Writing Fast

By June Shaw

I had never written a novel in less than a year--until recently.

The first book I wrote took two or three years, and it collects dust. It was fun. It was exciting. It was awful. It went on and on, and I was having a good time getting it down because I had wanted to do such a thing for so long. Then I discovered most books shouldn't be much longer than 100 pages unless the author was well-known or the book fit into a certain kind of genre, but it wasn't the genre I was writing.

Each book I sold in my first cozy mystery series took about a year to write, and that time frame let me write and exchange manuscripts with my critique group and revise a couple of times before I sent them in. Here is the first one--Relative Danger.
https://www.amazon.com/RELATIVE-DANGER-Cealie-Gunther-mysteries-ebook/dp/B003YJEWNK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490560419&sr=8-1&keywords=Relative+danger

Now I'm writing a cozy mystery series for a different publisher, and they want the books faster. They want one turned in every six months. At first I thought I couldn't do it, but then I sat, knowing I needed to do and many authors write two or three or even more books a year.

My first book in that series came out last month. The second will be published in August, and last week I finished the first draft of the third one.

Wow, how productive this publisher has made me. Thank you.

Many positive reviews tell me A Fatal Romance came out very well:
https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Romance-Twin-Sisters-Mystery-ebook/dp/B01F0YVQEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490560830&sr=8-1&keywords=a+fatal+romance

GUEST BLOG: 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.  Coley uses her scientific education to create believable backgrounds for her suspense novels. 

Mary Coley, Environmentalist and Author

Finding a Fresh 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.

2nd book in the Jamie Aldridge Series

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Learn more about Mary on her website, www.marymcintyrecoley.com, or at her blog, http://marycoley.wordpress.com. 

Her books are available at Amazon.com.

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  1st book in the Jamie Aldridge Series

My writing process

by Bill Kirton
Whenever I’m asked questions about my writing, I always seem to find out something new for myself. Here are my answers to some questions put to me in a recent interview.

What am I working on?
Ahem, this is an embarrassing question because I’ve been working on it for such a long time. It’s the sequel to my novel The Figurehead. That was set in Aberdeen in 1840 and featured John Grant, a figurehead carver, and Helen Anderson, the daughter of a shipowner. It was a crime novel (because that’s what I’m supposed to write) but the chemistry between John and Helen turned it into a romance, too. The romance aspect was left unresolved and I knew I wanted to spend more time with those two characters. There was also the pleasure of stepping back once again into 19^th century Aberdeen and its ways.

I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to get into the sequel. I knew I wanted it to feature a theatre company performing melodramas and that it would see Helen becoming involved in her father’s business. I also knew there’d have to be a crime (see above brackets) but, since John and Helen had ended the previous book with what I described as ‘a lover’s kiss’, I had to work out what they’d been doing in the year that had passed since then. This, remember, was in early Victorian Scotland so their options were limited. I’m 23,000 words into it and waiting for it to grab me and insist I work it all out. It doesn’t help that I’ve also started writing another sequel, to my satire The Sparrow Conundrum, and have made copious notes for the sixth (and probably last) in my detective series.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?
The bulk of my output has been contemporary crime, which is a very crowded field. It comes under the police procedural tag and I started writing it because a publisher liked a stand-alone thriller I’d written but would have preferred a police procedural, so I wrote one. There are now five in the series, all featuring DCI Jack Carston who’s happily married and doesn’t have any particular hang-ups. drink problems or other character-defining flaws, so I suppose that’s one difference. More than that, though, he believes in justice rather than the law and is aware of the gaps between them. His (and my) interest is in people and their motives rather than the deeds they perpetrate so, while the books are whodunits, they’re also whydunnits.

I try to get as much humour as possible into the stories but that’s not unusual. But there’s one thing which I think is: I have a tendency to add a coda to each book which suggests that, although the crime has been solved and the loose ends have been tied up, there’s still something going on which shows that evil persists. I like to leave the reader with the satisfaction of a good story where justice has been done but a little niggle to undermine their idea that ‘all’s right with the world’.

Finally, very few of the deaths are caused by murderers.

Why do I write what I do?
I’ve already hinted at that. I write crime because it’s what that first publisher wanted. But it also offers a ready-made structure. To tell any story about crime you need characters, motives, notions of good and evil and by seeing how different characters respond to temptations, frustrations, provocations and the rest, we come to understand better our own attitudes. The third in my Carston series, The Darkness, sets real questions for readers, making them examine where their sympathies lie and what that says about their own morality.

On the other hand, I used to write radio and stage plays and I also write short stories, most of which aren’t about crime, and stories for children and I do it for the sheer pleasure of entering different worlds, getting to know different characters, some of them existing in other dimensions. In fact, my latest novella, Alternative Dimension, was about an online role-playing game where characters were not only themselves but avatars, which could take any form. In the end, I write because I enjoy it so much.

How does my writing process work?
If you’ve read my answer to the first question, you’ll probably be thinking ‘well, it obviously doesn’t’, but I’m always writing something. Ideas come from everywhere – newspaper items, scenes you see in the street, some dialogue you overhear, a photograph, anything and everything – and they’re either compelling in themselves or two or more of them fuse to set up something which needs to be resolved. Then, once I’ve let the implications stew for a bit, I start writing about them, characters appear and, basically, take over. Thereafter, I sit and watch and listen to them and write it all down. When I’m really into a novel, I want to be writing it all the time and I sometimes lose track of time entirely. I know that’ll happen soon with that sequel that’s taking so long and, when it does, I'll finish it quite quickly.

How to write crime and mystery (or maybe not)

by Bill Kirton

I think I’ve mentioned before that I write things other than crime but since there are still crime novels of mine to be released later this year, and crime is still the main part of my output, and – by no means least – since this blog is supposed to carry ‘murderous musings’, I thought this time I’d offer some hints to would-be crime/mystery writers. Not that I have the formula for writing a masterpiece but simply to open areas which might get you asking yourself some questions. I’m not a fan of creative writing courses and, at every opportunity, I trot out Somerset Maugham’s observation. ‘There are three rules for writing the novel,’ he wrote, then added ‘Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are’. But there are ways to get the creative juices flowing (and of avoiding clichés such as that one but I’m lazy). Here’s one.

Where do you start? Serial killer? Gang warfare? Sado-masochistic practices in a nunnery? It’s a list that easy to extend. But my suggestion would be to prefer the ordinary to the extraordinary. If you start with pools of blood and a trail of smeared footprints leading down into a crypt, it’s dramatic, scary and can be thrilling. But what if it’s a park bench on a sunny day? A woman’s sitting reading a book and eating her lunch sandwiches. Children are playing, old women are feeding ducks, couples are strolling along. The woman’s bag slips from her lap. She bends to retrieve it and sees a red filament. It’s a tiny, barely noticeable trickle of blood which is oozing onto the path in front of her bench. It’s coming from a tissue which someone has wrapped around something and thrown away. The normality of the context brings the frisson closer. Until we see the blood, it’s a familiar scene, reassuring, normal – one which carries no threat, so the intrusion of a macabre element is more sinister. The shock is greater.

So try this. Tomorrow, go through at least part but preferably all of the day looking for clues, plots. Rather than think from the point of view of the murderer, set yourself up as a victim. Notice how many ways you could be murdered – not by any grandiose scheming, bombs, guns, etc. (although that’s not as unlikely as it used to be) but by the normal trappings of the way you live.

For example, toothpaste is a threat. Who has access to your toothbrush? What could they put on it to get rid of you? There are some toxins of which even a tiny drop would be very effective. Who knows about any vitamins or medication you’re on? How easy is it for them to tamper with it? Who knows what foodstuffs you prefer? Or where you shop? Could anyone have found indications of necessary medication in the rubbish you’ve thrown away? Who’s watching your movements in and out of the house? Are there any places on your route to work where you’re particularly vulnerable? Why is there a ladder against the neighbour’s wall? What’s in the box they’ve put out with their wheelie bin? And so it goes on through the day. Multiply all these questions by the number of people who have access to the various items and locations and you have a complex set of relationships – which generate lots of ideas. In my case, the answer to most of these questions is ‘My wife’ but fortunately she doesn’t read this blog.

So keep asking yourself these things and, each time you come up with an answer, always ask ‘But why would the person want to do that?’ Even the simplest action has reasons behind it and consequences. Ask what the reasons are and what’ll happen afterwards and you’ve got the beginnings of a story, or maybe the story itself.

See? It’s a nice game to play with yourself. And once that central departure point is set – the toothbrush, the bottle of vitamin pills, the tools in your garden shed – possibilities and consequences multiply. And you can start jigsawing together clues, red herrings, suspects and, most of all, characters. And pretty soon you’ll have the makings of a plot because, at least in my way of working, plots arise from characters, not the other way round.

Try it, and when you write the best seller as a result of using this technique, send me just a tiny percentage of the profits.