Taking Someone's Pulse Has New Meaning in Orlando
The front of Orlando’s Pulse nightclub a year after the devastating shooting that left 49 people dead.
Forever, the word pulse had a specific connotation and usage.
“What is your pulse rate?” “Who has their finger on the pulse of this issue.”
In other words, what’s the real story? What’s really going on?
Over the past year, pulse took on a new meaning. That was never more evident than at any of the memorials, vigils, prayer gatherings, interviews and discussions about June 12, 2016 – the day a gunman killed 49 people at a nightclub here called Pulse.
It was not a gay night club. It was not a Latin night club. It was a variety club. A chameleon. Whatever specialty night drew people in, that’s what it was.
So on some nights in early 2016, Pulse featured its Latin Nights. It quickly became a club night popular with Orlando’s Hispanic community and our gay community.
The club sat smack in the middle of a neighborhood mixed with residents and commercial businesses. It was a few yards from a fire station and directly across from an Einstein’s Bros. bagel location. Few people took issue with it.
That’s all changed, of course. The club is gone, replaced by a barrier-guarded memorial filled with flowers. Visitors – mourners, tourists, curious locals – can be found studying photos, flowers, notes and letters left at the site by others who were there before them.
When 49 people die in one place, it’s not just a scene of death. We see those everywhere, a roadside cross from someone to remember the place where a loved one died in a car accident. When 49 people died in one place in Orlando, it was an awakening.
That terror exists. That hate can be tangible. That extremism, intolerance or just mental illness are things that, even in a land known by others as a Theme Park City, must be acknowledged and dealt with.
Now, pulse is Pulse.
Pulse Shooting Is Time-Marker
For so many people here – not everyone, to be sure – Pulse means that their world is even more divided by time and events: pre-9/11, post-9/11, pre-Pulse and post-Pulse.
Orlando sits in Orange County, which is a blue county in a red region and a red state. Orlando discovered some new sides to itself in the wake of Pulse. Although the mass shooting devastated the local gay and Hispanic communities, an overwhelming majority of people who showed up to donate blood and pray for those who were lost, those who were recovering and all their families, were not gay or Hispanic.
They were just . . . people who wanted to help in some way. Judging by the millions of dollars that the One Orlando Fund raised to help Pulse victims and survivors, the same is true. It’s still true.
The one-year anniversary of this shooting brings to mind a recent project by author Eric Beetner, who last year published Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns, a collection of short stories that features all sorts of dastardly deeds and bodies – but no guns.
I fear that for those who like to write mystery and thriller fiction, plotlines about home-grown terror attacks will grow to be more routine. “What’s the book about? Huh, I think I’ve read something similar already.”
By happenstance, the anniversary also coincided with me meeting a couple people from the UK and a few others who had recently spent more than a decade in the UK. It also coincided, sadly, with the recent terror attacks in the UK.
Their horror at America’s gun laws is palpable. (And don’t get them started on American healthcare.) Their reactions only underscored the sadness surrounding June 12, a date that now has a permanent place in a city that not too long away was a sleepy town with an unused interstate.
We wanted to acknowledge the date and remember the lives lost, the lives altered. We also wanted to put more distance between then and now.
One-Word Designation of a City
This city is changed forever. A routine commute from the south into Orlando now encompasses more than Chik-fil-A, Starbucks and an Einstein Bros. location. It’s a trip past a nightclub-turned-makeshift-memorial, one soon to become a permanent one.
I can be thankful for the marketing machines that accompany Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World. For millions around the world, Orlando will remain the theme park capital of the world. For those of us who live here, it’s something else now. It’s more resilient and accepting than ever. That’s the positive.
But it’s also changed. Watch the news and listen to politicians rattle off mass shootings identified by their location: Columbine, Sandy Hook, San Bernadino, Orlando. We do the same thing around town but with one change: Columbine, Sandy Hook, San Bernadino, Pulse.
Working the List and Finding the Joy in Writing (and Rewriting) Again
For the past couple years, I found myself telling others at work to “find the joy.”
That is, do what makes you happy. Come to work because you know that whatever the task or assignment that day, that week, find the part of it that speaks to you and use that as motivation. Fight through the other stuff because of this one bit of inspiration and happiness. And do the job well because today, this is what you were called to do.
It’s idyllic, this notion of doing what you love. It doesn’t happen nearly enough. Yet there’s almost always a kernel of satisfaction, happiness and joy in doing a job, no matter the organization.
Professional writers don’t always get to write about what they want. Sometimes they put their daytime uniform and pay the bills as technical writers, public relations writers, marketing and advertising writers while getting their happy work – creative writing – done before breakfast or after dinner.
Somewhere, find the joy. Put another way, find a way to enjoy the journey.
After many, many months, that’s finally come back to me at the keyboard. Allow me to back up.
It wasn’t until I finished the first, bloated, too-detailed first draft of Dead Odds that I heard the unvarnished message about how to turn a manuscript into a novel. “Writing is rewriting” was the message from novelist and teacher extraordinaire Reed Farrel Coleman. This was from a gathering of wannabe mystery writers at a SleuthFest from a few years back.
Writing is Rewriting
Writing is rewriting? WTF?
“You can’t be a writer if you don’t want to rewrite,” Coleman said. “You spend more time rewriting than creating.”
I didn’t doubt his message. I did underestimate the difficulty.
In phases that were alternately slow, easy, plodding, quick, fun, drudgery and always necessary, I’ve written through nearly a dozen drafts. “Only 12 more to go,” another writer said to me recently. God, I hope not.
Working the List
Because of the way my mind works, I work on my book by working the most recently list of fixes. The list gets organized by priority, based on a combination of what I can get done quickly and what has to be done now for the rest of the list to make sense.
Working these lists – and there have been multiple lists over the past couple years – pretty much sucks. First, you have to re-read the same scenes and chapters over and over. (What’s more, your eyes continue to read over multiple typos, which get caught by the next beta reader in line.)
Second, this isn’t rewriting. This is editing. This is cutting for the sake of brevity, fixing grammar, adjusting tense, ensuring proper point of view. All at once. For those of us with a full-time job, it’s damned time-consuming. For those of who get caught up in the Thousand Words A Day Syndrome, this process can crush you because you can’t measure progress by word count. You have to measure by words cut, and God that’s no fun at all.
The Process of Getting Unstuck
For months this book has been stuck, its author paralyzed by confusion.
When I wrote the first scene and chapter that I really liked, the significant editorial (and agent) feedback I received was, “You didn’t lead with your protagonist. Your readers don’t know your protagonist yet, have never heard of him, and they want to know who that is right away so they can establish a connection and like him.”
The next draft led with the protagonist. That previous opening scene was now the start of Chapter 2.
The next bit of high level feedback from that draft was this: “Your book doesn’t really begin until Chapter 2. Why not start there?”
Sigh. What’s unpublished novelist to do? This had turned into the Mystery of the First Scene.
With no agent on board and no publishing house editor standing by to render a verdict, this decision was all mine to make. The stakes, I felt, were high. The resulting manuscript, especially the first 30 pages or the first three to five chapters, determines the fate of the book. As in, whether an agent feels it’s worth representing and, if it becomes self-published, whether readers read it and enjoy it. No pressure.
I couldn’t figure a way out of this maze. I had no idea what the right answer was. I was not set on either beginning other than I wanted it to lead to a series of page turns. Gradually, the conflicting feedback sunk in. No matter what, I needed a third option. I needed to get protagonist in the first scene and either get in and out of that scene quickly with some immediate payback.
Eureka!
It turns out I had an advisor I could ask, fellow author Micki Browning. And she made a fantastic suggestion for the first scene, one that introduces the protagonist and carries some lasting emotional impact for Chapter 2, which has the trigger point for the book, a death.
This is where the joy comes in. I get to write again. I get to create again.
As you learn how to write novel, you discover that that these beasts are not as much created as much as they are engineered. Chapters don’t matter, but scenes do. And each scene has to have a reason for being. They have to enlighten character, drive plot, set up or create tension or conflict or impact pace.
I recently wrote a new scene for the middle of Dead Odds to help make the book more historically accurate and to provide details for previously unanswered questions. That was fun.
This new Scene 1? Producing this re-engineered beginning is fun, too.
It has the added bonus of resolution. With a new beginning, the end is near.
Soon it’ll be time to start something new. I can hardly wait.
What It's Like to Be an Agent for a Day
I started thinking about agents this week. Not for the usual reason – how do I get one. I already know the answer to that one, and it’s only partly in my control anyway.
No, I walked a mile in their shoes. It was enlightening. It was disheartening. It was a jolt of reality.
My job on the days in question was to identify college students as potential employees for digital marketing company. For four hours one day and five hours another day, both days at a university job fairs, I collected resumes and held first-date conversations.
Students lined up in double-file lines, one for each of us recruiters.
What are you looking for?
When are you available? (Or, when do you graduate?)
Tell me about what you’ve been doing the past several years?
What do you really want for yourself right after school and long-term?
In a different setting, I thought later, you could change the setting slightly, substitute the questions and turn college students into wannabe authors. And I’d reverse my role from catcher to pitcher.
What book did you write or are you writing?
Tell me about the protagonist.
What’s the conflict?
Do you see this as a stand-alone or a series?
Catching Somebody Else's Pitch
In the case of this day, college students pitched themselves. Some of them, bless them, could not discuss anything beyond what was printed on their resumes. They’d taken this class and that class, had some internships or other practice working experiences, but they could not answer the question I offered almost all of them: If you closed your eyes and thought about what your perfect, right-of-college job is, what does that look like?
One student in route to a degree in rocket science (not kidding) said what he really wanted to do was write science fiction and science fantasy books. “But I don’t know if I can make any money doing that.”
My answer: “You’ll never make any money on it if you never publish anything.” I then congratulated him on being honest with himself and saying it out loud, and then I advised him to keep writing, to get to a writing conference as soon as he could to learn what he’s doing right and what he’s doing wrong and to never give up. “It’s much harder than it sounds, but it’s good that you know what you love. If you really love it, you’ll want to get good and you’ll make it.”
You Probably Know 'It' When They See It
The reality part of this story, of course, comes at the end. Because when you go looking for employees and you know what you’re looking for, you know the real deal when you see it.
So, I very much suspect, do agents and editors.
It’s easy to say and think, “They just don’t get it. This book is a winner, and somehow I haven’t conveyed that simple fact.” (Which could be true.)
Much more likely is that what I’ve done isn’t good enough yet. Or that I am not informed enough to understand the correct pitch to the agent (or editor or publisher) sitting in front of me. Images of PitchFest abound, where a swarm of unheralded authors rushed at three dozen agents camped at two-tops in small hotel meeting rooms in New York. There they delivered their same lines again and again.
Sorry, this isn’t the right genre for me.
Sorry, but I sold a book very similar to this for a new writer, and I don’t feel I could represent you both right now.
I’m going to pass on this one. But keep me updated when you have something new.
Send me the first three chapters.
Send me the first five chapters.
I’ll read the full.
At these last three points, the pitching ends. You’ve done it. Now the work has to carry you the rest of the way.
New Respect for Literary Agents
When my colleague and I left the job fair that day, we were tired. We’d stood for five hours, and we each had the same conversation with dozens of people. We’d collected a stack of resumes and notes that we’d tucked away for more careful review.
In the back of my mind, I reminded myself to review them within 48 hours so I could remember which students I liked the most.
I then wondered about some of the agents I met that afternoon during Pitchfest, which was an organized, two-hour speed-dating session at ThrillerFest. The setting at the New York Hyatt was different. Agents were seated at two-tops in small meeting rooms. They has business cards laid out and a timer by their side. Writers got only five minutes, max, to make a pitch.
That day, I’d gone back to my hotel room giddy. I’d pitched 13 or 14 agents and 10 of them wanted to see something. One of them, Bob Mecoy, had even coached me up and helped me polish my pitch.
[caption id="attachment_610" align="alignleft" width="225"] Bob Mecoy[/caption]
Many months later, I realized some of the agents accepted every pitch that came their way, so long as it was within the genre they wanted or unless some alarm bells went off. Why not take a chance? The only thing they have to lose is time, the time it takes to read all those three- to five-chapter (or 10-page) submissions that were certain to hit their inbox soon.
I have a new-found respect for these men and women. (Well, most of them. One of them was a slick-haired douchebag who ogled every woman author who sat or stood near him.) All of them showed up to let a firehose of authors hit them in the face with the hope of uncovering something special.
They live in an uncertain publishing world, one that changes every week. Yet their goal today is the same as it ever was. They want a perfect marriage of client, author, book and publisher.
What’s wrong with that?
Swearing in Your Manuscript: How the F**k Can You Write That?
The guy who cuts my hair made a confession. He was at his shop one day recently and mentally scrolling through customers he hadn’t seen recently and realized one of them was a female client he particularly liked.
“I called her because I had to hear her voice,” he said. “You’d never know it talking to her in public, but has the best F-bombs.”
“Oh? How so?” I asked.
“It’s not that they’re creative,” he said. “It’s just the way she says that word. I can’t put my finger on it. But God I love hearing her say that word.”
Photo credit: Etienne Giradet
“Just so I understand: You called her not about coming in but just to hear her say it?”
“Just to hear her say it,” he said. “And I told her how much I like it. She knows. I told her once I was surprised at how often she said it. She said, ‘Honey, I fucking say that word all the time. It’s my favorite word.’ And it’s my favorite word, too. ”
Mine, too. And, I told him, all of its derivations.
“Usually,” he said, “it’s followed by ‘you.’ “
Your Characters and 4-Letter Words
He was joking, but he wasn’t lying. I’ve heard him.
The drive back to work from my midday haircut was filled with thoughts of a unisex salon filled with women of all ages dropping F-bombs alongside all the gray hair they were having touched up. How oddly comforting that would be, I thought.
And then I thought of my own mom and the one time I heard her load up the F-word. She was in the throes of divorcing my father – or maybe already had, and was coping with bitter, ugly aftermath – and the word shot out, punctuating her tears, frustration and helplessness.
That, too, was good to hear. She’s just like the rest of us.
Still, these days the old Lutheran guilt tends to kick in when I go through a scene sketched by four-letter words. I’ve asked myself what dear old mom will think when she reads this.
She said, ‘Honey, I fucking say that word all the time. It’s my favorite word.’ And it’s my favorite word, too.
This is the wrong approach. If you’re thinking about mom when you’re writing and rewriting and honing your story to a fine point, you’re thinking about the wrong things. Be true to the story, true to your characters and please the reader. If your character is a cusser, let him or her cuss. Please yourself as you please the reader. It’s the only way.
Cussing and swearing is a topic that comes up from time to time at author conferences and during Q&As between authors and readers. It's hardly the primary subject, but people -- some who are offended, others who are just curious -- ask. Here's a riff by Lee Child about littering a manuscript with F-bombs. As he says, he sprinkles in some "industrial" cursing. He just ensures that it's not everywhere.
Full disclosure: I grew up playing sports and hanging out with people who cussed – a lot. Most of my professional life was spent around athletes, ex-athletes turned administrators and highly competitive business people. These people not only used profanity -- some of them quite creatively -- they often overused it. So did I. So do I.
For this new career, I write about crime. And bad things and bad people and cops and detectives. These people, not all of them speak so nicely all the time. In case you haven’t noticed, this is the way of the world.
If your cop/detective/criminal didn't go to finishing school, and most don't, chances are they're going to throwing around some four-letter words and f-bombs in all their derivative glory. That's not to say these characters are all going to come out sounding like they were a prodigy, say, of Chuck Wendig, one of the world's excellent cussers. But they're not going to sound like someone in The English Patient, either.
No Cussing at Wal-Mart?
A couple years ago, an unmemorable speaker at a writing conference told a group of wannabe authors that Wal-Mart would not carry your book if you used words that the company deemed too profane. In other words, you could get your book to the Wal-Mart masses if you used "hell" or "damn" but that something like "goddamn" would get you excluded, as would just about any other curse word in all its forms. Well, hell.
Why do I bring this up now? Because I finally have a manuscript worth peddling. Should I strip out the profanity for the sake of one day having some decision-maker at Wal-Mart or (pick your bookseller) declare the book not worthy of its shelves because of some blue words?
As the speaker said, "You may look down on Wal-Mart for having that policy, but the bottom line is, are you OK with your book not being able to be seen by millions of potential readers and buyers just because you wanted to use some curse words?"
Turns out, I find no evidence that Wal-Mart actually has this policy related to books. (Nobody from the company returned my email about this question.)
Regardless, thinking about Wal-Mart during the creative process seems like misspent energy, unless Wal-Mart distribution is the lynchpin in a book-selling plan.
The John Sandford Swearing Table
Every so often, I dig up one of the favorite blog posts ever about writing novels. This post by the webmaster son of John Sandford addresses an issue that rears up every so often: How profane should crime-fiction characters be, given the inherent risk of driving away readers? How much profanity is too much profanity for publishers and bookstores? And should a writer sacrifice a personal voice -- the one that wants to tell a story in exactly the way they dreamed it -- for a business decision?
It turns out Sandford’s readers complained that the primary character in his “Prey” series, state cop Lucas Davenport, was accused of swearing more as Sandford grew the popular Davenport-driven series. How does one fend off such a notion? Why, with facts.
So Sandford's son, who runs his website, went to each manuscript and ran word calculators on them. (In case you didn't know, there is software that analyzes manuscripts for word usage. This can be a valuable tool, because nobody wants to re-use the same word too often in the same book.)
What his son found was that cussing in Sandford’s "Prey" books goes up and down -- just like almost everything else in life.
In the end, any persona angst about this might amount to a whole lot of nothing. I might decide to self-publish, and of all the things to consider about that, one of them isn't about cussing. I won't be banning any of my profanity, much like the TV beer ad below that, sadly, never made it to television.
How's the Book Coming? Questions You Have to Answer
How’s the book coming?
You’ve heard this question, right? It’s the curious, thoughtful, awful question you get from well-meaning friends and family members when they want to let you know they take an interest in your writing career. Everyone gets excited about knowing a writer with a new book, right?
I love them all. They're my support system. A bedrock. They mean well. And it’s all so nice . . . right up until they pop that question.
Underlying the question are others. Are you almost finished? How long have you worked on it? When does it come out? And others. You feel as if you have to justify the time you're spending on something that no one (or very few people) can see. It can get old, fast.
There are only a few answers to the original question. The book is in progress. The book is with an editor/agent. The book is available through Amazon (or your website). The book will be out this winter/spring/summer/fall.
Always a WIP (Work in Progress)
When your book sits in the first stage – in progress – is where the frustration lies. How do you tell your spouse that you’re more than halfway through your manuscript and now you’re wrestling with your protagonist? How do you tell your brother-in-law that you think you have to cut two characters out of your last draft? Why do you want to share the fact that your last draft needs an overhaul? Will anyone really understand it when you tell them you have too many characters (or POVs) in your last draft and you have to tighten them?
There’s nothing wrong with any of these scenarios. If you learn anything about working on a book, at least seriously, you know that writing is rewriting. You know that, absent detailed early outlining and mapping out, you’re going to make mistakes in plotting. You also know you’ll overwrite or produce early drafts that need refinement. That’s the process. Writing is rewriting. And you have to love rewriting or else you’ll never finish.
John Sandford once spoke at ThrillerFest about people he knows who are fine writers. They can, he said, do everything related to writing a novel except finish the book. They might get a first draft written, but they never get to the point where they are ready to submit the draft to an agent, editor or publisher – for various reasons.
[caption id="attachment_567" align="alignright" width="300"] John Sandford[/caption]
I keep this anecdote in mind. And this one:
At a Poynter Institute writing conference years ago, Stephen Hunter delivered a solo address about his books, about writing them and about his career. Eerily prescient to what Sandford said years later, Hunter told a story about when he first started writing more than movie reviews. (He was a Pulitzer-Prize winning movie reviewer for The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post.) He said he had a group of friends, all of whom aspired to write novels. And they all embarked on the journey.
Hunter was the only one who published a novel. Why? “I was the only one who finished,” he said.
At some point, he said, you have to realize that you have to get up and get to work on it every day – every day.
[caption id="attachment_568" align="alignleft" width="300"] Stephen Hunter[/caption]
I have to forgive myself for not finishing yet. But I will finish.
Stages of Manuscript Progress
So, how could the book be coming? Let us count the ways – for me, anyway.
Mixed POV. Omniscient POV. As I learned much too late, you have to be consistent and tell your story the from the best point of view possible. You also have to remember, when you're writing, whose head you are in and what they know (and what they don't.)
Too much detail. The technical term for this is toothbrushing, as in, “We don’t need to see a character brushing his teeth. We can just assume it happened.” Another more practical way of thinking about this is the room entering principle. We can just assume that all characters walked into and out of the room (unless you write about vampires). We don’t need to see it happen. The reader doesn’t need to follow a character’s every step to want to follow them through the story.
Too many characters. This happened for sure. I ended up cutting two strong characters in my manuscript and a handful of minor characters. Word is, readers can’t keep up with a giant roster of characters. They want only a few they want to care about – love or despise – and the rest help drive the story.
Too many extraneous scenes. If the scene doesn’t push conflict, character or plot, it doesn’t belong. Good advice, I think: Human beings like to think in pictures, so when you think about your scenes, think about them as scenes in a movie. If the scene doesn’t fit, pitch it.
Continuity issues. In my case, the actual writing process from start to end of first draft was five years. It was hard at the end to remember all the details of the beginning. I decided to fix these in the second draft. But the fixing took more than one draft – and more than a couple beta readers to help.
Character names. I had too many characters with similar sounding names. Yes, this matters.
Data dumps. Also called info dumps. This is paragraph after paragraph of character back story. This is information to put in your master sheet about the book before you start writing. The challenge is to reveal as much of this back story as you can, spoonful by spoonful, throughout the book.
Wordiness. This is everyone and everywhere. It always is.
Things that don’t work. This could be scenes, jokes, dialogue, plot.
Word overuse. We all have favorite words, and we like to use the words we like too much. In my case, I discovered that I had too many characters “looking away.”
Slow start. It too much, much too long for it to sink in that my first five chapters didn’t work. And when I accepted that, it took too long to fix it properly. This is called procrastination.
Proper editing. I can only speak for myself here. There’s only so much I can do to my own manuscript. I’m prone to typos, and I’m prone to reading over them. (Age, it’s a bitch.) Bottom line, I need another set of eyes, and at the end of the process, I need a pro. I’ve hired one.
Final Answer: Great!
So how’s the book coming? My answer: Did you ever have a long English paper that was due in class? And as you get ready to hand it in, you know in your heart it needs to be rewritten, even though you’re already rewritten it once? That’s where it is.
It's great. I'm happy with it, but I'm still working. "But if you know any agents . . ."
Fear and Loathing Conquered, Writing Contests Entered
For my own good, I ignored my biases and held my nose. Then I went to work polishing and creating loglines.
And then I entered two separate contests over the past couple weeks.
As I’ve discussed before, I’m not a fan of writing contests, but I recently came to accept these as a necessary reality in the world of publishing when you’re an unknown author trying to create a name and market for yourself.
Parts of “Dead Odds” now sit with the judges and editors and agents of contests held by the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and by the Authoress of Miss Snark’s First Victim.
Both are progressive contests, which means you have to get through stages to win. Winning is different for each.
THE FREDDIE AND THE BAKER’S DOZEN
In the case of the Freddie, the name of the new award for unpublished mystery works, the number of 20-page entries are unlimited. The initial goal is to make it into the top five. From there, the judges (agents) will go to work and name winners — who gets a Freddie award.
As for the Baker’s Dozen, the contest run by Miss Snark’s First Victim, you enter a logline plus the first 250 words of your polished manuscript. Soon, out of 100 entrants (the number is capped), 25 adult fiction submissions will move to the next stage — an auction among agents. During the auction, agents compete on which submissions they want to see more of. And then they can request more pages or a full manuscript.
Winning the Baker’s Dozen means having an agent signing you. Anything gained short of that helps with confidence and a morale boost. Ultimately, though, it ends with some level of rejection.
But this is the game. This is the world of traditional publishing.
Changing My Attitude about Writing Contests
Confession time. I dislike writing contests.
During nearly three decades in daily journalism, I grew to despise them and resisted entering them. That attitude carried into my writing career in fiction.
The work, I thought, can stand on its own. If people want to award it, fine. If not, I was OK with that.
Silly me. This, I realized, was the wrong approach.
Unlike the newspaper business, the book business is much more of a solo endeavor. Yes, authors, particularly the ones who sell tens and hundreds of thousands of books, have a team around them that help them promote and market their books.
All the rest of the published world does much of this work with a team of one -- whatever the author can do on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Nook, etc. Any publicity for a newly published book can help. Any news can help. And winning an award qualifies as news.
Photo credit: Christie Davis
Essentially, entering manuscripts and books into writing contests is like buying a lottery ticket, only you're betting on yourself. If your writing can win the contest, catching lightning in a bottle, you figure to sell more book, draw the attention of book bloggers and reviewers and catch the eye of publishers who might want a crack at buying the next book.
I have to accept this because this is the reality. And if I don't accept it, I'm only hurting my career.
So for the first time, I'm in a writing contest. "Dead Odds" is entered in the Freddie Award for Writing Excellence, a contest held by the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America to honor unpublished works. Soon, I'll add a second contest entry to the resume, this one designed to attract the attention of agents, editors and publishers.
So off we go, like it or not. For most of my professional life, it was not.
Awards Show Journalism
I witnessed and lived through the creation of what I call "awards-show journalism." I can't speak to newsrooms, but I know that many of them adopted a philosophy that grew out of some major sports sections around the country in the 1980s.
Before then, newspapers followed a mission of finding news and writing it -- shootings, robberies, political scandals. Same thing in sports. Preview the game, write about the players and coaches, cover the game and then move onto the next one.
That changed with centerpieces.
Centerpieces were design elements built into the daily paper, usually the front of the paper, front of the lifestyle section or sports section. It was supposed to be the photo or story that drew the reader's attention. it was designed to showcase the best journalism or the best writing in the paper that day. Often, papers met the objective.
Then someone changed the objective. Years later, centerpieces were not about great journalism, per se, but about winning awards. In sports, the Associated Press Sports Editors organization created writing and section contests to reward writers of game stories, columns, features and enterprise (investigative) news and to reward editors for daily sections, Sunday sections and special sections.
A decade or so later, sports staffs started PLANNING out how they could win awards. Some even went so far to ensure that their very best writers -- columnists, typically -- stepped into game-story duty on days of big games.
Ever so gradually, newspapers started to care about winning awards.
Perhaps it was always thus, and my age only allows me to go back 30+ years and not half a century or more. I don't know.
Don't get me wrong. Papers, in my experience, never thought more about awards than the daily mission, don't get me wrong. But anything that takes your eye off the ball is a distraction.
Are All Writing Contests the Same?
How does this relate to book-writing contests?
It relates only to me, as far as I know. The sour taste of awards-show journalism left me unwilling to even look at a contest related to writing a thriller.
"Well, maybe the reason you don't care for contests is . . . you're not very good."
A valid question. But the deep-seated reason has much less to do with talent -- which is what it is -- and more to do with the that given the choice between staying in the background working and being on stage, smiling and collecting hardware, I'd chose the latter every time.
The times I won spot awards in which editors stood up and blindly handed me a glass trophy, sweat rolled down my back and blood rushed to my head. Had I been at lunch when the award was handed out, I'd have gladly traded that trophy for a burger, medium-rare.
That was then. The thing about awards is, the people who given them actually enjoy giving them. And people should appreciate that part of it. I should.
Should I find myself in position to have the blood rush to my head again somewhere amid a group of peers, I need to forget about the sweat and smile. And be happy someone liked what I created.
That is, after all, the objective.
Time to Find an Agent - Hello ThrillerFest, AgentFest
After about seven years and a handful of completed drafts, it's time to get serious and find an agent. My manuscript isn't going anywhere without representation, and a manuscript sitting in my desk drawer will generate damned few readers and even less money.
Or, as a friend said in a recent text message, "Quit picking at my scab or it will never heal."
From the beginning of this journey, I was steadfast in a specific process. Write the book, polish the book, find an agent, the book.
Today, the fourth draft of Dead Odds is in the hands of three people, including another novelist and a longtime (non-book) editor (but book enthusiast). Soon it will be in the hands of another professional (also non-book) editor.
While they read, a fourth draft morphed into a fifth draft, which incorporates minor language changes and ever-more scene tightening.
Regardless of the shape of the latest draft, though, my texting friend is right. I love this book, but enough. My wife is ready for me to tell her another story. I've already started on the next book, at least in my mind. An outline is not complete.
Before I can go there, I need to go somewhere else: New York.
ThrillerFest Includes Writers, Agents, Fans, Publishers
The annual ThrillerFest conference commences in two weeks in Manhattan. It's where the world's best writers of mystery, suspense and thriller books gather to teach and to meet their fans.
Writers, published and non-published, attend to learn more, to find a new agent or to find a publisher for their latest book. The day and a half of the conference revolves around teaching.
I blame Steve Berry and Shane Gericke.
When he was in Orlando a couple months ago, Berry spoke and then taught a three-hour workshop at the University of Central Florida about suspense writing. That day, he encouraged anyone with a completed manuscript to attend ThrillerFest.
"There's no other place you can talk to this many agents on one place," he said.
Hmm. Seed planted.
AgentFest Is Where Dreams Can Happen
The next thing I knew, I'd found an incredibly detailed blog post about the AgentFest part of ThrillerFest. Written by Gericke, "your friendly author captain," the post answers almost every question a newbie writer can think of.
[caption id="attachment_306" align="alignleft" width="250"] Novelist and author captain Shane Gericke[/caption]
There are any number of anecdotes about writers landing agents at conferences like this, although at most conferences they don't pile 40-plus agents into room and unleash the writers without an appointment. This is legit professional speed dating. Don't forget your log line, kids.
Gericke also was kind enough to answer more questions via email, and he was generous in his advice and in his time. I have to say, that went a long way.
The conference is not inexpensive. The hotel, the Grand Hyatt, is expensive for working stiffs and mortals, though it's a bargain by New York City standards. And there's airfare.
In other words, you have to be committed to make this happen for yourself if you want it to happen.
In the end, too many published writers said the same thing over and over again: You have to have an agent. Even if you self-publish and are successful, you will still want an agent.
Said Berry: "This business is to complicated and things change to fast to go without one."
Taking a Plunge by the Hudson
I joined the International Thriller Writers. I reserved the hotel room. A few weeks later, I registered for ThrillerFest. And then I bought a plane ticket. Cha-ching.
It will happen or it won't. Either way, the manuscript won't publish itself. And I'll never sell the first million books without getting the novel published and selling the first copy.
I can hardly wait to snap a picture of the author scrum before the agents.
Novelist Steve Berry Helps Adult Literacy League Raise Money at Reading Between the Wines
Everyone has an annual something that’s fun to attend. Or one that’s regarded as must-do.
A barbecue on July 4. A visit with Santa at mall Santa at Christmas. A New Year’s Eve party.
I have more than one on my annual calendar. Among them: Reading Between the Wines, a yearly fundraiser put on by the Adult Literacy League, a non-profit in Orlando.
Every year, ALL brings in a renowned author to speak and answer questions to a group of donors in a hotel ballroom or another event venue. There is, as the name suggests, wine served. Local eateries and chefs donate food. And close to 75 people or businesses in Central Florida donate items for a silent auction.
The goal is to raise as much money as possible for the league, which recruits tutors to teach adults how to read. A noble cause.
Full disclosure: I give to ALL. I believe the more educated we are as a society, the better off we are. And someone cannot be become better educated if he or she cannot read.
What’s the longtime PSA? “Reading is fundamental?” Reading is essential. It’s a pillar of a civilized society and one that has hopes of being governed better today than it was yesterday.
Berry's Persistence Pays Off
This year’s guest was thriller writer Steve Berry, whose new Cotton Malone book, The King’s Deception, hits the market on June 11.
Berry’s staple anecdote is that it took 85 rejections for him to become a published author. The 86th time was a charm. He sold The Amber Room to Ballantine Books. Why?
[caption id="attachment_275" align="alignleft" width="349"] Thriller writer Steve Berry signs one of his books at Reading Between the Wines[/caption]
"I was lucky. The world changed," he said. "There was a little book called The Da Vinci Code that you may have heard of."
Dan Brown’s historical thriller was an international best-seller. And it was exactly the kind of book that Berry wrote.
“Every time I pass The Da Vinci Code in the bookstore, I stop and bow,” Berry said, clasping his hands in prayer.
The first career for Berry, Georgia born and raised, was as a lawyer. With a law degree from the Mercer University School of Law, Berry had a his own wide-ranging law practice.
The day after his ALL appearance, Berry led a three-hour writing workshop at the University of Central Florida. He talked to about 20 future authors about story structure, point of view and dialogue. Then he added his 11 rules of writing.
"When we started doing these there were eight rules," Berry said, alluding to wife Elizabeth. "We’ve added three more as we’ve gone along."
Berry's Passions: Writing, History
Berry’s passion, besides writing, is history. He and Elizabeth created the non-profit History Matters "to assist communities around the world with historic restoration and preservation." Berry’s books are steeped in history.
He also has another commitment, one that came through during his workshop. He wants other to succeed in his footsteps. "Writers helping writers" is the credo of the Florida Writers Association, and Berry is all about that.
"I want people to learn from my mistakes, all the things I did wrong," he told participants in the workshop.
His overriding message to would-be writers is two-fold: write and finish.
"Ninety percent of writers never finish," he said. "I want you all to finish."
2,600 Helped Last Year
All Daniel wanted to do was start. Daniel is a young father who, a few years ago, did not know how to read. And now he can, thanks to ALL volunteer tutor Hugh Mills. Daniel and Mills were featured in this year's ALL video that played during the fundraiser.
ALL Executive Director Joyce Whidden said the league has 450 active volunteers and 50 more served at Reading Between the Wines, including some former students.
During 2012, she wrote in an email, the league helped 2,018 adult students about 600 children and parents benefited from the league's family literacy service.
Like Berry, I hope they all finish.
Discovering the (Brutal) Truths of Manuscript Critiques
An integral part of putting together a book -- any book, or any substantial piece of writing, really -- is that you almost always need some sort of feedback.
It is inevitable in a couple ways. If you're a writer, by definition it means you crave some sort of attention. You have something to say, you want to say it and you'd prefer someone pay attention to it.
So you do want someone to read what you write down or type out. The only real questions here are whether you want honest feedback from those readings and whether you want that feedback before you bare it all to the world. Or to an agent or (real) editor.
This is where wives, trusted friends, former college professors and colleagues come in.
Sixsome of readers
Who will you pick to critique your work?
My cadre so far is six. My wife, three former peers, a read-a-holic and another novelist. These are the six people I picked over the course of several years to read what I deemed completed chapters and then have at me.
My wife over a period of years read the book from its first chapters to the last. She caught many, many oversights and blunders. She also hated a few developments I liked, and vice versa.
A friend a former colleague, Peter Brown, has read manuscripts for another friend of his, books that were eventually published and did well. I figured he'd know what sells (to a publisher) and what doesn't, and he was incredibly encouraging. He (and maybe his wife) read the first half of the book and were impressed enough to tell me to finish. The book worked.
Another of the six, another of my former peers, never got around to it. (I'll spare his name here.) And by the time he would have, I told him to forget what I'd given him, that I'd gotten enough feedback already to know that what he had in his hands wasn't what I wanted him to read.
Yet the number is still six. My read-a-holic buddy, Bit Shaw, an octogenarian who eats, drinks and sleeps with Kindle -- and also may take into the pool with her -- shared my manuscript with her daughter, Barrie, also a prodigious reader (and lover of writing and of writers. Bless them.)
The two of them, by all accounts, read everything I sent them (in stages) within days. I asked the mother for her thoughts, and she delivered those of a real reader. She asked about characters and actions. She pointed out omissions and things that didn't jibe.
And . . . she guessed the ending.
I rewrote the ending.
You can handle the truth
My other erstwhile peer, John Cherwa, more hit man than editor, got through 12 chapters before I put the brakes on him. He'd done enough. I had to save him.
He savaged the early part of the book. It was fantastic.
It was exactly the sort of honest assessment the book needed. Flaws in plot, development and character plus issues with language. It was all there.
The manuscript wasn't ready.
Fast forward several months, and the sixth reader emerged. Following SleuthFest, Florida's Mystery Writers of America gathering, Micki Browning offered to read. I sent her eight chapters of the being-revised manuscript, and she sent them back with a couple days with numerous thoughts and helpful suggestions.
More chapters are coming her way. In between, I agreed to read her unpublished crime novel, and it was only then that I felt the sense of responsibility that some of my readers may have felt.
Should I say what I liked and didn't like? Should I couch the critique? Or should I just go the brutal route?
I chose the latter. That's what helped me the most, and I think most serious writers, though ever-fragile, appreciate a good flogging now and then. We do it to ourselves, we expect it from others.
And let's be honest: agents and publishers are going to do the same.
Let's just hope we all have thick enough skin and the believe that others do want what is best for us.
Tackling Timpano All about Prep, Patience and A 'Big Night'
A finished (and garnished) timpano.
Every now and then you find yourself at a party and you hear someone talk about a dish somebody made and you think, "I should try that."
Or you wind your way through a restaurant to your table and see something delicious-looking on someone else's plate and think, "I have to try that."
In this case, we're talking about the making -- and eating -- of timpano, a drum-shaped pasta dish that comes with a time-consuming and tricky recipe. I say pasta. It's more like an Italian casserole blanketed in pie crust.
The inspiration is "Big Night," a 1996 movie directed by Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci. The movie is about the efforts of two Italian immigrants, played by Tucci and Tony Shalhoub, trying to save their failing restaurant.
They end up staking their future on having one grand evening of food, hoping to impress an invited celebrity to spread the word about their special eatery. The chef, Primo (Shalhoub), decides to make timpano. And you get this:
This is what timpano looks like when it comes out of the oven. It is baked upside-down, and you flip it over to cut and serve.
In cooking, as in writing (as in life?), preparation is everything. It is doubly so with timpano.
Making this has the potential to make you feel as if you're preparing Thanksgiving dinner all by yourself. Or if you work ahead one or two days, the only work is changing your flour-laden clothes after you make the crust.
A few things at the start. Firs use penne pasta instead of ziti, which she said makes the dish a bit lighter. Another was to substitute Italian sausage -- hot or mild, your choice -- instead of salami because sausage is easier to chew.
My adjustments were to chop the cooked meatballs and sausages smaller than bite-sized. I did not use provolone cheese because I prefer mozzarella. I added one think layer of fresh parmesan midway through the assembly. (I also added a layer of fresh basil.)
When I make this again -- and I will -- I'll probably double up on the raw eggs and add them twice, once midway through assembly and a second time at the end. Cheating? Maybe. But who really loses in the end?
My order of prep was red sauce, meatballs, sausage, hard-boiled eggs, crust. I prefer to have the sauce marry for day in the refrigerator, so I made it a day ahead.
I changed the way I typically make meatballs, which is to add a lot of parmesan to them and to cook them in the red sauce. This time I used 1.5 pounds of pork and 1.5 pounds of ground beef, minced onion, some bread crumbs, chopped basil and parsley and one egg.
Mix it, form the meatballs slightly smaller than a golf ball. Bake them on a sheet for 35 minutes on a sheet pan.
The sausage: I did not make my own. (Someday, I swear.) I used one package of mild Italian sausage, removing small chunks of them from the casing to saute.
Once the meatballs and sausages were cooled, I sliced them into marble-sized pieces and put them in the fridge. Next came a hard boil of the eggs (add vinegar to the water).
Once those were done, they went into the fridge, as did a big pot of sauce.
The next day came the making of the pasta dough and, an hour later, assembly.
The dough was daunting because, well, let's face it: If you screw it up, you're done. You have no fallback plan unless you want spaghetti and meatballs or a sausage and meatball pizza.
Timpano crust before the roll-out.
As you make the dough (recipe below), just remember to help the process along as the mixer does its job. Push the flour from the sides to help incorporate it into the dough.
Add your water slowly so that the dough can form and start to pull away from the side and into a ball. Don't be surprised if for some reason you need to add more water than the recipe calls for to get the dough ball to form. I don't know why this is, it just is.
The dough has to chill for about an hour before you can start rolling it out.
While it's chilling, I started heating the pot of water to cook the penne. It must be done al dente -- only eight minutes on a hard boil. Then drain and add olive oil to keep the noodles from sticking.
The roll-out.
Back to the dough. The size: If you're making a small timpano, as I was this time, there is too much dough for the job. But I figured better to much than not enough. (Right?)
Having a well-floured surface for the dough roll-out is a must. You continually have to add flour as you work, too.
I guess the big key here for this is to have confidence. You can do this. Trust me, if I can do it you can do it. Just keep pushing flour underneath the dough as you roll so that the dough won't stick to the counter you're ready to use it.
Once the dough was where I wanted it, I greased the timpano bowl, flouted the top of the dough and folded it like a blanket. Then I moved it to the bowl, unfolded it inside and made the bottom and sides uniform.
Next came the assembly.
This is the order I used (and I'm not quite sure it's the proper order, if there is such a thing: penne, meatballs, red sauce, eggs, sausage, lots of mozzarella.
More penne, more meatballs, more cheese, more red sauce.
More sausage, more eggs, more mozzarella. Then came the final layer of penne and another layer of red sauce.
At some point, I added a double layer of fresh basil leaves. (And for the next one, I might doctor some of the penne up with pesto to add some more color and taste.)
After you're done filling the bowl, fold the sides of the dough over into the middle. Trim away the excess and make sure the top is sealed. Remember: Once finished, this is actually the bottom.
Filling the bowl with pasta, sauce, sausage, hard-boiled eggs and other goodness.
I was fearful that I'd overfilled the timpano because the it was actually higher than the level of the bowl. A needless worry, as it turned out.
It goes into a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. Then it sits for at least another 30 minutes.
This is when you start drinking red wine. You need something to calm your nerves, just in case you have a Timpano Fail on your hands.
Next comes the second scary part: flipping the bowl onto a cutting board, tapping on the bowl for luck and removing the bowl. Will the timpano stand on its own? Or will it collapse?
This seemingly fragile dish is not as fragile as you think. It works!
The final scary part comes at the slicing. This is just like a wedding cake with much more terror, because at least with a wedding cake is going to come out in one piece.
A ready-to-bake timpano.
The layers of food were quite apparent. But as cool as the slice looked, it tasted even better. An incredible blend of flavors, none of them overpowering. You could tell the difference between the meatballs and the sausage.
You could taste the basil. The hard-boiled eggs -- yeah, I know it's a bit strange -- melted into the dish as if they were cheese.
The crust was more pie crust than bread crust.
We served our timpano with more red sauce on the side and plenty of red pepper flakes for the heat-inclined.
So now the question is . . . when again?
The answer? The holidays, likely Christmas.
Or maybe another tester before then. In deference to my sister-in-law, I am thinking up a vegetarian version.
A serving of timpano. No extra sauce needed!
Red sauce
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
4 16-ounce cans of tomato sauce
1 can tomato paste
1/2 cup white sugar
2 TBL olive oil
Basil to taste
Oregano, to taste
Fennel seeds, to taste (1 TBL recommended)
Garlic powder, to taste (2 tea recommended)
Onion powder, to taste (1 tea recommended)
Red wine, to taste (half a cup)
This is a basic red sauce. Everybody prefers one style or another. If you like spice sauce, substitute red pepper flakes for the fennel.
Anyway, put the olive oil in a pot, finely chop the onion and sweat it for 4 minutes. Mince the garlic and add. Wait 2 minutes and add all the tomato sauce and the tomato paste.
Stir to incorporate the paste. Add the sugar and stir to help dissolve. Then mix and match the herbs and spices to your preference. With the fennel, I tend to fine chop the seeds into as much of a powder as I can.
Taste as you go. If you like the depth red wine adds, use some. If not, skip it.
Once you have the sauce like you want it, take it off the heat and walk away from 2 hours. Then put it in the refrigerator until you need it.
Dough for crust
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 sticks salted butter - cold
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup ice-cold water
Cut the butter into 1/2-inch cubes. Cut the butter into the flour, then use your fingers to get a crumby, flaky consistency with the flour.
Using a mixer with a dough hook, incorporate the eggs, one at a time. You will need to push the flour away from the sides to help.
Add the cold water a few splashes at a time until the dough pulls away from the sides and forms. Again, you may have to help it along off the sides.
After the dough forms into a ball, shape it into a two-inch wheel, wrap it in plastic and refrigerate it for an hour.
Sleuthfest 2012 Is in the Books
It’s hard to tell with so many participants, but the early betting is that suspense novelist Daniel Palmer squeezed the most of SleuthFest 2012.
Palmer spent most of last week in Orlando — some of it to serve on writers panels, some of it to moderate panels and some of it to cart his son to and from the theme parks. (SeaWorld won the theme park wars, according to dad.)
Writers won the rest of the week. Among those who shared anecdotes of woe, struggle, hope and success with the masses — and with each other — were Jeffery Deaver, Charlaine Harris, Chris Grabenstein, F. Paul Wilson, Heather Graham, James Grippando, Reed Farrel Coleman, John Gilstrap, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Jamie Freveletti, Keith Thomson, Mike Cooper, Michael Wiley, Neil Plakcy and two dozen others.
Sleuthfest is what organizers — the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America — call the preeminent regional mystery/thriller writers conference.
Suspense writer Jeffery Deaver talks about Carte Blanche, his addition to the James Bond series.
Deaver, Harris and Grabenstein were the headliners, with Deaver and Harris delivering keynote talks and poolside chats about themselves and their books and Grabenstein doing a memorable session about taking-as-it-comes writing.
Many others served as panelists to talk about telling mystery, suspense and thriller stories, about agents, about the publishing business today and mostly about the craft of writing. Agents and editors looking for new voices showed up, always a hopeful sign.
Finally, if you ever have the chance to see Grabenstein, either on a book tour or a guest lecturer, take it. He’s a one-man comedy show, hardly surprising given his improv background.
He’s good. He’s also damned smart.
Although he’s apt to tell you what a former co-worker used to share with him at the end of a long day writing ad copy: “Another day, another day undetected.”