Publishing? Here’s my story….

There are probably twice as many individual stories about the experience of getting published as there are published authors–taking into consideration that many authors have been published by more than one press.  BUT, in an on-going discussion on Murder Must Advertise, new authors have asked those with publishing experience to share their stories.   I sent a reply directly to a couple of questioners, but my answers turned out to be quite long, so instead of sending them to MMA generally, I am putting them here.

1.  My first publishing experience:

DEAR EARTH: A Love Letter from Spring Hollow, a non-fiction book of essays about country living and the transition from city to country sold, unagented, to a New York publisher in 1993.  I got a medium-large advance and standard royalties.  There was good and thorough editing support and a two-year lapse between acceptance and publication (in hard cover).  The publisher assigned a publicist to me but I think all she did was contact radio stations about interviews.  This eventually resulted in three hour-long interviews, one in coastal Alaska, one in California, and one in a small-town southern market.  I went on to get several more interviews on my own.  The publisher sent flyers and posters to bookstores and media contacts in my home area, and gave a stack of them to me.  The publisher suggested bookstores for signings but left me to make arrangements when the time worked for me.  (They did not pay my expenses.)  Neither my editor nor the publicist had much knowledge of the mid-south area and, at one time, wanted me to schedule same-day book signings at two Arkansas bookstores that are more than a day’s drive apart.    If the publisher or publicist submitted my book for reviews in major markets I never learned about it.  The books were in major distributors and were returnable.

Note:  Though the book sold moderately well and my editor said she was pleased, the final thousand copies were dumped in a landfill when the book  went out of print.  This was heartbreaking for me, partly because of the environmental cost.  (DEAR EARTH was later brought back into availability by my second publisher.)

2.  Second publisher–the first five books in my TO DIE FOR mystery series featuring Carrie McCrite and Henry King:

When I had finished the first two books in this series I did find an agent (I had an interview with her at a writers’ conference and she was the first one I had contacted.)  She was with a major agenting firm in NY and, so I was told, submitted my first novel to several publishers.  When I asked to see rejection letters she stalled (I thought) saying many authors did not want to see rejections.  I said I needed to see them and when, eventually, she sent me five letters, they all  began with statements about my work that I could have used for jacket endorsements on a novel! Then (turn the page) there was that “BUT” and what followed was usually the vague comment suggesting changes or, alternately, one of those “Not for us at this time” rejections. Sometimes the suggestions for changes were contradictions from one editor to another and, when I did do a re-write as one editor suggested, my agent did not re-submit.  Confusing and frustrating time for me.

Eventually this agent and I parted good friends and I soon sold the series myself to a small press I found in a write-up in the Mystery Writers of America newsletter.   This firm offered a small advance, very generous royalties paid monthly, offered excellent editing support, and submitted my novel to all major reviewers.   The book came out in trade paperback one year after acceptance, and was widely reviewed.  The publisher sent flyers to several hundred libraries and independent bookstores, and, with each, included a card the recipient could return for a free copy of the novel being promoted at that time.  Book tours were not arranged nor paid for.  The publisher supplied me with 1000 flyers with retail prices, and around 250 with bookstore discounts. The publisher also sold second rights for my books to a large print hardcover firm who markets to libraries.  We split that advance and royalties evenly. The publisher did a second printing on the first series novel, and let the second novel drop when it sold out.  (Returned all rights to me.)  This publisher also made all my books available for Kindle.

3.   Third publisher, beginning with sixth book in my “TO DIE FOR mystery series:

Small press.  I made arrangements myself, and was offered a standard contract including a small advance and standard royalties.  There is good editing support.  The publisher will submit ARCs to major reviewers and a few others and gives me copies to use for my own submissions.  They supply 500 bookmarks, a template for flyers I will have printed,  a list of radio interview hosts I can contact. Books will be in major distributors, with returns allowed. (This is in the contract.)

This is a Print on Demand publisher, and that’s one reason I chose them.  I have long been active on behalf of environmental causes and organizations, and I am willing to walk this publishing path for that reason.  I evaluated my dreams and goals and my conscience, and decided that, at this time in my life, it was time to allow my best instincts to guide me, and to keep within my comfort level.  It was a personal choice, and maybe not a path many of you would choose.

I have never been a “big city, big publisher” gal I guess.  I work hard on publicity and am comfortable doing that.  Though publisher number two came very close to getting one of my books reviewed in the New York Times, and always submitted to them, I don’t aspire to any notice from that source.  As the song says, “I gotta be me.” I write to entertain myself and my readers; to create characters that–I have been told many times–become like family to readers; and to accomplish what good I can through my writing as well as my life.

I can’t tell you more about publisher three yet because most of that experience is still ahead of me.

My advice to anyone seeking publication–especially if you are finding the path difficult–is, first, to be sure the book is well edited by someone other than yourself.  It’s almost impossible for any author to catch all problems.  It helps, of course, if you have had previous publishing experience as I had, since I was a magazine feature writer and journalists for several years before I wrote my first book.  Many of the essays in DEAR EARTH had been published previously.

Second, study agenting and publishing options.  Know and understand the many plusses and minuses. Investigate, investigate, investigate.  Talk to published authors.

Third, understand yourself and your publishing goals.  Look inside yourself to understand your comfort level.  These days publishing options are open to most since there are now thousands of small presses, a number of them “legitimate,” to use an industry term.

While I don’t advise self-publishing or publishing for pay for most writers, (for one major thing, distribution options are very limited and there can be a stigma attached) it might be a proper choice in some instances.  One example comes from our local critique group.  This member of our group is in his late 80’s and a cancer survivor.  He self-publishes.  In another example a friend in another part of the USA where there is a huge tourist industry self-publishes fiction set realistically in actual locations in her area.  She includes mentions of many real restaurants, shops, etc. when her characters patronize them.   State and local chambers of commerce, tourist sites, many businesses, especially if mentioned, plus real estate organizations,and the media support her work.  She sells–big time.

Of course all this comes from my own life experience, and that was my intention in this blog post.  I hope some readers here will share their own views and experiences.  If you are a beginning writer, talk to many people.  From this blog take only ideas that sound helpful.  Ignore the others.

Radine

Dying Conferences and Conventions….

Last May a conference died.  Present at the wake were conference volunteers and members of the board of Mystery Writers of America, Southwest Chapter.  Eulogies were said over “Hardboiled Heroes and Cozy Cats,” the conference with the mouthful title that has been chapter-sponsored with great success for many years and was  scheduled for  June 19 and 20 this year.

I didn’t travel to any of the HHCC conventions in Houston, the long-time venue, but was present at the first one held in  Dallas in 2007.  Huge  success, well attended.  Cindy Daniel, a real fireball worker, was the main driver, ably assisted by Mike Kirkpatrick.  A smoooooth event enjoyed by all.

In 2008 the conference, a moderate success, fell in a financial hole.  Income didn’t cover expenses.

2009.  We had big dreams, great hopes.    The chapter board and volunteers worked against a tide of difficulties to pull their conference together.  Major speakers were on board, including Doug Lyle and a retired FBI agent.   Though widely scattered over the chapter’s four-state area, workers and board members held one conference call after another to iron out details.  We took baby steps forward and spent hours on the phone.  A little over a month before the opening date we had 21 registered.  Cancellation was a mandate.   After a tussle with a hotel that wanted something over four thousand dollars in cancellation fees, the Ft. Smith school system closed because of a swine flu scare.  The cancellation fee was waived.  Though we had given the event plenty of our time,  at least we weren’t out money.

Twenty-one registered!  A conference that had previously drawn a hundred or two attendees couldn’t even get some of the volunteer workers to sign up and pay.   From what they said, the economy was definitely a factor.  Some promised to register and pay at the last moment.  Others asked about giving a credit card number to hold a registration and not activating a bill until the opening date.

Fast forward to now.  Midwest Mysteryfest,  sponsored by the Sisters in Crime Greater St. Louis Chapter at St. Charles Community College. The conference was skipped last year in favor of the chapter-sponsored Forensic University, but had been  held with success in earlier years and was scheduled for September 25 and 26 this year.

Midwest Mysteryfest died yesterday.  25 had registered, including panelists and speakers.  Organizer Jo Hiestand figured there would be 4, max, in the audience at each panel.  (Three tracks had been planned.)  Would scheduled agents want to travel long distances to hear only a few pitches?

This is scary.

I can’t verify, but have heard that attendance at almost all regularly held mystery conferences or conventions is down, from Malice to Mayhem.  Final figures aren’t in yet for Bouchercon.

WHY?  What’s your idea?  We already know the economy is a factor.  But what else?  Proliferation of available events?  Maybe.  But here’s something I haven’t heard mentioned before.   The Internet.   Could the availability of promotion activity on all kinds of lists and social networks be keeping people at home…saving money and giving them the feeling they are promoting actively on line when they previously used conventions as one way to make contacts and  get their names and their writing before the public?

Do these people yet miss contacts with other humans, face-to-face?   Do they have any idea they ARE missing something?  ( I admit I have good friends, Internet friends, I have never seen in person.)

Will the Internet kill many of our conventions?  And then, what else?

What do you think?

Social Consciousness

There’s been quite a bit of talk in the mystery writing community lately about issue-oriented and socially conscious plotting.  During a panel at Killer Nashville (a recent convention for mystery writers and fans) discussing this topic, Betty Webb (the Lena Jones series) was mentioned as the top example.  Grave issues we face today become the story and in some cases (Webb’s for sure) real change occurs as the result of a work of fiction! A novel can move the world?  YES!

Many authors, including myself, address social issues in their stories, though almost always to a much milder degree than Betty Webb accomplishes.  Our stories, for example, do not bring us the death threats she has faced.

Those who join the writing community today learn there’s much more to a writing career than simply writing “The End” on a sharply done manuscript.  Social consciousness can be one aspect of this.  Writing something we can happily promote is another aspect. A  second career, promotion of our work, is essential if we want anyone beyond family to buy our books.  In fact, I read advice recently suggesting those who don’t feel they can become hard-working advocates and promoters of their writing ought not to consider a writing career at all!

From experience over twenty-five years I can affirm the truth of that.  We  no longer lounge in the glow of being published while someone else sees that people learn about our writing and rush to buy and read it.  Those days are gone.

The days of the traditional book always being printed on paper between two covers are also gone.  Books on tape, (or CD), books read on screens, books downloaded on a multitude of technological wonders, are rushing into our lives.

The times they are a-changing.

Okay, let’s go a bit further.

How about bringing social consciousness into the book publishing business itself?  E-books of all kinds are environmentally sound.  They don’t require cutting a forest to make paper that is then bleached with chlorine.  They don’t use oil-based inks sheltering several volatile organic compounds to make words on that paper.

So far, so good.  But alas, what are the “I love the feel, smell, and eye attention gained from a real book” people to do if they care (as people increasingly do these days) about a “real” book’s impact on the environment?

The answer is staring us in the face and I use Wolfmont Press as my example.  Recently Wolfmont published a delightful little book called THE WRITERS’ JOURNEY JOURNAL.  Beyond being stuffed full of thoughts, entertaining insights, and good advice from sixty authors in the book’s essays and snippets of wisdom, this book was printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper not bleached with chlorine and produced in a mill powered with electricity generated by wind turbines.  Low or no VOC inks were used. Books are Print on Demand, in other words, no stacks of warehoused books, perhaps trucked long distances in gas-eating vehicles.  Just books made as needed.

In fact, all of Wolfmont’s books are created POD.  They cost a bit more to produce than thousands done at once by offset, but, by gosh, it’s “waste not, want not” and other old-timey values re-created in today’s world.

I love it.

My attention was first drawn to Wolfmont when I was invited to submit a story to their yearly holiday short story anthology, published to earn money for The United States’ Marine  Corps Reserves’ annual Toys for Tots campaign.  Neither publisher, editor Tony Burton, nor any author earns money for their work on these anthologies.  Promotion expenses  (and there is a lot of promotion, willingly done) are covered by the authors and Wolfmont.

As I grew to know more about this small but out-of-size valuable and moral company I dared to dream of working for them.  Now, more than a year later, I am grateful and proud to say that the small,  royalty-paying publisher Wolfmont will present the next novel in my “To Die For” mystery series in the spring of 2010.

A publisher can help move the world?  Yes, maybe it can!

See http://wolfmont.com/wordpress/?p=38 and page 61 in THE WRITERS’ JOURNEY JOURNAL, available through your favorite bookseller or http://www.wolfmont.com

Radine

The Green-eyed MONSTER

Is it worth a cat fight?

A recent discussion on a popular list for mystery fans has centered around jealousy among authors.  Some (a minority) feel mystery authors, whether aspiring or published, are competing for limited publishing slots and therefore must always be in competition.

Others say no, as we open up to and help others, we, too are blessed.

I’m with the second group.

I’ve been a published author for about 25 years now, and my first book (hardcover, NY pub) came out 14 years ago.  My first  mystery novel (from a small, mid-USA press offering an advance and royalty) appeared in 2002.  Since then five of my series novels have been published by that press, and now number six is slated for appearance in 2010 from a new publisher who also pays royalties, is extremely environmentally conscious in many ways, including printing books on demand as they sell (P.O.D.) rather than printing thousands to be warehoused somewhere and–eventually–face the possibility  they will be dumped in a landfill while few mourn the trees it cost to create them.

Am I someone who’s name has appeared at the top of the New York Times bestseller list?  Nope.

Do my books sell tens of thousands?   Nope.

Am I a contented author who does sell quite a few books ?   You betcha!

Even before I sold my first book to a publisher, I understood the importance of professional friendships and cooperation.  In my previous roll as a journalist I had made friends in the media.  I soon joined several writers’ organizations and began to add many authors, whether NY bestsellers or those with one book from a mini-press, to my list of friends.  I began sharing opportunities and ideas with them.  I eventually formed a group in my home state called “Writers Roadshow” and invited author friends to join me in group signings and discussions.  We prospered.  And…and…my author friends began sharing ideas and opportunities with me.  Green-eyed monster?  No way!  We were a professional group, working together to sell books in an amazing variety of ways.

Though it seems many authors are competing for few and decreasing publishing slots today, folks who grieve over that are usually limiting their publishing aspirations by a desire to connect only with an imprint of one of the six (or seven, depending on your point of view)  New York conglomerates.  They worry about snagging an agent, then pray that agent will find them a publisher.  And no wonder there is anxiety.  A top NY agent recently told me that, whereas she used to find twenty or more editors she could submit her clients’ books to, now she’s lucky to find six.   WHEW!

That does seem to be a recipe for cat fights and jealousy.

My suggestion (as well as my own publishing experience) says aspiring authors need to turn outward, even if that’s only after months and sometimes even years of turn-downs in New York.  Filling the void left by decreased activity among the biggies,  small presses are popping up all over.  Sure, finding them takes diligent research.  Sure some are bloodsuckers who, feeding on an author’s desire to be published, take money (often a lot of it), produce an inferior product (badly edited, hard-to-read books with, often, unappealing covers), have few follow-up promotion activities, and usually no general distribution avenues.  For most, that’s a bad choice.

But for every one of those, there are (I’m guessing, based on what I see on the Internet and hear from many other authors) at least twenty small presses who offer many of the same services authors get in New York, though sometimes avenues of distribution are more limited.  That’s partly because of a continuing prejudice against print on demand books.  Why?  Sometimes those books can’t be returned to the distributor or publisher, and sometimes it takes longer to get orders in.  It isn’t that booksellers can’t adapt to this, it’s that they haven’t had to, so are holding to the old ways.  I can’t exactly blame them.

But the times, they are a changing.  My home state, Arkansas, had, at last count, 499 independent publishers.  (Numbers cover those who have purchased ISBN numbers–source, Bowker.)  Texas and California had several thousand each.  Sure, some are “Granny’s Garage Cookbook Press” or they were formed to create books for special niches like memoirs, museums,  and religious texts.  But, there are still a bunch of them out there waiting for you.

Can small press authors get around the no return policy problem?  My own experiences may be helpful.  Once, at a Barnes & Noble booksigning, I was horrified to see three cases of about 40 books each stacked near the signing table.  These did come from a publisher who accepted returns, but, because of damage, really couldn’t afford that burden and eventually went out of business.

Okay, so I do sell a nice amount of books at signings (35 or so being an average)  but I’m not a big name except in Arkansas.  A reality check told me that B&N had over-ordered, and many of those books would be returned.  Also, in another B&N,  I saw a costly book I wanted for research.  They had two copies on their shelves.  One pristine, the other shop worn.  I asked about buying the shop worn one at a discount.  “No, not our policy,” the clerk said. “We can return that for a full refund.”    URK!  Poor publisher who would have to eat the cost of that expensive book.

Now, when preparing for any signing event, I usually suggest the top number of books to be ordered or, in some cases, take books myself and, on a 60/40 or similar deal, supply them for the event and for bookstore  stock following that.   Also, these days, many small presses will make special arrangements for a limited amount of returns of books in good condition within a certain time frame.   (Old rules allow bookstores to keep books for several months before returning them.)

It all boils down to knowing yourself and finding your niche.  Interested only in NY?  Have at it!  Otherwise, look around you.  Talk to fellow authors.  Find out who publishes them.  Ask about their satisfaction with that publisher.  When I was between publishers recently, several authors offered contact information for their own publishers/editors for my submission benefit.  And, when a novel of mine  recently took first in a contest, a judge suggested I submit to her publisher.

Like I said, friendship counts, not cat fights.

Purrrrrr!

Radine

Are you a book collector?

There’s more than one kind of book collector.  Dan Krotz of  Sow’s Ear Books and Antiques in Berryville, AR, blogs about that….

On Collecting Books (No. 4)

By Dan Krotz

There is no right or wrong way to buy books if the aim is the simple pleasure of reading. And since fewer than half of all Americans read a book once they graduate from high school. God bless that exceptional person for being a reader. But collecting books versus just buying and reading books is an activity that requires organization, purpose, and planning. Starting questions that collectors must ask are, “What am I collecting, and for what reasons?”

A few people indiscriminately collect “old” books as investments because they intend to resell them some day. That can be a disappointing strategy if profit is the goal because the age of a book often has very little to do with its value. Book dealers, collectors, and librarians, however, do use some broad time spans to establish dates of books with likely importance and value: e.g., all books printed before 1501, English books printed before 1641, books printed in the Americas before 1801 and books printed west of the Mississippi before 1850. Yet, even these dates are rough guidelines at best and are always subject to the overriding factors of intrinsic importance, condition, and demand.

“Intrinsic” importance really has to do with what is important to the collector himself. For example, I collect books written by Larry McMurtry. I suppose I have several copies of everything he has written, yet only a first edition, first printing Lonesome Dove—with a specific (and single) typographical error—is really worth much, and then only about $100. Still, there is something about McMurtry’s style that I find truthful, lyrical, and elegant in a laconic way. I collect him because I like the writing.

Another collector is the “accidental” collector who begins reading someone like Sue Grafton and her “alphabet” series of mysteries. One day the reader notices that she has “A” is for Arson and “C” is for Crime but is missing “B” is for Burglar. Suddenly the reader has a mission. And, since Grafton is up to “S” is for Silence, we can only assume that our accidental collector will one day own all 24 Grafton Titles.

Some books are always in demand by collectors. These include early editions of novels by the trinity of American literature, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway (Faulkgeraldway in book-speak). There are also books that represent a transition point in literature such as Ulysses by James Joyce, Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, or On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  Certain books by these writers can be worth as much as two or three thousand dollars—or more.

Other collectors are people who are only secondarily interested in books, but who are interested in a particular subject such as the Civil War, certain makes of cars, or birdhouses, and on and on. No matter how esoteric or narrow an interest may be, a writer—and maybe several hundred writers—have written books about it. “Of the making of books there is no end” and thank goodness, for otherwise there would be no occupation for booksellers like me, or for librarians, writers, and publishers.

A lot of young people (and some not so young) have started collecting Harry Potter books. While I can’t argue the literary merits of Rowling’s oeuvre—I wasn’t able to finish the first of her novels—I am quite certain that first editions/first printings of her books, especially UK editions, are going to be worth some serious money. I am always happy when I find one at garage sales, or in a jumble shop somewhere.

Conversely, Stephanie Meyer’s vampire books, among them Twilight, as an example, will never be worth much, if only because the publisher printed about a zillion first editions/first printings on relatively cheap paper. The abject silliness of a book rarely enters into a bookseller’s assessment of its future valuation since lots of profoundly goofy books are highly collectible. In Meyer’s case, however, production factors plus stupid equal ho hum.

Books written by people who have never actually read a book—so called public intellectuals like Al Franken and Michael Moore on the political left and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on the right—aren’t worth any money at all less than 30 days after publication, and are functional doorstops by day 31. These “writers” are never collectible in the way that genuine public intellectuals, such as Ambrose Bierce, William F. Buckley, G.K. Chesterton, H.L. Mencken, and Mr. Dooley will always be.

Good bookstores are characterized by the number of informal collections it has amassed, and which are interspersed among the general run of books. Because I love Graham Greene, Stanley Elkin, Harry Crews, and Hillarie Belloc, to name just a few, I always have several of their books on the shelves—and they stay there because these writers are simply out of fashion. Even though they probably will never sell, I can’t resist buying even more copies. If you find yourself in the same fix it is safe to say that you are a collector.

The single piece of advice I give to a prospective collectors is that if a book makes you cry, collect it. I suppose that’s why I own nine copies of The Sun Also Rises.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Book Signing: John Krankhaur, author of By Night a Fabulous Tap Dancer, signs his book Saturday, August 1, 2:00PM—4:00 PM.

Book Night: Roughing It by Mark Twain, 4:00 PM, Thursday August 19^th, Grandview Hotel.

Non-Fiction seeking: Western and Native Americana, Railroading and Trains, Regional (Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas), Antiquarian and rare agriculture, Machinery and Tools, better cookbooks.

Fiction Seeking: Cormac McCarthy, Sufi poetry, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jean Auel, Mary McCarthy and Edmund Wilson, Charles Bukowski,. Visit: My blog at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-krotz/

Shop: At the Berryville Farmers’ Market, Saturday Morning 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM

VISIT AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE TODAY!

–
Daniel Krotz
202 Public Square
Berryville Arkansas 72616

Answering your questions: “Where did DEAR EARTH come from?

Though I am a native Oklahoman, I have to admit up front that my heart is in Arkansas.  And though I suspected as early as grade school in Tulsa that, on occasion at least, I was a pretty good writer, was encouraged by teachers throughout school, and even edited a college newspaper, it wasn’t until my husband and I came to Spring Hollow in Arkansas that what one of my favorite authors, Mary Stewart, calls the writing virus, really caught me.  Because I loved a place, because it filled holes in my life, made me think and feel as I never had before, the writing simply exploded out of me from then on.  I had to write about Arkansas and the Ozarks.  And that’s what I’ve been doing since my first Ozarks essay sold in 1985.  The hills and hollows, the trees, wildflowers, animals, fruits of the land…all of it, really unleashed a creative rush that showed up in newspapers and magazines all over the world.

That was the beginning.  I continued to write and sell individual essays and articles about the Ozarks and our experiences there.  I had some success, accumulated quite a body of published individual pieces and, finally, in the early 90’s decided I was really writing the story of my husband’s and my transition from Tulsa city dwellers with demanding careers to Ozarks hillbillies, and I use that term in a positive light to mean self-reliant Ozarks hill dwellers.  That’s when I put previously written work together with new material in a story line that became DEAR EARTH: A Love Letter from Spring Hollow.

From the beginning of my interest in writing about the Ozarks I had been increasing my knowledge about my new profession.  I read informational  magazines and books for writers, I attended classes about writing at Tulsa Junior College, I joined organizations for writers and listened to information shared by others working as writers.  I learned proper manuscript preparation and magazine querying, then I studied book manuscript preparation, how to write a book synopsis, proposal, and query letter.  I studied publishing options, submitted my book idea, and–when requested–my manuscript.  I got rejections, and that went on for over a year.  Through all this I learned that successful writers never treat writing as a hobby…it is a profession, and it’s hard work.

In 1993 I read–in a professional magazine called The Writer– about a publishing company in New York that bought inspirational non-fiction books.  I queried, learning only later that the head of this company had recently come to the Ozarks to speak to an organization I was in the process of joining, Ozarks Writers League.  I began to have a very good feeling about this publisher, and not long after I got the big phone call…”Radine I’d like to talk with you about your lovely book.”  I was on my way as a book author.  For that book at least, the waiting and trying and trying and being rejected–was over.

Y’know…no matter how many other things I write–no matter how much I really enjoy creating my mystery series and short stories, DEAR EARTH: A Love Letter from Spring Hollow, will always be the book of my heart.

Interested in coming to the Ozarks for a visit?  You’re invited to begin by joining me at Spring Hollow in the pages of DEAR EARTH.
Radine

More about “travel” writing:

(Thanks to Kaye Barley for suggesting I double-post this…it’s on her blog, meanderingsandmuses.blogspot.com too.  SO….)

LET’S GO SOMEWHERE!

I love both travel reading and travel writing. Nope, I don’t do magazine features that begin something like this: “The yellow sand beaches of San Poopio will take your breath away this time of year, and the meals at Nightmare’s Inn manage to surpass my ability to describe them….”
You guessed it! There are better ways for me to travel at little cost. For example, when I want to escape extreme weather:
Ahhh, the driveway is shoveled and my toes are thawing in fuzzy slippers. Think I’ll begin reading one of my new book purchases. Um, which one…?  Oh yes, that one!
Page 1:
“Summer in Benteen County, Kansas, is a season possessed of all the gentle subtlety of an act of war…. A week ago, the thermometer had risen past the unbearable mark…and, in automatic response, the humidity rushed after it–-to a level technically described as obscene.”
(From J. M. Hayes’ mystery novel, Mad Dog & Englishman.)
But it gets hot in the Ozarks, too. In August I prefer escaping into something like Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger, (where you can experience a white-out blizzard and frozen body in northern Minnesota), or Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters.
Good mystery writers are master manipulators, aren’t they? They create atmosphere and location inside minds, take us to places dark and stormy or glaring and sharp, thrill us with chilly caves, steaming jungles, and worlds far away from the familiar. The more skillful the writer, the more willing we are to believe, share, travel, and enjoy–riding along eagerly with characters and events and seeing new places that become real for at least the space of a novel.
Many works of fiction offer this real place reality, some taking us into actual locations where we are intrigued by the story unfolding there. I love this type novel. Readers don’t have to pack a bag, endure airlines, or make long car trips, though quite often they do end up wanting to see the described location for themselves at a later date.
One author who gives readers a vivid location experience is Ellen Elizabeth Hunter, a real place writer sharing the area in and around Wilmington, North Carolina. I learned about her novels while planning a trip to the Cape Fear Crime Festival, a mystery fan convention once held on the North Carolina Coast. Someone recommended Ms. Hunter’s mystery novel, Murder on the Candlelight Tour, as an introduction to the area, but the book ended up being much more than that. My husband and I toured Wilmington by using Murder on the Candlelight Tour as our guide. We visited historic buildings and restaurants portrayed in the story. We even ordered the same dishes Ms. Hunter describes so deliciously.
Hunter is not a Carolina native–perhaps one reason she notices Wilmington details with a newcomer’s freshness and a tourist’s excitement. She says, “I fell in love with Wilmington and wanted to live there, but couldn’t because of my husband’s work. I decided the next best thing to living in Wilmington myself would be creating a character who did.”
(If you’d like to enjoy the Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach area wherever you are, go to http://www.ellenhunter.com.)
Meanwhile, back in the Ozarks, my own fiction writing career was getting under way in the same time period as Ellen Hunter’s. She and I are both relative newcomers in our areas.  My husband and I chose Arkansas for our home after spending time thinking about going “back to the land” in several parts of the United States. My love for Arkansas led to an interest in writing about it, and I spent more than ten years selling articles, essays, and poetry about the Ozarks to publications in the United States and other countries. After publishing one non-fiction book set here,(DEAR EARTH, A Love Letter from Spring Hollow)I decided to try my hand at writing the type of book I enjoy reading most–-the traditional mystery.
My first effort, A Valley to Die For, (St Kitts Press, 2002) was set in the same remote Ozarks area as Dear Earth, an easy location to describe, since it’s where I live. In my second novel, Music to Die For, I sent my protagonist, Carrie McCrite, accompanied by her friends, to another Ozarks spot I love, Ozark Folk Center State Park. (Picture Sturbridge Village with an Ozarks setting and a theater where old-time music can be enjoyed.) From then on, each novel’s setting has been at a different Arkansas tourist destination.
It wasn’t long before I, and my location destinations, discovered it was not only fun to site books in areas enjoyed by tourists, it was good business for the locations themselves. Settings are real enough that, at signings, I give actual tourist brochures and location maps to everyone buying one or more books in the To Die For series.
As a reader, I’m excited when I find a new author who takes me to a real place, tells me about a career I’m not familiar with, and joins these with mystery/adventure puzzles. As a writer, I love telling stories set in places I have chosen to visit, absorb, and share with readers. As a result, many tourist-oriented publications, including airline and National Park magazines, have carried feature articles about my writing.
My next To Die For story takes Carrie McCrite and Henry King to three popular tourist destinations: a ride on a restored 1920’s Arkansas train, the historic district and river front in Van Buren, Arkansas, and The Steamboat Arabia Museum in Kansas City. Danger times three! I had a wonderful time traveling to do research for this novel, and hope you’ll soon enjoy this Journey to Die For with me!

What can you be besides a writer?

I dreamed of being an archeologist.
Daddy insisted on secretarial school.  (Yes, this was back in the dark ages when fathers did that.)  The dream died.

Fast forward thirty-five years.  My husband and I chucked city jobs in Tulsa, Oklahoma and moved to the hills of northern Arkansas.  I soon discovered I was meant to be an Ozarks-dweller.  I began writing about the area I loved, and before long was a regular contributor to regional, national, and international publications; as well as an Ozarks-based reporter for radio news.

Then I decided to try my hand at mystery writing.  The “Something to Die For” series was born.  Two books into the series I was doing research for a third novel set in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas, when the park curator mentioned she’d been cataloging artifacts for Dr. Caven Clark, Staff Archeologist at Arkansas’ Buffalo National River.

Archeologist?  I knew the Buffalo area as a three-county-long landscape with a wild river known to offer canoeing, fishing, and hiking amid spectacular scenery.  I knew the river had cut deep canyons like a mini-Grand, but…archeology? Timidly I picked up the phone and called Dr. Clark.  Yes,
he was willing to help me.  I was IN.

After repeated discovery trips to the Buffalo, after exploring bluff shelters with Caven Clark, after many questions and interviews, I now know that the Buffalo National River area rivals the canyons of Arizona and New Mexico for archeological wealth.  Ten thousand or more years ago Paleo Indians hunted and camped along the river, leaving chipped points.  Centuries passed, and families began accompanying their hunters.  The family groups spent more and more of the year here, learning to scratch soil and scatter seed gathered from wild food plants.  They stayed during the winter, living in dry bluff shelters and caves along the Buffalo and elsewhere.

The word dry is important because, just as happened in the American Southwest, even fiber objects like woven garments, nets, sandals, and cradle boards survived inside the dry shelters.  More commonly preserved throughout were chipped stone hunting points and tools, as well as pottery. (Pottery making began about 500 BCE.)  A legacy of life, a cultural heritage, was collecting.

Then Europeans came.  Spaniards passed through the area during the 16th century, including a party led by Hernando de Soto.  By the early 1800s, white settlers were moving into valleys near the river.  Children and adults enjoyed exploring the world around them, often picking up curious-looking objects they found in caves and shelters or dug up in their fields.  This collecting by individuals continued, year after year.  A cultural legacy began vanishing.

Such “looting” was not yet a crime.  But, by the beginning of the last century, the cultural heritage found in Arkansas had been recognized, and archeologists came to collect artifacts for museums in the East.  The struggle to preserve what was left had begun.  As Dr. Clark now writes: “My job as an archeologist is no longer the digging of square holes for the extraction of scientific data, but the struggle to leave as much in the ground as is possible, to preserve what remains of the past for future generations…(and to) responsibly interpret these remains.”  (Epilogue, A RIVER TO DIE FOR.)
It’s not easy.  There isn’t enough staff to patrol the 36,000 acres of the Buffalo National River.  In recent years, due partly to the ease of advertising and selling objects on the Internet, as well as to the hunger of European clients for American Indian artifacts, looting at the Buffalo and elsewhere has become big business.  It’s often linked with the production and purchase of methamphetamines and other drugs.

Finally, after years of “slap on the wrist” law enforcement, some looting cases have been successfully prosecuted under the 1979 Archeological Resources Protection Act, which bans the removal and sale of artifacts from public land.

You can see where I am going with this.  Radine, now an archeologist by proxy, was on her way to creating a mystery novel about archeological looting.

Challenging?  Yes.  Fun?  You bet!  Caven Clark let me poke my fingers through the dusty floors of remote bluff shelters, identifying such things as the tiny shells of river creatures that long-ago people used for food.  After one hike I sat in a now well-known Buffalo destination, the Indian Rock House, imagining (as does Catherine King in my novel) what living there might have been like several thousand years ago. Then, stuffed with atmosphere and information, I returned to my office to dream like an archeologist, and to write.  A RIVER TO DIE FOR is the result.

I never worked as a secretary but, by golly, I have brushed the life of an archeologist.  And I was right.  It would have been a great career.

The danger of teaching “You can’t….”

We’ve just been discussing the dictum of a well-known and (previously?) respected author who stood before an auditorium full of budding and established writers a few weekends ago and laid down a number of her rules about point of view.  Most had to do with the idea that you can’t write from a POV that you haven’t experienced, as, for example, a man should never write from a female point of view.

I was excited and almost overwhelmed by your responses to that blog.  Comments agreed with my own thoughts.  Her rules were “horsefeathers.”   You can probably think of many, many exceptions to her POV  “rule” beginning with childrens’ stories written from the point of view of , say, a rabbit.

Now then, here’s another rule I heard an author with nearly a hundred published novels to his credit lay down during a talk to another group of wanna-be writers:

“Don’t write in dialect,” he said. ” Too hard to understand, and editors won’t touch it.”

(I might say up front that this author, who writes westerns, has broken the  rule in some of his own novels.)

And so have I.   I did it openly in one of my most popular novels, MUSIC TO DIE FOR, now out of print but soon to be brought back to life by Wolfmont Press.   The book is set deep in hillbilly country in and around Mountain View, Arkansas, and at Ozark Folk Center State Park.  Both are in remote Stone County,  AR, where the first paved road, county-wide,  appeared in the late 1950’s.

My favorite character in MUSIC TO DIE FOR (other than protagonists Carrie McCrite and Henry King) is a one hundred-year-old family matriarch called Mad Margaret Culpeper.  The Culpeper home is deep in the forest, and contact with outsiders is rare unless Margaret’s boys are out selling some of the family’s, uh, product.   (Her oldest boy is 80, I might say.)

Here’s Margaret, talking to Carrie and Henry, who, hoping to save a kidnapped child,  have dared a hike to her home in the middle of the Culpeper compound.

“Elizabeth weren’t ’special purty  ‘n’ niver had purties to fix up in, but she done good at school.  She were good at poetry ‘n’ thinkin’ up music. Oh, my, she loved music–she had the purty things in her head. She made music all the time.”

And, later….

“Elizabeth niver had friends. She daren’t to bring young-uns home, see, ‘n’ town folks didn’t want a Culpeper playin’ with thur chillern.  She weren’t asked to parties nur other affairs the young folks had….   So she got to spendin’ all her time in the woods….”

Margaret raised her arm and waved it in a wide, circular sweep. “It were out there she met the stranger.”

——————-

Every time she opens her mouth, Margaret Culpeper speaks in dialect.  And this book has gathered praise from editors and reviewers, including Library Journal and other notable sources, across the spectrum to local media here in the Ozarks.   Margaret’s speech has often been commented on with praise.

So, what do you think?  What am I supposed to think when someone says “Never write in dialect?”

(This is one reason I never say “never” when I teach or speak about writing. I think the minute you state a rule someone has broken it…beautifully.)

Radine

Who, or what, have you been?

A highly acclaimed literary author was speaking to an auditorium full of published and wanna-be published writers who had paid to be taught by her.

“Think of all you have been in your life,” she said.  “The obvious ones–daughter or son, student, sibling, confident, friend.  You’ve been hundreds of things.  If you’ve ever boiled an egg you have been a cook.  If you’ve ever pulled a weed, you’ve been a gardener.  You, at this point in your lives, have been hundreds of things.

“Point of View,” she continued, “relates to something that must be inside you and hence relates to what it’s possible for you to put inside your character’s lives.

“First person point of view is always interior and always gut-level honest.  It must always be something you yourself have been.  Third person interior must be the same.  Don’t write inside anyone’s head that you can’t be.  You can’t cross the sex line.  A woman can not write from a male point of view, for example.”

She continued in this vein, but I was already lost, thinking about what she’d just said.  Can’t write thoughts for a male character?  In my own field, mystery, what about Agatha Christie and Hastings?  What about Dorothy L. Sayers and Lord Peter?  And, of course, what about Radine Trees Nehring and Henry King?  And, even if they don’t cross a “sex line,” what about the many, many people who write historical fiction?

At the first break I did approach the speaker and ask her about historical fiction.  True, I have boiled an egg, but in my handy-dandy electric egg cooker and not over a wood fire.  Should I attempt to make the transition to a woman cooking at a fireplace  in the 17th century?  The speaker had no ready answer, only repeating that bit about boiling an egg making me a cook.

The rest–getting water, pouring it in the iron pot, putting logs on the fire, dodging sparks, timing the egg with what…an hour glass?–would have to be the product of my imagination and research.

Ah ha!  Imagination and research?  Aren’t both of those an essential part of the writing life?  And can’t they allow me to, at least occasionally, be what I could never be in real life?

Then why can’t I (especially with the help of men willing to read what I write and comment) be–at least in the pages of my novel, and using imagination and research–a man?

I didn’t remind her that I write mysteries and never in my life have I killed anyone though, in my novels, I have committed–let’s see–at least six murders.

What are your thoughts on this?

Radine