Your Book Title Can Make or Break You

The First Five Words

In 2000, Literary Agent, Noah Lukeman wrote The First Five Pages. In this thin little gem on writing, he said that if the first five pages didn’t hold the reader, it was bye bye book.

I believe that even before you get to the first five pages, you must be grabbed by the title. When I browse a bookstore (the ones that are still are business) or surf online for a new book, the title is what captures my attention. (The book cover design is also important, but I’ll leave that for another blog.)

Let’s peruse the market to see what I mean. Some book titles say it loud and clear and leave you with no doubt what the book is about. David McCullough is a good one for non-fiction: 1776, John Adams, The Johnstown Flood, Truman. No question about what the subject of each book is. Even novels can be pretty straight forward – the title hints at the story, although often more subtly. Interview With a Vampire is just that.  The Affair, Hostage, even The Patriot gives you a hint about the novel’s plot.

Some books on writing use clever titles to attract you, but you still know what kind of advice they’re going to offer. Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, and i never metaphor i didn’t like by Dr. Mardy Grothe both use humor and a play on words to get their subjects across.

Humorous titles are a great gimmick to attract people to your book, but only if the book lives up to the humor. For those Catholic readers, this may resonate: Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? by John Powers. I’m not even going to touch that one.   How about this: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James Loewen. Lies about anything always pique the imagination.

Here are a few titles that caught my attention while I was researching my books. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War by Thomas P. Lowry, M.D. Another universal topic of fascination – sex.

When I was researching my book on the Salem witch trials, I ran across this one and laughed out loud. Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England by Bruce Daniels. Kind of an oxymoron. Still, I bought it and the book was incredibly interesting and helpful. Had the title been just the second part without “Puritans at Play,” I’m not sure I would have noticed it.

There are the titles that use seductive, albeit overused, words like “code,” “enigma,” “paradigm,” “dilemma” to proclaim a mystery or a conspiracy is hiding between the jacket covers.  Think The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.

Other techniques. Robert Bloch’s Psycho hits you in the face with images of a mad man or woman, while Baldacci’s Absolute Power makes you think – who has the power, why, how, what does he do with it? As you read, the title becomes clearer and clearer until, whack, it too, hits you in the face.

Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City is a beautiful play on words. Black against white, good against evil. In Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, she captures the spirit of one man, a World War II hero, in one powerful word.

My first book, The Triangle Murders began its life as Tenement. When my critique group suggested I come up with something a little more mystery-genre rather than literary since the story is about murder, arson, and foul play. So, I went with a simple “murders” using the name of the factory that formed the backdrop, The Triangle.

When I worked on my Civil War mystery, myriad plot elements fought for the title: different time periods, history, forensics, photography- both civil war and digital, massive conspiracies, and so on. It took a while, but Time Exposure was the result.

My next book, due out in the spring, was originally titled Provenance and posed a challenge. It’s about the Nazi confiscation of art and a missing Van Gogh painting (in actuality still missing.) I thought Provenance was perfect, until it dawned on me that not everyone would be familiar with the word. They might think it was a city in Rhode Island or the end of Cape Cod.  Good grief.  Plus the word might conjure up “art” but not necessarily mystery or murder. So I changed the title to Deadly Provenance. Will it work?

You tell me.

 

The Christmas Truce

War and Peace in One Day

When it started, World War I was predicted to last only a few weeks. (The same was true of the Civil War, by the way.) Instead, by December of 1914, WWI had already claimed nearly a million lives. In fact, over fifteen million died in a war that dragged on for four miserable years.

But a remarkable thing happened on December 24, 1914. The front fell silent except for the singing of Silent Night. A truce! There are many examples of truces during wars, but none as famous as this one. The Christmas Truce of 1914.

In the Ypres region of Belgium on Christmas Eve, guns stopped, leaving a deathly silence across the fields. Then suddenly the British watched in astonishment as Germans began to set tiny trees along their trench lines. Soon a familiar tune with unfamiliar words carried across No Man’s Land, the battered and desolate space between the enemies. Silent Night. Stille Nacht.

Soon the British were singing along with the Germans. Soldiers on both sides crawled out of their trenches to meet in the middle and greet their enemy. They exchanged cigarettes and souvenirs. Perhaps a drink or two. And they collected their dead and wounded, carrying them back to their respective sides.

Peace for the day. Only one day because the next day they were back killing each other. Is there something wrong with this picture?

The story of the Christmas Truce came to my attention after reading the non-fiction, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, by Adam Hochschild, an amazing story of WWI. I highly recommend. http://www.amazon.com/End-All-Wars-Rebellion-1914-1918/dp/B008PIC0T8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356046840&sr=1-1&keywords=to+end+all+wars

I’ll leave you with this thought. If Christmas can bring together mortal enemies for a day, why not for a week, a month, a year or longer? Or forever?

I hope you click on the youtubes below. They will make you sad and happy but most of all hopeful. Wishing you a happy holiday and a prosperous and healthy New Year.

Belleau Wood: Christmas Truce by Garth Brooks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuD-hwDa8YQ

Christmas Truce 1914, Music with captions to tell the story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsCpLMPI7IY

Behind the Christmas Story: The Christmas Truce http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgLcvjA8NDk

Christmas Truce of 1914. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p05E_ohaQGk

 

 

Killing Sprees-What Has History Taught Us?

Reflecting on Tragedy

Following my blog last week “Learning From Our Mistakes . . . or Not,” and the grim tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, it appears, once again, that we never learn from history. As I reflect on this latest tragedy, sorting through profound emotions, I yearn to see how this incident fits into the history of such events. Perhaps following the trail of this madness will give me a foundation for understanding our society from a new, albeit, dark point of view, with the small hope that what I learn will make me a better writer.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to include a tragedy like this in my books, however, observing people’s actions and reactions to this sort of horror makes for pure character building.

I did a quick fact check on the historical angle and here’s what I learned from sources like the Washington Post.

Besides the December 14 massacre in Newtown, here are similar tragic events in history:

Dec. 11, 2012: Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, opens fire in a shopping mall in suburban Portland, Ore., shooting numerous rounds from a semiautomatic rifle, ultimately killing two people and seriously injuring another.

July 20, 2012: Twelve people are killed when a gunman enters an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, releases a canister of gas and then opens fire during opening night of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.” James Holmes, a 24-year-old former graduate student at the University of Colorado, has been charged in the deaths.

Jan. 8, 2011: A gunman kills six people and wounds 13 others, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in a shooting spree outside a grocery store in Tucson, Ariz. Doctors say Jared Lee Loughner, who has been charged in the deaths, suffers from schizophrenia.

April 3, 2009: A 41-year-old man opened fire at an immigrant community center in Binghamton, N.Y., killing 11 immigrants and two workers. Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant and a former student at the center, killed himself as police rushed to the scene.

March 10, 2009: Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people — including his mother, four other relatives, and the wife and child of a local sheriff’s deputy — across two rural Alabama counties. He then killed himself.

April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills 32 people and himself on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va.

April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school’s library.

Oct. 16, 1991: A deadly shooting rampage took place in Killeen, Texas, as George Hennard opened fire at a Luby’s Cafeteria, killing 23 people before taking his own life. 20 others were wounded in the attack.

Aug. 20, 1986: Pat Sherrill, 44, a postal worker who was about to be fired, shoots 14 people at a post office in Edmond, Okla. He then kills himself.

July 12, 1976: Edward Charles Allaway, a custodian in the library of California State University, Fullerton, fatally shot seven fellow employees and wounded two others.

July 18, 1984: James Oliver Huberty, an out-of-work security guard, kills 21 people in a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif. A police sharpshooter kills Huberty.

Aug. 1, 1966: Charles Whitman opened fire from the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin, killing 16 people and wounding 31.

This isn’t by any means a complete list but if you look at the dates, there are six significant rampages in a 30-odd year period between 1966 and 1999 and seven (including Newtown) in a recent five-year period between 2007 and 2012. What does this mean? Are mass shootings escalating? Is it related to the downturn in the economy, job loss, home loss? Are the shooters older, younger, mentally ill? If anyone knows of a book or article that can answer these questions, please let me know.

Here’s what I did find out:

1. Shooting rampages are not rare in the U.S. Since 1982 there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country. In most cases, the killers have obtained their weapons legally. This blows my mind!

2. Eleven of the 20 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the U.S.

3. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the U.S., five have happened from 2007 to present.

4. The South is the most violent region in the U.S.

5. Gun ownership in the U.S. is declining overall.

6. According to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, more guns mean more homicide.

7. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence. Dig deeper: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/

8. Shootings don’t tend to substantially affect views on gun control: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/

I also took a look at the U.S. Constitution and the Second Amendment, The Right to Bear Arms, which says “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Do you suppose our forefathers had AR-15’s or 9mm Sig Sauers in mind in 1791? I’d be happy to give gang members muskets instead of Glocks. Might work for a drive-by shooting, but muskets wouldn’t make a good mass-killing instrument. Way to slow to load and fire. Exactly.

Does this amendment need to be interpreted with modern weaponry in mind? According to #8 above, that’s not going to happen.

I’ll leave you with another conundrum. The following link will take you to a very powerful article posted by a fellow FB writer, which argues that it’s not gun control we should tackle but mental illness. Read it and weep.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother-mental-illness-conversation_n_2311009.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

In the end, all I can do is reflect . . . and reflect . . . and reflect.

 

Learning From Our Mistakes . . . Or Not

History Times Three

For those of you following the New York Times stories of the fires at garment factories, first in Bangladesh, India, then in Karachi, Pakistan, you’ll notice the lamentable similarities to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in this country in 1911.

When I wrote The Triangle Murders, I researched the details of that fire and blogged about it in past posts. I fictionalized a murder set against the backdrop of the actual fire and detailed the forensic analysis of the fire after the fact. I also blogged about heroines like Clara Lemlich and Frances Perkins who helped raise awareness of the deplorable situation the garment workers found themselves in every day, as well as the changes Clara and Frances helped institute to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again.

Reading the stories about these recent fires in other parts of the world simply blew my mind.

But first, back up to Saturday, March 25, 1911, and a few grim facts: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory occupied the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building on the northwest corner of Washington Place and Greene Street in Greenwich Village. On the eighth floor, fire broke out in a scrap bin. Perhaps someone tossed a match or cigarette butt into the bin. Soon flames leaped out and caught other fabrics. About 180 people worked on this floor. They rushed for the exit doors and fire escape. Many were trapped.

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/ (Notice how the picture of the Triangle fire looks incredibly similar to those in the Times articles of the more recent fires: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/world/asia/pakistan-factory-fire-shows-flaws-in-monitoring.html?pagewanted=all)

For various reasons, the workers on the ninth floor of the Asch building could not be contacted. It was estimated that 250 workers were on the floor that day. For an exquisitely poignant description of the events, you must read ‘Triangle – The Fire That Changed America” by David Von Drehle.

Suffice it to say here, that many of the workers were women and young girls, trapped by locked exit doors and only one poorly designed fire escape. Fire hoses reached only to the sixth floor, safety nets were unable to break the falls. To avoid suffocating or burning to death, the girls jumped nine stories to the pavement and their death. 146 of them.

“My building is fireproof,” Joseph J. Asch insisted. You might recall that the White Star Line directors made similar proclamations about the Titanic.

Fast forward to today. On September 11, 2012 in Karachi, Pakistan, close to 300 people, many of them women and children, died in a factory fire, trapped behind locked doors and barred windows. “There were no safety measures taken in the building design,” said a senior police official. “There was no emergency exit. These people were trapped.”

Just last month another tragedy occurred. Over 112 people, possibly seventy percent women, died in a fire at a garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh. Why? Bangladesh’s garment industry, second only to China, has a notoriously poor fire safety record. Most of the workers killed were on the first and second floors and died because there were not enough exits. One survivor on the fifth floor said he escaped by climbing out of a third floor window onto bamboo scaffolding used for construction workers.

Yikes. What am I missing here? With today’s lightning-fast communications, surely most industrial nations got the message about safety in the workplace. Right? Why must we wait for a disaster to occur before we decide to act? Why not employ preventive measures to avoid tragedy? Like preventive medicine to avoid illness.

There must be a more effectual way to learn from history, to take those lessons and apply them today. History is not just hard facts that inform us about our past. History is the measure of our past deeds, good and bad. If we don’t take those lessons seriously, as a human race, we’re doomed to repeat our mistakes.

We can do better. We must do better.

 

 

Give Your Characters Character

Animals Can Make Humans More Human

I admit it. I’m an animal person. I love them all but am partial to dogs and have had many and still do. I’ve read many “animal” books and find them endearing. Today’s blog, though, is not about writing animal stories, but about integrating animals into your novels to give your humans depth, compassion and vulnerability.

Comic relief is one reason writers insert animals into their stories. I recently watched (again) Lonesome Dove on television and laughed (again) at the scenes of the two pigs following the wagon out of Lonesome Dove to embark on a journey north. The journey would be fraught with drama and trauma, and the pigs added a light aspect to ease the tension. But they actually did more than that.

These two sweet little pink creatures gave us insight into one of the main characters of Lonesome Dove, Augustus McCrae. Sure, he hollered at them, kicked dirt at them, spit at them, but he also smiled at them, enjoyed their antics and encouraged them to join the entourage to Montana. What did that say about Gus, a former Texas Ranger who would hang an old friend for breaking the law? He had a definite soft side.

Characters that have a seriously dark job, like a cop or detective, need to have a way to show their human side. Relationships with the opposite sex, kids and family, even friends and colleagues can work. But so can animals. Take my NYC homicide detective, Frank Mead, in The Triangle Murders. In a dialogue, with his sergeant, Mead explains how he came to own a blue and gold, extremely noisy killer macaw named Dexter.

“What’s with the bird?” Jefferies said.

“Dumb move.” Frank sighed.

“I’m listening.”

“Brought my car into a garage out in Canarsie. The bird was in the back of the shop squawking up a storm. Real nasty place, they didn’t give a shit about him. He was covered in grease. So I took him. Fifty bucks. They sold him just like that. I figured I’d clean him up and give him away, to some good home or something.” His face reddened.

“So?”

“Kinda got used to the company. He’s incredibly smart, talks and, well, never mind. Stupid ass bird.”

Mead, a hard-boiled homicide cop, has a gruesome murder to solve, a dead wife always on his mind, an estranged daughter he feels guilty about. And yet he saves this kooky parrot. Would you have expected that of him? Or are you surprised?

Animals have played similar roles in mysteries for decades. Think Raymond Chandler’s The Thin Man. I can never forget the first movie and my introduction to Myrna Loy as the character, Nora Charles. Picture the scene: Nick Charles is in a nightclub bar being asked by a young woman to take a case, when Nora bursts in carrying Christmas packages and trying to hold onto Asta, her mischievous terrier, by the lead. Asta barrels into the room and Nora winds up face down on the floor, packages strewn everywhere. Unfazed, she gets up, brushes herself off and carries on.

Her dog was the perfect device to show us Nora’s personality. And it was dead-on. Nora is generally unfazed by embarrassing moments like these. But how would you know that without tedious narrative? By using Asta.

Other well-known authors use animals in similar ways. In Robert Parker’s Spenser books, you meet his dog, Pearl, and can picture her lying on the floor on her back with four feet in the air. How many of us are familiar with that pose? She’s entirely comfortable, not fearful or concerned in this position about any danger. What does that say about Spenser and his relationship with Pearl and the environment he provides for her? Safe, sheltered and most probably well-loved.

Elizabeth George, another dog person, has inserted a Longhaired Dachshund, Peach, into her stories. How does she integrate Peach with her characters to give them depth and breadth of human qualities. Yes, this is a quiz.

I know I will personally continue to use animals in my books. I encourage you to consider doing the same. They can add a sympathetic, sensitive and loving element to your humans . . . in ways other humans simply can’t.

And they’re fun to write about, besides!