Writer, Interrupted

Ten years ago this month, I became a published author with the release of The Heat of the Moon. This was probably the biggest turning point in my life. Now I’ve reached another turning point. Because I’ve received so many e-mails from readers asking when I’ll publish another book, I wanted to pause, reflect on the past, explain what has happened in the last few months, and look at the possibilities for the future.

Although The Heat of the Moon didn’t catapult me to fame and fortune (and I was realistic and knowledgeable enough not to expect that), my life did change in extraordinary ways, even before the book came out. I made personal friends I would never have met otherwise, connected with readers through the group blog Poe’s Deadly Daughters and Facebook, and discovered that no, I wouldn’t actually die of terror when I had to speak before an audience. 

On the whole, it’s been a great decade. I haven't made much money, but who wouldn’t love starred reviews, awards, fan mail? My only regret is that along the way deadlines and other aspects of publishing diminished my pleasure in the writing itself. 

Here I am, ten years on, still plotting murder and mayhem at an age when sensible people are enjoying retirement. After ending my six-book Rachel Goddard series (which started with what I thought was a standalone), I wanted to give up standard murder mysteries and return to my first love, suspense. I had a new character I loved, a concept I loved, and I was producing first draft pages at a furious rate.

Then the pain started.

And grew steadily worse. Like the majority of people, I was no stranger to back pain (the human spine is indisputably evolution’s worst mistake). But this was different. This was scary. The orthopedist I consulted thought I had bursitis, gave me cortisone injections that didn’t help, and sent me to physical therapy, which aggravated the pain to an almost unbearable level.

Admitting defeat, the ortho referred me to Virginia Spine Institute, where I found a brilliant doctor I trusted. But he, too, was unable at first to pinpoint the source of my pain, which was rapidly crippling me. I had x-rays. I had an MRI of my spine. Neither showed anything remarkable, just the same back problems I’d always had. Ordinary painkillers were no longer enough, and I started taking narcotics.

The pain worsened.

Determined to help me, my doctor ordered a nuclear bone scan, and at last we started getting answers. The scan showed massive inflammation around the pelvic bones. A CT scan followed, and numerous serious fractures were revealed — fractures that neither x-rays nor MRI had picked up.

By then, I couldn’t walk more than a few feet. As soon as he saw the CT results, my doctor got me in to see one of VSI’s world-class surgeons. His surgery schedule for the next day was full, but he rearranged procedures because I needed help immediately. I went from his office to Reston Hospital, where I was admitted through the ER. A painkiller drip mercifully knocked me out, and I was aware of nothing else until I woke up with a lot of screws and rods holding me together.

Recovery hasn’t been easy, with various complications from drugs and continuing pain from a bone that stubbornly refused to start healing for months. 

Needless to say, I wasn’t getting any writing done.

I missed my characters, my story. I felt rudderless without writing. I can’t give it up any more than I can stop breathing. Eventually, though, I started writing again and reclaimed my sense of self.

Before the sky fell on me, I had a rough draft and many pages of notes for revision. I’m grateful I didn’t have to return cold to the book and struggle to reconnect with the characters and find my footing in the plot. Persistent fatigue and pain still keep me from sitting at my desk and writing most of the day as I used to, but I’m writing. What’s more important is that I’m enjoying the writing more than I have in years because I’m not thinking about sales and covers and flap copy and promotion. I’m just writing. 

As I said, many readers have e-mailed to ask when my next book will be out. My answer: I don’t know. But I will finish this book, and one way or another, it will become available to readers.

Knowing that readers I’ve never even met enjoy my books enough to write and ask when they’ll get another one gives me a big boost when my spirit and energy fade. A lot of people make up the business end of a writer’s life, and books wouldn’t get published without them, but no one is more important than the individual reader, flipping the pages (or screens) and loving a book. I’m grateful to everyone who has read my books and everyone who has written to me in the last few months. Please continue to contact me whenever you wish.

The new book will come. I can’t say when, but it will come. I promise.

Meanwhile, here’s a panda! 

                                            Photo by Sandra Parshall, all rights reserved

Three Top Reviewers Tell All

What less-than-blockbuster mystery author hasn’t dreamed of his or her ARC being plucked from a teetering pile and chosen for an attention-getting review? 

Can the writer do anything to make that happen? No. So how do top reviewers decide which books to favor? 

Maureen Corrigan

Recently the Mystery Writers of America Mid-Atlantic Chapter, of which I am a member, hosted three guests who told us how they work, what they love (and hate) in a crime novel, and why certain behavior by writers and publishers ticks them off. 

Maureen Corrigan, a critic-in-residence and lecturer at Georgetown University, reviews for National Public Radio’s Fresh Air. She is an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery and Suspense Writers (Scribner) and won an Edgar Award for criticism. She served as a juror for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Dennis Drabelle, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s award for excellence in reviewing, is an author and the crime fiction editor at The Washington Post. Internet critic Bethanne Patrick, known for her Book Maven blog and the influential Friday Reads on Twitter, was named one of Flavorwire’s 35 Writers Who Run the Literary Internet. She has written for The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Oprah magazine, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Neither Corrigan nor Patrick reviews mysteries exclusively.

Dennis Drabelle

What kind of competition does a book face when an advance reader copy goes to one of these people?

Patrick said she receives 50-75 ARCs a week. Corrigan receives about 200 a week at her home address and 50 at her office. The Washington Post receives about 150 ARCs every day. Corrigan reviews a handful of mysteries every two or three months on NPR. The Post runs a single crime fiction review each Monday and occasionally devotes a Sunday column to a mystery roundup.

How are books chosen for review?

First off, self-published books are automatically excluded. Novels by “big names” rise to the top, but beyond that, Corrigan, Drabelle, and Patrick all keep an eye out for new and lesser known authors whose books offer something special.

The publisher’s name may persuade Patrick to give a book a closer look. “Some imprints,” she said, “are really reliable.” But the book itself has to win her over with superior writing. “It always comes back to the writing.” Corrigan said that “something unusual” will pique her interest and “open the door” but doesn’t guarantee a review. Drabelle is drawn to mysteries with exotic settings. Aside from his personal preferences, Drabelle started an occasional cozy mystery roundup column in the Post because he felt the paper should expand the range of crime fiction reviewed in its pages.
None of them is influenced by industry publications like Publishers Weekly or Kirkus Reviews. They also can’t be persuaded by a publicist’s pitch. The book itself is what counts.

Bethanne Patrick

What bowls them over and makes them feel a book deserves a review?

“Authority of voice,” Corrigan said. Sometimes she’s drawn in by the plot and setting, but fully realized characters are essential. Most of all, she likes books that have the ring of authenticity rather than market-driven gimmicks—“not vampires living in Downton Abbey with dogs.” Patrick is attracted to a fresh voice or a fictional world that is “other”—and that doesn’t necessarily mean exotic. “Even a cozy,” she said, “can take you somewhere different.” Drabelle admires authors who are skillful at withholding information to build suspense.

How do they approach writing negative reviews?

Fairness is essential, Patrick said. She cited her review of Sara Gruen’s new book, At the Water’s Edge, as “almost totally negative, but fair.” She always backs up her negative comments with examples from the book.

“It’s never a pleasure to read a bad book,” Corrigan said, and she is annoyed when a major author publishes “schlock” and starts recycling plots. When she’s “really had it” with such an author, she doesn’t hold back in expressing her opinion.

Drabelle concurred, saying that a book review is “a consumer report” and it’s the reviewer’s job to inform the public when a major writer publishes a bad book. He believes in saving negativism for lower down in the review because if the hard shots are fired in the first sentence people may not read on.

Do they get a lot of flack when they review a book negatively? 

Corrigan’s review of a book that had been praised by The New York Times drew angry letters and made her the target of online attacks. She was sufficiently concerned to tell Georgetown University security about what was happening.

Corrigan, Drabelle, and Patrick all said they prefer that authors not communicate with them about reviews, whether positive or negative. “It’s always a little strange” to hear from a writer, Drabelle said. “I didn’t do it for the writer. I did it for readers.” Patrick noted that several authors have told her they learned something about their writing from her reviews, but she believes “authors shouldn’t say anything to reviewers.” Corrigan doesn’t want any writer to think a positive review means he or she has found a champion who will review all future work favorably. If Corrigan thinks the next book from that writer is lousy, she’ll say so—or she won’t review it at all.

All three frown on the deceptive practice of publishers and writers taking pull quotes from a negative review and using them to give the impression the book was praised. Drabelle said that at the Post “we don’t take it lightly when a review is distorted,” and editors have expressed their displeasure to publishers.

Can any of them explain why some bad books, with a collection of negative reviews, attract hordes of readers?
 
No. Patrick mentioned The Memory Keeper’s Daughter as one book that was “review-proof” and seemed to come out of nowhere to take over the bestsellers lists. Those lists, Drabelle said, “are dominated by terrible books. You’re lucky if one is any good.”

Who are the people they hope to influence?
 
Readers. Their job is to help readers sift through the avalanche of books published every year and find something worth reading. They’re aware that they are speaking to a shrinking audience. “I don’t think writing is in trouble,” Patrick said. “There are many good writers. Reading is in trouble.” The world offers too many distractions, and people are reading less and less. Even a bookseller friend, Patrick added, confessed to watching more TV and reading less these days.

How much influence do they have in a world where traditional book reviews are fast disappearing and readers are turning to Amazon and amateur blogs for book information?
 
Patrick believes that some book bloggers are as good as or better than the professional reviewers and “can do great things for a book,” while others simply post reviews that “steal from the publisher’s synopsis” and offer no serious assessment. Veteran reviewers, Corrigan pointed out, still offer a special sensibility honed by years of critical reading. Drabelle sees internet competition as an incentive for traditional reviewers to “be better than ever.”

Whether you’re a writer or a reader, do you believe traditional reviewers still matter in today’s world? Do review quotes on a book jacket or in ads influence sales? Please leave a comment!

What year is it?

Technological changes have come at breakneck speed in the past few years, and I think a lot of people are starting to forget that we weren’t always so dependent on our gadgets and devices.

I’ve been startled several times lately by reader complaints that my first Rachel Goddard novel, The Heat of the Moon, seems “dated” and, indeed, “weird” because Rachel doesn’t carry a cell phone and doesn’t use the internet to look for old newspaper stories. Why, they ask, would Rachel have to go to the Library of Congress to look up anything, when all the information in the world is available online with a few clicks?

Let me clarify a few things.

The Heat of the Moon was published in 2006. Books are seldom set in the year they’re published. In this case, the book was written and set in 1997. (At one point I write, “It was the summer of the comet with the funny name, Hale-Bopp.”) As with so many “first” novels (this was actually the eleventh book I’d written), it made the rounds of New York publishers for a year, had strong interest from two editors who loved it and wanted to publish it but couldn’t get it past the committees that make the final decisions. I put it aside for several years, until my friend Judy Clemens urged me to submit it to Poisoned Pen Press. PPP kept the manuscript for 16 months before offering a contract in 2005. It finally saw print in March of 2006.

I suppose I could have rewritten it to include cell phones and internet, but the editor loved it as it was and published it without altering a single word. (I believe she added a comma here and there, as she has strong views about serial commas.) But here’s the thing readers may not realize: even if I had “updated” it, Rachel’s search for information wouldn’t have been very different.

Rachel was looking for newspaper stories about events that occurred in Minnesota in the mid-1970s. This may come as a shock, but few newspapers had all of their archived copies online in 1997, when I wrote the book, or in 2005, when I sold it. In fact, not all historical copies are online even now. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, today, has digitized copies beginning with 1986 editions. That wouldn’t have done Rachel any good, even if those back issues had been available through the internet in 1997. The same is true of many other periodicals. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, offers online copies starting with 1990. Older copies are available on microfilm.

 Furthermore, the Library of Congress is not the all-encompassing repository of digital materials that some people imagine, and you can’t find every page of every newspaper ever printed by going to the LOC website. The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the LOC and the National Endowment for the Humanities, began to take shape in 2003, and the first grants were awarded in 2005 for the collection and digitization of selected (not all) newspaper pages. The actual work is being done by state libraries, historical societies, and universities, and each grant covers the digitization of 100,000 pages that are considered to be of historical importance. The digitization is up to 1922 so far. (See the collection at the ChroniclingAmerica site.)

As for cell phones, when I wrote The Heat of the Moon in 1997, I didn’t know a single person who owned one, and I never saw people using them in public. Until the Motorola StarTAC, the first flip phone, came out in 1996, all cellular telephones were bulky and heavy, some weighing as much as a pound, and they cost a small fortune. The StarTAC was small but retailed for $1,000. Most mobile phones continued to be hefty for several more years. The precursor of smartphones was the Nokia Communicator 9000i (1997), the first phone with a separate keyboard. It weighed 14 ounces and cost close to $1,000. Rachel could have tucked a StarTAC into a pocket or purse, but not this Nokia. What's more important is that, as a low-paid junior veterinarian just beginning her practice, she would have fainted at the thought of spending $1,000 on a telephone. 
 

The boom in personal cell phone use didn’t begin until the first decade of this century, with the advent of 3G (third generation) technology and falling prices. By the end of 2007, about 295 million people worldwide owned mobile telephones. That was 9% of the entire planet’s potential customer base. Even if The Heat of the Moon had been set in 2006, when it was published, Rachel’s lack of a cell phone would not have been unusual.

In later books, Rachel does carry a cell phone and use the internet, and like a lot of series writers, I avoid identifying the years in which the stories take place. The aging of characters is a problem all authors have to deal with when they write about the same people over a long period. Should we let them age naturally with a year or so passing between books? Should we anchor them in a specific time period, and allow only a few weeks to pass in story time between installments?

Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone started out in the 1980s and there she remains, with her land line and her little black dress. James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux, a Vietnam veteran, now has an adult daughter and is nearing retirement. Harry Bosch, another Vietnam vet, has aged in Michael Connelly’s books, but in the TV version he’s back in his forties and has been transformed into a Gulf War combatant. Robert Crais made his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Vietnam veterans too, but today they seem as young and active as ever, unaffected by the passage of four decades. Crais hasn’t taken them into their sixties, yet he hasn’t noticeably slowed the passage of time in the outer world either. It’s fiction. If you like the characters, you don’t fret about such matters.

I allowed Rachel to age, but I didn’t let 14 years go by between book one and book six. She is now in her mid-thirties, not 41. What year is it? I have no idea, and I don’t care, because it isn’t important to any of the plots.

Although I’m sure most readers know a historical novel when they see one and don’t expect the characters to whip out cell phones or search the internet, I fear—if my own experience is any indication—that they’re less forgiving when novels are set in the near past. The 1970s have at last achieved the status of history, but do books set in 1985 or 1995 seem merely “dated” and therefore unreadable?

With my first book, I apparently landed on a dividing line that some people are unable to cross mentally. Trust me, though: cell phones and internet searches are irrelevant. All that counts is the story. Of the books I’ve published, The Heat of the Moon remains my favorite.