M’s Comments (group member since Jul 28, 2014)

M’s comments from the New Voices in Fiction Authors from William Morrow group.

What a great day. Thanks to everyone for the wonderful discussion!

Comic Con? You took the "go big or go home" approach, Katherine!

Coffee, coffee, coffee, or if it is after 3 pm, green tea.

Carol,

People sometimes say that there have been no original plots since Shakespeare. I haven't analyzed Shakespeare enough to know for sure if it is true, but I think your concern that you have read your story 100 times may actually be you picking up on the universal experiences a lot of us have shared in these stories. I think stories of hope are wonderful, and if you are true and honest, the story can be no one's but your own. I'd say go for it!

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and in fact I created a whole pinterest page about it one evening when I was procrastinating on my second novel. I listen to music constantly when I write, the only rule being that it can't have words. The soundtrack to Battlestar Galactica and Philip Glass were big favorites of mine. But I also listen to certain songs right before I write scenes with characters. "Enter Sandman" by Mettalica was remarkably effective in getting me into writing the outlaw biker Jelicksons, and Trampled by Turtles was the band I listened to when writing my FBI agent Hale Bascom.

http://www.pinterest.com/mpcooleyauth...

Joshilyn, my trick is to drink enough coffee that I am vibrating off my chair. It does a good job of preventing rot.

Nadia, that's wonderful that you were able to travel to Kabul. I think that having a sense of place can only really be captured by being on the ground where your book is set, getting a sense of how the characters would experience the streets and landscape of your setting. I only had to travel to upstate New York--Afghanistan must have been an adventure.

Ice Shear is the story of a small town cop,June Lyons, who finds the young woman impaled on an ice shear at the bottom of the frozen Hopewell Falls. The case goes high profile when the young woman turns out to be the troubled daughter of a congresswoman, and June ends up working with former colleagues in the FBI, not all of whom she can trust. As June races to find the murderer, an already fraught case turns red-hot when it leads to a notorious biker gang and a meth lab hidden in plain sight.

I, too, really have appreciated the chance to connect with people, both at events and through the e-mails I've received. Readers really like June, my main character, but an e-mail arrived a few minutes ago that I absolutely loved, talking about Ray, a 17 year old character who thinks of himself as an outlaw: "I could not quit laughing over describing Ray. He is a man who is so smart, plays video games and reads comic books. Gee, I am 78 and wish I had met such a manly man in the 1950s."

But I also appreciated working with Rachel, my editor. In our early conversations we connected over wanting a strong female hero, and I really appreciated talking with someone who valued that the same way I did.

So many of these books are set in vivid locales, and I'm amazed by how detailed your descriptions of different times and different places are. What research did you have to do on the people, places, and times of your novel?

Homesickness seems to be a driving inspiration for a lot of people. I set Ice Shear in upstate New York because while living in California I missed the landscape and people of the Hudson Valley. A person can take only so many palm trees!

The inspiration for Ice Shear was two fold. I feel like a lot of the crime novels I had read lately were very focused on anti-heroes, and I was really interested in telling the story of human heroism, getting up and fighting the good fight even when you've been knocked down.

I love CJs write or run idea. Unfortunately, I'm be worried that I would pick sleep instead.

I have a bunch of methods that I use to get through the minefield, depending on which stage of the book I'm at, and I'm a big fan of software tools. When I'm barreling through a first draft I tend to use "write or die", a program where you set your word count target and set your time limit and just go! If you slow down to a point where you aren't going to hit your target it starts to play really screechy violins and your screen goes red. While it doesn't produce the most polished drafts, I'm often surprised that my brain will come up with better, alternative plans to the story than what I had intended.

For the editing, it really is a matter of setting aside time, and for that I make appointments with myself. I am a very slow editor, and so I find that setting a page count goal doesn't necessarily work, but setting a time goal does.

And, of course, at every stage I use internet blockers so I don't spend the day reading sites like Goodreads.

Hazel, there was a joke making the rounds on Twitter recently that was surprisingly apt: “Give a man a book, and he’ll read for a day. Teach him to write, and he’ll never have time to read because he’s always on deadlines.” In addition to not having a whole lot of time this past year, I also avoided reading when I was working on the second book because I didn't want other people's ideas to accidentally filter into my story. I have a world I'm creating with a very specific tone, and I'm worried I might start mimicking the books I'm reading.

Hazel wrote: "My second novel A MEMORY OF VIOLETS will be published in February, 2015 - and I can't wait! It tells the story of two sets of sisters, and is set around a charity for orphaned flower sellers in Vic..."

I love the Victorian Era, and that sounds incredibly interesting. Can't wait to see the cover!

Jenn wrote: "How do you come up with names for your characters? I can only think of common names and I'd like something a little unusual, any suggestions?"

In my first draft of Ice Shear, 80 percent of my characters had a name that began with M. I found it confusing and I can only imagine how it would have been for the authors, so I made some changes in the second draft. For the last names, I started with family names. I changed most, but kept Brouillette--the name of the victim's powerful parents--and Lyons, the name of my hero.

"Easter eggs" are a great word for these small shout outs in the book. In Ice Shear I make two mentions of favorite mystery authors--George Pelecanos and Lawrence Block. I also have the first murder victim wearing a shirt that my sister owned--that took some explaining.

Cop Town by Karin Slaughter. Her last book, Criminal, had flashbacks to the 70s, where a pair of female cops had to navigate racism and sexism in order to solve a killing. This book takes place entirely in the 70s, and Slaughter doesn't flinch in exploring the sexism, violence, and racism of the era. And she gets the cultural touches right, with such a great sense of time and place that I half expect the type to be in avocado green and harvest gold.

Cop Town

Mary wrote: "I was recently the guest author for a bookclub dinner in Northern Wisconsin and had a chance to meet a group of people who had read and enjoyed my novel. I was reminded of the crucial relationship..."

What a perfect quote, Mary, and it exactly captures the great joy I felt being able to connect with readers.

I read Thorn Jack and really enjoyed it. I took a class on english ballads in college, and the allusions to Tam Lin that were threaded through this story of a grieving girl were well done. I also appreciated the setting--upstate New York represent!--which captured the Ichobod Crane spookiness of the Hudson Valley.

I have Last Night at the Blue Angel waiting for me when I get the last edits on book two into my editor. I need to reward myself with something good!

For me, the story of Ice Shear needed to be told, but it was really hard to carve out the time to do it. So many things--important things!--can demand my attention, and for a few years it was easy to push my writing down the priority list. I made a promise to myself that I would finish the book, and ended up making unbreakable appointments with myself to write two days a week. Those two days created momentum, and the project went much more smoothly after that.