Doing the happy dance here! I never thought I’d see #1 in the Free Kindle Store. Shot is free through Monday. If you don’t have your copy yet, click the cover in the sidebar to get yours.
BONUS: Shot is part of the whispersync program with Audible. If you own the Kindle edition, you can get the audio, with Jane Boyer’s wonderful narration, for $1.99. How cool is that?
I’m still getting the occasional hit on my Cover Dog Photo Contest posts from last summer. Thought I would let you know, I’m running another portrait contest. This one is a raffle to celebrate the launch of Maximum Security later this month.
It’s part of my online launch party on Facebook, Wednesday, November 20, from 7pm – 11 pm, EST. Participate in party activities to rack up entries. There will be lots of other prizes as well, but the grand prize is an oil painting of your dog from photos that you supply to me. No purchase is necessary to earn entries.
Go to the Maximum Security Launch Party Page to RSVP, and while you’re there, get your first entry by suggesting a caption for the photo of Buddy, a little troublemaker caught in the act of eating Grandma’s Christmas present.
If you’d like to study up for the trivia questions, half of these are from this sample of Maximum Security. The rest come from A Shot in the Bark and Drool Baby. Other activities do not require any special knowledge to participate.
Please feel free to invite anyone who likes dogs and mysteries – but then, who doesn’t?
I’m really excited about Maximum Security. It’s going to be another month before it comes out (November 21, Yikes!) and I can’t stand it, so I’m posting the first 10% here. This dog park mystery features my very own Max (yes, that’s her, above) as an escape artist (she’s playing to type). If you want to go straight to the dogs, skip the prologue and go to “Day 1.”
To get the PDF, click here > Maximum Security Sample
I hope you love it!
Here’s another picture, just because.
I’m having a hard time as a reader these days. Part of it has to do with becoming an author, giving me less time to read for pleasure and making me choosier as well as more critical of the books I read. Part of it has to do with reading the same series authors since the 90s.
For many of them, their story-lines have become preposterous, or they’ve gotten lazy and they’re phoning it in. I can tell because I still reread the stories that made me fall in love with them. James Patterson has become the McDonalds of popular fiction, farming out a dozen novels every year to a variety of short-order writers.
I was thrilled when the library phoned to say Storm Front was in. Thank God. John Sandford is still a reliable great read. I was in the middle of listening to Rough Country on audio, but happy to set it aside for the new installment in the Virgil (that F-ing) Flowers series.
I usually avoid reading the inside flap on authors I like because I want to be surprised every step of the way. This time I was riding in the car with a friend when I picked it up, so I took a peek. Turns out, Virgil is in pursuit of an artifact with calamitous religious implications smuggled out of Israel. A DaVinci Code knockoff? Not your typical Flowers fare, but what the hey, it’s John Sandford.
So I cracked the spine and turned the pages and found: “I wrote this novel with help from my partner, Michele Cook . . .” and she’s a journalist and screenwriter who never wrote a novel before.
Uh-oh.
I tried, I really did. I made it to page 60, but then I had to stop. It’s not a bad book, exactly. The writing is competent. If this were a college student, I’d give it an A. Not because I wanted to, because they did what they were supposed to. But it lacks the heart that makes a great book live.
I’m sure many people will be perfectly happy with the book. It’s just that it’s not John Sandford, whose ball-scratching masculinity sweats from the pores of every word. Sandford put the “F-ing” in Flowers. This Virgil is a paper doll in comparison.
I’m sure the rest of the book is competent as well. It’s just that I feel like someone gave me tickets to see Elvis and I got Taylor Hicks in a white jumpsuit instead.
Perhaps it’s not fair of me to judge a book I won’t finish, but my time is valuable and so is yours. If you aren’t picky, and you aren’t a rabid Sandford fan, you will probably enjoy this book. But I don’t think Sandford did Cook any favors by putting his name on the cover and setting expectations so high.
You’ve been warned.
Have you ever defended your lack of sales by saying, “I’m an Artist“? You may be right.
Yesterday morning, a deluge trapped me in the picnic shelter at the dog park with one of the other hard-core regulars. In talking about the house he was looking for, “Dave” said his fiance “Sue” had lusted after an inner-city building with one floor converted into a gallery.
I didn’t know Sue was an artist. Dave explained that she had always been too critical of her work and wound up giving it away, trashing it or painting over it. Then she went to NYC a few years ago and was disgusted with the art in the Museums. “She said, ‘my stuff was way better than this,’ and she was right.”
I began reflecting on my own creative journey with various mediums, and how attitude affects our chances for real world success. I decided there were three types of creative people. Dilettantes, Artists, and Craftsmen (or Crafts-women, or Crafts-people, or just plain Crafters).
THE DILETTANTE
I like to sing. I used to hold concerts in my car during long solo drives. On two memorable occasions, I sang back-up with friends. I used to indulge in fantasies about being onstage, singing in front of thousands of screaming fans. In my head, I auditioned for Simon Cowell and blew him away (yeah, right). Today I make up funny songs to sing to my dogs. They have multiple verses and everything. I imagine it would be fun to make a record of doggie songs one day. Meanwhile, I only sing them for my four-footers.
Notice how I’ve never had lessons, never submitted my singing to scrutiny, never worked at it, and my main value in singing is fun. I don’t do it on a regular basis. I’m easily distracted from it and have no true commitment to it. I fantasize that I’m fabulous without doing anything to get that way.
When it comes to singing, I’m a dilettante. And that’s okay as long as you know that’s what you are. The problem comes in when someone deludes themselves into thinking they will actually accomplish something of value someday. It has nothing to do with talent, of which the dilettante may have much or little.
The dilettante may actually be talented in so many things that they can’t make up their mind what they want to do. They may be serial monogamists, taking on one passion after another and dropping them when it gets tough or boring, or they may be polygamists, doing so many things at once that they never get beyond amateur status with any of it.
Being a Dilettante has everything to do with attitude, which with the Dilettante is an unwillingness to commit to one thing; to work at their medium, evaluate it with a critical eye and stick with it despite obstacles.
THE ARTIST
I’ve been an artist all my life. I knew I was going to be a painter when I was in grade school. I totally identified with being a painter. I sold my first painting at the age of fifteen and had my first art show when I was nineteen. I went to college to study art. While I was in grad school, I told one of the other TA’s, “If I only had enough money to either eat or buy art supplies, I would by the supplies because someone will always feed me, but they won’t necessarily buy me bronze.” (I was casting statuettes at the time). I was in the studio every day and wrapped my entire life around art.
The Artist has a voice that must express itself. Sometimes it feels like channeling, with unexpected results. Always, the work justifies itself and must manifest as it must be, according to the inner urging of the artist. They rail against limitations imposed on their creativity by outside sources, such as size requirements for submission to shows, or the necessity to work according to someone else’s deadline.
The Artist is usually compelled to share their work somewhere, somehow, and is willing to accept criticism. Despite the validity of the criticism, their inner voice is their god, and their work is more precious than life.
Nothing pissed me off more than someone else picking up a paintbrush and doing something to one of my pieces. I take that back. there is one thing. While I may occasionally destroy something as not good enough, you’d better not. It’s the one way guaranteed to end our relationship. Just ask my ex-husband.
The Artist constantly strives to transcend their limitations and conversely, may stop producing in a popular body of work because they “have nothing more to say” about that particular subject. The object serves as a vehicle for a higher purpose. They often define themselves as a “process person.” They literally get high off their work and if they go too long without being creative, they become depressed.
The Artist desires recognition and often deserves it, but usually rebels against the necessity of marketing and of compromising their work to suit the market place. They find it impossible to put a price tag on it. Artists are often offended that someone would buy a painting to have “something pretty that matches the sofa.” Discussing your decorating scheme with an Artist is likely to result in fisticuffs.
THE CRAFTSMAN
A Craftsman loves what they do, but they are able to balance their work with external realities and the market place. The things they create have a purpose, whether is it to hold their coffee, look pretty on someone’s neck or entertain. Their mantra is “form follows function” and they use external limitations, such as the size of a room or its color scheme (or genre norms such as page length and themes) as springboards for their creativity. Their pleasure comes from creating a fine thing that goes out into the world and serves its purpose.
While an Artist serves their work, the Craftsman’s work serves him/her. They understand that people only buy what they want, and if you want to sell to them, you need to provide what they’re willing to buy. They expect to profit from their work and budget their investment into each project accordingly. They know when their work is “good enough” and are willing to let it go out into the world without being absolutely perfect.
They have a professional attitude about selling the output of their creative impulses and dealing with the marketplace does not make them feel dirty. They understand the concept of branding and providing a consistent product. Business people find them easy to deal with and will choose to partner with them over more talented individuals for that reason.
Craftsmen also have the healthiest response to criticism. Their assessment of their abilities is realistic and they do not identify with their work the way the Artist does. Like anyone else, they may get nervous when they put their creative efforts out before the public, but it’s not their guts hanging on display.
Most of the successful artists in the high art world have at least some Craftsman in them. It’s a dirty little secret, but the people who sell art rarely have the patience to deal with a total Artist, such as DeKooning or Van Gogh (or more recently, Basquiat). It’s their gallery and they like being the temperamental ones. The danger with the Craftsman type is that of capitalizing on one’s popularity to the point of turning out cookie-cutter creations to satisfy the market.
When it comes to my writing, I’m a craftsman. I enjoy it, but I don’t feel driven by it they way I have been driven by painting. It’s a job to me. The very best of jobs, but still a job.
Each of these types has their place and their value. The Dilettante is playful and willing to try new things. They learn from each of their creative flirtations and may be able to apply what they learn when they settle on a direction, giving them a very rich perspective. The Artist is passionately committed and unwilling to settle for mediocrity. The Craftsman is a realist and is able to manage their creative life so it supports him/her, rather than the other way around.
These three aspects of creativity function best when they are combined in one person. If you’re feeling a bit lopsided, try on a different style for a while.
“Tell me, honestly, do these pants make me look fat?”
How many times have you wanted to answer that question with a resounding “YES! THEY HAVE ‘HINDENBURG’ WRITTEN ACROSS THE ASS! IN NEON!”
We don’t ever say it. Not if we want to keep our friends and loved ones. Our jobs. Peace with the neighbors. Tell the truth and you will be shunned. The closest we can come is a very tactful, “That’s not your best look. I like (fill in the blank) on you so much better.”
But that’s exactly what I want, need, prize in a beta reader.
What exactly is a beta reader you ask? Only the most important support person in that village it takes to get an indie book published. Indie authors cultivate a group of beta readers. These are the first people who see a manuscript, often at a point in development where it is nearly finished but not totally polished. They serve as a consumer focus group to give feedback about a book before it is published.
This is critically important to indie writer/publishers. Traditional publishing houses suffer from a huge deficit. They have a long food chain to support and they have to nurture projects that they know will sell. This results in slick, cookie-cutter books by big name authors that often play to the lowest common denominator, at the direction of their editors.
An indie author/publisher has a food chain of 1. He/she may farm out aspects of the publishing process, or an indie author may do it all themselves, editing, proof-reading, cover design and formatting. There is one thing an indie author cannot do. An indie author cannot experience their book the way a reader will.
One nifty thing about being an indie author is being able to take risks. Be different. Pursue a niche category. I don’t have to convince an editor that my book will sell. I only have to please myself and my readers. I value the beta readers who give me feedback on my books because they help me do a better job of serving my audience.
It’s hard to find good beta readers. Why? Social conditioning. The fear of hurting someone’s feelings, of offending, of damaging a relationship. So often a newbie beta reader will respond with some typo corrections and a vague “I liked it, it was good.”
While we really, really want you to love it, that response is always vaguely unsatisfying. I know I’m not perfect. I want to be better. In order to be better I need your raw, unfiltered, unvarnished response (okay, you can use a little tact and I won’t mind). I’ll pull on my big girl panties when I review your feedback and take care of my own ego.
My favorite beta reader once decided I was using a certain word too many times. She began numbering the instances in red pen, with the numbers getting larger with each instance. She added exclamation marks, first one, then two, then three. She circled and underlined. It let me know how annoying it was. I cut most of them out and we are still valued friends.
My usual method of working with a local beta reader is to supply them with a paper copy of the manuscript. If they don’t have a red pen, I will supply one. My fondest wish is that the reader use the red pen to scribble commentary as they go along.
I supply computer files for remote readers. In the best of all instances, they have full Word functionality on their device so they can add comments as they go along and return it to me with the comments included. Otherwise, they just take notes and send those back.
Go ahead, scrawl “BORING” right across that four page info dump. Lose track of who’s talking in a conversation? Let me know. Like something? You can put little hearts on it, I won’t mind. Did I put the bullet in his left arm in chapter 3 and bandage the bullet hole on the right arm in chapter 4? Point that out. If I say Lia rode west, into the sunrise, for heaven’s sake, correct me!
Does it drag? I really, really want to know that. If it drags for you, it’ll drag for other people, too, and they won’t bother to finish the book.
I know it’s hard. It’s like telling someone their fly is down. If your fly was down, and you were about to enter a room full of people, wouldn’t you want to know?
Some Hints:
1. Be a good match. Only beta books in genres and styles you like. I stopped using one beta reader because she kept pointing me at John Grisham, her favorite writer. I am very lukewarm about John Grisham and I absolutely don’t want to be him!
2. Be yourself. Don’t try to give me the “correct” response. Give me yours. I want to now what did and didn’t work for you.
3. Read for pleasure. Make comments when you notice something, but don’t feel like you have to comment on everything.
4. Don’t rewrite my book for me. That’s my job. Stick with feedback. “Too gory” “more mushy stuff,” (or “too mushy” “more gore”).
5. We want you to be totally immersed in the world we’ve created. If anything catches your attention and jars you out of that world, point it out. It could be an obvious error, weird word usage, an overwrought metaphor or something else.
6. Don’t assume I meant to do something. When I first wrote Drool Baby, I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick with the mystery format or go for a thriller format that revealed the killer early in the book. After I decided to stick with the mystery format, I failed to erase all instances of my murderers name. None of my betas mentioned it. It was published with the killer revealed a good sixty pages before the final confrontation. (It was corrected soon after, thankfully)
7. If you happen to catch a typo, sure, go ahead and mark it, but don’t search for them. I’d rather you were in the flow of the book instead. I’ve got someone else who proofreads. It’s a different mindset.
8. I may agree with you or I may not. Your opinion still provides valuable information to me.
Authors – Do you have any tips/hints for beta readers you’d like to add?
On August 22, Self-Publishing Guru Joe Konrath reported that he got drunk and wrote, edited, formatted, designed a cover for and published a short on Amazon in an hour. On four different occasions. He found this exercise tremendously freeing and challenged his readers to try it, giving them 8 hours to accomplish what he did in one.
On August 26, he promised to feature anyone who met the challenge in his August 30 blog: 8 Hour Contest Winners. He gave us until August 29th to complete this and send him the info (click the link to see the books, many of them are free tonight and tomorrow).
I’m not a huge Konrath fan, but I was outside of Chicago at the time visiting my stepmother. Her only computer is an ancient Dell that can surf for exactly five minutes before the browser locks up. There’s only so much I can do on my Kindle Fire. Like watch my on-line writing group buds whooping it up over the silly books they were writing under groaner pen-names. The more fun they were having, the more I felt like I was missing out.
Then I remembered. Back before Lia Anderson was a gleam in my eye, I was researching publishing options. Not because I thought I had a novel in me. Because I wanted to write a cookbook. I abandoned this project for two reasons: 1. I upgraded my word processing app and it ate my MS and 2. I thought eating right was going to cure my TBI (fool, I) and when I realized I didn’t have all the food answers, I dropped the project until such time that I did.
I never did find my answers, but I realized I had a lot of recipes I’d collected along the way. I got back into Cincinnati at 11 p.m. on August 27. Twelve hours later I sat down at my computer (lovely, lovely Mac! How I missed you!) and tossed together The Starving Artist Cookbook, skimming just under Konrath’s 8 hour deadline.
It’s not perfect. I didn’t get to include everything I wanted. The cover is, admittedly, ‘Meh.’ I didn’t have time to create a table of contents. But it’s out there. And tonight and tomorrow, it’s FREE! After that it’s $.99.
I will be adding to this book (and raising the price to a lofty $2.99) sometime this fall. Then I will contact the ‘Zon and tell them I have improved my book, and would they please let all the nice people who already bought it, download the improved version.
It’s written from Lia’s perspective, since she and I share the same quirky attitude about food. It has a large section featuring vegan smoothies, including Lia’s famous ‘pond scum’ smoothies. There’s info about making yogurt (which you can do with almond milk, if you like) and cultured veggies (yum!) and many raw food recipes. There are only a few recipes with include fish and chicken, and none with red meat. It includes several chocolate recipes, including raw fudge and my own crazy cake. One of the first things I’m going to add when I update the book will be Jim McDonald’s crazy cake recipe (which gets a mention in soon-to-be-released Maximum Security).
So, get your copy of The Starving Artist Cookbook now, while it’s free. I guarantee you’ll find at least one keeper recipe in it. And if you don’t, I’ll give you back every penny you didn’t spend on it.
Back in the day, long before I ever thought I’d write novels, a woman named Karen Shaffer invited me to bring my signature good-will guerrilla art project, New Leaf, to Abingdon, VA for an arts festival.
There I met her husband, Charles Vess. If you’ve never heard of Charles Vess, he’s an amazing illustrator who became disenchanted with drawing Spiderman for Marvel Comics. When I met him, he had just finished collaborating with Neil Gaiman on Stardust.
He told me he got tired of brawn being the ultimate solution in the comic book world. He went looking for stories that were resolved through ingenuity instead. Fast forward some years, and Stardust is made into a major motion picture featuring both Michelle Pfieffer and Robert De Niro. What does Hollywood do to this terrific book? They tossed in a lot of the POW! BAM! that Charles had turned his back on.
I enjoyed the movie and have watched it several times. I do not enjoy it more than the book despite the appearance of Robert De Niro in a :-X (sorry, can’t tell you. I don’t do spoilers).
As I was considering my recent review of Elysium, I remembered this bit of irony, and it brought to mind popular plot devices (read: lazy shortcuts) that disturb me as a mystery novelist.
One of the most over-abused practices: “If the pace drags, kill someone.”
This has become so popular that even romantic suspense writers such as Amanda Quick now litter their books with multiple corpses. When she started her writing career, one dead body would do just fine.
I’m not a prude about dead bodies. My first two books were about a serial killer (it says that, right in the blurb). But there just aren’t all that many serial killers out there, and ordinary, run of the mill murderers do not normally leave a trail of bodies behind them to cover up their crimes.
So I’m in the middle of novel number three, and I’m thinking about pacing without the easy device of gratuitous murder. I read some experts.
What do writing gurus have to say about plotting? There are variations on the exact wording, but the common wisdom is that “A plot is a series of disasters that get progressively worse as the book goes along until the triumph (or not) of the final confrontation.”
Seriously? I like to think my characters are smarter than that.
This makes me think about Patricia Cornwell, whose books I used to love until the exacerbating negativity finally got to me. The last book she wrote, I’d finally had enough. Within the first two pages, Kay Scarpetta is fuming about some bit of incompetence engineered by Pete Marino. She’s kept this guy around for twenty years with all the stuff he’s pulled and she hasn’t gotten rid of him? Why does everyone she works with eventually betray her? Is she that big a bitch?
And what about Lucy and Benton? Why do we never see her having a good time with the two people she loves most? Does she really love anyone? Why hasn’t someone sent her to the therapist she so obviously needs? This is entertainment?
So, yes, a novel needs obstacles or it isn’t compelling, or even real. But I like some triumphs and good times, too.
Other devices that annoy me: undetectable poisons that kill rapidly in tiny amounts, over-reliance on a network of readily available informants, silenced guns that are actually silent, same day DNA tests, and protagonists who have more money than God so they can drive around in fancy cars and fly to Bimini to pursue clues at the drop of a hat.
Edit: My friend, Jacques, just reminded me about duct-work large enough for a football lineman to crawl through. Doh.
Edit #2: More of a movie convention, but still worth mentioning: Endless thugs that multiply like tribbles, especially the ones who teleport in front of you, no matter how fast you’re going or how many times you’ve eluded them.
Where am I going with this rant? I have a small request to make. While I might slip from time to time, if I ever become reliant on such silly devices, please put a drop of that undetectable poison in my coffee and put me out of my misery.
George Wier, if you haven’t heard of him, is author of the Bill Travis Mysteries. These days he is spending most of his time hopping around the Southwest doing book signings for Long Fall From Heaven. He still finds time to pop into our online writer’s group.
Last night he shared the following. This beautiful little essay on writing had me thinking of the New York Sun op-ed piece written over a hundred years ago. You know the one I mean. It begins, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
Here’s George:
A bit of advice I gave someone yesterday on writing. Maybe I should start paying attention to it myself:
Marc,
While I would never dissuade you from reading other writers, or reading as much as you can on the subject of writing, I suggest that you dive in head first. As a reader you know what you like to read. I suggest you write exactly what you yourself like to read, and nothing more. Also, you should start writing out of the blue. In fact, get used to writing the moment (if possible) an idea hits you so that what you put down can be raw and true and from the gut. There ARE NO authorities on writing. You are the authority on your OWN writing. Period. So, write for you, first. Second, write a lot. Hone your skills, either over time or through a high degree of output, or both (as it usually works out that way anyway). As far as the “length” of what you should write, forget about length. Right now, at this stage, that’s not even in the equation. A story is it’s own universe, just as I say in the videos. It has it’s own internal laws. And what you write in a story will come out right if you pay ZERO attention to length, or whether there’s too much dialogue, or not enough of this or that, or whatever. Don’t put your attention on anything other than telling the story. And… at BEST, the story will begin to write itself. You’ll know what this feels like when it begins to happen. There is no other feeling quite like it. For me it is like being carried along by a strong current. It has swept you out to the middle of the channel and it is taking you somewhere. It’s best not to fight it, but to instead go along. Don’t bother swimming against the current, or even necessarily WITH the current, and definitely not towards shore. Just tuck your hands behind your head and let that story carry you along. That’s the best advice I can give.
So, Marc, what I want you to do is…today, or tomorrow, or as soon as you can, sit down and write something. And don’t worry about whether it’s good or not. Just write it. For it’s own sake. And that is really all there is. I could teach a seminar for weeks on the subject, but really, it all comes down to just this paragraph. Just…write.
Here’s George again, snuggling with his dog:
I feel like Dorothy, at the end of the Wizard of Oz, where she wakes up and pontificates about finding things in her own back yard. For three months I scoured the internet, looking for the perfect escape-artist cover-dog for Maximum Security. Doh. He lives next door.
Meet Simba. Simba Lives with Jerome Wilson, owner of Northside Grange Pet and Urban Farm Supply, where I get my grain-free kibble.
Simba is a bright and talented young man. I’ve known him since he came to live with Jerome as a pup less than a year ago. One day in July I was hanging over the fence and being neighborly. Simba has his own yard-within-a-yard, to keep him out of the garden. I noticed a small stock pallet leaning against the gate to Simba’s playpen, blocking the gap between the bottom of the gate and the ground.
“Does Simba ever try to escape?” I asked.
Turns out escape is one of his great pleasures in life.
Watch Simba in action.
Simba Wiggled through, only to meet his warden . . . er, owner, Jerome, on the other side.
I haven’t decided which picture to use yet because I don’t know which is my favorite. I’ll be sure to post the oil painting here when it’s done. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing with this image and I like it alot.
If you’d like to see some of my other entrants, click here and here.
Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries by C.A. Newsome 