By Chester Campbell
Last week my colleague Beth Terrell mentioned the challenges involved in the care and feeding of mystery writers. No one knows that better than my wife, Sarah. We always travel together. At our age, you never know how many trips remain in your life's itinerary. But it does make for interesting travels.
Last weekend we drove to Frankfort, KY for the annual Kentucky Book Fair. We alternate driving about 100 miles at a time. Sarah decided to take the first turn, which was a good thing, since that avoided an early argument. I had set up the destination in our Magellan GPS, but it required a few screen taps to get what I wanted it to show--miles to destination. She objects when I start tapping while I'm driving. Really! It's not like I'm texting.
We usually start a trip with a large cup of our favorite beverage, cappuccino. Not the noisy machine-made stuff you get at a coffee shop but the powder and hot water variety that comes from pushing a button at a convenience market. We make it at home using a large container from Sam's. At any rate, we found a Love's up in southern Kentucky and took a pit stop/cappuccino break. I've had a tooth that's been giving me a fit lately (and is scheduled for a root canal tomorrow), so she had to find me a straw, which I used to keep the hot stuff directed away from the recalcitrant molar. I'm not much of a talker normally, even less with dental dynamite going off in my mouth.
I took the wheel at a rest stop shortly before we turned off I-65 on a segment of the Kentucky Turnpike. When we got back on the interstate, Miss Floosie, the GPS lady, didn't come on so I started punching the screen.
"You drive, I'll do that," Sarah said with her best frown.
We probably have more arguments about my driving than anything. Since I have macular degeneration in my right eye, she thinks I can't see well. I had just been to the ophthalmologist, who said I was doing marvelous, that I was one of two or three patients she had where the AMD apparently was slowed by the effects of severe nearsightedness. So some bad things are good.
But that doesn't give me any free passes with my wife. When I turn too sharply and bump a curb, she says, "Didn't you see that?" Of course, I saw it. I just like to jostle her around a bit.
Eventually we made it to the Frankfort Convention Center and dropped off the books I had brought. I got lots of directions for where I should be turning but didn't.
We stayed at the Capital Plaza Hotel just across from the Convention Center. It was a nice room, and we crashed for a couple of hours before time for the Author Reception at Frankfort Country Club. At this event, we sat at a large round table where more folks gathered. Sarah talked to her neighbor and passed around my promo folders. I mostly nursed my food in an attempt to keep the tooth gremlin at bay. I did talk to a mother-daughter combination on my left, learning the younger one had once lived in Nashville and knew about the Marathon Motor works (subject of The Marathon Murders). Both of them bought books on Saturday.
With my chronic cough affecting my voice and the tooth affecting everything, Sarah came to my rescue during the signing, greeting people who passed the table. When she sold a book, I autographed it with a painted on smile. We wound up selling 33 books, which wasn't bad but under different economic conditions surely would have been better.
The trip back home brought more driving discussions, but we made it safely. I'll have to say my wife is a real trooper. She saves the day when I'm selling books, and she does her best to keep me on my toes. We do a lot of arguing, but it always ends with a laugh. As long as we find our disagreements amusing, I guess we'll be okay. I feel that for a much-traveled mystery writer, I'm well fed and cared for.
Showing posts with label Beth Terrell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beth Terrell. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
On Being a Pro-Crastinator
By Chester Campbell
My wife calls me a procrastinator. I say, heck, it's good to be a "pro" at something. But I suppose she's right in one respect. I should be writing on my current WIP (Work in Progress, for the uninitiated), but here I sit chatting up the blogosphere.
My Murderous Musings colleague Beth Terrell is getting ready to take part in NaNoWriMo, pounding out 50,000 words during the month of November. If I could mirror that feat with my fifth Greg McKenzie mystery, I'd be in high cotton, as they say in these parts. Since I'm currently at the 18,423-word mark, that would take me almost to 70,000 words. My books don't usually run much longer than that.
NaNoWriMo, as you may or may not know, is National Novel Writing Month, when authors around the globe are challenged to turn out 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days. The object is to take an idea and plug away at it, just to get all the words on paper, or in the computer. There's no time for editing. Just keep the pot (or plot) boiling. After all is done, you can go back and clean it up, patching the holes and prettying up the language.
As a procrastinator, I can't work like that. Each time I sit down, I have to go back over what I wrote last time out and make it sound better. Chances are I've had a new thought that requires me to go back and add something I neglected to do earlier. Like the other day I thought of a question the detective should have asked, so I backtracked to the proper spot in the story and beefed up the dialogue. Keeps readers from thinking why didn't the idiot pursue such-and-such?
My daily, when I can arrange it, walk at the mall provides a fertile time for thinking about the plot and searching out those holes that need to be filled. Sometimes I come up with ideas on new twists to put more strain on my poor protagonists. I'm a remorseless taskmaster. They don't get time to procrastinate.
But me? I have an excuse. I spent the past five days, including travel, atternding Bouchercon 2009, pushing my published work and trying to convince the good folks who read mysteries that I'm working on more to come. And I am. As soon as I finish this little tome, I'm heading for the living room and my laptop to plunge headlong into Chapter 13. Hmm, that's an ominous note. But what's even more ominous is that it will probably be nearly ten o'clock. That means local news, followed by a DVD recording of the early evening national news. Than it'll be bedtime. We have to arise at 6:15 to get grandson ready for school.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Magnolia Award Goes To . . .
By Chester Campbell
One of our own was honored last Saturday night at the 2009 Killer Nashville Mystery Conference dinner. The Magnolia Award, which is given annually in recognition of outstanding dedication and service to the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (SEMWA), was presented to Beth Terrell, who blogs here on Thursdays.
The award was presented by Karen McCullough, president of the Chapter. Beth worked tirelessly for months helping put together the myriad of details required to get the conference and its program ready. Clay Stafford, conference producer, said Beth was the indispensable person he could not have done without.
Killer Nashville is co-sponsored by SEMWA and serves as the Chapter’s main educational event for the year. McCullough was host for a Chapter gathering at the hotel on Friday night.
Beth and I have been members of a Nashville writers group for the past 15 or so years. She is an accomplished mystery writer and a great editor. At our twice-monthly meetings, she can be counted on to offer both encouraging praise and focused criticism that suggests ways the story can be improved.
She works fulltime, and the effort required to get everything ready for the conference severely reduced the amount of time she could devote to her writing. During the days leading up to the opening of Killer Nashville, she was lucky to get in four hours of sleep.
In addition to all her other duties, Beth is serving in her second year as Vice President of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of Sisters in Crime. I nominate her for the Murderous Musings Tenacious Spirit of the Year Award.
Friday, September 19, 2008
The Mysteries of Writing
by Jean Henry Mead
I wonder whether some of us are born with a compulsion to write. Many writers have created not only elaborate stories, while still in elementary school, but novels and three or four-act plays.
But why do we write?
Mignon G. Eberhart once said: “I write because I like to, sometimes hate to, but I have to write. I started when I was very young, almost as soon as I could put pencil to paper.”
Fellow mystery writer Lawrence Kamarck added: “I suppose I have a storyteller’s compulsion. I want to tell somebody what’s happening to all of us. I’m convinced nobody really knows but me. And because I want to keep the [reader’s] attention, I tell my story with as much force and drama as possible, within credible limits.”
Pulitzer winner A. B. Guthrie, Jr. told me during an interview that “the fun is having written well.” But he confessed that he didn’t enjoy the actual process of writing. “At the end of the day, I go back over it and say to myself, ‘By golly, that’s right, that’s right.’ And then I’m rewarded.”
So why do we write mysteries?
Ross MacDonald said: “Mystery stories have always interested me because they seem to correspond with life. They deal with the problems of causality and guilt that concern me.”
Loren D. Estleman wrote as an adolescent and sold his first novel at 23. He saw little of his parents because he spent so much time in his unheated, upstairs room, his only companion a typewriter. "I lived in my study and I didn’t have much of a private life,” he said. “It revolved around my writing . . .”
I like Estleman’s description of a mystery. “For me, a good mystery places story and character ahead of all else, yet never loses sight of the simple truth that in order to be a mystery, a question must be asked. It needn’t be a whodunit, and might be something as simple and maddening as why the murdered man had three left shoes in his closet and no mates. If the writer has done his job well, the reader will forget the question as the story draws him in. But there had damn well better be a mystery involved if he’s going to call it one.”
I pulled an aging copy of Mystery Writers Handbook from one of my book shelves and found the following quote from the editor, Lawrence Treat:. “Great ‘mysteries are great novels, like Crime and Punishment, A Tale of Two Cities and The Scarlet Pimpernel. And they’re clearly mysteries.”
I then asked my fellow blog team members why they write mysteries. Ben Small, during one of more serious moments, had this to say:
“I write mysteries and thrillers because I love the high stakes competition between good and evil, the uncertainty of justice, and the suspense of the ticking clock as the protagonist puzzles out a solution. Good stuff, escaping into a make-believe puzzle-world where I push the reader to beat me to the solution.”
Beth Terrell said that she loves the fact that the detective puts his own life at risk to protect others. She also loves the fact that “the good guy always wins--or almost always--even if it’s at a terrible cost. I feel like mysteries work on so many different levels. They are ripping good stories, thought-provoking puzzles, and wonderful vehicles to write about real human problems—things that matter. They’re a challenge to write; a good mystery or thriller has to do all the things a literary novel does and weave a gripping plot as well.”
Pat Browning concluded that a mystery is the oldest form of storytelling--with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Sometimes there's a moral, sometimes it's acautionary tale. It reassures us that good triumphs over evil. It satisfies our need to know that everything turns out all right in the end. Contemporary mysteries often have a romantic angle, and a humorous twist In short, the mystery offers something for every reader.
I wonder whether some of us are born with a compulsion to write. Many writers have created not only elaborate stories, while still in elementary school, but novels and three or four-act plays.
But why do we write?
Mignon G. Eberhart once said: “I write because I like to, sometimes hate to, but I have to write. I started when I was very young, almost as soon as I could put pencil to paper.”
Fellow mystery writer Lawrence Kamarck added: “I suppose I have a storyteller’s compulsion. I want to tell somebody what’s happening to all of us. I’m convinced nobody really knows but me. And because I want to keep the [reader’s] attention, I tell my story with as much force and drama as possible, within credible limits.”
Pulitzer winner A. B. Guthrie, Jr. told me during an interview that “the fun is having written well.” But he confessed that he didn’t enjoy the actual process of writing. “At the end of the day, I go back over it and say to myself, ‘By golly, that’s right, that’s right.’ And then I’m rewarded.”
So why do we write mysteries?
Ross MacDonald said: “Mystery stories have always interested me because they seem to correspond with life. They deal with the problems of causality and guilt that concern me.”
Loren D. Estleman wrote as an adolescent and sold his first novel at 23. He saw little of his parents because he spent so much time in his unheated, upstairs room, his only companion a typewriter. "I lived in my study and I didn’t have much of a private life,” he said. “It revolved around my writing . . .”
I like Estleman’s description of a mystery. “For me, a good mystery places story and character ahead of all else, yet never loses sight of the simple truth that in order to be a mystery, a question must be asked. It needn’t be a whodunit, and might be something as simple and maddening as why the murdered man had three left shoes in his closet and no mates. If the writer has done his job well, the reader will forget the question as the story draws him in. But there had damn well better be a mystery involved if he’s going to call it one.”
I pulled an aging copy of Mystery Writers Handbook from one of my book shelves and found the following quote from the editor, Lawrence Treat:. “Great ‘mysteries are great novels, like Crime and Punishment, A Tale of Two Cities and The Scarlet Pimpernel. And they’re clearly mysteries.”
I then asked my fellow blog team members why they write mysteries. Ben Small, during one of more serious moments, had this to say:
“I write mysteries and thrillers because I love the high stakes competition between good and evil, the uncertainty of justice, and the suspense of the ticking clock as the protagonist puzzles out a solution. Good stuff, escaping into a make-believe puzzle-world where I push the reader to beat me to the solution.”
Beth Terrell said that she loves the fact that the detective puts his own life at risk to protect others. She also loves the fact that “the good guy always wins--or almost always--even if it’s at a terrible cost. I feel like mysteries work on so many different levels. They are ripping good stories, thought-provoking puzzles, and wonderful vehicles to write about real human problems—things that matter. They’re a challenge to write; a good mystery or thriller has to do all the things a literary novel does and weave a gripping plot as well.”
Pat Browning concluded that a mystery is the oldest form of storytelling--with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Sometimes there's a moral, sometimes it's acautionary tale. It reassures us that good triumphs over evil. It satisfies our need to know that everything turns out all right in the end. Contemporary mysteries often have a romantic angle, and a humorous twist In short, the mystery offers something for every reader.
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