The Writing Process

The Art of Collaboration

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I’ve been collaborating for most of my professional life as a screenwriter and as a novelist. For twenty years, I wrote & produced TV shows with William Rabkin and plotted countless episodes with large writing staffs. I’ve also collaborated on over thirty books, most recently on the internationally bestselling Fox & O’Hare series with Janet Evanovich (our next book, The Chase, comes out on 2/25). So I am always interested in how other writers collaborate…and when I learned that my friends Rebecca Cantrell and James Rollins were writing together, I had to find out how their creative partnership produced the bestsellers Blood Gospel and Innocent Blood. Their answers are fascinating…and tremendously useful for any authors who are thinking about teaming up on a book.

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How did you two meet? How did you decide to write a book together? Was there any initial reluctance or concerns that you had to work out first?

Rebecca: We met at the Maui Writers Conference when I took a course in thriller writing from Jim. He blurbed my first book (thanks, Jim!) and we stayed in touch off and on afterward. So, we’d already known each other for a few years when Jim called to ask me if I was interested in collaborating on a project. When I asked for details, he said it was “confidential.” Trying to trick some information out of him, I asked if he could answer yes or no questions, which brought a ten-second pause before he caved and told me everything.  Obviously he was not mean to withstand that kind of brutal interrogation! After he explained premise and the world, I said yes immediately—it was too intriguing and controversial not to.

Jim:  Yes, I would not withstand torture.  As to the genesis of this series, I was visiting the L.A. Museum of Art, where they had a Rembrandt exhibit.  I became fascinated by that Old World master’s depiction of the raising of Lazarus.  There are many oddities about that painting:  like why does everyone have such looks of horror at this miracle by Christ, why are there weapons painted above Lazarus’s tomb (according to the Bible he was merely a banker), and why in one version of the painting did Rembrandt have blood dribbling from Lazarus’s lips?  This, of course, made me think “Hmm, maybe Lazarus was actually a vampire.”  Yep, that’s how my mind works.  And that got me wondering if vampires did indeed exist during the time of Christ, how might have Christ dealt with them.  Would he have tried to save them?  How would that have changed the Church?  How might that look today?  So I created a vampiric sect of the Catholic Church, vampires who swore an oath to Christ and the Church to stop feeding on humans and to only subsist on “Christ’s blood,” which for this series, is consecrated wine, which Catholics believe does indeed transubstantiate into the physical embodiment of Christ’s blood.  Once I had this idea, a grand epic story slowly built in my head, one spanning history and delving deep into the divide between science and religion.  I knew this story was too big for me to tackle alone, especially since what was in my head was not really my wheelhouse as a writer.  I could bring my skill at twisting history and science and building elaborate action sequences, but this story needed more than that.  It needed to be richly textured and gothic in atmosphere.  Not my skill set.  But from reading Rebecca’s books, I knew she could.  So I thought, “what if we took the best of both our skills and crafted this story together?”  So I made that call that Rebecca described above.

How did you know your two voices and approaches to writing would ultimately mesh?

Rebecca: We did a lot of work before we wrote the first word, tossing samples of scenes written in different styles back and forth until we found the ones that we thought would work best for this kind of story. We wanted something that was different from our regular voices. Once we agreed on that, we wrote to those styles. To make it mesh, we edit and edit each other’s work. After we’re done with that, we edit some more.

Jim:  We definitely challenged each other.  Rebecca would push me to look deeper into characters’ motivations, while I tried to find ways to ratchet up tension and keep those action scenes taut and varied.  But, like Rebecca said, it was a learning curve in regards to finding that “style” and “voice” for the story.  Initially there was lots of debate and trials in regards to how to make all those choices fit the story.  But eventually we discovered it and ran with it.

How did you handle the plotting?

Jim:    The first thing we did was to build a “World Bible” for this world and characters.  There’s actually much more in that bible than is actually in the books, but we needed to understand this world and its characters in as much depth as possible before beginning.  This helped us have a roadmap from which to work from.  And it’s still a work in progress as we work through this third book in the series.

Rebecca: The world bible might end up being longer than the books! But it’s definitely been a great resource for keeping track of things and helping to keep us on track for plotting. Which brings me to the outline (and the next question).

Do you outline? If so, how detailed do you get and how closely do you stick to it afterwards?

Rebecca: For the first book Jim had a detailed plot outline in place, which we ended up deviating from quite a bit as time went on. For subsequent books we’ve done a lot of brainstorming via email and Skype. We usually come up with the big moments of the book and the locations first, then drill down into a list of scenes. The outline changes as the book moves ahead, but we expect that.

Rebecca Cantrell
Rebecca Cantrell

Jim:   For my own books, I generally work from a pretty loose outline, but to work together, it was clear from the start that we would need more of a paved road.  I don’t know if we actually achieved that, but we at least carved out a gravel road.  We mostly stuck with it, but it did allow us some elbow room to venture off a bit from that path.  But I have to say, it’s sort of fun outlining with a partner versus doing it solo.  It was that back and forth on Skype where some of the most imaginative elements of the story were created.

How do you divvy up the writing? For instance, does one of you write the first draft and the other do revisions? Or do you trade chunks back and forth?

Rebecca: We trade chunks back and forth. I usually first draft historical scenes, love scenes, and character-oriented scenes, whereas Jim does more of the action and plot-driven scenes. But there isn’t a hard and fast rule on that.

Jim:    Exactly. There is a small love scene in book two (Innocent Blood) that I tackled (not without a lot of blushing on my part) and Rebecca cracked out some very awesome ambush scenes.  But I don’t think either of us would have been able to pull those off without going through the tempering flames of writing the first book.  We both learned a lot from one another in that first venture.  But one of the coolest things Rebecca once shared with me (and I think it highlights the success of our collaboration) is how one night she was reading a section of the book aloud to her husband and he stopped her and asked her who wrote that last paragraph she read.  She had to admit to him, “I really don’t know.”  That’s how intensive we are about editing, re-editing, and turning pages back and forth between us.

Here’s a techie question about the process…do you both work on the same operating system (eg are you both on Macs?), do you use the same software (Word?), do you share files using a Dropbox, Google Docs, etc. or do you just send email attachments back and forth?

Rebecca: I use a PC. I think Jim uses a Mac, but I’m not even sure. We email the manuscript file back and forth, using MS-Word with Track Changes and Comments.  We only have one manuscript file and we’re usually pretty good at not stomping on the other guy’s stuff by accident, although I have had to use Word’s Compare Documents feature a couple of times.

Jim:   Until this very moment, I didn’t even know there was a “Compare Documents” feature on Word.  But yes, we both use Word and I do indeed work on a Mac.

How much time do you have to write each book? How do you handle the deadline pressures?

Rebecca: About 6-9 months but we’re also writing other books at the same time. I’m pretty fast and Jim is ridiculously fast (which has made me faster because I can’t let him win), so we muddle through. We had some serious deadline pressure on a short story once and that’s where the time difference came in handy—Jim started when I was done for the day and I came back online when he was ready to go to bed, so we worked on it 24 hours a day. Crazy, I admit, but the story did get done quickly!

Jim:  I always work best (and fastest) under deadline.  The first book (while it took about 6-7 months to write) actually took us just shy of a full year to create.  Those additional months were occupied with building that World Bible, outlining, playing with styles, etc.  With that worked out, we crafted the second book slightly faster.  By the way, one other advantage in regard to having your writing partner living halfway around the globe is that difference in time zones does allow some magic to happen.  It was not uncommon for one of us to end our day by emailing a series of “problems with the story” to the other—only to awake the next morning to find solutions to those “problems” in our in-box.  It’s like having magical elves working on your project while you sleep.

I come from television, so collaborating with other writers is easy for me. But authors are a solitary lot. I know many authors who would have a very, very hard time writing with anyone else. They’ve worked hard to develop their own voice. They are used to writing alone and not having to deal with the input of anyone but, perhaps, their editor and agent. How did you reconcile your individual approaches to writing novels so that you could work together?

Rebecca: I was surprised at how easy it was. I’ve worked with teams of writers on technical documents before, so I was used to breaking things up and putting them back together, but I expected a lot more discord when it came to fiction. It helps that Jim is very easy to work with—mellow, generous, smart, and without a lot of ego. I think the work we did at the beginning to set up a world bible and the style we wanted it to be written in helped build up trust between us so that by the time we started writing the book itself we both were confident that we were working from a shared vision. Also, we communicate a lot during the process, with daily emails and weekly Skype calls, and that helps to make sure we’re both on the same page.

James Rollins
James Rollins

Jim:  And I had no background at all with working with another author.  So it was probably a steeper learning curve for me than it was for Rebecca.  One of the great tools she brought to the table, which indeed made things easier, was her organizational skills.   She is very good at making sure all elements of the story stay on point.  Also whenever some question would come up in regard to plot we had a simple solution:  we would look to the story itself.

How do you resolve disputes on plot issues? Or on the rewrites? Does one of you have the final word?

Rebecca: Again, this has been a lot easier than I expected. Because we’re both committed to the same story, we don’t tend to argue about much. There was one scene at the end of Innocent Blood where we spent a couple of hours going back and forth about what a certain character would do, but it was more about us trying to figure out what the story needed than arguing for one position or another. I would say that the story has the final word, not either one of us. I think that we end up with stories that are very different than what we would have come up with one our own and that’s good.

Jim:  Exactly.  Rather than letting ego be involved, conflicts were resolved by deciding what best suited the story.  And that one time where a critical moment of the story had the two of us on diametrically opposed opposite sides of a fence, it was debating the pros and cons of our two positions that created an entirely new scenario, a better one, one we would never have come up on our own.

Did you learn any lessons from your first collaboration that made the second one easier?

Rebecca: I think we developed shorthand of communication that helped speed things along, but it was pretty easy from the start.

Jim:   I also think that having that World Bible grow alongside the crafting of the first book gave us a great foundation from which to write that second book (and now the third).  And I agree that we have found ways to communicate much more efficiently.  We both have learned somewhat how the other thinks and writes and that helps, too.  I remember our initial forays on Skype were more tiptoeing around each other a bit, so as not to insult or come off too harsh.  Now we’re even better friends that we can forgo the niceties and get down more quickly to brass tacks.  Not that we’re harder on each other, just more real.

Has your collaboration changed the way you write novels on your own?

Rebecca: I’m faster now. Jim’s a faster writer than me and my pride forced me to keep up.  I’m also more comfortable writing action scenes than I used to be.

Jim:  I’m also much more conscious of character and the emotional inner world of those characters.  Seeing Rebecca’s approach to building character has definitely influenced my own writing.

Based on this experience, and assuming you had the time, would you collaborate with other authors?

Rebecca: Absolutely. It’s been a tremendous amount of fun!

Jim:  I wholeheartedly agree.  But I also think it still takes finding that special person who complements your own writing and is simpatico with you on a personal level.  For me, it was great (and I suspect a rare commodity) to find both of those in Rebecca.

 

Lessons of The Obsidian Heart

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9781477807606_p0_v2_s260x420My friend Mark Barnes’ new novel The Obsidian Heart is a character and plot driven story, as much political thriller as fantasy adventure. It’s the second novel in his lyrical Echoes of Empire series, an epic, fantastic tale of family loyalty and political intrigue, fraught with shadowy visions, baroque magic, arcane science, bloody feuds, and ancient forces whose agendas are as yet unknown. I invited him here to talk about what he learned while writing the second novel in his series.

It’s been said that the second novel is the hardest, and the one where a number of authors stumble. Inexperienced as I may be, I’d challenge that to say the novel you’re working on should be the hardest, because you want to improve in some way on what you’ve done previously. I looked at the second novel as a blessing, and a curse. A blessing, because this time I was being paid to do what I loved, to share more of my story with readers, and to get better at what I did. A curse, because I had to do all that while the clock was ticking, adding demands on a life that was already reasonably full.

When I signed a contract, the landscape changed. I was no longer working for myself, and had an obligation to complete my work within an established time frame, to an acceptable level of quality that wouldn’t cause my agent to facepalm, or give my editors a stroke. It reminded me a little of the warning you see on the side mirrors of your car: deadlines in the mirror are closer than they appear. In this case, three books released in a 12 month period.

By the time I broke ground on The Obsidian Heart, I was in the position where the first novel, The Garden of Stone, had been written and edited, but not released. The foundation for everything that was yet to come hadn’t been seen by the public: there were no reviews, and at this point no feedback on the project other than an enthusiastic agent, and publishing team. That support helped ferry me across rivers of doubt and second-guessing. But I was writing in a vacuum with regards to the response of paying readers. The only option was to continue with the story I wanted to tell, with the characters I’d become more familiar with, but to leverage from the lessons learned in the writing and editing process.

With The Garden of Stones, I had a detailed story plan that described everything. Writing The Obsidian Heart, I relied less on a rigid structure, and leaned more towards an organic experience where I strayed from the plan as the story grew, and characters evolved. This came from a greater familiarity with the world, the story, and the characters, as well as the knowledge that my work was going to be seen in the wild. My first readers had the impression that I enjoyed writing The Obsidian Heart more than I did The Garden of Stones: a shared view that I was more relaxed, and focused more on telling a story, than writing a novel. Such is true, because the pressure of getting published was no longer a millstone; it was replaced with the challenge of telling a better story, and being a better writer, which was more enjoyable Some of the things I found useful in the journey of writing the second novel were:

  1. Knowing what the story was going to be, and where the characters were going, before finger touched keyboard;
  2. More familiarity with my world, the people in it, and how they related to the various story threads that were going to unfold. A solid grasp on the foundations also meant I could be confidently flexible, as well as reigning things in when I needed to because a scene, cause, or effect made no sense;
  3. A world that grows in the telling. By changing the setting, I gave readers something new to see;
  4. Being aware of how long the narrative was going to be. This made it easier to work out how long writing and editing the novel was going to take;
  5. Having built up some writing fitness, and discipline. On a bad day I was doing about 1000 words. On a good day, circa 4000 words. This was a sustainable effort, thanks to having already written one novel;
  6. The deadline itself, as it gave me the time frames from which I calculated how much I needed to write in what time frame, allocating editing time, time for first readers to review and critique, etc; and
  7. Learning from my mistakes. I had no doubt that my agent and editors were focussed on making my book a better artifact than I had given them. A collaborative approach in editing taught me a lot about where I could improve. I hope it’s something for which I never lose my appreciation: good editors were, and always will be, my friend.

I’m writing this a week after the release of The Obsidian Heart, and early reviews and reader responses have been great. Here’s hoping it stays that way. I’d enjoy the ongoing opportunity to give readers the kinds of stories and characters they care about, in worlds they love.

Plotting As You Go

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McHugh_Born_of_Hatred_cvr_FINALEverybody plots differently. I could never plot a book the way my friend Steve McHugh did with his two acclaimed novels “Crimes Against Magic” and “Born of Hatred.” But he might not finish a book at all if he took my approach. Creativity isn’t cookie-cutter. Everyone has to find their own way to their muse, so I asked Steve to tell us about his approach…which, considering how successful his books are, has clearly worked for him. 

If you ever ask a writer what type of plotter they are, you normally get one of two answers. They either have everything arranged and know what’s going to happen from one scene to the next, or they throw caution to the wind and see what happens. But there is a third group, the one that does a little bit of both. And that’s the group that I fall in.

I started my first published work, Crimes Against Magic, about 4 years ago. I’d just finished writing a book that will never see the light of day and decided that I needed to write something new. I only knew two things. 1. That the main character would be Nathan Garrett, a sorcerer and thief whose memories had been forcibly removed some time before the start of the book and 2. That it was going to be hard work.

I had almost zero notes for the story beyond a very basic outline and just decided to figure it out as I went. The first draft took about 6 or 7 months and was an abhorrent piece of rubbish, as were the next 2 drafts. I re-wrote the book 4 times in total until I found a story I actually liked and then I set about editing. That was another 4 or 5 drafts. I’m not sure how many it was in the end, but it was a lot and it took a very long time. In all, it took me 3 years to finish the book. After which, I decided to self-publish it and it, to my great shock, did very well.

I knew that I couldn’t take 3 years to write the sequel, so in between editing Crimes Against Magic, I started plotting Born of Hatred. When I say plotting, I mean in detail I knew what was going to happen at every moment.

Steve McHugh
Steve McHugh

That whole plan lasted about 3 chapters before the book went off on a tangent and I changed a bunch of things. This happened a few times during the story and I quickly realised something. I was not a detailed plotter. Once I’d re-done the plot so that it was just  the beginning and end with details about what I wanted to happen and roughly when, the story flowed a lot easier. I finished the first draft in 6 months and then the 2nd a few months later and that was it. The story was then edited, but that only took another draft or 2. It took me a lot less than a year to write book 2 and it was an even bigger success than book 1. Enough that 47North picked up both books, which were re-published last month, and book 3, which will be published next Feb.

I learned a lot from the experience of writing both books. And when it came to write book 3, I started with how I’d finished book 2. Enough details to guide me though what I wanted, but not enough to know every little detail. I know now that I like to be surprised, but still have that guideline to know where to go, even if I don’t know how I’ll get there.

It can take time to figure out which way of plotting works best for you. Some people take books to get to a place they like, and some do it with the first thing they write. And while you can read about how other people do it, the trick is trying different ways until you get it just right for you. Once that happens, you’ll find that your story comes together much easier.

 

The Lost Ella Clah Pilot

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Ella Clah cover
The cover for “Aimee & David Thurlo’s Ella Clah: The Pilot Script.” The paperback, nook and kobo editions will be available soon.

Aimee & David Thurlo‘s Ella Clah, a Navajo Police special investigator, is one of the most enduring and popular characters in detective fiction today. Ella’s dedicated fans have long dreamed of the bestselling, critically acclaimed series coming to television…and it almost happened.

In 2001, CBS commissioned a pilot script, a sample episode of a proposed series, from William Rabkin and yours truly. Sadly, the Ella Clah pilot ultimately wasn’t produced, but ever since, the script has been hotly sought-after by fans. So we decided that it was time, at long last, to make that rare pilot script available to fans… along with the original sales treatment, six episode ideas, a foreword by the Thurlos, and a detailed account from Bill and me about how we approach our adaptation and what our plans were for the TV series. The book is called Aimee & David Thurlo’s Ella Clah: The Pilot Script and is now available on Kindle and Kobo (Paperback and Nook editions are coming soon) Here’s an excerpt from our introduction…

It was the end of the 2000-2001 TV season. CSI had become an unexpected hit on CBS. Every network was suddenly looking for a new spin on the traditional cop show and we thought we had one in Aimée & David Thurlo’s Ella Clah novels…but we’d have to make some big changes to pull it off.

In the books, Ella is an ex-FBI agent working as a special investigator in the Navajo nation’s police force. It was a character, and a world, that we hadn’t seen on television before. And we knew we never would. That’s because the concept had three big strikes against it: the setting was rural, the stories were all about Native Americans, and the lead was a woman. Remember, this was twelve years before Justified and Longmire, both of which are on networks that had yet to produce an episodic drama series, and there hadn’t been a hit, female-lead cop show since Cagney & Lacey.

Despite those major drawbacks, we believed there had to be a way we could make Ella Clah work within the current television landscape. So we went back to the books and analyzed what the key elements were that attracted us to them. And, not surprisingly, it came down to Ella herself, a woman torn between two different cultures; mainstream America and the Navajo nation…

To find out more, you’ll have to read the book. We hope it’s an exciting story for Ella Clah fans and aspiring TV screenwriters alike…and a cool peek behind-the-scenes of network television.

Finding Havana Lost

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The Chicago Tribune hailed my friend Libby Fischer Hellmann’s new novel HAVANA LOST as her “most ambitious book, a sprawling novel that spans more than six decades and a number of countries and comes peppered with passions, love affairs, kidnappings, conspiracies, CIA and Outfit thugs, and, naturally, a pile of dead bodies.” Sounds great, doesn’t it? So I asked Libby to tell me how this book came about… 

FINALHLebook-245x369I was talking to my sister on the phone after I finished A BITTER VEIL. I was already about 60 pages into my next Georgia Davis thriller, but something was preventing me from investing in it. I considered writing a World War Two thriller—I’m continually drawn to periods of extreme conflict in which some people are heroes, others cowards, and you never knew whom to trust. Unfortunately, I realized there was probably nothing I could write about World War Two that hasn’t been done better by someone else.

Our phone conversation turned to other time periods and settings of extreme conflict, and my sister brought up Cuba. As soon as she mentioned it, I started to get that itch—the kind of itch that can only be scratched by diving into a subject. We both remembered how my parents flew down to gamble in Havana. This was when Batista was still in power. I must have only been about 6 or 7, but I remember being jealous that they were going to a foreign country and culture. I wanted to go. Of course, they didn’t take me.

A few years later Fidel took over and Cuba was suddenly off limits to Americans. Soon afterwards it turned Communist, and Communism was our enemy! Because of that, Cuba seemed even more mysterious and exotic, and I wanted to know more about it. A year later, of course, came the Bay of Pigs, followed fifteen months later by the Cuban Missile Crisis, both of which made Cuba even more impenetrable and threatening. So close and yet so far.

Finally, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, I recalled one of the Godfather films where Al Pacino (Michael Corleone) and Lee Strasberg (Hyman Roth aka Meyer Lansky) are on a rooftop supposedly in Havana discussing how they’re going to own the island. Shortly after that, Michael sees a rebel willing to die in order to overthrow Batista . Michael changes his mind about doing business with Roth.

That clinched it. I realized I had most of the elements for a terrific thriller: revolution, crime, conflict, an exotic setting. And while I knew it would be a stand-alone story, rather than a series, there is a thematic link between HAVANA LOST, and the two previous stand-alone thrillers I’d written: A BITTER VEIL and SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE. That theme is revolution and what it does to an individual, a family, a community, a country, a culture. In fact, I consider HAVANA LOST the noir leg of my “revolutionary trilogy.”

There was only one other element I needed.  I enjoy—actually it’s more than that… it’s probably an obsession at this point—writing about women and the choices they make. I needed a female character I could insert into the middle of the volatile situation. It would be fascinating to see what she did and how she coped. How would she survive? What kind of a woman would she become? I found that woman in Frankie Pacelli, the daughter of a Mafia boss who owns a Havana resort. She’s eighteen when we meet her but in her seventies by the end of the book.

The rest was, as they say, is history.

Btw, I finally did make it to Cuba in 2012 with my daughter, and it was just as fascinating as I thought it would be. I want to go back. In the meantime, I hope you’ll take a look at HAVANA LOST.

Chicagoan Libby Fischer Hellmann is the award-winning author of ten compulsively readable thrillers. They include the Ellie Foreman series, which Libby describes as a cross between “Desperate Housewives” and “24,” the hard-boiled Georgia Davis PI series, and two standalones, SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE, and A BITTER VEIL. Her tenth and newest release, also a stand-alone, is HAVANA LOST, a historical thriller set largely in Cuba. She also has written nearly twenty short stories and novellas. A transplant from Washington DC, she says they’ll take her out of Chicago feet first.

 

 

 

On the Lam

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Marcus Sakey, Lee Goldberg, Sean Chercover and Ann Voss Petersen at On The Lamb. Photo by John Rector
Marcus Sakey, Lee Goldberg, Sean Chercover and Ann Voss Petersen at On The Lamb. Photo by John Rector

Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint brought their authors up to Seattle last weekend to meet with their executives and editors over dinners, parties and meetings…..and to talk shop at a conference entitled “On The Lam” that was open to invited members of the public. It was an amazing experience.

The best thing about  the “On the Lam” conference were the numerous, and lengthy, opportunities we had to meet, and spend time with, the Amazon executives and editors. It gave us a real chance to develop personal relationships with them rather than the typical short encounters you have at Bouchercon, etc.

 The first full day began with a breakfast meeting at Amazon HQ where the heads of their various departments gave us confidential briefings on the current status on all aspects of the Amazon Publishing program and the many initiatives they have in the works for the coming year. It was very interesting and I wish I could share the details…but we were sworn to secrecy. We were introduced to key department heads and went off to lunch aboard a yacht in Lake Union, where we got a chance to mingle with the execs one-on-one in a casual setting. We then broke up into groups for an afternoon cruise , a walking tour of the city , or a tour Seattle distillery tour. After the afternoon outings, we got back together for a terrific party at the Chihuly Glass Museum at the base of the Space Needle. There were a number of inspiring, short speeches by Amazon execs…and then we all mingled.

Saturday was spent in the “On the Lam” conference, where the authors in attendance were on panels moderated by Amazon editors and discussed many aspects of writing, marketing and the publishing business. The conference concluded with the authors breaking into several groups and going to dinners hosted by editors at some of Seattle’s best restaurants.

Authors Max Allan Collins and Jay Stringer
Authors Max Allan Collins and Jay Stringer
A lot of the authors and attendees have blogged enthusiastically about their experience at “On The Lam.” Author Max Allan Collins says the event was truly unprecedented:

[It]was unlike anything I’ve experienced in forty years of publishing. The T & M crew flew in 75 authors from hither and yon – “yon” being the UK, and hither being places like “Iowa” – simply to give those authors a chance to interact with each other, and the T & M editorial and marketing team. Editors have taken me out for lunch or breakfast many times, and publishers often have cocktail parties at Bouchercon and/or take authors out for a group dinner. But this was different.

For one thing, this conference was almost exclusively attended by one publisher’s writers. For the Saturday panels, family and friends and some local writers group members were in the audience, but mostly this was writers talking to other writers (and to editors). All weekend, the kinds of conversations usually only heard in secluded corners of bars at Bouchercon hotels was the up-front order of the day.

Barb and I both found it interesting and illuminating, and the generosity of T & M toward their authors was damn near mind-boggling. Everybody had a gift bag with a Kindle Paperwhite in it, for example…

The freebies went beyond that. There were t-shirts, notebooks, pens, umbrellas, and plenty of copies of the T&M books. Our money was no good at the restaurants and bars in the hotel. But it wasn’t the swag or meals that impressed me… it was the message that the gifts, and the event, underscored about Amazon’s attitude towards their authors: we appreciate you. We are in this together.

Author Helen Smith shows off some of her Amazon swag.
Author Helen Smith shows off some of her Amazon swag.

Author Christine Kling blogged about it on day one of the conference:

I guess you could say that in the 21st century with the advent (invent) of the Kindle, traditional publishing has come under siege. There is a war going on for eyeballs on screens. Authors are the ones who produce much that content that goes on the screens. It sometimes seems like the legacy publishers have forgotten that, but this is something that Amazon knows at the core of their corporate structure. I’ve been here 24 hours now and all I hear (and see) is how Amazon puts the author at the center of all business equations.

[…] all the talk among the authors was about how we, as authors, have never been treated so well by a publisher. They really want our opinions on covers, and when we say we think there should be changes, they go back to the drawing board and try again. They pay better royalties and they do so monthly. We have an online dashboard where we can see actual sales by the next day, so we always know how many books we’ve sold, and our final royalty statements are available online about fifteen days after the close of the month’s period.

Author Charlie Williams notes how lots of people like to depict Amazon as an evil empire …but that’s not how the company feels to authors or to customers.

You may have heard negative things about them, things about monopolies and doing the independents out of business and destroying the publishing industry. Well, all I can say is that they know how to treat an author. And if they treat you well too, dear reader, then that’s a pretty good deal. Right? See them as the dark overlord if you like, but I can assure you that they are a bunch of bright, imaginative men and women trying to find new and better ways of doing things. And they are book people. There is a new paradigm going on and they are at the heart of it, cutting unseen shapes from the rock-face. Lucky them. Lucky you.

Seattle Space Needle
Seattle Space Needle

Author Helen Smith says On the Lam was good business, for Amazon and for authors:

 It was an opportunity for us to meet each other and spend time with the staff at Amazon Publishing, including Russ Grandinetti and Jeff Belle, as well as the people who work across all the Amazon Publishing imprints. I had met some of them before at various events in London and New York and it was a joy to spend time with them again in their home town.

The conference made author Jay Stringer give serious thought to why he writes…and the direction his career is going.

I’m three books into my career. I’m still figuring out what kind of writer I want to be. At On The Lam I got to talk to many different kinds of writer. Some have forged successful careers mixing their own work with work-for-hire, some like to sit and slowly work through their own books, one at a time, and supplement their income elsewhere. Some have long-term deals, some only worry about one contract at a time. Each of them took time to talk to me about their careers, their paths, and to help me along in deciding on mine.

“On The Lam” was even great for the attendees who weren’t Amazon authors. Erin Havel reports for the Huffington Post that she found the panel discussions packed with information…

By the end of the day I was completely inspired. I realize I could write a separate blog on each of the panel discussions, perhaps I will in the future. However, for now, this is a small glimpse at a world few beginning authors have the opportunity to see. Thank you Thomas and Mercer!

Amazon has worked very hard to make their authors feel like partners, not like outside contractors or, worse, as a necessary evil (remember Harlequin complaining a few weeks back that their profits are down because they have to pay royalties to authors?).  I certainly can’t recall any publisher doing anything like “On the Lam” before…or being so open about sharing sales information (in real time!) or paying royalties so frequently and promptly (monthly!).

It’s very important to me to establish personal relationships with the people I work with.  The “On the Lam” conference is just one of many examples that demonstrate that the executives at Amazon Publishing feel the same way.

Remembering Elmore Leonard

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1185685_10151775387733930_1638378797_nElmore Leonard died today…and just about every crime writer in America owes some debt to him in their writing. I’m one of them.

The wonderful thing about Leonard’s writing is how unobtrusive it is…it gets out of the way and puts you right there with the characters. And oh, what great characters they are, each one every bit as rich and complex as those in “literary fiction,” emerging through action and dialogue rather than belabored, self-conscious prose. He knew the power of simplicity and humor to convey character, ethical issues, and the often contradictory impulses that shape what we do. His characters are never simply good or bad. Even the most vicious sociopath in one of his stories can be surprisingly likable, gentle and polite in certain situations. His cops and marshals were often more bloodthirsty and lawless than the criminals they pursued. I return to his books not just for the pleasure of a great story well told, but to learn how to say more with less (something I’ve failed to do here) and to use humor to reveal character.

I was lucky enough to meet him on two occasions, and I’d intended both times to tell him how much his writing meant to me, but that’s not what ended up happening. We didn’t talk about writing at all. We shared a few Hollywood anecdotes, but mostly we just chatted about this and that. Amusing, time-passing small talk. In some ways, that was more gratifying and revealing than me gushing over him or grilling him. The easy familiarity he could create in person was the same experience he created in his books. I realized that his writing talent came naturally, that it wasn’t so much a skill as it was an outgrowth of who he was. And that, in itself, was a writing lesson…and maybe a life lesson, too.

Two Pros Battle Illnesses With Prose

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crime_novelist_Joel_Goldman_02_t640Joel Goldman and Ed Gorman are two of my favorite authors…and two of my favorite people. They’ve both inspired, entertained, and educated me so much over the years. And now, coincidentally, they’ve both given lengthy interviews this week about their careers, their approaches to their craft, and how they have coped with life-changing illnesses while continuing to write great novels.

Joel was a successful Kansas City trial attorney when he was afflicted with a rare movement disorder which he calls “life annoying” and not life-threatening, but it still forced him to walk away from his legal career. He incorporated his illness into his fiction, with bestselling results. He talks about it in this candid interview with the Lawrence World Journal:

When he developed a movement disorder that caused him to experience involuntary shakes and spasms several times a day, he wasn’t literally under a spotlight. It only felt that way. But unlike his character Jack Davis, who stubbornly continues fighting crime against his doctor’s recommendations, Goldman turned away from the only career he’d ever imagined. Instead, he became a bestselling crime author.

“As crazy as it may sound, I look at this disorder as something that has opened new doors for me,” said Goldman, 60.

[…]In 2006, when he could no longer hide his periodic shakes at work and his doctors said he could no longer handle the long hours and constant travel of his job, he was determined not to feel sorry about leaving behind the law. Instead, he decided to focus full time on his now quite-successful writing career.

“People ask me now if I miss it,” Goldman said of his law career. “And I tell them that I miss it in the way that you miss your first girlfriend.”

You can hear even more about Joel’s books, his love affair with Kansas City, and his movement disorder  in a terrific NPR piece about him that aired last weekend.

Ed was already a successful author with dozens of mystery, horror and western novels to his credit when he was stricken with incurable cancer twelve years ago. He recently underwent a bone marrow transplant and has emerged 100% cancer free, though he knows the cancer will return eventually. But he’s not letting his cancer stop him from writing books, as he tells J. Kingston Pierce for Kirkus Review in this excerpt:

Gorman has been working for the last dozen years under the sentence of an incurable cancer, multiple myeloma—which has only brought his production of prose down to a slightly more human scale. “Before cancer I tried for 1,500 to 2,000 words a day,” he says. “With cancer it’s 500 to 1,000.” Ed_Gorman_-_photo_by_Carol_Gorman2_jpg_210x1000_q85

[…]”When you have incurable cancer you certainly have to face death. You have monthly meetings with your oncologist and those are a roll of the dice. Once in awhile you sit down and get some pretty grim news. As my oncologist told me, I had a choice—to go home and just wait to die or go in with my life. I’ve probably met 200 cancer patients by now, and I’ve never met a single one who didn’t fight like hell to stay alive. And none of them just sat around waiting for the final breath, either.”

You can read even more of the interview, packed with tons of insightful material about writing, that didn’t make the Kirkus article on J. Kingston Pierce’s The Rap Sheet blog.

The healthy attitude Joel and Ed have towards writing in the face of illness may actually be healthy. The Daily Mail reported a couple of days ago that people who write while they are ill recover faster.

 

Collaborating

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I visited the excellent MURDER SHE WRITES blog today to talk about the fine art of collaborating… writing a screenplay or book with another writer. Here’s an excerpt:

In TV, you work for the Executive Producer, who is often the creator of the show, and with a room full of other writers. Your job is to tell a story the way the EP does, to establish and maintain a shared vision of the show and voice for the characters. You plot stories with other writers and often rewrite each other or just an scene or act of someone else’s script. (This is even true when you are the EP — you may be in charge, but you need to run the writers room, guide the plotting of stories, and usually have to do a polish on every script). Working this way gives you a real objectivity about your work and a willingness to accept feedback and other points-of-view without your ego getting bruised. It’s all about the show, not you.

In books, the writing is usually a singular pursuit. One author, one voice. But much of my novel-writing experience has been collaborative as well…

For more, check out the post at MURDER SHE WRITES.