What to Do Before Your Book Launch

Love this trailer for M.J. Rose and Susan Meyers' What to Do Before Your Book Launch.

Vicki Delany: The Modern Gothic Novel

Today I welcome back Vicki Delany,, one of Canada's most varied and prolific crime writers.

Vicki Delany's popular Constable Molly Smith series (including In the Shadow of the Glacier and Among the Departed) have been optioned for TV by Brightlight Pictures. She also writes standalone novels of psychological suspense, as well as a light-hearted historical series, (Gold Digger, Gold Mountain), set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. Vicki’s newest book is More than Sorrow, a standalone novel published by Poisoned Pen Press, “a splendid Gothic thriller.” Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com, www.facebook.com/vicki.delany, and twitter: @vickidelany. She blogs about the writing life at One Woman Crime Wave (http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com) 

VICKI DELANY: THE MODERN GOTHIC NOVEL

Mention Gothic novels to ten people, and you’ll get eleven different interpretations of what that means.

About all we seem to agree on is that it doesn’t mean a cozy or a comedy.

In the mid-to-late Twentieth Century the Gothic novel was the sort written by the likes of Victoria Holt or Mary Stewart that I grew up loving. Think of penniless governesses, crumbling Scottish castles, brooding, handsome aristocrats. A dark secret in the family’s past. Always a dark secret.

Today the Gothic has been updated and the novels I love are sometimes called Modern Gothic, or British Gothic.

First, what they are NOT: No vampires. No ghost hunters. Not horror. And probably not anyone you might call ‘goth’.

I go with Kate Morton’s definition. In the afterword to her hugely successful novel The House at Riverton, Kate Morton describes the Gothic: The haunting of the present by the past; the insistence of family secrets; return of the repressed; the centrality of inheritance (material, psychological and physical); haunted houses (particularly haunting of a metaphorical nature); suspicion concerning new technology and changing methods; the entrapment of women (whether physical or social) and associated claustrophobia; character doubling; the unreliability of memory and the partial nature of history; mysteries and the unseen; confessional narrative; and embedded texts.

The Modern Gothic can be a ‘dark mystery’ but usually only in the psychological sense. Michael Koryta calls his brilliant novel So Cold The River a Gothic and it is because it involves many of Morton’s definitions, but in it the paranormal presence is malevolent. That is defiantly not always, in fact not usually, the case.

“Haunting of a metaphorical nature.” The modern Gothic may not even have a ghost story or paranormal aspect. If there is a supernatural element it serves as a device to reveal the secrets of the past to the characters and the reader, rarely is it intended to frighten the reader, as in a horror novel.

Kate Morton’s books for example, have no paranormal elements. In many books the suspected paranormal turns out to have a rational explanation after all, as in Carol Goodman’s Arcadia Falls. In Peter Robinson’s Before the Poison the protagonist is ‘haunted’ not by a ghost but by the story of a woman who lived in his new house sixty years earlier and was accused of a dreadful crime, a crime that had to do with ‘the entrapment of women’. If there is a paranormal element it is more likely to be benign or even helpful as in, for example, Katherine Howe’s The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, rather than dripping evil.

Sometimes, it’s the question. In my new novel More than Sorrow the protagonist, Hannah Manning, believes there’s something moving down in the dark damp root cellar. But Hannah is recovering from Traumatic Brain Injury caused by an IED explosion in Afghanistan. So, both the reader and Hannah wonder, is there really a woman down there, or is she only the hallucinations of an injured mind?

Which would be worse?

Contrary to popular opinion, Gothic doesn’t automatically mean romantic suspense. Romance is often a minor component, if there’s any at all, (e.g. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton or Blood Harvest by S.J. Bolton.) (Whereas in a Gothic romantic suspense novel, such as written by Susanna Kearsley, the romance is up front and prominent.)

The modern Gothic mystery novel can also be called a ‘psychological suspense’. What defines it as ‘gothic’ I think is the centrality of setting. There is a house, a hotel, some old building with a long past, and most of the plot centres around and takes place in this building or property, e.g. Michael Kortya again in The Cypress House. Tana French’s The Likeness is set almost exclusively in a crumbling Irish manor house and has very much to do with the “unreliability of memory” yet there is not the slightest hint of a paranormal element or romance. In More than Sorrow, the book takes place mostly in a 200 year old farmhouse in Canada.

Not a crumbling castle in sight! But secrets, lots of secrets.

Do you love the modern Gothic, or remember much loved books from the past? Why not share some names with us.

Recycled Crime Scene Tape Dress

Love this Crime Scene Gown that's perfect for the Red Carpet.. Created by artist and environmental educator Nancy Judd of Recycle Runway. She creates couture fashion from trash as an innovative way to provide education about conservation.

 
 Read a blog post about the making of this dress HERE.

Too Fancy for your taste? Check out Nancy Judd's Caution Tape Dress..

GUN VASES

Fab.com is one of my favorite sites for things I want but definitely do not need. If you know me, I need nothing, but I have a lot of wants. This vase comes from SUCK UK. Besides unique items for pets, they also sell items for people.

This ceramic vase available for $42 features three pistols at the ready...to hold a lovely arrangement of flowers. Inspired by iconic images from the peace marches of the 1960s, when protesters would stick a single flower in the barrels of soldiers' guns. Make love—not war!

 Also available as a Wall Vase --Sconce Vase, but with only one gun! $22.

Richard Lupoff: Writing Backwards

Today I welcome Richard A. Lupoff, writer emeritus, of mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction. Read a summary bibliography HERE.  

Dick Lupoff (born February 21, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York) is a science fiction and mystery author, who has also written humor, satire, non-fiction and reviews. In addition to his two dozen novels and more than 40 short stories, he has also edited science-fantasy anthologies. Dick is also an expert on the writing of Edgar Rice Burroughs and  H. P. Lovecraft. Don't miss his Hobart Lindsey/Marvia Plum mystery series. Following Dick tells Mystery Fanfare more about his writing process and history and his new mystery Rookie Blues (Dark Sun Press). Thanks, Dick, for stopping by.

Richard A. Lupoff: 
WRITING BACKWARDS

 Imagine a row of six small wooden chairs on a stage, facing an audience of a couple of hundred kids ranging from five or so, up through high school age. It was a summer camp, and this was part of the evening’s entertainment.

There were seven-year-old campers sitting in those chairs and they were divided into teams. Chairs one, three, and five were Green. Chairs two, four, and six were Gray.

A counselor read the first few paragraphs of a spooky story aloud. The six kids were then allowed two minutes apiece to continue the story. A panel of judges would award points to each team, depending on how well each contestant did at extemporaneous storytelling. A poor job would receive no points, a fair job would receive one point, a good job would receive two points. The three scores for each team would be added up to determine the winner.

There was probably a prize for the winning team, but I don’t remember what it was. Probably something on the order of a Tootsie Roll or a comic book.

I can still remember my feeling of terror as the contest began. I was a painfully shy child and I had no experience in extemporaneous storytelling. But I listened carefully as the counselor read the set-up paragraphs and as the other contestants continued the story. When my turn came I just took a deep breath and did my best, and hoped that I wouldn’t get a zero for my team.

The six contestants presented their parts of the story, the judges conferred, and the emcee-counselor announced which campers received a one and which received a two. Nobody got a zero. Then came my name, and the emcee said that because one camper had done an outstanding job, the judges had decided to award him three points.

Yes! I had scored a three-pointer.

The judges probably didn’t intend to choose a career for me, but the fact is that they did.

Segue a decade or so into the future, and I’m loafing my way through high school, ignoring chemistry and trigonometry and teaching myself to be a writer. I edited the school paper, worked as a sports reporter, operated a clandestine and totally illegal business ghost-writing book reports for my customers (twenty-five cents a page), turned out a few short stories and started a novel that I got about a page and a half into before quitting. And I read literary theory.

I came across the statement, attributed to Poe, that mystery stories were written backwards. That was a real head-scratcher. I thought Poe meant that he’d written “The Gold Bug” this way:

“?tell shall who—dozen a required it perhaps; pit the in busy were coadjutors his while , sufficient were mattock a with blows of couple a Perhaps”

It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand that “writing backwards” was a sort of metaphor. Poe’s idea was that the author knew the solution to the mystery before he wrote his story. With this solution in mind, the author would actually plan backwards (not literally write backwards) toward the beginning of the story, planting clues along the way so as to make the solution of the mystery inevitable.

Well, a few more decades slide past. I’ve already established a career for myself as a science fiction writer, packed that one in, started over writing mysteries, and scored a few credits in my new field. British anthologist Mike Ashley asks me for an original story for a book of historical mysteries. Well, I am not much of an historian, and would probably have Julius Caesar assassinated with a Tommy gun if I tried to write such a story, but I’m old enough and have a good enough memory to recall much of the 1940s, so I write a story set in August, 1946. Mike is delighted with it and I am happy to cash his check.

My protagonist is an ex-cop, recently discharged from the US Army after serving in World War Two, and I find that once the story is written I can’t keep this guy out of my mind. I want to know more about him. So the next time I’m asked for a story, I bring back Nick Train—that’s his name—and set the action earlier in the same year. I learned a little more about Nick, but I was not satisfied.

So I wrote another story, digging back into his past, and set it in 1942, while he’s taking Basic Training at Fort Benning, Georgia—just as I would a dozen years later. Now I know more, now I understand more, but still I am unsatisfied. So I start what I believe will be the last Nick Train short story. It’s set in 1938. Nick is a high school grad, an unsuccessful boxer—as I would eventually be—and becomes a rookie cop, mainly because he’s bored and broke and it’s a job.

Now I’m generally a committed outliner when I write stories, and when I write mysteries I “write backwards” the same way Poe did. But this story, I believe, is going to be pretty short and pretty easy to write so I skip over the outlining task and just start to write. I figure the story is going to be about 4,000 words in length.

A few nights later my Beloved Spouse asks me, over the sautéed eggplant, how the story is coming along. I tell her it’s coming along just fine but it will probably be a little longer than I’d anticipated. More like 5,000 words. Maybe 5,500.

A few nights later my Beloved Spouse asks me, over the chicken fricassee, how the story is coming along. I tell her it’s coming along just fine but it will probably be a little longer than I’d anticipated. More like 7,500 words. Maybe 8,000.

A few nights later my Beloved Spouse asks me, over the linguini and mushroom sauce, how the story is coming along. I tell her that it’s coming along just fine but that, well, I guess it’s a novelette. Gonna run maybe 12,000 words.

And so it goes. Once I’ve left 20,000 words behind me and there’s no end in sight, I finally admit that, Okay, you win, it’s a novel. And it is a novel. It’s called Rookie Blues.

For about thirty years, until his tragic demise, my friend Bill Reinka read all my novels and many of my short stories and commented on them. He was most intrigued by their structure. He always found it astonishing that I brought in so many characters and themes and made them all fit together and come out even at the end. No holes. No loose ends. Everything neat and tidy.

The answer is, it’s no secret, it’s just a matter of following Poe’s dictum and writing the story backwards. I knew the way it had to end. I just had to work back toward the beginning and plant my clues.

But I had no outline for Rookie Blues!

The thing just grew organically, and when I was stuck for a turn of plot I moved from Baltimore to Los Angeles, and followed Raymond Chandler’s dictum: “If you don’t know what happens next, just bring somebody through the door with a gun in his hand!”

Somehow the book got done, and it’s now in print from a fine new East Coast publisher called Dark Sun Press. The three Nick Train short stories are also included, as a kind of bonus to the reader.

Rookie Blues feels different to me than anything else I’ve ever written. Instead of the tight structure of, for instance, my Lindsey and Plum novels or my Chase and Delacroix novelettes, it has a kind of quirky, organic structure to it.

The world isn’t neatly and efficiently organized. Things happen unexpectedly. Events take weird and unanticipated turns. As Hammett said, a beam falls and it misses you by a couple of inches and you realize how fragile is your tenure on this planet, and instead of going back to your desk after lunch you change your whole life.

So far, nobody has complained about the loose structure of Rookie Blues. Early reviews and reader comments have been unanimously favorable. It’s getting close to time for me to start another novel and I’m wondering whether to take my lead from Poe—or from Chandler.

Cartoon of the Day: Passwords

I love Bizarro by Dan Piraro. one of my favorites..