GUEST WRITER—MARY COLEY

Posted by Jackie King

Mary Coley is an Oklahoma writer. During her professional career, she has worked as a journalist, a park planner, an environmental educator and a public relations officer. A native of Enid, Coley lives in Tulsa, where she is an active volunteer for Oxley Nature Center. She holds membership in state and national writers groups, as well as the Tulsa Chapter of the Women in Communications.

Finding a Storyline

by Mary Coley

We've all heard that there are no new story lines, they have all been used before. Not good news, especially for mystery writers. A limited number of motives for murder exist and only a limited number of ways to do the deed. So how do you make your mystery new and relevant? Incorporating a topic of current interest into your story is one way to do it.

For my second mystery, Ant Dens, I found a topic I had seen in the headlines and even on a  billboard with a 1-800 number. But I had never read anything about it and had never attached a human face to it. It was only a phrase; I didn't pay much attention.

While researching, I discovered a shocking issue: the kidnapping of children, young women, young men and even adults for use in the sex trade or servitude. Could I incorporate the issue of human trafficking in a mystery I had just finished drafting?

In the second mystery in my Family Secret Series, Ant Dens, the main character's stepdaughter disappears. Jamie wonders if Rebecca ran away or if she had been kidnapped. Wouldn't the tension be increased if it was possible that her stepdaughter had been trafficked and might be existing in a living hell? That would add a whole new twist to the story, and provide a way to make the mystery current but also timeless.

People have been sold into slavery, or trafficked, throughout the history of mankind. This horrific crime is not new, but most of us don't think much about it. That is, unless we personally have a missing loved one.

I began to delve into the emotions those family members feel when a loved one disappears. What horrible fears and imaginings must go through the minds of those left behind! I can imagine my character wanting to shrug it off, to refuse to believe the worst, but what if it becomes almost a certainty that her worst fear has been realized? And worse yet, what if the disappearance was not random, but might be related to her stepdaughter's father, her deceased second husband?

My character, Jamie, does what I hope I would do. She becomes consumed with finding her stepdaughter. It does not matter that she was not particularly close to the young woman. Rebecca is family -- she is all that remains of the husband she loved and misses horribly.

In Ant Dens I chose the setting of New Mexico, a state well aware of tragic disappearances, as the Hispanic population is often victimized in trafficking crimes. And Rebecca is half Hispanic. I added an additional conflict by including Rebecca's mother, Jamie's husband's first wife, in the mystery. Maria comes to stay with Jamie as they investigate the girl's disappearance.

I hope that the resulting newly crafted mystery, Ant Dens:A Suspense Novel provides a new awareness of this horrifying and prevalent crime as well as a chilling ride for the reader! I hope you'll check out my Amazon Author page too, after you visit my book link.

Www.amazon.com/Ant-Dens-A-Suspense-Novel/dp/1627871969/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1419966722&sr=1-2

MARY COLEY'S LATEST MYSTERY:

Learn more about Mary on her website, www.marycoley.com
or at her blog,Blog Site:  http://marycoley.me

Her books are available at Amazon.com.

GUEST AUTHOR DEBORAH CAMP ON WHY WE READ

WHY DO WE READ?

INFECTIOUS READING
by Deborah Camp

I recently read an interesting article by the ever-interesting novelist Neil Gaiman about the importance of reading. Often, I see posts on Facebook and other places wherein people fret about the younger generations not appreciating reading and preferring to play video games. This fretting flies in the face of huge sales of Harry Potter books and many other adventure novels aimed at children and teens.

I'm of a mind that there will always be avid readers, just as surely as there will always be those who can't bring themselves to read more than a caption under a photograph or instructions on how to play a new game.

Gaiman quotes Rebecca Solnit, who asserted that "a book is a heart that beats in the chest of another." That's so very true, and it's why many people not only enjoy books, but also films, TV, and video games. A book, however, gives you a wholly different journey because, when done well, it allows you to know someone else's mind, feelings, and experiences. You don't just "watch." You live and breathe with a character or characters.

As Gaiman puts it, "books are the way we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth..."

He cautioned against preaching and writing what you wouldn't be that interested in reading. Difficult tasks. That might surprise some, but writers know it's true. The need to "preach" hinders us all. We have beliefs and truths we want to present in every novel, but if we hammer home these "lessons," we risk alienating our readers. Likewise, every writer has written "fluff" to fill out a book. Fluff is usually scenes that go on too long and serve no real purpose other than to add pages, relating information the writer has recently learned and feels compelled to share even it's boring to others, or fascinating facts that end up stopping the book's narrative. To take the editing pen and strike out paragraphs and whole pages takes courage, but is necessary. Like cutting out a cancerous growth.

Lessons or ideas should be sprinkled in, rather than poured into book pages. Otherwise, you will over-season and ruin your original, good recipe for a well-told tale.

In my new novel. SOLITARY HORSEMAN, I dealt with three "lessons." With so many, it was a delicate mission to keep them under rein so they didn't trample my story. Throughout, I had to remind myself why we read -- to immerse ourselves in another place, time, and body, so that we emerge different than when we entered that fictive world. Also, and this is no small thing, to entertain and delight. When I write, I craft scenes that I hope will compel readers to keep turning the pages, but also to elicit smiles, frowns, and maybe even a giggle or longing sigh. This happens when readers "become" the characters; when they forget where they are and what they're doing and take breath for breath with the character in the book.

I recall when I read THE STAND by Stephen King. In it, a deadly disease was killing off most of the population and symptoms started off with people coughing. I had been reading the book during my break at work. When I went back to work, a co-worker walked past me and coughed. My heart froze and my gaze snapped to the person as a sickly fear slithered through my mind with the thought, He's infected! Of course, in the next instant I was back in my own world and laughing at myself even as I marveled at Mr. King's ability to wrap me up so tightly in his fictive world.

That my friends, is talent. And that is also why we read.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Deborah Camp's Newest:

Series below features psychic detectives Levi Wolfe and Trudy Tucker:

From Book 1: Someone is stalking women and murdering them in Key West. 

Psychic Detectives Levi Wolfe and Trudy Tucker join forces to help identify the murderer and stop him. Levi can channel the deceased victims and Trudy can tap into the mind of the killer. As a psychic detective team, they’re formidable. As lovers, they discover that they’re insatiable. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reach out to Deborah through these channels:

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AuthorDebCamp
Blog: http://deborahcampwritersdesk.blogspot.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/officialdeborahcamp/
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/debbycamp44

Lois Winston: Author, Agent, Artist

by Jean Henry Mead

Lois Winston is an award-winning author and designer as well as an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Her latest book, Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

Lois, as an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency, what advice would you give fledgling writers seeking literary representation?

If I had to pick one piece of advice, it would be: Don’t submit until your manuscript is ready to submit. Too many unpublished authors make the mistake of thinking their work is ready for submission when it’s far from ready. They start their agent search the moment they type THE END, without first learning how to write a publishable manuscript. Today, it’s harder than ever to sell a manuscript. Editors are doing the work of four and five people. They don’t have time to mentor writers with promise. The manuscripts agents submit must be near perfect. Likewise, agents aren’t in business to mentor writers. So before a writer wastes her time and ours, she needs to make sure her manuscript is the best it can be.

Tell us about Anatasia Pollack and your crafting mysteries.

Anastasia Pollack is a women’s magazine crafts editor, a reluctant amateur sleuth, and the star of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, was released in January and received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews called it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.”

When Anastasia’s husband permanently cashes in his chips at a roulette table in Vegas, her comfortable middleclass life craps out. Suddenly, she’s juggling two teenage sons, a mountain of debt, a communist mother-in-law, AND her dead husband’s loan shark. And that’s before she becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a coworker she discovers hot glued to her office chair.

How important is humor to the mystery genre? And who, in your opinion, has best combined the two?

Humor is very subjective, which is one reason it’s so hard to write. As a writer of humorous fiction, I know that not everyone is going to “get it.” I just hope that more people “get” my humor than don’t get it.

Some people don’t think humor belongs in mysteries. However, I believe that it’s easier to get through anything if you have a sense of humor. A good humorous mystery doesn’t make fun of murder and death. The humor lies in how the protagonist approaches life and deals with all the caca thrown at her.

Personally, I love Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series because Stephanie never fails to make me laugh. Being favorably compared to Evanovich by several reviewers has me floating somewhere over the rainbow. Another favorite series of mine is Lisa Lutz’s Izzy Spellman books.

You’ve received some great reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Book List and Kirkus, among others. How important are reviews to a writer’s career? And do bad reviews really damage a book’s success?

Great reviews certainly give a boost to an author’s career, but many books that have received mediocre or even lousy reviews have gone on to become bestsellers. Word-of-mouth is the author’s best friend. If people like a book and talk, tweet, and blog about it, other people are going to buy it, no matter what the critics have said.

How do you manage to balance your design art with your writing and agenting job?

LOL! I thought I was doing a pretty good job of juggling my designing, writing, and agenting careers until last Saturday at a conference when someone said, “See you next week.” Huh? As far as I knew, I had nothing scheduled for this weekend. Turns out, I’d agreed to speak at a SinC meeting and had completely forgotten about it. I guess the scheduling gods were looking out for me, because if this other author hadn’t said, “See you next week,” I would have stood up several dozen mystery writers.

I’ve decided I need a personal assistant, but first, I need to be making enough money to afford a personal assistant. Either that, or I need to win the lottery -- which means I’d better start buying lottery tickets. I wonder which has better odds.

You’ve won an amazing number of awards. Which one means the most to you? Why?

The award that means the most is the one I didn’t win. I was the first runner-up in Dorchester Publishing’s inaugural American Title contest. Even though I came in second, I was offered a publishing contract. That first sale launched my career as a published author.

How important is blogging? In your own experience, has it increased book sales?

It’s very hard to quantify how successful blogging or any social networking is in regard to actual book sales. All author promo is a crapshoot, whether it’s blogging or giving away tchotkes and doodads with your name and website printed on them. For that matter, even the promo done by publishers and independent PR firms is a crapshoot. What works for one author may lay a ginormous goose egg for another author.

In an ideal world, authors would sit at their keyboards and write while their publishers handled all the promo. However, today’s world of publishing is a less than ideal world, and authors are expected to flak their books. In the three years between publication of my last book and my current book, much changed, especially the way authors use social media for promo.

I knew it was time for me to have a blog, but I didn’t want to compete with all the well-established author blogs already populating the blogosphere. So I decided Anastasia should blog, not Lois. Since Anastasia works as an editor for a women’s magazine, it seemed like a natural extension that the magazine should have a blog. Thus was born Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers -- http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com . Mondays through Thursdays the various editors of the magazine blog. Fridays are Book Club Friday with Anastasia hosting guest authors who talk about their books.

Has Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers resulted in more book sales for me? I don’t know. What I do know is that every week I have more visitors to the blog and a growing following. Hopefully, that’s extrapolating to more book sales.

How has writing changed your life?

Writing has enriched my life in so many ways. I’ve discovered a talent I never knew I had. I’ve met many incredible people, some of whom have become extremely close friends. My life would be wanting in so many ways without these supportive, wise, and knowledgeable women. I’ve also enriched my mind, accumulating knowledge that I otherwise wouldn’t now have. And I’ve learned that it’s sometimes possible to have dreams come true if you work hard enough toward your goals and don’t give up on yourself and those dreams.

Thank you, Lois.

You can visit Lois at her website: http://www.loiswinston.com/,

Her blogsite http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/ and

Twitter: @anasleuth but she says, "I’m planning to become the last person on the planet not on Facebook."

A Deadly Dinner

By Beth Terrell

This past Saturday evening, Tony Burton of Wolfmont Press hosted A Deadly Dinner in Calhoun, Georgia. I was one of eight authors there to participate in something akin to speed dating for authors. Eight authors, eight tables. At each table were a group of guests who had, for a variety of reasons, paid to have dinner with us. Even though I'm not well known enough to draw a crowd like this all by myself, and even though the three-course meal may have been the main draw for several of the guests, it was a heady feeling.

The event was held at the Harris Art Center, where volunteers had set up round tables elegantly draped in white and labeled with a number from one to eight. My fellow authors and I were each given a "super-secret, highly confidential" number (mine was 5), and as Tony introduced each of us, we went to the table with the corresponding number. This is the part that always makes me nervous (What if they don't like me? What if I can't think of anything to say? What if nobody else can think of anything to say?), but of course, everyone was charming, kind, and generous. Every fifteen minutes, Tony would tap his wine glass, and the authors would switch tables (since I had 5, I went to 6 next, then 7, and so on). Interestingly, each table had a character of its own. Some groups were interested in the writing process, others in the journey to becoming a writer, and some in other topics altogether. At one table, we talked primarily about horses. At another, we talked about teaching and education. At one, we discussed our favorite authors (present company excepted, of course). I also got a chance to trot out my new pen name--Jaden E. Terrell--and felt gratified when the responses were favorable.

After each author had made a complete circuit, we signed books and chatted with individual guests. I bought a book from each of my neighbors, both cozies, which I don't usually read. I chose one because I loved the cover and the other because the protagonist is a guardian angel named Augusta. Since I had a great-aunt Augusta, and she was the closest thing to a saint I've ever known, I knew I couldn't leave without that one. Especially since the title included a Jabberwocky. How can you not buy a book called "The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders"?

I thought about that on the way home. I think of my book as appealing to people who like hardboiled PI novels, but just as I bought two books I wouldn't normally read for wholly personal reasons, there may be people who don't like PI novels, but who love Nashville-based stories or horses or children with Down Syndrome. Or modern-day cowboys or men named Jared. I've read that one of the first things you should do when coming up with a marketing plan is to go through your book and write down all the things that might appeal to a group of people other than your primary audience. Until I realized I had to buy Mignon Ballard's book because it reminded me of my great-aunt Augusta, I didn't really understand the power of those connections.

My fellow authors were Gerrie Ferris Finger (a former AJC writer and author of The End Game), Mignon Ballard (who writes the Augusta Goodnight mysteries and nine other novels, with Miss Dimple Disappears debuting in November), Randy Rawls (author of the Ace Edwards, Dallas PI series), Marion Moore Hill (author of the Scrappy Librarian Mysteries and the Deadly Past Mysteries), Mary Anna Evans (author of the Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries), Fran Stewart (author of the Biscuit McKee cozy mystery series), Kathleen Delaney (Author of And Murder for Dessert, Give First Place to Murder and Dying for a Change).

Of course, the roster would not be complete without Tony Burton, who worked tirelessly to bring it to fruition and make it special. Thanks, Tony. See you next year?

Author Question: "Which way is the restroom?"

By Chester Campbell

We did a book signing last Saturday at a library in a small town south of Nashville where they had a large group of authors from the area. Last year at the same event, I sold enough books to make it well worth the trip. For some reason, that didn't happen this time. I didn't see a lot of signing going on anywhere around me. Not all that many people showed up. My single sale came when another author bought my latest book.

That's me and colleague Beth Terrell at the library.

Signings are funny that way. You never know when one will knock your socks off and another will make you wish you had put on two pairs because the reception is so cold. But invariably you get to meet a number of nice people who make the experience worth experiencing.

When I'm doing a solo signing at a bookstore, my wife, Sarah, plays the role of a warm-up act at a night club. She stands at the entrance and greets people, handing out my small promo folders and telling them the author is signing  at the table "over there." Sometimes, a customer will stop and chat with her about the books. That frequently results in a sale.

She gets most of the questions from people wanting to know the location of the restrooms, where to find the magazines, and who knows what else. I get the ones who want to talk about the book they'd like to write. If somebody is actually working on a book, I'm happy to give my advice on whatever they need to know. It's usually about finding a publisher or an agent. The only problem comes when I get a talkative person who stands there forever, blocking the way for people who might want a book signed.

When Sarah takes a break, I stand at the door and greet the customers. I ask, "Do you read mysteries?" and it's appalling how many come back with, "I don't read books." Makes you want to say, "What the hell are you doing in a bookstore?" Of course, some will tell you they just came for the coffee.

It's interesting to watch people's reactions. Some appear intimidated by the appearance of an author and shy away from the table. Others zip right by as if you weren't there. I used to set up an easel near the table with a large blow-up of the cover of my latest book. However, watching people's eyes, I rarely saw anybody notice the poster.

Invariably, someone will stop at the table, take a book, turn it to the back cover, look at the photo, then up at me. "That's you," they say with a look of surprise. "You wrote this." Duh, if I didn't, why would I be sitting here?

Those you never see enough of are the ones who charge up to the table, grab a book and say, "I want this one. Will you sign it for me?"  Occasionally, at a signing like the Kentucky Book Fair, where I have all my backlist available, a reader will look them over and say, "I want one of each. I can start with the first and go right through them."

On the few occasions where sales have been almost non-existent, I found the person who invited me more distressed than I was. I've been around long enough to know these things happen. But the store manager will apologize profusely. I had one small independent owner who was almost in tears. Heck, everybody has a bad night once in awhile. You move on to the next one and hope for the best.

The Infallible Seer

By Beth Terrell

Top agent Nathan Bransford has a blog on which he occasionally asks such thought-provoking questions as, "What is your least favorite word?" and "What's the hardest part about being a writer?" Yesterday's question was, "Do you think you're a better writer than the average reader of this blog?" Talk about a loaded question!

The one that had me stewing went something like this: Imagine there is a seer. His predictions are always right. He can tell you with 100% accuracy whether or not you have the talent to be a published author, and if he said no, that was that. Would you want to know? (For the sake of fairness, I'm interpreting the question in its strictest sense: that if he says no, it means that, not only do I not possess the talent now, but I will never have it.) And if the answer was no, would you keep writing?

Notice it doesn't say he knows whether you will be published. It says he knows whether you have the talent to be published. He isn't just making a prediction; he's telling you your worth as a writer.

I've gone back and forth on this question a hundred times. If I were to become a successful author, with tons of adoring fans, I think I'd take that as an affirmation of my talent and forget about the seer. But if I weren't...Well, that's a different story, isn't it? To know, or not to know. That is the question.

I've always told myself that I would always write, no matter what. I love writing: creating new stories, falling in love with a character, exploring that character's relationships and history. There's nothing like it. My success as an author (or the lack of it) would have no effect at all on whether or not I continued to write.

But if the Infallible Seer told me I was a talentless hack, a lot of the joy I take in writing would shrivel up and blow away. Part of what I love about writing is believing that, whether anyone else ever reads my work or not, I'm good at it--or at least, that I can learn to be.

So, after much soul-searching, I've made my choice. I would choose not to know. Let the Infallible Seer destroy someone else's dream, if he can.

For my part, I'll keep learning, keep trying, and keep writing.

What would you do?