The British Are Coming, Y'all!

Writing Thrillers: Two More Principles That Guide Jeffrey Deaver

At the 1 May SkillBuild in High Point, NC, bestselling author Jeffrey Deaver cited three principles that guide his writing. Last week, I discussed his first principle: Don't write something that readers don't want to read. Remember the liver-flavored toothpaste analogy?

That first principle of Deaver's seems simple enough and logical. But most writers, especially at the beginning, write what they want, never mind that it doesn't hit the spot with anyone else. That's the best way I know to create a product that will appeal to no one except your mother.

Deaver's other two guiding principles embody the same logic and simplicity. Beginning writers often ignore these principles, too.

Write what you enjoy reading. In genre fiction, romance accounts for the largest percentage of sales. You might be tempted by these impressive sales figures to try your hand at romance. But if you're a science fiction fan, and you've never been able to finish reading a romance because the heroes and heroines always aggravate you, what makes you believe you're going to complete the first draft of a romance?

Each genre has its own rules. The rules by which a work of science fiction is deemed acceptable by its readers differ greatly from the rules in romance. One way you learn rules of writing within a genre is by reading many books within that genre, informally studying what makes the stories work. An added benefit of writing what you enjoy reading is that it sustains you during the slump times of your career. So many factors that determine your professional success in publishing are out of your direct control. Make no mistake. This job is difficult.

Know your craft. Here Deaver refers to grammar, punctuation, and spelling, plus basic rules for plotting and characterization. Many beginning writers let these basics slide. They're under the mistaken impression that editors at New York City presses are standing by with red pens, waiting to correct errors that writers themselves could have and should have corrected. Sixty years ago, publishers' editors might have made these sorts of large-scale line edits. But in the 21st century, it's up to the writer to ensure that his or her craft is polished by the time the manuscript undergoes the submissions process.

Since this task can almost never be undertaken without assistance, Deaver recommends investing in titles like Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Woe Is I, and The Chicago Manual of Style for your personal reference library. You do have a personal reference library, don't you?

I also recommend the following aids to polishing your manuscript:

Online workshops and conference workshops that deal with craft can be enlightening. During the years that I've been blogging, here are the online craft workshops that I've taken:

• Mary Buckham: "Plotting With the Mythic Structure"
• Margie Lawson: "Empowering Characters' Emotions"
  
• Kris Neri: "Mystery & Thriller Structure"
  
• Mary Buckham: "Body Language on the Page"
  

You can derive insight into the trouble spots in your manuscript from interactions with the members of online and in-person critique groups. But when your critique group members cease to be able to spot errors in your work, it's time to move on — either to a more advanced group or to an editor that you hire.

More and more writers whose works are close to being publishable have opted to hire a professional editor like Chris Roerden. Professional editors can be pricey, but if your goal is to lock down a publishing contract, it's worth paying an editor to help you find the little things that are throwing off first readers in publishing houses.

Here are Deaver's three principles again:

• Don't write something that readers don't want to read.
• Write what you enjoy reading.
• Know your craft.

What'll it be for you? Ignore the principles and carry on with your writing as a hobby? Or adopt a professional approach to your writing and apply these principles?

Writing to Sell: Chris Roerden Says Get an Attitude!

A fiction writer can improve his or her craft by studying books like Eats, Shoots & Leaves, taking courses that teach elements such as plotting and characterization, and hiring an editor. Just as important as craft is a writer's voice. Unlike craft, voice cannot be taught. It can only be found.

Agents and publishers agree that the presence of a distinctive voice is what compels them to accept one manuscript and reject another that's equally polished. If you ask twenty industry professionals to define voice, they probably won't agree on one definition. But they will agree on what voice is not. Literary agent Jim McCarthy comments, "There's a lot of stuff out there and much of it sounds familiar."

How do you create a manuscript that compels an industry professional to accept it for publication?

Editor Chris Roerden presented "Showing Versus Telling: When to Use, and How the Writer's Voice Affects Publication" during the SkillBuild last Saturday in High Point, NC. Roerden stressed that before the elusive voice can be found in a piece of fiction, the writer must do the time developing craft, polishing the mechanics of the manuscript. For reasons that I cited in my blog entry two days ago, this means that the odds are against your voice emerging in your first completed manuscript.

Deal with it. Move on. Write another manuscript, and another.

Harness the beasts of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Figure out how to create page-turner plots and three-dimensional characters. Then, says Roerden, make sure that each of your characters, especially your protagonist, has an attitude. This attitude distinguishes one character from another, reveals their personalities. Finding attitude in your characters is a crucial step toward finding your voice.

Don't expect to skip the labor of developing craft and jump straight into voice. It doesn't work that way. Your voice is what you find while you're on the journey of developing your craft. This means that no one can guarantee when you'll find your voice. But unless you actually start the journey and assume the responsibility of improving your craft, you're guaranteed to not find your voice. If you're wise, you will never stop improving your craft.

To emphasize the importance of attitude, Roerden provided excerpts from published works. She contrasted them with an unpublished piece that read very much like Jim McCarthy's familiar "stuff." Attitude sprang at me from the published excerpts. I discerned no attitude from the unpublished piece. It was without flavor.

Attitude drenches publishable manuscripts. Attitude doesn't wait several chapters to manifest, often grabbing readers from the opening lines. Attitude is present in all genres. In the following examples of attitude from the opening lines of novels, notice that each conveys a unique author voice.

• "It was one hell of a night to throw away a baby." In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming.
• "All children, except one, grow up." Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.
• "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton." The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien.
• "1801 — I have just returned from a visit to my landlord — the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with." Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
• "It's hard to be a larva." Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster.
• "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter." The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Each example of an opening line above delivers on its promise of what the reader can expect in attitude and voice for the remainder of the work. Attitude and voice require momentum. They permeate a manuscript. You cannot fake them by concocting a clever, attention-grabber first sentence. If you haven't developed your craft, you won't be able to sustain the momentum of that first sentence. Agents and publishers have seen this "bait and switch" plenty of times.

There's no shortcut to finding your voice. Take the time to polish your craft. When you're ready, attitude and voice will find you.

Share an example of a memorable attitude and voice in the opening sentence of a novel you've read.

Writing About Crime Scenes: Lee Lofland Laughs at "CSI"

Here's another installment from that marvelous SkillBuild that I attended on Saturday 1 May at the High Point Public Library in High Point, NC.

 Former police detective Lee Lofland updates his blog "The Graveyard Shift" regularly to expose errors in police procedure. He's especially fond of skewering those errors he spots on TV shows such as "CSI" and "Castle." For two hours last Saturday morning, he kept the audience entertained over glaring TV goofs, with the occasional cop escapade from  his own experience thrown in.

Writers tell Lofland, "But I saw it happen that way on TV!" This is one of his strongest motivations for educating people otherwise on his blog. Here are some of the blunders he cites as regularly showing up on cop TV:

• Positively identifying from the size of the bullet wound what caliber bullet was used
• Reading 'em their rights while they're being handcuffed
• Unauthorized arrests by CSI techsI don't watch police procedure TV.

Seems that every time one of those shows is turned on in the house, I spot an outrageous scenario like the following:

• The CSI woman arrives at an outdoor murder scene in makeup, heels, and a silk blouse displaying generous cleavage. Her coiffure is perfect despite a brisk breeze and an air temperature near 95 degrees. She's sunk half of her latest paycheck on a manicure. And the dead body she must examine is ripe.
• The CSI lab, equipment, and computer software interfaces look like they were lifted from the set of "Star Wars." Test results are available within minutes. Someone, somewhere in the world has an exact match for the fingerprints or DNA on their database. And they're eager to share.

I have an undergraduate degree in Microbiology, and I spent seven years in science laboratories, indoors and outdoors. I'm also a graduate of the Gwinnett County Citizens Police Academy, and I've spent plenty of time interviewing cops. Here are some of the realities that I learned from those environments:

• CSI techs are trained as scientists. It's ludicrous for scientists to dress up pretty for hands-on, everyday tasks. Whether you're culturing bacteria or collecting evidence, it can be messy work that entails the use of more protective gear than gloves. And why wear nail polish? Acetone, the active ingredient of polish remover, gets used in the lab often.
• Test results take lots of time: time for enzymes to work, time for bacteria to grow, etc. My guess is that the screenwriters who award speedy test results to TV police procedural heroes derive their inspiration from those quickie hematocrit and urine tests their doctors perform at annual physical exams.
  
• The final folks to receive funding for shiny, new equipment are usually those who work in government-run laboratories (ex. CSI techs). Need a centrifuge or an incubator? Negotiate sharing one with another department. Better still, since those folks have often adopted a scarcity mentality from having their funding cut each year, unearth a centrifuge or incubator from storage. It'll likely be broken, so you'll have to fix it.

Of course, none of the above realities form the basis for glamorous cop TV.

And isn't it exciting when the TV investigator makes an arrest based on the meticulous collection of cool forensic evidence? But that isn't a reality, either. As Lofland pointed out during his presentation, most crimes are solved when investigators talk with people, witnesses. Not by analyzing collected evidence.

I found this last point interesting, reassuring. In the late 18th century, when my current series is set, there was almost no forensic evidence to evaluate. No DNA, no fingerprints or ballistics analyses. I'm often asked how I can write convincing crime fiction without the tools of modern forensics.

I do so because some things never change. Then, as now, most crimes were solved when an investigator talked with witnesses. Also, people of the 18th century were better at observation than we are now, better at supplying an investigator with details he needed to resolve a case. Centuries ago, folks had no text messaging to distract them. No automobile or railroad to speed a journey. No television or electricity to keep them occupied at night.

The challenge of creating crimes that can be solved without modern forensics liberates me to focus on human nature in my fiction. I enjoy that. I've read too many contemporary crime novels that substitute forensics techno-babble for good plotting and characterizations.

But if you're writing contemporary crime fiction, and you must have the ins and outs of forensics, I suggest that you start with your local police department. If they offer a citizens police academy program, sign up! Citizens police academies usually run for a number of weeks. (Mine lasted nine weeks.) There's a lot of material to cover. Among other things, you'll learn how many hats a uniformed police officer has to wear every day in the line of duty.

If you're unable to attend a citizens police academy, don't despair. Lee Lofland has organized the first annual Writers Police Academy, scheduled for 24-26 September 2010 at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, NC. It's a crash-course citizens police academy and promises to be an action-packed, fun weekend. Find out the realities of CSI, accident reconstruction, arson investigation, fingerprinting, and a whole lot more. Experts like a medical examiner and an ATF special agent will make presentations. And so will thriller author Jeffrey Deaver. Register online.

What's your favorite TV police procedural goof?

Writing Thrillers: Jeffrey Deaver Says Quit Offering Liver-Flavored Toothpaste!

On Saturday 1 May, I attended a SkillBuild in High Point, NC. This event, co-sponsored by the High Point Public Library and the Murder We Write chapter of Sisters in Crime, showcased excellent workshops by Lee Lofland, Chris Roerden, and headliner Jeffrey Deaver. To do justice to the power of these workshops, I won't attempt to squeeze accounts of them into a single blog entry. So stay tuned to my blog for scoop on this SkillBuild.

 "People Don't Read to Get to the Middle: Writing a Page-Turning Thriller" was the title of the workshop by Jeffrey Deaver. This bestselling, award-winning author discussed the principles that guide him when he writes, and he shed light on the process by which he produces his thrillers.

"Who brushed their teeth this morning?" Deaver asked the audience. Following a show of hands, he produced a series of questions. "Who used mint-flavored toothpaste? Who used cinnamon-flavored toothpaste?" He drilled down to make his point about Guiding Principle One by asking a final question: "Who used liver-flavored toothpaste?"

Of course, no one uses liver-flavored toothpaste. The manufacturers of major toothpaste brands are smart enough to not produce a product that no customer wants to use.

Writers are also manufacturers of a product. They should be smart enough to not write stories that readers don’t want to read.

Writers should continually perform market research and ask themselves, "What do my readers want?" then write clear, coherent stories for their readers. Easy for Jeffrey Deaver to say. He isn’t caught up in the angst of finding an agent or publisher.

Here's what Deaver means with his first guiding principle. If you're a writer, and you want to create fiction that's saleable, throw your ego out the door. This business isn't about you. It's about writing to your audience. Deaver counts himself very lucky to be making a living off his writing. He achieves that by understanding what his readers want, then giving it to them. He cannot afford to cave to his ego.

Literary agents and publishers often cite the fact that few first manuscripts are saleable. There's a reason why they aren't. Most of the time, that first novel isn't for readers. It's for the writer. It's autobiographical and strokes his or her ego by bringing out all the personal baggage.

What is this baggage? Misery over being unpopular in high school, misery over being raised by parents who failed to meet your expectations, and so on. To deliver a story about baggage, your first novel becomes a plotting and characterization debacle that undermines delivery of a story with appeal to a broader audience.

In other words, your personal baggage on the page is liver-flavored toothpaste. Nobody wants to buy your liver-flavored toothpaste. Deal with it.

Understand that there's nothing wrong with writing an autobiographical first novel. You've heard the saying that there's a novel in everyone? That's the autobiographical manuscript, and it's great therapy to write it. Furthermore, actually completing a first draft is a major achievement! Most writers never get that far. Congratulations if you've finished a first draft.

However, if you've completed that first manuscript, and you have your cap set on this writing business, your next step toward making a living as a professional author of fiction will almost always be to put that first manuscript away on a shelf or in a drawer and start writing your next manuscript. With each successive manuscript, you leave more autobiographical baggage behind, and you acquire more of the craft of writing.

Almost every published author has a bunch of unpublished manuscripts stashed away. I shoved away two unpublished partial manuscripts and nine unpublished completed manuscripts prior to finishing my tenth manuscript, my award-winning first novel, Paper Woman. I ditched the autobiographical baggage in my partials and first finished manuscript. The subsequent completed, unpublished manuscripts are where I developed my craft, learned the business of understanding my audience, and became publishable.

Heck, yes, this takes time. Decades in my case. Maybe you won't take decades to create a publishable manuscript. But you must still invest in that time-consuming learning process if you want to be published. Painters and sculptors don't expect their first creations to sell.

People often ask me whether I plan to return to my unpublished manuscripts and fix them, make them saleable. No. Like many authors, I've cannibalized pieces of some of them. But each one is, as a whole, a tube of liver-flavored toothpaste. They're bombs that I wouldn't inflict upon my readers, kind people who have so many options for how they spend their leisure time, and they choose to spend it in my fictional universe. Grasshopper is grateful to them.

How many tubes of liver-flavored toothpaste do you have shoved away in a drawer?

Deadly Divas in Raleigh

"Tea with the Divas" features mystery authors (l to r) Sara Rosett, Laura Bradford, Marcia Talley (president of Sisters in Crime), Heather Webber, and Denise Swanson. Molly Weston organized the tour of these ladies through the Raleigh area. I caught up with them today, 23 October, at the Eva H. Perry Library. They discussed settings for their novels, characters who steal scenes, fan mail, themes, and the writing process. It was a pleasure to put faces to names that I've known until now in cyberspace only.

 

Autumn 2009 Mini-Tour Into Western North Carolina

Early 10 September, I set out from Raleigh in a rental car — didn't want to put my poor, old Honda through the rigors of the Eastern Continental Divide again — and arrived in Boone, NC in good time for my 10 a.m. workshop on archetypal characters, presented to the High Country Writers (HCW) at the Watauga County Public Library. This was an honor for me because these folks had invited me back after my workshop same time last year on the Hero's Journey. During the presentation this time, we discussed such provocative topics as why Scarlett O'Hara might be classified as a sociopath, and what heroic qualities Satan possesses. Never a dull moment with HCW. Such a fun group with a terrific sense of humor. They took me out to lunch afterward, so now I know there are at least two good Chinese restaurants in Boone. But like last year, I didn't see the sun shine until I left Boone.

After driving an hour and half on two-lane country roads beneath the likes of Grandfather Mountain, I arrived Friday mid-afternoon in Burnsville, home to the 2009 Carolina Mountains Literary Festival (CMLF), where I was again quite honored to be speaking, and I'd again accepted the hospitality of Lucy Doll. After I was squared away in her guestroom, she fed me yummy beans and rice for dinner, then had a small wine-and-munchies gathering at her house. We tried to hang out on her front porch, but it was unseasonably chilly, even after she'd loaned me a coat once worn by actress Helen Hayes, so we eventually migrated inside. Lucy's long-time friend, Leeann Hill, arrived later, from Atlanta, an arduous trip to make in the dark. Leeann writes web-based training for Ceridian. Since I was a technical writer in a previous lifetime, Leeann and I had much to talk about. She stayed next door for the weekend, with Lucy's neighbor, Dan.

Someone from the party left us with a mound of scrumptious, home-baked French bread. Friday morning, Lucy, Leeann, and I knocked out just about all the bread by making French toast. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. Then we all waddled over to the festival.

I'd met Peggy Poe Stern last year at the festival, so I decided to drop in on her early (9 a.m.) session, "Q&A: Writing the Novel," to say hello. Inside, I spotted the moderator and about ten attendees, but no Peggy. Meanwhile, the moderator was homing in on me like I was handing out winning lottery tickets. I told her, "I'm not Peggy. I just dropped by to say hello to her." The moderator pointed to my author badge and said, "I know you aren't Peggy, but you're an author, and Peggy's stuck in gridlock behind a horrible accident involving a fatality, and we need an author to answer questions from these folks who are writing novels." Ulp. Okay. It turns out that these were general questions about writing, not Peggy-specific questions, so I was able to help the writers. (Whew!) And when Peggy did arrived, the CMLF was able to reschedule her session for Friday afternoon. A win-win for Peggy and her audience.

The nasty traffic pileup had also delayed the arrival of Gloria Houston, far left in the image, who was moderating the Keynote panel at 10 a.m. It reminded me that last year, the arrival of Hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico had caused the petroleum pipelines to be shut down to much of the Southeast United States during the CMLF weekend, so speakers a year ago were also delayed while they waited in long lines to buy gas. The theme of the festival this year was "Mountain Mosaic: We All Come from Somewhere Else." Sans Gloria, the other panelists started discussing the relationships between their writing, heritage, and current issues. I'd met Eleanora Tate, second from left, the night before at Lucy's party. In fact, she'd left her Labrador Retriever mix, Shaka (as in Shaka Zulu), at Lucy's house Thursday night because Lucy fosters dogs and could provide a loving doggy motel for authors who traveled with their pets. Eleanora, an award winning author from North Carolina Central University, writes for middle-grade readers. On the panel, we also had Wayne Winkler, second from right, a Melungeon historian and author from East Tennessee State University, who spoke about Melungeons; and Robert Conley, far right, an author from the Western Band of the Cherokee and a Sequoyah Distinguished Professor in Cherokee Studies. By the time Gloria Houston arrived, the panel had clearly distinguished itself as a mosaic of authors with rich and diversified backgrounds.

Some of Robert's books contain depictions of Cherokee Indians in the Appalachians and have been labeled by publishers as Westerns, simply because of the Indian element. And I've thrown publishers for a loop by writing about the Revolutionary War in the South. Publishers like to categorize and have a hard time figuring out what to do with certain material.

After a delicious lunch of turkey chili, Vicki Lane and I walked over to hear Hal McDonald read from his work in progress, a sequel to The Anatomists, which won Court TV’s "Search for the Next Great Crime Writer" contest and was published by Harper-Collins. Then I listened to Vicki's presentation on how she has pulled together the pieces of her mystery series to present a mosaic of the Western North Carolina mountains.

In this picture, Lucy, draped with doggies (Shelby, Maggie, Mr. Carmichael, and Annie) takes a snooze while Leeann and I wash dinner dishes. Lucy, Leeann, Dan the neighbor, keynote speaker Ann Pancake, and I assembled a delicious dinner Friday night at Lucy's house. After Lucy, a festival coordinator, had been on her feet all day, helping to make the event run smoothly, Leeann and I weren't about to let her wash dishes.

Saturday morning 12 September, I caught the first part of a "shop talk" between Hal McDonald and Vicki Lane. In their session, appropriately titled "High Tea and Apple Cider," these two residents of Madison County with very different backgrounds discussed how they met in the authorship of mysteries. I had to leave early to make sure the equipment for my back-to-back presentations was set up.

It's a presenter's nightmare: you have competition from a couple of powerful concurrent sessions, plus your AV equipment doesn't work. By fifteen minutes into my first session, when we were still unable to coax the projector out of displaying my PowerPoint presentation backwards, I knew I had to start my presentation without the slides, or I'd never finish it on time. The good news: I already had a decent-sized crowd in the room and my next session was in the same room, so I hoped to hang onto much of my audience between sessions and modify the second session to fill in the blanks from the first. In "The Storyteller's Mosaic," I explained the stages of the Hero's Journey for readers and moviegoers (but not to the detail I use for writers), and I used examples from three classical movies to illustrate each stage. Most of my audience comprehended where I was going, despite the lack of a visual. Miraculously, during the break between sessions, the projector got fixed, and the room filled up with more attendees. Due to popular request, I ran through my slides quickly in the second session, before I did a reading from Camp Follower.

My titles in the bookstore area really got bought up after that. Here are some comments from attendees:

"The subject — Hero's Journey — was the best plotting aid I've ever listened to. Even if it's explained by other sources, Suzanne's approach is excellent."

"The best part of the session was Suzanne's clarity, organization, examples and content. Bring her back!!!! Give her a workshop spot. Most useful presentation of the festival."

And here's a comment I didn't expect: "After attending a session in which she substituted, I couldn't miss attending the others." That was in reference to Friday morning's session, when I filled in for Peggy Poe Stern.

Wow, folks, thank you! Grasshopper is so grateful! Maybe I'll get to return to CMLF in 2010 and teach the big workshop on the Hero's Journey and Archetypal Characters that I'm teaching for the Carolina Romance Writers 3 October, in Charlotte.

After lunch I attended Robert Conley's reading about a Cherokee fellow at the turn of the last century who was miscast by the locals as a hoodlum and wrongly arrested several times. He finally got fed up with the injustices in the justice system — timely, with the ongoing exposé of the Innocence Project — and turned to robbing banks during the era of John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. With wistfulness, Robert painted him a dashing, heroic figure and said he wouldn't have minded being a bank robber in the good old days. Can't say I blame him.

I drove back to Lucy's house for a nap and a cup of tea, fortifying myself for the three-hour happy hour that was coming up. This social was where I really got the opportunity to talk with other guests, such as Richard Allen Taylor, co-editor of Kakalak and poet; the editor of Press 53, Kevin Watson; poet Seabrook Wilkinson; historical novelist Charles F. Price; and author Marlin Barton.

Kevin Watson, Seabrook Wilkinson, and Vicki Lane.

Charles and Ruth Price.

Rhonda and Marlin Barton, Brette and Daniel Barron.

Of course, we all looked forward to the banquet and Ann Pancake's stirring keynote that combined the themes of environmentalism and coexistence. Make myths to preserve and create culture, she encouraged us.

Afterwards, folks showed up at Lucy's house. I chatted with them a few minutes but was too pooped to stay up later, plus I had the drive back to Raleigh in the morning, so I headed for the shower. Thirty seconds into the shower, my hair loaded with shampoo, I heard the Burnsville fire siren sound. The last time I heard a bona fide fire siren was in the 1980s, when I still lived in Florida. Every place I've lived since Florida has had a full-time fire department. Interesting how times have changed.

Sunday morning, Lucy, Leeann, and I had breakfast, then I drove back to Raleigh using a different route, since I didn't have to return through Boone. I'm sure the new route saved me at least half an hour. But on the road just before the switchbacks and serious downgrade out of the Appalachians began, I found myself behind a guy in a late-model car who kept exchanging kisses with a beagle (yes, it was a beagle) in the front seat beside him. Several times, he almost clobbered oncoming traffic. Fortunately, just before the switchbacks, he turned off the road into a Burger King parking lot. I wouldn't have enjoyed watching him kiss the beagle while he navigated the switchbacks. Too much like watching a Darwin Award in the making.

Many thanks to the High Country Writers; the planning committee for the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival, especially Lucy Doll; and all the folks who attended my presentations, wrote such lovely evaluation comments, and purchased my books.

Next up: a presentation for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington on Thursday 24 September.

National Women's History Month 2009

March is National Women's History Month. Since 2007, I have participated in the organization's mission to "…recognize and celebrate the diverse and historic accomplishments of women by providing information and educational materials and programs."

 From left to right in the picture, authors Suzanne Adair, Phyllis Harrison, and Sharon Ewell Foster at East Regional Library in Knightdale on 8 March. Our panel had a small audience that afternoon because we'd just been inflicted with the spring time change, and everyone was running an hour behind schedule. But our discussion was phenomenal. In one thread, we talked about the suppression of religion experienced by various groups throughout history. For example, export a captured Yoruban into slavery on Saint Domingue (Haiti), and force her to listen to a Catholic priest, and the result is not the obliteration of her native beliefs. Instead, those beliefs will be transformed into the powerful religion of vodou. History provides us with other examples of suppression being an ineffective tool for obliterating religion, government, sexuality, etc. Reminds me of what Master Kan said to Grasshopper in the 1970s TV show "Kung Fu:" "To suppress a truth is to give it force beyond endurance." A timely message for National Women's History Month.

I presented on the topic of women as camp followers in the Revolutionary War at the North Carolina Museum of History 11 March, the museum's "History à la Carte" program. This continues to be a topic of confusion, as most folks equate "camp follower" with "prostitute." Technically, the term "camp follower" wasn't yet used during the Revolution to describe those civilian artisans, sutlers, and retainers, male and female, who traveled with an army. But even by the time of the Civil War, when the term had entered the English language, prostitutes comprised only a tiny segment of an army's non-combatants. So the first matter I clarify for audiences is that not all women who followed an army were prostitutes. What amazes me is that these women endured great deprivation and occasionally found themselves in the middle of battles, just to stay near their loved ones. It speaks to the innate courage of women and their ability throughout time to do what needs to be done. Another timely message for the month.

Guest Blog on Non-Traditional Women of History

Were women in history always the fragile damsels of fables? Today I'm a guest blogger at Romance Novel TV, where I discuss what our "non-traditional" foremothers were up to during the American War of Independence. Visit me and share your thoughts.

Last Thursday, 13 November, my family and I presented "The Family War" for the Raleigh chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution and their annual Veterans' Day dinner. We gave this presentation again last Saturday, 15 November, at the New Hanover County Library in Wilmington. The latter appearance had been rescheduled from September, when it was canceled due to the passage of Tropical Storm Hanna.

Thanks to Marisa O'Neill, Glenn Sappie, and Dorothy Hodder for these wonderful opportunities.

Food, More Food, and an Interview

 Last Thursday night, I attended a booksigning at Quail Ridge Books for author Krista Davis. Her first book, The Diva Runs Out of Thyme, has recently been released. She talked about writing her "food" cozies. Then she read a couple passages from the novel. Krista very graciously asked me to stand up and talk for a few minutes about my books. And she'd brought mouth watering, home-baked treats from Virginia: bourbon pecan pie, pumpkin cheesecake, something chocolate (which I didn't sample because there were those other scrumptious, unique sweets to dispatch!), and cider, white wine, coffee, and tea. Way too much food left when the event was over. Since I didn't want Krista to injure herself by loading all that food in her car and transporting it back to Virginia, I nobly volunteered to lighten her load and take goodies home to my guys. The stash vanished within ten minutes after I walked in the door. I enjoyed meeting my sister Guppy face-to-face finally, after corresponding with her several years online, and wish her luck on book sales!

 Last Friday, I made a presentation for the Brown Bag Book and Lunch Club at the East Regional Library. The topic was how reenacting has helped me write my fiction. Attendees asked questions about reenacting as well as how I researched historical fiction. The librarian who coordinated the event, Janet Morley, provided "period" food: cornbread, molasses cookies, apple brown betty pie, and cider. Again, there was food leftover, so I nobly volunteered to relieve Janet of extras. Again, the food vanished almost as soon as I got home. I'm scheduled to return to East Regional Library March 2009 for a presentation associated with National Women's History Month.

And there's an excellent interview of me in the November 2008 issue of Mary Buckham's online newsletter! Sign up for the newsletter today from Mary's web site. Every month, you'll receive good advice on the craft of writing. Regular contributions from editing guru Margie Lawson and publicity guru Theresa Meyers...and it's free. What a deal!

Grasshopper is grateful to Krista Davis, Janet Morley, and Mary Buckham for their generosity.

Carolina Crimes 2008, and Another Guest Blog

In place of the annual Cape Fear Crime Festival last Saturday afternoon, Dorothy Hodder and Phyllis Smith at the New Hanover County Library in Wilmington, NC arranged two panels of authors. All authors had books released in 2008 that dealt with the Carolinas and had ten minutes to tell the audience about their works.

Authors on the first panel, left to right: Bill Floyd, Jacqueline DeGroot, Russ Hatler, Judy Nichols.

Authors on the second panel, left to right: Joyce Lavene, T. Lynn Ocean, Jim Lavene, Amanda Lamb, Suzanne Adair.

After each panel, the library provided refreshments and a booksigning. Many thanks to the New Hanover County Library, Dorothy, Phyllis, and Two Sisters Bookery for a fun afternoon.

Today Fiction Matters posted my guest blog on the obligations of the historical novelist to readers. I don't know about you, but I hate reading through pages of historically accurate descriptions. In my opinion, the primary obligation of any novelist is creating riveting drama and compelling characters. Stop on over and tell me what you think.