Overnight $uccess

If you knew anything you wrote would be published and successful, what would you write?

By Dietrich Kalteis

Doing what you love is anybody’s best shot at success. And I love sitting at my desk and making stuff up. And I don’t think any of us can predict what’s going to be a best-seller. I know if I tried to write what I guessed would sell, rather than writing what I loved to write about, it would be crap.

Okay, it sounds corny, but it’s the best thing in the world to get to do what I love every day, and that’s success in it itself. And if money follows, then that’s even better. Who’d turn it down? 

For most of us, it’s more of a slow grind than instant success. So, anytime I need a shot of perseverance, I recall that J.K. Rowlings was turned down a dozen times on the road to becoming the first author billionaire, Stephen King’s first novel Carrie was rejected thirty times, and Elmore Leonard’s The Big Bounce was bounced back over eighty times. The New York Times ran an article about him some years ago, the headline: Writer discovered after 23 novels. 

Writing every day is my best shot at standing out in a crowded field. And that need to write is an in-the-blood kind of thing. Being able to stay focused and positive helps, so does not thinking about success or the lack of it. And almost as important is reading and being inspired and influenced by great books.

And speaking of great books, since the Holidays are rushing up, I’ve listed some of the crime novels that I’ve read over the past year which stood out. As I’m writing this I just finished my friend Sam Wiebe’s second novel Invisible Dead, and I can tell you the guy writes like a champ. Then there’s Black Orchid Blues by Persia Walker, a bright and funny book. The Force by Don Winslow had to be the best-paced novel I read all year, and Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen had to be the funniest. Also very funny and well done (and Canadian) are No Fury Like That by Lisa de Nikolits or One Brother Shy by Terry Fallis. 

I reread a couple of crime classics that stand the test of time, ones that I’d highly recommend: Miami Blues, from 1984, and New Hope for the Dead by Charles Willeford, published 1985, and The Moonshine War by Elmore Leonard, published 1969. As much as I enjoyed Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, I started his Jesse Stone novels and I loved Trouble in Paradise, the second in the series, published in 1999.

All the best to everyone over the Holidays.

Stay-work-ations are best! by Cathy Ace

Summer's almost done! How did you spend your summer vacation? Or did you even take one?

 A bit of the garden in August

I travel a lot. There’s hardly a month in the year when I don’t get handed a series of boarding passes, all of which seem to have me placed in group Z, so I’m in the last little band of stragglers trailing onto the plane without even a glimmer of hope of finding an inch or two in the overhead bins. It’s why I don’t use wheelie-bags, just a tote that I can stuff under the seat in front of me.

Even sat on new deck seats!

The result is that MY summer vacation is to be at home for about six weeks without having to so much as enter an airport. It’s weird, I thought my “former life” – owning and running a business that meant I had to travel the world for nine or ten months of the year – was behind me. But I’ve discovered that this writing life involves a good deal of flitting about the place too…if that’s what you want to, and can, do. I’m lucky I can do it, and have met people at conventions and conferences I know I would keep in touch with even if I never wrote another word, or had another book published. I’m so grateful for that; camaraderie can spring up in all sorts of places. 

Probably the last bouquet from the garden

Thus, as I eye my brand new suitcase (CostCo special offer!) ahead of flying to New Orleans for Bouchercon in less than a couple of weeks, I have about six weeks behind me of “stay-work-cation” that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. I’ve had a chance to work in, and enjoy, the garden…as well as working on edits for Cait Morgan Mystery #8 THE CORPSE WITH THE RUBY LIPS, which will be published in October, and on the edits for the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries #3, which will be published in the UK in November, and in the US and Canada in March 2017. 

With fellow CWC authors at Black Bond Books, Maple Ridge

I also took over as Board Chair for Crime Writers of Canada at the end of May this year, so I’ve been hard at work getting up to speed with all that entails, as well as attending various Board and committee meetings. I also organised and participated in a four-event CAROUSEL OF CRIME for CWC members at Black Bond Bookstores around the Lower Mainland in BC. That was great fun. On September 1^st – yes, tomorrow – the CWC Arthur Ellis Awards for excellence in Canadian crime writing open for submissions for the 2017 cycle…for works published in 2016…and that’s been a lot of effort (not just on my part) too. (Photo: L to R - Allan J Emerson, Sam Wiebe, me, Marty Allen, Katherine Prairie, Eileen Cook.)

Gabby & Poppy like having me at home

But it’s good to be at home. For the past couple of years I’ve visited Mum in Wales during August. This year I was in Wales in May and stayed with her before, then again after, the weekend I attended CrimeFest in Bristol. I have to be honest, I’ve missed my summer trip to Wales, but to be here with the dogs and my husband has been super (yes, I thought about the order, there!). 

Cathy Ace writes the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (book #2 THE CASE OF THE MISSING MORRIS DANCER will be available in trade paperback on August 31st in the UK, and in November in the US/Canada, and the Cait Morgan Mysteries (book #7 THE CORPSE WITH THE GARNET FACE was published in paperback in April). Find out more about Cathy and her work, and sign up for her newsletter at http://cathyace.com/