Writing Lessons I've Learned

by Jean Henry Mead

When I wrote my first novels, I spent an inordinate amount of time rewriting first chapters before progressing to the second, only to rewite them again before I finished the book. I finally learned to write them once and forget them until the first draft was complete.

I’ve never been able to outline a novel because I give my characters free rein. They rarely submit to what I've planned because they seem to have minds of their own, and I don’t want them doing anything out of character. In my current mystery/suspense series, my feisty 60-year-old women amateur sleuths surprise me by doing things I hadn't considered before sitting down to write. Logan and Cafferty live with me 24/7 while I’m writing about them, and they have their own ideas about what should happen that day. 

In my new release, A Murder in Paradise  fifth in the series, my protagonists decide to vacation in a Texas RV resort with millionaires and other affluent travelers. Until the third quarter of the book, even I didn’t know who the killer was, and I had to return to earlier chapters to add clues  and flesh out some of the characters. 

In the second novel,  Diary of Murder,  my sleuths leave California, buy a motorhome, and are trapped in a Rocky Mountain blizzard. That had actually happened to me, so I could write convincingly about the life and death experience. The blizzard starts the novel off with suspense, but the characters face similar circumstances later in the plot, so I had to swap details between chapters so that it didn't appear the book was mired in snow. 

 

If I were not a writer, I'd probably be a meteorologist. I'm fascinated with weather patterns and weather plays a role in most of my books. Weather can also serve as an alternative villain in a woman against the elements plot.

In A Village Shattered, the opaque San Joaquin Valley fog hides a serial killer, but I didn’t even think about tule fog until I was writing chapter three. Having lived in the valley for a dozen years, I know the horror of regularly driving in dense ground hugging clouds, so I switched seasons and returned to chapter one to add fog to the plot. In doing so, it tied all aspects of the story together. 

A problem most authors eventually face is writer's block. Fortunately, I began my writing career as a news reporter and there's no such malady in the news room. Fiction, however, is a different story. There are no facts to guide a writer unless s/he has done a tremendous amount of research. I solved the problem by rereading the previous chapter(s). The momentum then carries me into the current one.

How about you? How have you solve a writing problem?

Developing Your Characters

by Jean Henry Mead

Some writers start with a setting, others with a theme. I’m one who begins with characters. But how do you breathe life into people who inhabit books to make them more than cardboard characters?

Characters have both inner and outer lives, according to Bharti Kirchner. I agree. Inner lives consist of beliefs and motivations while outer lives are your characters’ public personas. There are a number of techniques that can be used to reveal both.

Dialogue demonstrates a character’s personality, background and education. It also reveals how they feel about others. The following exchange is between my protagonists, Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty, two 60-year amateur sleuths who are caught in an Arizona flash flood in Murder on the Interstate:

Sarah warned about the amount of water on the road: “We’re going to hydroplane.”
“Too much water for that.” Dana switched the headlights to low beam and drove forward. “Where the hell is the road?”
“Stay between the delineator posts. There’s one off to your left.”
“I see it. Where’s the next one?”
Dana heard a scraping sound and Sarah yelled, “You found it.”
Later, when their Hummer is washed onto a sand bar, Sarah says: “Thank you, Heavenly Mother. Thank, you—“
“We’re not out of danger yet. If it starts raining again, we’ll be washed away.”
“What can we do, Dana?”
“Pray for all you’re worth.”
“I asked that the power angels be sent to help us.”
“Good idea. Maybe they’ll fly us out of here.”

There’s obviously a difference in religious beliefs between the two women as well as emotions and cynicism.

Physical descriptions also help the reader to visualize characters. Dana and Sarah are as alike as Mutt and Jeff. Dana’s tall with auburn hair and is said to resemble the actress Gina Davis while Sarah is short and plump with curly blonde hair.

A character’s birth place also contributes to her persona. Sarah Cafferty grew up in rural Nebraska and spouts expressions such as: “He took off like a scalded cat.” Dana, on the other hand, is a native Californian, who is a little more sophisticated, and I’m sure readers wonder why they became best friends. By transplanting both women from their retirement village in the San Joaquin Valley, in A Village Shattered, to Wyoming in the second novel, Diary of Murder, both women have to learn to adjust to a new lifestyle and that helps to define their character.

My Protagonist Tells Me Off!

by Jean Henry Mead

Ever wonder what your protagonists would say to you, if they were alive?

Sarah Cafferty is one of two amateur sleuths in my Logan and Cafferty mystery/suspense series. She wasn’t her usual self in my recently published novel, Murder on the Interstate, and I wanted to know why:

Author: Sarah, why are you so cranky in this novel? You’ve shown good humor in the two previous books. You’re too old for PMS.

Sarah: Cranky? What do you expect? You send a killer to stalk us and cause Dana to crash our new motorhome to escape. Then you cause us to be nearly swept away in a flash flood. The downpour scared me so badly that I irrigated my underwear.

Author: I’m sorry, Sarah. I know it was traumatic, but you have to admit that it was suspenseful.

Sarah: And where were you while we were getting soaked to our knees and nearly drowned? Sitting in your comfortable chair thinking up ways to get us into deeper trouble.

Author: That’s my job. Would you rather I replaced you with a younger sleuth?

Sarah: Over my dead bod—You know that Dana and I are only 60 and not some elderly widows with walkers. We can still do everything that the younger sleuths can do.

Author: Well . . .

Sarah: With the possible exception of skateboarding and scaling tall buildings.

Author: I was thinking of having you bungee jump in the next novel.

Sarah: Unless you’re joking, Dana and I are taking a permanent hiatus from the mystery series.

Author: What about our readers? You don’t want to disappoint them, do you?

Sarah: Haven’t we done enough? In A Village Shattered you send a serial killer after us, in Diary of Murder, a vicious drug gang. Then, in Murder on the Interstate a homegrown terrorist group kidnaps us while they’re planning to take down the entire country. How can you possibly top that?

Author: I’ve got some ideas that will knock your socks off.

Sarah: That settles it! You can email Dana and me in Aregentina. That’s where we’re going on vacation. If we don’t answer, you’ll know that some other novelist has decided to adopt us and treat us fairly.

Author: You’ll be bored within a week and out of a job in a month. Novelists who are nice to their protagonists don’t last long in the publishing business. Readers want suspense as well as mystery.

Sarah: I’ve got a great idea. You can take my place and I’ll write you into some mysterious and suspenseful situations. You’ll love bungee jumping over a crocodile pit or waking up with rattlesnakes. I can think of lots of exciting situations to place you in.

Author: Point taken, Sarah. From now on we’ll concentrate on mystery and go easy on the suspense.

Why I Write About Senior Sleuths

by Jean Henry Mead

I write senior sleuth novels because there’s a growing market for retirees who like to read in their own age group. I was intrigued years ago by Miss Marple and Hercule Periot, who were wise and perceptive, but never seemed to have any fun.

That’s not true of today’s seniors who are less inclined to retire to their rocking chairs than previous generations.

Pat Browning, who wrote Absinthe of Malice, said: “A St. Martin's editor gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten: ‘Be careful not to turn your characters into cartoons.’ I try to picture older characters as they are--the same people they always were, only older. This is especially true when it comes to romance and sex. For all the jokes about senior sex, it is a very real part of senior life, and it's no joke to those lucky enough to have a romantic partner late in life.”

I agree. Not unlike Janet Evanovich’s character, Grandma Mazur, who is eccentric enough for a cartoon character, most seniors have the same interests they’ve always had, with the possible exception of roller blading and downhill skiing. On second thought, I once interviewed Buffalo Bill’s grandson Bill Cody, who learned to donwhill ski at 65 to keep up with his much younger wife.

Mike Befeler writes what he calls “Geezer-lit.” His first novel, Retirement Homes are Murder, features his octogenarian protagonist, “who is short on memory but has a sense of humor and love of life. He accepts his ‘geezerhood,’ solves a mystery and enjoys romance along the way.” He followed it up with Living With Your Kids Can Be Murder and is busy working on another book in the series.

My second senior sleuth mystery, A Village Shattered, takes place in a California retirement village. The plot is generously sprinkled with humor but none of the seniors resemble cartoon characters, although a couple come close, a redneck Casanova and love starved widow. Diary of Murder followed and I portrayed the two 60-year-old protagonist widows as quite capable of traveling the country in their motorhome as well as chasing down killers who happened to be drug dealers.

Another senior writer, Beth Solheim, spent years working in a nursing home and says she loves the elderly and their “humorous, quirky insight to life, love and longevity.” Her protagonists are 64-year-old twins in her humorous, paranormal cozy series, The Fifi Witt Mysteries.

Chester Campbell, an octogenarian, writes the Greg McKenzie Mysteries. He said, “My friends in this [age] bracket are out going places and doing things. Some, like me, continue to work at jobs they enjoy. I chose to use a senior couple in my books who are long married, get along fine, and do a competent job as private investigators. Greg, who narrates the books, is aware of his limitations from age and makes up for physical shortcomings by outsmarting his adversaries. My hope is to dispel some of the absurdity of the stereotypes about seniors that are all too familiar. Like the old song says, "Anything you can do I can do better."

Chester recently started a new series featuring 59-year-old private investigator Sid Chase in The Surest Poison.

Like so many other novelists, I write what I enjoy reading. My readers are mainly retirees and baby boomers who number over 78 million. Some 8,000 boomers are moving into the senior column every day, the fastest growing potential book buying market on record.

We’re experiencing the graying of America. What better subgenre to write for?

Why I Write

by Jean Henry Mead

Publishing is a crazy, unstable business and few writers earn enough money to pay their expenses. The last I heard, 95% of us earn less than $12,000 a year and the average book sells 99 copies.

So why would anyone in her “right mind” devote so much time and effort to writing and marketing books? Is it the desire to give birth to something unique? A need for recognition? Or the desire to inform and entertain? I can’t answer that question. I just know that it’s imprinted in my DNA.

I sold my first book in 1981, a collection of interviews with politicians, authors, artists, craftsmen and ordinary people who had accomplished extraordinary things. The book was published by Pruett Publishing in Boulder, Colorado, and sold some 2,000 copies. I traveled around the state to take part in signing parties, and sold 40 books the first time out at a small town in eastern Wyoming. My marketing successes slid downhill from there.

My second book, which I wrote about last week, was a centennial history that required more than three years of research and writing. I shudder to think how little I earned from the book although it has sold steadily over the years from two publishers. My third was a book of interviews with well-known writers of the West, including Louis L’Amour and Hollywood screenwriters. It’s still selling online but I've never received a royalty payment because I was told it didn't earn out its advance.

After checking WorldCat, the library site, I found that there are still copies of Maverick Writers available in 114 libraries, including Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Baverische Staaftsbibliothek in Munich, Germany. Now, there’s a reason to keep on writing. The advance I received barely covered expenses, so satisfaction and eternal hope are also motivations to continue typing.

I then decided to write my first novel from leftover research. Escape on the Wind took a number of years to write and was helped along by the advice of two award-winning western authors, Richard S. Wheeler and Fred Grove. I recently noticed that a used hardcover copy of the book is being offered online for $152. That’s silly because the book was republished last year as Escape, A Wyoming Historical Novel, and is selling on the same Amazon page for $14.95 in trade paperback. Do readers actually pay those exorbitant prices? Or is it a seller's delusional dream?

I then started working on my first mystery novel, originally titled Shirl Lock & Holmes, a humorous senior sleuth novel, which was originally published in 1999 as an ebook and later in hardcover with another publisher. I changed the characters' names and last December it was republished again as A Village Shattered, available in print, Kindle and multi-format. Sounds as though it should have earned a lot of money but, all told, it wouldn’t pay one dentist bill. And I'm obviously not alone in that respect.

I wrote a number of nonfiction books along the way, none of which sold more than several hundred copies, so I wrote another mystery novel, Diary of Murder, the second in my Logan & Cafferty series, which just appeared at Amazon.com this week in Kindle and print versions. Next week it will also be listed in multi-format at Fictionwise and other online sources. I really enjoyed writing again about my senior sleuths, Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty, two 60-year-old, feisty widows who aren’t afraid to push the envelope when it comes to crime detection, or to brave the elements by driving their motorhome through a Rocky Mountain blizzard. I hope my readers enjoy the book as much as I did writing it.

I think I’ve found the answer. I write because it’s fun!