Something To Say

By Pat Browning


Growing up, I thought everything had been written. Who could top the King James Version of the Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, the novels of Charles Dickens?

In grade school, a teacher stood at her desk and read Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline” to us. I sighed and cried over it, but I thought of it as a fairy tale, not a story about real people. It would be years before I met Cajuns who lived on a Louisiana bayou, the poem made flesh, so to speak.

In junior high school the boys lined up for Zane Grey’s westerns even though the teachers didn’t accept book reports on such novels. I would be middle-aged before I read a Zane Grey book and realized what a good writer he really was.

In high school English class we read Beowulf, the Old English epic poem by an anonymous poet, and Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. Chaucer’s language fascinated me. I still remember “Whan that aprill with his shoures soote/The droghts of march hath perced to the roote.” Translation: “When April with his showers sweet with fruit/The drought of March has pierced unto the root.” Not nearly as musical as the original, and loooooong before my time.

In college I was put into an advanced freshman English class where we each got to choose one book to study for an entire semester. I chose John Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH, probably because the novel and movie were only whispered about in Oklahoma. I fell in love with Steinbeck’s writing and eventually read everything he wrote, but at the time GRAPES OF WRATH had nothing to do with me. I didn’t know any of those people.

The day would come when I moved to the part of California where Steinbeck lived while getting material for his novel. I would end up working on the local newspaper with a woman whose family had come from Oklahoma just like the Joads, and lived in an Okie camp, just like the Joads. She was a good writer and a good friend whose mantra – “The Lord will provide” – comes to mind almost daily.

Tme and fate led me to Dorothy Baker, who was beyond famous when I met her in late l962. Baker had literally been there and done that in the literary world. In Paris she had met and married Howard Baker, a poet, critic and novelist who became a citrus rancher in the rural Fresno area.

The Bakers taught and wrote, together and separately, but it was Dorothy Baker’s 1938 novel, YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, that really made a splash. Loosely based on the life of jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke, it became one of 1950’s hit movies. She was back on the citrus ranch when she wrote her fourth novel, CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING, the story of a young woman who tries to sabotage her twin sister’s wedding.

Baker was a careful writer. CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING appeared more than 20 years after YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN. Reviews were mixed, ranging from “a perfect novel” (London Observer) to “a crushing disappointment” (Time magazine.) To me it was a revelation. Cassandra, the book’s narrator, drove home from Berkeley on the same roads, past the same fields, that I now drove to reach Baker’s house. Suddenly here was a piece of work from a famous writer that mirrored the here and now of my own life.

As a new stringer for The Fresno Bee I showed up at Baker’s door expecting to be awestruck, even intimidated. Instead, I found her company to be as comfortable as an old shoe -- no airs, no archness, no visible trace of vanity. She talked about famous people she had met, good books she had read, her writing technique, how she sometimes sat for hours before typing a single line.

My clipping of that interview is brown with age but still readable. The best quote from Dorothy Baker: “A writer should have a thorough understanding of what the Greeks call the ‘recognition scene,’ that moment when a character has a revelation, an insight that will change the course of his life and the course of the story. It’s a basic technique.”

Toward the end of our chat I confessed that I had written a brief memoir, hoping to turn it into a novel, but I was stuck. She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry. If you have something to say, you’ll say it.”

Life takes its own sweet time. It would be almost 40 years before I finally had something to say and time to say it. FULL CIRCLE, my first mystery, was set in a fictional version of a small Central San Joaquin Valley town. A fictional version of the here and now of my life, as many first novels are, I self-published it in 2001.

In 2008, Krill Press, a small start-up press, picked it up and republished it, after some revisions and a new cover, as ABSINTHE OF MALICE. Best of all, the publisher put it on Amazon’s Kindle, where it has sold almost 400 copies in this month of October.

It was nine years after the book’s first publication before the brief memoir that started it all finally made it into print. “White Petunias,” about growing up in Oklahoma, had been revised periodically because I liked it too much to throw it out.

In 2007 “White Petunias” won second place in its category in the Frontiers in Writing contest sponsored by Panhandle Professional Writers, Amarillo, Texas. In 2009, after more revisions and polishing I submitted it to the RED DIRT BOOK FESTIVAL ANTHOLOGY: OKLAHOMA CHARACTER. In 2010 the anthology finally appeared in print. In the words of the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

And in the words of almost everyone who ever entertained a deep thought, “It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey.”
======
Photo of Dorothy Baker by Patricia Cokely (Browning), 1962

My Life Between Covers

By Pat Browning


Answering the age-old question: What’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?

My first mystery started out as FULL CIRCLE in 2001, and became ABSINTHE OF MALICE in 2008. It’s a long, twisted story but here are questions people are most likely to ask.


What is your book about?
The logline: It’s just another Labor Day weekend in the small California town of Pearl, until discovery of a skeleton in a cotton field leads to murder ... and romance. It’s about small town secrets and getting away with murder when you have money and power.


The working title changed as the story changed. The first title was ROOM THIRTEEN. The second was SKELETON CREW. For a long time the title was MURDER IN THE ROUND. In 2001, about a week before I uploaded the manuscript to iUniverse, I changed the title to FULL CIRCLE.


Then Krill Press came along in 2008 and republished it as ABSINTHE OF MALICE, and I ended up doing some tweaking and revising one more time. It’s beginning to feel like my life’s work.


What inspired you to write a mystery?
About 1995, while I was working for The Hanford (California) Sentinel, the managing editor suggested that I write a book column. I went to the library and walked along the shelves pulling out books that looked interesting. Most of them turned out to be mysteries.


After a few weeks I decided to write my own. I actually said, "How hard can it be?" Five years later I could have written a book on just how hard it is. Through it all I was taking online writing classes, asking questions in chat rooms, lurking on listservs, trying to learn everything I could in the shortest possible time.

FULL CIRCLE had more lives than a cat, with different titles, different characters, different plots and subplots. I think I ended up with nine or ten "final drafts," each time thinking that I finally got it right. Eventually I had to say, "Stick a fork in it, it’s done."


After it was published I still couldn't tell people what it was about because I didn't know. After I heard enough questions and did enough presentations I finally figured out what I had written. It all came from real life -- setting, characters, everything except the plot, which was pure fiction.


How long did it take you to publish your novel?
I probably spent a year writing a few query letters and talking to a couple of agents and editors, but I'm too long in the tooth to spare that kind of time. I had been checking out the new print-on-demand technology via the Internet, and iUniverse seemed to be the best game in town. Not only that, I could publish for $99. It was quick, and I liked the idea of total control over my book. I found Ariana Overton on the Internet, and she designed a beautiful cover for $100. Best $100 I ever spent. So, I formatted and uploaded my book about July of 2001, and by the end of August the finished product was in my hands


A major factor in my decision to go that route was my husband's health. I had given up the newspaper job to be at home with him. So there I was, sitting at the computer for hours at a time, days on end. He was patient, interested, supportive. He kept saying, "When are you going to let me read that book?" Once I decided I’d taken it as far as I could, I let him read the manuscript, then I contacted iUniverse.


He was so proud of that book that he told everybody he met about it. I don't know whether he generated any sales, but it gave him such a kick to talk about it. I never regretted publishing it myself. It was a gift to both of us.


When your husband died, prompting your move from California to Oklahoma, how did you cope? Did writing help?
Ed died 7 years ago this month. It's a terrible experience to sit in a hospital room and watch someone you love slip away from you, and know there is nothing you can do to hold them here. I've done that twice, and the second time was worse than the first. You'd think you'd get used to it. You don't. Another piece of your heart breaks. You can fall on the floor, or you can get up and go home.

My second book was off to a good start but it went onto a shelf while I got my life in order. Fortunately, I had a logline and an outline, so it wasn’t a total loss. An odd thing happened. Going through Ed’s files I came across a snapshot taken in 1937. At the time he was a teenager living in rural California, but I would have known him anywhere.

He hadn’t changed at all. He just got older. I realized this is true of real people and just as true of characters in a book. There’s a lot of talk in writerly circles about characters “growing” and changing, but I’m not quite sure what it means. People – or characters – don’t change, except perhaps superficially. They just get older. What binds us to them is their dependability; that is, they usually do what we would expect them to do. It’s who they are, and that doesn’t change much. Sooner or later they come up against a problem that challenges them but their response is true to their character.


The best example I can think of offhand is Scarlett O’Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND. From the first page to the last she never wavered in two things: her pursuit of Ashley Wilkes and her determination to save the plantation Tara.


What conflicts does your protagonist Penny Mackenzie face in your second book?
Here’s the logline: Small town reporter Penny Mackenzie tracks an offbeat Christmas story and finds herself in the middle of a murder and the mysterious desecration of an old Chinese cemetery.


Penny wants to solve the mystery of a long-dead Chinese man, whose records seem non-existent, and she wants to find out who murdered someone who seemed to have no enemies. On another level, she’s resisting marriage to the man of her dreams (and occasional nightmares) because she doesn’t quite trust him.


Someone who read my first book complained that there were no children in it. True. My characters are the people I know best, baby boomers and their elders. Unless I change the ending, the only character with a speaking part who is younger than 40 is a parrot.


How would you sum up your experience as an author?
Here's a quote from Jonathan Harrington, who wrote the Danny O'Flaherty mystery series. In an online interview with Charlotte Austin, he said:

"When I am gone, all that will be left are the stories I tried to tell in my writing. When the world is no more, all that will be left is a story that begins: Once upon a time a group of people lived on a place called Earth ... We are writing the story of our existence. When everything else is gone, all that will remain is the story of who we were."


Today's writers have computers and word processing software, but in a sense we are still drawing pictures on the walls of the cave, leaving proof of our existence and the way we see the world around us.

What are your future writing plans?
Finshing that second book. Beyond that, I have notes—bits and pieces really, and research notes—for a third and possibly fourth book in the Penny Mackenzie series. There's another possibility, too, for a standalone set in some interesting place I've visited, such as India. Whether it happens remains to be seen. Remains to be seen. Sounds like a good title for a mystery, doesn't it?

The Little Press That Could

By Pat Browning


It’s been almost a year since a brand new small press got off the block running with a reissue of my mystery. Now the Krill Press catalog lists four mysteries, with a fifth due in December. Not bad for a press that started out as a bright idea.


Looking back on a whirlwind year, I came across my January guest post on Helen Ginger’s blog: http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com/.

I’m reprinting it here as an example of how easy it can be to deal with a start-up press. But first, here’s the current Krill Press catalog:

 ABSINTHE OF MALICE by Pat Browning.
Old crimes come back to haunt a small California town. Penny Mackenzie, Lifestyle reporter for The Pearl Outrider and a cast of unforgettable characters find their lives turned upside down after chance discovery of a skeleton in a cotton field leads to murder...and romance

THE WELL MEANING KILLER by Miranda Phillips Walker.
A maniac is terrorizing Baltimore. "The Wishing Well Killer" is discarding his victims like they were the kitchen trash...stuffing their bodies in plastic garbage bags and throwing them down abandoned wells in the Maryland countryside.

 LITTLE BLUE WHALES by Kenneth R. Lewis.
A sadistic killer stalks the summer beaches of Oregon and the only cop who can stop him is about to let him get away with murder, in this adrenaline rush thriller where the most dangerous secrets to keep...are the ones you don't know you have.

 THE BIG GRABOWSKI by Carolyn J. Rose and Mike Nettleton.
When the body of an unscrupulous land developer washes in with the tide, there are more suspects than mourners in the quirky town of Devil's Harbor, Oregon. For Molly Donovan, the murder creates an opportunity to use her crime reporting skills.

Coming in December: COUNSEL OF THE WICKED by Roberto Kusminsky.
Prominent surgeon and ex-Navy Seal Gerson Asher embarks on a harrowing journey from the broad avenues of New York to the back alleys of Buenos Aires in search of stolen WW2 art treasures, Nazi war criminals, and the killers of his grandfather.
***
Here's my nod to other reissued mysteries, and a blow-by-blow account of getting my “new” book out into the world, and the revisions I made during the process. From "Straight From Hel" January 2009:


ITEM: Dec. 5, 2008
From the New York Times top 20 sellers in Paperback Mass-Market Fiction. Of the 20 top titles, three are reissues:


THE MANNING GROOMS, by Debbie Macomber. (Mira, $7.99.) A reissue of two novels: “Bride on the Loose” and “Same Time, Next Year.”
FOUL PLAY, by Janet Evanovich. (Harper, $7.99.) A veterinarian hires a woman who has lost her TV job to a dancing chicken, then helps her prove her innocence when the chicken disappears; a reissue of a 1989 book.
LOVE BY DESIGN, by Nora Roberts. (Silhouette, $7.99.) A reissue of two novels from 1989: “Loving Jack” and “Best Laid Plans.”


ITEM: December 2008
FULL CIRCLE by Pat Browning, revised and reissued by Krill Press as ABSINTHE OF MALICE.


That came out of the blue. It was a three-month ride on a Tilt-A-Whirl, and I’m still dizzy. Krill Press is a micro press in Oregon, with a multi-tasking publisher who puts the pedal to the metal. As in:


SEPT. 1 -- Krill Press was formed, more or less in the mind of said publisher, after the idea was kicked around in an Internet group we both belong to.


First bump in the road: He asked for a Synopsis of FULL CIRCLE, which I self-published in 2001, and also one for my half-finished second book, working title SOLSTICE. I started to sweat out that horror of horrors, the synopsis, for not one but two books.


SEPT. 6 -- Publisher said forget the synopses. He was reading FULL CIRCLE and liked it. He had already read the first three chapters of SOLSTICE on my web site.


SEPT. 14 -- Publisher loved FULL CIRCLE, suggested bringing out an “updated, refreshed 2nd edition” with a new title and new cover. Offered me an advance. I fell over laughing when I read the proposed new title, ABSINTHE OF MALICE, and saw the jazzy, sexy new cover proposed. But the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. We jumped right into proposed changes and details of a business relationship.


SEPT. 17 – We signed a two-year contract for publication in trade paperback, E-book and other electronic download formats, and Amazon’s Kindle.


SEPT. 24 – Advance check. I printed out a copy suitable for framing.


Second bump in the road: Publisher wanted manuscript by E-mail, in Word. I couldn’t find my computer file anywhere. I did have a printout of my iUniverse proof sheet from 2001. Nothing to do but make a new Word file by scanning in that proof sheet, one page at a time. More than 200 pages, one – page – at – a – time.


OCT. 26 – Publisher finished book block and e-mailed it to me for proofing. Last minute updating of cover blurbs and reviews for Krill Press web site, which was still under construction.


NOV. 3 – Book uploaded to printer (Lightning Source). Publisher signed contracts with Lightning Source and Ingram Book Group to have book distributed in Canada, the UK and Europe.


NOV. 6 – Lightning Source sent proof copy to publisher via UPS 2nd Day Air. Publisher made plans for virtual launch party on NETDRAG podcast.


NOV. 7 – Pursuant to my notice of cancellation of contract, iUniverse gave me written acknowledgment and washed their hands of it. It’s no longer listed on their web site.


Ongoing blip: FULL CIRCLE is still listed for sale by online booksellers and will be until they get rid of their last copy. If I could afford it, I would buy them all up.


DEC. 4 – I had copies of my brand new book on hand for a book signing at the local library.


Krill Press is promoting ABSINTHE OF MALICE in every known market. It’s displayed on Google Books, as far afield as an Italian library. Amazon.com has it displayed for sale in the UK, Germany, France, China, Japan … It’s print-on-demand but the publisher, bowing to marketplace realities, offers a heavy discount to bookstores and makes it returnable. He’s sending sell sheets and queries to Internet book review sites.


The publisher is doing his share and then some. I’m more of a hand-seller: “Pssst! Wanna buy a good book?”


It’s an ill wind, as the saying goes. Having to scan the book a page at a time gave me a chance to polish it up, tighten it up, and generally shape it up. It also gave me a chance to rewrite a couple of key scenes.


One has to do with my protagonist, Penny Mackenzie, a baby boomer whose first love shows up after a long absence. I had written her as a bit of a schlump, in a rut. The publisher picked up on a short scene where she whacks off her hair and throws her dowdy duds into a wastebasket. He took it a step further, seeing her as a woman whose long-suppressed vanity reappears when her old flame shows up. I rewrote the scene to fit the sassy, sexy new book cover.


The other has to do with DNA testing of an old bone. When I wrote the book in 1999-2001, DNA testing was fairly new. I misinterpreted a news article I read about a portable DNA machine developed by the military for battlefield use. Since then, of course, I’ve learned that DNA from old bones is mitochondrial DNA, passed down only through female ancestors. The test destroys the bone, making it impossible for a character to run it through a portable machine and then replace it in the police department’s evidence room. I feel a lot better for having rewritten the scene to reflect the differences in DNA, keeping a character from subjecting an old bone to the wrong kind of testing.

While all this was going on, my work-in-progress was shoved to one side. Now I’m picking up where I left off four months ago. Touching base this week with a friend, I mentioned that finishing the second book is essential to the success of the first one. His e-mail reply is taped to my computer monitor.

He wrote: “And if I were you I'd finish that second book. There's only so much promotion you can do without turning into a used-car salesman, and there's hardly anything worse than a used-car salesman who only has one car to sell.”

***

Words to live by!

Once Upon a Time

By Pat Browning


The local library has been filled with kids this summer – story hours for toddlers and on up. What do you bet at least some of the storybooks began with those magic words “Once upon a time …”


Times change. Contemporary children’s books include that atrociously titled “Walter The Farting Dog.” Still, many if not most writers write in hopes of being read, and so they move with the times.


That’s one reason I hang onto writers like Jonathan Harrington and the late William Tapply. They write well, and their themes are thoughtful and timeless.


Harrington is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Troy University, Alabama. His most recent work is THE CLIMATE DIET: HOW YOU CAN CUT CARBON, CUT COSTS AND SAVE THE PLANET (2008). It’s listed “in stock” at amazon.com.


At the tail end of the 20th century he wrote three Danny O’Flaherty mysteries: THE DEATH OF COUSIN ROSE (1996), THE SECOND SORROWFUL MYSTERY (1999), and A GREAT DAY FOR DYING (2001). He began his series just in time to get on with Write Way publishing. Write Way signed up a lot of good writers and then went belly up.


About that time Harrington gave an interview to Charlotte Austin, in which he said:


“When I am gone, all that will be left are the stories I tried to tell in my writing. When the world is no more, all that will be left is a story that begins: Once upon a time a group of people lived on a place called Earth … We are writing the story of our existence. When everything else is gone, all that will remain is the story of who we were.”


Words to live by. Today we have computers and word processing software, but in a sense we are still drawing pictures on the walls of the cave, leaving proof of our existence and the way we see the world around us.


William Tapply, who died in July, had a writing career that was all over the map. Name a subject and he probably wrote about it. His more than 40 books included the Brady Coyne mystery series. My favorite is PAST TENSE, No. 18 in the series.


In my review I wrote: “The fact that I haven’t read the first 17 was not a problem. Tapply gets right into the story and moves it along so smoothly that I simply sat and read until I finished at 3 a. m.”


On March 31, 2007, Tapply posted this to DorothyL:
QUOTE:
Subject: Why we read (and write) mysteries
1) Because they have actual plots.
2) Because some of our best writers are writing them.
3) Because they feature heroes and heroines and villains.
4) Because they conform to Joseph Campbell’s classic story formulation, and Aristotle’s, too.
5) Because they begin with a disruption of the status quo, descend into uncertainty, and end with the restoration of order, fulfilling our fantasies about real-world chaos.
END QUOTE


In spite of publishing turmoil, this is a good time to be a writer. I need look no further than my first (and so far only) mystery for proof of that. I posted this to Helen Ginger’s blog in February and reprint it here with her blessing.
***
In December 2008, FULL CIRCLE by Pat Browning was revised and reissued by Krill Press as ABSINTHE OF MALICE.


It came out of the blue. It was a three-month ride on a Tilt-A-Whirl, and I'm still dizzy. Krill Press is a new small press in Oregon, with a multi-tasking publisher who puts the pedal to the metal. As in:


SEPT. 1, 2008 -- Krill Press was formed, more or less in the mind of said publisher, after the idea was kicked around in an Internet group we both belong to.


First bump in the road: He asked for a Synopsis of FULL CIRCLE, which I self-published in 2001, and also one for my half-finished second book, working title SOLSTICE. I started to sweat out that horror of horrors, the synopsis, for not one but two books.


SEPT. 6 -- Publisher said forget the synopses. He was reading FULL CIRCLE and liked it. He had already read the first three chapters of SOLSTICE on my web site.


SEPT. 14 -- Publisher loved FULL CIRCLE, suggested bringing out an "updated, refreshed 2nd edition" with a new title and new cover. Offered me an advance.


I fell over laughing when I read the proposed new title, ABSINTHE OF MALICE, and saw the jazzy, sexy new cover proposed. But the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. We jumped right into proposed changes and details of a business relationship.


SEPT. 17 - We signed a two-year contract for publication in trade paperback, E-book and other electronic download formats, and Amazon's Kindle.


SEPT. 24 - Advance check. I printed out a copy suitable for framing.


Second bump in the road: Publisher wanted manuscript by E-mail, in Word. I couldn't find my computer file anywhere. I did have a printout of my iUniverse proof sheet from 2001. Nothing to do but make a new Word file by scanning in that proof sheet, one page at a time. More than 200 pages, one - page - at - a - time.


OCT. 26 - Publisher finished book block and e-mailed it to me for proofing. Last minute updating of cover blurbs and reviews for Krill Press web site, which was still under construction.


NOV. 3 - Book uploaded to printer (Lightning Source). Publisher signed contracts with Lightning Source and Ingram Book Group to have book distributed in Canada, the UK and Europe.


NOV. 6 - Lightning Source sent proof copy to publisher via UPS 2nd Day Air. Publisher made plans for virtual launch party on NETDRAG podcast.


NOV. 7 - Pursuant to my notice of cancellation of contract, iUniverse gave me written acknowledgment and washed their hands of it. It's no longer listed on their web site.


Ongoing blip: FULL CIRCLE is still listed for sale by online booksellers and will be until they get rid of their last copy. If I could afford it, I would buy them all up.


DEC. 4 - I had copies of my brand new book on hand for a book signing at the local library.


Krill Press is promoting ABSINTHE OF MALICE in every known market. It's displayed on Google Books, as far afield as an Italian library. Amazon.com has it displayed for sale in the UK, Germany, France, China, Japan ... It's print-on-demand but the publisher, bowing to marketplace realities, offers a heavy discount to bookstores and makes it returnable. He's sending sell sheets and queries to Internet book review sites.


The publisher is doing his share and then some. I'm more of a hand-seller: "Pssst! Wanna buy a good book?"


It's an ill wind, as the saying goes. Having to scan the book a page at a time gave me a chance to polish it up, tighten it up, and generally shape it up. It also gave me a chance to rewrite a couple of key scenes.


One has to do with my protagonist, Penny Mackenzie, a baby boomer whose first love shows up after a long absence. I had written her as a bit of a schlump, in a rut. The publisher picked up on a short scene where she whacks off her hair and throws her dowdy duds into a wastebasket. He took it a step further, seeing her as a woman whose long-suppressed vanity reappears when her old flame shows up. I rewrote the scene to fit the sassy, sexy new book cover.


The other has to do with DNA testing of an old bone. When I wrote the book in 1999-2001, DNA testing was fairly new. I misinterpreted a news article I read about a portable DNA machine developed by the military for battlefield use. Since then I've learned that DNA from old bones is mitochondrial DNA, passed down only through female ancestors. The test destroys the bone, making it impossible for a character to run it through a portable machine and then replace it in the police department's evidence room. I feel a lot better for having rewritten the scene to reflect the differences in DNA, keeping a character from subjecting an old bone to the wrong kind of testing.


While all this was going on, my work-in-progress was shoved to one side. Now I'm picking up where I left off. Touching base with a friend, I mentioned that finishing the second book is essential to the success of the first one. His e-mail reply is taped to my computer monitor.


He wrote: "And if I were you I'd finish that second book. There's only so much promotion you can do without turning into a used-car salesman, and there's hardly anything worse than a used-car salesman who only has one car to sell."
***
Note: Krill Press has grown rapidly in its first year. There are 3 books in its catalog, a new one coming out in November and another in December. Check out the web site at:
http://tinyurl.com/n48kxe

Slicing It Thin

By Pat Browning

Has anyone else noticed that mysteries seem to get longer and longer? It’s as if editors and publishers have decided that longer is better, which ain’t necessarily so.

Unless you’re writing historical mysteries which are dense with detail, you should keep your book as lean as possible, especially if you’re a beginner. Readers recognize rambling and padding when they see it. The book may get good reviews but readers may desert you. Or not. As one of my sisters tells me when I get nervous about what I’m writing, “People will read anything.”

In the years since I wrote my first mystery, I’ve learned to cut and cut, and cut some more. In simple terms, a plot comes down to what the main character wants, and what stands in his/her way. But when I began, I kept going off in other directions. Nearly all of what I wrote was back story. I assumed because I knew the complete details of a character’s life I had to explain it to everyone else.

That’s not true, of course. Aside from leaving a little something to the reader’s imagination, it simply isn’t necessary to tell everything. A line here, a paragraph there, maybe even a page or short chapter, is usually enough.

That’s the modern way, and it’s hard for people my age to make the adjustment. We grew up reading the English classics, Charles Dickens, for example. Dickens was paid by the word for his novels published in installments. Of course he put in everything he knew.

Among more modern writers, even Daphne duMaurier in REBECCA described every leaf, bush, flower and cloud in the sky, furniture, silverware, and clothing. But she was skillful at spinning a web to draw the reader in and she got by with it.

Learning as I wrote FULL CIRCLE, I cut out some very good scenes and chapters because they moved the story backward and sideways instead of forward. They were mostly explanations of what happened years earlier.

For instance, I threw in my travel experiences by putting my two main characters in Paris as college students. I actually took them through some of the cities I visited on my first trip to Europe. Well, heck, I thought, those were interesting experiences, and I had copious notes, so why not? Why not? Because I was trying to write a cozy mystery, and not a travelogue or memoir.

While I was cutting, I cut my entire Chapter 2, which had some good dialogue and interplay among characters but dragged out the beginning. I hung an imaginary banner above my computer: FICTION IS NOT REAL LIFE.

The hardest cut I had to make was priceless, in its way, because it was written from life. I devoted an entire chapter to my protagonist’s mother writing about her childhood for a senior citizens writing class. I had written it 30 years earlier, intending to turn it into the Great American Novel. Didn’t happen, so I filed it away.

Why not slip it into my mystery? I thought I was clever in the way I presented it, and it survived numerous critiques by other writers. At the eleventh hour, one puzzled comment by a professional publicist was all it took to nudge that chapter out. Once again, I filed it away.

In the meantime, I learned to cut extraneous material almost as second nature. I give my years as a newspaper reporter credit for that. When Krill Press came along with an idea for reprinting FULL CIRCLE as ABSINTHE OF MALICE, I cut and rewrote and revised with gusto.

This has been an extraordinary year. Not only do I have a shiny new – or at least different – book, but that piece of writing I saved for 40 years has found a home. Two years ago I revised it as a short memoir and submitted it to a magazine. Rejected. Last year I revised it again and entered it in a contest. Won second place and $50.

This year I rewrote it again, and submitted it for publication in the Red Dirt Book Festival Anthology. It made the cut. The anthology was supposed to be out in time for Christmas, but after 40 years – hey, what’s my hurry?

Touching Up

By Pat Browning

Whew.

My reissued book is ready to launch. An E-mail from the publisher says he got the final proof copy today, and it is “gawjus.” Looks like I’ll have books for a group signing at the local library Dec. 4.

It’s been a hell-bent-for-leather project, but one of the nice things about a small, startup press is that it can turn on a dime, and Krill Press has done that a couple of times. ABSINTHE OF MALICE will be listed in Books in Print next week. It takes a little longer to get it up and running at Amazon and other online bookstores. Soon to come – Kindle.

I read once about an artist who was never entirely satisfied with his paintings. He went around to museums and art galleries, touching up his work when nobody was looking. I can identify.

Re-doing my book was a chore, but I got rid of a lot of ellipses and dialogue tags. I completely rewrote a couple of scenes, at the publisher’s request. It’s the same book, but it’s a better book. Yet even as I signed off on the manuscript I saw a couple of small things that should have been changed. Ah, well. At some point you have to let it go.

The web site for Krill Press is still under construction, but it’s at www.krillpress.com.

Writing and publishing today is a Medusa’s head. A sense of humor is essential, so I’ll sign off with a chuckle for the week. This is an item from Leah Garchik’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle online, Nov. 13:

(Quote)
Mary Patrick Kavanaugh, who says she spent seven years “writing, editing, revising and even refinancing her house twice to underwrite the costs of this dream,” has declared her novel officially dead and is throwing a funeral to mark that reclassification. The service and party will be Dec. 6 at the Chapel of the Chimes, and she says the event will be open coffin so that guests can dispose of “remnants of their own dead dreams to bury with the author's dashed hopes.”

Kavanaugh will sell self-published copies of her novel in the lobby to help pay for the refreshments. “Pity purchases are welcome and encouraged.” She invites guests who can’t show up in person to watch via Webcast at mydreamisdeadbutimnot.com.
(End Quote)

What a great marketing line to steal: Pity purchases are welcome and encouraged!