A Little Marketing Music Please

A guest blog by Pat Browning

I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just when I was ready to write a few words on marketing, Vickie Britton’s new mini-ebook, Writing and Selling a Mystery Novel: A Simple Step-by-Step Plan, fell into my hands.

She also writes fiction. Vickie and her sister, Loretta Jackson, have co-authored more than 30 novels, most of them mysteries, mystery-romances, and westerns. Besides print editions, many are available on Kindle.

Vickie’s new mini e-book is a blueprint for writing a mystery from start to finish. Her segment on marketing sums up in three rules: Get it finished; get it out there, get it to the right market. Please note: The first rule is

GET IT FINISHED!

Here’s an excerpt from the marketing segment, reprinted with Vickie Britton’s permission:

Why Most Books Don’t Sell

Yes, being a writer is tough, and it is a competitive market. But there are three rules that will greatly increase your odds of success.

■ Get it Finished

Most people don’t sell their novel for one simple reason: they never get it finished. They attend writer’s conferences and critique groups, talk about their project incessantly, and maybe even jot down a few ideas or chapters. But when it comes down to the wire, they don’t have a finished product to offer.

Half a book will never sell. True, when you get established you may be able to sell on the basis of a synopsis and three sample chapters, but at some point in time the editor is going to ask for the completed manuscript. You had better be ready and able to produce one. Usually, editors want completed manuscripts from new authors so that they know the writer can finish what he started. Once you’ve written a completed manuscript you've already eliminated over half of the competition.

■ Get it Out There

No manuscript has ever sold sitting in the bottom of a filing cabinet. Once you feel you've written the book to the best of your ability, get it circulating – by either querying an agent or sending it directly to a publisher.

■ Get it to the Right Market

Not only do you have to get your manuscript out there, but targeting the right market greatly increases your chances of a sale. If you have a mystery, don’t send it to a romance market. If you've written a police procedural, don’t send it to a tea cozy market. You'll get nothing but rejection. Study the publisher’s book list. You'll find that all publishers have a certain image they project to target a certain type of reader. They can vary greatly. Even if you have written the great American novel, the publisher won't change his publishing list for you.

■ Finding an Agent

This is the question authors get asked the most. No, it isn't necessary to have an agent in order to sell a book. An agent can help you reach larger publishing houses that don't accept unsolicited material, and they can help you get a better book deal once you have reached the stage where you want to sign multiple contracts. They can handle foreign rights for you and do all the bookwork.

On the downside, they charge up to 15 percent. So yes, you should try to get an agent if you want one. There are plenty of legitimate agents listed in the Writer’s Market. Another way to find a good agent is through word of mouth. Never pay a reading fee. Agents who ask for money up front make their living by charging fees, not by selling books.

■ Going Solo

If you either can’t get an agent to take you on because you're a new author or you simply don’t want one, you can query the editors at publishing houses yourself. Read their submission guidelines carefully and don’t try to change rules.

Guidelines can be found in the Writer’s Market, or by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to a specific publisher. Most editors want to see a synopsis and three sample chapters. The synopsis shouldn't be more than three pages. People disagree whether the outcome of a mystery should be revealed in the synopsis. I believe when selling a book you should tell how the story unfolds so the editor can get an idea of the plot’s plausibility. The sample chapters should be the first three chapters and not picked randomly from the book. If a publisher will accept a completed manuscript, then send the entire book.

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Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: A Simple Step-by-Step Plan by Vickie Britton is available for purchase at Smashwords: http://tinyurl.com/4y75bt9 . It’s available in ten e-book formats.

About the Author:

A veteran traveler, Pat Browning's.globetrotting of the 1970s led to her work as a travel agent and correspondent for TravelAge West, a trade journal published in San Francisco. During the
1990s, she served as a newspaper reporter and columnist. Her mystery novel, Full Circle, first of her Penny McKenzie mystery series, was later republished as Absinthe of Malice. She's currently hard at work on the second novel in the series.

Introducing Susan Santangelo, new blogger

By Pat Browning


Susan Santangelo, a new blogger at Murderous Musings, lives part of the time in Old Saybrook, Connecticut and part of the time in Dennis, Massachusetts. She published her first mystery, RETIREMENT CAN BE MURDER in 2009. The second in the Baby Boomer series, MOVING CAN BE MURDER, is due out early in 2011. Susan and her husband founded their own publishing company, Baby Boomer Mysteries Press. The web site is www.babyboomermysteries.com.

Susan and her husband Joe share their lives with three English Cocker Spaniels: Tucker, Lucy (she's on the back cover of the book), and new puppy Boomer.

So why the focus on baby boomers? In an interview on WCAI (one of the listener-supported public radio stations serving Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and the South Coast) Susan notes that today’s baby boomers don’t have the kind of retirement their parents and grandparents did. On the whole they’re living longer and better, with time for volunteering, giving back to the community or starting new careers, doing things they always wanted to do.

RETIREMENT CAN BE MURDER is a classic cozy but with a difference. Susan's book is a light-hearted look at a serious subject: the first wave of what will be a tsunami of Baby Boomers facing retirement. When you've spent a lifetime with the clock and the calendar, what do you do after you throw away the alarm clock? Where do you go if you aren’t going to work?

Susan and Joe are both writers, recently retired from the public relations business. She proposed they write a mystery together. It was meant to be a “she said-he said” kind of story with the two of them writing alternating chapters. Susan wrote the first chapter to get them started and ended up writing the whole thing.

Story in a nutshell: Unsure of how to deal with a retired husband hanging around the house, the wife sends him to a retirement coach, with calamitous results. It’s a murder mystery, after all.

There’s an interesting interview with Susan at Novel Journey, chosen as One of Writer's Digest 101 Most Valuable Websites for Writers 2008 and 2010.
http://tinyurl.com/29n6x2f

Some brief excerpts from that interview of Aug. 21, 2009:

“It seems that people of a “certain age” become invisible, because our country seems to be more and more obsessed with youth. I’m hoping that by writing a series of books focusing on the everyday lives of Boomers, that perception will change. We still have plenty of good years ahead of us and lots of things to contribute. And if we can laugh along the way, that’s even better!”
***
“I’ve always written. And I’ve always wanted to write a mystery. I always figured I had plenty of time ahead of me to do it. But then I was diagnosed with breast cancer (12) years ago. That event completely changed the way I look at my life. I decided I’d better get going and do the things I want to do now. It’s really true that life is not a dress rehearsal.”
***
“I find that I can’t just sit at the computer and write write write all day long. I write in spurts, and I’m constantly making notes to myself. What really stimulates my ‘little gray cells’ is overhearing other people’s conversations. I confess I’m a real observer of human nature, and it’s amazing what people talk about in public situations such as the check out line of the local supermarket or on their cell phone. I get great plot and character ideas every day this way.”

A Special Note: Susan Santangelo is one of the founders of the Breast Cancer Survival Center in Connecticut, which provides support and education about the disease to those who have undergone treatment. A portion of the sale of each book will be donated to this organization (http://www.breastcancersurvival.org/).

This week I lobbed some questions Susan’s way to find out more about her.

Q: You’re in an interesting location, far removed from the wide open spaces of the West and Southwest where some of us live. Tell us about Cape Cod and Connecticut, and what it’s like to live in two places. How did that come about?

A: I guess I'm just lucky! I was born in Connecticut, but my family vacationed on Cape Cod for many years when I was growing up. When our first son was born, my parents rented a cottage here, and we loved it so much as a family that we continued the tradition and rented one the following summer. And the one after that. And the one after that. Finally, it made sense to buy a place.

Joe and I both love living near water. Getting up early in the morning and having the option of walking on the beach (or rolling over and going back to sleep!) is heaven. But our three dogs -- Tucker, 14 1/2, Lucy, 9 (she's on the back cover of the book), and new puppy Boomer, 9 months -- always vote for the walk.

The best part of the year is from now until early April. That's when we locals have the Cape all to ourselves, and can actually go out to eat without having to wait in line for hours to get a table. Life here is pretty casual. Most of the time, when we have people over, they're close friends, and everyone always brings something. But the specialty of this house, no matter what the time of year, is my homemade meatballs. If I could figure out how to stuff a turkey with them, my family would love it!

But Joe worked in Hartford, Connecticut for many years, and we still have a house there too, in the beautiful shoreline town of Old Saybrook. So many of my good friends are in Connecticut, and I have many good friends on Cape Cod as well. I guess someday we'll have to choose where we want to live full-time, but for now, it's a great life.

Q: You and your husband both had careers in journalism and public relations. What is he doing now that he’s retired?

A: Joe retired in December, and in his usual fashion hit the ground running on January 2 with an article published in The Hartford Courant (that's Connecticut's largest daily paper) on the legislature and governor etc. He's also had several pieces published in Connecticut Magazine, and has partnered with another go-getter here on the Cape to start a public relations company. The business is growing and he's working hard and enjoying the challenge of being an entrepreneur at last. He also hosts a television show called "Cape Cod Newsmakers" on our local cable access channel.

Q: At the end of your book you list some questions for discussion. I’ll put a couple of them to you.


(1) What is your definition of success?
(2) If you could choose one thing to do every day, what would it be? Why?


A: (1) At my age, my selfish definition of personal success is opening my eyes and putting my feet on the floor. My real definition of success is making a positive difference in somebody's life.
(2) If I could choose one thing to do every day, it'd be writing a great chapter in the next baby boomer mystery book. That gives me a real feeling of accomplishment. And it's so much fun!

Q: I looked up the web site of http://www.breastcancersurvival.org/.
It offers a comprehensive schedule of programs. Is the organization run by volunteers and/or professionals? Do you contribute to the programs?

A: Thank you so much for this question. The Breast Cancer Survival Center is near and dear to my heart. I'm one of the co-founders, along with my dear friend Carla Gisolfi of Norwalk, CT, a 2-time survivor who, unfortunately, lost her battle last year. I serve as President of the board of directors, which is a very hands-on job. We are the only non-profit in the state of Connecticut exclusively devoted to post-treatment education and support for breast cancer survivors and their families. Most of our programs are free. Part of the profit from the sales of baby boomer mysteries is donated to the Center. In the past 11 years, we have served more than 8,000 survivors and families. We are all-volunteer.

Q: I also followed the link to National Association of Baby Boomer Women (http://www.nabbw.com/)
and its sister site (http://www.boomerwomenspeak.com/).
At the sister site, among many other things I found notice of an August teleseminar, “How To Hire And Work With a Ghostwriter - Plus Tips on How to Become One,” and a writing contest. I’m astounded. It’s a whole new world out there. In a nutshell, what do you consider the most important contributions being made by baby boomers?

A: We are living life on our own terms, as we always did! NABBW is a great organization. I look at the membership roster, and I can't believe the diversity of talented women there.

Q: One more question. You have a good support system for your writing. What suggestions and critiques did members of Sisters in Crime and the Cape Cod Writers’ Center contribute during the writing of your book?

A: Sisters in Crime (SINC) is such a fabulous organization. I'm not sure how many folks know that fans can become members too. They have terrific on-line support and information feeds daily that, for a fledgling writer like me, is invaluable. Cape Cod is a very nurturing environment for writers. The Writers Center has a very reasonable summer conference with great courses. I took a course there and learned a lot about editing and revision that I hope has served me well. There are also many independent writers' groups on Cape Cod, including Book In The Hand, which is headed by another wonderful writer, Elizabeth Moisan, and allows prose writers (both published and unpublished) to come and read from their work.

Q: With Thanksgiving coming up I must ask: Is there much of an American Indian presence on Cape Cod?

A: There's not as much of a Native American presence here on Cape Cod as there used to be, except in the town of Mashpee, which is not too close to us. There's actually a tribal council which is integral to that town, and lots of talk about a casino off-Cape to bring the tribe revenue, like Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. We'll see how far that goes.

Q: How about your own Thanksgiving plans?

A: Thanksgiving will be spent traveling to New Jersey for a big family gathering. Our niece and her husband have a cast of thousands (at least, that's what it seems like!), and the food is delish. Then back in the car and onward to Maryland the next day to see our older son, Mark and his family -- wife Sandy, and grandchildren Jacob and Rebecca.


I should mention we just got back from Halloween in Maryland on Monday! We seem to spend lots of time in the car to-ing and fro-ing, but in the summer, the family (including son Dave, who's living the good life in Marina Del Rey California where he buys and sells sailboats -- lives on one too) gathers here on the Cape for barbecues, trips to the beach, splashing in our pool, and generally having fun being together.
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To-ing and fro-ing and pigging out on homemade meatballs – sounds like the good life to me. Many thanks to Susan for answering all my nosy questions, and good luck to her with her new Baby Boomer mystery series.
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PERSONAL NOTE: This is my last post for Murderous Musings. I’m taking my online life in a new direction: first as an editor at Lorie Ham’s ezine, “Kings River Life,” and second by joining Tumblr and Kindle Forum, a couple of new promotional avenues. I still have a personal blog, Morning’s At Noon, at http://pbrowning.blogspot.com/, and most important of all, I’m going to finish my second book and get cracking on Books 3 and 4. – Pat Browning

Veterans Day: Better Late Than Never

By Pat Browning

Living in California’s Central Valley I got to know several Americans of Japanese descent who were herded into internment camps during World War II. Some of them simply moved on with their lives after the war and didn’t talk about it. Some of them were still bitter. Some of them had worked their way out of the camps by taking acceptable jobs far away. At least one of them had fought with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the “Go For Broke” regiment.

In 1994, as a reporter for The Hanford Sentinel I interviewed a Valley man who had been taken out of a camp in Arkansas because he could speak and read Japanese. Dick Kishiue was chosen as one of the top-secret “Yankee Samurai” who served as interpreters in the Nisei Military Intelligence Service with army and navy units from the Aleutians to the far islands of the South Pacific.

According to Kishiue, each one traveled at all times with two armed guards so that nervous GIs wouldn’t shoot them by mistake. When the translators were discharged at the end of the war they were told never to talk about their service, and for 50 years they didn’t. At a reunion in Hawaii their astonishing stories finally began to come out.

Kishiue was a farmer, as were so many of the Valley’s Japanese Americans. He was a modest, unassuming man but he was proud of his wartime service. At the time of our talk he still made regular trips to the Bay area for dinner with some of his wartime buddies. He was active in Japanese-American veterans affairs, both locally and statewide.

My feature story won an award in the 1995 California Newspaper Publishers Association contest. It was my fourth CNPA award. In a long lifetime I haven’t come up with much to brag about, but I’m perfectly happy to settle for bragging rights in the case of those awards.

In October, 65 years after World War II ended, President Barack Obama signed legislation awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion, known as the "Go for Broke" fighting units, as well as the 6,000 Japanese-Americans who served in the Military Intelligence Services during WWII. The medal will be on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institute.


The award comes too late for Dick Kishiue to enjoy it. I did a Google search and up popped his obituary. He died in May of this year. May he rest in peace.

The 1951 movie ‘Go For Broke” is in the public domain and you can watch it on You Tube. It’s in black and white and there are a couple of commercials so brief you won’t even have time to get a cup of coffee. There are some familiar movie cliches but when you think about it, war itself is the biggest cliché of all.


Although the movie can be seen on You Tube, that web site is shirty about links. My links come up with an error message. You can go to www.youtube.com and search for “Go For Broke” to find it.

One URL that does work with no problem is the link to Classic Free Movie Downloads -- http://www.classicfreemoviedownloads.com/movies4.htm

You’ll find three largely forgotten films from the 1950s at the site. “Go For Broke” is one. The other two are “The Big Combo” (1955) starring Cornel Wilde in a crime film, and “Vengeance Valley” (1951), a western starring Burt Lancaster and Robert Walker. Just pick your movie and click on the Download Movie link.

“Go For Broke” is a good movie, with music guaranteed to stir the blood, and it’s funny, too. A running joke is the commanding officer’s tour leaflets touting the glories of Italy and France as his men slog from place to place.

Which brings me to TALLGRASS, a novel by Sandra Dallas about the effect of a Japanese internment camp on both the internees and the residents of the nearby town.

The place: The fictional small town of Ellis in southeastern Colorado. The year: 1942. Not really a crime novel despite two killings, and not really a war novel despite the time frame, TALLGRASS is a story of relationships, personal and communal, with a bit of mass hysteria thrown in for good measure.

A snowstorm sets the scene for murder: “The snow, which had started before Christmas, continued all night, a hard, stinging snow brought by a wind that swept a thousand miles across the prairie.” The morning after, a young girl is found frozen in a haystack behind her father’s barn. She has been raped and murdered.

The narrator is Rennie Stroud, 13 years old when the story begins. She draws me into her life and times as easily as if we were sitting at a table in Lee Drug, gossiping while we drink Coca-Cola through our straws.

After the snowstorm murder, local residents are quick to blame someone from Tallgrass, a Japanese internment camp outside of town. Resentment of the “Japs” has run high since a large group arrived and was whisked off to barracks surrounded by barbed wire fences and observed by armed U.S. troops in high watchtowers. Never mind that the internees look and dress like ordinary Americans from California, they are regarded as enemies, possibly even spies.

In spite of its Norman Rockwell landscape, this is no namby-pamby novel. Townspeople find all kinds of ugly if mostly non-violent ways to make the internees unwelcome. One of the best scenes depicts a hostile gathering outside the Tallgrass camp gates that is quietly defused by Rennie’s mother. The solution to the first murder is a bit of a dull thud, but the solution to the second killing is both practical and disturbing. The epilogue moves the story forward to 1974, with a bittersweet ending.


The author recreates small-town America in the 1940s just as I remember my own upbringing. Reading it brought back a lot of memories.

Tomorrow: Introducing author Susan Santangelo, new blogger at Murderous Musings.
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**“Go For Broke” photo from Classic Free Movie Downloads;
**Japanese American family awaiting evacuation in Hayward, CA 1942, photo by Dorothea Lange, Wikipedia.
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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.”
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Photo of Dorothy Baker by Patricia Cokely (Browning), 1962

Tales From The San Joaquin

By Pat Browning

All smiles after a presentation in Fresno, Calif. are mystery writers (from left) Marilyn Meredith, who writes the Deputy Tempe Crabtree series; Victoria Heckman, whose series features Honolulu PD officer Katrina Ogden; JoAnne Lucas, co-author of VALLEY FEVER, a collection of short stories; Lorie Ham, author of the series featuring gospel singer Alexandra Walters; Pat Browning, author of ABSINTHE OF MALICE, first in a series featuring reporter Penny Mackenzie.

All except Heckman, who lives on the Central Coast and sets her books in Hawaii, write mysteries set in the Central San Joaquin Valley. Meredith lives in Springville, in the Southern Sierra foothills. Lucas lives in Clovis, adjacent to Fresno. Ham lives in the college town of Reedley, near Fresno. Browning lived in Hanford, south of Fresno, for many years. (Photo taken about 2002.)

“The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” -- Okay, so I stole that line from THE MALTESE FALCON. Nice line, but in this case it refers to an Indian legend from Central California and the Yokuts Indian tribes who were the original inhabitants of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Researchers relate the Yokuts Hairy Man legend to the legends of Big Foot and Sasquatch.

I had never heard the Hairy Man legend until I read it in a mystery novel by my good friend Marilyn Meredith. She lives about an hour’s drive from Hanford, where I lived for many years. We did some book signings together and both belonged to the Fresno Chapter of Sisters in Crime. (I miss those days!)

Marilyn and her husband, Hap, have been a team for more than 50 years and are still going strong. Hap knows as much about her books as she does and he’s great at taking over for her when she needs a break at a book fair or festival.

Their long running love story began with a blind date in Southern California, in what sounds like an episode of “Happy Days.” Hap was in the navy at Port Hueneme. Marilyn was a high school senior in Eagle Rock. With two other couples they took the streetcar to Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles, where they danced the hours away. Later they took a taxi to one friend’s house, but the final ride never showed up, so Hap walked Marilyn home, a distance of three miles.

They arrived about 3 a.m., and Marilyn recalls that her parents “were wild.” It had never occurred to her to telephone them. Hap had no transportation at that hour so her parents let him sleep on the couch in the den. A few weeks later, he and Marilyn tied the knot.

They lived in Oxnard for more than 20 years, where four of their five children were born. Hap served in the Seabees, going to Vietnam three times. When Oxnard got too big and busy for them they moved to the foothills, where Marilyn’s forbears had settled in the early 1850s. Marilyn and Hap were in the residential care business until retirement.

But back to the legend of the Hairy Man.

I recently read DISPEL THE MIST, the latest book in Marilyn’s popular Tempe Crabtree series. Tempe is a deputy on an Indian reservation in Central California. Although Marilyn lives near the Tule River Reservation, she says in the book’s Preface that her fictional Bear Creek Reservation is just that – fictional; and while Yokuts tribes inhabited the San Joaquin Valley, the Yanduchi branch in the Tempe Crabtree mysteries is fictional.

However, the Indian legends in this book are real, beginning with How People Were Made. It features the Hairy Man, who outwitted Coyote in a race to ensure that people would walk upright. The book’s cover is designed from Hairy Man pictographs at Painted Rock on the Tule River.

In an interview on the blog of paranormal fiction author Lynda Hilburn, Marilyn says: “The moment I stepped inside the rock shelter and spotted the pictograph of the Hairy Man and his family, I knew that my heroine, Tempe Crabtree, would not only visit this sacred place at night—which I’d been warned against doing—I also knew she would have an encounter with the Hairy Man.”

The book opens on an uneasy note. Deputy Tempe Crabtree and her husband Hutch, the community pastor, attend a blessing ceremony at the new Indian casino. The casino manager’s announcement of plans to build a hotel, golf course and indoor amphitheater gets a cool reception from the guest of honor, Lilia Quintera, a member of the Tulare County Board of Supervisors.

Meanwhile, another controversy brews at a new gated community nearby. Someone bought one of the larger homes and plans to turn it into a residential facility for developmentally disabled women, much to the displeasure of the other homeowners. Lilia Quintera’s niece Suzy, who has Down Syndrome, will be one of the residents.

Following the facility’s open house and a nasty encounter with a pharmacist named Duane Whitney, Lilia Quintera has a fatal heart attack. Tempe is assigned as a temporary special investigator because of her Indian heritage.

Quintera’s parents are suspicious of Lilia’s husband Wade, a trauma unit nurse with a reputation as a Casanova. When he doesn’t show up at Lilia’s funeral, Tempe goes to the house and finds him bleeding from a half-hearted suicide attempt. Suspicion also falls on Lilia’s younger sister Connie, who is Suzy’s mother. Tempe’s investigation reveals that Connie and Wade were having an affair.

Seeking insight into the tangle of suspects, Tempe calls on Nick Two John who has previously instructed her on how to use the supernatural aspects of her Indian culture. He supervises the kitchen at the Bear Creek Inn, owned by his significant other, Claudia Donato. Construction of a new casino hotel will cut into their business but Tempe dismisses any thought of Nick or Claudia being involved in murder.

Nick reminds Tempe that poisonous plants grow wild on the reservation. A few belladonna leaves made into a tea and slipped into Lilia’s cup at the open house could cause a fatal heart attack.

Back on the rez, Tempe sees a coyote and flashes back to her grandmother’s story of how animals scatter to forage for food when People multiply and take over the food supply. Exceptions are Dog, who decides to make friends with People in hopes they will feed him, and Hairy Man, who opts to come out only at night when People are asleep.

A pattern emerges. Grandmother’s stories lead to dreams that become nightmares. A late night phone call warns Tempe to stay away from Painted Rock. Puzzled and curious, Tempe and Hutch go to the rez to visit old acquaintances Jake and Violet. Jake takes them out to Painted Rock, where they see pictographs of animals and Hairy Man. It’s a busy place, with a rehab center and a sweat lodge located nearby, but Jake warns Tempe not to come out at night: “Too many spirits are here at night. Not all of them are good.”

The story builds slowly. This is a small book – 206 pages – and for the first 148 pages Tempe makes a pest of herself, asking questions but without proof that Lilia’s death was anything except a natural heart attack. When the supernatural aspects of Tempe’s Indian heritage kick in the story takes off in a dead run. The killer overplays his hand by luring Tempe out to Painted Rock at night, leading to a heart-stopping denouement.

As Shakespeare so wisely observed, all’s well that ends well, and DISPEL THE MIST ends on an upbeat note, including Tempe’s recipes for Quick Beef Stroganoff and Macaroni and Cheese.

Legends of a big hairy creature, often called Bigfoot, have been around for hundreds of years. In the U.S. sightings have been reported in every state except Hawaii, which has its own legends. The number of reported sightings ranges from two in Delaware to 493 in Washington State.

Readers interested in Bigfoot/Sasquatch legends can read more at The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, http://www.bfro.net/
Marilyn Meredith’s web site is at http://www.fictionforyou.com/
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Photo of Marilyn and Hap Meredith taken at EPICon 2004, the electronic publishing convention at the Westin Hotel in Bricktown, Oklahoma City.

The Seasoned Sleuth: Not Your Mama's Miss Marple

By Pat Browning


Did someone say the first Baby Boomer is old enough to collect Social Security? My, how the time flew.

Savvy mystery writers age their series characters accordingly, making their female amateur sleuths older, although not necessarily slower. They age in real time without turning into cartoons. We’re not talking geezer lit here.

My favorite characters are still the women they always were. They’re survivors. They’ve come to terms with life and death. Call them seasoned sleuths instead of senior sleuths. “Seasoned” doesn’t automatically translate to “old” as “senior” does.

Take Agatha Raisin, the feisty heroine of M.C. Beaton’s long-running series. Agatha’s been hanging around crime scenes since retiring in 1992, but she hasn’t retired her high heels. In LOVE, LIES AND LIQUOR (2006) she’s also wearing flimsy knickers “in the hope of a hot date.”

Agatha hasn’t mellowed a whit despite arthritic twinges that make her think of a hip replacement. After opening her own detective agency, she’s dealing with murder, jewel thievery and romantic entanglements when her hip starts to hurt. For a moment she feels old and sick, but not too old and sick to face someone holding a gun and snarl, “Fry in hell, you bastard.”


Agatha’s polar opposite is the 70-something Charlotte Graham of Stefanie Matteson’s 10-book series. A retired but still glamorous actress, Charlotte ages gracefully and philosophically. In MURDER UNDER THE PALMS (1997) she visits friends in Palm Beach, where fate reunites her with a man she fell in love with more than 50 years earlier.

Their shipboard romance had lasted four days. He went on to become a famous bandleader. They find the old attraction is still there and it’s easy to pick up where they left off.

Quoting: “She had reached the point in life where now was what mattered. Because the next day, the next week, the next year, either or both of them might not be around. Maybe this was what Ponce de Leon had discovered when he’d come to Florida seeking the fountain of youth … (T)hat only by coming to terms with death can you really find life.”


Charlotte and her old flame work together to solve a couple of murders and a mystery dating back to World War II.


In DEAD MAN’S ISLAND (1993) Carolyn Hart introduces her 70-something sleuth, Henrie O, who is more cosmopolitan than Agatha Raisin, more driven than Charlotte Graham. Henrie O is a former foreign correspondent right out of a 1940s movie, with “dark eyes that have seen much and remembered much.” She is, in the best old-fashioned sense of the word, a dame. Think Lauren Bacall.


In a murder mystery set on a remote island off the South Carolina Coast, Henrie O answers a call for help from her first love. At one point she muses, “Loss is the price of love … But it’s kinder to let each generation climb that mountain unknowing. If we knew at twenty what we know at sixty, it would make the climb that much harder and harrowing.”

Six books later (SET SAIL FOR MURDER, 2007), Henrie O is still dealing with ex-lovers, this time on a Baltic cruise. In a scene touching on the dilemma of the older woman, Henrie O sits on a vanity bench to remove a pair of favorite earrings:
(quoting) “I looked into the mirror. When I’d first worn them, my skin was smooth and unlined, my dark hair untouched by silver. I balanced the earrings in my palm, looked dispassionately at my silver-streaked hair, the smudges beneath my dark eyes, the lines of laughter and sadness on my face. I felt caught between past and present. Perhaps the truest sign of old age is when the heart stubbornly looks backward instead of forward.”

But the definitive word on the seasoned woman comes not from a fictional sleuth but from an actress who portrayed the older woman to perfection. The late Bea Arthur starred on TV as “Maude” and as one of the “Golden Girls,” and later took her one-woman show on the road.
In a 2002 interview with reporter Sarah Hampson for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Arthur sings a song from her show:

(quoting) “We’re like birds who are perched on the limbs of a tree/When the time is right we simply fly away/That other birds come and take our places/But they won’t stay/We come and go/It was always so/And so it will always be.”


The song illustrates her answer to the reporter’s question about why she continued to work at her age. Arthur says, “… while we’re here, we have a chance to sing. … In other words, be ballsy, make a point and have an interest.”


That describes the mystery writer’s seasoned sleuth to a T.

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Bea Arthur publicity photo from the Web
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Charming An Audience

**"Charming An Audience" was first printed in The SouthWest Sage, newletter of Albuquerque-based SouthWest Writers, in the August 2007 issue.
**The photo of comedian Sid Caesar is cropped from an 8x10 black-and-white glossy publicity photo given to me more than 40 years ago.
**The photo of Fred Harris signing a copy of COYOTE REVENGE for a fan, Judge Tom A. Lucas of Norman, Oklahoma, was taken by me at a Red Dirt Book Festival. (Judge Lucas is my brother.)


What follows is an excerpt from the original article.
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Charming An Audience
By Pat Browning

Showbiz legend Sid Caesar gave me my first lesson in charming an audience. He was in San Francisco starring in Neil Simon’s “Little Me.” I was a new stringer for the Fresno Bee and wangled a backstage interview.


The play was hilarious. I could have laughed all night. Ushered into Caesar’s presence after the last curtain call, I blurted, “You’re a lot funnier in person than you are on television.”


He raised one of those expressive eyebrows and offered a simple explanation for the magic of live theater. He said that because I had bought a ticket, dressed for the occasion and made an effort to get myself into a seat, I was primed to think he was funny. In short, performer and audience worked together. We expected to be entertained and we helped to make it happen.


The same kind of interaction takes place when you’re selling books at personal appearances. You are the star of the show, whether you’re speaking to a library group, a book club or a mixed bag of readers and browsers in a bookstore. It all comes down to the marketing mantra: It’s not about the book; it’s about you.

Elegance is not a word I associate with bookstore signings but an event with Fred Harris at Full Circle Books in Oklahoma City came close enough. A star of considerable magnitude in the worlds of politics and academia, Harris was there to promote his first Okie Dunn mystery, COYOTE REVENGE. It was another version of the performer-audience dynamic.


We were seated on the mezzanine, not far from a coffee cart. The host circulated with a carafe of wine. Harris told a couple of funny stories about writing the book and the tips he got from Tony Hillerman. He opened the book and read the first chapter aloud. Afterward, he answered questions before taking his place at a signing table.


Natural charm is a gift. Experience is earned. Standing up before a roomful of strangers may make your knees knock but it gets easier. Ask ahead of time about a podium. You need a place to lay your notes and your book. You may also need something to hang onto. Put some markers in your book so you won’t fumble when you want to read a passage.


Nothing limbers up a speaker and an audience like refreshments. You don’t have to spring for wine and cheese. Homemade cookies with tea, coffee and soft drinks work just fine. Napoleon said that an army travels on its stomach. Trust me, that distant rumble you hear is not an army. It’s the whole human race.


What the great comedian told the green reporter is as true as ever. The audience is not your enemy. The audience is part of your presentation. Whether they know it or not, the people behind those smiling faces want you to succeed. The interaction that Caesar described is 99 percent of a successful program. With a little preparation and practice you can handle the other one percent.

A Few Good Books

By Pat Browning


From my personal blog, Morning’s At Noon, March 26, 2009, and an update:
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Jean Henry Mead tagged me for one of her blogs, asking me to name 25 authors who influence(d) my writing. It was tough, and either I can't count or some names floated off into the ether.
I ended up with 22, many of them golden oldies. Here they are, good writers and good books all.
My list of 25, give or take a couple:
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1. Writers of the Bible, King James Version – for spellbinding stories and beautiful language, imagery and cadence, this is … well… er, um …the Bible.
2. William Shakespeare, all plays – everything I said about the KJV, plus humor. Shakespeare relieved tension with levity, which nevertheless had meaning.
3. Charles Dickens, all novels –master of characterization. He reportedly said he got his villains from himself because there’s a little bit of every man in each man.
4. Edna Ferber (CIMARRON)– master of the sweeping saga, celebrating the early days of this country.
5. John Steinbeck – (THE MOON IS DOWN, THE PEARL) simplicity of writing in novellas, beautiful beyond words.
6. Phyllis A. Whitney (DAUGHTER OF THE STARS) – amazing writing. In five pages the story spans 100 years, from three points of view.
Pages 1-2,omniscient POV: two Union soldiers fight a duel at Harper’s Ferry.Pages3-4, present time, third person POV: an old woman writes a letter to her niece. Page 5, first person POV: niece picks up letter at the post office and is drawn into a web of family secrets.
7. Helen MacInnis (THE SALZBURG CONNECTION) – timeless thriller, turning the screw from paragraph one right up to the end.
8. M. C. Beaton (LOVE, LIES AND LIQUOR) – through many Agatha Raisin novels, Beaton’s theme never varies: Agatha wants the elusive James.
9. John M. Daniel (PLAY MELANCHOLY BABY) – place and time preserved in a story of a lounge pianist whose past catches up with him, with song titles as chapter heads.
10. Thomas B. Sawyer (THE SIXTEENTH MAN) – provocative story told from two viewpoints in alternating chapters, without ever using a signature tag.
11. Rebecca Rothenberg/Taffy Cannon (THE TUMBLEWEED MURDERS) – begun by Rothenberg before her death, completed to perfection by Cannon. Haunting story of an old murder and a reclusive country singer known as The Cherokee Rose.
12. Richard Barre (BLACKHEART HIGHWAY) – California’s Central Valley comes to life on a business trip that turns deadly, complicated by a country singer who went to prison for murders he didn’t commit. Barre wrote the lyrics for the title song.
13. Craig Johnson (THE COLD DISH) – deft use of back story and history in a rugged Wyoming setting, with one of contemporary fiction’s great sidekicks, Henry Standing Bear.
14. Robert Fate (BABY SHARK) -- unforgettable characters, likeable in spite of a high body count, in a story of revenge or die trying.
15. Lonnie Cruse (MURDER IN METROPOLIS) -- great examples of introducing a character or dropping in a bit of back story in a sentence or two.
16. Diana Killian (SONNET OF THE SPHINX) – graceful writing, intriguing plot and a prologue that dazzles.
17. Austin Davis (SHOVELING SMOKE) – pie-eyed look at a small town law office, one of the funniest books I ever read.
18. Brad Smith (BUSTED FLUSH) – another funny look at human nature, this one of a man besieged by collectors, history buffs and media types because he may have found a recording of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
19. Fred Harris (COYOTE REVENGE) – pitch-perfect story of an accidental sheriff in small-town Oklahoma in the 1930s.
20. Vicki Lane (SIGNS IN THE BLOOD) – beautifully written story of a widow coming to terms with life in Appalachia, her chapters interspersed with an old legend about a child bride who disappeared.
21. Beth Anderson (NIGHT SOUNDS) – memorable characters in a story of obsessive love set against a backdrop of Chicago's Gold Coast and the jazz scene.
22. Peggy Fielding (SCOUNDRELS’ BARGAIN) – echoes of Cinderella in this story of a hard-working woman, a rich old villain and a handsome stranger in Oklahoma Territory, 1889.


I’ll update my list to add:
23. Hank Phillippi Ryan (PRIME TIME) – creates a protagonist I can identify with – Charlie McNalley, veteran newscaster staring down middle age. I felt right at home in Charlie’s fictional newsroom at Boston’s Channel 3, beginning with the opening lines: “Between the hot flashes, the hangover and all the spam on my computer, there’s no way I’ll get anything done before eight o’clock this morning. I came in early to get ahead, and already I’m behind.”
24. James R. Benn (BILLY BOYLE) – puts a human face on World War II in a tale of a cop who joins the army expecting a desk job and ends up facing down a spy in the middle of top-secret invasion plans.
25. Timothy Hallinan (SKIN DEEP) – resurrects a PI named Simeon Grist from out-of-print oblivion by putting him on Kindle at $2.99, making him accessible to a whole new group of readers. Simeon is cynical, with a built-in BS detector but a soft spot for women and children. What I like about him is his wicked sense of humor, a wry way of looking at himself and the rest of the world.


And for lagniappe (for good measure) –


26. Chester D. Campbell (A SPORTING MURDER) – features a woman, Jill McKenzie, who’s an equal partner with her husband Greg in McKenzie Investigations. They have matching desks in the office as part of the agency’s “equal opportunity policy.” Greg is a retired air force officer; Jill pilots her own Cessna. Together they do “basic gumshoe work” to solve a murder involving NBA basketball and NHL hockey.
27. Lillian Stewart Carl (THE BLUE HACKLE) – a magical ending to a series, if that’s the case. Carl’s dedication reads: “For Anjali Ravi Carl, The last but far from least book of the series for the last but far from least member of the next generation.” The two principals – journalist Jean Fairbairn and Scottish detective inspector Alasdair Cameron, retired – plan a wedding on the historic Isle of Skye, but murder, ghosts and assorted hanky-panky at moldering Dunasheen Castle could derail their plans.

Are You Fiction Or Nonfiction?

By Pat Browning
Literary agent Michael Larsen’s blog at http://michaellarsen.wordpress.com/

covers topics from storytelling to publishing and everything in between. This week, with his permission, I’m reprinting his Sept. 15th blog -- “Memoirists: Are You Fiction or Nonfiction?”

The husband and wife team of Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada left New York for San Francisco and opened their own literary agency in 1972. They founded the prestigious San Francisco Writers Conference almost eight years ago.


The next conference is scheduled for February 18- 20, 2011. It will feature nearly 100 agents, authors, editors and book industry professionals. Attendees will have access to more than 50 “how to" sessions, panels, and workshops taught by authors. Speed Dating for Agents and Ask a Pro offer one-on-one opportunities to pitch your work directly to publishing professionals.

New this year is a contest for independent and self-published authors. Here’s a quote from contest publicity: “In this new era of digital publishing with eBooks, Print on Demand (POD) books and more, there are now many paths to publication," said Laurie McLean, Contest Director of the San Francisco Writers Conference and Dean of the soon to debut San Francisco Writers University. "While the Holy Grail remains a contract with one of the big six publishers in New York, that goal is getting more elusive than ever for writers. We are offering the indie alternative to get to the big six--and hoping to establish the credibility for indie publishing that the indie film and music industries enjoy today."

Check out The Indie Publishing Contest where you can win a publishing package complete with distribution, marketing and more. Deadline to enter is January 5, 2011. Details at the conference web site:
www.sfwriters.org/
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Memoirists: Are You Fiction or Nonfiction?
By Michael Larsen
William Hamilton once did a cartoon showing an aspiring young woman writer asking a balding, mustachioed literary type: “Are you fiction or nonfiction?”

If you’re writing a memoir (a me-moir to the cynical) you may wonder whether it would be better as a novel. What reasons might there be for making that decision?
Legal Reasons
Publishers are extremely wary about anything that might cause litigation. If you’re going to include unflattering things about living people, they may sue. You can disguise them, but if you’re living in a small town or people will know who you’re referring to anyway, that won’t help.
Personal Reasons
Fictionalizing your past may make it easier to write about. A memoir is constrained by the truth. Writing fiction liberates you to alter your experience as you wish.
Literary Reasons
What are your literary goals in writing the book? If you want to create a legacy for your friends and family, writing a memoir makes more sense. Nonfiction is easier to write because you’re drawing on your experiences and facts you can verify.

But writing fiction liberates you to create whatever combination of character, plot, and setting will have the most impact on readers. And a memoir should read like a novel. Frank McCourt’s bestseller, Angela’s Ashes, which ignited the interest in memoirs, certainly does. You could call it a novel without changing a word. The dialogues he had as a child with his family capture the emotional truth if not the factual truth of what was said.


Like a novel, a memoir has to describe places, characters, and situations so readers will want to keep reading about them. The book needs a story arc that traces your transformation from who you are at the beginning of the book to the person you become after being changed by your experiences. Many novels, especially first novels, are autobiographical, and all novels make use of the author’s experience filtered by the imagination and the needs of the story.
Commercial Reasons
What are your financial goals for your memoir? Will it be more salable as a novel? Will it be more promotable? Will it have more film and foreign rights potential? Will have more potential for follow-up books?


My partner, Elizabeth Pomada, spent quite a while trying to sell Pam Chun’s biography of her great grandfather, The Money Dragon. Finally, we suggested Pam call it a novel, and the first publisher to see it published it complete with photos and trial transcripts. It became a prizewinning bestseller in Hawaii, where it’s set.


I hope these considerations help you answer the question of whether to fictionalize your memoir. Everyone has a story to tell, and I encourage you to tell yours. First get it down on paper in the most effective, enjoyable way you can, and get feedback from a fiction or memoir critique group as you write. Then, if you still can’t decide whether to fictionalize it, let your community of readers help you figure out how best to offer your story to the world. If your writing has enough humor, drama, insight, or inspiration, it will find its audience.


Take heart. The hardest part of many memoirs is surviving the research!
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Riding A Bike With The Brakes On

By Pat Browning

I’ve lived in my apartment for almost six years and I’m still picking up, throwing out and rearranging. This week I spotted a sheaf of papers underneath an end table. What it was doing on the floor is anyone’s guess but I finally picked it up.


It’s a 13-page printout I did in February of an article from The Guardian newspaper online. The headline: “Riding A Bike With The Brakes On: The First 12 Years Are The Worst.” A survey of British writers inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, the article is both funny and spot on.


Some highlights:

Margaret Atwood – You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.


Roddy Doyle – Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy. Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – “He divides his time between Kabul Tierra del Fuego.” But then get back to work.


Helen Dunmore – Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away. It’s a nice feeling, and you don’t want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.


Geoff Dyer – Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire. Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give it up and try something else.

Anne Enright –Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.


Richard Ford – Don’t drink and write at the same time. Don’t write letters to the editor. (No one cares.) Don’t take any shit if you can possibly help it.


Jonathan Franzen – Never use the word “then” as a conjunction – we have “and” for this purpose. Substituting “then” is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many “ands” on the page.


Esther Freud – Cut out the metaphors and similes. In my first book I promised myself I wouldn’t use any and I slipped up during a sunset in chapter 11. I still blush when I come across it.

Neil Gaiman – Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing.


David Hare – Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome. If nobody will put your play on, put it on yourself.

PD James – Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.


AL Kennedy – Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.


Hilary Mantel – First paragraphs can often be struck out. Are you performing a haka, or just shuffling your feet?

Michael Moorcock – Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.


Michael Morpurgo – It is the gestation time which counts. By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I’m talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.


Joyce Carol Oates – Don’t try to anticipate an “ideal reader” – there may be one but he/she is reading someone else. Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst.

Annie Proulx – To ensure that you write slowly, write by hand.


Will Self – Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea forever.

Helen Simpson – The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying, “Faire et se taire” (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as “Shut up and get on with it.”


Zadie Smith – Don’t romanticize your “vocation.” You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle.” All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Colm Toibin – Stay in your mental pyjamas all day. No going to London. No going anywhere else either.


Rose Tremain – Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.


Sarah Waters – Respect your characters, even the minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story.


Ten Rules For Writing Fiction – The Guardian Feb. 20, 2010 - is still in the archives and includes Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules. Read the article at:
http://tinyurl.com/ygzq42z


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Reader graphic from www.NPR.org (Books)