Far to Go

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

This is my first post for SleuthSayers. For the past four and half years, I've had a posting at Criminal Brief on Thursdays. Being their Femme Fatale was fun and yes, I have also been known as Thursday's Child with far to go. As a Sleuthsayer, I am eager to start anew with a clean slate. Because this blog is comprised of experienced bloggers, we might be considered "new", but certainly not ingenues. That is both good and bad.

The good is though we enter this endeavor knowing not everyone is going to like every column, from what we've learned over the years, the odds are the readership will enjoy enough of what's here to return soon and often. We appreciate and need your feedback to find out what you'd like to see on this blog.

The bad news is -- wait! There is no bad news. We're ready to explore crime writing and getting to know mystery writers and hear what the mystery readers want.

Writers are like a combination between a magician and serial killer: we always have something new up our sleeve, but often the thoughts lurking deep in our mind aren't always nice and pretty, yet sometimes those are the most interesting.

I suppose I should introduce myself. I am a lover of the short story. My first love is mystery and I enjoy plotting crimes. I'd probably be a decent enough criminal except I'm too chicken to do the time if I got caught. Better for me to write my stories and stay scared straight.

As a fiction writer, it seems I sell a lot of nonfiction. I dabble in other realms of the writing world and have succumbed to poetry, screenplays and scripting a fashion show for the Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation. I've been a book reviewer, an office manager and spent time as an actual hired killer when I worked as an exterminator. I really do know how to get rid of the bodies.

I love writing, but probably do the work as much for getting speaking gigs as book sales. I love the stage and yes, I admit, applause. Writers usually sit in front of a computer and rarely get applause. In my opinion, we all need more applause in our life. So, right now, I am applauding you for having read something today just for fun and I hope that includes this blog. Go ahead and blush as I am now giving you a standing ovation. You're really quite wonderful and it's fine with me if you start feeling the same about me, too.

I'll be back here on alternate Thursdays. I hope you will, too. I have plans for you.

By Way of Introduction

by Robert Lopresti

So here we are in our new digs. I miss Criminal Brief but I admit to a certain delight at a fresh start. It feels like all my crimes have been pardoned, my sins forgiven, my Permanent Record run through the shredder and the statute of limitations run out. In other words, all the mistakes I made at CB have been forgotten and I can make them all over again. I can hardly wait!

It is tempting to do now what James Lincoln Warren asked us not to do in the last weeks of CB: namely, get all weepy and nostalgic about the good old days back there. But a better idea might be to ruin James’ reputation by revealing to the world exactly how incredibly generous, hard-working, and thoughtful he was throughout the whole project. Wouldn’t that serve him right?

But no. Even James deserves a fresh start. And in that regard I am going to assume you may not be familiar with me so I think I should tell you a little bit about the person who hopes to steal a few minutes of your time on 76.9% of your Wednesdays. (Neil Schofield will be filling this slot on the second Wednesday of each month, and I am delighted to have him on board.) But getting back to me, here are some Fun Facts:

• I am a librarian.
• I live in the Pacific Northwest.
• I am the author of forty-plus short stories and a novel.
• My most recent publication is a non-fiction piece entitled How Overdue Library Books Caused the Civil War.
• I am the winner of a Derringer Prize and a nominee for an Anthony. So far the Edgar, Oscar and Nobel have narrowly escaped my grasp.
• I am considered by some to have a bizarre imagination.
• I was Dashiell Hammett’s inspiration for the character Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon. (Frankly I don’t think Elisha Cook Jr. captured my innate charm.)
• I have built a 1:20 scale-model of Nero Wolfe’s office, entirely out of popsicle sticks.
• While I write under my own name now I am perhaps best known for my work under the names Ngaio Marsh and Erle Stanley Gardner.
• I know who killed Roger Ackroyd, who framed Roger Rabbit, who Teddy Villanova is, who killed Cock Robin, what Mrs. McGillicuddy saw, and where Carmen Sandiego is.

But that’s enough about me. Who the heck are you?

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be . . . An Introduction

            Introductions, awkward always, remind me of the opening lines of Emily Dickinson’s poem:  I’m nobody, who are you?  Are you nobody too?  While I am in august company on SleuthSayers, I am still pretty new to this game.

            I came to fiction writing later in life, near the end of my stint as a Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Litigation at the U.S. Department of Transportation.  There I wrote and (even more) edited the writings of others for over twenty years.  But those writings were not narratives, worse still, they were legal briefs!  I left all of that behind when I retired in 2009.  Since then I list my occupation as “recovering attorney.”

            Although I have some stories “making the rounds,” and others solidifying in outline form on the hard drive of my lap top, my published mystery fiction (as of this writing) numbers two stories.  “The Book Case,” EQMM May, 2007, was written with the assistance of Kurt Sercu, proprietor of “Ellery Queen, a Website of Deduction.”  (More on Kurt and his great website another week.) The story won second place in the 2007 EQMM Readers’ Award competition (missing first place by one vote) and was nominated for the 2007 Barry Award for best short story.  “The Mad Hatter’s Riddle,” a prequel of sorts, was published in the September/October 2009 issue of EQMM.  Both stories are pastiches, tributes if you will, to a character with whom I literally (pun intended) grew up – Ellery Queen. 

            In a November 2010 column in Criminal Brief, James Lincoln Warren, during the course of commenting on his own efforts to write a Nero Wolfe tribute, said this of my stories:

But is it really a good idea to write these tributes, to put one’s own spin on someone else’s idea?

Well, in the case of Dale Andrews, the answer is a resounding yes, because if he didn’t write an Ellery story or two, he probably wouldn’t have published anything at all in terms of fiction, and the stories are very good. 

I love the reference, and not because it is one of the rare comments addressing my writing.  Rather, I love it because it is quintessential James.  It is a compliment surrounding a cold, hard truth.   For he is correct – at least at this stage my fiction is comprised solely of pastiches.

Ellery Queen --  Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay

            As I pointed out some years back in a guest column I wrote for Criminal Brief, if you Google “pastiche” looking for a definition, the first one you will find is this: “a work of art that intentionally imitates other works, often to ridicule or satire.” You might guess, if you have been following this, that the definition I will offer up instead is one penned originally by Frederic Dannay, writing as Ellery Queen. Dannay wrote that “a pastiche is a serious and sincere imitation in the exact manner of the original author.” The readily apparent difference between the two definitions is that the former includes the parody – since it invites “ridicule or satire.” The latter, I would argue, correctly excludes both.

            My belief is that you have to approach characters created by other authors with reverence and with care.  My own rule for writing pastiches is also the basic cardinal principle for the practice of medicine: “first, do no harm.” To me this means that the protagonist who enters at the beginning of the story, and the one who emerges at the end, should be recognizable as the protagonist that you, the reader, expected.  Liberties can be taken, and I have done so in my stories, but it seems to me the author must always ask whether each of those liberties should be taken.  Constrained by Dannay’s definition, the writing style, the characters, and the plotting should, to the extent possible, emulate the original. As such, a strict pastiche is an homage, or as James Lincoln Warren notes in his aforementioned article, a tribute.  The pastiche, or tribute, is therefore a brittle form that calls for a deferential approach.

By contrast, liberties are taken regularly with Sherlock Holmes (a favorite subject of imitation since the Conan Doyle stories are now in the public domain).  Some of these I cannot read, and certainly would not write.  I remember as a teenager trying to read a Sherlock Holmes story that ultimately cast Holmes as Jack the Ripper and ended with Watson killing him.  I hurled the book across the living room and only picked it up again to deposit it in the trash.  Harm had clearly been done.

Benedict Cumberbatch as BBC's Holmes?

Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson?

Other transformations of Holmes are more difficult, perhaps, to judge.  Should Holmes be relegated to the role of secondary character to his “wife” (who isn’t even Irene Adler!) as Laurie King envisions the character in her very popular Mary Russell mysteries?  And what about the new BBC series, which cuts and pastes Holmes into 21^st century London, relying on blackberries and laptops?  Inevitably it is up to the writers of pastiches to determine how far the rubber band can be stretched, and then up to the reader (or viewer) to determine whether the rubber band has, in fact, been snapped.

Jennifer Garner as Miss Marple??

            A new battle is currently brewing concerning the further adventures, if you will, of Agatha Christie’s timeless sleuth Miss Marple.  Christie (famously) did not like the portrayal of her character as envisioned by Margaret Rutherford in the 1950s. She reportedly complained in one letter: “[w]hy don’t they just invent a new character? Then they can have their cheap fun and leave me and my creations alone.”  One can only suspect the reaction Dame Christy might have to recently announced plans by Disney to cast Jeniffer Garner as a re-invented young, hip and sexy Miss Marple.  Seems to me harm may well ensue!

With Holmes there is no one to object when things go too far (as in the case of Holmes as the Ripper) since copyright protections have long since expired.  Recognizable or not, Holmes and Watson are now afoot in the public domain; not yet the case for Christie or Queen. 
 
 Thus, with Ellery even if I did not follow to the best of my ability the constraint of “doing no harm,” that constraint could nevertheless be imposed externally since each pastiche featuring Ellery as a character – whether by me, by Jon Breen, or by the late and truly lamented Ed Hoch –  must be read and approved by the surviving children of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee before it is allowed to see print.  I did not include Francis Nevins, author of “Open Letter to Survivors,” surely one of the greatest Ellery pastiches of all time, in this list since Nevins never explicitly identifies his detective as Ellery.  I suspect, however, that that story also only saw print after Frederic Dannay, then still very much with us, gave it his seal of approval.

So much for this Tuesday.  What to expect in future weeks?  Well, I like Golden Age mysteries, whodunits that are "fair play" detective stories.  I also like to discuss how everyday events (and funny mistakes) can be re-cycled into ideas for stories and clues.  However, I am not certain exactly where Tuesdays are headed since I have yet to hear anything from my partner in crime (fiction) TBA who, I am sure, is “TB” to his or her friends.  I’d certainly like to hear from him or her by next week since I didn’t sign on to be the only “weekly victim” in this particular whodunit!

Peanut Butter on Monday

Greetings from your Monday SleuthSayers! I'm Fran Rizer, and my partner is Jan Grape, a Texas lady with an AWESOME background in mysteries. She'll introduce herself next week. Meanwhile, just remember:

START YOUR WEEK WITH JAN AND FRAN!

Like the other Sleuth Sayers, I'm a writer of mysteries. My Callie Parrish Mystery Series, published by Berkley Prime Crime division of Penguin, USA, and Bella Rosa Books, are my best-known works, but I've also had articles and stories in magazines including Pages of Stories (Canada), Living Blues, Bluegrass Unlimited, Bluegrass Now, Ladies Home Journal, and Field & Stream. At the moment, I'm working on the first mystery in a new series.

Considering what to write about in this first essay, I began to think about peanut butter. Yes, that's what I said--peanut butter! Decades ago, I was a yo-yo dieter whenever I needed to fit into some special outfit for an important occasion. Before my wedding, I adopted a popular diet of the time--one of those so specific that it dictated every mouthful for each day of the week. It may have been the one that allowed steak and four ounces of ice cream one night a week or the one that required grapefruit every morning, but what I remember most was that on Mondays, the dieter was required to eat peanut butter.

There are all kinds of peanut butter--creamy, crunchy, extra crunchy, mixed with honey, and even swirled with grape jelly--but it's still possible to grow tired of peanut butter. I began to dread Mondays, not just because they signaled return to work after the weekend, but because of that danged peanut butter. I'm the total opposite of OCD and I've always tended to do things my way, on my own time. When on writers' panels, I stumble over the questions, "When do you write?" and "Do you have a routine?" The answer is that I write morning, noon, and night--just not on the same day.

What does peanut butter have to do with SleuthSayers? I, the queen of commitment phobia (unless it's a contract deadline for a manuscript), am making a vow to you. I promise not to give you the same old thing every Monday. I'll share ideas and stories about writing and words, but I guarantee you that each column will address something different--sometimes smooth and creamy, sometimes chunky.

At times, I'm sure I'll be tempted to write about my personal life, including stories about my grandson. He calls me "G-Ma" and I call him magnificent. (That's his picture at the head of this essay. Yes, the photo is posed. I don't let him eat peanut butter off spoons that big.)

I may even occasionally write about the origin of recipes from the Callie Parrish crowd. We can explore where story ideas originate, how characters develop, and what will make agents and publishers sit up and listen. I didn't begin writing fiction until after my retirement, and my next column will be about getting a late start in the writing business. I hope you will enjoy reading my blogs as much as I will enjoy writing them for you.

If you'd like to know more before I'm back here at SleuthSayers, please visit my website at http://www.franrizer.com/. Until we meet again– take care of YOU!

Criminal Debriefing

by Leigh Lundin

For me, it started with a short story called 'Swamped'. To my shock, Ellery Queen not only published it, but 'Swamped' went on to win the Readers Choice award, a first for a first-time writer.

That resulted in my first MWA conference where I met *real* authors who, as a friend put it, climbed off the bookshelves and strolled around like they were people, not just authors.

Debriefing

At that conference, James Lincoln Warren invited me to join Criminal Brief. I'm not sure my colleagues understood they'd invited an occasionally irrelevant, often irreverent rookie, but they were kind, helpful, and tolerant.

Since then, I've written 228 articles. Tomorrow, CB completes an amazing 4½ year run. Five of us, including Deborah Elliott-Upton, Janice Law, John Floyd, and Rob Lopresti, decided we still had something to say, and that brings us to SleuthSayers.

Shades of Dorothy L

To be sure, I've mispronounced SleuthSayers' name more than once and Melodie Johnson Howe complained we chose a name that made her sound like Daffy Duck. But all five of us liked the title with its multiple plays-on-words.

Next came several decisions. At least three people asked that the look of the site not be too dark ("not as dark as the inkiness of thy forlorn disconsolate soul," they said). However, I wanted something classy and distinctive, subtle– no guns, guts, or guck. The look should be unique where unique isn't exactly blogging software's forte. A primary goal was a design that could represent multiple subgenres.

Criminal Conspiracy

Even with the fabulous pay, weekly articles can be emotionally draining and sometimes hard-earned, when other priorities compete. It didn't take us long to decide we wanted to share the burden, er, honor. We began a talent search.

Think of each day of the week as a mini-blog where two great writers choose their theme and manage their day, month in and month out, likely alternating articles. For example, Fran Rizer and Jan Grape really hit it off and tomorrow, they'll be off and running about cats, cosies, and chick-lit mysteries– clever commentary from two feminine powerhouses.

The Crime Fighters

The present line-up looks like this:

Mon		Fran Rizer	/	Jan Grape
Tue		Dale Andrews	/	Susan Slater
Wed		Rob Lopresti	/	Neil Schofield
Thu		Janice Law	/	Deborah Elliott-Upton
Fri		RT Lawton	/	Dixon Hill
Sat		John Floyd	/	Liz Zelvin
Sun		Leigh Lundin	/	Louis Willis

So there you have it.

Writing Wrongs

What can you expect from me? I'm notoriously shy writing about my own work.

My home state of Florida, the only state with its own Fark tag, is a constant source of bizarre material. Hey, we made Casey Anthony an industry.

Before I began writing fiction, I wasn't much interested in true crime, but in a quest for verisimilitude, I found I couldn't write crime stories in a vacuum.

Sometimes I share tips from great writers. If you're learning to write, why not draw from Elmore Leonard or George Orwell?

Finally, as James Lincoln Warren pointed out, I often write about injustice. And it will be an injustice if you miss a single article from SleuthSayers. We're glad you're with us.

Plots and Plans

by John M. Floyd

Welcome to SleuthSayers!

My name’s John Floyd, I live in Mississippi, my wife and I have three grown kids, and I write mystery stories. Writing is actually my second career—IBM was my first, and as Clint Eastwood said after the final gunfight in Unforgiven, I was lucky in the order. If I had discovered my love for writing when I was twenty years old, my family would probably have starved.

I’d like to begin by making something clear: I’m not writing this first column at our new blog because I’m the best choice for that. I’m writing it because for almost four years I wrote the Saturday column at the Criminal Brief blog, and since we contributors to CB are finally turning in our badges and guns, and since several of us are migrating here from that site, and since today is Saturday… well, you get the picture. I’ll be alternating Saturdays with my friend Elizabeth Zelvin, who writes wonderful mysteries.

By the way, this is a blog for both readers and writers. Mostly readers and writers of mystery/crime/suspense. And when someone asks me what I enjoy most about the writing process, the answer is an easy one, because it’s also what I enjoy most about reading. It’s the plot.

Spin Me a Web

To me, coming up with the plot of a story is more fun than everything else put together. I don’t deny that characterization and description—and all those other things that you must do well to be a successful writer—are important. Of course they’re important. Without them your piece of fiction isn’t interesting and it isn’t marketable. But I think the pure enjoyment of weaving a good plot, one that’s suspenseful and believable and entertaining… well, that can’t be beat.

Since I write mostly short stories, much of that plotting is done ahead of time, in my head, before the first word of the story is put on paper. Is that outlining? Probably so—at least mental outlining. And what I’ve outlined sometimes changes once the writing starts. But to me, some measure of before-the-fact brainstorming is not only necessary, it’s fun.

My story process consists of three steps: planning, writing, and rewriting. For a typical short story, the research and planning (pre-plotting?) phase probably takes the longest, maybe a couple weeks; the writing of the first draft might take a day or so; and the rewriting and editing can take another few days, or as long as a week or two. These times are directly proportional to the length of the story. Then I let my wife read it, I incorporate (or not) her ideas, and I mail it off into the great beyond. And then I start on another one. I’ve gone through that cycle so many times it’s as natural as climbing out of bed in the morning.

Teachable Moments

I hope I’ve done it enough that by now I know what I’m doing. But anytime I start patting myself on the back, anytime I even begin to think I’ve mastered the art of plotting a mystery story, I think of the last time I read a novel by Nelson DeMille or Harlan Coben, or Block or King or Lippman or Deaver or Sandford—or the last time I read a short story by someone like Jack Ritchie, Bill Pronzini, Roald Dahl, Ed Hoch, or Fredrick Brown. These folks are, to use the current catchphrase, amazing. Their expertise in creating compelling plots can inspire amateurs and veterans alike. Read them and learn.

I also like the way great authors incorporate plot twists, not only at the end of a story but in the middle. Read a novel by Lee Child, for example. You might think you know what Jack Reacher will try next, and you might think the story will turn out a certain way, but at least two or three times during the book, the plot does a one-eighty and takes you in a completely different direction. Child’s talent for that kind of reversal, for keeping the reader off-balance, is one of the many reasons he’s so successful, and so enjoyable to read.

Fun and Games

I think most of us agree that a mystery (novel or short story) is essentially a puzzle. The writer is presenting the reader with a question to be answered, a puzzle to be solved, a situation in which a likeable character (cop, PI, ordinary Joe, whatever) faces a difficult problem. And the writer’s job is to somehow solve that problem for the character, and thus for the reader, in a way that is (1) satisfying and (2) unexpected. That’s not as easy at it sounds, and it’s always a challenge—and a thrill—to find a way to steadily build the tension and make things eventually “turn out right.

I love all kinds of puzzles, and I think almost anyone who likes puzzles also enjoys reading mysteries. And I think anyone who doesn’t like puzzles shouldn’t try to write one. He probably wouldn’t even want to.

Tell Me a Story

A quick word on the old argument about whether plot is more important than characterization, or vice versa. Both—obviously—are vital ingredients of good fiction. But I’m always amused when I hear fellow writers say, “Don’t worry about the plot. Just choose interesting characters and then give them something to do.” Well, here’s a news flash: What they do is the plot.

I like the following quote from Secret Windows, a collection of essays by Stephen King:

“All my life as a writer I have been committed to the idea that in fiction the story value holds dominance over every other facet of the writer’s craft; characterization, theme, mood, none of those things is anything if the story is dull. And if the story does hold you, all else is forgiven.”

I wish I’d said that myself.

A word about SleuthSayers

Crime writers of fact, fiction, and forensics

Welcome to SleuthSayers, a forum about crime writing and crime fighting.

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