Clever Cleaver Mirror

O.K., maybe not what you want to look into every day unless you're a serial killer or butcher --or both.

Hat Tip: Toxel.com

"L" is for Littlefield: Sophie Littlefield

Continuing the crime fiction author alphabet meme, today I welcome award winning mystery author Sophie Littlefield.   "L" is for Littlefield. I'm just amazed at the variety and skill of her writing. Sophie Littlefield will be on my panel at Bouchercon in St. Louis in September. Be sure and attend. Today she shares her writing wisdom on how to keep a series going.

Sophie Littlefield grew up in rural Missouri. She writes the post-apocalyptic AFTERTIME series for Harlequin Luna. She also writes paranormal fiction for young adults. Her first novel, A Bad Day for Sorry, won an Anthony Award for Best First Novel and an RT Book Award for Best First Mystery. It was also shortlisted for Edgar, Barry, Crimespree, and Macavity Awards, and it was named to lists of the year’s best mystery debuts by the Chicago Sun-Times and South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Sophie lives in Northern California.

BOOK GIVEAWAY: Make a comment below about  your experiences with series-either as a writer or fan-- to win a copy of Sophie Littlefield's Bad Day for Scandal. Be sure and give your email address (can be cryptic: john at  gmail dot com)

SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD:

KEEPING THE SERIES GOING

Having recently turned in the edits on the fourth Stella Hardesty novel (tentatively titled A BAD DAY FOR MERCY) my thoughts turned to what sort of adventures my girl might encounter next.

It’s not a subject to take lightly. Building a sustainable series, one that satisfies and entertains readers well past the first blush of acquaintance, is a delicate dance. A challenge unsuitable for beginners or tentative sorts.

Most of us, beginning our first series, are ill-equipped for the challenge. We fail to augment our cast of characters, lay the groundwork for future developments, or set up conflicts strong enough to sustain the burden of a dozen more books. But that’s not the end of the world, because it’s in the cagey catch-up in later books that we get really creative. If we created fertile story worlds from the start, we would be less inclined to invent the startling, surprising, even shocking twists that keep readers interested.

Still, making book five as compelling as the first is a challenge not to be underestimated. Here are some tips for keeping a series fresh from the start.

1. In the first book, introduce a complex, richly-layered protagonist. Choose actions that reveal character. Set up an intriguing cast of secondary characters, and don’t stint on the quirky and engaging. Introduce the protagonist’s “ordinary world” but lay the groundwork for internal conflict substantial enough to resolve over time

2. In the second book, round out the cast. Upset the relationship apple cart – find a way to wreak havoc on whatever stability the protagonist has had in her professional, family, and romantic life.

3. In the third book, consider what readers are saying (usually you won’t have a chance to do this earlier, given the publishing lag of a year or two before publication.) Do more of what works, less of what readers found off-putting. Get creative with the central story problem – at this point the readers are ready to explore! Introduce a secondary romantic interest, if you haven’t already done so.

4. In subsequent books, stay fresh by putting effort into the central story problem. Take your protagonist on the road – a fresh setting injects new interest. Introduce a person from the past (secret lover, baby, avenger) or event from the past (military heroism or shame, romantic entanglement, inheritance, scrape with the law) that will challenge your protagonist, who is now familiar to your reader. Consider a timely subject matter, something from the news or innovations in science if these are appropriate to your genre.

5. ….and finally, never forget the Contract With The Reader. I’m a big believer in this imaginary but powerful obligation – you must never breech the trust of the reader that your character will behave in character. You don’t get to decide that he or she was “really” different from what you created; by now she has taken on a life of her own and you must honor that.

Cartoon of the Day: PBS for Cats

So yesterday I went to a new to me flea market on Treasure Island and picked up a small Oriental rug--a 6 x 7 Baktiari garden pattern. It's not in mint condition, but then it's over 50 years old.  It's imperfect which is perfect for me, since I want it for a specific place that gets a lot of traffic. For the very low price I paid, it can take lots of wear without any worries. Then today, while clearing up some long buried papers near my desk, I found this wonderful cartoon that used to hang on my refrigerator! Still makes me laugh!  No mystery here!

Brings back memories of cats long gone.

Hand Grenade Dresser

Love this Hand Grenade Dresser (bureau) from Los Carpinteros. Good place to keep your weapons?

Hat Tip: Toxel.com

A&E picks up Longmire

WOOT! (now a word in the OED)

According to TV/LINE A&E has given a 10-episode, first season order to Longmire, an hour-long Western-themed drama starring Matrix actor Robert Taylor as the show’s titular charismatic, dry-witted Wyoming sheriff. Katee Sackhoff will play Vic, one of his deputies.

The series, based on the Walt Longmire Mystery series by Craig Johnson, also stars Cassidy Freeman (Smallville) as Longmire’s daughter, Lou Diamond Phillips (Numb3rs) as his best friend, and Bailey Chase (Saving Grace) as another deputy.

Can't wait for the series? Get reading. There are 7 books in the series. Craig Johnson was recently in Berkeley for a Literary Salon with Mystery Readers NorCal.  

Photo: Craig Johnson & Me--I'm the one wearing Craig's Stetson :-)

Hat Tip: Omnimystery News

Hilary Davidson: Guest Post & Book Giveaway

Hilary Davidson is a new star on the crime fiction horizon. Her second mystery, The Next One to Fall, will be out from Forge in 2012. Her first novel, The Damage Done, has been nominated for several awards, including the Macavity, the award from Mystery Readers International. This post isn't exactly part of the crime author alphabet meme since we're past D, but you can never have too many Ds. So here's D is for Davidson. Enjoy!

Win a copy of The Damage Done. Make a comment about sense of place in mysteries. Winner will be announced 8/30.  Be sure and include your email address. Can be cryptic. ex: john at comcast dot net.

Hilary Davidson

When I was growing up, there were two things I dreamed of doing: writing and traveling. I imagined myself journeying from continent to continent on one action-packed adventure after another and penning stories about it all. My overall ambition was to be some fearsome hybrid of Agatha Christie and Indiana Jones.

The amazing thing is that I found a day job that let me fulfill both of these dreams. For the past thirteen years, I’ve been a travel journalist. I’ve been lucky, but I’ve also discovered that the job is less glamorous than I foresaw, especially because all of my 17 Frommer’s guidebooks have been about my hometown, Toronto, or my adopted hometown, New York. On the other hand, getting to know your own city by envisioning how it would appear to a first-time visitor can make you fall in love with the place all over again.

People have asked me if being a travel writer helped me give my debut novel, The Damage Done, a stronger sense of place. My answer is yes… and no. The New York in my travel pieces and the New York in the novel are not exactly the same city. That’s not because I invented the places in The Damage Done. I chose to write about real locations, and every corner, from the Jan Hus Church to Rosa Mexicano restaurant, and from the Pitt Street police station to the methadone clinic in Cooper Square, is real. (One exception is a glass-walled luxury hotel built on the site of a church destroyed in an arson. I hope that the U.S. Post Office workers in Lower Manhattan don’t mind that I appropriated their site!)

When you write about a place, you bend and twist it to suit your purpose; you exaggerate certain characteristics and minimize others. Your story is just as much about the people you’re writing it for as it is about the place you’re writing about. With travel pieces, that usually means wealthy travelers who like fine dining and shopping, families with young children, and business travelers. You write about the things that will interest them. When writing travel pieces about New York, I’ve rarely managed to include the Gothic elements I love. (My walking tour of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery — which ran in a Frommer’s guide — may be my greatest success on this front). In The Damage Done, New York’s Gothic side dominates. Much of the book is set on the Lower East Side, which is an ongoing battleground between old and new, preservationists and property developers, longtime residents and club kids. It’s a powerful contrast between the New York that once was and what it wants to be.

That tension exists in my main character, Lily Moore, as well. She’s a woman who has survived a traumatic family life and reinvented herself as a sophisticated journalist. But as she comes back to the city she abandoned — and especially as she searches for her missing sister — parts of her past resurface. The more she tries to push them back, the more they trip her up.

Writing travel stories has often allowed me to enter places that seem to belong to alternate universes, from exorbitantly priced hotel suites to unique, solitary places such as Easter Island. Writing about New York through Lily’s eyes was like entering an alternate world as well, one in which the physical boundaries are familiar but the emotional landscape is completely different. Traveling with her is fascinating, wherever she takes me (my second mystery featuring Lily, The Next One to Fall, is set in Peru and will be published by Forge on February 14th, 2012). Seeing the world as she does lets me live a second life. Now I get to follow her as she travels from place to place and gets into trouble along the way. It’s the closest thing to my childhood dream I ever could have imagined.