ADMIN: Please welcome guest blogger Roxanne St. Claire of the popular Bullet Catchers romantic suspense series (among many other books). She’s willing to answer questions and chat with MSW friends, so don’t be shy!

Hey suspense fans, how cool to be guest blogging at one of my very favorite places to procrastinate! Thanks to Allison, Karin (my future anthology mates) and the whole MSW gang for the invitation to play in the cyber sandbox.

I’m currently in writer’s limbo, a place that rarely lasts more than two or three days for me: between books. I do not like it, Sam I Am. I function best when I am ankle, knee or (best of all) chin deep in a manuscript, living on the hairy edge of a deadline, falling wretchedly in love, taking down a baddie, planning my next twisted twist. But this month finds me in the trenches (known as signings, appearances and speeches) to promote my latest release, THRILL ME TO DEATH. I am trying to make the most of it, and using my time with so many readers to do a little unscientific market research about what they read, and why. What I’ve learned is probably not news to anyone reading this, but it is so universal that it strikes me as something that bears blogging.

Here is the mother of all understatements: readers like connected books. No, that’s not true. Readers LOVE connected books. Frankly, this connection with connection is so extensive, pervasive and attractive to readers that very often they won’t consider books that aren’t connected, much in the same way they won’t consider certain genres, time periods or settings. Maybe that’s a great big “duh” to you, but I confess it took me a while to see this particular light, blinding as it might be. My first three books, all romantic suspense single titles, were blissfully unconnected to one another. Nary a character from one showed up in another. My interest in the world I’d created and the people that populated it ended on the last page. Those books sold just fine, did very well in contests, and started a nice career chugging along for me. But it wasn’t until I climbed aboard the connected book bandwagon that my career did more than chug, and I know that forward motion is no coincidence.

Readers, I’ve learned in my recent travels to bookstores and libraries, demand connected books. They are, in truth, way past disappointed when they pick up one of my backlist and use it to point to a stack of another title and say, “Are these a series?” Fortunately, I can slide forward two other piles, with similar titles, similar covers and one big world I’ve been building. These books, I assure them, are connected, and more are on the way. This gives me an opportunity to blurb my Bullet Catchers, “bodyguards to die for” or whatever marketing phrase flows to my tongue. The audience brightens. And they buy. (In multiples.)

I admit I wasn’t a fan of connectivity when I was “just a reader” — for a good twenty years, I should say. Maybe there weren’t that many connected series around then, but when an author would reference a character who was obviously from a previous book (now happily married, conflict free and, usually, expecting) I would cringe at what felt, to me, like arrogance. Was the author so cocky that she assumes I’d read everything she’d written? Plus, it gave me that feeling you get when you arrive at the movies fifteen minutes late: I’ve missed something critical — do I even want to be here? I don’t know why it took me so long to get with the program — I was a fan of nighttime soaps back in the glory days of Knot’s Landing and Dallas, and admit to being a 24 and Lost addict today. Why wouldn’t that spill over into books?

I dipped my toes into the connected book water with my first three category books (the much-loved and oft-used brothers connection) and then, when researching the premise for my fourth romantic suspense that I had decided would feature a bodyguard, I came across the term “Bullet Catcher” and the equivalent of writer’s lightning struck. My world was born, my team was formed, my series took shape faster than I could start a character list. And, lo and behold, brother, I am a believer! Readers adore connected books.

Not that everything comes down to marketing (says the former PR pro). I am really enjoying the process of world building and the challenge that comes with layering a story arc across multiple books and creating characters who will be promoted from secondary to lead in future books. I love the “extension” of my stories, and now look for ways to layer the connectivity, whether it’s a mini-trilogy within the series or laying the foundation for a relationship between secondary characters that grows and changes from book to book. I have definitely caught the connectivity fever.

However, I do believe this phenomenon has changed the playing field for genre and commercial fiction writers. It has an impact on the kinds of stories that are told, the speed with which they are published, and the eventual success (or not) for writers who may not be hardwired to think in terms of connected series (or may not be able to produce them fast enough to feed a hungry market). I hope it doesn’t impact creativity. I have lots of story ideas that have nothing to do with bodyguards. Some aren’t even romantic suspense. There may not be brothers, sisters, co-workers or story lines involved that merit their own books. Will I get to tell them? I hope so. I hope no stand-alone stories remain untold by any writer because of the market demand for connectivity. Just as I hope no secondary characters are created for the sole purpose of having their own book someday.

I won’t ask why readers like connected stories — they’ve told me. They like to revisit old friends, they like familiarity, they are invested in the characters and their stories. But I would like to know if you all believe this trend (if it can be called that) is forever. Is it good for readers and writers? Is there anyone out there who doesn’t like connected books? Could we overdose on them? Do some work better than others, and why? I’d love to hear comments from writers and readers on the pros and pitfalls of connected books.

Thank you, again, for inviting me to stop by. I’ll check comments and will be happy to answer any questions about connectivity in particular or the writer’s life in general. For a little while, anyway. Then I’ll be leaving writer’s limbo and heading into deadline paradise. I can’t be late…I’ve got a connection to make.

xoxo
Rocki
www.roxannestclaire.com

www.melvinfoster.com
The Four Things I Learned About Life and Writing While Narrating Audiobooks

1. Here, in a nutshell, is my life: Wanted to be a famous writer. Wrote a novel. Wrote another one. Wrote a third one. Etc. Then, 20 years and three more novels later, I got my “first” novel published.

To support my family during the “dry” years, I worked at a REALLY LARGE advertising agency. Often, when we edited television commercials, I was called upon to be the voice for the “scratch track” — the track they discarded when they hired the PROFESSIONAL voice talent.

I left the ad biz to pursue two dreams: writing and voice work. First things first, I wrote the novel that eventually got published. Then I drove to New York to attend an audiobook audition. There were 25 people from New York, 25 people from LA and me. The guy from Detroit. Yes, Detroit. I didn’t get a single job that year. Complete and total rejection. I went back to New York the next year to try again. (Hmm, there’s a pattern developing here.) This time it resulted in my first audiobook, Firehouse, by David Halberstam.

Last month, I was awarded one of the industry’s coveted awards, an Audie, for my twelfth audiobook, the narration of Philip Yancey’s Finding God in Unexpected Places.

Lesson One: Never, never, never count yourself out.

2. This moment occurs in many, many novels. There’s a killer or a rapist loose in the city. It’s all over the news. On a dark night, our protagonist hears a noise outside on the porch. She thinks, “Gosh, I wonder what that could be?” She might even consider — for a nanosecond — that it might be the killer. But she talks herself out of it and opens the door. Enter the killer.

As readers, we wince when we read this scene. It’s so transparent.

As writers, we try to be less obvious about such turning points.

As a narrator, it becomes a little more complicated.

When I get a book to narrate, I receive the manuscript a week prior to recording. I read it both to get the sense of the story and also to try out various voices for the characters. When I get to the scene described above, I tend to wince a lot.

Then, a week later, I’m in the booth recording that scene where it’s my job to perform it. To “sell” it. To make it work — sounding more true notes than false ones.

So when I read those fateful words, “Sally thought to herself, Oh quit being a worrywart and open the door. It’s probably just a stray cat,” I try my best to make it sound real. I don’t over dramatize the moment. I try to read it like the simple, quick, dismissive moment it is. And, in some instances, I find myself thinking, “Hmm, you know, it’s not as bad as I thought it was.”

Lesson Two: As a writer, you owe it to yourself and your reader to read the dramatic scenes of your book out loud. The false notes are masters of disguise when lying flat on a page, but reveal themselves when heard by the writer’s ear.

3. When I wrote my first novel, I thought I was the Most Talented Writer on the planet. After 20 years of rejection, however, I adjusted that assessment downward to Six Rungs below Useless Hack.

Even when I got my novel published, I felt that there was a vast gulf between my work and that of more successful writers. Sure, friends were always quick to point out to me the bestsellers they’d read that didn’t measure up to my book. But they were being nice.

In the past year, however, I have narrated several novels. The vast gulf has disappeared for me. Everything we’ve been told to avoid as writers is on full display in these bestsellers. Horrible metaphors. Nonsensical substitutes for, “he said.” Adverbs from hell.

The one common strength I have found is this: the structure of the story is compelling — even at the expense of character development. Yes, even when we think, “No way would this character open the door when she hears a noise on the porch,” we don’t mind it when she does. We forgive her because, by doing so, she’s kicked the story into another gear.

Lesson Three: You may not be as far away from the bestseller list as you fear — as long as you know how to tell a ripping good tale.

4. Even when I used to jog three miles a day, I never would have tempted a marathon without gradually working my way up to 26 miles.

The process of narrating an audiobook is a marathon. A typical CD is 75 minutes worth of recorded material and takes me anywhere from 100 — 120 minutes to record. (The three most frequent reasons for stopping the tape are: 1) Realizing halfway through a sentence that I got the “sense” of the sentence wrong; 2) Having the director point out that, without intending to, I’d rewritten the words in a sentence; and 3) Throat clearing, stomach gurgling, mouth clicks and nose noises.)

In a typical day at my home office, I spend about 5 minutes talking — mostly to my dog.

So, to go from that meager output to speaking for eight hours a day is no simple matter. My lips literally turn rubbery. I find it extremely difficult, at times to pronounce words with m’s and b’s in them. I can stumble over a two-word phrase again and again, unable to pronounce it when, on any other day of my life, I could repeat it effortlessly.

I find myself thinking, “Damn! I need to do this every single day so that I build up the muscles that move my mouth and tongue.”

Lesson Four: Change audiobook to manuscript-in-progress. Change mouth muscles to brain. The parallels are blatant. If you don’t work on your writing every day, it will show. Thank God for editing.

9 Writing Tips: Things I’ve Learned About Writing Novels in the last four years.

When I heard I’d get to do a guest blog on MSW, my first thought was: whoopeee!! My second thought was: what am I going to say?

We’ve talked a lot about the life of a professional writer. We have each taken diverse paths, because every writer is different. We’re all at different stages, too. I’ve learned so much from everyone here at MSW, especially about promotion–raising your profile and cutting through the clutter—but also about writing.

I thought I’d do something different and address writers just starting out, some of whom have sold stuff, some of whom haven’t, and share with you what I’ve learned about writing in the last few years. It also applies to veteran writers, though. No matter how much writing I have under my belt, sometimes I hear something said just a little bit differently, and it strikes a chord. I’m hoping that will happen here.

#1: Write to please yourself. It’s a daunting undertaking to write a book you think will reach thousands of readers. You want your story to be universal, to thrill or inspire people all over the country or the world. How do you go about doing that? I figured out the only way for me to write a really good book was to please myself, because I’m the only person I really know. If, when I read my story, I am completely taken away by it, then I’m guessing other people will feel the same way.

This is not to say you should be self-indulgent in your writing. You really do have to please yourself, not just think it’s “good enough.” You have to become the reader.

#2: Write at least five days a week. Preferably every day, even if it’s only a sentence. This keeps you tethered to the book and part of that world. Once you’ve taken a “vacation” from your story, it’s very hard to get back in. It’s like getting ready to start a diet—almost impossible. My voice teacher once told me, regarding practice: “If I don’t sing for one day, I know it. If I don’t sing for two days, my teacher knows it. If I don’t sing for three days, everybody knows it.”

#3: Writing a book is just a rehearsal. Another thing I learned from my singing career. If you have trepidation about writing a whole book, see it as a rehearsal. In a rehearsal, you can learn the material, practice it, and eventually it takes shape. Plus, you can fix anything during rehearsal, because there’s no audience to see what you’re doing behind the scenes. When you get ready to send the book out—that’s the performance. And you don’t have to worry about that for a long time.

#4: First draft: Write a bunch of crap. Face it, a lot of what you’ll be writing will be crap, so you might as well embrace the fact. Wallow in it, even. Because, since you’re only rehearsing, you can fix anything. You need a stack of pages—270 to 400+, double-spaced– to make a book, so all you really need is to get the ball farther down the field. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

Look at it this way. You’re a pioneer. You’re making your own trail through the deserts and mountains, and it isn’t a landscaped parkway. But once you’ve made the trail, it’s there. You can follow that trail or deviate, make it easier to follow by going around one mountain or making a bridge over a ravine. You’ve written the story. Your subconscious will have been working on it as you’ve written your crap, and all of a sudden you will be blazing new trails and they will be good. As one writer said, “I don’t care how bad the first draft is—at least it’s there. You can’t fix something that doesn’t exist.”
When I decided to start over and become the best writer I could be, I ended up writing crap. This was hard for me because always before, my first draft was pretty darn good. It was pristine, beautifully written, lots of good stuff. All I did was give it a quick polish, maybe three week’s worth. My work was well-written but it didn’t go any deeper than that, because I didn’t take it any deeper. I didn’t make it the best I could make it, because I thought I was good enough and besides, the words were so darn purty.

#5: Read only the best. If you aspire to be among the best, this one’s pretty obvious. Read the best writers, the ones on a consistently high level, but read the writers who speak to you. If you love John Grisham, read him. If you love Jodi Piccoult, read her. Don’t read bad novels. Yes, you can learn from their mistakes, but they can drain you psychically, and at some point you’re going to think, “well, if so and so got away with that and they’re published, I can, too.” Read the best, read them for enjoyment, and then study them. Ask yourself, why are their books so effective? Outline a novel or two. If you see something that’s particularly good, write down your impression of it, see if you can apply that principle somewhere in your own book.

The best are the best for a reason. They do things that may seem completely natural—easy, even–but a lot of deliberate thought and practice putting in hours blazing the trail have gone into their work. It’s not a fluke. You can’t get there from here unless you work hard, and the best way to get someplace is to see where you’re headed. That comes in reading the best.

#6: Find writers who write something that’s doable for you. Your Best Writers should appeal to you on a visceral level. You love their books. Generally, if you love mysteries, if mysteries consume your reading time, it’s a pretty good clue you should be writing mysteries. But there are sub-genres and sub-sub-genres. I could never picture myself writing like Grisham, only because I’m not made that way. But I can picture myself writing like a handful of other writers. They’re the best, but they share with me these things: a similar narrative voice and world view, a similarity in pacing; they write the kind of scenes I can see myself writing; they depict character, setting, mood, and tone in ways that feel familiar to me. I can fit inside their biorythms because on some pretty basic levels, we are similar. They are at the top and I’m not, but I can see myself among them. I have a comfort level with these writers that I could never have with John Grisham.

# 7: But don’t pick just one! I once heard an editor say that her author “channeled” a famous writer. I thought, how sad. The only thing any of us has over anybody else, is ourselves. That’s the one thing that makes us special. We are our own instrument. I love to watch the top comedians on the comedy channel, because the really good ones use themselves—their world view, their own quirks, everything that has been poured into their lives so far. So you’ve got a guy playing piano. You have a bunch of guys who look like meth heads. You have people with props. You have people who are dirty, and you have people who are clean. But the best ones don’t copy anyone else. I don’t want to channel John Grisham. There already is a John Grisham, so anything I could do would be only warmed-over, second-best John Grisham.

So how do you avoid channeling Grisham? If he’s your taste, look for other top authors like him, like you. And read them all. Mix it up. Don’t read two of one author’s books in a row. There are some writers who have such strong voices that when I read them, I have to leaven them with another strong writer from another direction. If I’m reading Sue Grafton (for fun! Because she’s one of the best!), then I have to find someone who will neutralize her, someone like James Lee Burke, before I start to write. That combination will confuse the hell out of anyone.

If you choose, say, five to fifteen authors you love, if you can see your work in that mold, in that grouping, you will do well to trust them. I have four writers, I call them “my boys,” and whenever I start to freak out in my writing I go to one of them, read one of his books, and it calms me right down. I know I’m on the right track, that I do many more things right than I do wrong, because I’ve been over this trail a few times and each time it becomes more pronounced. (They don’t know, by the way, that they’re “my boys.” If they did know, they might think I’m a crackpot and go out and hire extra security.)

# 8: Don’t compare yourself to other writers. This sounds antithetical to what I’ve just talked about, but it isn’t. Don’t compare your career to others. Don’t whine, “Why did he get a seven figure advance when I’m just as good?” Don’t think that just because one writer is doing really well, that you should, too, because you’re very much like her. Try not to be jealous. Try to concentrate on what you can affect, your own work. Be egocentric, literally. And when you’re up, don’t look down on people who are lower on the ladder than you, because reversals don’t happen just in screenplays. Try not to think, “I’m better than her.” Or, “She’s better than me.” Don’t compare, don’t compare, don’t compare. (I tell myself this a lot.)

# 9: Visualize where you want to be. To paraphrase Dr. Phil, “How would you feel if you were on an international flight and the pilot came on the radio and said, ‘We’re going to try for Paris today?’”

You have to believe you will get there—wherever “there” is. Getting there is one part hard work and one part believing it can be accomplished. Picture where you want to be, and aim for it. You might come up short, but I guarantee that the higher you aim, the closer you’ll get.

By planning to be one of the best, you raise your game. And that’s something worth working for.

(Note: The Murder Ladies are glad to have Tess Gerritsen here on this Valentine’s Day, to share some of her wisdom and wit.)

By Special Guest Blogger, Tess Gerritsen

Since this is Valentine’s Day, it’s only appropriate that I write today about following your heart. Or your gut. Or whatever part of our anatomy our emotions reside in.

I come to this topic straight from a lunch meeting with an acquaintance who has just finished writing his – ta da! — VERY FIRST NOVEL. (Insert secret groan on my part.) Usually, I try my damnedest to avoid these meetings. All you published writers out there have probably suppressed that same groan when your close friend or relative calls to announce that they’ve just written a novel, too! And could they invite you out to lunch to pick your brain about how best to get an agent and promote their book and manage the zillion-dollar fame and fortune that’s certainly coming their way. Normally, I find some excuse to avoid these encounters, but this fellow is someone I happen to admire, someone whom I thought might actually have written something publishable. And he promised, absolutely, not to make me read his manuscript. “I just want to talk about marketing,” he said.

So I went to lunch with him.

Over cappuccino and sandwiches, I ask him what his book is about.

“It’s about a man who comes of age in the turbulent sixties and moves to Maine,” he says.

“And then what happens?” I ask.

“He comes to realize what’s really important in life.”

“But what happens?” I ask again.

“It’s all about self-discovery. It’s about the journey. About coming to grips with life.”

“Something has to happen,” I tell him. “What’s the conflict? What’s the struggle?”

“Well, life is a struggle.”

Uh oh, I think. We’re in trouble. The more I press him on the plot and the characters, the more I hear about actualization and personal journeys and maximizing relationships. In a fit of frustration, I blurt out: “You’re thinking about this story too hard! You’ve got to start FEELING it!”

At which point he looks at me as if I’d just told him to leave his wife and run off to a commune.

It’s not the first time I’ve given this advice to a writer: “Stop thinking and start feeling.” The writers who most often need to hear it are, oddly enough, highly educated, logical, cerebral men like my friend. Well-read, accomplished people who think that writing a novel is going to be a snap for them because they’re so intelligent, so logical, such deep thinkers.

But deep thinking is what gets them into trouble. They work so hard trying to get across their philosophical or political points, they forget that novels are really about people. They’re about love and anger and grief. They’re about marrying and having children and being terrified of losing them. They’re about standing over your wife’s coffin and knowing that you’ll never again feel her hair brush against your face, never again hear her footsteps on the stairs.

They’re not about “self-actualization” and “personal journeys.”

When I write my own novels, I don’t think my way through them; I feel my way. I’m always stopping to test my gut reaction. Does a scene move me in some way? Am I upset or scared or excited or angry? No? Then I need to dig deeper to find the emotion. Maybe I haven’t layered in enough conflict, or I haven’t given my hero a stake in the scene’s outcome. Or maybe I’ve chosen to send the plot in a direction that leads nowhere interesting — to no crisis, no conflict.

My friend’s book involves a secret that the hero has been keeping from his wife, an explosive piece of information about his past. “Well, what happens when she finds out?” I asked him. “Does she leave him? Does their marriage teeter on destruction? How does he finally confess it?”

He said, “He doesn’t tell her. He keeps it a secret. The book ends without her ever finding out.”

And that’s it. No crisis. No conflict. No marital blow-up. No emotions. Just a fade-out to nothing. Sure, it’s a valid choice to make as a writer if you’re trying to portray an ossified marriage of quiet desperation. But I don’t think that’s why he chose this ending. I think he chose it because he’s scared of dealing with a marital crisis, even on the page. He’s afraid of feeling the truly deep and upsetting emotions that make characters come alive. And no wonder — these are threatening things, emotions. Writing about them makes us confront our worst fears. It makes us weep at our desks, it makes our hands sweat. It makes us wake up in the night, terrified that someone is standing over the bed.

Writers have to be courageous. We have to step out from behind our shields of chilly intellectualism. We have to get down and dirty, to howl in pain. We have to ask ourselves, again and again: “What am I feeling in this scene?” If you don’t feel anything at all, then you’d better write it again.

And that’s my Valentine’s Day tip to you.