What Fired Me Up to Write a Fireworks Story

Shortly before July 4th last year, I posted this on my Facebook page:

One day I am going to write a story in which someone who sets off fireworks in a suburban neighborhood, not giving a crap about the animals he's scaring, gets what's coming. And I won't feel bad at all. 

 

Sincerely,

 

The mom of a freaked-out dog

 

Boy, did the responses pour in. I got 145 likes, 29 loves, 47 hugs, and a smattering of other emojis. The comments were just as enthusiastic. Here's just a handful:

• PLEASE please write that story!
  

• Also endorsed by moms of small children, fire marshals, ER staff, those with PTSD. Please do something to those who sell the fireworks also . . . 

• I'm happy to consult on this one! People here are also very concerned about their horses being frightened by them. Apparently several were injured last year
  

• And I would read that book and recommend it to everyone I know. My poor boy Paddy has not left my side for hours now. 

• You’d get lots of support from those of us in California who are sniffing for wild-fire smoke after every very illegal bang.

• This has always been my least favorite holiday simply because of the loud noise and the fear and confusion it causes to animals, pets and wildlife both. Then there are the accidents to humans and fire potential.
  
  

Buoyed by the 100+ comments, I decided to write a story addressing the impact of fireworks. Then I saw a call for stories for an upcoming anthology to be titled Low Down Dirty Vote Volume 3: The Color of My Vote. Authors were asked to submit stories involving voting and color. We were giving wide latitude in how we interpreted the theme. As you may imagine, I thought of fireworks. They come in all kinds of colors. People who shoot them off frequently say they're being patriotic (red, white, and blue). People who don't like their impact see red. People who sell them want green. There were many more color associations I could make. Yes, I thought, a story involving fireworks could be a good fit.

 

Then I had to work in a voting aspect. Maybe, I thought, a city council could be about to vote on a proposal to bar residents from shooting off fireworks. I created a main character, a teenage girl, who is desperate for the ban to pass because of how fireworks set off in her neighborhood scare her dog, Bailey. The vote is expected to be close, and she has a friend whose neighbor is on the city council, so they decide to try to push him to vote their way ... with an unconventional approach.

 

Now it's almost a year later, and Memorial Day—another holiday associated with fireworks—is right around the corner. It's the perfect time for Low Down Dirty Vote Volume 3 to have been published. And I'm delighted the book includes my story "For Bailey." It's not the straight-on revenge story some people were hoping for, but it does address the effects fireworks can have on veterans with PTSD, firefighters, the environment, wildlife, and, especially, pets. I should add that I do not endorse any real-life crimes against people who set off fireworks or sell them. But I do like using fiction to try to open some eyes to the impact fireworks can have while offering an entertaining tale at the same time.

 

The anthology is out in trade paperback and ebook. It includes 22 stories of crime and suspense, ranging from comic to tragic and from cozy to noir. You'll also find a few stories involving science fiction, horror, and fantasy. The publisher is donating all the proceeds to Democracy Docket, an organization fighting voter suppression in the United States.

Here are the authors with stories in the book, in order of story appearance:

David Corbett, Faye Snowden, Eric Beetner, Sarah M. Chen, Gabriel Valjan, Jackie Ross Flaum, David Hagerty, Thomas Pluck, Katharina Gerlach, Stephen Buehler, Ember Randall, Camille Minichino, Patricia (Pat) E. Canterbury, James McCrone, Ann Parker, Miguel Alfonso Ramos, Misty Sol, DJ Tyrer, Anshritha, Bev Vincent, Barb Goffman, and Travis Richardson.

You can order a paper copy of the book through many indie bookstores. Click here to find some near you. If you prefer Amazon (paper or ebook), click here. Paper copies are also available through Barnes and Noble. Click here for them.

The anthology supports a worthy cause, so I hope you'll consider picking up a copy. I also hope you enjoy my story and you and your loved ones (human and furry) don't suffer too much from the effects of fireworks this summer.

Writing Outside the Outlines

Two weeks ago, I attended an interview with Don Winslow at which he was autographing his new novel. During the Q & A, someone asked about his process, which is almost sure to be a question at such events. 

Winslow said that he doesn't outline. Dennis Lehane, Tess Gerritsen and many other major writers don't, either. About half the crime writers I know don't, and the other half do, but in different ways. The debate can get pretty heated, but I don't really think it matters.

"Outline" has different meanings for people in different parts of the writing world. I suspect that's part of the cause of many arguments.

Practically everyone who graduated from high school wrote at least one research paper, certainly in English class, and possibly one or more in a social studies class, usually history. I remember having to hand in an outline during the process, in that format with Roman number I, two or more subdivisions, cleverly called "A" and "B." If those were also subdivided (which they usually were), they had to have at least two subdivisions, "1" and "2." If those were subdivided again…

Getting flashbacks yet? I'll bet you took the same ride yourself.

When I taught English, I required an outline, too. The point was to make sure the student worked through the assignment steadily over the six or eight weeks instead of throwing everything together the night before it was due. None of us ever did that, of course.

That outline form is very rigid, good for a persuasive or factual piece with a logical linear organization. Unfortunately, fiction isn't always linear. Stories can involve flashbacks, tangents and misdirection, and they muddy the waters.

Sue Grafton used to write a journal/outline/ideas book while she worked on her novels. She may have worked that way because, before she sold the Alphabet series with Kinsey Milhone, she wrote screenplays for TV movies. She said that her workbook sometimes ended up longer than the actual novel.

Robert Crais oulines, too. Like Grafton, he started in television, writing for Hill Street Blues and being a major force behind Cagney & Lacey. Story boards were routine and he stayed with what he knew. Obviously, it works for him. 

When I began my first novel fifty years ago, I didn't outline. I wrote stop and start for a few months, then got busy with grad school and teaching again. When I returned to that 60-page draft several months later, I decided to make a list of characters for the first time. Those 60 pages had over 100 characters, many who only appeared once, and my "story" was a series of tangents, more clang association than plot. I eventually finished that manuscript in about three years, and it was resoundingly, excruciatingly awful.

So were the next two.

When I decided to rewrite the first book as my sixth-year thesis at Wesleyan, I had to convince a professor to become my advisor. For the first time, I built an outline of what I thought that heavily-revised book would become. I listed the four or five events that would occur in each chapter. Years later, I discovered that it resembled Charles Dickens's outlines. Since Dickens serialized his novels in magazines, he need to know where he was going. Below is a sample of his outline for Bleak House.

I used the same format for several unpublished novels. When I attended writing workshops and met other writers years later, I learned of the "outline" agents and editors expected with a query, which isn't an outline, but a summary. Some people called it an outline and some called it a synopsis, but they were basically the same except that an outline is longer. I hated writing a two-page synopsis of the entire novel and I hated a ten-page outline just as much. For years, when people asked why I turned to self-publishing, I told them it was because I didn't want to write another damned synopsis. Ever.

By 2010, I'd published a few short stories but five or six novels accumulated 400 rejections. Then I read John Truby's The Anatomy of Story, which is geared toward screenwriting. I began to view an outline as a story board, and I suspect that Crais's outlines resemble that, too.

The form is especially helpful if you use several POV characters, and my novels often have five or six. Truby's form makes it easy for me to keep track of how much information a character has at any particular moment. It also make it easy to know how much time has passed because I incorporate it into the sequence. I first use the form for The Whammer Jammers, which I saw as a potential film.

Below is the first page of my final outline for Words of Love. The POV character for each scene is in caps. The first version usually took me about two months because plotting is the hardest part of writing for me. I don't have a linear thought process and have to write stuff out before I can tell if it works in that order. I move scenes around and cut them and add new ones as I discover what the story needs. This sample is "I," the ninth version. Some books went as far as version "M" or "N," and I often was halfway throught the first draft of the MS before I had the final chronology set.

There's no right way to outline or NOT outline. But if something isn't working for you, maybe this will give you a plan B or even a plan C.

---

Euphonics

Not Eurythmics

Long before I began to write, I realized some words have soft forms and others hard edges, even harsh, jagged teeth. The letter G has a soft feel that alliterates with J, but the hard G means serious business. For example:

glare, goat, glum, gormless, gut, gash, gears, glut, gangster, garage, gag, gasp, guttural, gale, gaffe, gaff

Combine the G with the letter R, then Gr… can sound overly masculine, even violent.

grit, gravel, grind, grubby, grungy, grumpy, grate, grill, grotesque, grab, grope, grease, gross, grim, groan, growl, grunt, grrrr

The sounds– the letters– that follow can soften a word. Examples include:

glen, glade, gorgeous, glorious, giggly, glamorous, girl

The Sound You Hear…

Not Ebonics

The understanding and practice of sounds is called euphonics. It comes to us from the realm of music and poetry, and it refers to the sounds of words. Some words work well together where one word seems to naturally follow another. Contrarily, other words don't sound right when harnessed together. Poets and lyricists treat euphonies as one of their best tools.

Authors also use euphonics, although they may not be aware of it. I pay a lot of attention to names: ethnicity, meaning, type (occupational, place, etc) and the sound. I often try to fit a name with a character’s personality: Is she smart, sly, sensible, seductive, sensuous, soft, sordid, staid, straight-laced, stalwart, or staggeringly strong? I strive to reflect that in the name.

Positive About Negatives

Thanks for a tip from ABA and Sharon pointing me to an article by Joslyn Chase. Chase drew my attention to a book, Euphonics For Writers by Rayne Hall. Among other topics, they point out words beginning with N tend to impart a negative tone. I might add that many, many languages have this same characteristic:

no, nay, nix, non, nein, ne, nee, nej, nie, não, nu, nyet

Not only do words have meaning and inflections carry meaning, but the sounds of words also affect readers and listeners.

If you’ve read Rayne Hall’s book, what is your impression?

Reading About Writing

  

Earlier this week, at the latest of what we've been calling our "watercooler" Zoom meetings in the Short Mystery Fiction Society, we talked a bit about reference books for fiction writing. Specifically, Michael Bracken mentioned the book Dreyer's English, written a few years ago by Benjamin Dreyer, a Random House VP. Michael even said the book has been praised and recommended by AHMM editor Linda Landrigan--which is reason enough for us mystery writers to want to be familiar with it.

NOTE 1: I wrote a SleuthSayers column about Dreyer's English back in 2019, and in that piece I pointed out that I'd found the book to be not only useful and informative but easy to read. It was even fun to read. It's not my absolute favorite writing reference book--Stephen King's memoir/instruction-manual On Writing is--but this one is now a close second.

Thinking again about things discussed during that Zoom meeting, I recall that Barb Goffman mentioned that she often buys those writing "self-help" books but seldom reads them. They wind up just sitting there on her shelf. I do the same thing: I can't seem to resist them, either in bookstores or on Amazon, but when I sit down at home with the purchased books I often never do any more than skim through them and then forever put them aside. I almost never refer to them when the actual plotting/writing happens. 

But . . . that's not always the case. Here are ten books about either the craft or the business of writing (or both), that I did enjoy and read, and that I often reference and even re-read. I've listed them here in order of preference, #1 being my top pick. (As I mentioned, Dreyer's is a recent addition.)

1. On Writing, Stephen King. A fantastic book. Enough said.

2. Dreyer's English, Benjamin Dreyer.

3. Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, Lawrence Block. A collection of his Writer's Digest columns.

4. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Renni Browne and Dave King. The best "style" guide I've seen. 

5. Bird by Bird, Ann Lamott. A funny and interesting look at the writing life.

6. The First Five Pages, Noah Lukeman. Advice to get an editor to keep reading past the opening.

7. Stein on Writing, Sol Stein. An editor's view of style, craft, and strategies.

8. Save the Cat!, Blake Snyder. Actually a book about screenwriting.

9. Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, Lynn Truss. A delightful mix of writing advice and entertainment.

10. Story, Robert McKee. Another look at screenplays and screenwriting.

NOTE 2: I didn't include The Elements of Style--maybe I should've; I bought a copy of Elements for each of our three kids when they went off to college--and I can also think of several more books not listed here that other writers hold in high regard. But these remain my top picks.

Now . . . What are your favorites? Maybe it's time some of mine got replaced.

Until then, use whatever helps, and--above all else--keep writing.

More About Covers

A few weeks ago a new writer member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society asked for advice on craft and best practices. I referred the writer to SleuthSayer and received a quick thank you.

Got me thinking so I thought I'd share my earlier comments about covers (and a few new comments about covers).

My original SleuthSayers post started with advice from Harlan Ellison and other writers who felt a book cover should have one strong image, the writer's name and maybe one thing about the book – it's a novel or a mystery novel or a thriller, etc. Maybe a notation about awards the book received such as Edgar Award or Shamus Award. Maybe a note about writing awards the writer received but don't clutter up the cover with a list. That's why there is a back cover.

Covers should be clear when viewed as a thumbnail since our books are viewed more online than in a bookstore. A cluttered cover or one which does not clearly give title and author's name can be confusing.

A tip I included was this and it worked. I received a couple emails commenting how it worked –

TIP: If you do not have the ability to design a cover using Adobe InDesign or Photoshop, get the image you want on your cover and go to the nearest university's art department. Seek out a college student majoring in graphic design and hire the student to design your cover. They can add your cover to their portfolio and you can cut a bargain with them.

I was going to put examples of good covers but the writers I contacted have not gotten back to me. I was also  going to put examples of bad covers but, hell, I don't like to do things like that. You can use your imagination and I don't have to make anyone angry or feel like I'm putting them down because who the hell am I anyway.

As an Indie writer I am able to control the covers of my books and spell my name correctly. As you can see, it's nice to have an artist in the family. As previously mentioned, the covers of my early books were pretty bad.

Here are a few of my recent ones:

Nothing's perfect but all you can do is try.

www.oneildenoux.com

Hiding in Plain Sight & Other Crimes

by Eve Fisher

Musings about Hiding in Plain Sight:

First of all, re the story of former Corrections Officer Vicky White who ran off with the inmate Casey White from Alabama, I am amazed that they stayed uncaught that long. I mean, 6'9"?  Seriously?  They were caught, as you probably know, in Evansville, Indiana, where "they were found with $29,000 in cash and four guns, including semiautomatic weapons and an AR-15. They also had several wigs in different colors." But, no matter how many wigs they had, how did they make it 11 days without being turned in, especially staying in a motel for a week?  Outside of a basketball convention, 6'9" anywhere should have been like Herman Munster in a Mickey Rooney lookalike contest. 

Along similar lines, I want to know how Jack Reacher isn't known all over the country:

6 feet 5 inches tall, weighing 210–250 pounds and having a 50-inch chest. In Never Go Back, he is described as having "a six-pack like a cobbled city street, a chest like a suit of NFL armor, biceps like basketballs, and subcutaneous fat like a Kleenex tissue."..."He was one of the largest men she had ever seen outside the NFL. He was extremely tall, and extremely broad, and long-armed, and long-legged. The lawn chair was regular size, but it looked tiny under him. It was bent and crushed out of shape. His knuckles were nearly touching the ground. His neck was thick and his hands were the size of dinner plates."  (Wikipedia)  

So... tell me again why he has to introduce himself anywhere?  

And I've written before about James Bond announcing himself everywhere he goes.  "Bond, James Bond."  Not very secret.  

Meanwhile, it's tragic that Ms. White killed herself, but: a widow, no children, and highly respected as a CO at the jail - employee of the year four times - what did she have to go back to? Jail. Trial. Prison. Corrections officers - any law enforcement officer - often face retaliation in prison. The truth is, sometimes consequences show up that are so stark and horrific there's no way to live with them...

Speaking of Consequences...

Some news outlets are already speaking of the Buffalo, NY white supremacist terrorist as a "white teenager," and "just a boy, really." Bull hockey. Last I heard, 18 makes you an adult in this country. You can vote, marry, drive, and as he did, buy any kind of freaking rifle or "long gun" you want from a licensed gun dealer anywhere in this country at 18. 

I'd say more about this case, but I'm too sick to my stomach. 

Meanwhile, even before this one, we've had 198 mass shootings in the United States this year:  

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting 

Who's safer with this endless flood of guns, ammo, and hot rhetoric?  Personally, I think it's about damn time that Stochastic Terrorism be made a crime.  

After all, if they could convict the woman who texted her boyfriend repeatedly, encouraging him to kill himself (and he did), why can't we do something similar to people on "certain networks", etc., who actively rev up their listeners to a fury and then say things like, "I'm only asking questions." 

Like a maniac who shoots deadly firebrands and arrows, so is one who deceives a neighbor and says, “I'm just asking questions...”  Proverbs 26:18-19 (Paraphrased for modern usage)

No you're not. You're trying to get them stoked so that you get higher ratings. And maybe there'll be a shooting, and then the ratings will shoot up even higher. 

Which leads me to my next idea:  a Sandy Hook style class-action lawsuit against Tucker & Friends and Fox News for the whole "great replacement theory" and other racist theories that are getting innocent people killed.  

Even More Horrific:  Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

The numbers are horrific. As of March, 2022, there were "103 people missing in South Dakota, with Indigenous people making up 62% of all missing persons despite being only 8.7% of the state’s population. According to the Attorney General’s Missing Persons page, Indigenous women make up 28% of all missing persons and 63% of women currently missing in South Dakota." Also, "Native American women are murdered at a rate ten times higher than the national average." (HERE  And a few of the grisly details HERE)  

Meanwhile, the South Dakota legislature approved making an Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP), which was fantastic! 

But then AG Ravnsborg said he couldn't find "the necessary funds to establish such a position." Yes, we have a very cheap legislature - they don't give money to anything, even when it's their idea. 

At last the non-profit Native Hope said it would fund the position at $85,000 per year for three years, so there may be some hope. Now can they find the law enforcement necessary to do the actual investigating???

BTW, Native Hope's website is:  https://www.nativehope.org/  Donations are always gratefully received.

On a Lighter Note, What's in a Name?

"A man found floating on a raft in the ocean off the coast of Rhode Island in 2016 after his boat sank has been indicted on charges alleging he killed his mother at sea to inherit the family's estate, according to the indictment unsealed Tuesday.  The eight-count indictment released in federal court in Burlington also says Nathan Carman shot and killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home in Windsor, Connecticut, in 2013 as part of an effort to defraud insurance companies, but he was not charged with that killing. [Why, one may ask?] Carman was found in an inflatable raft eight days after he went fishing with his mother, Linda Carman, who was never found." 

Now families are tricky things, and God only knows what led Mr. Carman to do the things he did. But greed does seem to have been a factor:  he sued the insurance company for $85,000 for the loss of his 31 foot fishing boat, The Chicken Pox. (NewsTimes)  Yes, The Chicken Pox. 

So of course I sat around thinking of similar suitable names for a boat, and came up with:

Montezuma's Revenge

The Spanish Flu

Daddy's Hemorrhoids 

Reilly's Pyloric Valve 

And those are just the printable ones.  Feel free to add your own!

Albuquotes

Two weeks ago I wrote about my adventures at Left Coast Crime in Albuquerque last month.  Those of you who read my column regularly, if such there be, know that that will be followed with my favorite words of wisdom from the con.  As always, I have removed all context to make things more interesting.  Enjoy.

 "There's always someone in the audience who asks about writer's block.  Who volunteers to be that person?" - Reed Farrel Coleman

"Wasn't the world better when it was better for me? Spoiler alert: No." - Catriona McPherson

"I don't start writing chapter one, page one, until I have about ten thousand words of notes."  - Mick Herron

"I wanted to write a book that would be Speed with canoes." -William Kent Krueger

"What the reader wants is not always what the reader needs." -Glen Erik Hamilton

"I've been the eye candy for Torrey House Press." - Scott Graham

"I do the research after I've written the book." - Catriona McPherson

"I'm interested in sharing the things about human beings that make me glad to be a human being." -Thomas Perry

 "I'm a New York Times bestselling author because I buy a lot of my own books." - Reed Farrel Coleman

"I've had people say 'I could read a whole novel in that voice' and I think 'My God, I could never write whole novel in that voice.'" - Amy Drayer

"It looked more like a breakdown than a career move." - Catriona McPherson

"I am addicted to semi-colons. I can hardly write a text message without them." - Mick Herron

"I talk to myself constantly, and I didn't know that until my husband started working from home." - Jamie Mason

"I can always win a contest of who has the most useless dissertation." - Catriona McPherson

"If I could I would write an entire book with a group of people locked in a room being unpleasant." - Mick Herron 

"I may have a tendency to be a preacher, but I don't like being preached at." -Karen Keskinen

"Overreacting in advance saves time later." - Catriona McPherson

"When you're writing a short story you need to distill a character to a single sentence." - Raquel V. Reyes

"Patience is one of the hardest parts of writing." -Amy Drayer

"Someone once said 'You're plots are just this side of ludicrous' and I thought 'Challenge accepted." - Catriona McPherson

"Part of why you write is to find out what you think." -Thomas Perry

"Writing a series about a lot of characters is like there's already a ghost novel waiting." - Mick Herron

"No crying on the yacht." - Catriona McPherson

"I like to think that not all my characters are needy all the time" Laurie R. King

"I love the time when I've finished a book and no one else has seen it so I can live the lie that it's great." - Jess Lourey

"People say that in the past racism was acceptable.  It never was. It was just acceptable to some White people." - Catriona McPherson

"I spent my first Bouchercon behind a potted plant." -Tracy Clark

"I'm barring anyone from saying 'I'm just a reader.'" - Catriona McPherson

"If you want to write about another culture, fall in love with it a bit." - Tori Eldridge

"It's quite easy to work out who the mole is in Wind in the Willows." - Mick Herron

"If you want to visit 1920s Scotland, just go outside.  It's still there." - Catriona McPherson

"I'm basically an evil man." -Thomas Perry

"It's important for children to read widely, not just the good stuff.  Quantity is important at that age." - Mick Herron

"A word of advice: Don't Google nun's underwear." - Catriona McPherson