Today I’m delighted to present Marilyn Meredith, author of over thirty published novels, including the award winning Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series. She’s going to share some of her secrets about naming characters.

 

Read more about Marilyn Meredith

Marilyn Meredith

 

 NAMING YOUR CHARACTERS

By Marilyn Meredith

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the creation of your characters. The name should in some way fit the character’s personality.

An example: If you have a strong, muscular hero you wouldn’t want to give him a weak sounding name like Lauren or Percy. You may know some body-builder types with those names, but for your book pick a name that will evoke the sense of the character for the reader.

Make sure that the characters in your book don’t all have names that begin with the same letter, rhyme, or all the same number of syllables. You never want to confuse your characters.

If you are writing a fantasy or sci-fi and your making up names, be sure they are able to be pronounced easily. If the reader can’t say the name in his/her mind, they’ll have trouble remembering who each person is. I’ve been reading books by Scandanavian authors and I’ve had a hard time keeping track of who is who because of the names that I can’t pronounce.

Having said what I did about made-up names, don’t give everyone simple names like Mary, John, Bill, Joe, Jane. If a name is a bit unusual, the reader will have an easier time remembering it. Of course there are exceptions—Jack Reacher for instance. Jack is a strong name even though it’s simple—but the character is mainly known as Reacher.

When I first started submitting my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series, I had an agent tell me Tempe was too unusual of a name and to come up with something else. Obviously, I didn’t follow her advice. Tempe Crabtree was my great-grandmother’s name and I thought it worked for as a Native American. Another prominent Indian character in this series is Nick Two John.

Though some young mothers are using old-fashioned names for their children, others are making up names. One of my granddaughters used syllables from her mother’s and mother-in-law’s first names for an original name for her baby. You might even try that if you can’t come up with the exact name you want.

If you are writing an historical novel, be sure to check and see if the names you want were in use during that time period.

Where to find names? The Internet has a wealth of names. You can find names from any country and popular baby names.

What I like to do is keep graduation programs and use the names I find there—of course I mix up first and last names. Other writers I know use names they’ve found in obituaries.

Keep track of what you’ve named your minor characters so that you don’t give them a different name later on in the book. (Yes, I’ve done that.)

I hope this has will be helpful to you when you start naming the characters that you’ve created. And readers, perhaps this has given you some insight into how difficult the author’s task is when it comes to naming their creations.

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Meredith's latest mystery, Raging Water from Mundania Press:

 

Mor information about Raging Water

 

Raging Water

 Deputy Tempe Crabtree’s investigation of the murder of two close friends is complicated when relentless rain turns Bear Creek into a raging river. Homes are inundated and a mud slide blocks the only road out of Bear Creek stranding many—including the murderer.
 

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No Bells

Meredith also writes as F. M. Meredith, and her latest Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel is No Bells, the fourth from Oak Tree Press. She has taught for Writers Digest School for ten years and serves as a judge in several writing contests. Marilyn is a member of EPIC, three chapters of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Visit her at http://fictionforyou.com and follow her blog at http://marilymeredith.blogspot.com/

Marilyn borrows a lot from where she lives in the Southern Sierra for the town of Bear Creek and the surrounding area.

Thanks to Marilyn for visiting today, and thanks to all readers who have stopped by.

Cheers,
Jackie King

So You Want To Write Mysteries . . .

By Mark W. Danielson

It’s been a while since I’ve addressed writing so here is a frank discussion on the subject.  Those of us who write murder mysteries have at some point all been asked the same question – where do we get our [warped] ideas?  The question seems reasonable enough, but the answer is far from simple.  Rather than speak for anyone else or say “I don’t know”, I must first state for the record that I had a wonderful childhood, my parents are still married after sixty four years, I have never done drugs or committed any acts of violence, nor do I have any plans to do either.  I have a graduate degree, have painted all my life, and had written non-fiction for many years before discovering fiction in the late eighties.  And so began my endless drafts of mystery and suspense novels that killed off people with traits I didn’t much care for.  Yup, that’s the beauty in novels – the ability to plug ’em and plant ’em at will.  Oh, what a stress reliever it is.

One of the more notable author/artistic traits is the power of observation.  We tend to hear and see things that others may not, and then transfer these details into a scene from a book.  Background noises, indistinct whispers, a clunking shoe, television, even a sneeze can all play important roles in a story.  Intentional or not, many storylines are stolen from one’s memory.

The power of perception is an essential sleuth requirement.  One must be able to understand multiple points of view in order to create believable characters.  This means we must get inside the criminal mind as much as those defenders of good.  Personally, I like to people watch, read, or watch news accounts that border on fiction with their sensationalism.  I happened to have been in LA when another car chase came on the TV.  LA car chases are so routine they are hardly worth my time, but this one was entertaining as Robin Hood tossed money from the car as he drove through neighborhoods with six police cars behind him.  Yes, sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.  I hear the culprit was the bank manager’s boyfriend.  Go figure.

There are plenty of whacked out people in this world, and while the percentage of nut cases may remain the same, their numbers climb proportionally with population growth.  Newspaper and magazines can stir volumes of sinister characters and complex plots.  Just don’t get too carried away.  Every plots must be plausible.

Any author will tell you that you can’t write if you don’t read.  You don’t read other authors to emulate them, though.  Instead, you do it to get a sense of their pacing and character development.  Reading within your genre also gives a sense of what is topical and publishable.  In a society of requiring instant gratification, news, and texting, it is unlikely that Hemingway or Michener could get published.  Today’s audience simply doesn’t have the patience for their writing style. 

Scripting requires perseverance.  Unless you are a celebrity or some quirk of fate happens your way, the odds of publishing anything in a timely manner is remote.  I know far too many excellent authors who will remain unknown because most readers buy with name recognition.  Because of this, book stores tend to limit their books to known authors and publishers.  Of course, this stacks the deck against new authors, but if your novel is good enough, it may still hit the chart one day.    

If you write to get rich, you’re probably better off investing in lottery tickets.  Computers, internet, paper, ink, queries, editors, proof readers, promoters, all cost money.  Unless you are an established author, publishers won’t be sending money your way because they simply don’t have it.  Expect to spend whatever advance you receive promoting your work.  Sadly, you won’t see another dime until your sales have worked off your advancement.  I don’t recommend giving up your day job until you have stashed away a couple million.      

For those who are married or live with significant others, know that creative writing is a solitary task.  It’s probably easy to tell when I’m writing because I am thinking more about the plot than what’s going on around me.  When I finally sit down to write, I find myself in a different zone.  Stephen King likes to write with rock music blaring.  For me, silence is golden as I download my subconscious thoughts into a Word document.  If the dog barks or phone rings, I flinch.  Because of this and my preference to stay married, I tend to write more while on the road so I’m not ignoring the person most important to me. 

Writing is my passion.  It is something I need to do.  I strongly encourage others to put their thoughts down as well, and if you happen to make a few bucks along the way, consider it gravy.

Food, far from glorious food

by Bill Kirton

This will be a moan. I’m blessed with a wife who’s a wonderful cook. She knows about flavours, combinations, health stuff and is far more creative than most of the restaurants in Aberdeen (and elsewhere for that matter). The highest compliment I can pay a restaurateur is to say that his/her food is just like that which we eat at home.

I don’t know if it’s the same elsewhere but in the UK, the TV is crammed with cookery programmes. AND FOR THE MOST PART I HATE THE PREMISS THEY’RE ALL BASED ON. Sorry, I must calm down and explain. Let’s start back in the late 80s. I made a series of educational programmes in France about various aspects of French culture and one of them, naturally enough, focused on food and leisure. At the time, we’d all at last moved out of that vile ‘nouvelle cuisine’ phase – you know the one, where a chef would cut a pea into maybe 7 or 8 slices, arrange them in a crescent in the middle of a plate the size of a basketball court, put 3 millimetres of something red near them and charge you £17.99 for it. BUT …

…when I interviewed a lecturer in the cookery school of an excellent college of commerce in Agen, where we’d just eaten a delicious lunch cooked by the students, he insisted that ‘presentation’ was a very important part of the discipline they had to learn. And presentation has come to prevail. So what do we get nowadays?

I could sort of understand it when they turned radishes into miniature roses or created crenellated carrots or turned beetroots into red spaghetti, but they’ve gone mad now. First it was towers of things – the same basketball plate but now with a tube of layered stuff in the middle with a sprig of flat parsley stuck in the top, or maybe a biscuit made out of a thin slice of pig. But soon that wasn’t enough. They had first to drizzle stuff, then drizzling was passé so they took ages making a flavour-filled sauce then put a small dollop of it somewhere on the plate and scraped it with a spoon to form a smear. This smear was neighbour to a minute portion of salmon or rabbit or venison or lamb or Gloucester Old Spot which was sliced into a small fan with some fragments of coloured things (one assumed vegetables) arranged on and around it. Nearby, if you were lucky, might be a fraction of a potato carved and teased into a curly or flat shape. And it could even be dusted with something that might be an exotic spice but looked like dandruff.

And then, pièce de résistance and horror of horrors, worse than Bram Stoker’s vilest imaginings, like something out of a receptacle in a hospital, some ingredients whipped up into FOAM. Why, oh why does it never occur to these Michelin-starred chefs that their delicious, slaved-over foam looks exactly like mucus?

But still the critics and the top chefs crave good presentation. Bafflingly, people who’ve sweated their apprenticeships out over years in hot kitchens spend hours arranging on plates things which are going to be scooped up with a fork, chewed and swallowed. OK, I don’t want to be served a plate with a grey lump on it, but I’m equally against risking being called a vandal because my fork desecrates a work of art. Food can look good without being made to resemble a Matisse.

I’m not a food philistine. I love eating, and no, I don’t just want huge platefuls of any old thing. But I want the chefs who prepare the stuff I eat (and for which I pay lumps of cash) to concentrate on getting the flavours and combinations right rather than on turning my plate into a Turner prize entry.

50 Plus Shades of Pink!

It's October, with fall foliage galore here in beautiful New England, interspersed with pink pink pink. Yep, it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- I'm sure everyone knows that. It's impossible to go anywhere these days without seeing the pink breast ribbon. I'm both a card-carrying member of the breast cancer survivors' sorority and Sisters in Crime, and here in New England, decided to organize an event to promote both. On October 27 SinCNE is sponsoring the first SinC Goes Pink To Fight Breast Cancer -- an author panel and signing in Westport, CT to benefit the Breast Cancer Survival Center, a CT-based non-profit. Tickets are $30 per person, which will benefit BCSC. Five mystery authors will be on the panel, and after the presentations, each will sign and sell their books to the hordes of attendees. No bookstore is involved in this -- all proceeds from any books sold go directly to that author. October 27 is also national Make A Difference Day, and the event is being promoted as part of Westport's annual celebration. It seems like a natural collaboration -- since so many mystery writers, and readers, are women! Wouldn't it be great if this became a national movement?

The Lost Cities Of The Amazon

By Leighton Gage

Remember the tales of El Dorado, the Lost City of Gold, the South American Shangri-La?

If only we could trace the legend back, and find out who started it.

That individual, whoever he was (I’m assuming it was a he) has a lot to answer for.

Five hundred years ago,  Francisco de Orellana, the Spanish explorer, travelled the length of the Amazon River searching for it.

He didn’t find it.

But he did survive.

And, in that, he was lucky.

Because many hundreds, perhaps thousands, – didn’t.

The legend arose in the sixteenth century and persisted, in one form or another, right down to the third decade of the twentieth.

The conquistadors of the mid-1500’s exchanged tales of causeways and grand roads, of great cities, of thousands upon thousands of Indians, and of heaps and heaps of gold.

And I have, in my other blog, written about Percy Fawcett and his mysterious disappearance:

http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/search/label/Percy%20Fawcett

That was in 1925.

Fawcett’s El Dorado was a place he called The Lost City of Z.

He lost his life trying to prove it existed.

Back in those days, mankind was still engaged with one of the most monumental tasks in history, mapping the world. 

And vast swaths of it remained unexplored, forming a fertile environment in which rumor and legend could grow.

But, as time went by, and the men (and women) who followed Fawcett found nothing but sweltering jungle, poisonous snakes, primitive tribesmen and disease-carrying bugs, the idea of a great civilization hidden in the heart of the Amazon began to fall into disrepute.

Scientists declared that the region could never have supported an advanced civilization.  They began to look upon the Amazon Rainforest as nothing more than a wasteland, a sort of verdant Sahara. The existence of El Dorado came to be regarded as just about as likely as the existence of Atlantis.

But then, after about a hundred years of believing the maps were complete, and a hundred years of archeologists telling us there was nothing there, guess what?

Turns out, there was.

Okay, okay, it may be a bit fanciful to equate the recent discoveries in Kuhikugu with El Dorado.

But one thing is for certain: they’ve shot the hell out of a lot of theories.

Michael Heckenberger is a professor of historical anthropology at the University of Florida.

In recent years he’s been excavating there.

And has hypothesized that Kuhikugu might possibly have given rise to the legend. 

Could be.

But, in reality, there wasn’t one settlement in the heart of the Amazon; there were more than twenty.

They covered an area of almost 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles ) and had a total population in the neighborhood of 50,000.

The settlements were built around large, circular plazas and surrounded by enormous ditches.

They were linked by a number of roads, and those roads were constructed in a carefully-organized, gridlike pattern.

According to carbon dating, the civilization flourished from about 200 AD up until around 1600 when diseases brought into the new world by Europeans, virtually wiped them out.

They lived, according to Heckenberger, in an area more akin to a large park than an untouched rainforest.

They built in wood, rather than stone.

They bridged a number of great rivers.

They built moats in wetland areas.

And they cultivated vast tracts of land.

Okay, we’re not talking about the Roman Empire here, or even the Mayan.

But, considering the way most of the world lived back then, it’s still  pretty impressive.

And, until the modern age, the achievements of the people who once lived in Kuhikugu have remained unsurpassed in the region.

The Mystery Doctor

by Jean Henry Mead

Richard L. Mabry has published four novels of medical suspense: Code Blue--a semifinalist for best first novel from International Thriller Writers; Medical Error--a finalist for book-of-the-year in its genre, by American Christian Fiction Writers; Diagnosis Death--a finalist for RT Book Reviews Readers Choice in its genre; and Lethal Remedy, winner of the Selah award from Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference.

Richard, how would you categorize your novels and what motivated you to write your series?
 

My tagline is “Medical suspense with heart,” by which I mean that the novels have a medical setting or feature medical personnel, there is an element of danger or uncertainty that threatens the protagonists, and the story line contains a certain amount of romance. Although the books bear the label of the “Prescription For Trouble” series, bound together by some aspect of therapy that causes the conflict, they are freestanding, rather than having the same cast of characters.

Because my background includes thirty-six years in practice, the last ten as a medical school professor, I felt competent to write about doctors and medicine. However, I must confess that I still have to research all the medical aspects of my books carefully, lest I slip up. I’ve learned by experience that there’s always someone among my readers who knows enough to catch my mistakes.

Each of the books began by my asking the question, “What if?” For instance, in the first one I wondered, “What if a doctor fled to her hometown when her life was falling apart, only to find that some of the people there didn’t want her back, and one of them wanted her dead?”

Tell us about your recent release, Lethal Remedy.

Lethal Remedyaddresses the question, “What if a wonder drug proves more dangerous than the disease it’s supposed to cure?” On rare occasions, I read in professional journals retractions of published data, and wondered what would happen if someone—a researcher, a pharmaceutical company, some person or entity—falsified research data to emphasize the great potential of a drug while hiding severe side effects, in this case, possibly lethal ones. And lest my readers throw away all their prescription bottles, I’ll hasten to add that in all my years of performing clinical research and serving as a consultant to various pharmaceutical companies, I have never personally encountered the manipulation of data I describe in Lethal Remedy.

How do you balance the thriller and Christian aspects of your work?

I don’t see these as mutually exclusive goals. Those with deep faith, those who have fallen away from their faith, those with none are all subject to problems. I simply try to weave the make-up of my characters in regard to their relationship with God into the fabric of the story. I don’t have altar calls and conversion scenes in my works, but do try to show how faith is demonstrated by some characters and rejected by others. Situations in which the characters are put in danger—and that’s the backbone of thrillers—are ideal for doing this.

Why did you decide to make your protagonist female?

My first four (unsuccessful) novels featured a male protagonist. As one of my medical school professors told us, “Hey, you can teach a white mouse in three times.” After I found that the vast majority of readers of Christian fiction are female, and most of them identify with female protagonists, I wrote a novel whose lead character was a female doctor. It clicked with a publisher, so I continued the practice with the next three. I have to quickly give credit to my wife, Kay, who is my first reader, for helping me write authentically from a female standpoint. Without her input, I’d be lost.

I am departing from this practice with my next novel, Stress Test, due for release by Thomas Nelson Publishers next spring. In it, a male doctor is kidnapped, escapes at the cost of a head injury that requires emergency surgery, and awakens to find he’s charged with murder. Of course, I’m hedging my bet, with a female co-protagonist, a fiery redheaded attorney who has just declared herself through with doctors forever when she gets the call to defend him.

You’ve received some great reviews. Which means the most to you?

I suppose I’m most pleased by the 4 ½ stars given my novels by RT Book Reviews, mainly because these are objective ratings by seasoned reviewers. I’ve also been fortunate enough to have rather glowing endorsements from some well-known authors, and this means a lot to me as well. However, probably the ones that count the most are the reviews that come from readers, because they are my true audience.

How do you react to undeserved one-star reviews?

I was fortunate enough to avoid one-star reviews for a while, but, as happens with every author, they eventually popped up. Most of these have been from people who took advantage of free e-book downloads of one of my books made available by my publishers, and their complaint was almost universally that there was a Christian element to my writing. I took those for what they represented—people who had no idea what the book was about, but were happy to get it free.

That having been said, if I see one or two low ratings that mention something in my writing that wasn’t up to par, I make a special effort to address that area in subsequent novels. No writer is perfect, and I think we all strive to get better with each book. If I defend myself against criticism instead of listening to it, I’m never going to improve.

And are you retired or still practicing medicine?

I retired from active practice almost ten years ago, but still maintain my license and work to keep up with the field. My practice was in the field of ear, nose, and throat and related allergic disorders, but my training before that was in both medicine and surgery, so I have an understanding of the broad field of medicine. Some of the scenarios I describe are loosely based on experiences of mine or my colleagues, some are products of my imagination as I wonder “what if?” but all are feasible.

Advice to fledgling authors.

Learn, write, revise, learn, write, revise, lather, rinse, repeat. I’ve read various statements that it takes a writer three books to “get it,” that writers have to put so many thousand words on paper to learn the craft, and I tend to agree. Beyond learning the basics of the craft, practice, based on valid critiques, remains the best way to improve. In my own case, it took me four years, writing four unsuccessful novels that garnered forty rejections before I got my first contract. During that time, I read books on writing, attended conferences and classes, but the most important thing I did was write, have my work critiqued by someone knowledgeable in the area, revise, write some more, and on and on.

The ease of publishing e-books has tempted many unpublished writers to rush their work into publication this way. I would encourage them to resist the temptation. Make sure the work is the best you can do. And if you choose to self-publish, get a professional to edit the work and another to do a book cover. If it’s going to carry your name, do it right.

You can visit Dr. Mably at his blogspot: http://rmabry.blogspot.com, his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rmabrybooks and his Twitter account: http://twitter.com/richardmabry

The Rothschild Trilogy

by Carola Dunn

Adventure, romance, danger, war, murder, high finance, and a leavening of humour--
Coming October 4th, my Rothschild trilogy will be reprinted in the UK. Also available as e-book for Nook, Kindle and others.


The first in the trilogy: Miss Jacobson's Journey

  Miriam Jacobson refuses the man her parents chose for her to marry, instead travelling through Europe as assistant to her doctor uncle. When he dies, she's caught on the wrong side of   the Channel in wartime. Her only hope to get home to England is to accept an assignment from the Rothschilds, to smuggle gold to Lord Wellington in Spain. She sets out across enemy France with two young men who loathe each other--and her.

Second: Lord Roworth's Reward

Felix Roworth accepts a job from the Rothschilds, to follow the cream of London Society to Brussels. He is to send immediate word to Nathan Rothschild in London of the outcome of the inevitable battle between Bonaparte, escaped from Elba, and the Duke of Wellington. The son of a bankrupt peer, Felix shares lodgings in Brussels with a penniless artillery officer and his pretty sister, Frank and Fanny Ingram, as the French approach and citizens and visitors panic. When Frank is badly wounded in the Battle of Waterloo, Felix helps Fanny get him to safety. But he needs a well-born, wealthy match, for his family's sake. It's his duty to forget the attraction he feels for Fanny.

Third: Captain Ingram's Inheritance

Frank Ingram, badly wounded at Waterloo, is taken to Lord Roworth's family estate to recuperate. Roworth's sister Constantia is an angel of mercy to the invalid, but a penniless artillery officer has no business raising his eyes to the daughter of a peer.

Then an unexpected inheritance makes everything seem possible--until someone tries to stop Frank enjoying his good fortune, someone who won't stop at murder.




Available in paperback from
Amazon UK

Also available as ebooks in just about every conceivable format,
for instance
Kindle
Nook

Read an excerpt at  http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.com/

<--ebook            large print-->

This is an actual artillery officer's uniform of the period