The Story Behind the Story -- Guest Post by Laura Brennan

Every week we answer a set question. This week you have the opportunity to write about whatever you want to write about as long as it has something to do with the intent of our blog.

by Paul D Marks

Since today’s post is an open question, I thought I’d have Laura Brennan pinch hit for me. Laura’s eclectic career includes television, film, theater, fiction, and news. Her weekly podcast, Destination Mystery, features interviews with mystery writers of every subgenre. Her short story, “Driving Dead Daisy,” is available on Amazon, while other stories have appeared in anthologies such as “Hell Comes to Hollywood” and “Live Free or Ride.” On screens large and small, Laura has lopped characters’ heads off and fed them to dinosaurs. But it’s not all blood and guts: her web series Faux Baby explores the lighter side of motherhood. And if the faux baby loses a limb here or there, well… No, actually, she has no justification for that at all. Laura talks about many of the authors and stories she’s been exposed to since she started interviewing authors a couple of years ago. So take it away, Laura:

The Story Behind the Story

by Laura Brennan

Two years ago I started the podcast Destination Mystery. I did it because I love mysteries and wanted an excuse to interview authors, and also because, as a newbie mystery writer myself, I wanted a way to be part of the conversation.

But over two years and sixty-plus interviews, I have learned so much from my chats with other writers. Some of the highlights:

1) We all write from our own life. Like her heroine, Dr. Ellen Kirschman is a therapist who worked with first responders and their families. Leslie Karst has restaurant experience in both the front of the house and on the hot line, bringing authenticity to her Sally Solari mysteries. And Kellye Garrett was broke in Los Angeles when she saw a billboard offering a reward for information on a murder. She didn’t solve the case, but Dayna Anderson, the heroine of Kellye’s debut, Hollywood Homicide, did.

2) Mystery writers tend to have experience with law enforcement. Criminal Minds’ very own Paul D. Marks told me how he pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell the tale (a story you can check out here: http://destinationmystery.com/episode-52-paul-d-marks/). Jessie Chandler, who writes capers, is herself a former police officer, while S.M. Freedman worked for a decade as a private investigator. Living the dream!

3) Other crime writers have had what Denise Swanson calls an “encounter with evil.” Denise stumbled across a satanic cult that was abusing children and became a target of them herself. Jane Kelly lost a friend to a murder -- a loss that had a direct impact on her writing. And of course, true crime writer Holly Tucker, while not herself directly touched by tragedy, was inspired by real life events: an epidemic of poisoning in the court of Louis XIV.

4) Writers grow and change -- and so do the books they want to write. Cozy author Ellery Adams has been pushing against the confines of the genre for a while and made a clean break with her new series, The Secret, Book & Scone Society, which she calls suspenseful women’s fiction. On the opposite side, Olivia Matthews comes from a background of romance and romantic suspense while her new series is squarely cozy -- and her protagonist is a Catholic sister!

5) Finally, everyone has themes that they return to again and again. This one worries me a little, because I can see a theme in my own writing -- one of unreliable narrators and moral codes that are just a little outside the norms. Not quite sure what that says about me!

But I can’t fight it. It seems impossible to escape our obsessions, at least on the page. Jenny Milchman writes thrillers about women who find the strength to recover from betrayal and learn to trust themselves. Steph Cha’s Juniper Song mystery novels are a modern take on LA Noir, infused with Raymond Chandler’s sensibility. And Kwei Quartey’s traditional police series is set in his native Ghana; in each Darko Dawson novel, Kwei ties a wider social issue to the very human and personal motives for murder.

Destination Mystery has exposed me to subgenres I would never have picked up on my own: Pirate Noir, anyone? While Steve Goble’s The Bloody Black Flag introduced me to that genre, I’ve learned about the Great Fire of London from Susanna Calkins, Joseph Haydn (Nupur Tustin), and growing up during the Civil Rights Movement (Valerie C. Woods). But best of all has been the chance to chat with fantastic authors about the struggles, inspirations, and successes in their careers.

Mind you, I’m still a bit worried about that unreliable narrator theme of mine…

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Thank you for stopping by, Laura. And I hope people will check out Destination Mystery at http://DestinationMystery.com 

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And now for the usual BSP:

Check out my website: www.PaulDMarks.com

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A Thousand Monkeys Walk Into A Room – And Start Typing Away

Scientists have invented a robot that can do your writing for you. You give it the basic plot and characters and it does the rest. Would you use it? Why or why not?

by Paul D. Marks

Aren’t some authors doing that already? Kind of doing factory farming writing – farming out their books to other authors. That seems kind of robotic to me.

And while it would be nice to have a robot take some of the burden off, I don’t think I’d do it. But like Sean Connery learned, “never say never.”

Part of what makes good writing is the author’s personal experience and how they interpret that experience and distill it into their writing. How s/he infuses their writing with their take on life. A robot or artificial intelligence would be missing that. Until they can truly experience life, not just have it programmed into them, their writing will lack a certain heart to it. And didn’t they try that with typing monkeys, thinking that eventually they’d come up with a Shakespeare play just by random chance. According to Wikipedia, “The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.” The same might be said for a robot. But, even if they could do it, having it programmed into them to whatever extent, it takes the fun and spontaneity out of writing.

Slate has an article about Shelley A.I., a bot that writes horror stories. ( http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/10/27/an_ai_bot_is_very_good_at_writing_horror.html ). I think the examples provided in the article show that the writing is, indeed, a bit “mechanical”. And, as they say in the piece, “The algorithms, like Shelley, still require human-made works to teach themselves how to create phrases and sentences from words, how to generate drama and rising action and climax, how to access a lexicon that delivers the right sort of tone and purpose, and more.” So it seems like robots or Artificial Intelligence bots have it one up over the monkeys, but I’m thinking that the A.I. writer still lacks something humans do, most especially life experience that puts what they’re writing in context and gives it a deeper texture. (I noticed that one of the commenters to RM’s blog earlier this week also mentioned this piece, so the word on A.I. Writer Bots is getting out.)

Wired also did a piece both written by and about robots or A.I. And maybe it works for non-fiction, at least a little better than for fiction. But for fiction it doesn’t seem like it would work, even if you wanted to do it that way. You can find the Wired story here: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/robots-wrote-this-story/ 

There’s something to be said for the human touch, whether in the market checkout line or at the bank…or in writing. Yes, the ATM or auto checkout line might be faster, but sometimes it’s nice just to have a face to say hello to and have it say hello back. Of course if they’re talking to their co-workers or on the phone, well screw ’em.

And while it’s nice to have “robots” or programs that can spell-check, offer up Thesaurus words or even check grammar (more on that in a minute) and analyze your story, you have to be the one to do the creative work. I don’t even like those programs that plot for you or do other similar things because they take the “me” out of the writing and without that the work could be written by pretty much anyone – or any bot –, so what then makes it unique? Plus, do we really want robots taking our writing jobs away?

Now to grammar: If you’ve tried using a grammar checker as a fiction writer you’ve probably found that it’s way too formal. It might work for non-fiction, but fiction is more free-form. And grammar checkers can drive you crazy. So though a robot or A.I. bot might be able to come up with a story it might be stiff and talk and walk awkwardly like Robby the Robot. You also have to be careful that your bot doesn’t mutiny on you:

VIDEO REMOVED

Someday there might be robots or AI with enough heart to create a good story. Or maybe, ultimately the human element just can’t be replaced.

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And now for the usual BSP:

Please check out the interview Laura Brennan, writer, producer and consultant, did with me for her podcast, where we talk about everything from Raymond Chandler and John Fante to the time I pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell about it. Find it here: http://destinationmystery.com/episode-52-paul-d-marks/

www.PaulDMarks.com

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My Kingdom for an Advance

Do the costs to promote a book sometimes equal the advance you got for it, and does that make you question A) writing it or B) doing all that expensive promotion?

by Paul D. Marks 

The question isn’t, or shouldn’t be, if the costs to promote the book = the advance, but if the money you spend pays off in terms of more sales, new readers and a higher profile in the long run. Of course, not everyone can have a perfect profile like these fellows.

W.C. Fields and John Barrymore -- AKA "The Great Profile"

In ye olden days of yore ye promotion was extremely expensive for the most part and largely out of reach of authors unless you were at the top of the heap and your publisher was hefting the hefty bill with hefty ads in various book reviews and papers of weight. Maybe even radio spots. Or sent you on a multi-city, multi-state book tour, flying first class of course…’cause isn’t that how we think of authors?

But in ye days of today things have changed. Many, if not most, advances are on the low end. And many publishers do little or nothing to promote a book once they birth it, whether you’re with a small publisher or on a big publisher’s midlist. They throw it out in the world, give it a spank on the rump, and then it’s sink or swim—unless, again, you’re one of the lucky few that the publisher decides to actually get behind and promote. So unless you’ve been through drownproofing you’re gonna sink and your book will go down even faster than you do.

But these days there’s so much you can do that either costs nothing or next to nothing. Hey, if you’ve got even 1/10 of Bill Gates’ money you can still do expensive promotion—take out TV ads, radio spots, full page newspaper ads…but with so many other outlets today you can probably get away with spending a lot less and getting a lot more bang for your buck. So even if your advance isn’t huge there’s plenty you can do.

Facebook, Twitter and a million online things, blogging, groups, conventions, promo materials (like PR releases, bookmarks, etc.) are a few things you can do on your own. Or you can hire a PR firm or person. Some work on an a la carte basis, others more on a retainer system. You can see more about ways to promote here:

     http://7criminalminds.blogspot.com/2017/02/face-to-facebook.html
     http://7criminalminds.blogspot.com/2016/05/kicking-and-screaming-into-social-media.html
     http://7criminalminds.blogspot.com/2014/12/blog-tweet-meet-and-greet.html 

There’s also book signings that you can set up on your own, but I have issues with those. Unless you’re John Grisham or Louise Penny most likely you’ll be lucky if your family shows up. On the other hand, doing book signings can get you in with booksellers who can then recommend your books to future customers. It’s a six of one, half a dozen of the other kind of thing.

When my two novels, White Heat and Vortex, came out they both sold pretty well, all things considered. But I’m not living off the profits. What I’ve done is set up an account where any profits go and I use that money to promote future books as well as existing ones. There’s very few of us who can live off our book writing, so unless you need the money to cover some basic expenses why not take whatever you earn, both the advance on a book and royalties from any books, and plow it back into promoting your books and yourself? Or to be hip and cool: your brand.

So to answer the questions: I rarely question the writing, though who doesn’t on occasion? Anyway, we all know you have to be nuts to want to be a writer. As Dorothy Parker said, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

And as for doing all that promotion, expensive and otherwise, it’s all part of the glamour, appeal and prestige of being a writer, as much as the writing and all that “glory” heaped upon us. But without it there’s definitely no glory.

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And now for the usual BSP:

My short story “Blood Moon” will be coming out in Day of the Dark (Stories of the Eclipse). Edited by Kaye George. Releasing July 21, 2017, one month before the big solar eclipse on August 21st. From Wildside Press. Stay tuned for updates.

www.PaulDMarks.com

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