How Bad Must a Book Be to Deserve a One-star Rating? by James W. Ziskin

Discuss the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review you’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. This is your chance to defend yourself and blow off some steam, since we know we can’t engage with reviewers.

From Jim

Full disclosure: I was the one who came up with this week’s question. At first, I thought it would be fun to answer. But, then, as I looked back at some of the bad reviews I’ve received on Goodreads, it made me sad. Not at all because some people didn’t like my books—that’s inevitable and normal—but because Goodreads shows you just how angry some people are. How gladly they vent their vitriol, proclaim their self-righteousness, and parade the the brilliance of their judgments for their legion of followers to admire. I feel sad but not really surprised. If the age of social media has taught us anything, it’s that very little of it is social.

How bad must a book be to deserve a one-star rating?

As online rating portals such as Amazon and Goodreads offer no option for zero stars, I can only assume a rating of one star means there is nothing of value in the book. Just bad writing, poor characterization, misspellings, incorrect grammar, and excruciating sex scenes. What else can one assume? Surely most books—traditionally and independently published—have some value. If writing a book were a school test, would so many get one star? A failing grade?

Professional reviewers tend to leave the nastiness out of their reviews. Tend is the operative word. There’s plenty of snark out there, too. Usually, they try to offer a measured critique of the book, where it fails and where it succeeds. And the professionals reach a larger audience. Even a bad review in the New York Times will likely stimulate sales for the author.

A cruel review on Goodreads, however, 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 simply am not feeling it. The exercise only served to remind me how much hatred is out there waiting for an audience. But I asked the question, so I’ll offer an answer of sorts. Instead of talking about my bad reviews in particular, 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.

Here are some of the archetypical reviewers who specialize in poor reviews/ratings:

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?

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

        Teacher: You aced the test, young man. Congratulations! C+.

        Student: Huh?

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. Me, I don’t like getting punched in the face. That’s why I don’t pick fights in biker bars.

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

8. The ones who complain that they figured out the ending.

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

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 say the print is too small. (Legitimate complaint, but not the author’s fault.)

13. The ones who ordered the book by mistake.

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

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

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

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

18. 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. But, I confess, this week’s question backfired for me. I feel worse for having posed the question. And answering it did nothing to make me feel better.

Apologies to my fellow 7 Criminal Minds bloggers and to you readers. But at least I learned something.

Okay, let’s get the knives out

Discuss the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review you’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. This is your chance to defend yourself and blow off some steam, since we know we can’t engage with reviewers.

by Dietrich

What every writer wants to ask a critic, “How many books have you written?”

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

A two-bit comment, a one-star review, a hatchet job. Here’s my rule: if they’re nasty I ignore them; if they’re nice I appreciate them. What’s to be gained by letting my ego off its leash, imagining horrific things on someone using an alias like Bad Hass, the kind of person who straddles the line when parking, then leaves their shopping cart behind my car.

Okay, my writing isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, I can accept that. Even the greats get their share of one-star reviews. So, I’m in good company.

To feel disturbed by someone’s negative opinion, well, that’s on me. If I let it get to me, next I’ll be wondering why I can’t write a word that day. 

Let’s face it, we put ourselves out there by having a book published, and we all get criticized. They say it takes a certain amount of courage to put anything creative out there in the first place, so bravo to us for doing it. And to make us all feel better about it, here are some harsh reviews of some of the greats.

“A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape,” — Art critic Louis Leroy on Claude Monet

“The cover of Led Zeppelin, the British quartet's seismic 1969 debut, shows the Hindenburg airship, in all its phallic glory, going down in flames. The image did a pretty good job of encapsulating the music inside: sex, catastrophe and things blowing up.” — Rolling Stone

“We must turn down gifts offered since we feel it is not fair to accept as a gift a work which may be shown only infrequently.” 

— Alfred H. Barr, director of collections for Museum of Modern Art, New York, on receiving a donated work by Andy Warhol

“A novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name.” 

— Salman Rushdie on Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code

“The first book written for people who don't read books.”

— Eileen Battersby, chief literary critic for The Irish Times on 

Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls

“This is easily one of the worst books I’ve ever read. And bear in mind that I’ve read John Grisham.”

— Susan Cohen, the Charleston City Paper, on Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

“The story is mostly a snooze: not so much The Silence of the Lambs as The Counting of the Sheep —  Ron Charles for the Washington Post, on Thomas Harris’ Cari Mora

“Reading it, I even began to suspect that parts may have genuinely been written by Don Jr. himself. The excruciatingly insecure prose wasn’t the tell — that could have come from any of the hacks who work for him. It was that some of the errors are so ludicrous they couldn’t possibly have come from anyone else.” — Ashley Feinberg, Slate, on Donald Trump Jr.’s Triggered

“The greatest mind ever to stay in prep school.” 

— Norman Mailer on J.D. Salinger

“Once you’ve put one of his books down, you simply can’t pick it up again.” — Mark Twain on Henry James

“I got a little bored after a time. I mean, the road seemed to be awfully long.” — Aldous Huxley on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

“Leaving out politics, I regard the book as a sorry thing, clumsy, trivial, and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelievable girls, and trite coincidences.” 

— Vladimir Nabokov on Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago

“Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw, that of outright unreadability.” — Martin Amis, The War Against Cliché

“Fear and Loathing in America is a great doorstop of a book …” Douglas Brinkley for The Guardian, on Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in America

How Did You Like It?

Terry Shames here. This week we are discussing the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review we’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews are a fact of life for writers—it’s one of the best ways to introduce readers to our work. Whenever we come out with a new book, we writers hold our breath, worried that reviewers will say that the books don’t work, or worse. But I suppose even a bad review is better than none at all. Because reader reviews are what alerts other readers that we’ve written a book. There are two types of reviews, those from professional reviewers and from readers who want to comment on their experience with a book. I was always happy to say that I had never gotten a bad review from a “professional” reviewer—that is somebody who regularly reviews books in some kind of ongoing forum. That includes Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, Stop, You’re Killing Me!, Kathy Boone, Reel, Kevin Tipple, Kristopher Zgorski, and many others. In fact, I’ve received several starred reviews. So far, so good. When I published my first book, I thought the reviews were okay, but not wonderful. Then my in-house publicist told me that in the scheme of things the reviews were terrific. I took the time to read some reviews of popular books by well-known authors, and discovered she was right. Some of the best in the business had received lukewarm or even scathing professional reviews. Whew! So I was pleased with my reviews. And then, sometime after I published my fifth book someone (James Ziskin) sent me a review from a forum I didn’t know about. I read with pleasure the positive feedback and then went back to find out if the reviewer had featured others of my books. Oops. I found out. I would have been better if I’d left it alone.

Not only had he had read my fourth book, A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge, but he hated it so much that he threw it across the room! Did I weep and moan? No, I laughed, for three reasons. One, I was reading it long after it came out and he liked it. Two, I disagreed with his assessment. He said he didn’t believe such a thing could happen, and unfortunately I knew women to whom it had happened—including the woman that the story was based on. The third reason was the biggest: I felt like I had finally joined the club of people who had gotten trashed in a professional review. It wasn’t lukewarm, or damning with faint praise, it was an out and out loathing of the book. I took it as a badge of honor. Pretty much every writer gets bad reviews at one time or other, and it’s something writers have to accept. Not everyone loves every type of book. I had finally gotten my “bad” one. Reader-generated comments on books in Amazon and Goodreads are a whole different thing. These are much more scatter-shot. Some readers make astute comments, and some even go so far as to write, long, involved reviews that include synopses. Others are just a line or two. Sometimes you see reviews that are patently unfair—a one-star review because the book was damaged or wasn’t received on time. Or the reader expected a different kind of book, despite clear evidence of what the book was about. I generally get good, solid, well-though-out Amazon and Goodreads reviews. But I have gotten a few funny ones. As anyone who reads my books know, I write a series set in Texas. One of my glowing reviews, “loved the book!” said the reader especially appreciated my wonderful descriptions of Oregon. Another reviewer said she couldn’t give me a 5-star review because she compared the book to all literature and it was a 3-star. If she was comparing it to all literature, I have to say I’m well-satisfied with three stars. Move over, Jane Austen! Take that, Ernest Hemingway! And then there is this one-star review: “A good read with a suspenseful plot. I would read more books by this author.” Uh, okay, but you do know that one star indicates you didn’t like the book, right? I’ll close by saying that it’s useful for writers to get reader reviews on those sites, so if you’re reading this and have read my books, I’d appreciate a review. Even if you weren’t thrilled about it!

You Think What?

Post and discuss the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review you’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. This is your chance to defend yourself and blow off some steam, since we know we can’t engage with reviewers.

What a provocative question this week! 

Brenda Chapman posting today.

As authors, we know to never engage with reviewers who slam our book. There's that infamous cautionary tale of the author who got into it with one reviewer and did not fare well. We're warned that those readers who would take the time to rip apart one's book would not hesitate to rip apart the author if given half a chance. Be afraid, be very afraid...

I'm always grateful to those readers who post thoughtful reviews, whether glowing or less so, but there are a few categories of reviews that make me shake my head.

1.  The one star review with no explanation. My question is, "Why bother?" I mean, really, why bother?

I sometimes check out the 1* reviewer posting on Goodreads and most often they give one star reviews to lots of books. (One reader posted about twenty one-star reviews a day, prompting me to send a note to Goodreads telling them that this reader looked to be bogus given that I don't know of anyone who can read and hate that many books in twenty-four hours for days on end. Goodreads essentially shrugged and said not their problem.) 

2.  The reader who says the book is okay but they wished they'd known it was part of a series. They say that they'd likely have given the book a higher rating if they'd read the rest of the books because they hate starting a series partway through. Gaaaa! 

3.  The reader who says they don't like mysteries so they don't like my book. Please, please never read another one of mine ... is what I'd like to say. And why did you pick up my obviously-a-crime-fiction book anyway?

4.  And then there's the reader who says they figured out the killer early on so the book is crap and the author is dumb. These types of readers always astound me since the vast majority of readers tell me they never guessed the killer and didn't see the twist coming. If you did figure out whodunnit, then kudos. The clues are there as they should be in a play-fair mystery. This doesn't make the book terrible. (and guessing every possible scenario and then saying you guessed the killer from the onset is not fair play for the author.)

So, getting back to this week's question where I'm asked to select one review.  This is a two-star review for one of my Stonechild and Rouleau books that stands out: 

 rated it **

Made it to 3 stars until murderer revealed. I am very tired of The-Woman-Dunnit crime mysteries. Becoming as much of a cliche as the-butler-did-it, without the wry humour.

Okay, so half of the human race are women. If you rule out all women as killers, then that leaves men unless space aliens are a thing. And if all the killers are male, isn't this a cliche too? Just whom would you have be the killer? 

Enquiring minds want to know. Seriously.

I suppose what I'd like to say to readers is that I understand if my books or the books of my fellow authors are not your cup of tea. This is why we have so much selection, categories, genres, writing styles. Not all books are created equal and you are certainly entitled to your opinion and to express your views on social media platforms. All that I ask is that you give a thoughtful, balanced review, perhaps a critique that you'd say to my face if we were sitting in the pub having an honest discussion about the book. 

Most books take a year to write and another six months working with editors to bring to print. So few manuscripts ever make it to completion let alone to publication. This doesn't mean a reader needs to like  the story or the writing, but it should be enough to garner respectful feedback and not a sarcastic toss-off line.

Finally, I'd like to end by saying that it's human nature to focus on the negative. We can have forty lovely reviews and one critical review and guess what we obsess on? But not always! I'm happy this week to share a review for Closing Time in The Ottawa Review of Books that  made my week :-) 

But all good things must come to an end. The seventh novel of the series, Closing Time is also the last in the series, and for Chapman’s devoted readers it will be a bittersweet experience, reading the final chapter in what has proved to be one of the strongest and most interesting crime series to emerge in years. A skilled storyteller, Closing Time is a finely-drawn story, Chapman writing with an assured hand, confident that she’s nailed her subject – and she has. Closing Time is an evocative and compelling work, and a fitting end to the series; and while I regret reading the last of Stonechild and Rouleau, I look forward to the next step in Chapman’s impressive literary journey. I’m certain it will be equally special. – Jim Napier

Website: https://brendachapman.ca/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrendaChapmanAuthor 

Twitter: @brendaAchapman 

What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Tell us about the first story/stories you ever wrote. First book, published or no.

by Paul D. Marks

I don’t really remember what the first story I wrote was. But when I started writing I was trying to write more mainstream or literary fiction. And just in the last few weeks I resurrected one of those ancient stories, rewrote it as crime fiction and sent it out into the world to hopefully be picked up somewhere. The theme is the same as the original story, as well as some of the elements, but I like it better as a murder mystery than as “serious” fiction. Especially because, as one of my first stories I was horrified at how badly written it was. But I liked the idea enough to keep it in the back of mind all these years and try again with the basic elements from it. I think it works better this time. Hope so anyway.

Breaking News: Speaking of stories, and before I get back to the current question, Coast to Coast: Noir from Sea to Shining Sea, volume 3 in the Coast to Coast series of crime fiction anthologies that Andy McAleer and I co-edit dropped last week. Twelve noir stories from twelve terrific authors, with stories set throughout the US from…coast to coast. The “chronology” of the book (if that’s the right word) goes from the West Coast to the East Coast, noir all the way. The authors are: Colleen Collins, Brendan DuBois, Alison Gaylin, Tom MacDonald, Andrew McAleer, Michael Mallory, Paul D. Marks, Dennis Palumbo, Stephen D. Rogers, John Shepphird, Jaden Terrell, Dave Zeltserman. See the post I did earlier this week at SleuthSayers for more on this collection: Hope you’ll want to check it out: 

Available at Amazon and Down & Out Books

And now we return you to our regular programming already in progress: Another thing I remember is that I began by writing poems and song lyrics. I wanted to be a rock star—who didn’t? But I was always writing something.

One of my early novels—maybe my first completed novel, that’s also hard to remember—a satire about a screenwriter trying to make it in Hollywood, was almost published way back in the 80s. Almost. It was accepted for publication (if that's the right terminology) by a major publisher.  But then there was a "housecleaning" at that publisher: the old team of editors and assistant editors got swept out. And the new team didn't want most of the old team's slate of projects, so I got swept out with the "new broom". So that one almost got published. But by the time it was put into “turnaround” it was too late for it as a lot of the humor was dated. Remember Fawn Hall, Jessica Hahn, Donna Rice and Gary Hart—see what I mean, dated. ’Cause even though it was about a guy trying to make it in Hollywood, it had a lot of topical and satirical humor of the day. I work on it every once in a while to remove the dated satirical elements and make it more neutral in terms of topicality. So one of these days it might see the light.

The first writing that I got paid for was a piece in one of the L.A. papers about John Lennon on, I believe, the one year anniversary of his murder. It wasn't fiction, but it felt awfully good to actually get paid for writing something. But even though it felt good to be paid, I had mixed emotions because of the subject matter. Appropriate that this should appear today as today is John Lennon's birthday.

Available on Amazon

My first published fiction, but certainly not the first story I wrote, was a short story called Angels Flight (before Michael Connelly borrowed the title from me 😉). It was published in the Murder by Thirteen anthology and republished in L.A. Late @ Night, a collection of five of my stories. A review of L.A. Late @ Night in All Due Respect calls Angels Flight the reviewer's favorite story in the collection and says this about the two main characters, "They're a dynamic pair, and I'd like to see them together in more stories," so I might just have to oblige him.

The title for Angels Flight was inspired by the famous funicular railway in downtown L.A. and my love for old Los Angeles. I think the story was inspired when they drained one of the lakes in L.A. and found all kinds of junk there. So in my story they drain Echo Park Lake, find a dead body and the story takes off from there. And even though it was originally published a looooooooong time ago, it's still one of my favorites. I think it's (hopefully) surprise ending brings to mind Shakespeare's quote, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

Angels Flight

After Angels Flight, I had more stories published and eventually my novel White Heat, and others. And then I happily reached one of my major short stories goals, getting published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and its sister publication Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Another thrill was to be listed on the cover of EQMM, as well as winning their Readers Award. So there’s always hope, don’t give up.

All I can do to end is quote another rock band, the Grateful Dead, "What a long strange trip it's been." 

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

The Blues Don't Care got a nice review from It was a Dark and Stormy Book Club.

“On one level it’s a mystery where Bobby Saxon, with secrets he wants no one to find out, works to solve a murder and clear his name under extraordinary racially tinged circumstances. With a lot of twists and turns, this is an excellent mystery.  It takes place in World War II-era Los Angeles, and the author does a brilliant job that brings the long-gone era alive with memorable characters, scents, descriptions, and most of all, jazz. Highly recommended."

Buy on Amazon or Down & Out Books

***

And Tom Bergin at The Name is Archer Facebook page had this to say about Coast to Coast Noir:

"This is the new book out that contains stories by Archer group members Paul D. Marks and Dennis Palumbo. There are 12 stories in all in this collection and so far I've read the stories by Paul and Dennis. They are both really good stories. Paul's story is called Nowhere Man. The story is set in Southern California and the year is 1965. The story does conjure up the Beatles song but is also a very clever nod to the 1944 movie Laura. The story by Dennis is titled Steel City Blues and is set in Pittsburgh in the year 1970. Here's the opening line of the story - I'm sitting at my usual spot on the roof, back against one of the brick smokestacks, the revolver across my upraised knees. Dennis never wastes any time getting the reader involved in his stories and Steel City Blues is no exception. Interestingly both of these stories deal with obsession. Both stories show what can happen when a man becomes obsessed with a woman. It's noir. Things don't go well. Check the book out. I have a feeling the remaining ten stories will be as good as these two."

Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my web site www.PaulDMarks.com

Wendy the Wise, by Catriona

Tell us about the first story you ever wrote.

It bore a heavy influence from Enid Blyton. (I mean anvil-heavy.) And she was often a crime-writer, right? The Famous Five, the Secret Seven, The Put-em-rights . . . Even her school stories tended to be pulsing with thievery and vandalism. There was always some grey-eyed head girl (head girls tended to have grey-eyes, long humorous faces, and be Scottish, for some reason (?)) finding distinctive purple ink on the sole of an upturned slipper, thereby proving that its wearer stamped on some other girl's special fountain pen. Torrid stuff.

So my first story was a heist caper, in the Enid Blyton tradition. It was set in Fairyland, obvs, and featured a sting carried out on Wendy the Wicked (bad fairy) by Wanda the Wise (good fairy). I searched for it last night - I've got a copy somewhere - but couldn't lay my hand on it, so the plot is a bit hazy. I do know Wanda painted her own wand black and smuggled it into Wendy's cottage at one point. Wendy fell for this ruse, hook line and sinker.

The most notable thing about my debut effort is that my sister is called Wendy. And although she could have given her name to the good fairy, I went the other way like a right wee horror. I mean seriously, who does that? Me.

The other point to bear in mind is that my dad made the story into a book. This was a lot of work in them days: he took my scribbles to the office, persuaded a secretary there to type them up, mocked up a booklet, and ran off copies on a Banda (US Rexograph, I think), leaving space for me to add illustrations. 

My parents unearthed a copy in the attic about twenty years ago, during a clear-out. I was mortified. As a fix, I re-wrote the thing with Wanda the Wicked and Wendy the Wise, adding my sister's children.  Amy was the chief of staff at the fairy palace; Lewis was the head elf . . .

So there's my future mapped out right there: crime story; working off grievances by putting real people in; reliant on the kindness of others to get the work into the hands of readers; still editing years afterwards.

While I was searching for the story yesterday, I happened to turn up another bit of my mum and dad's attic clearage. This one's even earlier and barely a story at all, but it's got some topical relevance.

Transcript: "the miners are on strike and we cant get aney coall or aney electricity and we often have powr-cats one night when the powr was of all my famuly played Molopoly and I won my mummy lost and it got so bark daddy had to lite a lamp"

NB: my dad didn't wear yellow flares then or ever; none of us has curly hair; someone is missing (???); all my sisters had legs irl.

But the real point is that the winter of 1972 was horrible for the adults (especially if they were miners). They were inconvenienced and stressed, feeding in this case four wee girls with food cooked on a camping stove and worrying about work. But for us, it was a magical time when lamps were lit, shadow puppets abounded, and mummy and daddy never watched the news, but instead played "Molopoly" and let us win (I realise, with hindsight).

So, absolutely not to downplay the seriousness of this pandemic for one second, but as we worry about the children missing school and trips and pals, it's possible that some of them - the lucky ones - are making the sweetest memories of childhood.

Still. Wear your mask, wash your hands, keep six feet/two metres apart, party not, and - round this way, at least - vote like your life depends on it. It does.

Cx 

Short story, long story by Cathy Ace

Q: Tell us about the first story/stories you ever wrote. First book, published or no.

Okey dokey, here comes a long story about a short story...

After all the usual school essays, and poems for our Eisteddfods etc., the first short story with a criminal bent I ever wrote was called “Dear George”. It was written in a car park in 1987, in about an hour and a half.

Why?

Well, I’d been waiting to collect my sister at the airport, and her flight was delayed. I bought a magazine to read to fill the time (I’d forgotten to carry a book – what an admission!) and the one I chose was a magazine called “Company”. The reason I chose that one was because there was a bold encouragement to do so on the cover: “Murder, and be published!” it shouted at me, so I read the article about a short story competition, and thought, I might enter that.

Fast forward a few months: I rediscovered the magazine, only to realize that the deadline for the competition was a few days away. I’d been cogitating about what I would write (you know, when I got around to writing it!) and was a bit annoyed I hadn’t pulled my finger out…so, the next day, in the middle of my work day as a sales person for a label-printing company, I left the HQ office of my client – Marks & Spencer on Baker Street (yes, that Baker Street) in London – and sat in my car in the multi-storey car park adjacent to Baker Street and wrote the story (by hand, of course) on a notepad. A friend of mine at the office typed it up for me that afternoon, I read it through once and made a few copy changes by hand, and delivered the “manuscript” to the office of the magazine the next day when I was back in central London again.

Fast forward another few months, and I was somewhat taken aback when I received a letter to say the story would, indeed, be published in an anthology called “Murder & Company” alongside stories by “real” authors. I was pleased, excited a little, but – to be honest – not overly so: I’d just remortgaged my flat to be able to set up my own business, and it was tough going, so it was a bit of a frisson rather than a “this could change my life” moment…I had to make my new business work well enough to pay my bills, and the salaries of my freshly-minted employees. The book launch in 1988 was quite an experience, held, as it was, in a fabulous then-new book shop on the Charing Cross Road called Murder One, owned by the legendary Maxim Jakubowski (with whom I am now Friends on FB – ain’t life wonderful!?).

The story was then (in 1990) included in another anthology called “Thrillers”, which was created to become a book for the England & Wales GCSE English Language syllabus (the exam taken at 16 years of age) which blew me away! The list of authors whose work was also included reads like a Who’s Who of crime writing…I’d heard of, and had read, everyone except me! (Side bar: when I first met the wonderful Peter Lovesey in 2017 he was kind enough to sign my copy of this anthology…to which he’d written the introduction, and in which he had two stories…and Felix Frances signed his father’s short story in it for me too!)

By the time I was approached by Martin Jarvis and Rosalind Ayres in 2007 asking if they could produce the story for BBC Radio 4, I had sold my business, migrated to Canada, and had written nine marketing textbooks. The recording of the fabulous Alex Kingston (she of ER and Doctor Who fame) reading “Dear George” isn’t currently available to listen to online but I know that sitting in Canada listening to the broadcast, as Mum and Dad, and my sister Sue, did the same in Wales, was one of my proudest moments. My story, on the BBC! WOW! It was July 9^th 2007.

My father died soon after that broadcast, and I decided that, if I was going to write fiction, I’d better get on with it. So I wrote eleven more short/long stories to accompany “Dear George” and self-published “MURDER: Month by Month”. “Dear George” appeared as the story for January, and it filled that same role in my 2017 publication “Murder Keeps No Calendar”.

For one short story it’s worked hard...and it DID change my life, after all! It features DI Evan Glover, who also appeared in another short story in those aforementioned collections, as well as a novella in “Murder Knows No Season” and in my standalone novel “The Wrong Boy”. He was my very first police character…and he gained not only the #1 amazon bestseller spot with “The Wrong Boy” but that book’s also now been optioned to become a TV mini-series, to be produced and broadcast in Welsh and English by the same UK indie production company that makes the wonderful Agatha Raisin series, Free@LastTV.

Little did I know that all these murders would result from me picking up a magazine to "kill a few hours" at an airport…!

I sent the print copies of those two, original, collections of short stories and novellas to a publisher on Vancouver Island, and they asked me to write what turned out to be the first Cait Morgan Mystery. There are now nine books in that series, which has also been optioned for a series of TV movies by Free@Last TV. 

You can read about all my books – including the collection which includes “Dear George” - at my website, here: http://www.cathyace.com/

If you’d like to read “Dear George” (FREE!!!!) you can do that by using the “Look Inside” feature at amazon, here: Link to MURDER KEEPS NO CALENDAR

Way Back Then...

Tell us about the first story/stories you ever wrote. First book, published or no.

From Frank

I've known I was a writer from a very young age. As a result, I honestly couldn't tell you the first story I ever wrote... although to be fair, they were more vignettes than stories, and all terribly derivative. 

Hopefully someone doesn't cut and paste that into a review for my latest book!

I can say that the first (paid) story that was ever published was called "Bill's Son." Wide Open Magazine published it in Spring of 1990 and paid me $15 for it... a check, which as you can see, I never cashed.

I wrote "Bill's Son" when I was eighteen or nineteen. Ironically, it is not crime fiction (I didn't really start pegging away at that until about 2004). The story is about Ralph, a grocer who is very risk averse. He lives vicariously through the exploits of Bill and mostly through Bill's son. Bill is the produce manager, and a few years older than Ralph. Ralph is there when Bill announces his impending fatherhood, and then through all of the many milestones that follow - birth, growing up, being an athletic stud and a prom king, to graduating and going out into the world. 

Bill's son took risks, some of which worked out and others that didn't, but he never gave up. He graduated high in his class, became a lawyer, tried to open his own firm, things like that.

Ralph, meanwhile, lived a life that was very much the same. He worked at the grocery store, day in and day out. He rarely put himself out there or took a chance on anything.

And so it goes until Bill's son is in his mid-thirties and Ralph in his early fifties. Bill himself is nearing retirement when tragedy strikes. Bill's son dies suddenly. (I re-read the story again as I wrote this piece, and found it interesting that I never said how the guy died. But I guess that wasn't the focus, so...). Bill and his wife, Jeni, are understandably devastated, but so it Ralph.

This untimely death ends up being the catalyst that gives Ralph the courage to stretch, and to start to truly live himself. Bill's son is dead, he thinks, but I'm still alive.

It's nothing too impressive - basically a 'life is short, so live like it' story. But 52-year-old me is mildly impressed that 18-year-old me even understood that sentiment, much less wrote about it. Especially since I'm now basically the same age that Ralph is at the end of the story. It's evokes a curious mixture of "Wow, I know so much more now than I did then" and "Wow, I'm basically still eighteen" (or fifteen).

Anyway, that was my first published-for-pay story. Anyone who wants to actually read it (about a five minute read), message me and I'll send you the PDF. Of course, it's spoiled now, so don't expect to be bowled over...

My first published novel was Under a Raging Moon, and it is most definitely crime fiction. But the first novel I wrote was a dark coming of age story called Not Without Saying Goodbye. I wrote that when I was eighteen, too. I haven't looked at it in many years - I don't even have a digital version - but I'm sure it's horrible and embarrasing.

Which is, of course, the perfect first novel.

My thirieth (or so) novel is less embarrassing... at least, that's my take on things. 

Badge Heavy, which I wrote with Colin Conway, came out in September. It's the third book in the Charlie-316 series, which will conclude next month in Code Four. No waiting around to find out what happens in this quadrilogy!

"Author, author!" They Shouted (In My Dreams)

 Q: Tell us about the first story/stories you ever wrote. First book, published or no.

 

- from Susan

 

Only someone a lot younger than me would pose an open-ended question like that, since my “first” was back in the dark ages before fire was tamed. Let’s not go there except to say, yes, I have been writing stories, poems, and even a family newspaper (The Wolff Weekly) since I learned how to form letters and words. The Weekly was a cheerful carbon-paper, illustrated edition for 4 readers or almost readers, properly organized by banners, heds, and ledes. Considering that the Wolff household was rarely less than chaotic, the Weekly was often a fiction story, alas. Nevertheless, I was in the third grade and had big dreams.

 

I wrote a lot of feature articles for local newspapers here in northern California in the early 70s, stories about artists, and descendants of locally important historical figures like ship captains, and World War II shipbuilders. Not fiction, but storytelling at ten cents a word. I loved it.

 

My first fiction manuscript was about halfway through the laborious process of typing and retyping and ordering White Out by the carton when I realized my vanity in thinking I could write about a 1) detective and 2) a Latinx detective at that, given that I knew one San Francisco policeman and that was the sum total of my awareness. Reams of paper wasted. Lesson at least partly learned. 

 

I did know some cool entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley in the mid 1970s and got a perfectly good crime fiction idea over dinner at a neighbor’s one night. Problem was 1) I knew nothing about biotech and 2) nobody else other than these pioneers did either. About 70 pages in, it was well-researched – more dinner parties – but since it was still almost incomprehensible to me, I dropped it even though the co-founder of Genentech was that neighbor and he really, really thought it would be a bestseller. He admitted he never read crime fiction.

 

Skip way past that. The manuscript for my first completed book was on more familiar turf – art markets, non-profit fundraising, and settings I knew and loved. It wasn’t smooth, but after a lot of re-writes and much good advice, it became MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT.

 

We writers have an itch that comes on early, and we scratch it every way we can, rebuffing rejection, overcoming our own shortcomings, and pushing on. Very few of us get rich, not many earn a real living, and we have learned to be proud of being called “mid list authors” rather than invisible. It’s a life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Breakin' the Law

 Do you find that proper grammar and structure sometimes interfere with style and tone? What liberties do you take with language for the sake of style?

 

By Abir Mukherjee

 

 

Morning. It’s Friday, and once again I find myself in the difficult position that my fellow bloggers have made all the salient points on the topic more eloquently, powerfully and humorously than I could hope to, including James’ point about Welsh and the pronunciation of Llanfairfechan!

 

If I have one request, it’s that on his next blog, James includes a voice recording of him pronouncing Wales’ longest place name: Llanfairpwll-gwyngyllgogerychwyrndrob-wllllantysiliogogogoch.

 

I was amused to read that Trainspotting had to be subtitled when it was released in North America. As we say in Glasgow, ‘It’s no’ ma accent tha’s the problem, it’s your ears!’

 

So I’ll keep it brief today. Proper grammar and structure are of course, important, but like anything else, they can’t be hard and fast and you’ve got to know when to break the rules.

 

Why are they important? Well language is a tool, and writing is a craft. Like any craft you need to practice to get better. On day one at carpentry school, they don’t just hand you a circular saw and say, ‘there you go, get on with it’. You learn slowly, you learn the rules, you learn to use the tools and then, once everyone is confident you’re not going to hack off any limbs, they give you that saw and leave the room for a cup of tea and you set to work, off-piste, the Michaelangelo of medium density fibreboard and plywood.

 

It’s the same with writing. You need to learn the rules, understand them and use them, before you can break them.

 

Again Id echo my colleagues from earlier in the week structure and grammar are important because otherwise reading long poorly punctuated passages proves tiring and well you cant be bothered reading it after a while and you just stop and go read something else instead innit

 

The exception, as has been pointed out, is probably direct speech. Nobody speaks the queen’s English – not you, not me, not Meghan Markle; the queen maybe, and prince Phillip, but he’s like a hundred years old and no one has really listened to him since the nineteen eighties.

 

Speech patterns don’t follow the rules, and speech and accents add authenticity to your characters. But even here it’s a fine line. It’s great if you know the dialect or accent inside out – then you can write with authenticity – but I’ve read passages by great authors, famous authors, who really don’t have the ear for the accents they’re writing and end up veering into stereotype. (For the record, no one in Scotland has ever actually said, ‘hoots mon, it’s a braw bricht nicht the nicht,’ and no, Scrooge McDuck doesn’t count.)

 

But even if you do have an ear for perfect dialogue in what might be considered an unusual accent, I’d ask whether there are limits to just how much authentic dialogue you’d want to use. The problem is, if I’m writing in Glaswegian (‘Weegie’ for short), readers sitting in San Francisco or Samoa might be able to decipher it, but if I’m doing it for page after page, it might affect their enjoyment of the story. 

 

So, I’d say – learn the rules, then break them, but like the British government - only in a specific and limited way, and only when it’s right to do so, like when James pronounces Llanfairpwll-gwyngyllgogerychwyrndrob-wllllantysiliogogogoch.

 

Jazz Is Better Than Muzak by James W. Ziskin

  Do you find that proper grammar and structure sometimes interfere with style and tone? What liberties do you take with language for the sake of style?

Oh, boy, do I love talking about language. So much so, in fact, that I’m going on a bit of a tangent before addressing this week’s question.

Here goes. First, let’s all realize that language changes. How could it not? Think of English. More than 1.5 billion people speak English. (One thousand five-hundred millions.) Of these speakers, somewhere between 360 and 400 million are native speakers of English, i.e. English is their first language. Imagine trying to get all those people to agree on spelling and usage. We don’t have an Académie Anglaise to set linguistic standards, after all. Vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling, style, and grammar vary significantly among the many populations who speak our language. I like to think of these varieties as flavors—flavours to our Canadian and British Criminal Minds friends. These flavors include American, UK English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Australian, South African, Canadian, Indian, etc., with countless sub-variations among those. (Ha, Baskin-Robbins, with your thirty-one flavors... Give me a break.) The flavors of English are—usually—mutually intelligible. Americans and Brits mostly understand each other without an interpreter, though there are clear differences in accent and vocabulary. I, for one, have never been able to get the hang of Cockney rhyming slang. I simply don’t get it. Nor do I profess to understand everything Catriona McPherson says, but that’s more due to Scottish vocabulary than pronunciation. Never forget, however, that Trainspotting was subtitled when it was released in the US. 

And our own Cathy Ace may recall that several years ago I phoned her with a question about Welsh, just as she was boarding a cruise ship. I was in subtitling at the time, and we were working on a film set in Wales. Our client couldn’t provide us with a script, so we had to transcribe the entire film from scratch. That was a tall order, given the unfamiliar accents and cultural references. But we managed to get most everything right, except the name of a Welsh city one of the characters mentioned. The pronunciation of the name didn’t match anything we could find on a map. I described it to Cathy over the phone, trying to imitate the name, and she knew it right away: Llanfairfechan. Take a look at this wonderful video on how to pronounce it and tell me if you could spell it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjBTIzYhpn8

This is another wonderful lesson about language: spelling is NOT language. (But, please, spellcheck your work before submitting. Spelling may not be language, but it can piss off editors and readers if you get it wrong.) English is the worst offender when it comes to phonetic spelling diverging from pronunciation. (For this post, I won’t go into the challenges of languages that use ideograms instead of letters.) Think of the vowels and -gh- sounds in tough, though, bough, ghost. Never the same. How does one know how to pronounce them? We memorize, that’s how. French, too, has its challenges, though not to the same degree as English. Take a name like “Meursault.” Where’s the -l-? The -t-? And the -eu- isn’t chopped liver either. Very difficult for non-native speakers to get right. And how would you pronounce “un grand amour”? Hint: the -d- is pronounced as a -t-. Yes, that’s right. A -t-.

Spelling is not language.

At least not from a linguistic point of view. The relationship between spelling and pronunciation can be complicated by phonological changes, accent, and—often—history. Spelling tends to be conservative. We hold onto spelling conventions long after they no longer reflect the current pronunciation. Take “butter.” Americans say, “budder.” Brits tend to say “buttah,” though many—e.g. Ricky Gervais—say it with a full glottal stop for the -t- in the back of the throat. Something like “buh-ah.” Imagine if Ricky were teaching English as a second language and told his students it was spelled b-u-t-t-e-r. Where are the -t-s? Where’s the -r-?

Vowels can be even more problematic. There are twelve distinct “pure” vowel sounds in English, but only five letters that we call vowels. (Okay, there’s the semi-vowel, y, but that’s not a “pure” vowel sound.) So we either need more letters in our language to represent these sounds, or we need memorize our archaic spelling. A pure vowel, by the way, is one consisting of a single phoneme, the smallest distinct unit of speech. It’s made up of only one sound, as opposed to, say, a diphthong, which has two pure vowel sounds mushed together in one syllable. Think Ow! Ah-oo. That’s a diphthong. And there are even triphthongs, though there is some disagreement on whether they actually exist in English. I say they do. Ever hear that odd way some Australians say Oh? Or No? Not all do it, but many manage to squeeze three distinct vowel sounds into one syllable. Something like ah-oh-oo.

But let’s leave diph- and triphthongs aside and talk about pure vowels. Their pronunciation differs wildly from one English variety to another, even within the same country sometimes. Even just a few miles down the road. I pronounce “France” to rhyme with “pants.” My wife, who is from India, pronounces it more like the French do, with an -ah- for the -a-. Fraahnce.

You may well ask, “So what if language changes and English has many varieties? The job of a linguist is not to correct others’ language, but to describe it.” And you’d be right. What does all this have to do with us writers, anyway? We’re not linguists. We tell stories.

Yet, at times, we writers are like “descriptive” linguists. We represent, without judgment, our characters’ language and personalities through dialogue. To accomplish this, we strive to make their dialogue “appear” realistic. I say “appear” because it’s really just an illusion. If we wrote truly realistic dialogue, our books would be unreadable, boring messes. Long and imprecise—with fits and starts, self-correction, repetition, and linguistic breakdowns. (Watch a non-scripted reality show and compare what those people say to the dialogue in a scripted sitcom. You’ll see how polished the sitcom dialogue actually is. And that’s a good thing. That’s the value a writer brings to the exercise.) And then think for a moment about the way Shakespeare wrote his dialogue. One actor at a time, speaking without interruption. It may be beautiful writing and great storytelling, but no one would say it’s realistic dialogue. So, to make dialogue more realistic, we’ve learned to have our characters interrupt each other and speak more as actual people speak.

At other times, though, we writers act more like “prescriptive” linguists—perhaps in our narration and description—and employ correct usage and syntax. It’s remarkable how versatile and nimble language can be, and it’s our job to use it as the powerful tool it is for our storytelling. While speakers of any language/dialect share a nebulous natural grammar, which allows them to understand each other, that shared grammar has its limits. It’s a continuum that, on the extreme ends, blurs into something incomprehensible. The society matron has no idea what the street urchin is saying and vice versa.

In my Ellie Stone books, I write a first-person narrator. Her language is precise—at times precious, for comedic effect—and very correct from a grammatical point of view. She knows her parts of speech, the double genitive, and the difference between a subject pronoun and an object pronoun. Me and her both know those. She always uses a comma in direct address—so should you—and will cut you if argue about the necessity and elegance of the Oxford comma.

But that’s Ellie. Not my other characters. They say things such as, “I seen him yesterday.” And they might fall victim to the occasional spoonerism or malapropism. A gangster in A STONE’S THROW described a woman he’d known years before as, “Plenty pretty back then, but surly-like and greedy. Wasn’t going to win any Miss Congenitalia contests.”

We writers use language to tell our stories. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and words are tools we use to put that language on paper in a way others will understand. Playing with these tools, we can create fabulous effects and amuse, anger, petrify, and/or enchant our readers. Those effects have their origins in the wild complexity of English and its flavors. And, of course, its ever-changing nature. This is a very different thing from prescriptive grammar. The kind Miss Grundy taught to Archie and Jughead. As Dietrich put it, once we know the rules we can bend them.

One last metaphor. Think about the difference between your favorite jazz or rock or classical tune when transposed to Muzak. Pretty awful, even if the notes are the same. The rhythm, the pauses, the hesitation, the variations... That’s what makes jazz better than Muzak. And Muzak is what perfect grammar would be if all your characters spoke in complete sentences with Received Pronunciation to the exclusion of all else.

With all due respect

Do you find that proper grammar and structure sometimes interferes with style and tone? What liberties do you take with language for the sake of style?

by Dietrich

I don’t find that it interferes — because I won’t let it. Not because I’m a rebel or challenged by literacy, but for the sake of tone and style.  

An understanding of grammar is a wonderful thing and certainly leads to clarity and effective communication. The funny thing about grammar is I studied up on it when I took to writing short stories some years ago. There was a tall stack of texts on my desk, and I relearned what I had forgotten from my school days, and then some.

“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.” – Jack Kerouac 

Anyone who’s read my stuff can tell you I don’t exactly adhere to what I learned from that stack of texts. And while I don’t follow many grammar rules in my novel writing, I’m familiar with them, and I know when I’m breaking them.

And it’s funny, we generally break grammar rules all the time. Ever stand in a line with a sign that reads Ten Items or Fewer. We don’t balk when someone says, “Hey, what are you up to?” Although we might raise a brow if someone said, “ To whom shall I pass the joint?”

"That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put!” – Winston Churchill

“I can’t get no satisfaction.” — Mick Jagger

“Lay lady lay.” — Bob Dylan

I generally write from the perspective of a character, so the writing needs to sound authentic to that person. And I assure you most of these people wouldn’t know an adjectives from an adverb, let alone know there’s a royal order to them. And they don’t know squat about em and en dashes, subject-verb agreement, split infinitives, compound or run-on sentences. They speak in fragments and start their sentences with conjuctions and end them with prepositions. And if you pointed it out to them, they’d give you a look and say, “What’re you gonna do ‘bout it?” What can we expect, they’re misfits, marginals and criminals. And not one of them’s ever pondered why the O sounds different in “tomb” and “bomb” or “comb.” 

The important thing is that the characters sound natural and real. It most cases it would sound phony if they started speaking proper English.

“Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.” ― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

And consider that William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, James Joyce and Jack Kerouac, didn’t have much use for punctuation. 

So, grammar is the correct use of English, and I generally stick to the rules when I’m writing letters or a blog like this one. But, when I’m writing fiction, that rulebook goes right out the window.