The 3 Rs

by Bente

I’ve been talking to a friend about goals lately.

Specifically, word goals.

She’s a brand new writer, who hasn’t completed a full manuscript yet. And a few days ago she emailed me to ask whether I thought October 31st would be a reasonable deadline to aim for, for a new, completed manuscript. This happened the middle week of August, so basically, she was looking at two and a half months to write a brand new book, beginning to end.

I told her it depends. How many words would her book have? How much time can she devote to it per day? How fast does she type?

For me personally, a new book in two and a half months isn’t a goal I’d set myself.

That’s not to say I can’t do it. I can. I’ve written 90K books in two months before. If someone were to tell me, right now, that they’d pay me $50,000 if I could turn in a complete novel two months from today, I could do it no problem. I might kill myself in the doing, from the sheer stress of knowing I had to finish on time, but I’d manage. I can easily write 90,000 words in two months. I’ve done it before, so I know it’s possible. That doesn’t mean I’ll choose to put myself under that kind of stress. I’d rather give myself three months, and aim for 1,000 words per day—knowing it’s a rare day that I don’t write more—and be done early.

There are people out there whose goal is 365,000 words per year. One thousand words per day. Every day. Christmas, July 4th, their birthday, the day their kid starts school, the day they come down with the stomach flu and can’t drag themselves away from the porcelain ring long enough to answer the phone.

Not me. I know I need downtime. There’s gonna be days when I won’t write. There might be a week or two when I don’t crack open the computer because I’m on vacation or because I finished a book and I’m not ready to start the next yet.

Or—since writing isn’t just about adding words to the manuscript—there’ll be days when I’m revising. Lots of days when I’m revising. Days when I don’t add a single word to the count. Days when I take them away instead. Days when I do copy edits or when I proof read. Days when I’m at a conference doing a workshop and a signing. Days when I just don’t want to write; I want to read instead.

If my goal is 1K/day, I’m going to have to make up for those days. If I spend a week revising, suddenly I’m behind my goal by 7,000 words. In just a week. And when you’re behind 7,000 words, it can be hard to catch up.

And so we come to the three Rs.

• Reasonable.
• Realistic.
• Right.

Set a goal for yourself, by all means. Goals are great. Most of us are motivated by goals. If you’re not, then feel free to ignore this post.

Just make sure your goal is Reasonable and Realistic. Make it a goal you have the ability to meet. If it’s so far out of your reach that there’s no way you can possibly get there, you’ve missed Realistic by a wide margin. And if it’s so simple you could do it in your sleep, it’s not a really goal at all, and so not at all Reasonable. And finally, don’t choose to write three books a year because someone else does. Your goal is your goal, and it has to be Right for you, no one else.

So what about you? Do you have word goals? Or deadlines? Self-imposed or otherwise?

***

FYI, the ebook of Close to Home, Cutthroat Business mystery #4, is now available through Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. Anyone who wants a freebie review copy can email me for a Smashwords coupon code.

Thanks!

The debate rages on

The debate on pricing in indie publishing, that is.

If you have a Kindle or Nook, or for that matter a Kobo, Sony, or iPad, and you read e-books at all, you’ve probably noticed the wide disparity in pricing. The price of a newly released e-book of a hardcover bestseller can be as high as $12.99 or more. On the other hand, there are plenty of $.99 e-books to be had, as well.

Mostly, those 99-centers are from indie, i.e. self-published, authors. Publishers have too much overhead to price their books that low. Amazon pays 70% royalty on e-books listed at $2.99 or more, but only 35% on those below that magic divide. Most of the time, you won’t find a traditionally published e-book much lower than $4.99. That seems a fair price to me, for a book that’s been professionally written and edited and that has professional cover art. There’s a certain sense of legitimacy in the traditionally published books: whereas I may not like the content, at least I’ll know that the product itself is pretty good.

As you know, I have a few traditionally published books out there. They’re released in mass market paperback for $7.99, which is a pretty standard price for a mass market paperback of 90,000 words. The electronic versions of those same books are also priced at $7.99. Same as the paperback. This also seems like an industry standard, and in polls, that $6.99-$7.99 price point is comfortable to a lot of people. Anything above that, and people start to complain that prices are too high.

So that’s the traditional e-books. In indie publishing, there’s no real standard. We’re all just trying to figure out what works. And we all seem to have different ideas. There are people like John Locke, who’s making a ton of money selling all his books at $.99 each. He has lots of titles that people can choose from, and that probably has something to do with it. When you have a lot of inventory, you’ll make more money than if you have just a little, regardless of price.

Some people, like golden girl Amanda Hocking and e-publishing guru Joe Konrath, as well as our own Stiffs buddies C.J. Lyons and L.J. Sellers, take a more staggered approach. They offer some of their books as $.99 titles to entice people to try them out, and then the rest of the books are priced at $2.99 or higher. Those $.99 titles are sometimes called ‘loss leaders,’ because you know darned well you’re going to lose money on them, but you hope you make up for it in volume and in sales of your other books. Some authors switch their $.99 titles out regularly, while others keep the first book in a series, for example, at a steady $.99 to get readers to try the series.

On the other hand, you have Michael Sullivan, another bestselling indie author of fantasy novels. His books are priced at $4.99-$6.99 – a deliberate choice on his (or his publicist’s) part, to align him with traditionally published authors and get away from the indie/self-published stigma. It seems to have worked: Michael sells more than 10,000 e-books per month, and when he tried to drop his prices, sales dropped, too.

Some of it comes down to perception of value. Some readers think they’ll get a more professionally written and presented product if the book is traditionally published – or if it appears to be. Some readers don’t care about professional; all they care about is price. Some authors have it as their main goal to sell lots of copies while some would rather sell less copies for more money instead of more copies for less. Some feel that the book they spent six months or a year on, is worth more than $.99. Others – and I quote Konrath here, as well as Bob Mayer – say that value has nothing to do with the cover price; value is about how much money the book makes for the author.

And then there’s the question of the devaluation of the book as a whole. Perpetuating the idea that books should only cost $.99. Setting the bar so low that there’s nowhere to go – except free – if you want to run a promotion, and so low that the public’s perception of value is skewed forever.

I could go on, but I won’t. It’s a tough issue, with many facets and good points on either side of the argument. I have to confess to being on the perception of value side myself: I’ve priced my Cutthroat Business mysteries at $3.99. Half the price of my Berkley e-books. It seemed fair. I make more per copy than I do the traditionally published books, and they’re still priced below that magical $5 mental mark, where everything supposedly is an impulse buy. They’re selling, but not like hotcakes. Then again, this stuff takes time.

I’d love to hear what you think. Is $.99 the sweet spot for lots of sales? Or is $2.99? Is anything below $5 really an impulse buy? (It isn’t for me.) Is Michael Sullivan selling so well because his books look like a bargain compared to the traditionally published fantasy books he’s aligned himself with? Or doesn’t price have a lot to do with it when it comes right down to the nitty-gritty, in your opinion?

Inquiring minds want to know.

PS – Hot Property, the sequel to A Cutthroat Business, is available for Kindle and Nook. If you’d like a free digital review copy, email me and I’ll tell you how to get one. If you do get a review copy, I’d appreciate it if you’d actually get around to writing a review at some point. Unless you absolutely hate the book, of course. Then you can feel free to keep your opinion to yourself.

Till next time!

Living in the past

by Bente Gallagher/Jennie Bentley


So here we are, and it’s November. Thanksgiving’s coming up, and the suggested topic for the month is things we are thankful for.

Luckily, there are lots of things I can mention. Life, health, health insurance, doctors, modern medicine, my children, their schools, my husband, his job, my book contracts, my computer, air travel, cars, grocery stores, toilet paper with Aloe Vera oil...

I could keep going, but I won’t. Much of it comes down to one thing: modern life. Or maybe more specifically, technology. The technology that allows us to live fairly long, fairly healthy lives of relative ease and comfort.

I had an idea for a historical mystery recently, and as a result I’ve given some thought to living in the past, specifically in the American West some hundred and thirty years ago. I’ve also spent quite some time over the past week watching episodes of a certain old TV-series.

(No, not Gunsmoke. I’m not that old.)

It was called The Young Riders and debuted in 1989. Set in the Wild West in 1860, it dealt with a half dozen or so young men (and a girl in disguise) who delivered mail for the Pony Express.

The Young Riders never did become a huge hit, but it held its own for a few years, and spawned what I can only describe as a huge fangurrrl following. Given the eye candy factor, it wasn’t surprising. It also launched the careers of a few actors who have gone on to do rather well for themselves, including Josh Brolin, who played a young Wild Bill Hickok, and who was my own personal eye candy of choice. To be honest, I still gush when I watch those old episodes, and it’s more than twenty years later.

Each real life Pony Express rider rode up to 75 miles per day, changing horses every 15 miles or so. Today, we can cover 75 miles in a matter of an hour on a nice smooth interstate. Then, it was an all day thing. Sometimes another rider wasn’t available at the next way station, so the first guy would have to keep going. The Pony Express covered the distance between St. Joseph, Missouri and San Francisco, California, in ten days. Riding for the Pony Express was hard, dangerous work; just check out this advertisement:

In 1860, the Pony Express owners, Russell, Majors and Waddell, used the 1860 presidential election as a way to promote the Pony Express and how fast it could deliver the U.S. Mail. On November 7, 1860, a Pony Express rider departed Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory, with the election results. Riders sped along the route, over snow-covered trails, and into Fort Churchill, Nevada Territory, and from there California’s newspapers received word of Lincoln’s election only seven days and seventeen hours after the East Coast papers, an unrivaled feat at the time.

Earlier this week, there were elections held in the here and now. I don’t know about you guys, but in my house, the TV stayed on and hubby got the news as the votes were tallied. Could you imagine waiting seven days and seventeen hours to find out who won?

So let’s hear it for modern technology, shall we? News at our fingertips... the ability to pick up the telephone and talk to someone halfway across the country, or halfway across the world, at the press of a few buttons, and from the car yet!... not to mention the ability to see episodes of my favorite TV show twenty years after it went off the air just by signing up for a free trial with Netflix!

So what's your favorite piece of newfangled technology? I have to admit to being rather partial to air conditioning myself, although I don't honestly see how I'd be able to do without any of it. I wouldn’t last a week in the Old West, and today, I’m thankful I don’t have to!

Ghost Stories

by Bente Gallagher (and Jennie Bentley)


So we’ve heard some totally creepy and cool stories this month, haven’t we? True creepiness as well as fictional. I know I’ve gotten chills more than once during October.

As promised, I’m back to talk a little bit about a few of my favorite supernatural stories and books.

And no, I’m not talking about Stephen King. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s written the best book ever on writing, called – coincidentally – “On Writing,” but I can’t read his novels. They give me the creeps. And not in a good way.

Back in the late 1960s, when I was just slightly more than a gleam in my mother’s eye, one of my all-time favorite authors started publishing books. Her name is Barbara Mertz, but she started writing as Barbara Michaels, and a few years later as Elizabeth Peters, when her publisher told her she was too prolific for just one pseudonym.

(Nice problem to have, innit?)

In 1968, she published a book called “Ammie, Come Home,” about a house in Georgetown and the people who lived there. Ruth was a non-traditional romantic heroine for that time: a divorced woman over 40. Pat was a non-traditional hero: also older, and going gray, with a face described as ‘lived in.’ There was a younger couple too: Ruth’s niece Sara, living with her aunt while attending Georgetown University, and Sara’s boyfriend Bruce. And then there were the ghosts. Three of them. I won’t give you the specifics, because I’d really love for you to read the book, but it has bar none the creepiest, most evocative description of possession I’ve ever read. 40+ years after it was written, it still manages to give me chills.

It’s not the only ghost story she’s written; not by a long shot. Most of the Barbara Michaels books are paranormal, and a few of the Elizabeth Peters books have that element too, most prominently “Devil May Care.” A few of my other favorites are “Witch,” “The Walker in Shadows,” “The Crying Child,” and “House of Many Shadows.”

Much more recently – as in last week – I read Jennifer Crusie’s latest novel, “Maybe This Time.” It’s also a ghost story. With multiple ghosts. A few instances of possession. And a lovely, lovely twist at the end. It’s also a love story, of course, as are all of Crusie’s books. She’s another of my favorite authors, although supernatural is not her usual stock in trade. The only other that I can think of off the top of my head was the book before this one, “Wild Ride,” written with Bob Mayer, and it’s about demons. A demon-possessed amusement park in Southern Ohio, loosely based on King’s Island. (I drove past it the first weekend of the month, on my way up to Columbus for the Central Ohio Fiction Writers Conference, and I gazed open-mouthed at the big rollercoaster on our way past; in the book it’s called the Dragon Coaster.) Highly recommended! Both of’em.

Lillian Stewart-Carl has written a ton of books about ghosts. The Jean Fairbairn/Alastair Cameron series (four so far, starting with “The Secret Portrait”) has ghosts in every book, as does the trilogy “Ashes to Ashes,” “Dust to Dust,” and “Garden of Thorns.”

Most of Lillian Stewart-Carl’s books are set in or deal with Scotland, including “Shadows in Scarlet.” Its heroine, Amanda, is a guide at a historic home in Virginia, where she encounters the ghost of Scotsman James Grant, and falls in lust with him. There’s even a sex scene. The first and only sex scene between ghost and human I’ve ever read, and she pulls it off quite well, I might add. I totally bought it. However, when Amanda goes to Scotland to bring Jamie’s bones home, Jamie’s spirit tags along, and when Amanda meets Jamie’s flesh and blood modern-day descendant – and lookalike – Malcolm, and falls in love with him, let’s just say that Jamie’s not too happy.

Read the book to find out what happens. You won’t regret it. Just like you won’t regret reading any of the others.

So what are some of your favorite ghostly books? Care to share?

BOO!!!

by Bente Gallagher (and Jennie Bentley)

Welcome to October, the spookiest month of the year! We'll be talking about spooky stuff this month, and I have the honor of starting us off.

I love a good ghost story. Always have. I love books about ghosts, ghost tours, places that claim to have ghosts, stories about ‘true’ ghosts. I’d love to actually see a ghost—at least I love the idea of it—but so far, I haven’t. And truth be told, I might not love it at all if I did.

I have had other slightly weird things happen to me. My mother used to have what we in Norway call a ‘vardøger’—a harbinger. Not of death; this was while she was alive and I was little. She worked part time, until 2 PM, when she’d take the trolley home from downtown. I was in school, and I would usually arrive home before she did. If I stayed downstairs, I’d always hear the front door open and close around 2:30, and then, about thirty minutes later, my mother would come in. After the door opened and closed again, I mean. The first time, nobody was there. Just my mother’s spirit, I guess, looking forward to getting home to her little girl.

To me, growing up, it was no big deal. I never thought twice about it. Until I told someone else about my mother’s ‘vardøger,’ and watched them turn pale, and that was when I realized that not everyone’s mother had a harbinger.

A few years later, I developed some sort of precognition. I was living in New York City at the time, and crushing on this guy named Michael. We met when I was nineteen—just a kid, really—and I didn’t like him much at first. In spite of that, I knew from the moment I set eyes on him that we’d end up getting married. And for the next two years I had this weird sixth sense about him. I’d wake up in the morning and know that I’d run into him that day. (Very convenient, since I could primp beforehand and make sure I looked my best.) And I never ran into him where you’d expect; I didn’t stalk his place of work waiting for him to show up or anything like that. No, this was on the street somewhere in Manhattan, where neither of us knew the other one would be; a pure and total coincidence in a city of 8 million people. And it didn’t just happen once, it happened over and over. Just with him, never with anyone else.

At one point, I had this certain question I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t want to just call and ask; I wanted it to sound coincidental and like it was no big deal. (I know, silly. But I was nineteen. What more can I say?) So I made this deal with my roommate, Myra, that if I hadn’t gotten ‘that feeling’ in the next week, and hadn’t run into him coincidentally on the street somewhere, I’d call him at 7 PM on Saturday night.

The week passed, of course, with none of ‘that feeling,’ and Saturday rolled around. It was getting close to 7 o’clock, and Myra was trying to talk me into picking up the phone and dialing when she phone rang. She was closer, so she answered, and I’ll never forget the look on her face when she turned to me and said, “It’s for you. It’s Mike.” It was three minutes to seven.

I did end up marrying him, by the way. It’s been 23 years.

So that’s the extent of my spookiness, which seems to have rubbed off over time, sort of like gilt. There’s nothing spooky about me now (although I did write a haunted house mystery last year). I’d love to have a nice long chat about my favorite spooky books, but it’ll have to be some other time. When you read this, I’m actually on the road, on my way up to Columbus, Ohio, for the Central Ohio Fiction Writers Conference, where I’ll be spending the weekend. And I'm not dragging the computer along!

If any of you are in the neighborhood, please come say hi. I’m not teaching, just soaking up a little learning of my own, but I will be participating in the author signing from 4 to 6 on Saturday night, if anyone wants to stop by and see me and maybe buy a few books. 

I'll be back on the 26th to discuss favorite paranormal books. Until then!

Free at Last

by Bente Gallagher AKA Jennie Bentley


Swear to God, I had a post titled Free at Last about a year and a half ago too. Didn’t I?

I’m in the same situation now that I was in then. I’ve handed in the manuscript for the last DIY-book, tentatively titled Flipping Out!, and I’m flipping out a little myself too, being out of contract. Until my editor approaches me with an offer to continue the series, I’m unemployed.

Sure, there’s the Cutthroat Business series which isn’t finished, but I write those on my own time and submit them to my publisher when they’re ready. We’re on a book-by-book basis, not a contract. And I’m a book ahead of the game: #2—Hot Property—is in the pipeline and ready for release next summer, while #3—Under Contract, or maybe Contract Pending—is written and under consideration; that would be slotted for the summer of 2012. So I have some time I can waste until I have to get started on #4, which has a working title of Close to Home. Don’t know yet whether that’ll be the last, or whether I’ll need another to tie up the action. It’s a relationship-focused series, so it just depends on when I can get my people together and keep’em that way.

For the next four months, until DIY-4, Mortar and Murder, is released in January and I have to start promoting, I plan to write something new. Something different. Something exciting.

The question, of course, is what.

I thought I had it all figured out. I’m eighty pages into a romantic suspense/thriller/FBI-procedural sort of thing that’s—gasp!—all plotted and outlined. (I know. The world is surely coming to an end.) And I still like my story. I do. I just managed to get caught up in something else, that’s sort of taken over my brain for the time being.

Remember that flash fiction Will had me do earlier this year, during Short Month? 200 words starting with “If you have to die, February is the best month for it?” Remember Quinn Conlan? The poor galactic smuggler I left to rot in a prison colony on the moon Marica-3? I even said at the time I could have kept going and spun the idea into a book.

Well, during the month of August I’ve been taking this online workshop through RWA on how to write suspense. I thought it was a workshop on writing romantic suspense, and that I’d get a grounding in the genre I’m considering slipping sideways into, but instead it’s been more about making sure your writing is suspenseful. Which I already know how to do, at least to a degree.

Not that I’m complaining. I’m having tons of fun. First we had to write a scene or prologue—500-1,000 words; take that, Freddy!—beginning with the words, “The blood dripped on the floor” and submit it to the group. Then we had to do a character sketch for our protagonist. Then we had to write a 1,500 word synopsis for the book, and submit that and the first ten pages.

When you’re writing for publication, you can’t really throw your WIP out there for the world to see. Neither of my publishers would be happy about that. I had to start from scratch and come up with something brand new that I could share with the class. So what I did, was resurrect Quinn. And I ended up with a first scene, a character bio, a detailed synopsis, and eventually, the first chapter of a book I never intended to write.

But as I submitted it to the class, other people—including our New York Times bestselling instructor—told me how much they liked it, and that I really should consider writing the book. And the thing is, it’s got me by the throat now. I love when characters do that, when they grab you and hold on and yell in your ear until you write their stories. But I had other plans for the next four months. Other plans for the direction I wanted to go from cozies. And let me tell you, I never intended to branch off into futuristic romance.

You can read the synopsis HERE if you’d like, and tell me whether it’s something you’d read. And then you can tell me whether, if you were me, you’d abandon your carefully laid plan of writing a romantic suspense/thriller/FBI-procedural thing in favor of it.

Till next time!

If you can't stand the heat...

by Bente Gallagher/Jennie Bentley

Howdy, folks! Bet you didn't expect to see me today. I didn't either. But when Joyce put out the SOS, I had this nice rant all worked up and ready to go for my September blog date, and now I get it out of my system sooner.

Picture this: It’s last Friday, and I’m sitting behind a table in the front of a meeting room in a hotel in Franklin, Tennessee. The room is full of Killer Nashville attendees. To my left and right are other writers. Their names aren’t important, although I will point out that one of them, the panel moderator, was best-selling romantic suspense writer and RITA-award winner Annie Solomon.  

(FYI, the RITA is RWA’s top honor. It’s like the MWA’s Edgar, Malice Domestic’s Agatha, or the science fiction people’s Hugo award. A pretty damn big deal in the romance genre. She also has a Reviewer’s Choice award.)

I should mention that it was my idea to push the romantic suspense angle this year. There are a lot of romance writers in Nashville—everywhere, really—and they weren’t coming to the conference because they didn’t think it contained anything for them. I talked the executive director of Killer Nashville into inviting a few of the bigger local romantic suspense names to attend, and they went with Annie and with the enormously successful Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Anyway, there we were, sitting in front of a bunch of published and pre-published mystery writers discoursing on Love and Murder: how to juggle romance and mystery in crime fiction.

We were talking genre, because that’s what we write, and the various expectations people—agents, editors, readers—have when they pick up one of our books. In romantic suspense, a couple of sex scenes, more or less explicit, are de rigeur. Same for romantic thrillers and a lot of traditional mysteries. Hardboiled, noir... descriptive, even graphic sex is fine. In cozies, a sex scene looks more like this:

* * *

At the end of the panel, we opened it up to questions from the audience, and this woman—who shall remain nameless, although I’d really like to share her name publicly—pipes up. Not with a question, but to tell the audience that genre is bogus, and that they shouldn’t worry about it; they should write the book that is in their hearts and let the chips fall where they may. Her publishing company—yes, she was an editor, soliciting manuscripts during our panel—doesn’t care about genre conventions. She ended up with a question—to the panel—that sounded a lot like: “Do you just write genre for the money?”

Hell, yeah. And I told her so. After which she went on to suggest that I was selling out and didn’t have an artistic bone in my body.

And you know what? I’m good with that. As far as I'm concerned, she can believe anything she wants about me. I don't know her, and after that, I don't care if I ever do. Here’s the thing, though: I’m all for writing the book of your heart. Absolutely, you have to do that. I’ve been there and done it. A Cutthroat Business was the book of my heart. But if you can write that book within the conventions of the genre you’re trying to enter, it’s going to be so much easier for you to sell it. As Marilyn Monroe said, "It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man."

See, if it’s a cozy with a sex scene, it either ceases to be a cozy—and cozy editors will turn it down—or you’ll be asked to prune all those beautiful words you agonized over. Same thing with subject matter: if the book that’s in your heart is about a serial killer, you’re probably not writing a cozy. You may not be looking at a mystery at all, but a suspense novel or a thriller. If you can’t put the hero and heroine together in the last chapter, and they don’t get their HEA—Happy Ever After—you haven’t written a romance. If there are vampires or demons, I don’t care how cozy the rest of the book is, or whether the hero and heroine get together at the end: it’s a paranormal. Just like you can’t write a paranormal without the supernatural element, you can’t write a romance without the HEA or a cozy with the sex.

And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with toeing the line. If you’re looking for commercial success as a professional writer—big publisher, big advance, big distribution; maybe even making a living—the closer you can stay to the genre blueprint, the better off you are. That isn’t what everyone wants, or what everyone gets, but if that’s your choice, then more power to you. Do it, and write the best damn cozy or romance novel or thriller or noir mystery the world has seen.

Or write the book of your heart, eschew convention, spit on genre, and sell it to someone who doesn’t care about large-scale commercial success, but who loves it like you do and feels that it’s a book that deserves to be published and read, even if just by the few people who realize it exists.

Success is subjective, and far be it from me to tell anyone what their definition should be. And I'd appreciate it if everyone would just afford me that same courtesy.

Whoa, I feel better now. :-)

(The picture up above was taken by Rae Ann Parker. That's Annie on the left, me in the middle in full yap, next to me is Laura Elvebak (she's wearing peach, and you have to squint to see her), and in the black and white is Karen Gallahue (I believe). We had two Karens, the other was McCullough, but I think she arrived later.)

As it happens, I'm also over on the Southern Authors blog today, if anyone wants to stop by. The theme there this month is setting, so I'm babbling about some of my fave places.

New Beginnings

by Jennie Bentley/Bente Gallagher

So it's August. Back at the beginning of June, it seemed like it would never really come. Just like when I was a kid, and summer vacation stretched out in front of me forever. Or so it seemed.

But all good things must come to an end, right? And in just over a week, it's time for school to start again. The kids aren't much looking forward to it, but I am. I mean, I love them and all... but they're wreaking havoc with my writing schedule. I have to deliver DIY-5, FLIPPING OUT! to my editor by September 1st, and with two kids underfoot all summer, it hasn't been easy finishing the manuscript.

As a child, I always looked forward to the beginning of school. I looked forward to summer vacation, too, but by August, I was ready to see my friends and get back to a regular schedule and have normal life start up again.

To some people, New Years Eve is the beginning of the year. That's the time to make resolutions and changes.

To me, autumn has always been about new beginnings. New friends, new crushes, new teachers, new school every few years...

If we haven't picked a suggested and optional topic for the month of August yet, I'd like to propose that one. New beginnings. And if nobody minds, I'll start.

Two very exciting new things coming up for me a little later this fall: we're trying to buy a condo in Florida - just about five miles from the wonderful Nancy Haddock, whom I adore - and if things work out, we're thinking of possibly making a move down there in the next six months or so. With kids and school and DH's work and other considerations, it's all still very much up in the air, but we're thinking and talking  and praying hard. We've moved ten or twelve times in the past fifteen years, but all within Nashville; this would be the first city-to-city move since we left New York back in the early 1990s. It's scary, but exciting too.

The other new thing is a switch in focus for my writing. After I deliver DIY-5 to my editor on September 1, I'm once again contract-less. I have at least one, maybe two books to write for the Savannah Martin series, to finish the story arc, but I write those on my own time and ship them to the publisher when they're done. Book 2 is under contract and will be released next summer. Book 3 is finished, and will be coming in 2012, assuming the publisher likes it and wants to keep the series going. I'm ahead of the game by at least a year there. So between September 1 and the release of DIY-4, Mortar and Murder, in January, I plan to write something new. Something different. Something exciting.

To kickstart my new direction, I'm taking an online class right now in writing romantic suspense, and the first weekend of October, I'll be driving up to Columbus, Ohio, for the Central Ohio Fiction Writers Conference, Write from the Heart, to listen to people like Suzanne Brockmann and our buddy CJ Lyons talk about writing romantic thrillers. 

(CJ just won a Daphne award this past weekend, by the way. In case some of you hadn't heard. Be sure to congratulate her.)

So that's my big news, and my new beginning. Feel free to take the rest of the month to talk about yours.

Till next time!
xoxo

Presenting...

by Bente Gallagher (yes, I'm Jennie Bentley too...)

Looks like we have a free day today, with no posts. Let me remedy that.

I've got a new book coming in June, the first in a new series. This is actually the book that started it all, the one that caused an editor at Berkley Prime Crime to offer me the opportunity to write the DIY series. It's a case of writing what you know: as a brand new real estate agent in Nashville, Tennessee, going into empty houses with strangers every day of my life, I got to thinking about what might be lurking inside some of these houses. Escaped convicts, crazed axe-murderers, homeless junkies, dead bodies...

That's how A Cutthroat Business was born. Here's the elevator pitch:

Everyone has warned new-minted Realtor® and Southern Belle Savannah Martin that real estate is a cutthroat business. But Savannah doesn't take the warning seriously... until an early morning phone call sends her to an empty house on the other side of town, where she finds herself standing over the butchered body of a competitor, face to face with the boy her mother always warned her about. Now Savannah must figure out who killed real estate queen Brenda Puckett, make a success of her new career, and avoid being killed - or kissed - by Rafe Collier, all before the money in her savings account runs out and she has to go back to selling make-up at the mall. 


Library Journal, bless their little hearts, say that "The hilarious dialog and the tension between Savannah and Rafe will delight fans of chick-lit mysteries and romantic suspense." 


Check it out:

1.

Forewarned is forearmed, they say, and in justice to — well, everyone! — I guess I must admit that I was forewarned. It’s just that when people told me that real estate is a cutthroat business, I didn’t think they meant it literally.

My name is Savannah Martin, and I sell houses. Or I should say that I try, because I’m brand new at my job, and truth be told, haven’t sold so much as a lean-to yet. I should have realized, when the call came in about 101 Potsdam Street, that it was too good to be true.

It was about 8:45 in the morning on the first Saturday in August, and I was at work. As usual. For the past six weeks I’d been on call pretty much 24/7 — not exactly what I’d had in mind when I looked forward to setting my own hours — and I haunted the office like the proverbial ghoul.

I guess I should also mention that I didn’t actually have anything else to do. I used to work at the make-up counter at the mall, but when I got my real estate license, I quit my job and started living off my savings in the hope that my dwindling bank balance would give me the incentive I needed to succeed. So far it hadn’t worked, and if something didn’t change soon, I’d have to crawl to Dillard’s to beg for my old job back. And that was assuming it was still available, with the way the economy was going these days.

But that was why, when the phone rang, I snatched it up on the very first ring, and had to take a couple of steadying breaths before I put the receiver to my ear. “Good morning. Thank you for calling Walker Lamont Realty. Savannah Martin speaking. How may I help you?”

“Savannah Martin?” a male voice repeated.

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

I waited for him to comment, but instead he just continued chummily, like we were old friends, “See, Savannah, it’s like this. I was supposed to be meeting Miz Puckett at eight, to see 101 Potsdam Street, but I’ve sat here for 45 minutes, and I ain’t seen hide or hair of her.”

“I haven’t seen her this morning, either,” I answered, my heart starting to beat faster. Someone was interested in buying 101 Potsdam? And my colleague and competitor Brenda Puckett had dropped the ball...? “Though it isn’t like her to be late.” Much more like her to be early, so she could feel superior when you merely showed up on time. “Are you able to wait while I try to call her?”

My caller said he was, and I put him on hold before dialing Brenda’s cell phone, and when there was no answer, her home number. There was no answer there either. I got back on the line. “Sir? I’m sorry, I can’t get in touch with her. But if... that is... I mean...”

My tongue tripped over itself in its eagerness to offer help. The caller didn’t say anything, but I could sense amusement through the line. I gritted my teeth and tried again. “If you’d still like to see the house, I’d be happy to come out and open the door for you...?”

I held my breath. The Italianate Victorian and surrounding two acres were listed for almost a quarter million USD, a fairly high price for Nashville, Tennessee. The commission would pay my rent and keep me in gasoline and Ramen noodles for the rest of the year, at least.

“You sure you can spare the time, darlin’?”

I assured him, with all the sincerity I could muster, that there was nothing I’d rather do than be of service to him. He chuckled, but didn’t comment. Even so, the ripeness of the chuckle brought a blush to my cheeks. I ignored it, promising him I’d be there in fifteen minutes, and then I wasted the first thirty seconds of that time doing a (premature) victory dance before I grabbed my purse and headed out the door. If I was going to get from the office to Potsdam Street in the fourteen and a half minutes left to me, I would have to get my tail in gear and keep my foot glued to the gas pedal the whole way.

  ###

 

So there you have it. The first couple pages of A Cutthroat Business, for your delectation. Whatcha think?

Do The Twist!

by Jennie Bentley

Q: How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?


A: Two: One to screw it almost all the way in and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.


Last year, my panel at the Killer Nashville mystery conference was on beginnings and endings. As someone once said, “A great first sentence will make someone buy your book. A great last sentence will make them buy your next book.”

No arguing with that. We all know how important the perfect beginning is. Personally, if my first sentence isn’t perfect, I can’t move on. It’s what sets the tone for the whole book for me, and if I don’t have that, I can’t get the rest right.

Equally important, of course, is ending on the right note, with that little zinger as you finish up. Something that makes the reader think, “Oh, darn, I wish there was more!” and then go out looking for something else you’ve written.

Twists, though, are a different animal than beginnings and endings.

And I’m not talking about the obvious twist that all good mysteries should have: the one where the person you pegged for the murderer isn’t the murderer after all, it’s someone else. That twist sort of goes without saying. No, this is the other twist, the one no one sees coming. And it isn’t always related to the mystery.

That particular Killer Nashville was in August 2008, a few months after the fantastic Julia Spencer-Fleming had published ALL MORTAL FLESH, book five in her award winning series about Reverend Clare Fergusson and Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne. If you haven’t read Julia’s books, you need to get yourself to a bookstore today, and max out the credit card if you have to. I’d suggest the library, but just do yourself a favor and go directly to the bookstore: once you’ve read these, you’ll want to own them.

Anyway, for purposes of our beginnings and endings panel, ALL MORTAL FLESH became the example of a perfectly executed surprise twist.

I'm gonna put in a spoiler space here, just in case some of you haven’t read the series. If you haven’t, you’re gonna wanna stop reading right

NOW!

A little background: the Reverend and the Police Chief met in the first book in the series, called IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER, and very quietly, very subtly, very unnoticeably fell in love. (No, I didn’t see it coming.) This happened in spite of the fact that he had a wife and wasn’t about to cheat on her. By the time ALL MORTAL FLESH came out, they’d been dancing around this fact for four books. At the end of the previous book, Russ had told Clare he was going to tell his wife Linda the truth, and at the beginning of ALL MORTAL FLESH, he has moved in with his mother while Linda is staying in their shared house. And then Linda is found murdered, and both Clare and Russ come under suspicion. Of course, we know it isn’t either of them, but the state police don’t, and things get difficult. Then it turns out that Linda isn’t dead after all, it’s someone else, and everything seems fine. Or not fine exactly, seeing as Russ and Clare are still in love with one another, but at least Linda isn’t dead. She shows up, having spent the week in St. Barts, and she and Russ decide to give their marriage another try. Until Clare gets into trouble and Russ leaves Linda to go help her. Linda gets pissed, naturally, and gets in the car with her sister Debbie. Russ and Clare save the day, kill the bad guy, etc., Russ tells her he’s committed to trying again with Linda, blah blah blah... and they start driving back to town, only to discover that Debbie’s car has driven off the road and wrapped itself around a telephone pole, and Linda is dead, for real this time.



YOU CAN START READING AGAIN NOW.



And that’s the surprise twist. It spurred some strong feelings, let me tell you. A lot of people were pretty seriously angry. When you read the book, if you haven't already, you'll understand why.

The moderator at my panel back then asked whether we thought a twist at the end of a book is necessary. The general consensus was that it isn’t, but it sure can’t hurt. I’ve never managed to pull off a twist quite like that one, though, and I doubt I ever will.

So what do you think? Is a twist at the end of a book necessary? Have you ever used one? Know any good ones that someone else has used? And if you’ve read ALL MORTAL FLESH, what did you think of that particular twist?