The British Are Coming, Y'all!

The South’s Other War

When did the Civil War start—1861? That was the second Civil War. Many scholars believe that the Revolutionary War, especially the way it developed in the Southern colonies, was America's first Civil War. Monday 20 June, I'm Kaye Barley's blog guest on Meanderings and Muses, talking about "The South's Other War" and why we Southerners sometimes shoot our own credibility in the foot with our love of legends. Stop by and weigh in on your favorite folklore or outrageous legend from the South.

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Love. Sex. Death.

Love. Sex. Death.

That’s why you visited my blog today, right?

Well, okay. Maybe it is for the Blog Tour de Force free book, and the prize AND Kindle drawings.

I don’t blame you. Great! We’ll get to that in a moment.

First, let’s talk about love, sex, and death. They’re what you look for in every novel you read. Doesn’t matter which genre.

“...the need to belong, the hungers of the body, and the search for individual worth; Community, Carnality, Identity. Ultimately, that triad is what all stories are about.” ~ Orson Scott Card

It’s what you’ll find in A. M. Harte’s book, Hungry for You. Through short stories about zombies, you’ll follow characters in search of community, carnality, and identity. Some are living. Some are undead. But set your preconceived notions aside. I promise you, these aren’t your father’s zombies.

 
Now, I know that zombie fiction isn’t everyone’s cuppa tea, so there’s love, sex, and death aplenty in my historical suspense series starting with Paper Woman, winner of the Patrick D. Smith Literature award. Spies and assassins, ships of sail and storms at sea, swashbucklers and bandits, and a brilliant, brutal, sociopath challenge my main character. I promise you, this isn’t your father’s Revolutionary War.

Okay, you want a free book, a prize, and a Kindle, right?

1.  Win an ebook copy of Paper Woman! (No eReader required.) First, read “The Making of a Fictional Villain, Part 1.” Then return to this post and use the comment form to tell me the following:

• One characteristic of a good villain
• Who’s your favorite fictional villain, and why (Love. Sex. Death.)

Make sure you give me an accurate email address. I’ll email you instructions for your Paper Woman download.

2.  Win the Historic Haversack goodie bag! (U.S. deliveries only.) My sponsors’ reviews prove that Paper Woman has the Right Stuff:

• A Writer's Life
• Babs World of Book Reviews
• Juniper Grove
• Let Them Read Books
• Motherlode
• My Reading Room

So pick your favorite sponsor review, and comment there with the phrase, “Love, sex, and death. Paper Woman has it all!” Then, come back here and comment what review you selected. I’ll enter you in the drawing for the Historic Haversack. Watch my blog for an announcement of the winner.

(Need more convincing? The Pen & Muse posted a review of Paper Woman and an interview of me, plus Red Adept Reviews posted a non-sponsor review for Paper Woman.)

3.  Win the Kindle! Every relevant comment counts as an entry toward the Kindle drawing. The more you and I talk on my blog, the more entries you have. Love. Sex. Death. Let’s talk!

4.  Want more chances to win the Kindle? Of course you do! So let’s stay in touch. Each of the following secures you an additional entry toward the Kindle grand prize drawing. Make sure you comment where you followed and Liked.

• Like my Facebook page
• Follow me on Twitter
• Follow my blog with the Google Friends Connect badge in the sidebar
• Follow me on Goodreads

I need comments from you folks today. The busier the conversation buzz on my blog today, the greater my chances at winning Blog Tour de Force’s author prize: creation of a video book trailer for my series.

Thanks for stopping by. You’re a winner!

Update: The Paper Woman giveaway has ended. The drawing for the Historic Haversack and the drawing for the Kindle from my blog are closed.

Suzanne Adair

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The Making of a Fictional Villain, Part 1

My series features a bad-ass sociopathic villain. His name is Lieutenant Dunstan Fairfax. Readers occasionally ask me where his complex characterization came from. Ex-boyfriend, maybe? Former boss? Nope. Fairfax comes from a number of sources, and he’s evolved in my imagination over a lifetime.

Fodder for a Kid’s Imagination: the 1960s

September 1964. I was a second-grader in South Florida. Less than a year earlier, the president of the United States had been assassinated, and the space program had gone into full, frantic swing with his legacy: putting a man on the moon ahead of the Russians. President Lyndon Johnson was eyeing Vietnam. The Cold War was personified in movie theaters by James Bond and the denizens of SPECTRE. Such stuff primed the imaginations of a whole generation of kids.

On a more personal level, I’d just experienced the wrath of Hurricane Cleo. Still fresh in my memory were the terrible roar of tornadoes imbedded in the storm, and the remarkable calm of the hurricane’s eye, drenching my world with the smell of the ocean. Then I was exiled from class to get over a case of the mumps. How unfair! I didn’t feel bad. Okay, I looked a little weird, but man, was I bored. September wasn’t shaping up to be a good month for me.

Like most kids my age, I watched TV (ours was black-and-white) with my family after dinner at night. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who’d given us The Flintstones for primetime evening entertainment, offered a new primetime cartoon show in 1964. But this one wasn’t comedy. It was science saving the world, science threatening the world, spies, death, space-age gadgets, heart-pounding adventure, and the whole, exotic world. It jump-started my writing career, stuck at home as I was with the mumps, with nothing to do except write stories because I ran out of things to read.

My First Three Villains on TV

Dr. Zin, The Adventures of Jonny Quest. Drawn by Doug Wildey and voiced by Vic Perrin, Dr. Zin possessed the heroic qualities of intelligence, sophistication, resourcefulness, focus, and good salesmanship. Unlike other villains in the original series, he was never completely defeated. Dr. Zin was also the nemesis of Jonny Quest’s father. In other words, a TV kid with whom I identified had an uber-baddie pitted against his dad. Peril, yes, and at the time, the only type of peril that seemed comparable was what I'd experienced during Hurricane Cleo.

Khan Noonien Singh, Star Trek. Portrayed by Ricardo Montalban, Khan was all the things that Dr. Zin was, plus he possessed charm, physical and sexual prowess (more important when I grew up), and the skill to maintain leadership over a big group of baddies. Khan was by far the most interesting guy aboard the starship Enterprise during the episode “Space Seed.”

Angelique, Dark Shadows. Kids of the 1960s were fascinated with Dark Shadows, due partially to the tragic, tormented character of Barnabas the vampire. What intrigued me far more than Barnabas himself was how he wound up being a vampire, and who was responsible for it. That who was a her, my first exposure to a worthy female villain — one who wasn’t merely the minion of a male villain. Angelique, portrayed by Lara Parker, had her own agenda.

A Villainous Pattern

In these first fictional villains, my subconscious recognized a pattern, something they had in common. The label hadn’t made it into the watercooler conversations of most Americans just yet, but the condition has dogged humanity from prehistory. Dr. Zin, Khan, and Angelique didn’t give a damn about people except to control them. Gaining control and manipulating others was what floated their boats. Dr. Zin, Khan, and Angelique were fictional examples of sociopaths. They were evil, evil, evil.

Ah, the sixties. What a great time to be a kid with an active imagination. Back then, I was blissfully unaware that sociopaths weren’t confined to fiction — but those are tales for Part 2 of this post, at a later date.

For now, tell me: who were your favorite TV villains from childhood?

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Encore of “The Things We Do For Research”

Today Writers Who Kill posts my essay "The Things We Do For Research." If you missed the essay when it was originally posted on "Meanderings and Muses," please join us today, learn what crazy hoops writers of mysteries, suspense, and thrillers jump through to conduct research, and let us know what you think. Thanks for this opportunity.

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Worldbuilding and Writing from the Heart

Does the complexity of worldbuilding preclude the freedom of writing from the heart? An interesting question, posed last Saturday during a panel at the Cape Fear Crime Festival in Wilmington, NC.

At first glance, the task of linking technical details for worldbuilding looks daunting. I know this because my current, published series is historical suspense and mystery, and before that series, I’d written a contemporary crime fiction series and a science fiction series. Altogether, I’ve completed fourteen novel-length manuscripts.

Development of my characters drives my plots. When I write from the heart, I’m open to spontaneity, the unexpected. All I need to get rolling is a few benchmarks for my storyline. I turn my characters loose early in the first draft, and they find their way, growing and changing, past those benchmarks, to the end. Although I do incorporate some plotting, I’m much more of a “pantser.”

Consider the following facts, pulled from data that comprise the worldbuilding for each of my three series:

• Crown forces, the 82nd Regiment of Foot, occupied Wilmington, NC from January until November of 1781.
• Procedures that local law enforcement agencies follow when a murder is involved differ from those followed by state agencies.
• The rocky planet of a Class G star just a little bigger than our sun must orbit out farther than 93 million miles to confer Earthlike conditions on the planet.

To me, worldbuilding components create an essential core — like a set of immovable system files on a computer’s hard drive. Those files must reside there, or the computer won’t operate. True, the files dictate what type of operating system the computer runs as well as what version of software programs the computer handles. To a small extent, that restricts my options.

But how I populate the remaining space of the hard drive, given the parameters of my computer’s system, is entirely up to me. A large enough hard drive holds many, many application programs.

Likewise, a large enough world vision holds many, many stories. The greater your imagination, the smaller the worldbuilding slice becomes in your overall vision of the “pie.”

Worldbuilding performed properly permits you the freedom to write in ways others cannot about inflammatory issues that score you deeply. It also allows you opportunities to explore unique characterizations, cultural permutations, and plot conflicts. Here’s how all that plays out for each worldbuilding fact that I listed above:

• The Continental Army’s effectiveness in North Carolina is stymied for the year 1781, allowing redcoats to control the state.
• Territorial spats erupt between two representatives of the local and state law enforcement agencies.
• Warfare practices and religious rituals evolve that are based on the planet’s longer year and longer seasons.

In each situation, do you see how much room there is for spontaneity, the unexpected? Worldbuilding establishes certain plot elements as a baseline for me, so I don’t have to worry about those elements. Far from restricting my creativity, worldbuilding frees my imagination to do what it does best: develop my characters.

Worldbuilding doesn’t preclude writing from the heart. It enhances it.

Crafting Dialogue in Historical Mystery and Suspense

Why do authors of historical mystery and suspense create dialogue the different ways they do? How do readers react to the dialogue? That's the subject of my guest essay today on Lois Winston's blog, "They Said What? Crafting Dialogue in Historical Mystery and Suspense." Be sure to stop by and leave a comment. Lois will have a drawing, and I'll give away a copy of Camp Follower to one of the visitors who posts a comment.

Special thanks to the readers on LibraryThing who responded to my discussion topic over the summer and gave me input for this article.

Soaring with the Eagles: Do You Finish What You Start?

In the Boy Scout program, Life Scout is the rank immediately below Eagle Scout. Whenever a young man advances to the rank of Life in my sons' troop, the scoutmaster delivers a special message to him, his peer scouts, and all the parents. He recites the statistic that only about three percent of boys who start the scouting program advance all the way to Eagle. He also states that when a boy completes that final, arduous advancement from Life to Eagle, it proclaims to everyone (such as future employers) that he is a person who finishes what he starts.

When it comes to books, do you finish what you start?

If you're a reader, do you finish books that you start reading? If not, is it because the book wasn't to your liking? Or do you allow the needs of others to overrun your sacred reading time every day? Finding the opportunity to read presents a great challenge if you're a parent with young children, or you're a caregiver of an older relative. Take a book with you everywhere. Insist on squeezing in the reading moments each day: at lunch, before bed, in the bathroom.

If you're a writer, how many manuscripts have you cast aside, unfinished? Ask yourself why you quit working on them. Do you allow the needs of others to overrun your sacred writing time every day? Do you continue to produce manuscripts that you don't complete? Maybe you discovered that a plot ceased to work or an idea wasn't viable. Take a workshop to get over the hump. Talk with other writers about what it took for them to reach "The End."

Both my sons have attained the rank of Life Scout. My older son, a senior in high school, completed the physical portion of his Eagle project at the end of August. Now he must document the project, submit the paperwork, complete the two remaining merit badges he lacks, and pass his Eagle Board of Review — all by his eighteenth birthday in a few months.

Between now and then, he doesn't have the leisure to devote sole attention to his Eagle project. His younger brother is watching him, learning from him. We're all encouraging him to finish what he started as a Cub Scout over a decade ago, despite less-than-ideal circumstances.

The truth is that if you wait for optimum circumstances, what you're trying to complete will never happen. Most people who finish what they start admit that they didn't have ideal circumstances.

What stops you from finishing what you start?

Encore of "Of Fairy Tales and Dragons"

Today author K.D. Easley posts my essay "Of Fairy Tales and Dragons" on her blog. If you missed the essay when it was originally posted on "Meanderings and Muses," please join me today, learn what crime fiction and fairy tales have in common, and let us know what you think. Thanks for this opportunity, K.D.

Jeffrey Deaver on "Combat Writing"

Prior to Jeffrey Deaver's presentation at Killer Nashville 2010 on how he writes thrillers (check here and here for a recap of his presentation points), Clay Stafford conducted an interview with him. One question Deaver is asked often is how he finds time to write, given his traveling schedule.

He says there's a difference between writing books and living a writer's life. The life of a writer is about more than writing books. A professional writer has a partnership with his or her publisher. Therefore, the writer's life includes travel and promotion. A writer must be prepared to write in the midst of those activities.

Deaver cannot afford to wait for inspiration. He engages in what he calls "combat writing." He writes, researches, and edits wherever his circumstances take him, such as in the hotel room and on the plane.

Maybe you're thinking, "Wow, what a skill to have!" But let's consider Deaver's "combat" concept more. It shouldn't be foreign. All too often, life demands that we not wait for ideal circumstances to act. If you parent young children, you might have skills that include the following:

• Combat sleeping
• Combat cleaning
• Combat lovemaking

If you manage a marketing department, your skills might include the following:

• Combat budgeting
• Combat product design
• Combat customer relations

The curious thing about not holding back, not waiting for inspiration, is that when you trust yourself and give of yourself wholly in the moment, often what you produce is more than good enough. It's great. And that's living.

What are your combat skills?

Interview in the Nashville Examiner for Killer Nashville

With the approach of the Killer Nashville conference, the Nashville Examiner graciously interviewed me about the Revolutionary War in the South and the craft of writing.

Currently they're experiencing technical difficulties with the links in the interview -- and I'm credited with writing Paper Moon instead of Paper Woman :-). I hope they can correct the errors soon.

In the meantime, facts in the rest of the interview appear to be correct, so enjoy!