Writing What You Have To

People are always asking Lawrence Block when he's going to write another Bernie Rhodenbarr book. He doesn't know. Besides, he's not interested in writing what you want him to write… because that's not what drives him, or most writers, to put words on the page. He says: 

It’s counterproductive to tell me what you want me to write. I sincerely hope that my writing pleases you, but if you think I’m here to give you what you want, there’s a lot you don’t understand about writing, and no end of things you don’t understand about me. The greatest disservice I could do my readers is to try to give them what they want. That’s just not part of my job description. All I can do is write my books my way, and try to make them so irresistible that you enjoy reading what I want to write.

[…]as much as I might want to write a book about Bernie, or any other character, the desire’s not all that’s required. There are writers who can write anything they’re asked to write, and I thank whatever gods may be that I am not of their number. I probably was, early on, but I got spoiled, and for years now I’ve been unable to go on writing a book unless it engages me.

I love my readers. I need my readers. But some readers have the ridiculous notion that the novelists they read work for them and have an obligation to keep churning out the same book over and over. Some authors are quite content to do that. But even among those authors, I know many of them keep writing book after book about the same characters because they love it, because that's what they are driven creatively to do, and not only because its what their readers and publishers want from them. I'm on my 14th MONK book, and I can tell you I'm not writing them for the money. If I was, I would have quit long ago, because the money is far from spectacular.

Others, like Lawrence Block, would rather go where-ever their muse takes them, regardless of whether it makes the most commercial sense or disappoints some of their fans (I am sure there are scores of readers who wish he'd do nothing but write Scudder and Burglar books for the rest of his life). He writes the story that he has to tell…not the story that you, or me, or the publishers want him to tell.

I admire that about him.  Maybe it's that dedication to his muse, and not his readers, that's one of the keys to his prolific output and great success. 

Man Undercover

Watch Me Die Final Jeroen Ten Berge is a terrific cover artist. He' s done the covers for my books WATCH ME DIE and THE JURY SERIES…as well as the books coming out of Top Suspense, to name a few. Author Joseph D'Agnese interviewed Jeroen on his blog. Here's an excerpt:

How do you describe the work you do? Are you a designer, an illustrator, or what? (It might help if you tell us what your training/background is.)

I consider myself a designer first. However, illustration is a skill I almost always use to assist me in creating the design I have in mind. In some cases an illustration becomes the key element of a design. The Scientist & The Sociopath is an example, but the Serial-series covers I created for Blake Crouch and Joe Konrath are also illustrations, as is Suzanne Tyrpak’s Vestal Virgin cover. I also use stock photography, sometimes my own. Several of the covers I designed for Marcus Sakey feature my photos, as do several of Blake’s covers. 

I guess I was fortunate to have studied graphic and typographic design at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague in the early- to mid-1980s. There was a strong focus on teaching the principles of design and typography, taught by people such as Gerrit Noordzij, one of the greatest type designers of his generation. There was, however, equal attention paid to illustration and photography. The philosophy was very much, "Why ask someone else to make an illustration or photograph for your design if you can do it yourself?"  In retrospect I can see that graduating the year before Apple MacIntosh was introduced to the Netherlands helped as well. Knowing how lead type works, and why there are certain rules of design helps me on a daily basis. That said—I have worked on an Apple for more than 20 years now, and would consider a career change if I had to go back designing old school.

 

Call To Danger

The HMSS Blog has a terrific piece on the saga of  Call to Danger, a series concept that CBS kept trying to make work during the 60s and 70s.  The idea was that a spy would recruit an ordinary citizen to help him solve a crime.  I also wrote in detail about these pilots in my book, Unsold Television Pilots.

The network commissioned three pilots — in 1961, 1967 and 1973 — but none of them clicked.

Lloyd Nolan starred as treasury agent Robert Hale in the 1961 pilot, which was produced by Perry Lafferty, who later became a top CBS exec.

In the 1968 pilot, Peter Graves played Jim Kingsley, an agent for the Office of National Resources, who used a super computer to recruit citizens to help out…to a rousing Morton Stevens' theme.  James Gregory played his boss. The network liked Graves so much, they made him the star of Mission Impossible. And they liked Stevens'  Call to Danger  theme so much that they re-used it in the score to the Hawaii Five-O pilot and as the "CBS Specials" theme.  

In the 1973 pilot, written by MI producer Laurence Heath, Graves reluctantly signed on again. this time playing Treasury Agent Douglas Warfield, who also uses computers to recruit civilians to help him solve crimes…but with a different theme tune.

Here's the opening to the 1973 pilot

Tied In to Writing

For the last few weeks, author Jonathan Maberry has been running a terrific series of lengthy, detailed interviews with Scribe nominated tie-in writers on his Big Scary Blog about the nuts-and-bolts of their craft. This week he focuses on the authors nominated for "Best Speculative Original." Here's an excerpt:

BIG SCARY BLOG: Talk about your process for creating a media tie-in book.

MATT FORBECK: If I’m not already familiar with the basis of the book, I immerse myself in it as best I can and become a fan of it too. As I do that, I look for story hooks, little “what about that?” or “wouldn’t that be cool?” bits. Those become the seeds of the novel. Once I have that, I write up an outline, get it approved, and dig in for real.

JEFF GRUBB: I think all media projects have a core ethos, an underlying truth about them. The original creators of the project may not know what it is, and in fact it may evolve over time. One of the goals I have when working on a media tie-in book is to dig down and find that piece, find that core ethos, and remain true to it in the story. Guild Wars 2 is very much about people coming together to fight a greater threat – that is one of Dougal Keane’s major conflicts in the book.

DAVID MACK: It’s a lot like most other writers’ processes, I imagine. Either I solicit an editor for a shot at writing for a particular license, or they approach me. Either way, if it’s a property I know well, I might already have ideas ready to pitch and develop.  If it’s one that I’m curious about but don’t know intimately, I’ll dig in and immerse myself in it until I start to get a feel for its big picture, its characters and its broader storytelling arcs.

Next, I’ll try to find a story that interests me and seems to offer some new angle that neither the show nor its existing tie-in titles have explored.  In some cases, such as a tie-in line that’s been running for a while, an editor might ask me to craft a story specifically to advance a part of an ongoing narrative.

Then I write a proposal, just a few pages, to see if my general idea is what the editor is looking for. Once we settle on an idea, I prepare a much longer and more detailed full outline that can be presented to the license-holder for approval. Once we get the green-light, I go to work on the manuscript.

To stay in the right mindset while working on a given franchise, I’ll try to listen to music soundtracks from it (if they’re available), and have DVDs ready for reference and quick refreshers on characters’ speech patterns, etc. Online references are also often invaluable tools, especially for a series that is still in production while one is working on it. Thank Heaven for the invention of wiki reference sites!

SEAN WILLIAMS: Well, firstly, I have to make sure I know the property sufficiently well to do it justice. With Star Wars or Doctor Who, say, that would be easy: I’ve been a fan of them for decades. Depending on the kind of project, the next step would be to get right down into the details of the story and character, since they’re the aspect of the tie-in most important to get right, at least in the early stages. This is always accomplished in collaboration with editors and other stakeholders in the project–the people who own the property, basically. I’m not just telling a story for me: in a real way I’m just channelling something for someone else. But that is a fun process, and a challenge, one I take very seriously. There are snafus sometimes, without a doubt, but whether I have one month or one year to write a tie-in, I give it the same energy and consideration I would give one of my own books. To do anything less would be to cheat everyone involved.

The entire series of interviews is well worth your time, regardless of whether you are into tie-ins. There's a lot of great insights into the craft and business of writing books shared by the authors, all of whom are experienced, hard-working pros.

Sizzling Summer Reads

It's going to be a long, hot Top Suspense Summer! Here 12 masters of the genre will keep you on the edge of your beach towel with 12 sizzling summer reads guaranteed to get your pulse pounding.

Join in the discussions this summer and win a free copy of our second anthology! With our second Top Suspense anthology we’ll each be contributing an award nominated, an award winning, or a personal favorite story.  It will be out in the Fall, and anyone who reads and joins in the discussion on our Facebook page of four of our summer books–or better yet, reviews the books on Amazon–will receive a free copy before we make it available to the general public.

Watch the Top Suspense blog over the next three weeks as each Top Suspense author will talk about their sizzling summer books.

Blood Dreams by Jack MacLane (Bill Crider)

Blood Moon by Ed Gorman

Dying Memories by Dave Zeltserman

Motion to Kill by Joel Goldman

No One Will Hear You by Max Allan Collins & Matthew Clemens

Riptide by Paul Levine

Running Cold by Harry Shannon

Set The Night On Fire by Libby Hellmann

Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara

Valley Of Lights by Stephen Gallagher

Voluntary Madness by Vicki Hendricks

And Watch Me Die by yours truly. And don't forget to join our Summer Sizzling Reads discussions all summer long at our Top Suspense Facebook Page!

Thriller Breasts

Jordan-Has-Huge-Breasts-2 A few years back, I remember reading that Homeland Security was inviting thriller writers over to give them advice on what plots terrorists might be cooking up. The notion was widely lampooned but it was probably a very smart idea, because as author Lew Perdue points out, when it comes to terror plots, he's often been way ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to killer breasts: 

The Obama Administration’s recent warning about terrorists using breast implant bombsreminds me that over my 35 years of writing thrillers, I’ve frequently developed ideas — including explosive breast implants — that once seemed preposterous, outlandish or impossible — but which have either come true or entered the realm of the dangerously likely.

[…]About two year ago, I outlined a thriller around women who had implants filled with a liquid explosive that does not require a separate detonator to explode. Nitroglycerine is an example one of these, but is less stable and not as powerful as alternative formulations available. […]I had stunningly attractive women with breasts surgically enhanced to Brobdingnagian proportions, which of course, require commensurate structural support including a substantial underwire superstructure.

 

The detonation mechanism consisted of two parts, both cleverly constructed to identically mimic bra underwiring. The actual detonator circuit was contained in side the implant was a simple variation on a spark gap. This was capacitance linked to external wiring in the bra.  The connection as I designed it in the outline was a bit like those capacitance switches that work when you touch them with your finger. No direct connection is needed.

 

Similarly, the electrical charge to initiate the detonation in the breast implant bomb doesn’t need a direct connection. Just the closeness through the skin between the detonator and the electrical charge to set off the explosive. The electrical charge in my thriller outline came from a small netbook which had been rewired to route the power leads of the USB port to the earplug port. Very large capacitance charges can be achieved by gradual charging. But the advantage of a capacitor is that t can discharge all its energy almost instantly.

 

By bringing the slightly modified earplug near the implanted detonator wire and pressing the “PLAY” button on the netbook’s music player would detonate the implants.

 

What Royalty Should Publishers Pay Authors For Ebooks?

Publishers maintain a 25% royalty on ebooks is generous but the Authors Guild thinks it should be 50%. Author Kelly McClymer's thoughtful husband has crunched the numbers and determined what he believes, based on industry figures, what he thinks the fair royalty should be. He goes into great detail about how he determined those numbers, and it's truly fascinating to read, but here's the bottom line:

25% net is much too low a royalty rate, a 50% net is too much as it assumes no cost to the publisher and is not realistic. […] Ebook royalties should be between 31.4%and 45% of net. The lower royalty rate assumes publishers have the same cost to publish an ebook as a paperback while the 45% has a more reasonable cost.

The Interrogator Is Interrogated

TTMAR 2 Brian Drake conducts an indepth interview with my buddy Paul Bishop, who has just reissued all of his terrific crime novels as ebooks (some under new titles). Paul is a veteran LAPD detective and an interrogation expert (also the star of ABC's upcoming reality show Take the Money and Run) who brings that experience to his books. But, like Joseph Wambaugh before him, he writes more than simple police procedurals.  In the interview, he talks in detail about how the characters in his books are shaped, in particular his series heroine Fey Croaker. 

BD: Fey Croaker is a great character in her Detective Fey Croaker L.A.P.D. Novels. Was there anyone in particular who inspired her?

PB: All of my long-term partners on the job have been female.  I learned a ton from all of them.  In my opinion, the average woman in law enforcement is much better than the average man – and yes, I know saying that is sacrilege to many.  Women on the job are natural problem solvers and can instinctively deescalate potentially violent situations far quicker and easier than their male counterparts because they are not hung up on their own machismo.

Working for so many years with female partners, I saw firsthand how they were mistreated by bureaucracy, how every time they turned around they were being hit on sexually.  It got to the point where I’d heard every pick-up line in the book a hundred times used on my partners.  I got really tired of it, so I had some inkling of how they felt. 

I also came to understand why female cops have a very hard time sustaining personal relationships outside of the job.  And through investigating sexually related crimes for thirty plus years, I came to believe the majority of females have some kind of sexual abuse – almost always unreported – in their background.  This was inside knowledge, and I wanted to bring it to the character of Fey Croaker.  CROAKER TEQUILA

Before I had even started writing the first book, I had plotted out a four book story arc for Fey’s personal life.  I knew each book would contain a standalone plot, but would also be designed to isolate Fey more and more personally, before forcing her to deal with her demons in the fourth novel.

So, Fey is a combination of many of the great female detectives with whom I’ve had the honor of working.  And the best feeling was when I would be approached by female law enforcement officers who had read the book and demanded to be told how I knew this stuff – it meant I’d gotten it right.

That's not all he gets right. If you're looking for great summer reading, do yourself a big favor and pick up a Paul Bishop novel.

Literary Agents Reinventing Themselves

Victoriaphoto With the publishing industry undergoing cataclysmic changes, and with self-publishing now a viable option for authors, it's only natural that literary agents are scrambling to position themselves.

How are they going to make money in this new publishing business? How are they going to be relevant?

One way is to reinvent themselves. Instead of just finding clients publishers and negotiating the deals,  they are now branching out into publishing books themselves… or helping their clients self-publish by taking on the management and business side of the business (finding cover artists, copyeditors, tracking royalties, etc) …in exchange for a 15% commission on books sold. Here's how the Dystel & Goderich Literary Agency is doing it:

 We have a project manager whose job it is to coordinate, advise, and make sure that the process goes smoothly with minimal work on the part of the author.  This, because we want our authors to write, not have to engage in a 47-e-mail exchange with someone about font size.   Everything is subject to the author’s approval.

Which brings up the question posed by several of you, both here and on Joe Konrath’s blog: what are you people doing to earn that 15% commission?  Pretty much what we do now to earn that 15% commission.  Our commitment to this is more than just uploading and watching the dollars trickle in.  In addition to all we do as agents, managing self-published properties will be part of our job: updating metadata, copy, next-book excerpts, etc.  It’s not just vague managerial duties, but concrete tasks that we will be adding to our other duties.

Over on the Writer Beware blog, there's an informative, thoughtful, and remarkably civil discussion going on about this new development, one that Victoria Strauss sees as a troubling conflict of interest. Here's just one of her many concerns:

 If an agency can publish a client's book itself, will it try as hard to market the book to traditional publishers? Will it give up sooner on a book that doesn't sell right away? Where and how will the line be drawn between "this book still has potential markets" and "this book is tapped out?" How much–unconsciously or otherwise–will the agency influence clients' decisions on which publishing route to take? According to Dystel & Goderich's announcement, "what we are going to do is to facilitate e-publishing for those of our clients who decide that they want to go this route, after consultation and strategizing about whether they should try traditional publishing first or perhaps simply set aside the current book and move on to the next." (My bolding.) Does this mean that the agency may take on clients whose manuscripts are never marketed to other publishers at all?

 But in the comments section, author Barry Eisler, who is married to an agent, and Joe Konrath, whose agents just announced their new self-publishing intiative, have  jumpd in to explain in detail why they see this as a natural evolution for agents as advocates for their authors. Barry says, in part: 5085106102_6ebeaff14f

I think you're defining the author/agent relationship premise too narrowly. Most fundamentally, the purpose — the end — of the agent is to help authors get their books to the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success. The means by which this end has traditionally been achieved is a sale to a legacy publisher. Because the "sale to a publisher" route has until quite recently been the only means to the "getting the book to the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success" end, it's easy to conflate the two. But just as railroads were not in the railroad business, but rather were in the transportation business, agents are not in the "selling to publishers" business, but rather are in the "helping their authors reach the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success" business. Agents who miss this fundamental distinction are making the same mistake the railroad companies made, and will achieve similar results.

It's discussion well worth reading.  

I'm sure you're wondering where I weigh in on this.

I agree with both Victoria… and with Barry & Joe.

I think it's a big conflict-of-interest when an agency becomes a publisher…creating a situation that's rife with ethical problems and plenty of opportunities for the authors to be exploited and screwed.

However, I think that's very different from what agencies like Dystel & Goderich appear to be offering.  

If I am reading it right, they're offering to take all the headaches out of your self-publishing venture by dealing with the cover artists, copyeditors, formatters, and sales platforms for you.

In other words, you write, we'll handle as much of the business side of it as you'd like us to. You'll still be making all the decisions and writing all the checks…we'll just shoulder all the time-consuming, day-to-day managerial work. 

I don't see a conflict-of-interest in that scenario. It's your self-publishing venture, they're just managing it for you in exchange for a commission (I think 15% for that service is way too high, but that's another discussion).

 (Pictured: Victoria Strauss and Barry Eisler, who photo was taken at Bouchercon 2010 by Mark Coggins)

Me on Me Again

The Writer Underground interviewed me this week about, well, writing…here's an excerpt.

Q: You came to writing early; you wrote and sold your first novel while still in college. How many novels have you written over the course of your career?

Eight Diagnosis Murder novels, 13 Monk novels, four Jury novels, My Gun Has Bullets, Dead Space, Watch Me Die, and The Walk.

Q: In an era where a lot of “experts” suggest you have to specialize to succeed, you write in several different formats (novels, online, TV, etc); how has that versatility paid off during your career?

It’s kept me alive. I have never put all of my eggs in one basket. So when TV lets me down, the books pick up the slack, and vice-versa. I also work as a TV consultant to studios and networks around the world.

Q: How do you approach new projects when you have little or no experience with that kind of writing (e.g. — your first script, your first novel, first tie-in novel, etc)?

With terror… and excitement. I like challenging myself. It keeps me sharp. I usually begin by researching the subject and talking to experts in it… before tackling it myself.

Q: Any quirky writing habits that would immediately endear you to my readers?

I write in the nude while listening to TV themes. I’m joking, of course. I at least wear underwear.

Q: You’ve got a pretty active online presence; how much time are you investing in your blog, interviews, social media, etc?

Way too much. In fact, I shouldn’t even be answering these questions.

Q: Writing professionally means dealing with tight deadlines, yet “writer’s block” is still a hot topic among writers. How do you make yourself “creative” on a deadline?

It’s the deadline that makes me creative. I do much better when I have a drop-dead date. I have never missed a deadline, even when I had an accident and broke both of my arms.

Q: Any advice for novice writers, or observations about the mistakes they make over and over and over and over…?

Avoid clichés.