Jenn McKinlay on her Identity Crisis

 RHYS BOWEN: I am often told that I am driving myself into the ground for writing two books a year. But I've come up with someone who is even crazier than I. Jenn McKinlay is my good friend and neighbor when I spend my winters in Phoenix and we've done some fun events together. But I am in awe of her writing schedule. Beside her, I'm a slacker. And she'll tell you why.  Take it away, Jenn. 

 Jenn McKinlay: Who do I want to be today?  No, really, I have a variety of names to choose from.  Some people have a tough time choosing what to wear, I have a hard time choosing who to be.  Just kidding, mostly.

     So far in my mystery writing career, I’ve written under three different names for five different series.   I am Lucy Lawrence, Josie Belle and Jenn McKinlay, the latter being my actual name.  People often ask me why I write under different names.  I tell them it’s because I don’t want to hog too much shelf space, but the truth is that I want to have multiple aliases in case I am ever in trouble with the law and have to flee the country.  Yes, that’s a lie.  Clearly, fiction writers are not to be trusted even with their own backstory. 

     The truth, so boring, is that because I kept submitting new and different ideas to my publisher, all of which were rejected, I think they finally had a meeting, which no one will confirm or deny, and decided that if they offered me a book to write, I would, please god, go away. 

     So, they asked me to be a writer for hire and pen a series about a woman who works in a paper shop and does decoupage for a hobby.  I became Lucy Lawrence and took on the job.  Knowing decoupage was about as timely as macramé, I quickly offered up more series ideas so that I would not find myself out of work before the ink dried on book three.  I sold a series about cupcakes, thought the fad would be quickly over, and another about libraries, also thought they were going the way of the dinosaur, both under my name Jenn McKinlay. 

     Convinced I would fail with these series, yes, I was having some confidence issues, I took on another writer for hire work and wrote a bargain hunter mystery series under the name Josie Belle.  Then I got a wild hair to write a book set in London, I really needed a vacation, and sold another series set in a hat shop in Notting Hill as Jenn McKinlay.

     Now with three different author names and five distinct series, one might wonder if I suffer from multiple personality disorder, a split personality or just a general identity crisis.  I do.  Oh dear, another lie!  Seriously, I don’t.  Not really.  My author names don’t define me any more than my married name does, yes, that’s yet another name.  See? I really could flee the country if I had to -- just sayin’.   

     When I was new at this writing game, I used to roll my eyes when I’d hear writers talk about the world they had created as if it was real.  What a rude newb I was!  Now that I have had to develop some multiple book story arcs, I get it.  I have caused great pain and suffering to some of my characters, I have shattered dreams and occasionally killed off people I didn’t want to die which caused some tears of my own.  For real.

     For me, being an author is a lot like being a reader.  When I was a kid, my first out of body experiences happened while sitting under a big dogwood tree in our yard where I went sleuthing with my two besties in my blue roadster and when I fell through the back of a wardrobe during a game of hide and seek and found myself in Narnia. 

   

  Writing is a similar experience for me.  It really is like falling down a rabbit hole, observing what is happening around me and trying to put it into words so that someone else can share the adventure.  The wonderful thing about being both a writer and a reader is that I get to live all sorts of lives and have endless adventures.  I wouldn’t change my job for anything.

     How about you?  If you’re a writer, how does it work for you?  Is it like taking notes while visiting a new world?  If you’re a reader, how do you feel when you are immersed in a great story?  How far do you wander from your actual surroundings into the world the author has crafted?

     Thanks for inviting me to visit, Rhys.  It’s always a pleasure to visit the ladies at Jungle Red.

 RHYS: Thank you, Jenn. Fun post. And Jenn will be giving away a copy of her latest hat shop mystery, DEATH OF A MAD HATTER for the best comment of the day.   

    

On Being a Crafty Gal

RO: About a year and a half ago I met a cute, energetic woman at Malice Domestic, that's a mystery writer's conference for those of you who may not know it. Like me, she was a new writer. Unlike me, she revealed herself to be a very crafty gal. Not just smarts - although she could give workshops on marketing and book promotion and probably has - real crafts. Particularly scrapbooking. Now I confess I had never given scrapbooking much thought. It was the section in Michael's that I passed on my way to the baking stuff..or the floral arranging items. Then I had a chance to see one of Joanna's scrapbooks. It was a work of art! Seriously..who knew? The details, design and talent involved were mindboggling. (What did I know? I thought people stuck pictures in a book and maybe added a few ticket stubs.) Anyway, I'm proud to call this funny, crafty gal a new friend.



Meet Joanna Campbell Slan...and a couple of her four-legged friends.




It’s No Mystery—We Love Dogs!by Joanna Campbell Slan
Weekend before last, Rosemary and I attended Love Is Murder, a grand mystery lovers’ conference held in Chicago. I’d like to tell you that the fans were throwing themselves at Rosemary and me, but that’s not completely true. See, it’s more accurate to say they were throwing themselves in our general direction because--we were standing in front of Rosemary’s dog, Max.




Never fails. I shave my legs, put on panty hose and makeup, for what? To get upstaged by a dog. Sigh.
But hey, who could resist? Max sure is a cute dog. I was right there at the front of the crowd trying to give him some loving. (He’s a sweet pooch, and he accepted the attention and affection with admirable calm. Rosemary, is there a photo of him here on your blog somewhere? Could you point us to it? Hmm?)
I was at the head of the “I want to pat that dog” group because I was jonesing and missing my pets. I love dogs—and cats! If I could cope with the drama and the mess—and if my husband wouldn’t kill me--I’d have more than just the two pooches we own, Rafferty and Victoria. My hubby is a great guy, and a smart one, too, so he’s set a limit on our pet ownership. “Don’t even THINK about it,” he’ll say when he sees “pet lust” sparkle in my eyes. I can’t really blame him. He knows that I once owned thirteen Great Danes and that was just…NUTS. I had a revolving account at the vet’s office, I bought a twenty-pound bag of Purina almost daily, and I spent most of my waking hours cleaning up messes. Back then, the bulk of fiber in my diet was dog hair, and all my sweaters looked like they were mohair. Which they were. Mo’ hair than yarn.



I was also single. (Guess why? Hmmm? Could it have been the roaming pack of big dogs that surrounded little old me? Uh, maybe!)



Since I can’t have more dogs in real life, since I’m incredibly allergic to cats (I wondered why my nose ran for years!), I have resorted to virtual pet ownership. While writing Paper, Scissors, Death, I decided my protagonist Kiki Lowenstein would adopt Gracie, a rescued harlequin Great Dane with uncropped ears. You can imagine how shocked I was to discover that one of the women who works in my vet’s office owns “Orion,” a rescued female Great Dane who looks exactly like Kiki’s imaginary pet!
I used to tell school kids that the best part of being an author was the dress code. You can roll out of bed and head to work wearing your pajamas, and you have to admit, that’s pretty neat. But lately I’ve been re-thinking the benefits of this job. Maybe the BEST part of being an author is that you can have all the pets you want. And never have to clean up any messes. How cool is that?

***
Cut, Crop & Die, the second book by Joanna Campbell Slan in the Kiki Lowenstein Scrap-N-Craft series will be out this June.

The first book—Paper, Scissors, Death—is available through all major booksellers. ***********

Sophomore Slump?..never heard of it.

Ro: There are certain things I don't even like to say, for fear that saying them will make them happen. Like...well...use your imagination..certain diseases, for example, unhappy altercations between cars and men walking dogs late at night. You get the picture.

On a far less tragic, but still unhappy, note is one expression a new writer can't seem to get away from - Sophomore Slump. I'd heard of it for years, even before I started writing. One publisher I know went so far as to say that publishers should bind a blank book (for number two) and then just leapfrog ahead to number three. I can tell you that wasn't a very encouraging conversation since I'd just spent the best part of a year banging out book two in my Dirty Business mystery series.

I guess there's some truth to the myth of the Sophomore Slump...many writers spend ten years or more polishing their first books and are then expected to push out number two in record time - generally one year if they're mystery writers.

Needless to say, I was determined not to fall victim to the dreaded SS. It goes without saying that I tried to write the best book I could. I held on to that manuscript until the bitter end, rewriting and revising until my normally calm and gentle editor pried it from my bony fingers with a look that told me it was now or never. We agonized over the title, the cover, the different PMS colors for the cover, the ARCs. Everything that went smoothly for book one was more of an issue for book two.

Was Sophomore Slump a self-fulfilling prophecy? Did things screw up because people expected them to screw up?

Time will tell for The Big Dirt Nap. My pub. date is next week, and I've already had a pre-launch party to benefit the Chalula Community library, which my husband and I helped to found. (At the legendary Friar's Club in New York...went well, thank you.) Kirkus, PW and (yippee!) Crimespree have all given me good reviews. So, so far, so good...

Any words of wisdom or war stories from the rest of you seasoned travellers?

ROBERTA: Ro, you've done everything you can. Now let it go and move on. And enjoy the launch! I did have a sophomore slump and lived to survive it:). Although I loved a lot of things about my second book, A BURIED LIE, I lost patience with working on it at the end. The research was impeccable (I paid to play in an LPGA pro-am tournament), the characters developed nicely, but the plot had holes. Big ones. I think I learned a lesson on that one--at any rate, my sweet husband reminds me of it when I'm tempted to rush another ending.
And yes, many writers find writing the second book to be very different from the first. With that first one, there was no deadline, no editor, no real audience in mind. But for the Big Dirt Nap, let's all enjoy the party!

RHYS: I don't think it has much to do with the quality of the book, Rosemary. Collectors buy first in series, especially signed. People try a new series and some decide it's not right for them. The second is often not accompanied by the buzz of the first book. Having said that, the numbers went up on the second book in all my series. So think positively.

JAN: My second book, A Confidential Source, was the most successful, but then again, it was launched as first in a series, (a few name changes but initially written as a sequeal to Final Copy). So I think Rhys is right. It's not in the writing so much as the buzz. You're awesome at generating buzz, Ro, seemingly tireless in promotion. If anyone shouldn't second guess herself, it's you!! Congratulations. I predict another success!

HANK: In college, I gained five pounds my sophomore year. That was also the year I decided going to class wasn't that important. Now that's slump. That's--falling off the chair.
I loved writing my book 2, Face Time. You know why? I had learned so much in the writing and revisions of Prime Time that I wanted to see if I could put it to use. For instance, PT was 723 pages when the first draft was finished! And I had to edit it to 325. That was one of the most educational experiences I've ever had. I learned my crutch words, my weaknesses, my digressions. That sometimes I wasn't that funny. I learned it was all about advancing the plot. Face Time, when I typed The End of the first draft? Bingo. 325 pages.

RO: I have a great group of blog sisters to learn from! Anybody remember that song from Damn Yankees...A Little Brains, A Little Talent? I shall try to employ both - and not gain five pounds!

Come back on Wednesday to meet this week's guest blogger, Joanna Campbell Slan who writes the Kiki Lowenstein Scrapbooking mysteries