What's We're Writing--Debs on It's All in the Execution

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It's What We're Writing week here on JRW! On Monday Jenn McKinlay gave us a snippet from the Library Lovers book she's finishing, in which the victim is electrocuted, and I thought, "I haven't electrocuted anyone since the very first murder in my very first book!" That got me thinking about how weird that must sound to people who don't write (or read!) mysteries. What a bloodthirsty bunch we are, always trying to come up with inventive ways to get rid of our poor victims. 

I have used, as we go through my Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series; electrocution, blunt intrument, poison, drowning, blunt instrument, poison, poison, drowning (the last three all in one book!), strangulation, drowning, hit by car, knifing, knifing, shotgun!, blunt instrument, blunt instrument, drowning, blunt instrument, hit by car (two victims again! And there's a stabbing in that one, too), blunt instrument, blunt instrument, drowning, strangulation, a bomb!, victim pushed in front of train (ick!), strangulation, gunshot, poison, and stabbing!

You can see that I'm not very inventive--I work on the theory that most murderers use the easist/most accessible means, especially if the crime is spur of the moment--and also that I have favorites in my murderous arsenal! Drowning and bludgeoning, obviously, are high on the list, but which one is it in the book in progress, Kincaid/James #20? (Working title is some iteration of The Long Cold Sleep, but we shall see...it may end up something altogether different.)

Just for fun, check out the poor drowning victim in the ridiculously awful original hardcover art for my third book, LEAVE THE GRAVE GREEN. 

The British poet Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving but Drowning," comes to mind. Does that setting look anything like Henley-on-Thames to you? Or even remotely like a British mystery??

Here's a snippet from K/J #20 (which will hopefully have a much better cover,) in which Gemma, the detective inspector on the case, consults with our dashing favorite pathologist, Dr. Rashid Kaleem.

Raising an eyebrow, Rashid said, “Nothing like jumping back in the deep end, then. Let’s see what we’ve got.” Pulling up his hood, he crouched beside the body and began his examination. “The victim appears to be a Caucasian male, in good physical condition. Probably, judging by his clothing, a runner.” He manipulated the fingers of the corpse’s right hand, then the left. “Rigor is established, as you can see, but from the flexibility in his digits, I’d guess it’s still advancing. However,” he glanced up at Gemma, “immersion in water can play havoc with all our usual indicators, as you know. There’s some bloating and discoloration, but not much sign of marine predation yet.”

“Why is he curled like that?”

“Drowning position. Back to the surface, arms and legs dangling. Normally bodies sink in this position and may show abrasions on fingers and toes, and even the face, from scraping the bottom, but I’m not seeing that here.”

The features were distorted enough that Gemma couldn’t get a clear idea of the man’s looks, or even his age. He’d been clean-shaven and his hair, although still wet, looked dark. He wore running shoes, and above them loose-fitting jogging trousers and a gray t-shirt in some sort of moisture-wicking material.

 Rashid, who’d been examining the clothing, held up an unmarked set of keys. “Zipped in the key pocket. House keys, I imagine. There’s also a mobile phone pocket at the back of the trousers, but it’s just a slip-in type. If he had a phone, it’s come out.”

“Do you think he went in the water here?” Gemma asked. “If that’s the case, the divers may find it.”

“There’s virtually no current in the canal, so in all likelihood, I’d say the body didn’t move far.”

“And time of death?

Rashid flashed a smile at her. “You’re not pinning me down on that until I get him in the lab. But I’ll schedule the postmortem as soon as possible. Bodies that have been in water start to decompose very rapidly once they’re exposed to air.”

“So, this guy was running, fell in, and drowned?” Frowning, Gemma added. “He did drown, right?”

Rashid had moved from the victim’s torso to the head, and was now running his fingers gently over the skull. His hand went still. He looked up at Gemma, all levity gone. “He very well may have. But that would have been after someone bashed him over the head.”

This week's other exciting news, other than writing progress and a blunt instrument or two, is our new REDS & READERS private Facebook group! It's a great place to make friends, find new authors, and of course keep up with the REDS. We'll be doing live chats and LOTS of giveways! I'll be giving away a copy of Kincaid/James #19, A KILLING OF INNOCENTS, so click here to join the fun, and leave a comment there to be entered for the contest!

Readers, do you like your murders complicated, or straight up?

What We're writing--Rhys on Dialog (or is it dialogue?)

RHYS BOWEN: At the moment you are reading this I'll be heading to the airport on my way to the Bouchercon mystery convention where I'm looking forward to seeing fellow Reds Hank, Debs and Susan. I'm on a panel on Saturday with Hank and Deborah--it's about our tales from the road: mishaps, misadventures and outright fun during our book tours and speeches. I hope there are going to be some stunning reveals. I know I have plenty of good stories. I may share some with you when it's my next turn to host JRW.

But in the meantime I'm juggling two books: I have finished the first draft of the next Georgie Book, called ON HER MAJESTY'S FRIGHTFULLY SECRET SERVICE, I've started on the final polish, and I'm just starting to write the next Molly book, called THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST. This is a much more somber affair so I'm having to juggle the two a little and switch moods between jolly and depressing!

I've been reading a lot of books lately and one thing that strikes me about beginning writers is that they don't know how to handle dialog.(or is it dialogue? I spend my time writing half in British English and half in American English, hence perpetually confused!)

 When people start to talk we have one line of speech after another, like staccato bullets. In real life people don't speak like that. They speak in broken sentences, they gesture, their body language matches their mood, outside things happen like planes flying over, dogs rushing in. AND we need to be reminded where we are. If the dialog scene takes place on a train station we need to hear an announcement or toot of a train whistle to remind us.

I've been told that my dialog is one of the things readers enjoy most about my books, so I thought I'd share a scene in which we have action, dialog, character and setting all playing a part: This is from the Georgie book I am working on. We are in Stresa, Italy, on Lake Maggiori:

            As I approached the villa I spotted a group of people, sitting on a terrace beneath an arbor of wisteria. I felt suddenly shy and awkward. Why had I not asked the driver to take me to the villa? I must look pathetic, staggering up the drive carrying my own suitcase and dressed in my unfashionable tweed suit. And what if the letter still hadn’t arrived and here I was with my suitcase?  Had the queen actually suggested that I join the house party, or merely that I should be welcomed for a drink if I showed up? Why on earth hadn’t I left the suitcase at Belinda’s house and pretended I had just dropped by to pay my respects? Then, when they suggested I should stay I could have acted as if I was surprised and they would have sent someone to pick up my belongings. But now I was committed. I couldn’t retreat without being noticed. It was only a matter of time before one of them looked up and…

            I was startled by a great scream. “Georgie!”

            I was even more startled to see that the scream came from my mother. She had risen to her feet and was running toward me, her arms open. “Georgie, my darling!” she exclaimed in that voice that had filled London theaters. “What a lovely, lovely surprise. I had no idea you were coming to join us. Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

            She flung her arms around me , something she was not in the habit of doing. Then she turned back to the others. “Which of you arranged to bring my daughter to me? Was it you, Max, who suggested it? You knew I was pining for her, didn’t you?”

            I had prudently put down the suitcase before she attacked me. Now she took my hand and dragged me forward. “Everybody, this is my darling child, Georgie, whom I haven’t seen for ages and ages. And I had no idea she was coming to join us. ” She gazed at me adoringly. “And now you’re here. It seems like a miracle.”

            I noticed she had failed to mention that she had bumped into a few days ago and at that time there had been no talk of inviting me to join her. Nor had she seemed overjoyed to see me. As I smiled back at her I wondered what she was up to.

            Several other members of the party had also risen to their feet as she led me up steps to the arbor. Among them I recognized Miss Cami-Knickers herself. She looked older, perfectly groomed, incredibly chic as she stepped down from the terrace and approached me.

            “Georgiana. How delightful to see you again after all this time. I was so pleased to receive a note from the queen herself suggesting that you join our party.”

            I shook the hand that was offered. “I do hope this has not inconvenienced you in any way, Camilla,” I said. “When I told her majesty that I’d be staying nearby I really had no idea she’d invite me to be part of your house party. But she was insistent that I pay my respects to my cousin, the Prince of Wales.”

            “But not at all,” Camilla laughed. I remembered she had always had a horsy sort of laugh. Her horsy looks had definitely been improved with impeccable grooming and expensive clothes but the laugh was unchanged. “Actually we’re horribly short on women at the party, so you are a godsend at evening up the numbers.  Come and meet my husband and the other guests.”

            I followed her up to the terrace where several men were now standing to greet me. One of them I recognized immediately as Paolo, Belinda’s former love. I saw from his face that he also remembered me but I also saw the warning sign flash in his eyes. “Pretend you don’t know me,” could not have been more clear if he had shouted the words.

            “My husband Paolo, Count of Marola and Martini,” she said proudly.

            “My dear Lady Georgiana, you are most welcome, especially since my wife tells me you and she were old friends from your school days.” He took my hand and kissed it.

            “How do you do, Count,” I said, inclining my head formally.  “But please let us dispense with formality. Why don’t you call me Georgie?”

            ‘Georgie. How charming.” He smiled. I had forgotten how incredibly handsome he was. I could see why Belinda had been quite smitten at the time.

            Camilla took my arm and moved me on. “And of course you already know Herr von Strohheim?”

            My mother’s beau Max clicked his heels and said, “Georgie. I am pleased to see you again,” in his stilted, staccato English. At least it was better than when he first met my mother and spoke only occasional monosyllables.

“Max, how are you?” I said, shaking his hand. He too looked handsome in a blonde and Germanic way and I was reminded of my encounter on the train with….

            “And this is Count Rudolf von Rosskopf,” Camilla said, and I found myself face to face with my would-be seducer.

            He too took my hand and drew it to his lips. “We meet again, Lady Georgiana,” he said. “What a delightful surprise. And I had no idea that we would run into each other again so soon. It must be fate, drawing us together.” He looked rather pleased with himself and his eyes flirted with me.

            “Behave yourself, Rudi,” my mother snapped. “This is my young daughter, you know.”

            “Not too young,” Rudi said. “Ripe and ready for adventure, I think.”

RHYS: I rather fear that seduction will be the least of Georgie's worries as the story progresses!

So do share: what do you look for in good dialog?

My One Square Inch of Alaska by Sharon Short

 LUCY BURDETTE: I find it hard to forget Sharon Short. Why? Because I have a magnetized set of cleaning tips from her Josie Toadfern mystery series stuck to my washing machine! But now she has a new book, just out today--a lovely story about a sister and brother and their dreams and hopes... How she came to write it is a wonderful story, too. She'll tell it much better than I can!
  

SHARON SHORT: After my cozy mystery series wrapped up, I wasn’t really planning the literary equivalent of a fashion makeover for my writing career.

Of course, that was before a Tim Gunn Bobblehead entered my life.

More on that in a moment…

Back to the days (weeks, months) after my cozy mystery series was, shall we say, all sewn up. Because I enjoy reading mysteries (and enjoyed writing them), the logical next project seemed to be another mystery. But… I couldn’t find an idea that clicked with my imagination.
Then, at a book club gathering, one of the women asked if anyone remembered the deeds to one square inch of Alaska that used to come in cereal boxes in the 1950s. (The question wasn’t related to the book we were discussing.) The 1950s were before I was born, but I was immediately taken with this compelling concept… the desire for a deed to one tiny bit of land in a vast frontier, and what that could symbolize. Almost immediately, the shadowy image of a young woman and her little brother, standing together and holding hands, appeared in my imagination. I couldn’t ‘see’ them yet in sharp detail, but I could ‘feel’ them saying, “tell our story.”

I had no idea what their story would or should be, but by the time I returned home, I’d written in my head one of the final scenes, which narrated itself in what would become the first person voice of my main character, Donna Lane. I went home, wrote down the scene in a journal, and then realized I had a lot of work ahead of me to discover the rest of her story.

I also realized fairly quickly that Donna’s story wasn’t a mystery. Frankly, this was unsettling at first. How could I plot without a mystery backbone?

But then I started thinking about all the novels I’ve loved reading that aren’t mysteries as well as the ones that are, and realized that in both cases, the best stories (and plots) emerge from character. And sure, mysteries focus on a protagonist solving a particular crime, but in a broader sense of the definition, don’t we all have a bit of mystery in our lives that we need to unravel? Pasts and relationships we need to understand, in order to come to an epiphany of some sort so that we can move on to stronger, wiser, healthier futures?

This is certainly the case for my characters Donna and Will, who leaved behind the strictures of their 1950s small Ohio town to go on the adventure of a lifetime, and in the process come to understand the power of embracing and following dreams.

Realizing this helped me make the transition from writing mysteries to writing my debut mainstream novel.

Well, that and my Tim Gunn Bobblehead.
You see, I’m a huge fan of Project Runway and Tim Gunn, and as it turns out my character Donna’s dream is to become a fashion designer. (This is because one of my childhood fantasies was to become a fashion designer.) During the Christmas after I’d started my novel, my family gave me a Tim Gunn Bobblehead, which quickly found a home on my desk. When I need a little writing encouragement, all I have to do is press the button to hear a recording of his voice saying his trademark lines, “Carry on!” “Make it Work!” “I can’t want you to succeed more than you do!” and “Fab-u-lous!”

And as for how I feel now about reading mysteries? “Fab-u-lous!”
Of course, I hope that’s how you feel if you get a chance to read MY ONE SQUARE INCH OF ALASKA. In any case, I’d love to hear from you!

LUCY: I loved this book and hope it takes off for you Sharon! JRW, Sharon will be stopping in all day to answer questions and comments. You can find out everything else you always wanted to know about Sharon, including how to buy her book, right here.

The Mystery of the Missing Character: a guest blog by Jill Edmondson

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The descriptions for Jill Edmondson's Sasha Jackson series include words like "classy madam," "fetish party," "naughty sex" and "talking dirty," so you KNOW the Reds are all over this like gin on olives. 

Ahem. Because, of course, we're fascinated by the way Jill has set the traditional PI story on its head. In a field crowded with flat-foots and and gumshoes, her sleuth has a penchant for high-heels and phone sex. When a unique character like Sasha Jackson pops up, it's easy for other writers to say, "Why didn't I think of that?" Well, you're in luck, because Jill is going to tell us exactly what sort of research and planning goes into "thinking of that."

Attention All Aspiring Crime Writers!!!! Here’s a $1,000,000 dollar whodunit idea, and it’s yours this week for free! That’s right: FREE! You just have to read the rest of this post and then act on the advice contained herein...

First some background...

Quite some time ago, long before I was published or before I had even finished my first manuscript, I attended a seminar for wannabe mystery authors. The speaker emphasized that a writer should know – really and truly be familiar with her genre (whatever it may be). Get to know the best-selling and most prolific mystery authors of that genre. Get to know the characters, the settings and the conventions of whodunits. In addition to being a sort of training - which reading the genre most certainly is - a great degree of familiarity with whodunits will also help you to figure out WHAT’S MISSING FROM THE GENRE. And that’s what you should write.

Let me explain...

If there are few-to-no police procedurals, then you should write one. If there are few-to-no gay detectives, then you need to create one. If there are no visible minority private eyes, then that’s what you must invent.

Some more background (but this time it’s nerdy...)

As part of the course work for my MA, I did a number of papers on Crime Fiction, and in particular I looked at women in crime fiction. After reading something like 728,351 mystery novels featuring female main characters, I could safely say I knew what the genre had to offer when it came to female lead characters. There are bodacious bounty hunters, ingenious investigators, cunning caterers, awesome attorneys, terrific taxi-drivers and so much more.

It is interesting to note (and I’m not the first one to notice this) that crime fiction, overall, has mirrored and embraced demographic shifts. Verisimilitude is contemporary mystery fiction’s word of the day. Crime fiction protagonists are no longer overwhelmingly male (let’s give a round of applause to Marcia Muller for this). Whodunit protagonists are no longer isolated loners walking down those mean streets.

Modern sleuths now have families and close circles around them, whether those bonds are with traditional families or chosen ones, such as a “little sister”, an elderly landlord, a niece, or someone else. Indeed, many sleuths have children of their own, which is cool. It’s nice to see art imitate life.

In fact, there are even a number of single parents in the world of crime fiction. Two of the first hardboiled dicks to have offspring were Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder and Michael Z. Lewin’s Samson, although neither of these divorced dads has custody of his children. Les Roberts’s Milan Jacovich mysteries has dad taking the kids on alternate weekends. Then of course, there is the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly: full time cop and full time single dad with teenaged daughter. 
 

Single moms (more specifically: custodial single moms) abound in mystery as in real life. According to Parents without Partners, single mother families numbered 10 million in 2000, 46% of which have more than one child. Mystery readers can check out single moms like Elaine Viets’s Josie Marcus, Marianne MacDonald’s Dido Hoare, Diane Mott Davidson’s Goldie Bear, and Anne Underwood Grant’s protagonist Sydney Teague. What’s interesting to note is that these characters are a mystery shopper, a bookseller, a caterer, and an advertising agency owner respectively.

I’m almost at my point...

What you may have begun to notice is that the male single dads (whether custodial or not) are all officially employed in law enforcement on some level or another. They may not all be cops or licensed PI’s but they make their living from solving crimes. The female single mothers on the other hand, are all amateur sleuths – shopkeepers stumbling over dead bodies, chefs happening upon a cadaver. For too many of the single moms in mystery fiction, crime solving is an accident, a sideline, a by-product of their “real job”. 

So here’s the idea (and YES, I know!)...

If you want to write the character that the genre seems to be missing, then you should write a single mother who earns her living as a cop or an investigator or something along those lines. There’s room for a new series in which a female protagonist is employed in an official crime solving capacity, and not simply an anthropologist or a photographer who tripped on a corpse. She should have at least one kid her who lives with her full time.

Yes, yes, yes. I know about the Joanna Brady series by JA Jance (and, indeed, Joanna Brady is not the ONLY single mom who solves crime for a living, but given the number of titles in the series, she definitely stands out). The widowed Joanna is the Sheriff Cochise County in Arizona. Great series, love the character. But the genre has room for another Joanna, and mystery readers (you already know that more women buy mysteries than men do, right?) would most likely be happy to have one or two female versions of Harry Bosch.

So there you go: Create a supermom-supersleuth who juggles badges and baby bottles, handcuffs and homework, guns and gummi bears, and my guess is that you’d have a winner.

You’re welcome!

You're going to be thanking Jill for more than her clever writing tips. Dead Light District, the second book in the Sasha Jackson series, is available as a FREE Kindle download today and Sunday, the 14th and 15th of July. The Lies Have It, the third book in the series, will be available as a FREE Kindle download on Wednesday and Thursday, Julia 18 and 19. No e-reader? No problem!  Jill has three signed copies of her first mystery, Blood and Groom, to give away! Leave a comment letting us know what you'd like to see in an original sleuth, and you could be one of the lucky winners.


You can learn more about Jill Edmondson and her books at her website. Jill also blogs, and is on Twitter as @JillEdmondson