Sofie Kelly on The Writer’s Image

Please welcome guest blogger Sofie Kelly. Leave a comment today and you could win a copy of both of her mystery novels!

Sofie Kelly is the pseudonym of award-winning young adult writer, Darlene Ryan. Darlene’s latest teen novel is Cuts Like a Knife, a Junior Library Guild selection. Sofie writes the New York Times bestselling Magical Cats mysteries. The next book in the series, Copycat Killing will be available May 1st. Visit her at www.sofiekelly.com.

Whenever I tell someone I'm a writer I almost always hear, "You don’t look like a writer." If I ask what I do look like, the answer I most often hear is an academic. A few times I've heard that I look like a psychologist.

I think it's the glasses.

Back when I worked in radio I was always hearing that I didn't look like my voice. "I thought you were blonde," people would say when I showed up at some community event, looking at me somewhat disappointed. (When I say "people" I mean guys and when I say looking at me I don't mean in the eyes.)

The face we present to the world does matter. Readers--as well as agents and editors--like to be able to put a face to the name. And a photo of me in my paint-spotted sweatpants with my hair standing on end is going to make a very different impression than the photo of me smiling in the sunshine at the park. But I think there’s another part to a writer's image that's even more important than how our author photo makes us look, and that's presenting a professional image.

Do you have a business-like email address? (Not bobbys-girl or bbq-king.) Do you answer emails within a couple of days or have an auto-respond message to explain why you can't? What’s the message on your voicemail? (Your acoustic version of the Bay City Roller's Saturday Night is not professional unless you're looking for work in a tribute band.) 

When your manuscript is finished is it properly formatted and checked for spelling mistakes and grammar errors? When an agent asks to see it, do you get back to her in a few days or a few months? Do you wrangle over every single suggested change with your editor? Do you argue for days about serial comma use and whether or not Ms needs a period? (It's not an abbreviation so I maintain it doesn't.) Do you meet your deadlines? Do you say please and thank you?

Being reasonable, responsible, and easy to work with is part of creating the image of a professional writer. No one's suggesting you have to be a pushover. But over time, people get tired of working with the "difficult artiste," no matter how brilliant his or her writing is.

Maintaining a professional image makes it just a bit more likely that you’ll have a long career. And no one will be disappointed if it turns out you're not blonde.

The Mystery Novel: A Strategy for Living?

Welcome guest blogger Betty Webb. As a journalist, Betty interviewed U.S. presidents, astronauts who walked on the moon, and Nobel Prize-winners, as well as the homeless, the dying, and polygamy runaways. The dark Lena Jones mysteries, based on stories she covered as a reporter, include this year's Desert Wind, given a starred review by Publishers Weekly; Desert Lost ("One of the Top Five Mysteries of 2009," Library Journal); Desert Noir ("A mystery with a social conscience," Publishers Weekly); and Desert Wives, ("Eye-popping," New York Times). Betty’s humorous Gunn Zoo series debuted with the prize-winning The Anteater of Death, followed by the just-as-silly The Koala of Death. A long-time book reviewer at Mystery Scene Magazine, Betty is a member of National Federation of Press Women, Mystery Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and the National Organization of Zoo Keepers.

When I learned that today’s topic was “strategy,” I worried that it was both too specific and too vague. But when I looked the word up in my Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, one of several definitions caught my eye: “A careful plan or method for achieving an end.”

In mystery writing, that end is usually – after the commission of a murder – to restore truth and justice to a threatened community. Yes, someone’s life has been unfairly cut short, but because of the due diligence of our hero sleuth, the guilty person has been apprehended and order has been restored to the world. The sun rises over a peaceful land and birds sing sweet songs as rosy-cheeked children skip hand-in-hand down picturesque country lanes.

If only.

I give a popular writer’s workshop titled “Five Ideas A Day, Every Day,” in which I teach my students how to read a daily newspaper for story ideas. This idea-getting strategy never fails because newspapers are filled with mayhem, from the front page (“Severed head found on popular hiking trail”) to the comics (the anteater in “B.C.” slurps down a peaceful ant farm), to the advice column (“Dear Abby, my husband is having an affair with my mother”). In newsprint, the carnage is never-ending.

But that’s because they reflect real life, a chaotic place where as soon as we solve one problem, another rears its thorny head. We feel like Sisyphus, forever rolling a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down every time.

Compared to real life, a traditional mystery novel is a tidy place. Someone does a Bad Thing, and people get hurt. But unlike in real life, in mysteries the perpetrator of the Bad Thing is always caught and duly punished. Light chases away darkness. Serenity replaces chaos. And it is the strategy of the sleuth that has brought about this magical transformation. Whether a grizzled police detective, a suburban housewife, or even the octogenarian resident of an assisted living home, successful sleuths all have one thing in common: an orderly mind.

In the sleuth’s orderly mind, one and one always make two. Effect – the murder – always follows cause – the motive. Confronted with a dead body, the sleuth mentally backtracks from the scene of the crime to the commission of the crime. Throughout this process, clues are studied, red herrings explored and ignored. Consciously or not, the sleuth firmly believes the Universe is an orderly place, that all he/she needs to do is pinpoint the one disorderly element, and lo presto, the perpetrator is revealed. The innocents are saved, the guilty are punished. The sleuth’s strategy guarantees salvation.

Sounds almost religious, doesn’t it?

Maybe that’s because in a way, a traditional mystery novel is a religious pilgrimage. We begin in Eden, where all is peace and light. Enter the snake. Daylight darkens. Eden vanishes. Someone gets killed. Chaos reigns until one day, someone with an orderly mind shows up with a list of rules that promise peace and light – a strategy for living, if you will. Exhausted by the chaos, most people eagerly adopt the rule book, hoping that by adopting this new strategy, they will win back Eden.

This is exactly what a mystery novel gives us: a formerly happy place marred by an ugly crime, returned to salvation by our mentally-formidable sleuth.

Maybe it bears repeating – strategy guarantees salvation.

At least in traditional mystery novels, it does.

To read the first chapter of Betty Webb’s new mystery, DESERT WIND, log onto www.bettywebb-mystery.com

Snake in the Bucket

Welcome today's guest, Camille Minichino, a retired physicist turned writer. As Camille Minichino, she's the author of the Periodic Table Mysteries. As Margaret Grace, she writes the Miniature Mysteries, based on her lifelong hobby. As Ada Madison, she writes the academic mysteries featuring Professor Sophie Knowles, college math teacher. The Probability of Murder will be released March 6. Soon, every aspect of her life will be a mystery series. 


I don't trust anything that can't be described by an equation and/or plugged into 120 VAC. So you can imagine my delight when Gigi told me that the Pens, my bookmarked, read-daily blog, would be talking about SNAKES!

An equation-based theme; what a dream!

The snake curve is one of my favorites. Also called active contours, snake curves are the wave (so to speak) of the future. They're able to track motion in a way that holds great promise for cool apps, like tracing the history of a person's smile, or the action of a heart valve. The full progress of the smile in the picture, as well as other apps that are sure to revolutionize medical image processing, are given in this report from the International Journal of Computer Vision.


OK, I know for some people the snake curve may not be the first thing that comes to mind for this topic. More often, the word SNAKE evokes an image of a scaly reptile, or a plumber's tool, or an ex-husband. 

Thinking about this blog has made me realize how much snakes have to do with my life. Many items on my Anti-Bucket List (things I hope never to have to do before I die) have to do with snakes, including but not limited to

1. Visit a zoo (the only place where snakes should exist)
2. Hike (where there might be snakes);
3. Garden  (where there surely are snakes)
4. Eat outside (where the risk of snakes is great)
5. Sleep outside (see 4, only more so)
6. Bring a plant into my home (thus, a possible snake embryo)
7. Enter a pet store (where all species thrive, indiscriminately)

I could save a lot of time by simply putting NATURE on my Anti-Bucket List.

But NATURE includes  technology, which I love and want more of. Unlike snakes, technology is an extension of ourselves, from scissors as an extension of our fingers (not just for Johnny Depp!) to printers and books as an extension of our thoughts, to cars as an extension of our legs, and so on.

Snakes do nothing to extend our abilities. Not even Juliet Blackwell's earlier post, with its symbolic pokes in that regard changed my mind.

I get really tense if I inadvertently walk down the pet food aisle in the supermarket, where they sell 25-pound bags of snake food. In fact, I'm getting tense writing this blog.

Excuse me while I plug up all the vent holes in my house.

Chocolate Kisses

Our guest today is Chrystle Fiedler, the author of DEATH DROPS: A NATURAL REMEDIES MYSTERY (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster), the non-fiction title THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO NATURAL REMEDIES and THE COUNTRY ALMANAC OF HOME REMEDIES. Chrystle has also written about natural remedies for many national publications including Better Homes and Gardens, Natural Health, Vegetarian Times and Remedy.

I love kisses, especially dark chocolate ones! Not only does dark chocolate taste good, it’s good for your health. In my writing I focus on natural remedies (and in my new mystery DEATH DROPS: A NATURAL REMEDIES MYSTERY) so this is something that I find interesting. Dark chocolate is one of the best natural cures around. That’s because dark chocolate is loaded with flavonoids, a kind of antioxidant, that protect the body from free radicals which can cause many chronic conditions such as heart disease. Dark chocolate is an effective natural remedy because it: 

1. Reduces blood pressure by dilating blood vessels.
2. Lowers cholesterol
3. Slashes the risk of diabetes (by cutting sugar use and stopping insulin spikes)
4. Inhibits the clumping of blood platelets reducing the risk of blood clots and strokes.
5. Stimulates endorphin production, which makes you feel good
6. Contains  serotonin which acts as a mild anti-depressant
7. Has theobromine and caffeine which is stimulating and helps you focus
8. Activates certain enzymes which help prevent cancer
9. Tastes yummy!

 

The key with chocolate that is good for you is not to overdo. Just eating an ounce or two several times a week is enough to reap dark chocolate’s benefits.  You’ll find more natural cures like chocolate to improve health in my book DEATH DROPS: A NATURAL REMEDIES MYSTERY (Gallery Books/Simon and Schuster) which will be published on February 21st 2012. Please visit www.chrystlefiedler.com and www.killerhobbies.blogspot.com where I blog on Saturdays!

To have a chance at winning an autographed copy of DEATH DROPS: A NATURAL REMEDIES MYSTERY and a bag of Hershey’s Dark Chocolate Kisses, leave a comment below!

Leftovers, Fir-Tree Style

Please welcome our guest today, Nancy Adams. Nancy is a librarian, freelance editor, and writer of mysteries and fantasy. Her short story "Saint Nick and the Fir Tree" has just come out in both e-book and print formats. Another short story, "The Secret of the Red Mullet," a historical mystery, is published in FISH TALES: the Guppy Anthology (Wildside Press, 2011).  Nancy is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. In her spare time she reads, sleeps, and whacks the occasional dust bunny. Find out more about Nancy and her writing at: http://nancyadamsfiction.com.

Trees and humans have very different ideas about what constitutes food. In the plant kingdom, there are no leftovers. Everything is used. Nourishing humus from decomposing leaves, the natural fertilizer of manure . . . What humans call waste. Leftovers.

Potato peelings left from Thanksgiving's mashed potatoes. Apple peelings from that homemade apple pie. Not exactly leftovers, but left behind nevertheless. These can turn into food for plants. Not in their current raw state, but cook a few months in a well maintained compost pile, et voila! They break down and join the rest of the compost ingredients, the perfect dish as far as plants are concerned.

There's a scene in "Saint Nick" where the Saint and the Tree are sitting in a diner. Fir Tree's become mobile, thanks to Nick's magic, but eating human food is another matter. When the Tree says there's nothing on the menu it can eat, Nick responds:

"Then keep quiet and suck on your soil. I'm starving. Just order a salad or something."

"A salad!" The thought made me so queasy, my sap almost burst through my bark. "That'd be cannibalism!"

Thinking about that scene now, in the context of compost, logically the "cannibalism" makes less sense. But emotionally, it resonated. It wasn't something I thought about: the words just tumbled out and felt right. Perhaps Tree's reaction mirrors the revulsion some of us experience at the thought of eating raw meat. Or eating fish when that big eye is staring at you out of the plate. Once salad ingredients are composted and "served" to the plant, any resemblance to green, living matter has vanished. Many of us prefer our meat dishes the same way.

In Fir Tree's world, human leftovers mean a bonanza for plants. No meat or oils, but anything left over from chopping or peeling vegetables or fruit. When I first read about compost, it appealed to the romantic in me: Nature's mysterious alchemy, transforming dross into gold.

Our own compost bin, out in the backyard, is sadly neglected these days. What with a full-time job and writing on weekends, I give it only minimum care. Dollops of vegetable leavings, but no fancy turning or layering or watering. Bags of manure get dumped in from time to time, and leaves in the fall. Someday, I say. Someday when I'm no longer working the day job, I'll take better care of the plants in our yard.

For now, I write about them. They'll have to be content with that.

My Hunger Challenge, or Blogging for Charity

And this week on the Pens we've got a little weekend extra!! Our pal, Bethany is here! Bethany Herron is an almost-Pen, by blood (yes, that Herron). She drives freight trains, raises moolah for disadvantaged youth, counts pennies on the Board of SFA-RWA, and writes urban fantasy from her Edwardian-era flat (it has a pie safe!) in Oakland, California.

Blogging is a very personal thing. Which is a nice way of saying that it has a tendency to become quite selfish.

There are frequent breaks in that tendency, all of which I love: twitter mavens donating their tweet to charity, fundraising campaigns through social media, blog posts that shed light on a social injustice.

Some non-profits are starting to do amazing things on blogging platforms, raising awareness and involving online communities. Which brings me neatly to my #HungerChallenge http://hungerchallenge.blogspot.com! For one week, finishing up today, the SF Food Bank challenged bloggers everywhere to try and live on an average food stamp budget.

That’s $33, for one week. $4.72 a day. Dude, one Zachary’s pizza would wipe you out for the entire week. And that’s not even counting a tip.

I’m not going to focus on the fact that I failed miserably. I’m not even going to go into the why and how; you can check out my personal blog for that, if you’re so inclined. I will share a couple of thoughts that came to me during the process, and hope that it inspires you to show some charity towards your local food bank. And yes, this will still be all about me. It is a blog, after all.

I’m blessed, and I know it. I have an amazing support system, and a billion places to score a freegan meal. I still have an ‘emergency’ credit card, even after cutting all my real cards into little pieces at the beginning of this year.

What happens when those fail? When my sisters can’t afford to feed me, and when all of my emergency cards max out from “but I really needed it” pizza and ice cream? What happens when – not if, but when – I’m looking for some charity?

See, I always think the apocalypse is just around the corner. I’ve been learning how to create debris shelters and make fire, and a tracking course is in my future. But there are smaller, more personal apocalypses. Where your world falls apart, but the one around you keeps going.

I hope I will be prepared and have the strength of will to keep going when that happens, just like the 38 million people on food stamps in the US already do. I could live on $4.72, for sure. But it wouldn’t be easy, it wouldn’t be fun, and it would also be only one small view of a larger life of difficulties.

Plus, no more Hangar One Vodka tonics! Like, ever! Can you imagine the horror? This was a very dry week.

Be charitable, while you can. And appreciate your booze while you still have it.

And if you want more of Bethany, you can read about her adventures here.
http://jujuwiz.wordpress.com

The Charity Blog, Pens Welcome Veronica Wolff

Pens are really pleased to welcome our pal, Veronica Wolff, author of historical romances and a the newly released YA series, beginning with ISLE OF NIGHT!!!

The Charity Blog




I’ve got a new book out this week, which means two things:

1. Yay, new book! Happy birthday, ISLE OF NIGHT!
2. I’ve been blogging, and interviewing, and Q-ing and A-ing my little heart out.

You’re catching me at the tail end of my publicity blitz, wherein I’ve been asked everything from the nature of horror (my book has vampires, and not the sparkly kind…mine are of the ruthless, bloodthirsty sort), to childhood abuse (my heroine suffered at the hands of her father, sending her careening straight to rock-bottom, which is how she ended up with those vampires), to vanilla vs. chocolate (vanilla in a photo-finish, unless it involves sea salt, in which case, chocolate all the way).

So, yeah, I’ve written lots of blogs in the past month, which has me a teensy bit burned out. But I really, really wanted to stop by and blog with the Pens too, because, seriously, I love these women. And not just in a SQUEE OMG AIR KISS kind of way. In a real, honest-to-goodness, admiring sorta way.

So, when Lisa got in touch, I had to say yes. Our exchange went a little something like this:

Lisa: Wanna come be a guest on the Pens? You could do an ISLE OF NIGHT launch post.

Isn't this cover gorgeous? (Lisa ::inserting her opinion here::)


V: (beaming, feeling thankful and honored) Fun! Thanks! I’d be honored!

Lisa: Great! The topic of the week is Charity.

(Shoulders sag.) How on earth do I tie vampires to Charity?

I racked my brain and came up with Weak Idea #1, something along the lines of…if my heroine could’ve relied on some sort of safety net (i.e. charity!), then maybe she wouldn’t have ended up on an airplane bound for the Isle of Night, where a coven of ancient vampires recruits young women to become Watchers, an elite group trained as agents, ambassadors, and sometimes assassins for them.

Meh. Boooring.

Time to bring out the big guns. At that point, I did what any smart person would do and asked Martha. (Because Martha knows, like, everything.)

V: So next week’s theme is charity. What should I blog about? (Cue me, wearing a pleasantly optimistic expression, waiting for Martha’s trademark wisdom to blow me away.)

Martha: You could do something clever and funny, like make up a vampire charity.

V: That does sound clever and funny! (Thinks a moment. Realizes how hard that sounds.) But I cannnn’t. (Hopefully I didn’t whine that last part too much, but only Martha could say for sure.)

Here’s where the panic set in. And with panic came the ludicrous, the ridiculous. I thought…I could look “charity” up in the dictionary and link the definition to my book in a witty, thoughtful way!

Nah. Too much of a stretch.

Or, I could refer to the lesser-used definition, which is mercy, which is something the vampires on my island don’t show. Particularly when they make the recruits compete against each other…and failure means death.

Not quite.

Or—ooh!—I got it…I could take the word c-h-a-r-i-t-y and write some pithy thing for each letter!!

Cue big shoulder slump, realizing that, when panicked, apparently I resort to that part of my brain best suited to fourth-grade homework problem solving.

Really nervous now, I decide to do what I always do when I hit this point. I consult with my critique partner, Kate Perry. Kate is a Kung Fu Master—like, literally, a full-on, red-sashed Kung Fu Master, whom you can see in action as the body double in my awesome



book trailer (because remember, this is still about me promoting my new book, ISLE OF NIGHT—in stores now!) Anyway, Kate is very calm and always has sage advice.

V: I have to do a blog about charity and I need help I don’t know what to blog about tell me what to do and how on earth do I link charity back to vampires?? (Do you hear the panic in my voice?)

Kate: Charity? That makes me think of Chaz Bono.

(This does nothing to ease my panic. Doesn’t she see how urgent this issue is?)

V: That’s Chastity. My topic is charity.

Kate: Hm. Interesting.

V: Well?

(The panic is intensifying now.)

Kate: Just do an interview-style post like the ones I do.

A-ha!! The author shouts in triumph! High-fives self! Thank you, Kate! An interview-style blog it is.

Only, hell, I just noticed…I’m closing in on 800 words, which is getting to be too long for your average blog post (since, as you can see, I’ve become something of a pro at these by now), which means it’s time to wrap it up.

So, to sum, this was a blog about Charity.

Also, I’d love it if you checked out my new book, ISLE OF NIGHT.

And hey, I’d be thrilled to send today’s winner a signed copy…which some might call downright charitable.

My Enemy, My Friend: Hunger

The Pens are thrilled to welcome guest blogger and long time pal, Mysti Berry. Mysti Berry has a B.A. in linguistics from UC Santa Cruz and an M.F.A. in writing from University of San Francisco. Her scripts, novel excerpts, and short stories have won awards from Mendocino to Salinas. Her short story, "Inside Job," will be published next year in a Sisters in Crime anthology. Her first crime novel about a fraud investigator in San Francisco and Las Vegas is due to be finished any day now.

For most of my life, I’ve dodged hunger. The mere threat of a rumbly tummy sent me straight to the Ding Dongs, HoHos, PopTarts, or on gourmet evenings, to a box of mac-n-cheese and a fruit pie for dessert.

Predictably, this led to some serious poundage by my fourth decade. Within a few hours of vowing to behave, I would be hungry, and then would dodge the feeling by eating. Finally, the lovely folks at UCSF Weight Management program suggested a “medically supervised, VLC (very low calorie) meal replacement program.” Instead of my impulse-based 3000 calories a day, I eat carefully prepared 200 calorie doses, five times a day. Surely I’ll fail at this as much as I failed at everything else diet related, won’t I?

Turns out, I am 100% compliant with the program, twenty pounds down and a few more sets of twenty to go. And I’m hungry all damn day. Hungry, hungry, hungry. But with the help of a whole team of medical professionals, I’m able to now just feel the hunger and let it go.

There’s a trick to it, of course.

At 1000 calories of “food” like the early astronauts ate, your body and most of your mind loses interest in food of any kind as it settles into a safe, medically-supervised ketosis. However, I’ll eventually have to go back to the real world of making choices about food, and feeling all my feelings instead of stuffing them down with giant pasta feeds or extra large pizzas. So I’m hard at work on all these things while the relative quiet of the program gives me a little extra time and space to sort things out.

What has any of this to do with writing? A whole heck of a lot. Now that I understand hunger instead of run from it, I can use the concept of hunger for both character and plot development. It goes a little something like this:

1. Figure out what the protagonist needs more than anything else in the universe. For example, Sam Spade needs to believe he isn’t as morally corrupt as everyone around him is—he needs to know he has his limits on the downward slope. So he has to find out who really killed his partner—if it was his partner’s wife, he’s partly to blame. In a newer example, Lily Ivory in Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery series needs a community—she was robbed of one because of her powers. Throughout the series, she takes incredible risks that we believe, because we know how much her new friends and position in the local community mean to her.

2. Figure out what the flip side of that need is, what endangers it or threatens it. Back to our examples: Sam Spade’s desires threaten to overrun his morality—after all, he’s sleeping with his partner’s wife when the story starts, and Ms. Wonderly is in a whole new league of femme fatale. And Lily, if the “establishment” finds out about her gifts, or if the new men in her life freak out, she’s at risk of losing her newfound community. We know this would be like death for Sam or Lily, and yet it’s so likely they will be overwhelmed that we just have to keep reading.

3. Find every situation you can that both promises more of what the protagonist needs and threatens to take it away, preferably in the same scene! Sophie Littlefield has mastered this with her Stella Hardesty series—after a lifetime largely shorn of adult love, Stella needs the affection and approval of a romantic partner. The object of her desire, however, threatens her safety, her freedom, and her new day job. We can’t imagine how she’ll resolve this contradiction between absolute need and nearly certain failure, so we have to keep reading.

So for fictional characters as well as real ones, hunger is both a friend and an enemy. Please tell me, what do you hunger for, and what threatens to take it away?

"Oops."

Say hello to our friend Susan Shea: author, mystery booster, all-around bon vivant. It's always great to have you on the blog, Susan!

“Oops.”

First, thanks to one of my favorite authors, Sophie Littlefield, for offering me a chance to rub elbows with the fantastic writers on Pens Fatales. To say thanks to the blog readers for checking it out, I’m offering a signed hard cover copy of MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT, the first in a series of mysteries featuring Dani O’Rourke. Leave a comment on this post with an email address by July 22. We’ll throw all the responses in a hat and pick one entirely at random. Good luck!

“Oops” sounds like dumb moves, and I could list some of my own, but that would be lengthy, tedious, and uncomfortable. In real life, mistakes frequently lead to unhappy consequences, everything from running out of gas on the freeway to finding yourself standing in a corner at a party because you realize that sweet salesperson was lying through her teeth when she assured you orange was your best color.

In crime fiction, the stakes are often a lot higher. The protagonist doesn’t tell anyone she’s headed into the abandoned building in search of a man with a knife. The detective gets distracted by the obvious suspect and misses a vital clue to a serial killer. The petty crook gets dragged into a homicide by his stupider-than-dirt brother. Oops.

Why does this happen? Why would a sane woman tiptoe up the stairs in a dark house where she’s just stumbled across a dead body? Because she heard footsteps? Is she crazy? Are we crazy to keep reading? Why do supposedly smart people do things that, in real life, no one would dream of doing?

It’s a fair question for readers to ask, and one that can make us squirm as we’re writing our stories. The bottom line is, of course, we authors need the characters to precipitate action, to challenge the status quo, to ramp up suspense and confusion, and ultimately to lead us to the villain. If our protagonists merely dialed 911 and continued on to the grocery store or the movies, we wouldn’t sell a lot of books. But we have an obligation to answer the question of why as persuasively as we can, to create reasons that entice you, the reader, to suspend belief long enough to get caught up in the drama.


I think it’s one of the hardest tricks to pull off and I salute those who do it well. I remember one of Sue Grafton’s masterful moments when Kinsey, running away from a bad guy, jumps into a trash can and pulls the lid down on her head. She has to crouch there, seemingly for ages, waiting for the agonizing possibility that the man saw her and will suddenly whip the lid off and beat her up. My heart was pounding and I couldn’t read fast enough. I never stopped to think, Why would a savvy private detective put herself in such a vulnerable position? Why not keep running until she found a tree or a gas station, some place where she might have an option to defend herself? Grafton did that magical thing – she seduced me entirely into suspending disbelief.

I don’t remember the details of Kinsey’s internal dialogue, but it’s not hard to imagine her saying, limbs tangled, breath coming fast, “Oops, not a great move.”

-Susan C Shea

www.susancshea.com

Susan C Shea is a former non-profit executive. MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT was her first mystery novel. THE KING'S JAR is the second in the series. She's active in Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime and lives in northern California.