory yor chances of becumming a good speller ar lo. But wors stil, yor chances of lerning to read ar not good either, because of phonnic nonsens like “cow-crow, dream-dreamt, friend-fiend” and hundreds mor like them.
The problem for the SSS is that most peeple ar not aware of the educational disadvantages which stem from spelling inconsistencies or how they came about.

VC: Don’t forget English has many other aspects that are a problem for children and adult learners. Our “standard” pronunciation is very hard for many people; our vocabulary is vast and drawn from virtually every language in the world; our grammar is a mystery (try explaining to a speaker of any other language when you say “I have been to Warsaw” rather than “I went to Warsaw”).
This makes it like any other human language, full of features that seem illogical but add up to a whole that works for human beings.

MB: Yes, as a language, English is exceptionally easy to lern. Compared with the six uther European languages which I hav studied (Lithuanian, Russian, German, French, Spanish and Italian), it has almost no grammatical difficulties whatsoever.
I did not begin to lern English until the age of 14, and the onely linguistic aspects I found tricky wer idiomatic expressions like “get off, back up, turn up”. – “I have been” and “I went” wer easy. The difference between them is consistent and logical.

VC: English is a great success story, used by hundreds of millions of natives and being used and learnt by a billion non-natives: it is so efficient that there are problems about it wiping out other languages.
I cannot agree that it is absolutely easier or more difficult than any other language: it depends on what first language you start from and many other circumstances of learning.

MB: But the alphabetic unreliability of English spelling is a huge problem. Foreign lerners can never be sure how to pronounce an English word without hearing it first [sun - sugar, and - ask, on - once]. That’s why onely English dictionaries have pronunciation guides and why I regularly annotated the words I was lerning: woman [wooman], women [wimmen].

VC: A problem for what? When reading simple words I don’t turn letters into words but words into meanings: “the” is not “t+h+e” but a whole symbol “the” like “@”.
Perhaps you could explain how any changes to spelling would affect the issue of English globally and how you would change spelling in a way that would help children and not hinder the rest of the English-using world?

MB: The most serious disadvantage of English spelling lies in making literacy acquisition for Anglophone children exceptionally slo and difficult – roughly three times sloer than the European average, acording to the most recent reserch (Seymour, 2003).
In English, even practised newsreaders occasionally still mispronounce words. (I hav herd Anna Ford struggle with “counterfeited” or “reneging”). That’s why moast English speakers stick to a fairly simple vocabulary

BLAH!!! And it just gets worse from there! That’s been our problem for years, trying to make things ‘easier’ for society. Can you imagine our falling prey to THIS kind of enemy??

Early Monday morning, two armed men broke into the home of Dr. William Petit, Jr., and held his family hostage. At some point, the two men forced one of the family members to go to a bank to withdraw money. A bank teller got suspicious and called police, and the home was then surrounded–with everyone inside.

The doctor’s wife, and two daughters, were killed. The two men escaped, and the house was torched. The doctor was severely injured.

Petit’s wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their two daughters, Hayley and Michaela, were found dead in the home, said a law enforcement official with firsthand knowledge of the investigation.

Red flags aplenty went up for me upon reading of this story.

1. Why would the two men go to the bank, get the money, and then go BACK to the house? It seems to me that if MONEY were the thing they were after, they would have released the hostage far, far away from the house and skedaddled with their loot.

2. Why kill the wife, and her two daughters, and NOT the doctor?

Petit, 50, a well-known diabetes specialist, was in stable condition at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, though it was not released how he was injured.

3. Why torch the house upon leaving? Destroying evidence? Most home invasion robberies don’t involve concern about evidence. Criminals are NOT smart. Unless one hires a SMART criminal.

All of this leads me to believe there is more involved here.

If this was a vendetta against the doctor, he made some VERY BAD ENEMIES. They made sure no evidence was left behind, and took away everything that meant something to the man. His wife, his children, AND his home.

If this was a hired job, they need to look deeply at an insurance motive. Not only did he lose his family, but his HOUSE was involved as well.

All in all, this is a terribly tragic story. Do other people see red flags here, or is it just me?

UPDATE:

Two suspects have been arrested and arraigned in the home invasion and murders of the Petit family. Read more here:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2007/07/24/supects_arraigned_in_home_invasion_homicides/

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On the Dear Author Blog readers are angry at a particular author of a suspense series. (IMPORTANT SPOILER WARNING: If you follow the link to Dear Author you’ll find out which author and book it is, then if you read my blog, you may figure out the plot twist. Your choice.) The author wrote in a huge twist at the end of her latest book affecting a main character and the fans, evidently, are very unhappy. I’ve only read one book in the series the readers are talking about, so I don’t feel very strongly about the plot twist.

My initial reaction to this hoopla is that it’s the author’s world (she created it) and she has a reason for shifting the plot. And I’m slightly dismayed that people are criticizing the author, making it personal, instead of about the book. Many are saying they will never buy another one of the author’s books.

But then I started thinking about my fan mail. I wrote five books in my Samantha Shaw series then switched to writing single titles. (For the record, that was my publisher’s decision, not mine. I would happily do both.) My last Samantha Shaw book came out in January 2006 and I get emails all the time asking me when the next one is, or begging me to write more. I also get emails asking me to let Sam and Vance have sex, (one reader asked me for an entire chapter of sex between Sam and Vance—God I love readers!) but that’s another blog 

What really surprised me is that readers told me they were so invested in the characters in the Sam books that they were reluctant to read the stand alones and get to know new characters. Wow! That’s amazing. The light began dawning on me that the connection readers form with series characters is incredibly strong. And through the characters, the readers feel a connection the author.

So going back to the Dear Author blog, these fans feel betrayed by the author. They feel like they had a personal relationship with the author through the characters, and now they’ve been seriously let down. One fan likened the twist to JD Robb killing off Roarke. And that really brought it home for me. I’d take it personally if Nora (writing as JD Robb) did that!

So my question for you—do you think series authors have an obligation to the readers to give them what they want? Or is it okay to change things so drastically in the series world? Would you feel betrayed? Or would you keep reading?

P.S. Because readers are so awesome, many have emailed me that they tried my stand alone books and love them. I love my readers!

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As many of you know, I was in Dallas last week for the RWA National Conference. You may also know, I have a fear of flying. (In airplanes, not the other kind of flying. ) Statistically, I know when I step onto an airplane, I will survive. I will land safe and sound at my destination airport. However, when I am 35, 000 feet above said destination airport and the plane is getting struck by lightening, bumped by thunder and shoved by turbulence I am certain I will crash to my death in the most horrible of ways: Straight down and painful.

Up until my trip to New York in March, I have had the reinforcement of Xanex fortified by a double Bloody Mary almost every time I travel by air. Since my daughter traveled with me to New York, I had to be the strong mama bear and overcome my fear of flying because she too has a bit of fear. I had to look and act the part of confident air traveler. Surprisingly, thinking confidently I was confident (huh, what a concept). Although I did have my moments.

So I figured instead of bugging my doc and asking for drugs, I’d tough the flight out to Dallas, knowing full well thunderstorms lurked over Texas waiting patiently for my airplane to pass by and mess with me. The last 45 minutes of the flight into Dallas was bumpy, very bumpy, and there was no convincing myself I was not going to die. But I soldiered on and breathed a very loud sigh of relief when we touched ground. I ran off that damn plane.

So why, you ask, are you boring us with your phobia of flying? Bear with me.

After a lovely two days with friends at a wonderful B&B in Gainesville last week, I checked into the Hyatt on Wednesday. (ladies, book early next year. I heard horror stories from those staying in the overflow hotel). I was up in my room and changing for the evening festivities in no time. I spent the entire conference socializing. It’s what I do best.

As it happened, Friday night after the Kensington cocktail party a group of people went up to the atrium lounge. I had a quick dinner with some friends then joined the group. I sat next to a very senior editor (who is also a publisher) who I had the immense pleasure of getting to know. Some time later a friend of mine pulled up a chair next to me. I can’t remember if I asked her if she had met this editor or if she had asked me to intro her, but the bottom line was I told my friend before introductions were made, “Miz Senior Editor/Publisher doesn’t scare me anymore.”

My friend looked at me and asked, “Does anything scare you?”

I had to think for a minute. I nodded and moved closer and said, “Yes. This is what scares me: Yesterday I called my 17 year-old son. I could tell he was in his truck on his way somewhere. This was our conversation:

‘Hi, honey. Are you wearing your seatbelt?’

‘Yes, mom.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To Ben’s house.’

‘I don’t want you drinking. No drinking and driving.’

‘I’m not, Mom. I promise.’

I told my son I loved him and missed him. He told me the same.”

The thought of loosing someone I hold near and dear to my heart terrifies me. Everything else? You can have it. Now don’t get me wrong. I love to write. LOVE IT! (In fact in an email today to my editor I told her, I LOVE MY JOB!) After the conversations I had with my agent and editors this conference, I feel so good about my future in the romance writing world. I want it all. I can do it all! But if they all called me right this minute and told me they never, under any circumstances, wanted to read another word of mine again, I could live with it. I could live with it (but miss it for sure) because what is most precious to me is just down the hall as I type.

My friend’s question put it all into perspective for me. And as I have pondered my response over and over, I realize I am very blessed. Both with my family, and my career. And while I am passionate about both, and love both, I know the driving force behind my passion for writing is my deeper passion for my husband and children.

Discovering these pearls of knowledge about myself is one reason why I love to socialize, especially with people who I find engaging. It makes me think. It makes me grow as a person, and it makes me feel good to be around people who get me. Life is too short to walk around all unhappy and resentful. Life is too short to blame others for your mistakes. Life is too short not to take it by the balls and hang on and have the ride of your life. We get one chance. Don’t waste it on negative self-destructing behaviors or negative self-destructive people. Savor what you have, and reach wider for more. But always remember what is closest to your heart.

Now I have a question kind of off topic but sort of on the same page. Who do you miss from conference (and if you didn’t go to Dallas who do you miss in general?)

Since I came back from conference this time around there are two people who I actually have like this achy-breaky heart over. It’s very weird. These two gals know it, and the weird ass part of it is, they feel the same damn way! How peculiar is that? I think as I get older I’m getting far too sentimental. So much for giving off the “I’m an island” vibe.

K*