New releases coming down the pike

cj Sez:  NEXT SATURDAY, February 7, 2015, my friend, Dean James, is having a book signing for the hardcover version of ARSENIC AND OLD BOOKS, one of the books in his cat in the stacks mystery series.

 

The signing is scheduled to take place at 5-6:30 p.m. at the White House Hotel in Biloxi, MS.

Everyone is welcome to stop by and chat with Dean (who writes as Miranda James) and have some fun. Check out the reviews on Amazon at http://amzn.to/1KgYjT0

Next comes Carolyn Haines’ BOOTY BONES, a Sarah Booth Delaney mystery that will be out in paperback on February 15. Carolyn plans to be at the White House Hotel for Dean James’s book signing and expects to join in the fun. She says she’s also going to go ghost hunting, because, and I quote, “I think this wonderful, historic old hotel will be an excellent setting for my next creepy book.” She writes her creepy stuff under the pen name of R. B. Chesterton.

Check out BOOTY BONES at http://amzn.to/1Adfq8j 

Dean and Carolyn's novels are enjoyable reads, and that kind of excellence doesn’t happen overnight. These two Gulf Coast authors have honed their craft over the years and continue to work hard at putting out their very best effort for their readers.

One of the blogs I follow is that of author/editor/chief-cook-and-bottle-washer, Hope Clark at   http://www.fundsforwriters.com  Her “Funds for Writers” blog has been on the Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers list every year since 2001. Anyway, Hope says: “Writing well takes time. It isn't an instinct. You are not born with it. You do not accidentally write a stupendous tale. You develop this talent with hard work and a crazy number of hours invested in making your craft better.”

That means all writers, but especially aspiring writers, need to participate in workshops, critique groups, conferences, and READ in the genre you write. Before a writer can develop his/her own writing voice, (s)he must read the good work of other published authors.

Now, to inspire you to look at your own WIP, here’s another famous first line: 

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

Be sure to check out the new “Meet The Author” widget on the right side of our page. Lyrical Pens will soon post info about more local authors' new books with a smidge of info about them or the book.

You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

Writerly miscellaney and BOOTY BONES

cj Sez:  First let me plug a friend's book, "BOOTY BONES."  Author Carolyn Haines is a prolific (and fantastic) author of more than seventy books, and this one is from the Sarah Booth Delaney (and Jitty the ghost) mystery series.The paperback version is arriving on Amazon  Feb. 15, and pre-orders are being taken now. Check it out and place your order at:  http://amzn.to/1L7hC4y 

So far, I’ve managed to "somewhat" keep my writerly resolution. I’ve written something almost* every day. I sat down at the computer and keyboarded clever dialogue and scenes (ha!) into my work-in-progress, even if it was only for thirty minutes. My next goal is to write a consistent hour. (*I missed a couple of days but made up for it by writing extra time the next day.).

How are all y’all (I read somewhere that "all y’all" is the plural of "y’all") guys doing with your writing so far this year? 

I know Mahala’s post recommended that writers not make resolutions, but I tend to think the opposite. I may not keep the resolution, but I feel guilty when I don’t . . . especially after I’ve told “the world” that I would do something. Feeling guilty makes me write more often than I would had I not made the resolution. (Does that make sense?)

This afternoon, I spent an hour or so finding definitions to some of the verbiage in Charles Krauthammer’s book, Things that Matter.  I absolutely love learning new vocabulary. His collection of published columns is chock full of new information for me. Most of the words I understand within the context of the sentence, but I still want to know what the word means, exactly. Such searches have been a favorite pastime for as long as I can remember. My prize for winning the 6th grade spelling bee was a Webster’s dictionary with my name engraved in gold on its blue cover. I wore the thing out. (For all you twenty-somethings out there, Dictionary and its cousins, Encyclopedia and Library Card Catalogue, are the generic ancestors of Google and its second cousin, twice removed, Wikipedia.)

Okay, time to quit and get to the task of reviewing the manuscripts of my fellow critique-group members. We meet tomorrow afternoon.

To inspire you to look at your own WIP, I’ll leave you with one of Elmore (Dutch) Leonard’s famous first lines: 

Chris Mankowski's last day on the job, two in the afternoon, two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb."—Freaky Deaky (1988)

You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

 

cj

Do you critique?

cj Sez: I written about some of these things before, but they bear repeating because critiques are a must for serious writers. We’re way too close to our manuscripts to be subjective. Despite our best intentions, we can’t judge/proofread/edit our own words, at least not thoroughly or objectively. We read past things . . . because we “thought” them. Obviously the reader will know what we mean, even if the words aren’t on the page or are wrong. Objective critique partners are able to find missing words, poorly constructed sentences, punctuation errors, missing story threads, plot holes, and all those other etceteras that the subjective writer misses.

Finding compatible critique partners is hard, sometimes very hard. Shared likability and a mutual respect for expertise are required by/for/from each other. But the manuscript deserves/needs critiques, so connecting with a critique group is definitely worth the effort.

It’s important to note that members of critique groups generally have different strengths and areas of expertise. One might be a whiz at line editing. Another might offer insights into story structure. Still another may be great at recognizing any plot weaknesses. Or character flaws. Or the dreaded middle-of-the-book sag.

There is yet another type of critiquer that can be incredibly helpful. That’s the one who perhaps isn’t so technical, but who points out the things that elicit their visceral reactions. What they laughed at, what they got scared of for the character, where they cried, got lost, what they did or didn’t “get” or where they were tempted to skim over paragraphs or pages. That kind of emotional information is invaluable. These are the comments that point the writer to where s/he’s succeeding or where s/he’s failing to communicate the desired story. These comments can represent the reaction of the writer’s intended audience.

A caveat: Writers should consider all critique comments as if they were values on a bell curve. The comments that are similar (and bunch up like a hump in the middle) could need another look. The outliers on either end of the curve (the one or two strange or obviously subjective comments) can probably be disregarded.

Whether your work is critiqued in chunks (as I like to do) or you wait until your manuscript is complete, find some fellow writers to read it over. Trade yours for theirs. And the more eyes on the manuscript, the better. I formally belong to two critique groups and occasionally also trade whole manuscript critiques with other members of the Guppies…a subset group of the Sisters in Crime organization.

Something to remember, though, is that there really are rules for critiquing. The most important one is: Be kind. Second: Find a way to start your critique with something positive. (Writers have fragile, creative egos, but you already know that.) But also be truthful. It won’t help any writer if you praise something that is poorly written. I truly understand that no one likes to hear their baby manuscript is ugly, but speaking from experience, if we’re going to be successful writers, we have to develop a rhino hide to deflect unwarranted or warranted criticism and agent rejections.

The step after getting critiques—before you send it to an agent or consider self-publishing—is to send it to an editor, but that’s a post I’ll leave for Mahala, the Lyrical Pens editor-in-residence.

I’ll leave You with an offer:  I’ll be happy to provide a brief/written critique to the first ten writers who eMail me the first three (3) pages and the last three (3) pages of Chapter One of their work-in-progress.     Rules:  Copy and paste the pages within the eMail (no attachment). The formatting might be lost so use asterisks or extra line spacing to separate the first three pages from the last three. It'll be a long eMail, but that's okay.

In the meantime, you-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same

cj . 

P.S. Congratulations to Carolyn Haines on the release (in May) of the latest must-read book in her Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery series. BOOTY BONES is now available in hardcover or eBook at Amazon.com and  BarnesandNoble.com.

P.P.S. Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there, and to those fathers who can't be home because they are serving our country in far-off places, my prayers go up for your safe return to your families.