David Corbett: A Writer, a PI, and a Duck Walk into a Bar . . .

David Corbett

David Corbett is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), and Blood of Paradise-which was nominated for numerous awards, and was named both one of the Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers of 2007 by the Washington Post and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book. His fourth novel, Do They Know I’m Running?, will be published in early 2010. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including San Francisco Noir and Phoenix Noir, and his story “Pretty Little Parasite” (from Las Vegas Noir) was selected by guest editor Jeffrey Deaver for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2009. David has also contributed a chapter to the world’s first serial audio thriller, The Chopin Manuscript, which won an Audie Award for Best Audio Book of 2008, and its follow-up, The Copper Bracelet. For more, go to www.davidcorbett.com.

A Writer, a PI, and a Duck Walk into a Bar . . .
By David Corbett

It says a lot about me, I suppose, that my favorite fictional portrayal of a private investigator is a cartoon character named Duckman.

Then again, it is also true that my older brother-a “human factors engineer” (read: research psychologist with a security clearance) who spent his career working for the Defense Department (current specialty, unmanned drones-which apparently feel traumatically inferior to manned aircraft)- once remarked that it was “frightening” to see how much of my personality was formed by Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Duckman, which ran on the infamous USA channel, known primarily at the time for near-continuous Wings reruns, featured a sexually degenerate, compulsively spiteful, savagely violent, hopelessly incompetent and wildly self-deluded duck who seemed to suffer from an anatine variety of borderline personality disorder.

Weirder still, his pupils and eyebrows vanished when he removed his glasses.

He benefitted from possessing the voice of Jason Alexander (on hiatus from his role as George Costanza on Seinfeld), and was aided by a stellar cast of freaks who were all vastly more functional than he was: in particular, a sidekick known as Cornfed, a dapper, insightful and lowkey piglet with the voice of Joe Friday and an encyclopedic knowledge of damn near everything (guess who did the crime solving).

Other characters included a buff, leotard-clad sister-in-law named Bernice whom I found strangely alluring, despite the bill and webbed feet (I have eccentric tastes); three sons-Ajax the dullard (with the voice of Dweezil Zappa) and the genius Siamese twins, Charles and Mambo; and finally two squeaky-voiced, pathologically upbeat and PC stuffed bear assistants named Fluffy and Uranus, who routinely got tortured, shredded, burned alive or otherwise hideously abused by Duckman in one of his customary fits of pique.

God, I loved that show.

(Oh, did I mention that in one episode, there appeared a would-be presidential assassin named, I kid you not, Lee Harley Kozak?)

When it came time to write my first novel, I considered a PI protagonist, but couldn’t quite get with the program. The PI novels I read were really just urban westerns, featuring some variety of the lone gunman, a character that bore no resemblance to me or what I did in my real-world job as a private investigator. We didn’t square off against the bad guys in a hail of gunfire. Normally, the bad guys were our clients. If we squared off, it was over how much money they owed.

I considered the more quasi-legalistic type of PI novel, a first cousin to the legal thriller, but even in the best of these, the defendant is almost always innocent. This again bore little resemblance to my job. I always fought vigorously for my clients, and did everything in my power to find evidence that would undermine the prosecution’s theory of the crime or impeach the informant (we sometimes blithely referred to ourselves as the Snitchbusters-Who ya gonna call?). But I had few illusions concerning my clients’ innocence. (To their credit, neither did they.) In many cases, their indictments were salted with a few gratuitous crimes they didn’t actually commit-oh, those fun-loving snitches-and I felt proud to whittle the number of charged crimes down to a more truthful number before sentencing, but this isn’t what the American crime-reading public wanted. They want their defendants absolved. I had no clue how to deliver.

The other grand illusion of PI novels is the allure of the private client, the ordinary citizen (read: babe) who walks through your office door with a terrible problem-often involving some form of blackmail or extortion, usually resulting from some itsy-bitsy indiscretion, with or without barn animals-and this poor victim of fate needs the tireless advocacy of the intrepid PI, the man who, in the immortal words of Raymond Chandler, can walk the mean streets but who is not himself a mean streetwalker (something like that).

Truth is, PIs loathe private clients. These creatures routinely feel certain they know exactly what happened, and you’re being hired simply to confirm their self-serving delusions. When you come up with something different-the truth, for example-they refuse to pay.

Guilty men with lots of money are the gravy train of real PIs. Unfortunately, they don’t make good fodder for the kind of crime novels Americans like to read.

You may have caught a somewhat jaundiced opinion of the American reading public. Not so. But I do, admittedly, possess a somewhat low regard of certain aspects of American culture, which still bears a strong imprint from Puritanical Voodoo with its black-and-white morality and apocalyptic eschatology. Very bad people (read: Satan and his minions) do unspeakable things to the innocent (read: the faithful). The moral? The Messiah is coming. (Look busy.)

This simplistic kind of morality also bore no resemblance to what I saw as a PI, and I wanted no part in continuing to propagate a beguiling (if wildly popular and thus potentially lucrative) delusion. I know all novelists lie. I just didn’t want to lie about that.

And so I have written four novels that deal with more morally and psychologically complex individuals whose lives are touched by crime: a marijuana smuggler who takes the fall for his crew and leaves prison dedicated to finding his hard-luck girlfriend; a cop who can’t shake the ghost of his brother who died pointlessly in Vietnam; an irascible musician who dies out of some mistaken jealous rage at the hands of a patsy arsonist; a bodyguard whose attempt to outrun his bent cop father’s legacy only lands him squarely back in its grip; an up-and-coming Latino musician obliged to make a pact with the devil to help his deported uncle emigrate back to the States. And, as anyone who’s read my work knows, I am particularly fond of the charming and expertly manipulative sociopath, a variety of creature with whom I’ve had more than my share of firsthand experience. And not just dating.

That said, I am venturing into PI territory with the book I am just beginning. (It will be my fifth; the fourth, Do They Know I’m Running?, comes out early in 2010.) I don’t want to spoil things, but Dan Abatangelo, the marijuana smuggler protagonist of The Devil’s Redhead, will appear as a stringer for a PI firm with connections to his sister’s law practice. I will return to Rio Mirada, the setting of my second novel, Done for a Dime, and deal with political corruption in both city hall and the public service unions.

That’s right, I am finally going to write the PI novel everyone has expected me to write. And I am really, really looking forward to it.

But I’d still rather be Duckman.

*     *     *

David and I spoke briefly at Bouchercon last year about our loyal, but aged friends, Tilly and Pebbles. During our conversation, we, two majorly tough guys, each produced our cellphones to share the photos we display as background images on the devices. The photos are of our beloved dogs. Two tough guys with soft spots for little dogs.

Since that time David’s longtime canine companion, Tilly, has passed away.

For Tilly:

The House Dog’s Grave
Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now run with you
in the evenings along the shore, except in a kind of dream;
and you, if you dream a moment, you see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
where I used to scratch to go out or in, and you’d soon open;
leave on the kitchen floor the marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do on the warm stone,
nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the nights through I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet outside your window
where firelight so often plays, and where you sit to read
– and I fear often grieving for me- every night your lamplight lies on my
place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard to think of you ever dying.
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope that when you are lying under the ground like me
your lives will appear as good and joyful as mine.
No, dears, that’s too much hope:
You are not so well cared for as I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided…
But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

/by

Lee Child: On Trial

Lee Child

Recently, I had the pleasure of asking Lee Child a few nosy questions. Of course, Lee, being the gentleman that he is, answered in a way only the creator of Jack Reacher could.

Lee, what time of day do you prefer to write?

Nothing of value can be achieved in the morning.  For 18 years in TV I worked unsocial shift hours, so my luxury as a writer is to sleep late, have a long slow breakfast, and start work after lunch.  I usually quit around 6 or 7.  Toward the end of the process I might start another couple hours at midnight.

What’s your daily word count?

It is what it is.  Minimum might be 600, I’m happy with 1200 or 1500, a great day would be 2500, the best I ever did was 4000.

Do you like to listen to music when you write? If so, what kind?

No, I need to generate my own rhythms, and music disrupts that.  And certainly anything with lyrics would be difficult to ignore.

Do you conduct a lot of research before you write the first word?

Better to ask if I do any research before I write the last word! I don’t do any general research. I depend on things I have already read or seen or internalized, maybe years before. I ask people about specific details … like I asked you what a rural police chief might have in his trunk.  But in terms of large themes I think it’s difficult to research too close to the time of writing … research is like an iceberg – 90% of it needs to be discarded, and it’s hard to do that without perspective.

How long does it take you to write a 100,000 word novel?

I just finished my book for 2010 – 108,000 words in 69 working days, for an average of about 1560 words a day.  But those 69 working days were spread across six months – always a lot of other crap to deal with.

What is your favorite food and drink?

My favorite drink is black coffee, no sugar.  Second would be champagne.  I’m entirely indifferent to food.  Don’t really care what, when or if I eat.

Finally, what would it take for Jack Reacher to settle down?

A spinal cord injury, probably.

* Lee Child is the author of the wildly popular Jack Reacher series. You can visit Lee here.

At Crime Bake 2007, we conducted a mock trial of Jack Reacher (played by Lee Child). I played the part of the DEA agent who’d arrested Reacher for murder. The part of the prosecutor was played by Michele Martinez.

Author and former federal prosecutor Michele Martinez.

Lee and his defense attorney, Julia Spencer-Fleming, discuss strategy.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kenneth Freeman as himself.

The cast, including award winning author Hank Phillipi Ryan as the investigative reporter.

*2007 Crime Bake photos by Maureen “Mo” Walsh.

Author Rosemary Harris, jury foreman, declared Jack Reacher innocent of all charges because the defendant was HOT!

Testifying in the murder trial of Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher/Lee Child confesses to the murder in an open courtroom and still gets off free and clear.

 

/by

Becky Cantrell: Missing People

Becky Cantrell

Rebecca Cantrell bought her first typewriter with babysitting money at age thirteen. Since then, she has written novels, screenplays, and short stories about the Alaskan wilderness, Berlin before and after the wall, and dot com Silicon Valley. She has also written many technical manuals. “A Trace of Smoke” is her first published novel. As of this writing, she lives in Hawaii with her husband and son.

Missing People

Like most parents, losing a child is the scariest thing I can imagine so when Echelon Press asked me to donate to a collection of short stories about missing people, aptly titled MISSING, I jumped at the chance.

Echelon isn’t just talking about missing people, they’re doing something to help. All of the proceeds from the book are donated to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), an organization founded by John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted. Their mission is:

“to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them.”

In addition to helping lost children, they have information on ways to keep children safe, including how to teach your children safety skills and how to check up on child care providers. You can find out more at “What to do if Your Child Goes Missing.”

There is a lot of valuable information there. I am proud to be one of the authors who donated my story to help support them.

Missing persons is a hard topic to think about, and I admit it was difficult for me to research it. Did you know that on any given month there are about 100,000 active missing persons cases in the United States? In less than two months that’s the entire population of the Big Island of Hawaii.

To find out what was going on closer to home, I searched for missing children listed at missingkids.com. I found 12 children missing in Hawaii, some of them since 1977. One child is even missing from my little town of Kailua Kona. Luna Marie Fox, missing since July 5, 2005.

In a stable society, like the United States today, the typical victim of abduction and murder is the little girl next door. Statistically, she’s approximately 11 years old and is described as a “low risk” and “normal.” She lives in a middle-class neighborhood, has good relationships with her family and initially met her abductor within a quarter mile of her house.

The site details what happens after a child goes missing, which boils down to: look everywhere (don’t forget the trunk of the car and large appliances) and contact law enforcement. If you’re in a store, many stores have a protocol called Code Adam where employees mobilize and start looking for the child immediately. New laws allow police to list children under 14 as missing within two hours, so be sure to contact law enforcement immediately with detailed information about the missing child (age; height; weight; distinguishing characteristics such as glasses, braces, birthmarks, scars, piercings; clothing last worn; and a recent picture).

In addition to rules to guide kids to help prevent abductions (http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=3597), the site also lists success stories. For example, 443 children have been recovered through AMBER alerts, the NCMEC reunited several children separated from their parents after Hurricane Katrina, and their CYBERTIP line has led to the arrest of child predators traveling overseas to have sex with minors.

My story, Coffee (http://rebeccacantrell.com/2008/08/25/coffee-short-story-excerpt/), is set just after World War II and deals with one man, an American bomber pilot, who returns to the city that he bombed, this time on the ground. He was born in Berlin, but moved to the United States when he was quite young. He searches for his mother, his aunt, and redemption for his actions. He might not like what he finds, but at least he will find something.

All the stories in the anthology deal with missing persons, but as writers, we resolved each person’s status by the end of the story. Sadly, that’s not so easy to do in real life.

Let’s hope that all of those missing find a way home.

Aloha,
Rebecca Cantrell – www.rebeccacantrell.com
“A Trace of Smoke”
Forge Books May 2009

*     *     *

* I’m on my way to the Writers Police Academy, so Becky’s going to hold the reins to The Graveyard Shift until I arrive at my hotel later tonight. You’re in good hands!

/by

Thomas B. Sawyer: Writing for Murder She Wrote

Thomas B. Sawyer

Novelist, screenwriter, playwright Thomas B. Sawyer was Head Writer/Showrunner of the hit CBS series, Murder, She Wrote, for which he wrote 24 episodes. Tom has written 9 network TV pilots, 100 episodes, and has been Head Writer/Showrunner or Story Editor on 15 network TV series. He wrote, directed and produced the cult film comedy, Alice Goodbody, is co-librettist/lyricist of Jack, an opera about John F. Kennedy, backed by the Shuberts, that has been performed to acclaim in the US and Europe. He is publisher of Storybase 2.0 writer’s software.

The best-selling mystery/thriller, The Sixteenth Man, is his first novel. Both his book, Fiction Writing Demystified, and Storybase are Writer’s Digest Book Club Selections. His new thriller, No Place to Run, will be published in April, 2009. He’s taught writing at UCLA, at other colleges and universities, at numerous major writers conferences, and online at Writers University. Mr. Sawyer has been nominated for an Edgar and an Emmy.

WRITING FOR MURDER, SHE WROTE
Or
Creating 264+ Murders Using Three Motives – and No Blood, Violence, Crazy People or Forensics
By Tom Sawyer, Head Writer/Showrunner

Oddly, though not entirely unusual, the way I became a writer for MURDER, SHE WROTE before it began to air was the result of my agent sending the show’s co-creator, Peter Fischer, a non-mystery pilot script I’d written for CBS. Peter ‘saw’ something in it – presumably, that I could write scenes that worked – and he gave me a ‘blind assignment’ to write an episode. Meaning, I had to first come up with a story that was acceptable. He invited me to come in and view the very impressive half-hour film they’d produced in lieu of a full-on pilot, and to me, anyway, Angela Lansbury’s specialness, her presence, was awesome.

So Peter and I met. Pleasant, witty, like myself a former East Coaster, I have to say – in terms of instant impressions – that what struck me most tellingly about him was his spotlessly clean desktop (in contrast to my own, which has always been a colossal mess of scraps and disorganized piles that periodically reaches critical mass, requiring a half-day or more for me to clean up). Peter’s had not a single sheet of paper, not a pile anywhere – and it remained that way for the seven years I worked with him. Which is not, incidentally, a knock. A direct corollary of this clearly anal trait, I would learn, was that unlike any other showrunner with whom I’d been associated, Peter always had several scripts in the drawer, finished and ready to shoot. In series TV, this is rare to the point of nonexistence. On most shows they’re constantly hanging on by their fingertips, often writing the scripts as they’re being shot.

All that aside, MSW looked to me like a hit, and I said so. I also offered that given my limited writing credits in the genre (a QUINCY and a MIKE HAMMER), he’d probably have to hold my hand. He assured me that that wouldn’t be a problem and, in response to my question about the approach, the show’s style, Peter explained – as I feared – that he envisioned it in the mold of traditional Agatha Christie puzzle mysteries – what are known in the mystery genre as ‘Cozies’. You know – the character who behaves badly toward all the other players, and is detested by all, who is then – surprise, surprise – murdered – and all of them have motives which at the end are tediously, routinely – for me, anyway – explained by the sleuth, who has gathered them all in the drawing-room. Which prompted – with no hesitation – a remark from me, the sheer chutzpah of which I really didn’t wonder at until I recalled the incident several years later. And having wondered, I realized that it was pretty much the way I’ve operated for most if not all of my life: “Peter, I have to tell you, when I was a kid I read a couple of Christies and one or two locked-room mysteries, and they bored the shit out of me. I’m not going to write that for you.”

His response betrayed no sign that I’d offended. “Okay. What will you write?”

“I’ll write The Maltese Falcon.”

Peter replied without missing a beat: “That’ll be fine.”

And that’s what I did for the next twelve years – seven of them with Peter’s on-the-job blessing.

Though I never discussed that initial encounter with him, I think his not taking offense was because the two of us were speaking a kind of writer’s genre-shorthand, the subtext of which Peter, with his extensive background in whodunnits, certainly understood better than I. He knew exactly what I was saying-without-saying-it because for all of us who are ‘into’ that form, Hammett’s Falcon was/is the paradigm – the seminal modern detective novel – for several reasons – most significantly in that unlike the more traditional mysteries, and Falcon is indeed a mystery – who killed Sam Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, as well as Capt. Jacoby of the SS La Paloma, and gunsel Floyd Thursby? – there were no clues, and almost no emphasis on suspects. Instead, Hammett took the reader on a journey, involving a bunch of marvelously colorful characters in pursuit of a McGuffin, and at the end, and happily without the tedious old-hat convention of the drawing-room climax, we did indeed get our closure about who did what to whom. But – and this further differentiated it from all the others – we almost didn’t care who the murderer was, so interesting were the journey, the people and their stories.
That was the matrix I used for all of the twenty-four MSW episodes I wrote, and for the nearly one hundred scripts I developed with other writers. Basically, my approach was that each was a play, about something, in which a murder had to take place. And for me, the play was the thing. I almost didn’t care about the details of the murder, because our main challenge was to make the method, circumstances and surrounding characters seem different from the last six or seven episodes. Oh, we provided clues and suspects, so that the viewers had a reasonably fair chance of solving the mystery before Jessica Fletcher nailed the bad guy. But I invariably placed the emphasis on that underlying drama, the interplay of characters with conflicting agendas, that (hopefully) provided an entertaining setting for the inevitable murder. Also consistent with the show’s ‘bloodless’ approach to violence, which was never shown, we steered way clear of another dark side – sociopaths and psychopaths, as in serial killers and the like. Happily for me because, despite their popularity in fiction, I find crazy people and other such stuff tedious in the extreme since they’re unfixable, their motives irrational – not, from my perspective, interesting enough to try getting inside their twisted heads. Not people I can, nor wish to try relating to. All that the police – or your detective – can do is catch them which, even with the fashionable cachet of forensics, I find basically uninteresting.

Thus, on Murder, She Wrote, we employed three motives for the killings: money, sex or power (sometimes together). A fourth, really a non-motive, was the occasional ‘victim-by-mistake.’ Essentially, to avoid predictability we tried to rotate these, as we did with the murder method (gunshot, knife, poison, etc.).

Like so much of my life-view, I assumed all the writers on the show regarded its structure the same way. I was therefore surprised when, some years later, I mentioned my take on it to one of them, and he revealed that his method was almost diametrically different, citing among his own rules that, somewhere in Act Two, his murderer had to make what would prove to be a fatal mistake.
Which proves, I suppose, that there is more than one way to do it right.

Though about that, I’m still not convinced.

Oh, and one other thing. Around the set, we referred to Cabot Cove, Maine as The Murder Capital of America (I have a coffee mug inscribed: “If you lived here, you’d be dead by now”). And Jessica Fletcher was known as The Angel of Death.

I mean – this nice lady just happens to be in the vicinity of a murder every week for twelve years…?

 

www.ThomasBSawyer.com

WRITING FOR MURDER, SHE WROTE
Or
Creating 264+ Murders Using Three Motives – and No Blood, Violence, Crazy People or Forensics
By Tom Sawyer, Head Writer/Showrunner
Copyright © 2009 by Thomas B. Sawyer
Oddly, though not entirely unusual, the way I became a writer for MURDER, SHE WROTE before it began to air was the result of my agent sending the show’s co-creator, Peter Fischer, a non-mystery pilot script I’d written for CBS. Peter ‘saw’ something in it – presumably, that I could write scenes that worked – and he gave me a ‘blind assignment’ to write an episode. Meaning, I had to first come up with a story that was acceptable. He invited me to come in and view the very impressive half-hour film they’d produced in lieu of a full-on pilot, and to me, anyway, Angela Lansbury’s specialness, her presence, was awesome.
So Peter and I met. Pleasant, witty, like myself a former East Coaster, I have to say – in terms of instant impressions – that what struck me most tellingly about him was his spotlessly clean desktop (in contrast to my own, which has always been a colossal mess of scraps and disorganized piles that periodically reaches critical mass, requiring a half-day or more for me to clean up). Peter’s had not a single sheet of paper, not a pile anywhere – and it remained that way for the seven years I worked with him. Which is not, incidentally, a knock. A direct corollary of this clearly anal trait, I would learn, was that unlike any other showrunner with whom I’d been associated, Peter always had several scripts in the drawer, finished and ready to shoot. In series TV, this is rare to the point of nonexistence. On most shows they’re constantly hanging on by their fingertips, often writing the scripts as they’re being shot.
All that aside, MSW looked to me like a hit, and I said so. I also offered that given my limited writing credits in the genre (a QUINCY and a MIKE HAMMER), he’d probably have to hold my hand. He assured me that that wouldn’t be a problem and, in response to my question about the approach, the show’s style, Peter explained – as I feared – that he envisioned it in the mold of traditional Agatha Christie puzzle mysteries – what are known in the mystery field as ‘Cozies’. You know – the character who behaves badly toward all the other players, and is detested by all, who is then – surprise, surprise – murdered – and all of them have motives which at the end are tediously, routinely – for me, anyway – explained by the sleuth, who has gathered them all in the drawing-room. It prompted – with no hesitation – a remark from me, the sheer chutzpah of which I really didn’t wonder at until I recalled the incident several years later. And having wondered, I realized that it was pretty much the way I’ve operated for most if not all of my life: “Peter, I have to tell you, when I was a kid I read a couple of Christies and one or two locked-room mysteries, and they bored the shit out of me. I’m not going to write that for you.”
His response betrayed no sign of being put off. “Okay. What will you write?”
“I’ll write The Maltese Falcon.”
Peter replied without missing a beat: “That’ll be fine.”
And that’s what I did for the next twelve years. Though I never discussed that initial encounter with him, I think his not taking offense was because the two of us were speaking a kind of writer’s-shorthand, the subtext of which Peter, with his extensive background in whodunnits, certainly understood better than I. He knew exactly what I was saying-without-saying-it because for all of us who are ‘into’ that form, Hammett’s Falcon was/is the paradigm – still the seminal modern detective novel – for several reasons – most significantly in that unlike the more traditional mysteries, and Falcon is indeed a mystery – who killed Sam Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, as well as Capt. Jacoby of the SS La Paloma, and gunsel Floyd Thursby? – there were no clues, and almost no emphasis on suspects. Instead, Hammett took the reader on a journey, involving a bunch of marvelously colorful characters in pursuit of a McGuffin, and at the end, and happily without the tedious old-hat convention of the drawing-room climax, we did indeed get our closure about who did what to whom. But – and this further differentiated it from all the others – we almost didn’t care who the murderer was, so interesting were the journey, the people and their stories.
That was the matrix I used for all of the twenty-four MSW episodes I wrote, and for the nearly one hundred scripts I developed with other writers. Basically, my approach was that each was a play, about something, in which a murder had to take place. And for me, the play was the thing. I almost didn’t care about the details of the murder, because our main challenge was to make the method, circumstances and surrounding characters seem different from the last six or seven episodes. Oh, we provided clues and suspects, so that the viewers had a reasonably fair chance of solving the mystery before Jessica Fletcher nailed the bad guy. But I invariably placed the emphasis on that underlying drama, the interplay of characters with conflicting agendas, that (hopefully) provided an entertaining setting for the inevitable murder. Also consistent with the show’s ‘bloodless’ approach to violence, which was never shown, we steered way clear of another dark side – sociopaths and psychopaths, as in serial killers and the like. Happily for me because, despite their popularity in fiction, I find crazy people and other such stuff tedious in the extreme since they’re unfixable, their motives irrational – not, from my perspective, interesting enough to try getting inside their twisted heads. Not people I can, nor wish to try relating to. All that the police – or your detective – can do is catch them which, even with the fashionable cachet of forensics, I find basically uninteresting.
Thus, on Murder, She Wrote, we employed three motives for the killings: money, sex or power (sometimes together). A fourth, really a non-motive, was the occasional ‘victim-by-mistake.’ Essentially, to avoid predictability we tried to rotate these, as we did with the murder method (gunshot, knife, poison, etc.).
Like so much of my life-view, I assumed all the writers on the show regarded its structure the same way. I was therefore surprised when, some years later, I mentioned my take on it to one of them, and he revealed that his method was almost diametrically different, citing among his own rules that, somewhere in Act Two, his murderer had to make what would prove to be a fatal mistake.
Which proves, I suppose, that there is more than one way to do it right.
Though about that, I’m still not convinced.
Oh, and one other thing. Around the set, we referred to Cabot Cove, Maine as The Murder Capital of America (I have a coffee mug inscribed: “If you lived here, you’d be dead by now”). And Jessica Fletcher was known as The Angel of Death.
I mean – this nice lady just happens to be in the vicinity of a murder every week for twelve years…?
Books by Thomas B. Sawyer
*     *     *

My weekly review of Castle will be featured tomorrow. Please stop by to see how I graded their police procedure.< >< >< >< >< >< >< >< >< >< >

/by

Rebekah Aidukaitis: An Atypical Police Tour

Rebekah Aidukaitis

As a corporate wife, Rebekah Aidukaitis has seen much of the country. Using this to her advantage, she now writes romantic suspense, romantic comedy and family humor, deftly incorporating setting and socio-economic backdrops to compliment each plot. Her recently completed manuscript, Hickory Grove, explores the connection between a Midwest artist torn between saving her marriage or an abducted child, and the perverted abductor bent on destroying her life. Available now to agents everywhere. When not writing, Rebekah is a volunteer with several community organizations. She currently lives in Indiana with her husband and four children.

Atypical Police Tour

A Police Department tour is a must for every Cub Scout. As a den leader, I set up a tour with the community relations officer in our town and arrived February 2, with eight seven-year-olds and their parents, ready to see all the exciting, secret stuff beyond the lobby. We weren’t disappointed. This tour was VERY informative.

Richmond Indiana Police Department

The officer appeared in full dress uniform, definitely impressing the boys, and happily showed us every room, from the weight room to the interrogation room (letting the parents spy on the kids through the one-way glass, and vice versa). That was fun. But there were portions of the tour that seemed a bit odd.

As we entered the Juvenile Division, one of the boys made a funny comment about the officer’s name. The officer jokingly took the boy in a head hold, which caught some parents off guard. But we were okay. This was a police station after all, so we were safe, right? He let the boy go. Then the officer started telling the boys about the kinds of crimes that land juveniles in jail, or sometimes even in the mental institution on the edge of town. At that point a boy raised his hand and announced to the group that his brother lives at the mental institution. The room went silent. Awkward.

On we went to the lab, which led to the evidence storage room. Pausing for a few moments outside the door, the officer told us the importance of evidence and why we couldn’t go in, giving us a graphic description of items that have been held there and the crimes committed with these weapons. Every parent cringed, wanting to cover their boy’s ears, pushing toward the hallway to continue the tour at the drunk tank and the two locked cells there. That was a bad move. Standing in the hallway, I think the officer took relish in telling us why they don’t use those cells anymore. Apparently a teenager was brought in on a Friday and locked in one of the holding cells. Inexplicably, they were forgotten about all weekend with no food, water, or toilet facilities. Since then everyone is transported directly to the jail across the street. Wonderful. That gave us such confidence in our civil servants.

But the tour didn’t stop there. Anxious to show us the city’s cutting edge equipment, we were brought to another room with a fifty thousand dollar drying machine. Here again, we were told the gruesome details of bloody shirts, semen-coated clothing, and the crimes associated with these messy pieces of evidence. Then he pointed out the refrigerator in the corner to talk about the rape kits kept inside. Maybe not so appropriate for young boys.

Last stop was the Detective Division, where we were warned not to discuss anything in that room once the tour ended. I didn’t see anything as bad as what I heard. In order to show the determination of some detectives, the officer related a story about a detective’s daughter who was murdered (more grisly details), and how that detective vowed not to retire until the case was closed. Twelve years later, the detective solved the crime, retiring the very next day. Great, a happy ending. I’m sure the parents appreciated that as they swept their boys out the door, mourning the loss of innocence.

Over the past few weeks, some of the parents and I have shared a good laugh over these events, but the general consensus remains the same: next year we’re going to the fire department instead.

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Andrew McAleer: The Professor and the Bank Robber

Andrew McAleer: The Professor and the Bank Robber

Photo by Stephen D. Rogers

ANDREW MCALEER is the author of The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists and the co-author of the number 1 best-selling, Mystery Writing in a Nutshell. Mr. McAleer is also the author of three novels including the critically-acclaimed, Double Endorsement and Bait and Switch. A prosecutor with the Massachusetts Department of Correction, Mr. McAleer is an adjunct professor at Boston College and a recipient of the Sherlock Holmes Revere Bowl Award. He serves as a specialist in the Army National Guard. Visit Mr. McAleer at www.Crimestalkers.com

The Professor and the Bank Robber

Working in the prison system has reinforced for me the old adage “Crime doesn’t pay.”

In 1965 my father, Professor John McAleer entered his office at Boston College and found on his desk a single letter addressed to him in a boyish scrawl. The letter writer, William “Billy” Dickson, was serving time in Cedar Junction “Walpole” State Penitentiary for bank robbery. Billy had seen a copy of a review my father had written for the Boston Globe in connection with Theodore Dreiser and had a few questions. My father thought the questions were worthy of response and thus began a 1,200-letter correspondence between them. My father-a WWII-veteran-encouraged Billy to write about his front-line Korean War experiences, which ultimately developed into the best-selling war novel Unit Pride. The parole board, impressed with Billy’s rehabilitation, released him in 1967 just in time to stand in as my godfather.

After he was paroled he worked in the Boston College bookstore and then started a cleaning company. Tragically, in 1974 a disgruntled employee murdered Billy. At the behest of his widow my father heavily revised the manuscript. Unit Pride was published in 1981 and major critics soon praised it as the definitive novel of the Korean War.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the story concerns my maternal aunt Alice Delaney. As it turned out, she was the bank teller Billy held up. This was a connection my father and Billy didn’t make until a year after they met because my father never asked Billy why he was incarcerated. Having seen so many lives torn and shattered from The Big Two, My father saw Billy as a troubled vet, who, like so many others, found it difficult to adjust. In any event, if Billy thought bank robbery was his calling, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Alice, just a few months before her death in 2007 at the age of 91, still recalled the botched hold-up in vivid detail. Events that can’t help but bring to mind the bank robbery scene in Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run.

“I remember he slid me a note,” Alice told me, “and I slid it back to him because I thought it was a slip to open a new account and I didn’t handle that. Then he slid it back to me and I thought he was being fresh, so I slid it back to him. He was a terrible bank robber.”

Unit Pride was re-published in 2005 and quickly became the #1 best-selling war book on Amazon. Have we seen any money yet on the book? Just a few bucks, which has me wondering how much dough the publishers have taken in and just haven’t coughed up. Maybe crime does pay – for some.

* Fun fact – Unit Pride was one of the first books Robert B. Parker (a Korean War Vet) blurbed. So early in Parker’s career in fact that the publisher (Doubleday) credited him as Robert S. Parker.

*   *   *

Due to the state of the economy, the early bird registration rate for the Mad Anthony Writers Conference and Writers Police Academy has been extended. Please contact me at lofland32@msn.com for details. You won’t want to miss this conference!

 

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Steve Burt: The Sinister Minister

Rev. Dr. Steve Burt, a.k.a. The Sinister Minister, has won the Bram Stoker, Ray Bradbury, and Benjamin Franklin Awards. In addition to horror and mystery/suspense, he writes church leadership books, inspirational books, devotional material, and has published hundreds of pieces in such venues as Reader’s Digest, Writer’s Digest, Yankee, Family Circle, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

He’s the father of writing authority Wendy Burt-Thomas

(Writer’s Digest Guide to Writing Query Letters) and grandfather to Ben and Gracie. In February 2009 he was profiled in Connecticut Magazine (“The Sinister Minister”). His book Even Odder was a runner-up to Harry Potter for the 2003 Bram Stoker Award, and his Oddest Yet won it in 2004 (Young Reader category), the first self-published book to do so.

I hear they call you “the Sinister Minister.” What’s THAT all about? Do people get upset?

I was unintentionally but luckily “branded” during an interview on WCAX TV Channel 3 in Burlington, VT when I won horror’s top writing prize, the Bram Stoker Award (Young Readers category). The news anchor focused on my being both a liberal/progressive pastor (known for church leadership books) and a top-drawer horror writer, a  unique combination. Everybody in creation must have been watching that night, because folks started coming up to me at fairs, saying, “I saw you on TV. You’re The Sinister Minister.” Good lucky branding, and I’ve had fun with it. In fact, Connecticut Magazine just profiled me in February using “The Sinister Minister” as the title.

Occasionally fundamentalist Christians will give me a hard time at signings, but I just ask if they’ve read my material (No!) and if they’ve read their Bible (Of course!). Then I tell them there’s more blood and guts, demon possession, and rising from the dead in the Bible than there is in my books. (Or I tell them God told me to write horror. How do you argue that?)

I believe writers should write what they’re called to write, or what they like reading or writing. I’ve also written poetry, cartoon captions, a canoeing book, devotional material, church leadership books, and inspirational stories for Chicken Soup for the Soul. Nobody questions a minister writing that stuff. But there’s always been a connection between theological issues and horror literature (Frankenstein is about Man Playing God, Dracula is about drinking blood and the cost of eternal life). More to the point, I always liked Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt as a kid, so I write it now.

 

How did you get started as a writer? What were your influences?

My second-grade teacher got the high school newspaper to print a one-paragraph story of mine. The third-grade teacher encouraged rhymed poems and limericks. The fifth-grade teacher read aloud to us, and I wrote stories using the read-aloud stories as inspiration. But my sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Youngs kept me after school for being a chatterbox; and instead of making me clean the erasers or write “I will not talk in class” until my hand fell off, she had me write stories, and then she’d critique them.

I wrote fiction in college, edited the literary magazine and, discouraged there was no money in writing, went into the ministry. There I got to write articles, practiced the discipline of writing a sermon every week (the equivalent of a short story in length), and cranked out a few hundred devotionals, articles, poems, and a dozen books. Eventually I decided to write fiction again even if there was no money in it (since I had my pastoral job as an anchor). From early on I loved Poe, DeMaupassant, Saki, Twain, Keats & Shelley & Wordsworth, Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley. And before I hit my teens I gobbled up Homer, Virgil, and the stories of the Norse gods. The last thirty years I’ve really enjoyed the short stories of my old neighbor Stephen King, and Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas series, James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books, Tony Hillerman, John Sandford, Sue Grafton, and Thomas Perry.

 

Your stories sometimes fall under horror, but they’re not gory. How would you describe them?

Lite horror since they’re in the Young Adult category, some supernatural adventure, and a few paranormal mysteries like my Devaney and Hoag stories. While it appeals to a large adult audience, because my readers are mostly young adults I lay off the gore, preferring instead Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock off-camera approaches, and character-driven stories over plot-driven ones, where there’s far less dependence on shock and special effects. Myself, I’m sorry horror literature took the turn toward splatterpunk and gore in the early seventies with movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street, because it de-emphasized good writing. That may be why I read a lot of what my Brit colleagues call “weird fiction,” the high quality stuff you get from Ash Tree Press and The Ghost Story Society.

 

I’ve read that you’re the first person in history to win what is arguably horror’s top prize, the Bram Stoker, for a self-published book. Is that true?

Bram Stoker award

I’ve heard that, too, and it’s apparently true, at least for the Young Reader category. It’s pretty certain I’m the only ordained minister to win one. But your question points up an interesting issue about self-publishing today. It’s lucky the Stokers are awarded for “superior achievement” and not “superior achievement with a traditional publisher,” because even the open-minded Horror Writers Association (HWA), which sponsors and awards the Stokers, has a bias built into its membership strata requirements (even though many horror writers are self-published or publish with small presses).

Here’s what I mean: based on dollar sales for my work, I’m a pretty successful horror writer, one who made a full-time living at it for four years, but despite all the money and the awards, I’m still not an Active (read: Full Voting) Member of HWA–only an Affiliate Member–because I haven’t sold a novel to a publisher (other than my own publishing house) or sold the required number of short stories (I think it’s three) at such-and-such a minimum price to magazines.

The bias is, I think, a holdover from the old days when all self-publishing was equated with “vanity” publishing and meant little or no editing, maybe not even any proofreading. But to its credit the HWA is striving to have “pro” standards (accepted by and edited by someone other than the author) as a requirement for Full Member status, and at this point it still translates into “other-than-self-published.” But publishing has changed (I own and operate an award-winning publishing house that publishes only my work due to limited funds), yet HWA’s membership guidelines don’t account for that shift. It depends on “professional-level” sales, but doesn’t consider self-publishers’ sales “professional.” That said, I still belong to, support, and enjoy HWA as an Affiliate Member, and I haven’t pressed to change the rules.

Have you always self-published? If not, what made you decide to do it?

No, I wrote church leadership books for traditional publishers like Judson Press and Alban Institute. But making 3% to 6% on a $10-$13 book that has a first run of 2,000-3,000 books isn’t very rewarding monetarily. They changed my titles, insisted on covers I didn’t like, and-in one case-had a 3 year delay before the book came out. And I had to do all the p.r. myself anyway. I’d rather run 2000 of my own books (from final ms to published book is 3 months) for $2-$5 cost apiece, and sell them at fairs and public readings for $15 a book.

Other than Amazon.com I don’t even bother with bookstores or distributors. When I had a distributor, I sold fewer than 1% of my books through bookstores, and the store and distributor made all the money. I mean, do the math; by producing books myself, meeting my audience face-to-face (young readers), and selling direct to my market (teens, parents, grandparents, teachers and librarians), how many copies do I have to sell per year to beat the money offered by those “real” publishers? I owe this realistic approach to self-publishing guru Dan Poynter, whose book I read (The Self Publishing Manual) and whose weekend course I took. Thanks, Dan.

 

How do you juggle time between the church and writing?

I intentionally contracted with my church for 2/3 time so I’d have time to write and tend to my bookselling business. I spend about two to three hours a day actually writing, but only between January and end of April, which easily gets me a 144 page book. From June through early December I don’t write, but instead spend most Saturdays selling and autographing at arts & crafts fairs. I also spend weekdays on school visits at middle and high schools, do read-aloud programs of my short stories for different groups (camps, schools, youth groups, senior centers, cemetery associations, civic groups, libraries), and sell a few books in other ways. There’s usually an honorarium to cover travel and expenses. So between church work and the writing business, I stay pretty busy.

 

Can you talk about your writing process a bit?

After finishing my church work and writing an 8-10 page sermon each week, if I can squeeze out three good hours a day for fiction (say, five days of the week), I’m happy. It’s usually in the afternoon or evening, but on days off I may do a morning. Each writing session will produce 3 to 5 pages of manuscript, but heck, that’s 15-25 pages a week-and even over my limited four-month Jan-Apr writing season–that could total 240 to 400 pages, easily enough to sugar off to a 144 page collection.

Just a side story about writing process. After Odd Lot won a Ben Franklin silver for Best Mystery/Suspense Book in 2001, I felt the pressure to beat that with my next collection. So I wrote and rewrote the first lines, first paragraphs, and first pages of the opening story for Even Odder. Writer’s block! Dead end! Finally my writing-authority/editor/daughter Wendy Burt-Thomas (Writer’s Digest Guide to Writing Query Letters) advised me to free myself up by shifting from the write/edit side of the brain to the storytelling side. I got a mini-cassette tape recorder with headset mouthpiece and from scratch orally created a story every day while on an hour’s walk with my dog. At the end of 43 days I had 43 stories, some very bad. But I transcribed the best 15 to word processing, edited on-screen, and published Even Odder (a runner-up to J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” for the 2003 Bram Stoker Award for Young Readers). I didn’t write the book, I told it.

 

Do you have any funny stories?

Yes. My next book, Oddest Yet, won the 2004 Bram Stoker by beating Dean Koontz and tying Clive Barker. I didn’t attend the black-tie event in Burbank, figuring I had no chance against the big names (besides, I couldn’t afford the airfare and I had to preach in my church the next morning). So my agent from nearby L.A. attended, capitalized on photo ops of her schmoozing with the big names, and phoned me at 2 a.m. to say I’d won the Stoker. I was still pretty much asleep, muttered “Shit” and went back to bed.

The Stoker Committee UPS’d me my oh-so-lovely Stoker trophy that week (a haunted mansion modeled after Poe’s House of Usher) which I placed above the fireplace. Then, after two weeks of bowing down to it every night, I noticed the little door in front and opened it. It had Clive Barker’s name inscribed there for Abarat. He’d walked off the Burbank Hilton stage with my Stoker! So the Stoker Committee and UPS had to mediate a hostage exchange. Barker was gracious and the mistake was righted. After I told my daughter, she said, “Dad, you should have kept Clive Barker’s. It’s worth a lot more than your own on Ebay.” Kids are here to keep us humble, right?

What advice do you have for new writers?

Read, read, read-for enjoyment and to learn. Write, write, write anything you can–sermons, newsletter articles, jokes, anecdotes, devotional material, poems, cartoon captions, recipes, anything-but especially stories short and long. Write what you like. Submit stuff. Publish even if sometimes there’s no money but only a contributor’s copy. My first horror stories went for no-pay and low-pay, but I gave away only one-time rights, then later collected them into Odd Lot (almost all reprints of mag stories) that won awards and eventually made a lot of money. That’s contrary to most writers advice columnists who are selling nonfiction and advise you not to ever let it go unless you get paid for it.

I also say, read and learn from writing-related magazines and books. Learn from rejections (I had a thousand before an acceptance) and submit again and again. Publish your own stuff if you have to, but make sure you know your audience (for me it’s teens), your market their parents and grandparents and teachers), and how you can get it to the buyers. As my old neighbor Stephen King said, writer’s write, wannabes wannabe.

What are some of your favorite books?

Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Shane, Jaws, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Poe’s short stories, and books by J.K. Rowling, James Lee Burke, John Sandford, Tony Hillerman, Thomas Perry, Stephen King (some), Dean Koontz (some), and Sue Grafton.

What books do you recommend that fiction writers read?

Everything in their favorite fields or genres, then beyond that. I gobbled up hundreds of romances over three years, trying to see if I wanted to write the more formulaic stuff. But several romance-writer friends gave me a reality check when they said they were trying to write a book in 6 weeks and produce 2-5 a year under several names. They loved it, and more power to them for doing what they love, but it wasn’t for me. Still, I learned a lot about character development and plotting from romances. There are two absolute essential non-fiction primers every fiction writer should read: Gary Provost’s Make Your Words Work and Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer.

Most of your stories – like the Devaney and Haug mysteries – are set in New England. Why?

It’s what I know. I’ve lived most of my life in different parts of New England, so I know the dialects and accents, the common words and colloquialisms New Englanders use. My fourth collection in the Stories to Chill the Heart series is titled Wicked Odd, a northern New England phrase that has spread (Wicked Good Chowdah, wicked cold, wicked funny).

I know the places, the back woods, the small towns, and the weather. It’s second nature to me to write my characters into these settings. And every year when I read the stories aloud on radio across the country (horror in October, inspirational holiday stories in December), I allow my characters to speak in the DownEast Maine dialect and with the New Hampsha accent. Plus, using New England gives me four seasons to consider, which means I can have a body rotting and bloating in the summer sun or on ice and preserved in the (pardon the pun) dead of wintah.

What are you working on now?

A fun new novel for young adults. It’s going very nicely and the pages are piling up. I hope to have it ready for July 4th release on Cape Cod, where my fans line up for the newest book.

What’s the best part and worst part of being a writer?

The worst? You always want to spend more time at the writing, but there’s the other job that pays most of the bills. And there’s the countless time you have to put into promotion and publicity. And the small paycheck for most writers. The best? Finding yourself “in the zone” and losing track of time and place while writing. The other day I started in my writing room (midnight blue walls with fluorescent stars that glow after the lights go out) in the afterooon and looked up at the end of a chapter to see it was not only pitch-black outside but in the rest of the house. Only my computer screen and desk lamp shed any light at all. I had missed supper by an hour.

Also, finishing a story you know is good, that’s worth a lot. And holding the first copy of the new book that comes out of the case-wow (even if it’s the 15th book you’ve written). Oh, and the fact that you can write anywhere. My friend Dan Poynter is on jets all the time and yet writes every day and night there or in hotel rooms. Writing is a portable profession.

Where can people buy your books? Are they in most stores? On Amazon? On your Web site?

I don’t bother with bookstores, since they’re just warehouses you have to drive your customers to. I sell direct at arts & crafts shows, on amazon.com, and on my own website www.burtcreations.com.



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Wendy Burt-Thomas: The Importance of Query Letters

Wendy Burt-Thomas

Wendy Burt-Thomas has more than 1,000 published pieces to her credit, including articles, short stories, essays, reviews, poems and greeting cards. She has worked as an editor, columnist, staff writer, copywriter, freelance writer, writing teacher and public relations specialist.

Her first two books, “Oh, Solo Mia! The Hip Chick’s Guide to Fun for One” and “Work It, Girl! 101 Tips for the Hip Working Chick,” were written for McGraw-Hill with co-author Erin Kindberg.

Her newest book, “The Writer’s Digest Guide to Query Letters” (January 2009, Writer’s Digest Books), includes topics that Burt-Thomas taught in her class, “Breaking Into Freelance Writing” for eight years. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado and is a successful full-time freelance writer, editor and PR consultant. Yep, she makes a living as a writer!

1. Q: Can you tell us about your book?

The book was a great fit for me because I’d been teaching “Breaking Into Freelance Writing” for about eight years. In the workshop, I covered a lot of what is in this book: writing query letters to get articles in magazines, to land an agent, or to get a book deal with a publisher. Since I’m a full-time freelance magazine writer and editor with two previous books, this was incredibly fun to write because it didn’t require tons of research. I was lucky enough to receive lots of great sample query letters from writers and authors that I use as “good” examples in the book. I wrote all the “bad” examples myself because I didn’t dare ask for contributions that I knew I’d be ripping apart!

In addition to the ins and outs of what makes a good query, the book covers things like why (or why not) to get an agent, where to find one and how to choose one; writing a synopsis or proposal; selling different rights to your work; other forms of correspondence; and what editors and agents look for in new writers.

It was really important to me that the book not be a dry, boring reference book, but rather an entertaining read (while still being chock full of information). I was thrilled that Writer’s Digest let me keep all the humor.

2. Q: Why are query letters so important?

Breaking into the publishing world is hard enough right now. Unless you have a serious “in” of some kind, you really need a great query letter to impress an agent or acquisitions editor. Essentially, your query letter is your first impression. If they like your idea (and voice and writing style and background), they’ll either request a proposal, sample chapters, or the entire manuscript. If they don’t like your query letter, you’ve got to pitch it to another agency/publisher. Unlike a manuscript, which can be edited or reworked if an editor thinks it has promise, you only get one shot with your query. Make it count!

I see a lot of authors who spend months (or years) finishing their book, only to rush through the process of crafting a good, solid query letter. What a waste! If agents/editors turn you down based on a bad query letter, you’ve blown your chance of getting them to read your manuscript. It could be the next bestseller, but they’ll never see it. My advice is to put as much effort into your query as you did your book. If it’s not fabulous, don’t send it until it is.

3. Q: You’re also a magazine editor. What is your biggest gripe regarding queries?

Queries that show that the writer obviously hasn’t read our publication. I’ll admit that I did this when I was a new writer too – submitted blindly to any publication whose name sounded even remotely related to my topic. One of the examples I use was when I submitted a parenting article to a magazine for senior citizens. Oops! A well-written query pitching an article that’s not a match for the magazine isn’t going to get you any further than a poorly written query.

4. Q: There’s an entire chapter in the book about agents. Do you think all new writers should get agents?

Probably 99% of new writers should get an agent. There are lots of reasons, but my top three are: 1) Many of the larger publishing houses won’t even look at unagented submissions now; 2) Agents can negotiate better rights and more money on your behalf; 3) Agents know the industry trends, changes and staff better than you ever could.

5. Q: You’ve been a mentor, coach or editor for many writers. What do you think is the most common reason that good writers don’t get published?

Poor marketing skills. I see so many writers that are either too afraid, too uniformed, or frankly, too lazy, to market their work. They think their job is done when the write “the end” but writing is only half of the process. I’ve always told people who took my class that there are tons of great writers in the world who will never get published. I’d rather be a good writer who eats lobster than a great writer who eats hot dogs. I make a living as a writer because I spend as much time marketing as I do writing.

6. Q: What are some of the biggest misconceptions that writers have about getting a book deal?

That they’ll be rich overnight, that they don’t need to promote their book once it’s published, that publishing houses will send them on world book tours, that people will recognize them at the airport. Still, you can make great money as an author if you’re prepared to put in the effort. If it wasn’t possible, there wouldn’t be so many full-time writers.

7. Q: What must-read books do you recommend to new writers?

Christina Katz (author of “Writer Mama”) has a new book out called “Get Known Before the Book Deal” – which is fabulous. Also, Stephen King’s “On Writing” and David Morrel’s “Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing.” Anything by Anne Lamott or my Dad, Steve Burt.

8. Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned as a full-time writer?

Seize every opportunity – especially when you first start writing. I remember telling someone about a really high-paying writing gig I got and he said, “Wow. You have the best luck!” I thought, “Luck has nothing to do with it! I’ve worked hard to get where I am.” Later that week I read this great quote: “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” It’s absolutely true. And writing queries is only about luck in this sense. If you’re prepared with a good query and/or manuscript, when the opportunity comes along you’ll be successful.

9. What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

Writing the “bad” query letters. I’ve read – and written! – so many horrible ones over the years that it was a little too easy to craft them. But misery loves company and we ALL love to read really bad query letters, right?

10. Q: What do you want readers to learn from your book?

I want them to understand that while writing a good query letter is important, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You can break it down into parts, learn from any first-round rejections, and read other good queries to help understand what works. I also want them to remember that writing is fun. Sometimes new writers get so caught up in the procedures that they lose their original voice in a query. Don’t bury your style under formalities and to-the-letter formatting.

You can learn more about Wendy and her work at www.guidetoqueryletters.com/

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Christina Katz: Get Known Before The Book Deal

Christina Katz

Christina Katz is the author of Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books). She started her platform “for fun” seven years ago and ended up on “Good Morning America.” Christina teaches e-courses on platform development and writing nonfiction for publication. Her students are published in national magazines and land agents and book deals. Christina has been encouraging reluctant platform builders via her e-zines for five years, has written hundreds of articles for national, regional, and online publications, and is a monthly columnist for the Willamette Writer. A popular speaker at writing conferences, writing programs, libraries, and bookstores, she hosts the Northwest Author Series in Wilsonville, Oregon. She is also the author of Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids (Writer’s Digest Books).

Interview with Christina Katz on Get Known Before the Book Deal:

What is a platform, and why is it so important for unpublished writers to have one?

A platform is a promise, which says you will not only create something to sell (a book), but also promote it to the specific readers who will want to purchase it. Your platform communicates your expertise to others and it works all the time so you don’t have to. Your platform includes your Web presence, any public speaking you do, the classes you teach, the media contacts you’ve established, the articles you’ve published, and any other means you currently have for making your name and your future books known to a viable readership. A platform isn’t what you once did. It’s what you currently do. If others already recognize your expertise on a given topic or for a specific audience or both, then that is your platform. A platform-strong writer is a writer with influence.

Why is it so important to publishers that writers have a platform?

One writer can have a great book idea at the perfect time and be the absolute best person to write that book and still not land the deal if he or she doesn’t have the platform that is going to fulfill the promise to sell the book. Agents and editors have known this for years and look for platform-strong writers and get them book deals. If you want to land the book deal, today, then you need to become a platform-strong writer. You need to stand out in the crowd by the time you are ready to pitch your book.


Why did you write Get Known Before the Book Deal? What was the intention behind the book?

Most of the other self-promotion books for writers pick up with the book deal. No other book dials self-promotion all the way back to how to get started. My intention for Get Known was that it would be the book every writer would want to read before attending a writer’s conference. It should increase any writer’s chances of writing a saleable proposal and landing a book deal whether they pitch the book in-person or by query.

As I was writing the book, I saw how this type of information was often being offered as “insider secrets” at outrageous prices. No one should have to pay thousands of dollars for the information they can find in my book for the price of a paperback! Seriously. You can ask your library to order it and read it for free. Get Known outlines the complete platform basics step-by-step.


Is there a single most important thing authors need to do to build a platform?

When you think about the fact that about 500 books are published each day in this country, you realize that writing a book isn’t going to set you apart. So, the first thing you need to know is what makes you and your expertise unique and communicate that. If you don’t know who you are and what you uniquely offer, how is anyone else going to know? I call this cultivating your identity, not branding, because that word is so grossly overused these days. Identity also nods to the importance of keeping things real and staying true to yourself, while also making self-promotion a priority.


Can you give three specific tips to help writers launch their platform?

Sure. Here’s my top three…

1. Clarify the expertise you have to offer. If you don’t know what your expertise is, then mulling it over could take some time. And that’s okay. Consult experts you respect. Do some self-reflection. Get out and connect with others like you through associations or conferences. Write some articles on things you know how to do. Don’t be afraid to take time for platform development before you start spending a lot of time online…especially if you already are online but are not getting any closer to accomplishing your professional writing goals. When it comes to clarifying your expertise, taking a step back and looking within is a good strategy.

2. Carve out a distinct niche among others who are offering similar expertise. How are you different? Inquiring minds want to know. You’ll have to communicate who you are and what you do quickly. Attention spans are getting shorter, so writing down what you do concisely is critical. Platform isn’t the credentials or your resume; it’s what you currently do. It’s current, constantly evolving, and updated on an ongoing basis. A blog is a good example of a place where a writer can authentically share what she is learning to assist others. Any niche should always be a win-win proposition like this. But again, give your topic some forethought. Realize that a hundred people might already be blogging on the same topic.

3. Identify and respond to your audience. If you are vague about your audience, the whole writing process takes longer and typically requires more rewriting. This applies to books, blogs and everything else. But when you identify your specific audience and begin speaking to them directly, the conversation can spark all kinds of wonderful ideas, connections and opportunities. Small concrete steps build over time and create career momentum.

Times are tight, and people don’t necessarily want to shell out money right now. Do you have any tips that are cost-friendly?

Platform development shouldn’t break the bank. My advice is don’t shell out money at the get-go. Instead educate yourself first and then take small steps. Try to avoid the impulse to slap together a platform quickly to impress others. I suggest a more long-term approach and working slowly and steadily in order to spend less and save more in the long run. This means, while you are working on your novel, you should at least be planning your platform. And if you want to write nonfiction, I suggest platform development first and book proposal development second. Platform development will help you write a stronger and more impressive proposal. The numbers of people you influence will help close the deal.


What are the special challenges for fiction writers building a platform?

Fiction/memoir/children’s writers will often spin off a series of topics they can explore to help promote themes they’ve already written about and hope to sell in book form. For example, novelist Marc Acito wrote How I Paid For College, A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater. Afterwards, it made sense for him to write and teach and speak on how to write humorous fiction and how to write a page-turner. Note how specific his topics were. He spun them off after mastering them in his process.

Other things fiction writers often learn about involve: place, a topic from their research, a time period, a truth or phenomenon, universal human themes, a particular time or phase every person experiences (like coming of age), or the creative process itself. These can become promotional opportunities (sometimes even paying ones) that spark book sales.


How do being prolific and/or productive relate to platform building?

Many writers promise publishers that they have the ability to make readers seek out and purchase their book. But when it comes time to demonstrate this ability, they can’t deliver. This explains why so many books get into print, only to go right out of print within the year. They don’t go out of print because they aren’t well written, mind you. They go out of print because they don’t sell. My mission is to empower writers to be 100 percent responsible for their writing career success and stop looking to others to do their promotional work for them so this won’t happen to them.

Platform development is crucial to the sustainability of your writing career. Don’t think: get a book deal. Think: get book deals. A prolific writer can churn out words. A productive writer closes deals and signs contracts to write the kinds of books she’d love to read.


Are there any types of writers who don’t need a platform?

Yes. There are dozens of reasons to write but only writers who want to establish themselves as professional writers, who aspire to publish a traditionally published or a self-published book should concern themselves with platform development. If you’re writing for other reasons, such as to heal, to connect with friends and family, or just for pleasure, then perhaps you don’t need a platform.

When you’re done platform building, how do you find time to write?

My career goes in cycles. I have periods that focus on writing followed by periods that focus on self-promotion. I’m in a promo cycle right now and it’s fun! I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. And I’m still writing plenty. I have noticed that these supposed “non-writing times” often yield the next book idea, which has been the case again this time. I can’t wait to pitch it.

If a writer starts today and allows platform development to be an integrated aspect of her writing career, I’m sure she will find that the two efforts-writing and self-promotion-feed each other and help her career to grow naturally and authentically. And what writer wouldn’t want that?

You can learn more about Christina and her offerings at http://www.christinakatz.com.

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A&E Television VP Laura Fleury: Crime 360

Laura Fleury

LAURA FLEURY
Vice President, Non-Fiction and Alternative Programming
A&E/BIO Channel/Crime & Investigation Network

Laura Fleury is Vice President of Non-Fiction and Alternative Programming at A&E Network. In this position, she plays a senior role in the development and production of nonfiction series and specials for A&E, Bio Channel and The Crime & Investigation Network. She has developed, launched and currently serves as Executive Producer for many of A&E’s most critically-acclaimed and top-rated series including MANHUNTERS: FUGITIVE TASK FORCETM and CRIME 360TM (both tied as the #1 justice series launches in network history) and PARKING WARSTM, all of which launched in 2008, the SWAT franchise launched in 2006, and THE FIRST 48TM, which launched in 2004 and is the top-rated nonfiction crime series in cable. She is currently developing a number of pilots for 2009. She also has developed and executive-produced new series for The BIO Channel, including the top-rated series in the history of the BIO Channel, I SURVIVED…TM, and THE INTERROGATORSTM which will launch in 2009. She has developed and produced numerous specials for AETN including First Person Killers, Miami City Vice, Bill Kurtis Special Reports, the A&E IndieFilms project Abused (short-listed for the Academy Awards), and Miami Manhunt.

In her previous roles as Senior Director, and prior to that, Director, Documentary Programming at A&E Network, she developed, launched and executive-produced several documentary series and specials to ratings and critical acclaim including 2-time Emmy-nominated Cold Case FilesTM, Minute-by-Minute, American Justice, Parole Board, Investigative Reports, Makeover Mamas, The Real Story, The Point and The Hunt. Awards include the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award in 2002, and numerous Emmy nominations. Prior to that, Ms. Fleury served as a Supervising Producer for a number of A&E’s documentary specials and series, including A&E’s very first ‘real-life series’, LA Detectives, as well as Biography®, The New Explorers, Sea Tales, Treasure!, The Unexplained, Inside Story, The Planets and One-on-One with David Frost among others. Prior to joining A&E, Ms. Fleury worked in independent film production on scripted and unscripted films, including the award-winning documentaries BROTHER’S KEEPER and PARADISE LOST.

Crime 360

CRIME 360 premiered on A&E in March of this year. We specifically developed this show to build on the success of our ground-breaking hit series, THE FIRST 48, by evolving the genre again with CRIME 360 which brings real present-tense criminal investigations and cutting edge-forensic technology and high-end computer graphics together for the first time on television.

In each episode viewers experience the investigations first-hand with detectives and forensic specialists from around the country as they work to solve their cases with the added tool of state-of-the-art 3D laser scanners in their arsenal. These scanners allow investigators to measure, model and diagram crime scenes with great detail, precisely preserving the original scene so they can revisit it as they test out various theories and test evidence against it. We follow each investigation from beginning to end, unlike any other present tense show, so from the moment detectives are called to the scene, viewers are part of the investigation through until the end.

CRIME 360 is also revolutionary in the way it uses 360-degree digital photography and computer-generated imagery (CGI) visualizations to allow the viewer to experience these unfolding investigations, the evidence, and the detectives’ evolving theories in ways never seen before on television.

We were thrilled with the reception of the show’s inaugural season — it was the #1 justice series launch in the history of the network. Fans seemed to really appreciate how CRIME 360 takes real-life law enforcement programming to the next level-combining real investigations with real cutting-edge technology. Today, we’re releasing the first season on DVD.

Whether or not you saw the episodes when they were first aired the DVD set will get you ready for the premiere of season two.

By the way, episodes are also available for download on iTunes.

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You can visit Crime 360’s website here.

Be sure to visit The Graveyard Shift on Saturday December 20 and Sunday December 21 to see how you can win a DVD of Crime 360’s entire first season! This is so important I’m skipping Weekend Road Trip this week.

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