by Lynne | Nov 30, 2014 | Uncategorized
This is a reprint of an earlier blog of mine that hit a nerve with many writers. The dilemma of spending time marketing your books vs. writing your books clearly resonated and drew lots of responses. I’ve tried to practice what I preached in that post and have cut down my time on social media. Some. Yet, here I am writing something that is not my next book. How effective is this use of my time?
There are two sides to this new dilemma of blogging. Both sides take time from writing your book. The first is writing blogs. The second is reading them — other writers’ blogs, that is. Writing them takes a great deal more time. Is it worth it? Actually, yes. It’s difficult to know whether my blogs drive sales, but I do know it drives people to my web site. I can measure the number of hits on the actual blog. That’s a good thing.
The other positive about writing blogs is that I actually learn from my own blogs. When I write about characters or scene or POV, I am focusing on the good, the bad and the mediocre. I am reading and re-reading other writers’ to see what works and what doesn’t, which characters shine and which fall flat, which scenes and settings have atmosphere or how point of view affects the story.
One of my blogs was about how to use animals to give your characters character. The topic forced me to think about my animals. How does my character interact with her dog or his parrot? What does it say about them if they leave them alone for days at a time, or if they are constantly worried about them? Great device for character development.
Another blog dealt with the forensics of fire. The fire took place in 1911. What was arson forensics like then? The blog helped me organize the details of my research so I could determine what was missing in the mystery.
So, the answer to the first side of this dilemma, is yes, writing blogs can be very valuable to the writer. After all, it is writing. However, I have no hard evidence that it drives book sales. As to the second part of the conundrum, reading blogs can also be a valuable use of time. There are some blogs I find extremely helpful. A good blog has a message that is of particular interest to me as a writer. I probably won’t read a blog about cookbook recipes, auto mechanics or pit bull fighting.
I will definitely read blogs on forensics, crime-solving, digital photography, art, and many historical subjects. Once the topic is of interest to me, I will take the time to read a well-written blog (yes, that’s important), and hopefully, one with a sense of humor. I will often share those with writer friends. Here are a few I can share right now:
http://barbararogan.com/blog/?p=711#! Specifically on how to create a good scene.
http://writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com/ Great, knowledgeable forensics Q&A and more.
http://www.blogher.com/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-using-photos-your-blog-my-story – How not to get sued as a writer using photographs. Handy info.
For the moment my dilemma is solved. I’ll keep writing weekly blogs as long as folks keep reading them. I’ll keep reading blogs that can help me write better. In the end, I hope both of these activities will help drive book sales. Please share your thoughts.
by Lynne | Nov 23, 2014 | Uncategorized
I found this article particularly interesting with the holidays coming and my latest book, Pure Lies, a mystery about the Salem Witch Trials, just released. Sexual obsession is not a concept usually associated with Puritans, but this sheds light on a grim and repressed period of time in American history.
“America’s Thanksgiving holiday goes back at least 388 years to the year following the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1620. The Pilgrims were among a number of sects called Puritans, and like many Puritan sects, the Pilgrims came to America essentially because they thought 17th Century England much too bawdy.(1) That England of the time was bawdy — a raucous bawdiness in full bloom — there’s no doubt. But the idea that the Puritans (and Pilgrims) suffered from religious persecution in England is probably a myth. What they suffered from was unease (and maybe too much temptation) at the general licentiousness of English life.
So various Puritan colonies were established in America, colonies with dictatorial repression of daily life, mostly of sexual behavior. It’s an American cultural heritage that few Americans ever talk about, except maybe when they read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a novel about the miseries of an adulterous couple in a Puritan community. Our custom is for three or four generations of family to sit down at a Thanksgiving dinner with hardly a memory that what the Pilgrims and other Puritans were all about was sexual obsession.
A set of ideas about human sexual behavior so strong that the ideas result in strict rules that govern a community by threat of physical punishment easily morphs from philosophy into obsession — and that’s exactly what happened once the Puritans came into control of laws in their colonies in the New World.
The background of the Puritan obsession with sex is a fascinating thread in the history of Western culture. The obsession apparently originated in a close literal reading of the Bible, a fervent belief that the main causes of the suffering of all mankind were 1) the disobedience of Adam and Eve in seeking knowledge of sex, 2) the shame of their nakedness, and 3) their sexual desire for each other. Taking these causes as axioms for social doctrine about sexual behavior led the literalists (fundamentalists) easily into social tyranny. The sexual act itself became the “original sin” — an irony, since the sexual act was the only means available to produce progeny to replace those who died.
The old New England children’s rhyme tells it all: ‘In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.’
These ideas certainly predated the Puritans, since hatred of women as sexual saboteurs, revulsion at the sex act, and derision of marriage are on nearly every page of the writings of St. Paul and St. Augustine. The great Protestant reformers Luther, Calvin and Knox did little to change these attitudes about sexual behavior, and more or less enforced them. The classical Christian view was that any act of sexual love, in or out of marriage, was a betrayal of God. By the time the Puritans arrived, the classical view had been modified: sexuality in marriage was acceptable, but sexuality of any kind outside marriage was a sin and a crime, punishable with fines, whipping, branding, banishment, and even death.
And the origins? The fervor against sexuality evidently originated in ancient Hebrew law, the ancient fear that man was weakened by sexual intercourse, ancient references to the sex act as the “little death” and a form of castration. In their morning prayers, Orthodox Jews still proclaim, ‘I thank Thee, Lord, for not having created me a woman.’
Sexuality was inherently evil, the sex act an abomination and a sin, women morally inferior and sources of temptation. If the sex act was needed to produce a new generation, let it be accomplished without lust. So much for the mechanics of Darwinian sexual selection. From a biological standpoint, it’s a wonder the Western world did not go extinct before the Renaissance. But it’s no wonder at all that countless women (and many men) were driven into madness by the incompatibility between the social tyranny of their Judeo-Christian cultural heritage and their evolved biology.
At the Thanksgiving table we think of turkey, children, and grandparents. Let it be so. We need the comforts, especially in our current time. But we should also be thankful that we’ve come out of the darkness of the past, the darkness of ignorance and social tyranny. That too is something that needs the giving of thanks.
Note (1). Whatever persecution the Pilgrims suffered in Europe was political rather than religious. The Pilgrims were Puritan separatists. The sect of Puritans who came to be known as Pilgrims wanted complete separation from the Anglican Church. Other Puritan sects did not demand separation. It was the vocal opposition of Pilgrim leaders to the Anglican Church and the King of England that caused their problems with government. The Pilgrims left England for Holland, were unhappy in Holland, and eventually achieved financing by English investors and migrated to America.”
Written by Dan Agin and posted 3/18/201, updated 11/17/2011. Reprinted from the Huffington Post.
by Lynne | Nov 16, 2014 | Uncategorized
For me, outlining is extremely important. Mainly because a large part of the action in my mysteries take place in the past and have so darn many details, I can’t rely on my pea-brain to remember it all. I begin with my “jump-start” outline. Now, what the heck is that, you ask. I made up the term so I can’t refer you to any book or manual. Since there are two separate story lines in my books – past and present – I actually have two “jump-start” outlines. But since both are very similar I combined them for today’s blog.
Modern (and Past) Story Line
a. Broad overview of story, ie: Digital photographer searches for missing Van Gogh painting after her best friend is murdered (my last book.) The Past story line will be a bit different since this is where the story begins.
Expand this to a paragraph if you like, but no more for now.
b. Characters: Snapshots of main characters, both protagonists and antagonists, to include physical description (so you can visualize them,) their likes, dislikes, what’s important to them . . . or not, education, occupation, you know, general stuff. Add in personality traits: stingy, obsessive, lazy, kooky. Use bullet points. They’ll grow organically as you write.
c. Setting: Where does most of the plot take place? In my last book, Washington, D.C. and Paris, France. Ooh la la. Get it right – go visit, don’t just look at pictures.
d. Major conflicts, ie: Is the main character getting divorced, in love with a loser, always fighting with her boss, her mother, her sister? Are her relationships getting in the way of her job success? These may only come up occasionally and in usually in sub-plots.
e. Ending: You may not always know this at the beginning, but at some point — early on –you do need to know what the ending will be. As a caveat, I will say that I had the ending for one of my books and my editor suggested a completely different one. I loved his idea, changed it and in doing so, ruined my follow-up book. (You’ll have to read it and see. Ha!)
With my “jump-start” outline I write a quick and dirty first draft. At this point, I have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t as far as plot, characters, etc. Now, I get into serious outlining. More detail on all the above, and even a chapter by chapter outline. What will happen next, next, next.
I better define the characters in terms of personality and interactions with each other. I refine their conflicts. I add details to the settings.
Then I start again. Read the new draft out loud, cringe and re-write. Test the chapters out in my critique group, cringe and re-write. I don’t usually re-outline unless the book isn’t working as a whole.
Hopefully, that first “jump-start” is all I need. Ideas welcome.
by Lynne | Nov 3, 2014 | Uncategorized
Pure Lies Premiering Soon
It’s now high time that ev’ry Crime be brought to punishment: Wrath long contain’d, and oft restrain’d, at last must have a vent: Justice severe cannot forbear to plague sin any longer, But must inflict with handmost strict mischief upon the wronger.
The Day of Doom, Stanza 139, Michael Wigglesworth, 1662
Pure Lies opens with this quote from The Day of Doom, a grim, religious tome written in the mid seventeenth century. It is a fitting opening to my novel about the Salem witch trials and to a time of primitive superstition, fanatical religion, a radical Calvinist philosophy of pre-destination, and a lifestyle that was harsh and mirthless.
My research into this time period gave me new insight into the early days of our country and the Puritan way of life. Unless you were wealthy, your days were spent working from dawn to dusk in the fields, or the kitchen, or the barns, to earn a livelihood, or to simply survive.
In addition, Puritans had to contend with unmerciful winters, living in crowded little homes with no heat except a fireplace; hot, humid and buggy summers (with no A/C); being plagued by Indian raids — always a serious threat; and facing the difficulties of raising and growing their own food to sustain their families. Bleak.
Young men and women had it particularly rough because school and learning was a luxury and often done at home or not at all. They had the drudgery of chores to keep them out of mischief, but socializing was confined to church and church activities. Dancing, singing, music in general was frowned upon. The books they were allowed to read were limited to religious works like “The Day of Doom,” and the Bible.
In some ways, it’s easy to see how the young girls of Salem would conjure up a diversion to give their life . . . life. To alleviate their boredom, although boredom was not in fact a word at the time. “Taedium vitae — the weariness or loathing of life” would be more exact.
In “Pure Lies” we see how a group of so-called “afflicted” girls send the townsfolk of Salem into a mad spiral of fear, superstition, and vengeance. Nine people would pay with their lives, innocent victims alleged to be possessed by Satan. How did this come to pass? Why did the deacons and magistrates of the Court of Oyer and Terminer (to hear and determine) believe the accusers rather than the accused? Were the girls so skilled in the art of dissembling? In any event, if the judges believed that the devil was, indeed, visited upon Salem, it was their sacred obligation to save the God-fearing citizens from his sorcery.
As always in my books, I take the truth about real historic events and add a “conspiracy” or “alternative history” element. Could it have happened that way? In Pure Lies I would have to say yes, it could have happened that way. In earlier books, most likely no. You can decide for yourself.
Please forgive this blatant self-promotion but I’m excited about Pure Lies going live soon. I hope you enjoy it and I welcome feedback.
The other positive about writing blogs is that I actually learn from my own blogs. When I write about characters or scene or POV, I am focusing on the good, the bad and the mediocre. I am reading and re-reading other writers’ to see what works and what doesn’t, which characters shine and which fall flat, which scenes and settings have atmosphere or how point of view affects the story.
