WICKED WEDNESDAYS

Diary daze of a mystery writer!

And so, the next stage in my mystery odyssey begins. I have been asked to prepare some information for my editor to use at the "cover conference" which will take place shortly.

This is particularly exciting as they also want any ideas I might have (not all publishers allow this input). And also, this brings me one step closer to the publication date, even though it's still far away -- April, 2012. The dream is closer to becoming a reality.

To continue the birthing analogy that others often use -- if the release date is the birthdate of the writer's 'baby', then this is the ultrasound stage. Some form is being given to what has previously been a bulky manuscript. Yes, I have it printed out here even though it was sent electronically. Thank God for the computer age. Could you imagine the cost of mailing this mass of paper down south?

This prenatal bulk will also be formally named. The working title will be exchanged for something that more befits what the novel has become. My baby will have a name!

I'm still awaiting the editing stage -- and I know there will be a lot for me to do when we get there -- but just think, a cover! That blank website will have something to capture a reader's interest. I can start with promo material -- bookmarks at the very least. Uh, something else to add to that long To Do list.

This is all very exciting. Can you tell? You authors with a long string of titles to your credit may have forgotten the ultra-sound stage. But for me, being my first born, it's a delight.

So, on to the joyful task at hand...and then back to draft #2 of book #2 and the deadline that's looming. Maybe it's a good thing I'm now a dual personality, what with so many tasks.

Any tips on multi-tasking?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
Mystery Book Club series coming
from Berkley Prime Crime, April, 2012

CRIME ON MY MIND

Malice, here I come!

In just a short week (notice how weeks & days can be much shorter if there's a deadline of some sort looming, even a good one?) I'll be attending the Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, MD. If you're a cosy type, this is the place to be.

The last Malice I attended was just after 911. It was held in Washington D.C. at that point, needing a larger space after many successful years at the Hyatt Regency in Bethesda. I stopped attending because other conferences were wooing my travel budget. And, to a small extent, because the conference vibes had changed when it moved into the big city.

Now, it's back in Bethesda again, in the same great hotel with the rooms that wind around an open walkway which allows one to peer down into the lobby and eyeball who's where. It also has a marvelous glass elevator, and while I cringe, hugging the back wall if such an elevator climbs the exterior of a building, this one is inside and not quite so hard for someone with vertigo to manage. It's also the elevator in which I was stuck with my favourite author of the day, Nancy Pickard, for 20 minutes while the maintenance staff worked to get it moving again. We enjoyed a nice visit, Nancy gave me the name of her agent, and the elevator continued on its way. Ah, conference memories!

It's not all fun and games though. Well, always fun...yes. The panels are always entertaining and informative. And I'll give a small plug to the one I'm moderating about mysteries set in the New England states. it's called, Cold Winters, Deadly Nights: Murder in New England and I've just finished reading the latest books by my panel of authors -- Sharon Love Cook, Katilyn Dunnett, Lea Wait, and Heather Webber -- and thoroughly enjoyed each of them. So, I'm really looking forward to meeting this crew and I guarantee, it will be a panel to attend, if you're attending Malice.

The size of this conference means there's a lot of schmoozing that goes on -- always a chance to hook up with an author you've been dying to meet, someone from the publishing world, or readers who delight in mysteries. It's very similar to our own Bloody Words in that way.

There's the Agatha Awards banquet on Saturday night and this year, it's even more exciting because Mary Jane Maffini is on the short list for the Best Short Story award! Her nominated story, So Much in Common, appeared in Ellery Queen magazine Sept/Oct 2010. Go Mary Jane!!

So, my panel notes are prepared, plane tickets printed out, banquet meal already ordered. There's just the small problem of packing. What to take, what to wear. I'm starting on that one early because you can never change your mind too often.

And then, I'll be going through the same routine all over again for Bloody Words 2011 which is being held in Victoria, B.C. the first weekend in June!

Conference season is in the air! Will I meet you at any?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
Mystery Book Club series coming
from Prime Crime Books, April 2012

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

My new baby is two weeks old today, having burst forth on the scene on April Fool’s Day.

No, not my new puppy, my new book. I feel guilty because until now, I have not even sent out birth announcements. Cedric O’Toole already has enough to feel inferior about, without adding maternal neglect. So I’m going to brag a bit.

The Fall Guy is the first in what I hope will be a new series featuring simple country handyman Cedric O’Toole. It is part of Orca’s Rapid Reads imprint of short, entertaining novels aimed at the busy or reluctant reader. This book is quite different in style, setting and characterization than my Inspector Green novels, and I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to delve into something new, play with an entirely new set of characters and setting. Cedric couldn’t be more different from Michael Green. He lives alone with his dog on a hard-scrabble farm he inherited from his mother, he’s a dreamer and a tinkerer who collects junk in the hopes of scoring the next great invention. He barely made it through high school and finds his tongue tied in knots whenever the spotlight shines upon him. But he’s good with his hands and ekes out a living as a handyman. A perfect way to accidentally stumble upon people’s secrets.

The setting for The Fall Guy is the rural Ontario countryside, dotted with lakes, cedar swamps and craggy Canadian Shield hills. Although serene and beautiful on the surface, it provides plenty of opportunity for trouble, from decades-old grudges between families to simmering tensions between cottagers and locals. I use my own cottage area around Sharbot Lake as the inspiration.

All the Rapid Reads books have a brisk, punchy style that keeps the reader wide awake and turning the pages. But they are big stories in small packages, written with an eye on character and emotional depth. Perfect for a quick read on the deck at the cottage, or on an airplane, or as a refreshing break from the Stieg Larssons threatening to topple your TBR pile. Written by some of Canada’s foremost crime writers, they are well worth a peek at http://www.orcabook.com/rapid-reads.com/

In keeping with Cedric’s style, my launch for The Fall Guy will be unlike any I have had in the past. I have always wanted to throw a party in a pub, and this is my chance. I am teaming up with two other Orca authors, Brenda Chapman, who is launching her own Rapid Reads title The Second Wife and Jeff Ross, who is launching his young adult novel The Drop. We are throwing a party at the Clocktower Brew Pub at 575 Bank Street in the Glebe (Ottawa). There will be pub food, beer on tap, door prizes, and of course, books for sale, courtesy of Books on Beechwood.

So if you live in Ottawa or want an excuse to visit the city during the Tulip Festival, come on down on May 15 between 4 – 6 pm and raise a pint to Cedric.

It’s his day.


Barbara Fradkin is a child psychologist with a fascination for how we turn bad. In addition to her darkly haunting short stories in the Ladies Killing Circle anthologies, she writes the gritty, Ottawa-based Inspector Green novels which have
won back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, which explores love in all its complications, is hot off the press.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

Launch time – almost...

Who was it said that producing a book is a process that makes childbirth look easy? Not a woman, certainly, and most certainly not an actual mother. But writing a book, from the first empty page – or blank computer screen – to the finished manuscript, and then having it shepherded through to a finished product between covers is a sometimes wrenching process; and when not actually wrenching, really difficult and wearying. Well, for this writer, anyway. In just over ten years I have produced three novels; and a half-dozen unfinished works – many hundreds of pages, hard copy and electronic copy both. Stillbirths, I suppose one could call them, if one were being graphically crude – or just criminally evocative. Which, come to think on it, is what I do.

I have friends and fellow writers (most of them female, though) who produce a novel a year; and one notable friend, the uniquely talented Mary Jane Maffini, who produces more than one book per annum, and juggles three different series.

How does she do it? I have no idea. I think the output would be even greater if she could type more quickly, but thus far that’s only a rumour.

Anyway, my third book is about to appear. Yesterday, I picked up five copies of the advance reading copy of Death Of A Lesser Man from my publicist, Taryn Manias. She had been busy all of that day preparing press kits for mailing out to some 60 reviewers in Canada and the US. We will hope for a good outcome. The release date is a month from now, May 15th. The Ottawa launch will happen a few days later. A launch in St. John’s – scene of all three Inspector Stride novels – is a possibility for later in the summer.

On the last weekend in May, as part of the book-promotion process – I will be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for a luncheon event with the Canadian Library Association as part of their annual meeting. I will be traveling to and from Ottawa with Barbara Fradkin – she of the very successful Inspector Green series – and the aforementioned amazing Mary Jane.

It seems that I will be the lone male writer on the menu for the luncheon, surrounded by homicidal females. And not for the first time in my writing career. It’s been my – and others’ – observation that the crime-writing milieu is almost dominated by the ladies. There is even an organization known as “Sisters In Crime”, and a local Ottawa branch called “The Ladies’ Killing Circle”. (Imagine, if you will, the hubbub that might erupt if there were organizations known as “The Gentlemen’s Killing Circle”, or “Brothers In Crime”.) There is probably some very good explanation for all this. Perhaps MJ and Barbara will enlighten me on the flight to Halifax.

The week after my return from Halifax, I will be winging my way to Victoria, British Columbia, for the annual gore-fest of the Crime Writers of Canada, Bloody Words 2011, June 3-5. The last time I attended that gathering it was held in Ottawa in 2009. On that occasion I chaired a panel on historical mysteries. At the Vancouver conference, I will sit on a panel on “Cold Cases” (perhaps because I come from an island in the North Atlantic where most cases are chilly?); I will also introduce and moderate a session with Barbara Fradkin and Garry Ryan, “Inspired To Murder”. That should be an interesting session, and this time – for once – the males have the female outnumbered, two to one – although Barbara would probably see that only as evening the odds.


Thomas Rendell Curran was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland. His novels are set in the post-war, pre-Confederation Newfoundland of the late 1940’s. His protagonist is Inspector Eric Stride of the Newfoundland Constabulary. (The designation Royal was added to the Constabulary’s title in 1979.) The first, Undertow, was short-listed for an Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award from Crime Writers of Canada. The second is Rossiter. And the third Eric Stride novel is on its way.

MAYHEM ON MONDAY

What will it be this time: celebration or sympathy?

Uh oh, here they come again: butterflies in the stomach. Tomorrow, April 5th, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder will hit the shelves. Today I will worry about that. Oh sure, it’s my thirteenth book and the fifth in the Charlotte Adams series. I am well aware of that and you’d think I’d get over those butterflies when I think about it. Shouldn’t I be blasé after all these years? Maybe. But there’s something about the first ‘official’ day of a new book. Will it have all its fingers and toes, um, pages? Will readers reach for it? Will they like what they read? Will reviewers be kind to it? Will the series still feel fresh? Will the characters actually stay in character and continue to intrigue? Will all the former loose ends that were fixed in the last draft stay knit up? And of course, the all-important question: will the readers guess the ending or will I win the game of wits with them? There’s no way to know that until the book has been read. Believe me, they’ll let me know if they catch on before the ‘darkest hour’.

It’s a bit like being a parent. We authors get very attached to our projects, sort of like our children. A book does take longer than a pregnancy as a rule and is often painful at certain stages too. The results are worth it, of course, for the author and we hope for the reader. We are also, by and large, very proud of our literary (and criminous) offspring. Rightly so. But there’s something about that day before the official publication date that stirs up any worries, anxieties, whatever. Of course, in my case I could worry over a longer period, but this is an intense business and who’s got time? Once a year for one day has to do the trick.

So wish me well and join me in a small bit of fun to celebrate or sympathize with two of my on-going characters in the Charlotte Adams books: the rescued miniature dachshunds and reigning canine royalty in Charlotte’s small apartment,Truffle and Sweet Marie.

As the story starts, the spoiled little darlings are trying to pass their therapy dog test (third time and you’re out). They’ve been working on this since book three, with woefully embarrassing results. Of course, there is murder and mayhem and investigating by Charlotte, but we are talking about the dogs here. To celebrate the arrival of the book, I am having a little contest and I thought you might be interested. The winner will be drawn from among the correct answers and will get the cute little watch shown here.

The ‘skill-testing question follows:

Truffle and Sweet Marie have their last chance to pass their Therapy Dog Test. What happens?

a) Truffle passes and Sweet Marie disgraces herself.
b) Sweet Marie succeeds and Truffle snarls at the instructor (automatic fail)
c) Both dogs leave Charlotte mortified
d) Truffle and Sweet Marie pass with flying colors
e) None of the above

If you think you have an answer, email me at detect@rogers.com Good luck! Psst, you have until the first week of May.

MJ

The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder: a Charlotte Adams mystery
(April 5, 2011)
A TOP PICK! RT Book Reviews, April 2011 4 1/2 stars


Mary Jane Maffini rides herd on three (soon to be three and a half) mystery series and a couple of dozen short stories. Her thirteenth mystery novel, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder (April 5, 2011), is brimming with names, no two the same.

WICKED WEDNESDAY

Music to write by.

I have to have music on all day. I awaken to the radio playing classical music, switch over to CBC Radio One for the local morning show until I start working, and then it's back to music. Fortunately, CBC Radio Two obliges me with 5 1/2 hours more of classical music. Then I usually switch to CDs.

However, when I'm deep into writing, I like something more in keeping with what's happening in my mind. I went through a Baroque period, which lasted quite a long time actually. Now days, since my mysteries are set in Alabama, I've made another switch.

I started by playing, over and over, the soundtrack from The Big Easy. Wrong state but it got me thinking southern, especially on cold northern winter days. I also found Quincy Jones to be a big help.

With this second book, I'm more into Aaron Copland. Today, I have Appalachian Spring in the background and then I'll move on to Rodeo.

Music moves me. It always has. It deeply affects my mood and is great for elevating it when I'm feeling down, consoling me in time of pain or grief, calming me before bedtime after a hyper evening, as well as hugging me in a cherished memory.

It can also be inspiring. I had no idea earlier this morning what I'd write for this blog, until Copland came on. Aha! A blog about music and its many powers. As such, it's one of the many elements in my writing. Along with the research, the plot, the characters, the setting, the dialogue...there's music.

Is it a part of your writing or do you prefer silence?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
Book Club Mysteries coming April 2012, from Berkley Prime Crime
Murder By the Book

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

HELP! ALIENS ARE TAKING OVER MY MIND!

Okay, not really. I created the aliens myself, and they’re not really aliens. They’re characters in the stories I write.

But they do like to take over. One of my protagonists lived in a house almost identical to mine (how convenient for both the writer and the writee). Someone broke into her house, the fictional one.

She was fine. I, however, couldn’t work on those chapters when I was home alone.

I moved far away, and now live in a rural area of Ontario where textile and needlework shops are hard to find. I sensibly invented Threadville, a village where textile and needlework shops line the main street.

My protagonist, Willow, owns a machine embroidery boutique, In Stitches. When she needs something she doesn’t carry in her own shop, she strolls across the street to the fabric store, the yarn shop, the notions boutique, or the quilting shop.

So there I was, taking a break from writing about her life. I was back in my real life, setting up my computer and embroidery machine to stitch an incredible embroidery design. I needed thread in a particular shade of periwinkle.

I believed, if only for a second, that I could simply cross the street to browse in Threadville . . .

It gets worse.

Last Friday, Willow blogged (see, she really has taken over) at www.killercharacters.com about what happened to her during the beginning of my first story, DIRE THREADS. A bullying zoning commissioner refused to grant her a building permit to renovate the sweet little cottage in her back yard. She wanted to rent the cottage to tourists who would enjoy living next to a river and a hiking trail leading to a sandy beach on Lake Erie.

The zoning commissioner, however, had his own agenda. He planned to turn the hiking trail into an ATV trail, expropriate the land the cottage stood on, and replace the cottage with public outhouses.

Willow made some dire threats. She didn’t mean them literally.

Early the next morning, that zoning commissioner was murdered. In Willow’s back yard, beside her cottage. The wrong people remembered Willow’s dire threats.

She ended her post on Killer Characters by asking if anyone had ever felt threatened by outhouses. (The answer was yes.)

Friday night, only hours after Willow posed the question about outhouses, I was back in my real life. I went to dinner at the home of friends I’d never before visited before. They live in fine 1840’s home in a tranquil, if snowy, country setting.

I’d no sooner removed my coat and boots when my friends pointed through their back window to a quaint building a few steps from the back door. “There’s the outhouse,” they said. “We don’t have indoor plumbing.”

As a writer or reader, do you ever feel fiction taking over your mind?


Janet Bolin writes the Threadville Mystery Series for Berkley Prime Crime (PenguinUSA). The first book, DIRE THREADS, hits store shelves June 7, 2011, and is available for pre-order now.
Janet’s short stories have been published in literary journals including The New Quarterly and The Antigonish Review. Her humorous essays have been read aloud by Bill Richardson and Shelagh Rogers on nationally-broadcast CBC radio shows. Three of those essays were published in the anthology DEAR SAD GOAT, Douglas & McIntyre, 2002.
Janet lives in rural Ontario with a pair of dogs who have a remarkable resemblance to Willow’s dogs.

MAYHEM ON MONDAY

Perils of procrastination: Part 2

Linda’s latest blog struck a cord with me. Procrastination: it has to be the greatest enemy of the productive writer. Not only that the writing doesn’t get done, but it hangs over your head when you are being distracted by, well, it doesn’t matter what. Anything. I would like to add … wait is that a cardinal in the tree outside my window? Gorgeous. I’ll be back!

Where were we? Oh yes. Procrastination. My grandmother used to say, “Never do today what can be put off until tomorrow.” She really did. I don’t think she intended me to take her seriously, but it happened. I’ve spent my life dodging deadlines and dreaming of writing.

The problem with writing and actually selling books is that when the dream come true it also comes with a deadline. Dead. Line. That would be two (!) four-letter words sent to torment.

Thirteen books and two dozen short stories and nothing’s changed. The massive task of writing a book is so overwhelming that it sends many of us to the sofa to watch endless reruns of CSI. Would you like blowflies with that order, sir?

Even if you’re not procrastinating, the task can get hijacked by the gazillion business and promotion tasks (yes, Miss Facebook and Mr. Twitter, I’m talking about you). What about you? Are you procrastinating about promo if you’re writing or putting off writing if you’re scribbling updates for your shamefully outdated Webpage? You claim you would have done that earlier, except you were scrambling to get your mailing list up to date and your newsletter ready. But wait, your blogs are due! All at once? Eeep.


What do you mean you need to have a bubble bath?

There is a tiny glimmer of hope for the worst of us. It came in a blog post from my friend Elizabeth Spann Craig (also Riley Adams) a while back and stuck with me. She’s a busy writer, bloggeuse, and mom with at least two mystery series going. Who knows what else is up her sleeve? In an interview Elizabeth revealed her secret of seizing writing time in fifteen-minute (and even smaller!) segments wherever she finds it: in the car at stoplights, in coffee shops on the way to errands, in waiting rooms and at kids’ sporting events. In the same interview, Elizabeth said that for pleasure and escape, she was in the middle of In the Shadow of the Glacier, by our own Vicki Delany. You can check out Elizabeth’s writing tips on http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com/

This fifteen minute idea stuck with me. It does the trick. I think it works because writing under those circumstances seems like time stolen from duties. It’s a bit like when we first got started, when writing was a stolen pleasure rather than a requirement. Me? I’m all for going back there, at least in my attitude.

How about you? Do you write at stoplights? In the shower? While being arraigned for writing at stoplights? Any tips to share? We need ‘em!


Mary Jane Maffini rides herd on three (soon to be three and a half) mystery series and a couple of dozen short stories. Her thirteenth mystery novel, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder (April 5, 2011), is brimming with names, no two the same.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

It's all research!

As my writing group delights in saying, "It's all research". You're walking along the slush-covered street and a bus splashes you -- IAR. You get lost on a long drive and find yourself along some unfamiliar, unusual country road -- IAR. You get thrown in jail (although I hasten to state, none of us have) -- IAR.

So, that's the attitude I took the other morning when I leapt out of bed after checking the alarm clock, without glasses. I quietly donned by walking outfit, went into the kitchen for a glass of water, and noted that the clock on the stove hammered home the point that it was an hour earlier than I'd thought. No wonder it was so dark. Oh well, since I was all ready to hit the streets of Fort Myers, just keep going.

I love being out early in the morning when there are few others foolish enough to greet the dawn. Mainly dog walkers and they're a friendly bunch, often to the point of muddy paw prints on my black jogging pants. But that's what washers are for. I didn't meet any of that morning group though. Too early. Just one older gent doing a fast walk along the road, a tiny red light flashing from where it hung from his neck on a chain. We said 'Hi' as we'd done every morning and then I thought, why is he out so early? For the next few blocks I gave him all sorts of drama happening in his personal life. He'd had a late night argument with his wife and was still steaming. He would sometimes awaken in a sweat from a nightmare dealing with his past. He was searching for someplace to hide the body. My point -- IAR.

I decided to cut through a portion of the golf course, a part of my brain remembering tales (possibly tall ones) we'd heard the first time visiting Florida -- stories of the gullies and ponds saturating the course, that had to be culled for alligators. They'd even been spotted climbing the banks. Now, the only gator I've seen is from an airboat in the Everglades, but of course, I was certain that noise in the underbrush was a hungry alligator about to pounce. I never did find out what it was as I gamely continued my walk.

Then I thought, HDSF, another of our invaluable sayings. How Does She Feel? How did I feel at the point of dread -- could I describe it...could I remember it to add to my novel? IAR.

By the time our home base came into view, the Floridian sky glowed a muted pink. Breathtaking when viewed as the backdrop to a variety of palm trees. Remember the beauty, remember the feeling of awe -- IAR!

Many mornings when my walk is ended, I will have worked though a sticky plot point and/or moved my story ahead, at least in my mind. No such luck today. But I do find there's nothing like an early morning walk to stimulate the imagination.

What gets your brain in over-drive?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase