What We're Writing Week: Julia's To-Do List

 Julia Spencer-Fleming: I'm at a weird point in the process of seeing a new book into the world (and you'll have to pardon any birthing metaphors I make; my oldest, Victoria, is having a baby this fall, and it's taking up a ridiculous amount of my brain space, considering I don't have anything to do with it.) 

At any rate, the words-on-paper portion of my work is done. AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY has been edited, and copy-edited, and galley-edited. (This is why authors will often say they never want to think about their current title ever again.) I'll kick into high gear again sometime in October and through November, with, I'm sure, some events in December, because we all know books make the best holiday gifts, don't we? 

In the meantime, I'm left working on my To-Do list. It starts like this:

 

1. Have website rebuilt

    1.a  Research current best practices for author websites. What to                       include vs. what's too much? 

    1.b   Get recommendations of web designers

    1.c  Contact and interview web designers

But then I start thinking, wait - what do I want the new website to look like? Remember that discussion on author branding we had a couple weeks ago? Should I use the same fonts as my book covers? (and what are they, anyway?) Do I use pictures of moody Adirondack landscapes? Maybe small towns? Shoot, should I have something that reference the military in there?

So then I go back and start:

 

1. Determine branding - what message to I want to send to my readers?

    1. a  Who are my readers? 

    1. b   What are the three/four words they use for my work?

    1.c  Do I need a tag line? Is that old fashioned? Oh, crap, I'm going to               have to do more research, aren't I? 

And of course, if I have a brand new website, I want my social media - Instagram and FB - to reflect the same look.  Also, I'm terrible with posting regularly, and that's not going to fly with a new book coming out. I promised Steve the Marketing Guy I'd do a better job. So if I renumber the website stuff to 2...

 

3. Update social media with new headers, etc.

    3. a  Come up with a posting schedule 

    3. b  Don't forget to schedule time to answer readers, comments!

    3. c  What the heck to I post about?  

 

Now I'm thinking I'd better go back to 1. b and add in

1. b. 1  Determine topics based on description words for books

1. b. 2  Figure out what kind of photos and graphic work with the brand 

 At this point, I'm getting increasingly overwhelmed, and I haven't even touched on everything I need to do to revamp and relaunch my newsletter. That's probably going to be points 4 through 6 all by itself.

Honestly, dear readers, this is not what I thought I would be doing when I became a published author. (I also didn't think I'd still be changing the cat pan and mopping the kitchen floor after becoming a NYTimes bestseller, but the life of an author is much less glamorous than advertised.)

Do you ever get overwhelmed by the unexciting but necessary part of your work? And does writing out your to-do list ever make you want to recline with a cold drink, as it does me?  

Debs Wobbles Nearer to the End

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We talk a lot in writing/reading circles about panster vs. plotter, as if these two approaches to writing were entirely separate. "Panster" meaning you have no idea what a book is going to be about when you start to write, "plotter" meaning you have a structured outline for everything that's going to happen before you put a word on the page.

But I strongly suspect that for most of us, however we describe ourselves, it's much more of an evolving spectrum. I may call myself a "plotter" but that mostly means I like to have a little "basic capsule," "who-why-when-where," for the actual crime. That gives me something to contruct the rest of the story around.

Then, for example, I begin to add ideas, as in the book-in-progress, Kincaid/James #20:

"Gemma has a challenging new job at a troubled police station" +

"I don't know much about London's canals but wouldn't it be fun to set a book there/Little Venice," +

"The Thames west of London/history/houseboats," +

"Family stuff/new nanny, etc.," +

"Melody plotline," +

"Backstory plotline," +

Etc., etc.

(Houseboat moored on the Thames above Teddington Lock.)

Those were some of the initial building blocks. But those concepts don't tell me how they are all going to fit together, and especially not how my detectives are going to figure it all out by the end. From there I usually do a very rough scene-by-scene outline of a few chapters at a time. Any more than that and I know that what I thought was going to happen will have squirmed all out of shape.

Also, none of this "planning" stuff means that a new thing can't suddenly appear and whack me upside the head, which has happened over the course of the last half a dozen chapters!

My math tells me that this book is now almost 90,000 words, which means I had better figure out what happens between here and THE END. ASAP. And that means back to the outline drawing board.

And in case you're wondering where Duncan is in all this, he's very much in help and support mode, and has his own connection to the case.

Here's a little snippet I wrote earlier this week of (spoiler-free) Duncan and Gemma, in a little interlude at home.

Having finally settled the little ones, Gemma came back downstairs to find the kitchen and the sitting room dark. Puzzled, she checked the study but it was dark, too. Then a movement outside the patio French doors caught her eye. Duncan stood just on the other side, his back to the house. At first, she thought he was taking the dog out, but Geordie lay on his back on the sofa, paws in the air and the lighter fur on his belly gleaming in the dim illumination from the small lamp on the bookshelf. Tess and the cats were upstairs with the children.

Duncan must have heard her because he turned and eased the door open as she came up to it. “Shh,” he said. “Don’t let the dog out.”

Gemma slipped out to stand beside him. “Wait,” he whispered, his breath tickling her ear. So, she stood, barely breathing, and he slipped his fingers through hers.

A low iron railing separated their small flagged patio from the expanse of the communal garden, where its rolling grass, kept cut short, was dotted with large trees. The moon was almost full and as her eyes adjusted, the unshaded grass looked silvery against the deep, dark patches beneath the trees.

And then she saw it, movement, a flitting shape, and then another. Cats? No, their bodies were too large, she realized, the muzzles too long, the ears too big. The tails were wrong as well, too bushy for cats.

They were foxes, and they were playing, chasing one another, then rolling and tumbling in the grass, then jumping back up to start all over again.

Watching, enchanted, Gemma thought suddenly of Karo Fox’s little cottage and the array of fox prints on the sitting room’s walls. Were there foxes on Eel Pie Island, she wondered? And would they know they’d be welcomed in Karo Fox’s garden?

She gave a shiver as the cooler night air began to penetrate the thin fabric of her t-shirt and Duncan let go her hand to put his arm round her.

“Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s leave them to it, shall we?”

Speaking of London's secretive communal gardens, here's another chance to enjoy a fictional visit!

GARDEN OF LAMENTATIONS, Kincaid/James #17, is on sale on all e-book platforms for $1.99!

In which Gemma investigates a death in an exclusive Notting Hill communal garden, while Duncan delves into wrongdoing in the highest echelons of the Met, in a case that could cost him his career, if not his life.

AND the audio version is also on sale on CHIRP for $3.99!

Dear readers, are you a planner or a pantster in real life, or do you wobble somewhere in between?

Edging Toward One Finish and Celebrating Another by Lucy Burdette

 LUCY BURDETTE: I admire writers who manage to block out an entire plot before they begin writing. I am not one of them. I have a premise at the beginning, hopefully a good one, and an idea of my characters’ directions. Then I start in. You might remember that five of us Reds have been chatting behind the scenes to share our writing progress. This has been so helpful even if it’s demoralizing when my total word count is zero. It keeps me moving forward when I might otherwise become hopelessly distracted. 

A couple of weeks ago, I told these Reds that I finally figured out why I didn’t know who had committed the murder in book 16. I didn’t know enough about the suspects to understand who would really be capable of such a crime and why. Obvious right? But it felt like a breakthrough! That’s my process. Write and then think, write and think. This book (still untitled) is due September 1. I am probably 5/7 of the way through, and quite pleased with how it’s turning out. Here’s a tiny snippet from a second attack that takes place outside a daycare. (Now that I’ve written this, I’ll need to figure out what really happened.)

The night darkness was streaked with flashing blue and red lights, from four police vehicles and an ambulance. The multicolored dancing children painted on the outside cement wall were warped into distorted and throbbing figures by the strobe lights on the cars.

A gaggle of onlookers had gathered and were being pushed back to the edge of the property by officers, one of them Danielle's husband Jeremy. I struggled out of the back seat and wove through the crowd to get closer to him.

“Jeremy,” I hissed, waving him toward me. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

He rolled his eyes as if to say I surely knew better but moved over to speak to me anyway. “From what I can tell, one of the employees from Toddlers and Tots was shot.” He pointed to a still form on the front lawn, covered with a foil blanket and surrounded by rescue workers. Several of them had dropped to their knees to tend to the victim. Police officers were interviewing a woman near the entrance to the building. “That’s Alice Mayhill, the owner. She called it in, after she heard noises in the yard, then what she believed to be a gunshot. She lives upstairs.”

“Have any suspects been apprehended?” asked Damian, who was now standing behind me. He placed a protective hand on my shoulder.

“None so far,” said Jeremy. One of the other officers began yelling for him. “Gotta go.”

“Miss Gloria probably knows more about this from listening to her police scanner than Jeremy does standing right in the thick of things,” I muttered.

Meanwhile, I’m working to set up promotion for THE MANGO MURDERS, arriving in bookstores near you on August 12. There will be a grand book launch at RJ Julia‘s in Madison CT on August 12 at 6:30 with cake, wine, and door prizes. This book party is kind of special because it celebrates novel number 25! 

I still remember my very first book event for SIX STROKES UNDER back in 2002. I told everyone I knew about it. We had so many people sign up that it had to be moved from the bookstore to the library. 

I certainly had no idea where the writing journey would take me, but 

I’m so glad to be here with all of you. 

What turn or outcome in your life has surprised you?