Re-Releasing a Backlist: Guest post by Elaine Viets

Today I welcome one of my favorite people and writers Elaine Viets who shares with us her experience of re-releasing a Backlist. This is a great article for writers with a backlist and for readers eager to read her series. The Dead-End Job novels are being re-issued by JABberwocky Literary Agency. Get the whole set or treat yourself to the books you missed. Prices start at $2.99 and go up. Check them out here. http://awfulagent.com/ebooks/elaine-viets  

*** To win an ebook from Elaine Viets' Dead-End Job series, make a comment below. The winner will be notified by April 1 ***

Elaine Viets:
Re-Releasing a Backlist

I didn't realize it until I met with my new agent, Joshua Bilmes, but I am "backlist rich." That's how Joshua, president of JABberwocky Literary in New York, described me. He wanted to re-release my backlist. JABberwocky represents award-winning authors including Charlaine Harris, Brandon Sanderson, Toni Kelner and Tanya Huff. Joshua has made books available from two dozen of his clients within the agency's e-book program.

Done right, re-releases are expensive: re-releasing my 23 books (13 Dead-End Job and 10 Josie Marcus mystery shopper mysteries) can cost a solid five figures, and JABberwocky fronted the money.

It takes a lot of work.

First, Joshua got the rights back from the publishers – he sent them revision of rights letters, and the publishers granted most of those requests.

He decided to go with the Dead-End Job mysteries first. Helen Hawthorne is a St. Louis woman who once made six figures a year, had a beautiful home— and a good-for-nothing husband she caught in the act with their neighbor. When she divorced the bum, the judge saddled Helen with alimony. Helen refused to pay her ex, tossed her wedding ring in the Mississippi River, and went on the run. She wound up in Fort Lauderdale, working dead-end jobs for cash under the table. Helen – and I – had worked at everything from hotel maid to telemarketer. The pink collar jobs that Helen and I worked for that series make it even more relevant today than when the series first started in 2003.

The Dead-End Job novels get new covers and fresh cover copy. It was exciting to work with artist Jenn Reese at Tiger Bright Studios for new DEJ covers. She designed 13 clean, bright covers with a different symbol and color for each novel. They captured the series' lighthearted tone and Florida setting.

Meanwhile, I had to read all 13 Dead-End Job mysteries, and correct the small errors that happen when the files are converted to book formats, plus the occasional typo. I was blessed with good copyeditors for this series, but one was crazy for semicolons. I have a deep, abiding hatred for semicolons in novels. They should be banished to term papers. I rewrote to get rid of the pests.

Each book had new cover copy, and this slogan: "The thrilling mystery series about one woman trying to make a living . . . while other people are making a killing."

It had been awhile since I'd read my novels. Readers ask me about a scene or a character, and I can't remember what happened.

"Well, you wrote it," they'll say.

Yes, I did. But once I finish one book, I'm on to the next.

I can't read my novels when they're hot off the presses. That's when I see all the parts that sag and the phrases I wish were more graceful.

I wrote Shop till You Drop 15 years ago, so it was almost as if someone else had written those books. Some lines made me laugh. In Clubbed to Death, Helen's co-worker describes their hated boss this way: "Her heart is as hard as her fake boobs."

In Just Murdered, Helen talks about how when she caught her cheating husband with their next-door neighbor Sandy, "She hit Rob where it hurt the most—right in the radiator." Helen knew the way to really hurt a man was to destroy his car.

Some of Helen's quotes reflected her philosophy – and mine. In Murder with Reservations, she tells her husband Phil,

"I hate to cook but I love good food. Most nights I settle for scrambled eggs or tuna out of the can.”

"Life is too short for bad food," Phil said. "I could teach you to cook."

"I'm hopeless," Helen said.

"How come women who can't cook are proud of it?" Phil said.

"Because we've escaped a drudgery men never have to face. Some men think cooking is creative. Women like me think it's a trap. We're afraid we'll have to waste our time making meals instead of doing what we really want."

And some were wistful. In Clubbed to Death, when her awful ex disappears, Helen says, "How come when you finally got what you wanted, it wasn't what you needed?"

***

Elaine Viets returns to her hardboiled roots with Brain Storm, the debut novel in her Angela Richman, Death Investigator series. Charlaine Harris calls Brain Storm “a complex novel of crime, punishment, and medical malfeasance.” Elaine has 30 bestselling mysteries in four series: hardboiled Francesca Vierling, traditional Dead-End Job, cozy Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper, and Angela Richman, Death Investigator. Elaine passed the Medicolegal Death Investigator Training Course for forensic professionals. She’s won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards. www.elaineviets.com 

Going Back to the Dark Side: Guest Post by Elaine Viets

Elaine Viets has written 29 books three series: the dark Francesca Vierling newspaper mysteries, the traditional, humorous Dead-End Job mysteries, and the cozy Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper mysteries. She returns to the dark side with Brain Storm, the first mystery in her Angela Richman, death investigator series, and her 30th novel. Pre-order the Brain Storm e-book for $1.99 through August 1. http://amzn.to/29KudfA

Elaine Viets:
Going Back to the Dark Side

I'm going home – and my home is dark, violent and bloody. After twenty-four cozy and traditional mysteries, I'm writing dark mysteries again: the Angela Richman, Death Investigator series.

My first series, the Francesca Vierling newspaper mysteries, was hardboiled. When Random House bought Bantam Dell and wiped out that division, I switched to the funny, traditional Dead-End Job mysteries, featuring Helen Hawthorne. The Art of Murder, the 15th Dead-End Job novel, is just out in hardcover. I also wrote ten cozy Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper mysteries.

I love both series, but I never abandoned the dark side. I wrote dark short stories for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and anthologies edited by Charlaine Harris and Lawrence Block. I wanted to spend more time on the dark side, but I didn’t want to do another police procedural or a private eye with a dead wife or a drinking problem. Other writers had done those and done them well.

Angela Richman, my new protagonist, is a death investigator in mythical Chouteau Country, Missouri, stronghold of the over-privileged and the people who serve them. Brain Storm, the first mystery in the new death investigator series, debuts August 2.

My death investigator mysteries aren't too gory – not like Patricia Cornwell's "I boiled my dead boyfriend's head." This series is closer to Kathy Reichs's Tempe Brennan series.

Many readers aren't familiar with death investigators, but the profession practices nationwide. At a murder the death investigator is in charge of the body, and the police handle the rest of the crime scene. The DI photographs the body, documents its wounds, and records the body core temperature, clothing and more. Death investigators work for the medical examiner. They are trained professionals, but do not have medical degrees. I wanted the training – and the contacts – to make the new series accurate. Last January, I passed the Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course for forensic professionals at St. Louis University, a two-credit college course.

Now that I'm writing dark again, my writing has changed. Here's what happens when I jumped from cozies to hard-boiled:

My characters can cuss. Angela Richman's best friend and colleague is Katie, Chouteau County assistant medical examiner Dr. Katherine Kelly Stern. Pathologists tend to be eccentric, and Katie is based on a real pathologist who’d perfected the art of swearing. Her profanity was a mood indicator. I could tell how angry she was by whether she used "fricking," "freaking," or the ultimate F-bomb and how often she employed these and other cuss words. Oddly enough, when she swore, the words didn't sound offensive.

Katie cusses with style and grace in Brain Storm.

Body counts. In cozy and traditional mysteries, the murders take place offstage. In the new death investigator series, readers aren't forced to take a blood bath, but they will see crime scenes and forensic procedures. They'll get a firsthand look at the sights, sounds, even the smells of death.

Real weapons. In cozy mysteries, when Josie Marcus battles killers, she resorts to “domestic violence," using kitchen tools, gardening equipment, and whatever she can grab for weapons.

Helen Hawthorne in the Dead-End Job mysteries is a little bolder. She's armed with pepper spray to take down killers, though in Checked Out she did get sprayed with her own weapon.

In Brain Storm, when Angela confronted the killer, she was in an office, surrounded by the standard supplies: waste baskets, chairs, coffee mugs, letter openers. I was prepared to have Angela grab one, when it dawned on me: Wait! This isn't a cozy.

You can use firepower.

So Angela shot the killer in the head. It felt so good.

Request for Tributes to Jerry Healy

The MWA Florida Chapter is collecting remembrances of Jerry Healy.
Please send your tributes of 250 words or less to eviets@aol.com.
Favorite photos (Jpg and gif files) are also welcome.
Tributes must be received by Tuesday, August 26.
Please limit your tribute items to 250 words.

So sad...

Elaine Viets: How to Keep a Florida Series from a Dead End

The lastest issue of Mystery Readers Journal: Florida Mysteries (Volume 28:4) is now available in both PDF format and hardcopy. Check out the Table of Contents and order it HERE.

Elaine Viets, one of the contributors to this issue, writes two bestselling mystery series, the Dead-End Job mysteries and the Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries. Final Sail, her latest hardcover (NAL, 2012), explores the world of the haves and the have-yachts. Elaine won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards. 

ELAINE VIETS:
How to Keep a Florida Series from a Dead End

My Dead-End Job series started because I worked in South Florida.

I'd been writing the Francesca Vierling mysteries set in my hometown of St. Louis, even though my husband, Don Crinklaw, and I now lived in South Florida.

Florida seemed like such a juicy setting for a series: We lived in a condo on the beach and each day more characters paraded past on the boardwalk:

A pony-tailed hippy rode a bike with a cockatoo perched on the handlebars.

A stately disabled woman motored on her scooter, an alert Boston terrier at her feet.

Dealers boldly sold pot to tourists at a beach restaurant.

Retired mobsters discussed their cholesterol at the Italian restaurant two doors down.

Beach bunnies flirted with the strapping lifeguards in the tower near my window.

They were begging me to put them in a book. But my series was set at a St. Louis newspaper. I'd been a reporter for more than 25 years. The Midwest is charming and quirky, but it lacks South Florida's outrageous style.

Then Don and I had a bad year: he was diagnosed with stage three cancer (he's fine now, thanks), we were audited by the IRS, we lost our money in the stock market and my Francesca series was canceled, along with dozens of other series when Dell wiped out its mystery division.

I went to work as a bookseller at a Barnes & Noble in Hollywood, Florida, and learned the obvious: When you make $11 an hour, people treat you worse than if you have a well-paid corporate job.

My Dead-End Job series was born. I started making notes about the colorful characters I met at the bookstore:

The furious man who screamed at me when I didn't process his return fast enough. The other customers defended me, bless them.

The old man who brought his lunch and read at the store all day, but only bought a book when his Social Security check arrived.

The woman who talked on her cell phone while I rang up her books.

It was all fodder for a new series. Helen, like me, is a Midwestern woman. We have similar views of the world, except I had a better marriage.

The bookstore wasn't the first book in my Dead-End Job series. I set Shop Till You Drop (Signet, 2003) where I had my first retail job: a high-end clothing store where the owner went to federal prison.
 
Murder Between the Covers (Signet, 2003), the second book in the series, was my bookstore mystery. I worked as a telemarketer for Dying to Call You (Signet, 2004). That's where Helen met her future husband, private eye Phil Sagemont. Yes, Helen works as a topless bartender to solve a murder in that book. No, I didn't work that job.
 
For Just Murdered (Signet, 2005) I worked in the bridal department at Zola Keller, a chic Fort Lauderdale store. I killed the mother of the bride in that novel, but the publisher wouldn't let me call it "One Dead Mother."

The Dead-End Job series went hardcover at book five, Murder Unleashed (NAL, 2006), where Helen and I worked at a dog boutique. Murder with Reservations (NAL, 2007) was the hardest job I ever worked. I was a hotel maid and made 28 beds, cleaned 17 toilets and the honeymoon Jacuzzi daily.
My back killed me.
 
Clubbed to Death (NAL, 2008) was the most unpleasant job: customer service for a country club whose motto should have been "Do you know who I am?" I hated waiting on spoiled rich people.
 
Killer Cuts (NAL, 2009) was a lot more fun. I was an assistant to a South Beach hairstylist.

After five books, Helen and Phil wanted to marry. But that plan changed on their wedding day.

I had a change of plans, too. Jobs, even dead-end ones, were getting hard to find. Florida's unemployment rate was one of the highest in the USA. I was able to work at a designer resale shop for Half-Price Homicide (NAL, 2010). I learned trophy wives were allowed unlimited shopping, but their controlling husbands wouldn't give them cash. The wives bought expensive items and sold them at the resale shop for personal cash.

Helen and Phil married in that novel. Their lives changed, and so did the direction of my series. Florida unemployment was now at 11.4 percent. More than a million people were out of work. I couldn't take a job for research when so many people needed real employment.

But Helen keeps working those dead-end jobs. In Pumped for Murder (NAL, 2011), newlywed Helen and Phil started their private eye agency, Coronado Investigations. Helen works at a gym and falls into extreme bodybuilding.

I attended private eye conventions to learn about the gumshoe business and did more research. For my May 2013 book, Board Stiff, I learned stand-up paddleboarding.

Actually, it was more like fall-off paddleboarding. In nine feet of water.

Call it in-depth research.

---

V is for Viets: Elaine Viets

Elaine w/Pizza & Gooey Butter Cake

V is for Viets: Elaine Viets. Today the Mystery Author Alphabet Meme continues. I welcome this guest post from Elaine Viets. Be sure and scroll back for other author entries.

Elaine Viets writes two national bestselling mystery series. Her Dead-End Job series is a satiric look at a serious subject – the minimum-wage world. Elaine and her character, Helen Hawthorne, work a different low-paying job each book, from telemarketer to hotel maid. Elaine’s second series features St. Louis mystery shopper Josie Marcus. Elaine Viets has won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards.

**BOOK CONTEST**  Comment below to win a copy of one of Elaine's two new books!
 
ELAINE VIETS: Living in Two Worlds

Each year, I spend half my writing life in St. Louis, Missouri, and the other half in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. These two cities are in two different states. They could be on other planets.

Josie Marcus, heroine of my Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries, lives in Maplewood, an old inner ring suburb of St. Louis. Josie is 31, a single mother with an 11-year-old daughter, Amelia.

Josie’s society is deeply connected: Everyone knows everyone, and if they don’t, they know someone who does. Josie’s nosy neighbor, Mrs. Mueller, runs her own private Neighborhood Watch Program. She ratted out a teen-age Josie for smoking, and Josie left a burning bag of dog doo on Mrs. M.’s front porch.

Josie lives in a two-family flat owned by her mother. She is Josie’s backup babysitter. Jane also drives Amelia to school when Josie is working – or solving a mystery. Josie survives on a mystery-shopper’s meager pay thanks to this help from her mother. But Jane has problems of her own. Like many of her readers, Josie belongs to the sandwich generation. She’s caught between caring for her mother and her child.

Helen Hawthorne, my other protagonist, lives nearly twelve hundred miles away in Fort Lauderdale. She’s the star of my Dead-End Job mysteries. Helen is ten years older than Josie and doesn’t have children. Helen has created her own family at the Coronado Tropic Apartments. Margery, her cigarette-smoking landlady, is her surrogate mother. Peggy is a sisterly friend. Helen divorced badly and for a while she dated every druggie, drunk and deadbeat in Florida. Recently, she married Phil Sagemont, a private detective.

Readers have different expectations for these series. They want Josie to be a good mother and a good daughter with old-school values.

Helen’s South Florida is a lot whackier than Josie’s hometown. I can get away with more off-the-wall characters in Fort Lauderdale than I can in St. Louis. Peggy, Helen’s friend, never goes anywhere without her parrot Pete on her shoulder. The poor bird would freeze to death in the St. Louis winters.

I enjoy moving between these two worlds. Right now, I’m promoting my new Josie Marcus mystery shopper novel, “Death on a Platter.” Each book, Josie mystery shops something new. This time, she shopped St. Louis food for a national tour group. This gave me the chance to write about – and eat – local specialties: Gooey butter cake is an artery-clogging concoction oozing butter and sugar. St. Louis’ Kakao Chocolate has sea-salt chocolate caramels and chocolate bark sprinkled with locally ground coffee. I even ate pig ear and snoot sandwiches. Did you know snoot sandwiches have been singled out as the city’s contribution to barbecue? I read that in The Economist magazine. They’re pig noses on a bed of potato salad and white bread, slathered with sweet red barbecue sauce. C&K Barbecue makes tasty snoots in St. Louis.

Both these very different worlds have their own pleasures. Writing a Josie book is like going home. I get to visit my favorite places and old friends.

Helen Hawthorne lives in Fort Lauderdale, my current home. I love the rustle of palm trees and the soft feel of salt-tinged air. I like this fluid society: No one knows what your father did for a living or if your family lineage is important. It’s a good place to start over.

For nine Helen Hawthorne books, it was easy for me to work those dead-end jobs, from hotel maid to telemarketer.

But “Pumped for Murder,” my newest Dead-End Job mystery, grew out of a career crisis.
What was next for Helen Hawthorne?

She was no longer on the run from her awful ex-husband, but she could not go back to her corporate life in St. Louis. She was a Floridian now, living at the Coronado and joining her friends after work for sunset salutes by the pool.

She’d married Phil, the love of her life, in “Half-Price Homicide.”

After a romantic honeymoon in Key Largo, Helen and Phil were back home. I faced a terrible temptation:

Should I kill Phil? His murder would give me at least three books: Helen would have to solve her husband’s murder. Then she’d learn to cope as a widow. Maybe she’d meet another man in the third novel.

But I couldn’t do it. One woman threatened to kill me if anything happened to Phil. I wasn’t sure how serious she was, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

I could also kill off one of Helen’s friends. But I couldn’t. To me, Helen’s friends are real. Losing one would be painful.

The answer was right next door.

Don and I used to live in a condo on Hollywood beach. Our next-door neighbor was a Canadian pilot.

One winter, our Canadian snowbird didn’t arrive. He’d been arrested for flying drugs into the US.

We were stunned. But now I understood why Florida has more private eyes than any state except California. We’re a rootless place. We never know if our neighbors are drug dealers or sun-loving snowbirds.

Also, the warm winters attract retired police officers who open their own Florida detective agencies. They live on their pensions until their new business succeeds.

Thanks to my neighbor who flew snow into Florida, my Dead-End Job series went in a new direction.

Phil and Helen started Coronado Investigations in “Pumped for Murder.” Helen still works those dead-end jobs, but now she’s undercover as a private investigator.

Readers keep asking me: Will Helen and Josie ever meet? Will the two series intersect? After all, Helen does come home to St. Louis to see her sister.

Some writers have characters from one series visit their other series. I can’t do it.

In my mind – where Josie and Helen live – they can’t meet.

It would make my eyes cross.

Fun Mystery Author Contests: Cupcakes, Happily Ever After

I came across two contests offered by Mystery Authors this week that are both a bit whimical and fun, so I thought I'd post them here.

Karin Slaughter has set up a Cupcake Contest! and, yes, it belongs here, probably as well as on DyingforChocolate.com. Here's the Deal. Karin Slaughter, author of Broken, and lover of The Whimsical Bakehouse and all things cake has set up a Cupcake Contest. You can follow instructions or create cupcakes in the Style of Slaughter or come up with something completely on your own. All details HERE.

With June just around the corner and thoughts of marriage on your mind--you, your daughter, your mother?, Elaine Viets has initiated the Elaine Viets Happily Ever After Contest. Besides being a bestselling mystery author, she is also an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. She will marry a couple anywhere within the continental United States to celebrate a very special literary occasion: The publication of Half-Price Homicide, her ninth Dead-End Job mystery.

After nine books and many adventures, Helen and Phil begin their new life together in this novel. They have a romantic beach wedding. Helen and Phil are married by a minister in Universal Life Church. This wedding starts a new chapter for both of them.

Whether you want a romantic wedding by the sea, a mountain meadow, a luxurious garden, a grand hotel or a private home, Elaine will be honored to marry you. Because true love defies labels, she will marry either a traditional bride and groom or a same-sex couples.

RSVP your entry to Elaine Viets’ Happily Ever After contest: Email to: eviets@aol.com

(1) Your names

(2) The proposed date and time of your wedding

(3) The location. Name or type of place (private home, park, hotel), Street address, State and ZIP

Entries must be emailed by midnight, June 1, to eviets@aol.com.

The winning couple will be chosen by the Elaine Viets advertising team.

PLEASE NOTE: You will have to work out a mutually agreeable date if she has a previously scheduled event.
She will travel to the wedding at her expense within the continental USA. She has been a minister in good standing with the Universal Life Church since 1976.

The engaged couple or their representatives agree to provide lodgings for her, as well as meals, transportation to and from the airport and the ceremony, if needed. Her hotel room must be booked in advance of the wedding, if the wedding takes place outside the Fort Lauderdale area.

The couple must be of legal age to marry and either single or divorced. If one or both parties are divorced, you will be asked to produce your divorce decree(s) and all necessary identification.

Both parties must mutually consent to Elaine Viets as their minister.

Same sex weddings are legal only in the states that permit them, but she will still perform the ceremony.

Visit Elaine Viets' website for more information. Contest ends June 1, 2010

Friday Mystery Picks

Friday Picks: Something for Everyone.

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (Delacorte). A CWA debut dagger winner, this book captured my heart. You'll be transported back to childhood and a time when things seemed safe, but don't be fooled, this is a very dark novel. The mystery is first rate, as is Bradley's turn of phrase. The novel begins in the summer of 1950 in the sleepy village of Bishop's Lacy. Flavia de Luce, the 11 year old heroine/detective with a penchant for poisons is a welcome addition to the world of mysteries. This book has it all: a country house, stamps, poison, terrific pacing, brilliant quirky characters, dark atmosphere, humor, and lots of twists and turns. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is wickedly brilliant. It's the first of the Buckshaw Chronicles, and I can hardly wait for the next.

Ravens (Grand Central Publishing) by George Dawes Green. After a wait of 14 years, Edgar Award winner George Dawes Green, has produced another excellent psychological thriller. Green is the author of the award winning Cave Man's Valentine and The Juror (both made into films), and I believe this is a real contender for another film. Friends Shaw McBride and Romeo Zderko pull up at a convenience store off I-95 in Georgia to fix a leaky tire on their way to Florida where they're going to get away from their dull Ohio tech-support jobs. At the service station, Shaw learns that a local family has won $318,000,000 in the state lottery. He then beings a ferocious scheme to squeeze the family for half of their prize money. Shaw's power over the family and the way he manipulates and drives terror into their hearts will keep you reading into the night. What I particularly liked about Ravens was that although it's dark, Green manages to infuse humor throughout, dark humor, but humor, all the same. From the first page you'll be swept up on a journey through the lives and thoughts of incredibly well developed and somewhat deprived odd characters. It's a 'creepy' novel, but I couldn't put it down. ( July 2009)*


Killer Cuts by Elaine Viets (New American Library). This is in the Dead End Jobs series. In Killer Cuts, Helen has taken another dead-end job to support herself and stay under the radar, this time at a high-end hair salon. She is an assistant and gofer to Miguel Angel, a Cuban celebrity stylist, who runs a salon where a haircut can cost as much as a car payment. The novel starts with the wedding of Kingman King Oden, a wealthy gossip blogger and cable TV show host. When he is murdered at his own wedding, things get hairy, All the usual suspects are in this Dead End job series, and Helen's own life and series development is intertwined skillfully. Fun, fast paced, good mystery and surprising resolution.