Adventures in Bedlam

I'm Just Drawn That Way

I'm sitting here listening to Levon Helm sing The Mountain. It's a song about coal mining that's touches me so deeply that it makes me want to weep. It also makes me want to write beautifully tragic stories.

It got me thinking about things and places I'm drawn to, that I've always been drawn to. I don't know, maybe my viewing of COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER at the tender age of twelve influenced me (and coincidentally, Levon Helm played Loretta Lynn's father in the film), but I do have an attraction to the culture of coal mining, West Virginia, and Appalachia. Mind you, it's a romanticized version (like if Disneyland had a "Coal Mining Land"), but an attraction just the same. And I don't mean to make light of coal mining--I know it's a tough, dangerous life.

Someday I'd like to write a story set in this world, but my greatest fear is not doing it justice. It deserves to have justice done.

But that said, I felt the same way about London, specifically 17th century London. I honestly don't know why I thought I could write a novel set during this time (especially my first novel), but somehow I managed to do it. I'm still working on doing it justice, but I have no doubt I will.

So there's hope for my Appalachian mystery yet.

Other things I'm drawn to:

-- Voodoo and other African religions and how they adapted themselves to Christianity
-- Storyville in New Orleans
-- California Gold Rush country (I grew up there)

Will I ever write stories or novels about these places/things? I probably will. But one thing just struck me--everything I'm compelled to write about starts with a place or a time in history, or a theme. The characters come second. I don't mean to say they come second in the actual writing, but the thing that forms first for me is the setting, and then I mold the characters to fit into it. I wonder if that will change as I continue writing?

What about you? What are you drawn to?

 

 

Two Bits of Advice

1. Read your work aloud

2. Write flash fiction (generally stories 1000 words or less).

An Ode (of sorts) to NEEDLE Magazine

Don't know why, but the more I look at this cover, the more enthralled I am by it:

Sure, part of the reason is because my name's on it, I ain't gonna lie. It could also be the nipples. But John Hornor Jacobs, the Creative Director at NEEDLE: a Magazine of Noir, designs some kick ass covers. I've been a fan for a long time.

Diary of Bedlam

Update 10/6/11: DIARY OF BEDLAM is currently being revised.

I am seeking representation for my historical mystery, Diary of Bedlam, a standalone novel set in 1678 London with series potential:

Lady Isabel Wilde, a former English spy and occasional favorite in King Charles II's bedchamber, has a secret: she makes her living disguised as Mistress Ruby, a fortuneteller who caters to London's elite. Charlatans, rogues, villains, and swindlers lurk in every corner of the city, and Isabel concedes she is one of them. But hard experience has taught her that women have few enough advantages in this world, and her conscience does not often bother her.

Dani Amore: My Path to E-Publication

Dani Amore is the author of DEATH BY SARCASM and DEAD WOOD. Today she was kind enough to stop by the blog and tell us about her path to publication.

I decided to become an independent author because a famous writer gave his reason for why you shouldn’t self-publish.  Basically, he said that if you’ve written a novel and can’t attract interest from an agent, you probably haven’t written a good enough book. So don’t self publish. 

I had written a novel that attracted attention from an agent. In fact, I’d written two different novels that had attracted two different agents.

 The agents had several things in common:

1.  They both represented New York Times bestselling authors.
2.  They both believed in my respective crime novels.
3.  They each represented me (one in 2003, the other, in 2005)
4. They absolutely could not sell my respective crime novels.  Despite going out to many publishers.

So I after the second agent couldn’t sell the second book, I found myself without agent representation.

I’m feeling pretty low.  I’ve taken to calling myself Miss-Can’t-Sell-A-Book. 

Of course, I can't stay away from the blank page.  So I write a thriller.  My most ambitious work to date.  The manuscript is 600 pages or so.  110,000 words.  It's dark. Gritty.  Bad-ass. I love it.

Let's Get Personal

On Friday night I went to a launch party for Darrell James's debut novel, NAZARETH CHILD. It's a book I've been looking forward to, and it was great to celebrate the release with Darrell and well, a hundred or so of his best friends. The great thing is that many of those friends are my friends too.

The following morning, I tweeted "I talked so much last night my throat is sore today." See, you get me in a room full of writing friends and I get so excited to have someone to talk to about writing and books, I can't shut up.

Which brings me to the subject of this post.

On Monday, the esteemed Steve Weddle asked this question on DO SOME DAMAGE:

"Wasn't Twitter supposed to kill crime fiction conventions? You make friends online, you don't need to meet them 'in person' to know them. Isn't that the, ahem, conventional wisdom?"

For me, the answer is no.

Don't get me wrong. Twitter is the single most useful tool I've found for networking on a daily basis. Every contact I've made in the publishing world started there, but I never intended for them to end there.

From the beginning, I made an effort to go out and meet the people I connected with on Twitter in person. If I recall correctly, the first Twitter friend I met was Linda Brown from the Mystery Bookstore. Soon after I met James Scott Bell. When I became aware of conferences, both local and national, I attended them. At my first Bouchercon in Indianapolis, I not only met Ali Karim, a twitter buddy for whom I have the highest regard, but two of my writing idols, David Liss and Sue Grafton. I walked away from that conference higher than a kite, and it wasn't because I'd spent too much time in the hotel bar.

I could go on and on, but I won't.

Social media (primarily Facebook and Twitter, and to a much lesser extent, this blog and other websites) have all been important in my journey to publication. They are, in many ways, crucial to getting published, and I could quite easily argue they're all you need (well, besides a kick ass book and some luck).

But I need the personal contact too. I need to be able to sit at the hotel bar and geek out and be a fan girl and talk incessantly about books and writing to like-minded people until my voice gets hoarse. I love doing it online, but that personal contact, however infrequent, strengthens the common bond we all have: a love for books.

And now, if you'll pardon me, I need to go pack for Bouchercon 2011. See you there, my friends.

Looking for a Few Good Writers

Hey Author Friends:

I have a few features on my blog that I've been ignoring for far too long, and now, with your help, I'd like to put a little more effort into them.

I'm looking for authors (mainly crime fiction, but I'll consider others as well) to contribute to "Path to Publication," "Author Interviews," "Question o' the Day," or any other topic you might like to guest blog about. This blog is kind of geared toward aspiring authors, so anything in that vein would be great. I'd especially like to beef up the "Path to Publication" section because everyone loves a good success story, don't they?

The only caveat is I reserve the right to refuse if I don't think your content is right for my audience. Oh, and I don't get paid, so neither do you, except in all those book sales your presence on my blog might generate. I may add more caveats if I find I get too many requests or something like that. We'll see.

Anyway, I like to promote authors whose work I like. So that's what the purpose of all this is, as well as to give readers some content that informs, inspires, and/or entertains.

Contact me here in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook if you'd like to participate.

Sharp Compassion

I'm excited to announce I'll be moderating a panel at the upcoming Bouchercon in St. Louis. It's called "Sharp Compassion: Finding the Humanity in Crime." It's at 8:30am on Saturday, September 17th.

Did I say excited? I meant super-crazy excited. And a tiny bit skeered.

Did I say skeered? I meant super-crazy-out-of-my-head skeered.

Thankfully, I've got a great group of panelists to ease the fear:

Rachel Brady, author of the Emily Locke mystery series

Laura Caldwell, author of numerous thrillers (and whose bio is too impressive to condense in this post, so you'd better just go read it)

Julie Compton, author of Rescuing Olivia and Tell No Lies

Janice Hamrick, author of Death on Tour

Marcia Talley, author of the Hannah Ives mystery series 

It should be an interesting and thought-provoking discussion. Certainly worth getting up early on Saturday morning after a rip-roaring night at the hotel bar.

You can find a list of all the great Bouchercon 2011 panels right here.

See you in St. Louis!

 

Don't Bypass the Gatekeepers

I've been thinking a lot lately about the books I buy and read. They're about equally split between eBooks and paper books and though I used to say I preferred paper books, I'm no longer certain that's the case. What I prefer is a good story. If it's delivered by a paper book, great. If I'm reading it on my Kindle, that's all good too. It's the stories that matter to me, not the method by which I get them.

Sure, there are books on my shelves I will never get rid of and that I'm happy to allot precious storage space to. But frankly, I acquire and read so many books that only the bestest, most specialest books get to stay forever.

So this post isn't about eBooks vs. paper books. It's about why I choose the books I buy and read, and whether or not self-published books will ever make the cut. So far, they haven't. I read article after article about John Locke, Amanda Hocking, and the like but I have yet to purchases any of their books. And I've certainly never bought a book simply because it was 99 cents. The only reason I've ever been tempted to buy any of these books is because, well, I want to see if selling millions of eBooks equates to good writing and good story telling. It may or may not. But I have too many books on my To Be Read (TBR) pile to give any time to titles that haven't been recommended by people whose taste I trust or are written by authors I already know I like. 

All this to say, I still believe in the gatekeepers. The agents, the editors, the publishing houses, all those pesky people whose job it is to make sure the riff-raff doesn't get through. And before you get all offended by that last statement, remember, I'm an aspiring author looking for an agent. I'm counting myself as riff-raff here.

I should probably clarify that last sentence. I'll be riff-raff as long as my stories aren't the best they can be, not until they suddenly (ha ha, like anything every happens suddenly in publishing) gets published by a Big Six publisher.

Back to the topic at hand.

The gatekeepers aren't just comprised of agents, et al. They are my friends on Twitter who can't stop talking about a particular book. They are book store employees who jabber excitedly about this book or that. I'm a voracious, but slow reader. I need help culling titles. That help comes from the gatekeepers, whoever they might be.

Someone recently posted in group I follow that he was in the process of self-pubbing his debut novel and wanted hints on how to promote it. In the discussion that ensued, the subject of beta readers came up and it turned out he'd never even heard of beta readers. Said it was too late to enlist their help because the book was being uploaded in a few days. Hells bells, people, beta readers are the first line of gatekeepers. Do you think I'd consider buying his book now, even for a paltry 99 cents?

Lest you think I'm picking on debut authors, let me tell you this story. Awhile back I downloaded a self-pubbed novel by an established author I have a great deal of respect for. Certainly, someone who should know better. How surprised, and frankly, angry, was I when I saw it was so filled with typos and glaring errors I had to put it down by the third chapter?

I'm not saying people who haven't been traditionally published shouldn't self-pub, not at all. I'm saying that if you do, you'd better make damn sure you've written a novel worth not only my 99 cents but my time. That means at the very least you've had trusted beta readers take a look, hired a professional editor to copy edit (and perhaps even do a developmental edit), and make sure that story sparkles.

Oh, and to all you traditionally pubbed authors who are jumping on the self-pub bandwagon, that goes for you too. It might even go double for you, in fact I think it does. You've already built my trust and I might just buy your work based on your track record. Don't spoil it by putting out a self-pubbed book that's crap.

This post is already too long, so I'll end it here. In my next post, I'll discuss what to do to get my attention once you've done all this. Or actually, what you should be doing RIGHT NOW, regardless of where you're at in the writing/publishing process.

Playing with the Big Boys

This past Sunday night, I was invited to read a passage from Diary of Bedlam at the first Noir at the Bar L.A.

Eric Beetner, Stephen Blackmore, Josh Stallings, and Duane Swierczynski also read. I suppose it's appropriate to ask the question: Including my own, which of these names are not like the others? You guessed it: Holly West.

I'll be honest. I was terrified to read my work in front of this crowd. Not only was this to be Diary of Bedlam's first public outing, my work is considerably fluffier than the pull-no-punches, skulls-blown-to-bits stories these guys put out. I love reading the hard stuff, but I don't write it because when I do, it's trite, derivative, and fake. I'm a big believer in knowing your strengths, and playing them up to the hilt.

Not that I don't also believe in doing something new and challenging once in awhile.

So with that said, I did the only thing I could: I donned a push-up bra, black leather boots, and pretended like I knew what the hell I was doing.

For the most part, it went well. I certainly have no regrets, though I still wonder if perhaps I could've picked a better passage. That was the hardest part, you see--figuring out what to read. What best represented the tone, characters, and story of Diary of Bedlam? I'm not sure I nailed it, but the passage I picked at least did the job.

One thing I learned from this experience that I will certainly be putting into future practice: Reading your work aloud is an excellent editing tool. I'd heard this before and had even done it a little whilst editing Diary. But now I kind of think that every scene in every novel, every story, should be read aloud because it's easier to identify superfluous words and passages that don't work when you hear them, not just read them.

Many, many thanks to Eric Beetner, Stephen Blackmore, Aldo Cacagno, Josh Stallings, and Duane Swierczynski for letting me play author for a night. Makes me think someday I might be doing it for reals.