Merry Christmas!

GM Malliet, mystery writer and author of one of the best books of 2008, recommends creating trailers to promote your books. If she recommended wearing blue mascara and tube socks over your pants, probably we should do that, too. Fortunately, she's only gently nudging us toward the digital era, and out of respect to her bona fides, I have created a trailer for August Moon:



I love how writers share marketing tips. It reminds me of the first time my son Xander sparred at a Tae Kwon Do tournament. He's tall for a six-year-old and as kind as the day is long. His dad died before he was born, and I try to fill the role of both parents. In that spirit, I was coaching him on how to best kick ass (you can decide whether that is normally mom's or dad's job).

"All I know about sparring," I said, "is that as soon as the ref drops her hands to start the match, you get in there with a chinning kick. Catch your opponent off guard and they'll be running for the rest of the match."

So I get him all pumped up. "You can do it!" I tell him. I put in his mouth guard and yank on his shin and forearm pads. I walk him over to the waiting pen, where he nods to the three boys he'll soon be fighting. He indicates for them to lean their heads in close, and when they do, he pulls out his mouth guard and says, "OK guys, all I know about sparring is that as soon as the ref drops her hands..."

That's my boy. He likes winning, but not nearly as much as he likes treating people well. And so generous writers like GM and Joanna Campbell Slan and countless others share their marketing secrets, knowing full well that if we're all doing the same thing, their efforts will have less impact. I guess they just like treating people well. Thank you to all the generous writers out there for your gifts of blurbing, a pat on the back, sharing marketing tips, and all the nice stuff you do to make this a writing community! Happy holidays to all!

p.s. As a gift to myself, I have just completed and sent September Grace to my agent. Here's the first chapter. I'm pretty dang proud of this one. Now, my kids and I are off to be with friends and family. Stay warm, full, and generous.

What Have You Done for Me Lately? by Jess Lourey

I have just been elected to the national board of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). Thank you to all of you who voted for me, even if you just checked the box next to my name because there were only as many candidates as there were spots.

Harlan Coben is the current president, and other board members include mystery-writing greats like Lee Child and Reed Farrel Coleman. They're flying us all out to New York in January to rub elbows (lay money on me making an ass of myself) and get oriented.

I don't know what crazy series of events led to my nomination for this position, but now that I'm in, I feel obligated to represent what I know:  the small press mystery writers, independent bookstores, and cozy/soft-boiled readers out there. To those of you in those categories, I ask you:

What do you want MWA to do for you? It's a huge organization with some big guns in it, originally founded by amazing mystery writers in 1945 who believed that "Murder doesn't pay--enough" (here's a slightly more detailed history). MWA has brought recognition and respect to the field over the years, but now when I hear mystery writers mention the organization, it's only as a line in their bio. It doesn't have to be that way. Here are some points I'd like to see addressed:

• Could MWA have more visibility in schools and/or bring mystery reading program to at-risk/low reading score schools? MWA Reads is a wonderful program that's grown dusty; would it be worth it to revive to help promote all the great YA mystery authors out there?
• Genre diversity. Edgar-nominated novels, while all amazing, are almost without exception all dark and gritty and feature heterosexual male protagonists. Is it time to broaden what the MWA/standard-bearer considers a great mystery? Can it be soft-boiled or a cozy, take place in a small town, or feature a gay and/or female and/or supernatural protagonist? Or maybe, how are the judges chosen (besides based on their heroic commitment) and what are their guidelines? I don't know the answer, but this is a conversation that I'd like to enter at the national level.
• How can we link MWA up more actively with book clubs? Create a list of books, organized by sub-genre, that have discussion questions included and whose authors are available for teleconferences, free of charge? Get list to box stores, independents, libraries, and book club sites?
• I found this on the MWA website: "MWA also works to educate writers and those who aspire to write regarding their rights and interests, and to make writers and readers aware of matters which may affect crime writing through legislation, publishing industry practices, judicial decisions, or in other ways. " How do we help published writers get better contracts, represent a united front to publishers, get more film and TV options? Is this something we need to pursue more actively?
• What about health care for members? This came up in the past. Should it be revisited?
• Recently, the guidelines as to who can be considered an active member (or a published author) were updated, eliminating a wave of small press authors. Should that decision be revisited, and if so, why?

 Are any of the above issues important to you? Do you have others that aren't listed up there that I should bring to the board? What would your ideal mystery-writing organization do for you and for the community? If you aren't a member of MWA, why is that? Please start a lively discussion that I can take to NYC, or, if you'd rather your comments remain anonymous, email me at jesslourey@yahoo.com, and I'll forget where I heard them.

p.s. One thing everyone who knows anything about MWA agrees on--Margery Flax does a fantastic job as coordinator/supporter of the organization.

Teleplays

I am addicted to House. In fact, I consider Sunday nights date night with my television because a double-header of House reruns are on USA Network, and Hugh Laurie always puts out. Actually, it's the series' writers who always give me what I need. The show is consistently uncomfortable, intelligent, funny, and original (though I've noticed an over-reliance on chelation in season 4). It's the best detective show on the air, and millions of people, like me, can't get enough.

The genius of the show is the central character, Dr. Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie. (My friend Julia Buckley says she has a hard time adjusting to his American accent but we both agree that he nails the role.) His character is an eminently unlikable and doesn't care, which makes him fascinating. He doesn't run with the herd yet he manages to succeed, and we all want to know why.

On a recent Sunday during my House juggernaut, I was flipping stations during a commercial and ended up on the Discovery channel, which, as usual, was covering something really gross. I watched long enough to get the gist and flitted to E!, which was airing The Girls Next Door. One of the ladies was having a problem due to her enhancement surgery. I switched back to House, which was now on, and an idea began niggling at me. There was a thread connecting these three shows. So, I turned back to the Discovery channel, back to The Girls Next Door, back to House, back to the Discovery channel, back to The Girls Next Door, and voila: I had a thrilling idea for a House episode--there'd be the central medical drama thanks to what I'd just seen on Discovery, continued character development in line with the direction of the series, and the humor that holds the show together, inspired by the "issue" I'd caught on The Girls Next Door (thanks, fake boobs). Talk about a strange stew.

As I sketched my ideas, I started to imagine what it would be like to write words that other people act out, to create characters that real people slip into like suits. I'm a novelist, and the words I write are meant to stay on the page, a note from me to you. But to write a script? I was taken with the idea. The television writers I have heard speak and those writers I know whose books were lucky enough to be turned into movies grumble at the experience--too many cooks spoiling your broth--but I thrive on collaboration.

So I've begun the teleplay for the House episode burbling in my head. I own one book on writing teleplays, penned by Lee Goldberg, and in it, he assures me I'd have better luck turning water into wine than selling a teleplay on spec, but that's true of any fiction writing, right? It's not a business venture for the practical.

In that vein, anyone have advice for me on writing teleplays, or the phone number for David Shore, the head writer and showrunner for House? Or show ideas of your own?

Trick or Treat

Halloween is one my favorite holidays because I love a good masquerade. The holiday originates from the old Celtic festival called Samhain (pronounced  "sah-win"). The Celts believed that the new year occurred on November 1, when the summer harvest was over and the cold winter was settling in. The night before the new year, October 31, the boundary between the living world and the dead became blurred, allowing the dead to walk the earth and the living to access a wider range of their powers.

When Christianity hit the land of the Celts in the 800s, the Church piggybacked on a lot of their rituals and altered them slightly so they became church-sanctioned. The Celts' new year became All Saints Day or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse, meaning All Saints' Day), and the night before became All Hallow's Eve. From that came what we now know as Halloween, where our little demons and ghouls walk the earth and collect candy to appease their souls.

Whee! In honor of the roots of Halloween, I offer you a trick and a treat. First, the trick, and I warn you that it's a really scary puzzle and you shouldn't do it if you have a heart condition. You need the sound turned on to hear the directions, and the link will take you to a new site where the maze is located (I don't have copyright rights to post it here).

 

 

Now for the treat. A librarian just informed me of the HowDunit series, which I'm ashamed to say I've never heard of but if you are a mystery writer,  appears to be indispensible. The series was initially published by Writer's Digest and is a series of books written for crime fiction writers. There's a book on poisons, a book on crime scene investigation, a writer's guide to weapons, a writer's guide to private investigating, and my personal favorite: Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries, featuring such gems as, "What the Glasgow Coma Scale is, and why it's important," 'and, "The Dirty Dozen: dreadful-but survivable-chest injuries.". How have I been writing mysteries this long without this information?

Oh, and here's one more treat. A friend of mine got a Wonder Woman costume for Halloween when she was 10 years old, which would have been about 30 years ago. She'd don the red, white, and blue swimsuit, the white pleather go-go boots, the gold circlet on her head and the bullet-repelling bracelets, and strap on her golden lariat and wear it for days after Halloween had come and gone. She slept in this costume, and she got so good with the golden lariat that she actually roped one of her much-older sisters. My friend, Heidi-cum-Wonder Woman, said to her sister, "You must be honest with me as you are now  ensnared in the Lasso of Truth." And her sister said, "You're a dork." See? The lasso worked. Happy Halloween!

The Janet Evanovich Interview, by Jess Lourey

  Thanks to Janet Evanovich, I write humorous mysteries. (At least I hope they're funny.) About seven years ago, I was having no luck getting my embarrassingly autobiographical "fiction" published, and I needed something to distract me. A friend suggested I read One for the Money. Couldn't put it down. What a person likes to read is personal, but I consider that book one of the top ten best mysteries ever written. It hit all the right notes--suspense, humor, sex, food. When I found out there were more in the series, I devoured them. When I was at the end, and she wasn't writing fast enough, I decided to try my hand at it, and so, the Murder-by-Month series was born.

So yeah. She's one of my idols. And on a whim, I recently emailed her and asked if she would agree to a brief interview, made up of five questions only a Stephanie Plum geek could love. Imagine my surprise when she graciously answered them! Here is the interview:

 

JESS: You are famous for your dedication to your fans, touring when it is no longer a career necessity. What keeps you going back on the road? 

JANET: It's a way of staying in touch with my readers. And I love room service.

JESS: Ha! That room service never seems to find me in the basement of the Motel 8, but it's probably for the best. I don't know what they'd bring, but I'm pretty sure it'd have a hair in it. OK, next question. Tess Gerritsen tells a story of having one of the big dogs reviewing her first book. The review said, essentially, "This book will only appeal to readers who move their lips." Do you have any mortifying interview/review anecdotes that could make us mere mortal writers feel better about ourselves?

JANET: First, let me say that I've been known to move my lips while reading. Second, stop reading the reviews and interviews and use that time to improve a couple sentences in chapter three. Third, just about everything I do is mortifying ...it's a way of life.

JESS: Hallelujah! Back in your pre-published days, you wrote a few novels that would be categorized as literary, or mainstream, fiction. Ever think about dusting those off, revising them using your hard-won writing skills, and publishing them?

JANET: Nope. They wouldn't meet reader expectation in their present form and the editing would be so time consuming it wouldn't be cost effective.

JESS: And I certainly don't want to pull you away from creating more Stephanie Plum adventures! OK, Mark Twain once said, "I prefer having written to writing." (He also said, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society," but that's beside the point). How about for you? Do you enjoy the act of writing, or is it still a challenge, albeit a grand one?

JANET: I prefer writing to having written. I love the process, the isolation, the unique world I go into every morning. Once the book is off my desk it belongs to someone else. The only really good part to having written is that someone sends me a check which allows me to go on writing.

JESS: That is a nice perk! OK, here's the big one, the one many of your fans are dying to know. If you were single and Joe Morelli and Ranger both came to life, whom would you choose? (Morelli would come with a lifetime supply of Cheetos; Ranger w/limitless grocery store birthday cake with crusty buttercream frosting.)  

JANET: That's an easy one ...birthday cake.

Ha ha! Thank you to the lovely, ever-funny, and talented Janet Evanovich for her time. Happy fall, and thanks for reading!

Karma, New Mysteries, Sherlock Holmes, and the Sarah Palin Effect

Today, I am cleaning the lint trap of my mind into this space. I think when I'm done, my overall life performance will improve. First, many many many mystery writers, including me, have recently gotten this email:

Hello,

My sister is one of your biggest fans and she has terminal breast cancer and her birthday is coming up and I was wondering if I could get her an autographed copy of one of your books. She would enjoy it so much.Thank you so much.

Kathy Sickles

Her address is below:

Cindy Lewis
3816 Highway Avenue
Highland,Indiana 46322

I was raised by a paranoid man, which makes me a suspicious woman. My first response was that it’s a scam. However, I’m also a mother, which makes me a bleeding heart regarding issues of death and sadness. Fortunately, I’m also a writer, so I used my mad letter-penning skills to sniff out the truth. Here's what I sent back a week ago:

I'm so sorry to hear about your sister, Kathy! That is truly very sad, and thank you for contacting me. The email you sent me has also been sent to many other mystery authors, no? Many of us have been discussing it in our online communities, and though we all strive to be supportive of those in need, the fact that you are mass emailing us and telling many of us that we are your sister's favorite author sends some concerns that your request is not legitimate. Since many of us are on a limited budget and have to buy our own books, would it be possible for you to address this issue so we can do the right thing without feeling taken advantage of?

Best,

Jess Lourey
Murder by Month Mysteries
www.jesslourey.com

I haven’t heard back from her/him/it/them. Suspicious Jessie wins another round, and Compassionate Jessie is saddened by the bad karma the original email is generating. On to happier news. I have a new agent, Victoria at the Levine/Greenberg Literary Agency, and I’m thrilled with her. She’s currently negotiating the contract for September Mourn, which will be released fall 2009 if all goes well. Also, I just last night got a shiny, sparkling, funny, edgy idea for a new mystery series! It’s my first whole new full-length mystery idea since I started writing the Murder-by-Month series six years ago, and it’s about freaking time.

Finally, I took a trip to London a couple weeks ago and ate dry chicken, delicious warm custard, and bubbly cider at the Sherlock Holmes pub (right off of Baker Street. Seriously). Good times! Inside, they have this weird, dusty dioramic room set up to look like Sherlock Holmes’ office as described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You can peer at it through glass, and it appeals to the inner Wall Drug/Corn Palace child in all of us. Feast your eyes on this.

p.s. For the past week, I've been thinking how familiar Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin looks. I thought it was just because she was the archetypal high school Queen Bee, all grown up. You know the one I mean. She was nice to your face but slapped a "kick me because I'm fat and think a french kiss is a new line of Hershey's candy" sign on you when she faux-hugged you? She's pretty and uber popular with the guys, and always complains to them how she doesn't have any female friends because we're all so catty? Yeah. Her.

But then, when I read that as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Ms. Palin tried to fire the local librarian because she wouldn't censor books, I realized why she looked familiar. Sarah Palin is one of the villains in August Moon. The book features an extreme religious group that believes they are God's warriors, that religion should be taught in science classrooms, that their small group should decide what books are acceptable at the local library, and that civil liberties should only be offered to those who look and think like them. When writing that book, I found humor in satirizing that tiny, zealous slice of the U.S. population. Guess the joke's on me.

Confessions of a Catastrophic Thinker, by Jess Lourey

I am a catastrophic thinker. I have known this about myself for the past twenty years, but stumbling across Harley Jane Kozak's Lipstick Chronicles post, Blog of Fear, convinced me to come out of the closet. When I admit to being a catastrophic thinker, I'm not saying I'm a worrier, or that I have an overactive imagination. I'm saying I'm crazy. Here's a perfect example, and it happened about three months ago:

I returned from Tae Kwon Do with my kids. We go every Tuesday and Thursday, and every Tuesday and Thursday, we return to our little house in St. Cloud at 8:30 pm. One Thursday in early April, we got home, and there was a potted begonia on our back step. The temperature was hovering around 12 degrees above zero, but that begonia was green and fresh in its brown paper bag. Somebody knew exactly when we were returning home and had timed their flower-leaving accordingly. Five more minutes, and it would have been frozen solid.

My kids thought it was a nice gesture, and I encouraged that. In my head, though, I was thinking: We've recently moved to town. We don't know anyone here. All my friends and family live at least 30 minutes away. No one I know would leave a flower on my back step without a note. Clearly, a serial killer has been tracking me and my babies for weeks, he has learned when we come and go, and he's leaving his calling card--the orange begonia--right before he murders us in our sleep.

That night, I slept on the couch with a knife. It was my chef's knife without the tip, which I had broken off a couple years ago in a pound of frozen ground turkey that wasn't thawing fast enough. It was the sharpest one I had, but that's hardly the point, is it? SOMEBODY LEFT ME A FLOWER AND IT MADE ME SLEEP WITH A KNIFE.

And there's something about having kids that super-revs the powers of catastrophic thinking. I have to travel to conferences and out-of-state signings about five times a year, and I leave my kids, ages 6 and 9, with my parents. Every time I go, I say the same thing to my mom: "Don't forget you're watching them."

And she always says the same thing back. "Don't worry. I raised you, remember?"

I might not be her best reference. I remember how many times she let me walk to the store alone when I was five, or how she encouraged me to miss two weeks of 5th grade because we didn't like the politics of the long-term sub. But I get her point. I survived, and my kids will too.

Still, when my plane leaves the ground or my wheels cross the state line, my catastrophic thinking kicks in. What if one of my children was kidnapped? Would I be able to find them? Could I go on living if I didn't find them? Or if they were in the hospital, how long would it take me to get back to them? What do you even thinking about when you're waiting to get a flight back to your children in a hospital? Should I call and make sure they're okay? Or should I wait until I've been gone five minutes?

Agh. And don't even get me started on public speaking. You know how people say, "It was an honor just to be nominated?" I mean it. I like staying in the audience. I'm pretty sure that if I ever had to stand and speak in front of of a crowd of people I respected, I'd start bleating like a sheep right before my bowels relaxed.

So there you have it. The true confessions of a catastrophic thinker. I imagine there is a medication for it, but I think the same part of my brain that takes these wicked spirals is the part that allows me to love reading and spinning stories. All it takes is a spark, and I can run with it. Also, the superstitious part of me is sure that thinking about all this stuff is protection AGAINST it happening. Sorry, author of the The Secret.

p.s. An old college friend who lived 35 miles away and had heard I'd moved back to town was the one who left the begonia. She was dropping it off on a whim and didn't leave a note because she didn't have a pen. See? All my worrying scared off the serial killer. So what do you worry about?