There but for the grace of the editor . . . by Catriona

Do you work with a professional editor? Why/why not? What would you look for if you hired a professional editor?

I do but that's because I'm traditionally published and there's no alternative but to submit to the process. Which shouldn't be taken to mean that I would swerve the structural edit, copy edit, line edit OR proofing if it was up to me. Oh my God no. I shudder to think what I might have put out into the world if my books had only ever had my eyes on them.

I'm doing a structural edit right now, as it happens. The notes came in the form of a long three-way Zoom call with my agent, her in-house editor and me, where we thrashed out what was wrong with draft 4 of the book I'd worked on for a year.

Here's the redacted follow-up list "Stuff to be done in order of importance":

1. Beef up XX and XXXXXX’s motivation for:

• the big thing
• Quite a big thing
• The timing of a fairly big thing (+ why XXXXXXX cares)
• Everything since then

2. Take a look at XXXXXXX’s episodes of frailty and competence to make sure there’s a coherent arc.

3. Bring XXXXX forward throughout and in particular beef up the motivation for a huge thing

4. Make XXXXX nastier

5. Fix the pacing and tone at the first big moment by cutting back-story and darkening the mood of the three characters.

6. Fix the question about who the protagonist is by:

• Making this one pretty obvious tweak
• Cutting chapter 2 and 3 a bit to balance them with chapter 1.

7. Add a family tree.

8. Maybe have more allusion to the big creepy secret

In other words, after I had written the book, left it to steep, read it, made a second draft and then done all of that twice more what I ended up with was a story with the following features:

1. The main crime, plus another crime, plus the timing of both, and the reaction of the villain made no sense

2. A major character went wanging about between being fine and cracking up for no reason whatsoever

3. A major character was so absent that making them responsible for something amounted to breaking the rules of crime fiction

4. The villainy of a major character came out of absolutely nowhere (which also breaks the rules of crime fiction)

5. The big huge early twist was invisible to the naked eye because three people reeling from a shocking event basically had a tea party and talked about the telly.

6. After three chapters it was impossible to say who this book was even about

7. And it was impossible to get the relationships between the characters to stick

8. And there was an elephant in a room full of zookeepers who were supposed to be searching for a lost elephant.

Once this book is with a publisher's editor it'll go through as much again if not more, I am sure. I'll be saying things like: 'Oh yeah. That got cut from an earlier draft and I forgot to put it back in somewhere else'; or 'Oh yeah. I've got all that in my head but I suppose it would make more sense to put it on the page rather than have every reader phone me to let me explain'; or 'What? I don't know what you mea- Oh yeah! Huh. That makes no sense at all, does it? How did I miss that? Thank you.' 

The documents with margin comments have all kinds of stuff from the editor, but my responses are usually one of the following:

• Good save!
• Phew!
• Duh!
• Thank you!
• WTF is wrong with me?!
• I give up!
• Ohhhhhh yeah!

God bless editors, Cx

 

An excellent pairing... by Cathy Ace

In this photo you can see me with my editor, Anna. It was taken back in 2014, it’s the only time we’ve ever met in person, but I’m just about to send her the manuscript of what will be the twelfth book she’ll have edited for me since then. I suspect this might be a bit of an “odd” relationship with an editor…but it is what it is, and it works for us, which I think is fine. 

So, to answer this week's question of  Do you work with a professional editor? Why/why not? What would you look for if you hired a professional editor? the first part of my answer is yes...read on for the rest...

I first met Anna when she was a staff editor employed by Severn House, the publisher of my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (Edwin Buckhalter, the owner of Severn House, is between us in the photo). By the time it came to the second book in the series, Anna had moved to become an independent editor, and was having her first child. I think, at that time, that most of the books she edited were still for Severn House, but – being contracted rather than employed – she had more flexibility to be able to balance her professional and family life.

When I decided to start to publish my own work, Anna was the editor I turned to: we already had a good working relationship, and I also knew she was always on-time with her feedback…which means a great deal when you’re planning and scheduling. And that’s why we still work together, I think: I just shot her an email last week to see if she could “fit in” a short-notice structural and full edit, and she told me exactly when she was and wasn’t available over the coming months. Now I have my deadlines, and can work to them, knowing exactly how many days my manuscript will be with her, and when it will get back to me.

Being honest (and I always try to be at least that when I talk to you here) this is one of the most wonderfully liberating aspects of being an Indie publisher of my own work: I get to plan and control the workflow, which allows me to do what I just did.

Of course, I still have to actually write the book…so, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to that now. Yes, yes, I’ll tell you the title blah, blah, blah soon – but if you want to be the FIRST to know all about it, why not sign up for my newsletter? Details are on my website, where you can also find out about my existing work: http://www.cathyace.com/

Wish me luck! This is a rollercoaster of a life, and I’m hoping that this book – the one I’m trying to shoehorn into an already busy year – will be welcomed by readers as much as its predecessors have been (oh…is that a clue???) and will allow the folks who’ve been emailing me about certain characters to finally understand how certain things are going…LOL – that’s all for now, folks!

Should I Hire an Independent Editor?

 Q: Do you work with a professional editor? Why/why not? What would you look for if you hired a professional editor?

-from Susan

 

Good timing. For the first time ever, I will be working with a developmental editor this summer. Not for my French series, which is humming along nicely. But during the pandemic’s gloomiest days, sitting at home alone, not yet under contract for the two new French mysteries and feeling the itch to write, I had a light bulb moment.  Why not write a 21^st century American take on one of my favorite operas, one I happened to be listening to at that moment. It was perfect – yes, a crime story; yes, filled with interesting, conflicted characters; yes, with a great climax. (And, no, I’m not going to spill the beans and tell you which opera.) It was not an easily defined genre tale and all the characters were, at least in the format I needed, new to me. But the plot…aha! 

 

I had so much fun writing it, finished a draft in three months, unheard of for me, went back in to flesh it out more, and took a friend, a wonderful crime writer, up on his offer to read it. He had good things to say and some smart suggestions, which encouraged me. But I still didn't know where it would sit on bookstore shelves and neither did my agent. And, it needed work. I wasn’t sure what to do next.

 

Enter the concept of a developmental editor, suggested by several author friends during a regular zoom call. Why work with an independent editor? For me, this being the first time, there were several reasons. My agent wasn’t sold on the story. It seemed to straddle a couple of sub-genres but not to sit comfortably in any one, and would be hard to sell if it couldn’t be defined more clearly. Second, I’d just been offered a new two-book contract for a series I don’t need another pair of eyes to help with, and I couldn’t focus all my attention on a book that might never sell. Third, I was beginning to think it fell into that category called “women’s fiction,” with which I was not familiar. Fourth, I liked this story immensely and didn’t want to give up getting it published without giving it every chance to succeed.

 

What I needed in an editor was someone with a proven track record of helping authors get the books she worked on sold. She needed to understand and have worked with women’s fiction authors I knew about and whose work I liked. She had to show me she knew the publishing business well enough to give me good advice. She needed to outline specifically what she would and could do, and what was not included in any deal I made with her. And, she had to like my sample chapters enough to believe I had something worth her time and reputation.

 

I’m happy to say I found her. I liked her based on our phone conversation, and she’s about to take on my manuscript. This is a new experience for me, and my hopes are high. If there’s a good book in there, she will help me find and write it. If it’s strong enough, I hope I can convince my agent to take it on. But in any case, I feel pleased knowing I didn’t abandon a project I believe in, didn’t give up and bury it in a computer file. 

The cost? An investment to consider, but let's say it's a birthday present to me. And, actually, today is my birthday!

 

 

A Dish Best Served Dead

 

By Abir

 

 Authors are told never to respond to bad reviews. Have you ever been tempted? How do you deal with negative comments? Pick a few irksome ones (anonymous of course) and let us know how you really feel … no judgment.

 

When it comes to responding to negative comments, one star reviews and hatchet jobs, there are basically two schools of thought. The first, advocated by my esteemed colleagues, which I’ll term ‘the high road’, involves never engaging, or seeking to justify yourself, or even bothering with negative reviews. Bad reviews are, advocates of the high road say, part and parcel of the life of an author and should be treated with disdain. As the Indian saying goes, the dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on. This is all very high minded and lovely and frankly bloody lazy. Advocates of this approach make me sick.

 

And then there is the other approach, my approach. Let’s call it ‘the correct road’. This entails exacting revenge on each and every person who has the temerity to criticise my work in any way, from a negative review to a mildly unenamoured look when I’m talking at festivals. This approach – actually it’s a philosophy – maintains that anyone who doesn’t appreciate my genius to the full is a delusional heretic and must be re-educated or have vengeance wreaked upon them. This approach has two major benefits over the lackadaisical approach adopted by my colleagues: Firstly it’s far more satisfying than turning the other cheek; and secondly, the plotting of my revenge keeps me busy on a Sunday night.

 

Several of my fiercest critics have disappeared; others have suffered unfortunate accidents. The fun is coming up with ways of murder which can't be traced back to me. The best is when I manage to completely erase a person from the public consciousness, making them unpersons who essentially never existed. Remember Quintin Fortescue? No? Exactly.

 

This may seem excessive to you, but I’d argue it’s only fair. Some arse-head who gives me a one-star review because they ordered the wrong bloody book frankly needs to be removed from the gene pool. Seriously, you wouldn’t trust such a person to drive a bus or look after your kids. If you think about it, their destruction is in all our interests.

 

That’s not to say people haven’t criticised my approach to bad reviews - they have – and those critics too are now all dead, sleeping happily with the fishes, and I’m sure that in the afterlife, wherever they are, they are now regretting their mild mannered contradiction of me.

 

While the reviewers have gone, the reviews alas, still exist. In our 21^st century, interconnected world, it seems it’s easier to disappear people than it is to get information off the internet (but I’m working on that. It's because of me that Elon Musk backed off his Twitter acquisition). In the meantime, here are some of the misguided reviews I’ve received, cos I know that's what you are really here for. 

 

 

 

So to sum up. Choose life. Don’t leave me bad reviews. 

Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged from James W. Ziskin

Authors are told never to respond to bad reviews. Have you ever been tempted? How do you deal with negative comments? Pick a few irksome ones (anonymous of course) and let us know how you really feel … no judgment.

The book in question 👆was a finalist for the Anthony, Barry, and Lefty awards. 

I’m sure I’ll regret this, but here goes!

I confess this topic makes me uneasy. It makes me sad and angry at the same time. But I will answer it honestly, if petulantly, because those who put their egos and frailties on the line each time they publish a book or story deserve to be defended. It’s hard to suffer the mean-spirited jabs from—basically—anonymous haters. We don’t have the luxury of responding to those critics, not unless we want to expose ourselves to further social-media ridicule. This post is the closest we can come to getting some of our own back. So, to all my fellow writers, share with me the frustration and outrage below and let us ridicule the ridiculers.

I ignore negative reviews and comments on social media, of course. That’s what we’ve all been trained to do, and it’s great advice. But that doesn’t mean we don’t notice..

I have no issues with serious/professional reviewers and bloggers.They do a great job of getting the word out about our books, even when their reviews are critical or stingy in their praise. Nor do I have issues with earnest, open-minded, honest readers who don’t enjoy my books and express their opinions on social media. No, I’m not writing about them. Instead, I want to take to task those brilliant arbiters of taste—those with tens of followers—who like nothing better than to excoriate hard-working—sometimes emotionally fragile—authors with Schadenfreude as their sole motiviation.

About two years ago, I wrote a piece on this, asking the question “How bad must a book be to deserve a one-star rating?” If I started reading a book and lost interest in it—or even if I hated it and abandoned it—I would never stop what I was doing, log onto Goodreads, and vent my bile over some poor soul’s hard work. It’s pathetic. Instead, I would return to my life and enjoy a different book. Or a movie. Or a meal. A sunset. After all, no one ever said, “When you die, you regret the missed opportunities to berate others.”

A cruel review on Goodreads accomplishes only two things: 1. it saddens the author, and, 2. it gladdens the reviewer. Negative reviews on Goodreads do not affect sales. They do not influence other reviewers. Ultimately, they don’t matter. Except to the author and to the reviewer.

I thought about highlighting the dumbest, snarkiest, rudest reviews I’d ever received. We’d all have a good laugh, right? But I’m not feeling it. So instead of talking about my bad reviews in particular—and there are some—I’ll try to catalogue the types of negative reviewers out there. The ones who confound and frustrate all authors. See if you recognize any of these, and, please, feel free to add your own ideas in the comments.

1. The ones who give one-star ratings to all the books by an author. Why continue reading books you hate? How do you manage to turn the pages while holding your nose?

2. The ones who write that they really loved the book but mistakenly clicked on one star instead of five. (It is possible to change the rating.)

3. The ones who qualify their three- or four-star review by announcing they only award five-stars to “literature.” What do they say to their kids about their latest finger painting? “Meh, it’s not exactly a Rembrandt, is it?”

4. The ones who say “terrific book! Loved it. Three stars!” 

5. The ones who—essentially—admit they’re not smart enough to understand the book. “I just don’t get it.”

6. The ones who hate the book because they dislike the genre.

7. The ones who want to show off the devastating cleverness of their ridicule.

8. The ones who complain that they figured out whodunnit.

9. The ones who complain that they couldn’t figure out whodunnit.

10. The ones who say the book was damaged in shipping.

11. The ones who didn’t like the picture on the cover.

12.The ones who ordered the book by mistake.

13. The ones who didn’t read the book, but know that it’s bad anyway.

14. The ones who don’t approve of the four-letter words in a book set in a maximum security prison.

15. The ones who don’t like female characters who have a sex life.

16. The ones who conflate a character’s behavior/opinions and those of the author.

17. The ones who say they skipped large sections of the book, but—don’t worry—didn’t miss anything...

Now I’m a big boy. I can take a legitimate, serious bad review. Sure, they sting a little, but I’ve got enough positive reviews and critical success to put them out of my mind. 

Sticks, Stones, and Hatchet Jobs

Authors are told never to respond to bad reviews. Have you ever been tempted? How do you deal with negative comments? Pick a few irksome ones (anonymous of course) and let us know how you really feel … no judgment.

by Dietrich

“Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.” ~ Jeffrey Robinson

I can’t see an upside to dwelling on a bad review or negative comment, and there’s no reason on earth to respond to one. That’s just a surefire way to go from bad to worse. The way to respond is to brush it off and write more. In the time it would take to rant back, I could have written another page.

“Most of all, I believe in hardening yourself against opinion … There is one piece of advice I strongly urge: never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don’t put them on paper.” ~ Truman Capote

Have I ever felt slighted by a negative comment? Show me a published writer who hasn’t. The best thing is to resist the urge to read them in the first place. Since I haven’t always heeded my own advice in that regard, I’ve learned to adopt a brick attitude and not take harsh words personally. I once asked an author buddy how she dealt with it, and she suggested what got her past a negative review was to pull up a good review and dwell on that for a while. Somebody else pointed out that the most famous books on earth have been criticized at one time or another, meaning we should all consider ourselves in good company.

“The important thing is that you make sure that neither the favorable nor the unfavorable critics move into your head and take part in the composition of your next work.” ~ Thornton Wilder

“Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing.” ~ D. H. Lawrence

The point is, not everybody’s going to like what I write — I get that — and I’m okay with it. What matters is that I get up every morning and focus on the work in progress.

How Dare You!

 

Terry, here with this week’s topic: Authors are told never to respond to bad reviews. Have you ever been tempted? How do you deal with negative comments? 

 When my first book came out, I read all the reviews, both professional and reader-driven. They were wonderful, and I was thrilled. But after a while I began to realize that there was nothing about them that helped me learn anything about my process. Occasionally I’d get an email giving me word that I needed to do something better. For example, one man wrote to me to tell me that in my second book, The Last Death of Jack Harbin, I’d mentioned motorcycles and that I needed to add some information. I resisted replying that if he wanted more about motorcycles perhaps he should write his own book. I hope he loves Murder at the Jubilee Rally, which comes out in October. It's set at a motorcycle rally. 

 Another wrote to say that I had mentioned alfalfa growing in the fields, and I was mistaken, that alfalfa doesn’t grow in Texas. He informed me that what people thought was alfalfa was actually Johnson grass. I resisted the temptation to tell him he was wrong, that indeed there was plenty of alfalfa in Texas. Instead, I wrote him that my daddy had told me those fields were alfalfa and I believed him. (I still believe him). 

 There were a few less than excited Amazon and Goodreads reviewers who said the books were too slow, but that didn’t bother me. The Samuel Craddock I don’t write thrillers—or at least I didn’t write them at the time. But by and large the reviews were all terrific. 

Then one day I told one of my fellow “minds,” James Ziskin, that I’d never gotten a bad review. He begged to differ, and hunted up a review he’d read about my fourth book, A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge, that was in fact a complete take-down. The reviewer said he’d liked my other books, but he hated this one so much that he threw it across the room. 

He raged that it was something he never believed would happen and that he thought I must be laughing at my readers. 

 So what did I do? I laughed. Why? Because the review had been written two years earlier, and I’d somehow missed it. Also, I somehow felt that getting a bad review made me a real part of the writing community. Everyone gets bad reviews at one time or another, and this one was a doozy. Maybe if I’d read it at the time the book came out, I would have been horrified and felt the need to tell him that in fact the book was based on a real incident. But too late. I had moved on, and presumably he had, too, because he reviewed the next book positively. 

 In the past few years, I have only read professional reviews. Not that I have an aversion to reading reader reviews, but I never seem to find the time, and when I do take a peek, I have no complaints. The fact is that even if I got bad reviews, it probably wouldn’t change the way I write. I have a particular slant on things in my small Texas town and with my characters and I think it would be hard to change that. I do wonder if I’m pushing hard enough, though. Maybe it’s time to rile up my readers and get some tomatoes thrown at me!

The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Nasty

Authors are told never to respond to bad reviews. Have you ever been tempted? How do you deal with negative comments? Pick a few irksome ones (anonymous of course) and let us know how you really feel … no judgment.

Brenda Chapman here.

I've come to be in a zen place with negative/nasty/dismissive/ reviews. I'm not sure who said it, but the best advice I ever heard when faced with a bad review is: "This person is not your reader". Yeah, they really aren't and that's okay. I'm not a fan of everything I read either, even some books that are on the best-seller lists. And that's okay too.

I have to admit though, there have been times I've had to pull myself away from the keyboard because I soooo wanted to respond to somebody's comments, but then I sunk into my mantra ... "Just not my reader."

So a few anonymous examples.

A recent Goodreads reviewer took the time to read all seven of my Stonechild and Rouleau books before giving the entire series one star. My question to them would be, "Why did you keep reading if you didn't like the first book? Who reads seven books if they aren't enjoying the storyline or characters?" Hmmm.

Someone else wrote recently about the last book in the series, "The author dialled this one in." I want to respond that I spent a year writing and editing that book, and took great pains to make it an original story with a complex plot. My editor and publishing team also spent a great deal of time working on it. Readers have almost to a person lauded the book and lamented that it's the last one in the series. Dismissing my work with one flip line sounds like a dialled-in response to me :-) 

One final irksome example of a review that bothered me (just ask my husband how much) happened a few months back. My latest book Blind Date had just been released and started a new series. I nervously awaited feedback from readers to see how it would be received. A day or two after the book was up on Amazon, a reader rushed to put up a two-star, critical review that stubbornly stays first on the list of reviews, the rest of which are all positive. This first review was demoralizing, but I'm happy to say that it's been the only negative one to date.

Recently, I watched some well-known American authors in a webinar and they spoke about the reviews on Goodreads. One of the authors said after her first book came out, she opened up her phone to read the reviews while in her car in the grocery store parking lot. She said they were so bad that she burst into tears. Another author on the panel said that she's learned never to read reviews on this site because they can be so brutal. 

While I respect the right of every reader to their opinion and recognize that tastes can vary widely, I'd like to gently suggest that reviewers remember a very real person has written the book and invested a lot of time, sweat and effort. Constructive criticism doesn't have to be so cutting that the author is devastated, maybe even enough to contemplate stepping away from the business. 

On the other side of the coin, any reader who is moved enough, either positively or negatively, by a book that they rate or review it, is a marvellous thing. However, I'd argue that every author deserves respect even if a reader doesn't care for their writing or book. It's fair to criticize, and writers appreciate constructive feedback, but I'm not a fan of taking kindness out of the equation.

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

Facebook & Instagram: BrendaChapmanAuthor

Twitter: brendaAchapman

Make Them All Unforgettable Characters, by Josh Stallings

Q: How much air time do you give to secondary characters? Have any threatened to take over a book?

A: I give them as much time as they need to be fully there. A paragraph, a chapter, I don’t have a formula. The tension between narrative drive and character exploration comes down to personal taste. I can feel when editing when I come to a section that’s off the main story if I want to blow past it, it means it needs work, either to cut it down or make it sing. 

I’m dancing around the question because though I understand the term “secondary characters” I don’t think about any characters as secondary. Every one of us believes we are the hero of the story. I realize this phrase is both vague and over used, so I’ll dig a bit deeper into my process. Because I mostly write from beginning to end not knowing where the tangled twisting path leads, I am forced to treat every character that stumbles onto the stage as if they might be a key player, and they might. One of my best friends since we were glittery rock teenagers is Tad Williams. He writes these MASSIVE epic fantasy series, because of the size and scope he peoples them with a huge cast, some will be spear holders and others may step forward in book three and save the day. Sitting at the starting line he can’t see seven years of writing down the line who will be what, they all must be worthy of taking the lead.

Another way of thinking about this is, the best stories make me feel like they are showing me a small portion of a real world, one that exists beyond the page. Everyone we meet is coming from somewhere and going to someplace else.

Great paintings work this way for me. I was a weird kid, I loved landscape painting. My father was an artist, and my mother was a teacher who believed art was an integral part of any education, so I spent a lot of time in museums. I was drawn to work where I would day dream about what was around the next corner on a country road, behind a tree in the forest.

Two early lessons in theater school were, “Know where your character was before they walk on stage.” And “Write your character’s biography.” Even if you only have a one line walk on, doesn’t matter. The audience will never see this work but if you do it, they’ll feel the truth. Same thing for writing. I have to know my characters intimately, I often discover who they are as I’m writing. Once I really know them, I go back and build a document with only their scenes, I read and edit them to be sure they track with who I know they are now. 

Part of the joy in writing TRICKY was getting to show the intellectually disabled community as individuals. I wanted the group home where Cisco lives to be peopled with three dimensional characters. They all started out based on people I’ve known, or observed. But once I start writing they take on lives of their own. 

Meet Pris, with wild unkempt long hair and smeared on make-up. She claims the staff cut her hands, “Staff say I’m too pretty to live. Like a butterfly on fire.” Only when she shows her palms to the detective there are no signs of any damage.

And Donald, in his Star Wars wheelchair and Rebel X-Wing tee shirt, “June, June, June.” He calls to the house manager.

“Donald, what is it?”

“June, June, June.”

“What?” June smiled at Donald.

“Um I forgot. God damn it!”

“Language, Donald.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

And Lilly, a wonderful innocent who we discover has feelings for Cisco as she explains to Detective Madsen, “I think he’s beautiful.” 

“Did David and Cisco get along?”

“Everyone likes Cisco. Do you like him?”

“I just met him today.”

“That’s all it takes. Maybe you think too much.” She scrunched up her eyes, mimicking over concentration. “It is okay to trust.”

Combined they illustrate that being intellectually disabled doesn’t preclude one from being delusional, or paranoid, or use profanity and be really into Star Wars, or have crushes and fall in love. But none of them are stand-ins for an idea, they are characters I’ve gotten to know well enough that I could write a book about any of them, they just happened to show up in Cisco’s book.

Now as for characters threatening to take over a book? All the time. Early on in TRICKY I had wanted to write much more about Lilly with Cisco. I’m a romantic. But what I want and what the novel needs are often very different. I feel like that tension helps make a better book. I want Cisco and Lilly to have a love story, hopefully so do readers, the tension lies in will it won't it happen? If it doesn’t happen in the novel, it still remains as a possibility and that creates a world beyond the book in the reader’s mind.

YOUNG AMERICANS is a disco glitter rock heist novel told through the eyes of the intelligent but naïve Jacob Stern, and his safe cracking sister Sam. Set in 1976 their crew is full of flamboyantly wonderful characters, but it was Valentina Creamarosa who stole my heart and could have walked away with the whole damn book if I’d let her.

 

Valentina spun through life trailing glitter and feathers molting from her thrift store boa. Six foot two and muscular, she vibed Tina Turner on steroids. 

A trans-gender badass and the patron saint of Fabulousness. She was an expert in firearms and lip liner. Vulnerable, loyal, damaged and deadly. 

“Settle down you dazzling bitches, class is in session.” Valentina unzipped an olive canvas duffle bag that was sitting on the coffee table in the Creekside Apartment living room. It was full of guns.

“Oh, fuck me.” Terry turned a lighter shade of pale.

“You OK, Terr-Terr, this shit getting a little too real?” Valentina tossed a snub-nosed .38 to Terry. He recoiled and the revolver bounced off his chest, landing on his lap. “Pick it up, Ms. Cutie.” Terry looked scared. “Pick. It. Up. Bitch.”

“Leave him alone, Val,” Jacob said, reaching for the gun.

“Stop. Terr-Terr either pulls his weight or he walks.”

“Fine, fine, I’m cool.” Terry picked up the snub-nose.

“I want the nickel-plated Smith & Wesson,” Candy said. “I have a silver snakeskin belt that will go perfectly with it.”

“Done, girl. Style points are always appreciated. We may be robbing this joint, but there is no excuse for looking tacky.”

Valentina is the character I’ve gotten the most requests to write a book about. And I get it, I love her, who wouldn’t? A local coffee joint owner loves her so much whenever I pick up a latte instead of my name it says, “For Valentina.” 

I guess that’s the point of this job, to become invisible and write characters people can’t forget.  

Whose book is it anyway? by Catriona

How much air time do you give to secondary characters? Have any threatened to take over a book? Choose one of yours that you particularly enjoy and share them with us, including a snippet of text that gives us their flavour.

This question made me laugh a hollow laugh. When I embarked on the Last Ditch Motel series, one of the boons - so I thought - was that there would be a different selection of transient minor characters in every book. You know, because it was set in a motel. 

That plan went ever so slightly wrong. In Scot Free, I put a pair of doctors in the next-door room to my heroine, Lexy Campbell. They were staying for a few nights while their house was tented for bugs. But I fell in love with them and didn't want them to go away at the end of the book. So I gave Todd a bad case of cleptoparasitosis (a fear of bugs, including imaginary bugs) and made them permanent residents of the motel because it's the only place safe enough for them to live in.

Lexy meets Todd thus:

a young man in Hello Kitty shorty pyjamas shoved past me, leapt across the floor, and dove into my bed

“Emm,” I said.

“Can I stay here?” he said. He had the covers clutched to his chin, a chiseled chin with perfect stubble and a dimple you could have filled with melted chocolate and dipped marshmallows in.

“Emm,” I said.

“I saw the bed was slept in so I knew someone was here,” he said. “Can I use your phone?”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” I said.

“I’m Todd,” he said. “I live next door. In two fourteen. But I just got up and went into the bathroom and there is a s-p-i-d-e-r the size of Godzilla’s grandpa in the shower. So if I could just stay here and use your phone to call Roger – my hubs; he’s at work – to come and kill it, that would be a really big help to me.”

“Or,” I said, “I could go and kill the sp- it for you.”

He had pulled the covers up to his eyes when I started to say the word, but he let it drop again. “For

 reals?” he said. “It is bigger than my first apartment.”

I might have been able to resist Todd enough to send him back to his house for the start of Scot and Soda but when I added Roger the two of them together were too much for me: 

            "Well, for God’s sake, Lexy," said Todd. "Pour us a glass of Chablis and tell us all!”

“I haven’t got any Chablis.”

“He’s probably filled your refrigerator,” Roger said. “As you see, Todd doesn’t really do boundaries.”

“As you see, Roger tends to over-psychologize everyday life,” Todd shot back.

“My apologies,” said Roger. “As you’ll soon find out, Todd likes to take care of people.”

“As you’ll sooner find out, Roger is troubled by normal amounts of everyday kindness.”

“Normal?” said Roger. “What about when you fostered those hedgehogs?”

“What about it? The PETA website linked to my Facebook post.”

“Todd, you bought a stroller!”

And that's not all. Why is the Last Ditch Motel the only safe palce for Todd and Roger to live? Well, because of another pair of transient motel guests who morphed into permanent residents so they could be in every book. I had put a germaphobe and her long-suffering wife into Scot Free, for plot reasons. With a flick of the wrist, I made the long-suffering wife into the motel owner - because it's always funny to me when someone monumentally grumpy works in a customer-facing job. Here's Noleen, perhaps my absolute favourite character, still bitching and moaning in the motel reception, in Scot on the Rocks:

She was facing away from me, wearing a sweatshirt I hadn’t seen before – it read nobody asked you – upending the stationery drawer over a black bin bag. Elastic bands, bulldog clips and pens cascaded down. I think I saw some postage stamps go in there.

“Wow,” I said. “Are you going paperless?”

“I’m starting over,” she said, turning. The front of the sweatshirt said Shut up. Blunt, even for Noleen. “I’m going to OfficePro after Della gets here to tag me and buying just what I need and nothing else. None of this . . .” she stirred the very dregs of the drawer contents then tipped it higher to shoot the lot into the bin bag.

“Is that foreign currency?” I said. “Because it looks like quarters. Nolly, you’re binning money.”

“I’m letting go,” she said. “And I’m going to start locking this drawer so no one can put hairbands and thumb tacks in it when I’m not looking.”

“No one . . .” I began. “Okay. But you know what I think?”

“Don’t want to,” she said. “Don’t want your opinions stinking up my head any more than I want random strangers’ Canadian change stinking up my drawer.”

And once Noleen was the owner, Kathi the germaphobe automatically became permanent too. I added a laundromat to one end of the horseshoe of rooms and made her its manager. The perfect job for someone who likes everything spick and span. I also added a cousin in Costa Rica who supplies the insecticide that keeps the Last Ditch bug-free. (It's illegal in California, this insecticide. In fact, it's so good it's illegal in Nevada too.) Here's Kathi in Scot Mist, which takes place in March 2020, doing what she does best - panicking:

Kathi jabbed a finger at me before she spoke. “Disneyland is closed. The federal government has offered a tax-filing extension. A. Tax. Filing. Extension. Lexy, they’ve admitted that the only sure thing is death.”

“I don’t know what the Brit equivalent would be,” Noleen chipped in.

“Me neither,” I said. “Taking down the Bake Off tent?”

“I swear to God if you crack one single joke,” said Kathi. Her jaw was clenched so tight she sounded like Sean Connery. Doing a surprisingly good American accent.

“I’m not joking!” I said. “We haven’t got a Disneyland to close.”

“Look,” Kathi said. “I don’t know how many people are sick,” I did and, from the way she shifted her feet, I think Noleen did too. “But they’re not all from Wuhan and they’re not all on that floating petri dish down in the docks. Some of them are in the city and some of them must be leaving the city and this is a motel ninety minutes from the city and so it closes today.”

“Kath-”

“So help me, Betty White, if you tell me not to worry . . ."

So there it is. My four transients from the first book are all still there. And it was more or less "in for a penny" that made me give up and turn the other guests into permanent residents too. Dylan, the college kid, was supposed to be there for a weekend because he was being bullied in his dorm. Della and little Diego were staying a while till she could find a flat. In next year's Scot in a Trap (Book five of the planned trilogy (I might have a general lack of control, it occurs to me)),  not only are the three of them still checked in but SPOILER Della and Dylan are married and now there are four, after baby Hiro was born on Thanskgiving Day:

‘Okay!’ Della said, putting her hands on the arms of her chair and pulling herself upright in it. ‘Ahhhhh. Ooooh. Owwwiiieeee.’

Everyone around the table winced in sympathy, except Hiro who was yelling at her own fists as they waved in front of her face. And also except Diego, who was motoring through a towering bowlful of pie and ice cream as if he was being paid by the slice. ‘What’s wrong, Mama?’ he said, pausing with a spoon half way to his mouth. ‘Brain freeze?’

‘My vulva tore a little when I was pushing Hiro out,’ said Della. ‘It’s tender.’

A huge thought bubble formed above everyone’s heads overshadowing the accompanying silence.

‘Things are so much better than they used to be,’ I said, eventually. ‘As a therapist, a woman, and a buttoned-up Brit, I thoroughly approve of no-nonsense openness.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Noleen. ‘That’s just weird. Vulva? No way Diego knows what a vulva is.’

‘It’s the folds of skin around-’ Diego got out, before Noleen managed to stop him.

‘Mommy was right on the edge of needing stitches,’ Todd said, as if Diego – or any of us – needed more detail. ‘But Uncle Roger said she could give it a day and then take another look. What do you think, Dell?’

‘The ice-pack helped,’ Della said. ‘Oh, Lexy. I need to replace your ice-pack. Remind me if you remember.’

Like I’d forget.

‘Anyway,’ Della said, ‘I want to talk to you about three things. We need to have a memorial for that guy who died.’

‘We do?’ said Noleen.

‘I do,’ said Della.

‘Someone died?’ Diego said, with his eyes like saucers.

‘This’ll be good,’ said Noleen. ‘What the vulva equivalent when it comes to sudden death?’

‘He did,’ Della said. ‘He went to Heaven to live with Jesus, and we need to honor his memory so that his spirit is at rest.’

‘Phew,’ said Noleen. ‘No death vulva. Fine by me.’

I can hardly remember these people as minor characters in a single book now. They are Lexy's logical family, to quote Armistead Maupin, and she loves them all as much as I do.  Cx

           

Oh what a tangled web... by Cathy Ace

How much air time do you give to secondary characters? Have any threatened to take over a book? Choose one of yours that you particularly enjoy and share them with us, including a snippet of text that gives us their flavour.

Oh, this is a good one…and something I was asked about on a panel in which I participated at CrimeFest in Bristol, UK a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I’ve been “on the road again”, and it was a blast! Anyway, I won’t go on and on about how wonderful it was to spend time with my tribe (though there are some photos to show how fun it was!) because I could chatter on all day…so…to the question!

"Long running series" panel: Caro Ramsey, Peter Guttridge, Kate Ellis, Andrew Child, me

I always planned the Cait Morgan books as a series where each story would take place in a different setting, with only Cait Morgan and Bud Anderson being in every book, but, even though I’m writing fiction, I aim for relatable circumstances that allow readers to happily inhabit the worlds I’m creating…so there are folks who pop up more than once.

Jack and Sheila White are a case in point: Jack was something of a mentor to Bud during his early days with the Vancouver Police Department, and the two men built a friendship based upon mutual respect that lasted beyond their retirements. The Whites also have acreage where Marty, Cait and Bud’s tabby black Lab, can stay when they are off on their mystery-solving jaunts (which is handy!). Thus, Jack and Sheila have appeared briefly in several of the books, and they finally took center stage in The Corpse with the Crystal Skull, when they stayed with Cait and Bud at a private resort in Jamaica…which is where we find out a good deal more about their backgrounds.

With Barry Ryan, of  Free@LastTV, the company
producing the Cait Morgan Mysteries TV series

Another recurring character is John Silver. Yes, he’s tall…which leads to the inevitable nickname…and he’s also quite mysterious when we first meet him: he arrives in Amsterdam in The Corpse with the Garnet Face as a “facilitator” with links to international intelligence-gathering services, and his presence allows us to discover more about Bud’s links with similar organizations. But I didn’t want John Silver to end up being no more than a cypher…a cut-out character who allows the plot to move forward by mysteriously revealing key background details about suspects…so I allowed him to also be the person upon whom Bud relied when Cait completely disappeared in Budapest, in The Corpse with the Ruby Lips; this time it’s Bud taking the lead, with John in support. In The Corpse with the Crystal Skull, John joins the house party in Jamaica as a guest, bringing with him his newly-acquired girlfriend, and we discover that maybe his overall judgement isn’t quite what his secret-squirrel job might lead us to believe it should be! Then, in The Corpse with the Granite Heart, I’m sorry to say I left poor John Silver completely undone…and questioning his entire future. I do have a plan for John, but won’t say here what it is…but the fact that he and Jack White are about the only people Bud trusts 100% (as well as Cait, of course) means he’ll be back, but maybe not in the way readers might expect.

I’ve enjoyed illuminating John Silver, and allowing the light cast upon him to reflect onto Bud, allowing his character to be revealed more and more too, which I think adds dimensions to one of my leads it would otherwise be difficult to communicate: judging a person by the friends they choose works well in fiction, as it does in life.

As requested, here’s a passage where John Silver is playing a central role. The set up? Taken from The Corpse with the Crystal Skull, Cait and Bud, Jack and Sheila White, and John Silver are “enjoying breakfast”, when John’s questionably youthful plus-one, Lottie, has openly “accused” John, Bud, and Jack of visiting Jamaica to carry out some sort of secret operation…including investigating the death of the man who owned the resort where they are staying – Freddie Burkinshaw.

Sheila and I exchanged a glance as Lottie’s comments hung in the heavy air, then we looked at our respective husbands. They, in turn, were glaring at John, who’d puffed out his cheeks, snapped his napkin onto the table, and pushed away his plate.

He said, “Right-ho, this obviously needs to be addressed. Lottie dear, you don’t know anything about any operations that Bud, Jack, or I may, or may not, have been party to. Cait and Sheila are married to two wonderful men who’ve put in their years for Canadian law enforcement and have both now retired from that life. I, as you know, have a desk job. Yes, I work in Whitehall, and, yes, I have to travel within my role, on occasion. But I can guarantee you that – if I ever had been involved in that sort of undertaking – I would now be well past the age when I would be called upon to carry out any ‘secret squirrel’ work, as you so quaintly described it. I know that Rusty, Sir Roger Rustingham, is professionally involved with a particular branch of British security in a senior role, but he does have friends and acquaintances from other areas of his life too. I got to know him when we worked together on a couple of charity committees. Where I also met your father, I might add. It’s all totally innocent, and above board.”

“Well, that’s a pity,” replied Lottie with a wry smile, “because when I spoke to Daddy on the phone earlier today he said he’d known of Freddie Burkinshaw, and had always wondered if he’d been dispatched to Jamaica to ‘keep an eye on a few local chaps’. Apparently, Freddie arrived here just around the time independence was granted, and was pretty close with Ian Fleming – and we all know what sort of a war he had, and what he got up to after it, don’t we, children?” She rose, and swooshed her chiffon scarf around her firm, young throat. “I’m off for a shower now. It’s so dreadfully humid. The rain’s stopped at last, I see. Thank you for a delicious…egg thingy, Cait, Bud. See you in a bit, John. Maybe someone will be kind enough to let me know what sort of place we’re dining at tonight, when you’ve made the arrangements, so I can dress accordingly. Bye-ee.”

And she was gone. Leaving us all a bit flummoxed, and – in my case anyway – fixated on the fact that I’d just heard several potential reasons why someone might want Freddie Burkinshaw dead. It seemed he might not have been the innocent octogenarian without an enemy in the world we’d all thought him to be, after all.

BSP: find out all about John Silver - and Cait and Bud - here: http://www.cathyace.com/