Overture to Disaster Goes Free

By Chester Campbell

I haven't commented on the final book in my Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy since a post back in September shortly after it came out in ebook format for the Kindle. I haven't done much in the way of promotion except an occasional tweet, and the results are obvious. It has registered few sales and has received no reviews on Amazon. I suspect one problem is that my loyal readers are all fans of PI whodunit mysteries. The political thrillers are a different breed, the action sweeping across continents, the characters dealing with complex motivations.

My friend Tim Hallinan began his review of the first book (Beware the Jabberwock) with the observation: "This is a change of pace for Chester Campbell, best known (to me, at least) for his Sid Chance PI novels." Happily he added: "Here he's working in the global intelligence thriller territory of Ludlum and Trevanian, but (I'm happy to say) with more character development."

Hallinan (author of the popular Poke Rafferty Bangkok thrillers and the Junior Bender humorous mysteries) concluded his review with: "Short chapters, great pacing, good characters, and high stakes. I really enjoyed this book." As busy as he is I've been reluctant to ask him for a review of the final book in the series.

So I've decided put my money where my mouth is and do a freebie promotion on BookBub for Overture to Disaster. Previous BookBub promos have resulted in lots of new reviews. I have my fingers crossed on this one.

If you'd like a free copy for the Kindle, check here March 10-12 to get yours.

Visit me at Mystery Mania

Different Words Have Different Places

By Chester Campbell

People who advise us on the craft of writing fiction are fond of saying make every word count. If it doesn't help define character or move the plot, it doesn't belong in the story. Okay, they allow us a little leeway in painting the setting, so maybe that's the crutch on which we can hang our little peccadillos.

I got a new review by Gloria Feit, who with her husband is probably the most prolific reviewer on the DorothyL mystery listserve. She posts her reviews on nearly a dozen other sites, including Spinetingler and Crimespree magazines and Midwest Book Review. At the end of her review, she commented that I gave a "tip of the hat from the author to Tim Hallinan and his Bangkok mystery novels, and to Lee Child and his Jack Reacher books."

I like to stick in little plugs for authors I know and like.  In one scene I had my secondary protag, Jaz LeMieux, reading a Tim Hallinan mystery to take her mind of her troubles. I don't recall how I brought in Jack Reacher. In other books I had used well known authors as well as lesser known but equally great writers like Beth Anderson, an old pal from Chicago.

I've just finished revising an early manuscript of a thriller I plan to put up as an ebook. Much of it takes place in South Korea, and I included a lot of Korean food and Korean customs to give a better feel for the setting. My first visit to Seoul took place in 1952-53 during the little fracas between North and South. My wife and I journeyed there in 1987 with our son and Korean daughter-in-law. During a visit to her parents' home in Inchon, I got a good look at how non-Westernized people lived.

One interesting little tidbit I used in the book was that you should make noises while eating to show the cook that you enjoyed her meal. When my son was married over there while on duty with the Army, it was with a civil ceremony. I Pun, my daughter-in-law (her maiden name was Han I  Pun), wanted a real wedding, so they had a formal ceremony at a wedding house. The preacher spoke in both Korean and English. Afterward, we ate at a Korean restaurant and joined several of her girlfriends for a tour of the town. We visited a Korean War museum and the Port of Inchon, where they let my son open a lock to let a boat in. The book, titled The Poksu Conspiracy, winds up with a Korean wedding.

Some of these little snippets probably advance the plot, others may add to character, but they all help give the reader a feeling of being there.  And that's what I like to create.

Visit my blog at Mystery Mania

Golden Age

A Guest Blog by Timothy Hallinan

I once knew a woman who translated hieroglyphics, and one of the texts she rendered into English was one of the oldest poems known to man, dating from about 3000 BC. And what was it about?

It was about how things were better before. It was a lament for having missed the Golden Age.

It seems to be human nature to think in terms of lost Golden Ages. The operative word is “lost.” It's not even fashionable to suggest that we're living in a golden age.

But I think we are. I think this is a golden age for mysteries and thrillers.

Sure, some of the great ones are gone: Christie, Hammett, Chandler, Sayers, Tey, Highsmith, Stout, McDonald, Parker, and many others. But we have an enormous number of exceptional writers working now, and more titles to choose from than at any time in history.

I'd put the best writers working today up against the best working at any time since Poe kicked things off. Who's better than James Lee Burke, Sue Grafton, Louise Penney, Laura Lippman, SJ Rozan, Lee Child, John LeCarre, Donna Leon – I could go on for pages – all writing right now?

Golden.

I think this Golden Age has come about for three reasons:

First, the ubiquity of relatively inexpensive books; until just a few years ago, despite all their moans and groans, the world's publishers put out, in editions of varying costs, more books than at any other time in history. And with all those books being published, good writing usually found a champion.

Second, the durability of the genre. The mystery or thriller is the one of the oldest genres (what is “Oedipus Rex” but a mystery?) and one of the most universal. Mysteries and thrillers help readers work through some of the most difficult aspects of human existence. They present a world in which order, even though it's been temporarily broken down, can be restored. They ignore the fashion of nihilism and despair that mars so much supposedly “literary” fiction.

Third, women have come full circle. Once the royalty of the genre, they faded during the heyday of the pulps. the hard-boiled noir, and the five-testicle PI fiction of the 40s through the 60s. And then, starting in the 70s, the entire genre tilted; women re-emerged with a vengeance, no longer confined to the classic and/or cozy end of the spectrum, but ranging straight across, from one extreme to another. And in one of the most remarkable shifts in modern marketing history, women became the driving force in mystery writing.

So now we have women writing all kinds of books and also some of the best male writers who have ever worked in the genre. Jackpot. We've also seen a loosening (pretty much an abandonment) of the old restrictions on what people can write about, which has produced some terrible books but also some really serious explorations of the darkest corners of human behavior.

And now we're seeing things open up even more widely. The ebook has broken New York's stranglehold on what we can read—and what we can write, too. Once again, we're seeing a lot of books that should have remained in people's desk drawers, but we're also seeing some tremendous stuff.

It's certainly opened things up for me. Like most writers, I've been restricted in what I could write because publishers would only buy a certain kind of book from me. But now I can write literally anything I want and put it out there to sink or swim.

I've always had an ambition to write a series in which the thrills were real but there were also a lot of laughs. And now, thanks to ebooks, I am. I just put out LITTLE ELVISES, the second in a series starring a Los Angeles burglar named Junior Bender who moonlights as a private eye for crooks. It's got some rough stuff in it, but it's also pretty funny, or so people tell me.

I believe it's a uniquely human experience to be frightened and amused at the same time, and I love writing books that attempt to put the reader in that position. Junior's first outing was CRASHED, and it did well enough that I had offers from traditional publishers to buy the series, but I decided to stay with the e-book channel, direct from me to the reader.

Do I think LITTLE ELVISES is golden age material? I doubt it—I can't take myself that seriously. But they're the product of a writer doing what he wants instead of what a corporation wants him to do, and in the long run that has to be good for everyone. When people look back on this particular golden age, I think they'll say the emergence of the ebook both broadened and prolonged it.

The Ebook Revolution

Tim Hallinan prompted a raft of comments when he wrote a post for Murder is Everywhere a day or two ago, praising what the ebook has done for authors. Tim pointed out how he has put up some of his old books for the Kindle, books the publisher let go out of print, and plans to release in electronic format some new books publishers were less-than-enthusiastic about.

I'm thinking of doing the same with two or three thrillers I wrote before landing a publisher for my first Greg McKenzie mystery. At least a couple of them were spoken of favorably by publishers before being turned down.

All six of my current mysteries are now available for the Kindle at $2.99. I've put the last two on Smashwords, which makes them available in various e-book formats, and plan to upload the others soon. I get 70 percent of the sales, which gives me a little more than the standard royalty on a paperback. Of course, I don't have a following like Tim Hallinan, who sells about 1,000 ebooks a month. But half a hundred isn't bad and should add  up to more than a thousand bucks in a year. Hopefully my sales will improve, and if I get a few more on my Amazon page, it should cover the cost of attending a couple of conferences.

One of Tim's blogging partners, Stan Trollip (half of Michael Stanley), decried the long-term effect of books going electronic. He talked of fondly remembering times when he opened his grandfather's bookcase and browsed its impressive contents. I sympathize with him. A faded wooden bookcase with artfully decorated glass doors stands against one wall of my office. It opens with an old hollowed-out metal key. It contains some of my own books, plus ones handed down in the family. Pulling out one at random, I hold a thick volume titled The Mentor, Serials 73-96. A little more battered are volumes with Serials 49-72 and 97-120.

These came from my history-teacher aunt who died some years back at age ninety-six. The Mentor was a weekly publication of  The Mentor Association in New York City. Serial 73 is dated December 15, 1914. An early issue of the publication contained this statement:

"The object of The Mentor Association is to enable people to acquire useful knowledge without effort, so that they may come easily and agreeably to know the world's great men and women, the great achievements, and the permanently interesting things in art, literature, science, history. nature and travel."

Serial No. 73 is devoted to Charles Dickens. Printed on heavy stock, it contains beautifully rendered intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating Dickens' characters. The next issue covers Greek masterpieces, with full-page pictures of various sculptures, including one I saw on a visit to the Louvre, Venus of Melos. Following this came an issue devoted to Fathers of the Constitution.

I have my doubts that any e-reader will ever have the impact of turning the pages in this vintage volume. I hope our libraries will continue to provide sanctuary for bound books both old and new. But I think coming generations will depend more on electronic reproductions of books read for entertainment. I intend to contribute my share of ebook fiction to the cause.

Ghost Story Two

By Pat Browning

Back in June author Tim Hallinan told us a real life ghost story that happened in Thailand. It’s a doozy. If you missed it the first time you can still read it at:
http://tinyurl.com/2553s69

Now Tim is back with another true ghost story to share, this one from Bali.
This ghostly encounter happened when he was staying on Kuta Beach in Bali, and after I read his story I looked it up at
http://wikitravel.org/en/Kuta

Here’s what I found out:
(Quote)
With a long broad Indian Ocean beach-front, Kuta was originally discovered by tourists as a surfing mecca. It has long been a popular stop on the classic backpacking route in South East Asia. Back in the 1980s they used to talk about the three Ks: Katmandu in Nepal, Khao San road in Bangkok and Kuta. Today Kuta still attracts some hardcore backpackers as well as families and tourists from all over the world, and is most notably a playground for young visitors from Australia.

The five km long sandy stretch of Kuta is arguably the best beach front in Bali. The beach is safe, partially clean, well-maintained, although the beach vendors remain annoying pushing massages, hair braiding, cigarettes and surf boards. The long wide stretch of sand is often full of sunbathers and although most of the serious surfers have moved on to newer pastures, there are still plenty of surf dudes around at most times of the year, and especially so during peak season.


Once the sun goes down, Kuta is the rough and ready party zone of Bali, even after the tragic events of 2002. Even the most hardened of party animals will find something to please them on Jalan Legian at night.... Kuta is the low end party centre of Bali. It has recovered well from the bomb blasts in 2002 & 2005 and tourists still flock to the bars where alcohol is served freely and excessively. Many of the bars here have a house cocktail with a local Arak (rice spirit) base. These go by charming names like Jam Jar and Fish Bowl, pack a huge punch and make customers very ill!
(End Quote)


I emailed the the last paragraph to Tim with the question: Is this an accurate description of the bar scene?

He replied:
“I haven't been in Bali in about 12 years, but Kuta was definitely the most Western and the most vulgar of the resort towns. There were restaurants that sold omelets with magic mushrooms, there were a couple of incipient discos, which apparently turned into real discos, one of which was bombed, Bali is absolutely loaded with Aussies, and Aussies drink hard, Arak is probably right up their alley. I usually stayed in Legian, which was walking distance from Kuta, although I understand that now it's one party strip, full of neon and Javanese prostitutes.”


Tim has written ten mysteries and thrillers under his own name and several others in disguise. His current series, set in Bangkok, features American "rough travel" writer Philip "Poke" Rafferty, who lives in Bangkok with his hand-assembled family: his Thai wife, Rose, a former Patpong bar dancer, and their adopted daughter, Miaow, who was eight years old and living on the sidewalk when she met Poke.


The first three Rafferty books, which have made Ten Best lists everywhere, are A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART, THE FOURTH WATCHER, and BREATHING WATER. The fourth, THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, has just been published by William Morrow and is racking up rave reviews.

****
A BALINESE GHOST STORY
By Tim Hallinan


A while back, I sent Pat the true story of my encounter with a ghost in Pattaya, Thailand -- without any doubt, the most terrifying experience of my life.
If you haven't read it, you might want to do so now and then come back to this one. Or you could ignore the paragraph above completely and just read on.

This happened to me in the middle 1980s, in Bali. Bali was then, as it is now, one of the world's spiritual vortexes: one of the places where the force of the spirit pushes its way through everyday life like bones emerging beneath the skin of a face or a plant pushing its way up through the earth. The island is teeming with spirits.

Every village has its temples, its spirit gates. Offering to the spirits, in the form of elaborately carved leaves, fruits, and flowers, are created by the thousands daily and scattered over streets and sidewalks.

In the walled, red stone temples, ancient stories are still danced almost daily -- the tourist audiences are almost incidental -- and in one of the most stunning stage effects I've ever seen, the sudden entry of a god was heralded by a bucket of flower-petals thrown over the wall in front of which the dancer playing the god was standing. My eyes had been drawn elsewhere and then there was a shower of pure color with a god standing beneath it. I've seen it a dozen times, and it never fails to take my breath away.

And then there are the not-so-benign spirits, in which the Balinese believe profoundly. I haven't ever actually seen any, but this happened to me, and I swear -- as I did in the previous story -- that every word of it is true.

I was staying on Kuta Beach, not quite then the frantic tourist town it is now. I had hiked half a mile or so along a red-dirt road to eat dinner in town, and about nine o'clock I decided to go back to the room, but instead of taking the road, I improvised and created a short-cut by walking through the coconut plantation the road wound between.

The moon was full. Coconut trees are planted pretty far apart, so there was lots of light: silvery ground, the shadows of trees like cardboard cut-outs, more silvery ground. The lights of the town had faded behind me and those of the hotel area where I was staying had not come into sight, and I was thinking this was an unforgettable experience: the silver moon, the coconut palms, the shadowed trees.

And then, in front of me, I saw a darker shadow, not shaped like a tree. It was, instead, vaguely circular, maybe 12-15 feet across, like something dark and irregular thrown over the ground. I thought I'd check it out, and I approached to about ten feet from it.

And then I didn't want to check it out any more. I saw that the dark area was a hole, and as I looked into it, something brushed the back of my neck and then absolute terror, all the way to the cellular level, wrapped arms around my chest and began to squeeze. I knew I could feel something breathing on my back.

It took all the strength I had to free my arms. The moment I could move them, I started running, to the right, as far away from the hole as possible. Behind me, I could hear something like a whisk broom: tsshhhhh-tsshhhhhhh-tshhhhhhhh. I ran faster, hearing that dry scrape of a sound until the lights of my hotel came into sight.

My hotel was surrounded by a stone wall about four feet high, which I cleared without a moment's hesitation, running across the lawn and not stopping until I was in the bar, all full of nice sane drunk Aussies. I got as drunk as they were and then flopped onto the bed with the lights burning and went to sleep.

The next day, at high noon, I forced myself back into the coconut grove, but nowhere could I find any sign of the hole.
****
Thanks to Tim for another spine-tingling true ghost story, and for the priceless image of Himself leaping that four-foot stone wall.

Ghost Story

Timothy Hallinan is back, this time with a true-life ghost story from Thailand, where he lives six months every year.

Tim has written ten mysteries and thrillers under his own name and several others in disguise. His current series, set in Bangkok, features American "rough travel" writer Philip "Poke" Rafferty, who lives in Bangkok with his hand-assembled family: his Thai wife, Rose, a former Patpong bar dancer, and their adopted daughter, Miaow, who was eight years old and living on the sidewalk when she met Poke.


The first three Rafferty books, which have made Ten Best lists everywhere, are A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART, THE FOURTH WATCHER, and BREATHING WATER.

The fourth, THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, will be published in August by William Morrow and is available now for pre-sale on Amazon.com.
http://tinyurl.com/2v6vn9e

Tim’s ghost story and explanation had me Googling “spiritual vortex,” which turns out to be a very complicated subject. When I asked Tim about spiritual vortices in Bali and Thailand, here’s what he said:


“The original title of A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART was HUNGRY GHOSTS, referring to the most fearsome of all Thai ghosts, women who have died in childbirth.


"You asked me why Thailand and Bali were spiritual vortices. That's a very good question. These places seem to arise everywhere -- Stonehenge and Angkor are two internationally known examples. But some societies, such as the Thai and the Balinese, share a single religion -- until recently 99% of Thais were Therevada Buddhists, and the same for the animist Hindu beliefs cooked up on Bali. And they not only believed the same thing together, but they believed it fervently.

"Every village has its temples, usually two or more. Every Thai male enters the priesthood at some time in his life. Balinese propitiate the gods with scattered offerings several times a day. 

Maybe, after a while the landscape becomes saturated with belief. In both places, unusual trees and stones are wrapped in monk's robes and offerings of flowers and food and whiskey are made regularly.


"I just think those worlds are saturated with belief and more open to manifestations than spiritually dryer locales.”


And here’s Tim’s ghost story.
****
Unlike most ghost stories, this one is absolutely true. I know because it happened to me. But first, some background.

Thai people, whether they're relatively uneducated villagers or sophisticated city-dwellers, take ghosts seriously. Most Thai people believe in a whole pantheon of ghosts, ranging from benign to horrific. I personally know four Thais who woke one night to see someone in their family -- someone who lived a considerable distance away -- standing in their room, usually at the end of the bed. Without exception, they learned the next day that the person they had seen -- a grandmother, an uncle, a mother -- had died. This is accepted. The spirit came to say farewell.

Other ghosts are not so harmless. There are many kinds of malign spirits, and they tend to take up residence where lives have ended badly.

From the beginning of construction on the new Bangkok airport (set on a piece of land that used to be called "cobra swamp") workers complained that there were ghosts everywhere. Many workers resigned rather than have to mingle with the dead. And when the airport opened and the computerized baggage retrieval system broke down, the malfunction was briefly blamed on ghosts. And I mean officially.

While I have no idea what, if anything, may have happened at the prime minister's official residence (sort of the Thai White House), I do know that almost no one ever spends the night there because of the house's ghostly guests. We are talking the highest realms of government here, folks. Prime ministers, cabinet ministers, generals. Nobody sleeps there. The general official, high-level reaction to the place seems to be brrrrrrrrr.

So with all that as a setting, here's what happened to me.

About 20, 21 years ago I was in Pattaya. This was when Pattaya was still a relatively quiet little town, although the nightlife that ultimately transformed into a thriving sewer was beginning to blossom.

I was staying in a small hotel set into a cliff overlooking the sea. I went to bed about midnight and drew the curtains so I could sleep in. That made the room extremely dark.

At about 3 AM I snapped awake, knowing I was no longer alone. Remember, the room was almost pitch-black. In one corner, diagonally across the room from me, was a figure.

I looked away. I looked back. I blinked heavily. It was still there.

I could only see it by looking slightly past it, but it was a female wearing a shapeless white dress that fell almost to her ankles, and black hair down to her waist. Her head was bent downward so she was facing the carpet, and her face was hidden by the fall of hair. Then, moving slowly, she grasped handfuls of hair and lifted them straight up and let them fall again. Then she reached down and did it again. The second time she pulled her hair into the air, she started to bring her face up.

I knew that if I saw her face, I was dead. I rolled over as fast as I could, snapping on the lights on the bed tables, and when they came on, she was gone. I lay there, fighting for breath, literally more frightened than I've ever been in my life. And I stayed there, wide awake, until the sun came up.

When the room was bright enough, I went into the bathroom, pulled the shower curtain, turned on the shower, and let the water hit me full in the face. When I'd had enough, I pulled back from the stream of water and opened my eyes, and something moved very fast on the other side of the shower curtain. I left the water running, grabbed a towel, wrapped it around me, and ran all the way to the lobby, where I demanded, and got, a new room, as far as possible from the old one.

Later that day, I went back with a maid to pack my things -- there was no way I was going in there alone -- and the maid said, yes, that woman had been seen before in the room, and she volunteered to take me to the temple later that day when her shift was over to burn some incense and do a brief ceremony to release that poor woman's spirit from whatever powerful force was holding it on this side of the curtain.

And we did, and I felt a little better. But that night -- even in my new room --I slept with my lights on.

And no, I had never previously believed in ghosts.
****
My thanks to Tim for sharing this experience!

A Demon Called Time

By Chester Campbell

My in-house (meaning in computer) dictionary lists the first definition of demon as “An evil supernatural being.” As for time, how about this: “A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.” Does that sound supernatural, or what?

As for evil, the darned thing resists all efforts to pin it down to accommodate my needs.

I’ve never had a problem with what is familiarly known as “writer’s block.” Lately I’ve been wondering about it, however, since my efforts at writing a new book for the past couple of months or more has produced less than 20,000 words. After further reflection, I’ve concluded it’s that old demon time.

Yesterday I sat myself down and firmly laid out the law: you will write for four hours a day, period. Maybe 9:00 to 11:00 in the morning, then 1:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon. So I wrote last night from about 7:00 to 9:00.

Hmm, something doesn’t sound quite right here.

It is now 1:00 p.m. today (Tuesday) and I have yet to boot up my laptop, where said book resides. The first problem was I didn’t shuffle out of bed until nine o’clock. The previous morning we were up at 3:00 a.m. ready to take our grandson to the emergency room coughing his head off (at least it seemed to be rolling around the bed). After considerable discussion and administering a last-ditch pill, we finally got him settled down, but the night’s sleep was hopelessly muddled.

By the time we were navigating this morning, two more moppets (my wife’s great-grandkids) had arrived for the day, being on Fall Break from the next county’s schools. I checked my email, answered a couple of pressing messages, and was just getting started writing this blog when the time arrived (there’s that old demon) to shuttle everybody over to a relative’s apartment so Sarah and I could meet grandson’s teachers for a conference.

Now I’m about to take a lunch break. If I’m lucky, I’ll get this finished and posted in time to spend a couple of hours writing on my novel. But first I need to hit the bank and the post office. By the time I’m done with a brief writing session, Sarah will be calling me to eat before heading for my bimonthly writers group meeting. After that, I’ll be checking homework until time for the ten o’clock news (and the recorded 5:30 national news, which lasts little more than 20 minutes after zapping commercials). Then it’ll be bedtime.

I remember back years ago when I thought retirement would bring time to accomplish whatever needed to be done in a relaxed environment. Boy, was I misguided in my thinking. Now I can’t imagine how I was ever able to hold down a fulltime job. I read about authors who get up at 5:00 a.m. and write for three hours before going to work. If I did that, I would have to compensate by taking a three-hour nap in the afternoon.

Hmm. I may do that anway.

But I have to finished this blog and get it posted. Oh, well, maybe the answer is to do like Tim Hallinan, head for Phnom Penh, plunk down my laptop in a coffee shop, and write till I’m finished. Somehow I don’t think that’s in the cards.

It’s now past 1:30. Where did that old demon go?

Writing Advice

There’s a wealth of good advice from successful authors to be found on the Internet. Here are some recent blogs that I’m saving.

Tim Hallinan visited Jean Henry Mead’s Mysterious People blog (http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com). Hallinan writes the Poke Rafferty series and his newest book is BREATHING WATER. You can read more about it at his web site: www.timothyhallinan.com.

Here’s what Tim had to say during his interview with Jean.

(Quote)
(a) Write the book you'd most like to read. Some people waste years trying to create a Great Novel they wouldn't read if it appeared one morning beneath their pillow;
(b) Honor your writing by giving it an immovable place in your daily schedule and sticking to it;
(c) If you can't get it right, go ahead and get it wrong – but don't stop; the enemy, as someone has said, is not the bad page – it's the empty page. You can always go back and make it better;
(d) Give your characters their freedom, and remember that plot is what characters do, not a box to put them in.
(e) Finish your first novel even if it goes completely, spectacularly wrong; you'll learn more from the first one than from the next three combined, and you can't very well start the second until you've finished the first;
(f) when you're not writing, read.
(End Quote)

More good advice, this time from L.J. Sellers. She was a recent guest blogger at Working Stiffs (http://workingstiffs.blogspot.com) on the subject of writing first drafts that don’t suck. Her first book is THE SEX CLUB, and a second book, SECRETS TO DIE FOR, will be out in September. You can find out more about her and her books at www.ljsellers.com.

I have L.J.’s permission to use her blog in a workshop proposal for a book fair next year, and I’ll summarize the high points here. She writes:

(Quote)
… here’s how I craft a great first draft without any gaping holes or illogical twists:

1. Create an outline. Once I have a basic story idea (comprised of an exciting incident, major plot developments, and overview ending), I start filling in the details. I structure my outline by days (Tuesday, Wed., etc.), then outline the basic events/scenes that happen on each day, noting which POV the section will be told from.

2. Write out the story logic. In a mystery/suspense novel, much of what happens before and during the story timeline is off page — actions by the perpetrators that the detective and reader learn of after the fact. Many of these events and/or motives are not revealed until the end of the story. I worry that I won’t be able to convey to readers how and why it all happened. So I map it out—all the connections, events, and motivations that take place on and off the page.

3. Beef up the outline. As I write the first 50 pages or so, new ideas come to me and I fill in the rest of outline as I go along. I continue adding to the outline, and by about the middle of the story, I have it completed.

4. Create a timeline. A lot happens in my stories, which usually take place in about six to ten days. I keep the timeline filled in as I write the story. This way I can always look at my timeline and know exactly when an important event took place (Monday, 8 a.m.: Jackson interrogates Gorman in the jail). It’s much faster to check the timeline than scroll through a 350-page Word document. The timeline also keeps me from writing an impossible number of events into a 24-hour day.

5. Keep an idea/problem journal. I constantly get ideas for other parts of the story or realize things I need to change, so I enter these notes into a Word file as I think of them. (Ryan needs to see Lexa earlier in the story, where?). I keep this file open as I write. Some ideas never get used, but some prove to be crucial.

6. Keep an evidence file. I make note of every piece of evidence that I introduce and every idea I get for evidence that I want to introduce. I refer to this file regularly as I write, so that I’m sure to process and/or explain all the evidence before the story ends. In my first novel a pair of orange panties didn’t make it into the file or the wrap up, and sure enough, a book club discussion leader asked me who they belonged to.

7. Update my character database. It took me a few stories to finally put all my character information into one database, but it was a worthwhile effort. Now, as I write, I enter each character name (even throwaway people who never come up again) into the database, including their function, any physical description, or any other information such as phone number, address, type of car, or favorite music.

As a general rule, I like to get the whole story down on the page before I do much rewriting, but I’ve learned to stop at 50 pages for two reasons. One, I like to go back and polish the first chunk of the story in case an agent or editor asks to see it. Two, I usually give this first chunk to a few beta readers to see if I’m on the right track.
(End Quote)

Lastly, Alexandra Sokoloff’s blog, The Dark Salon (http://thedarksalon.blogspot.com), subtitled Screenwriting Tips For Authors, is a mini-writing course. Screenwriting is more like novel writing than you may think. Most recently she blogged about act breaks, turning points, act climaxes and plot points, with examples.

She gets right into specifics, as in:
“ACT ONE CLIMAX (30 minutes into a 2 hour movie, 100 pages into a 400 page book. Adjust proportions according to length of book.)”

Sokoloff’s ghost story, THE HARROWING, was published by St. Martin’s in 2006. Her newest supernatural thriller is THE PRICE. She has contracted with St.Martin’s for her next two supernatural thrillers.