by Lynne | Jun 1, 2015 | Uncategorized
Two weeks ago, I posted a blog called Dusting off an Old Manuscript. I got many replies from readers – – which leads me to believe that many writers struggle with this issue. The overwhelming feeling, however, was that it is, indeed, worth re-reading and most likely re-writing the old novel.
This gave me hope and I’ve been inspired to allow my old manuscript to see the light of day. I’ve begun reading it and making notes and decided to re-write. Not an easy job, especially in a series where one or more characters appear in my other books.
So, first I had to create a new timeline. Where does this book fit in with the others? What year does the book take place (the modern story, in my case, since the back story can be any time.) What is the main character’s role in this book? Is this a prequel or a sequel to the others?
Once the timeline makes sense, I have to get many things straight. If the protagonist is the same as other books, how old is she now? Is she still living in the same location? What has changed in her life? Career, relationships with others, marital status. How has she changed personally? Does she now have a Zen approach where previously she was a stressed-out nutter? Plus, I must do the same with all re-appearing characters who play significant roles.
This particular dusty manuscript is tricky because of the ending of the previous book. I plan to rely on science to help me out of a jam here! I shall say no more.
What about location? Am I locked into a particular location for the modern story? Did the main character move to a different city, house, street? Why? Does it matter to the story?
A lot of work needs to be done, but it would also need to be done in a new story if I continued the series. The only way around this is to write a new mystery with completely new characters. Maybe even a new series.
For now, I plan on blowing off the dust on the manuscript and writing Book Five of my current series.
Wish me luck!
by Lynne | May 24, 2015 | Uncategorized
I recently read a mystery that had me completely riveted. I wasn’t able to put it down for three days, and I was bummed when I finished. Fortunately, a sequel is coming.
The title: “A Killing in the Hills” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Julia Keller. The prose is distinctive and original, the characters intense yet believable, and the story is artfully compelling. But when I analyze why I am so enjoying this book, I have to say, it’s the location. It takes place in a small, poverty-ridden town in West Virginia. Keller paints a grim and sorrowful image of a backwards country town thrown into chaos by a horrifying triple murder.
The idea made me think of other books in which the location kept me turning the page. Peter May’s “The Black House” takes place on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. A forbidding and dark, cold place and perfect for murder. Then there are TV series like “The Killing.” The Killing takes place in Seattle, but somehow the filmmakers managed to film only on days when it was raining — pouring buckets, actually. Bleh.
I guess I have a penchant for dark, cold, wet, poverty-stricken and forbidding places. It seems like crime would be rampant. But crime is pretty darn rampant in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and they’re not exactly dark and cold locations.
I also like big city grit. New York, LA, Chicago but there’s something about small, isolated towns that calls to me. To prove that location is an important factor for me, I’ve tried three of Louise Penny’s books now and really haven’t been thrilled. But I keep trying because they’re set in Québec and I’m fascinated by the area.
I’ve enjoyed the Amish series by Linda Castillo, which takes place in a small town, Painters Mill, in Ohio. Love the backdrop. And Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” Trilogy. I guess I love cold and snow as well as dark, dirty and cold.
Obviously, my feelings about location feed into my own writing. First book, the poverty-stricken tenements of the Lower East Side in NYC, second, the Civil War battlegrounds with its dead and dying, and third, Nazi Germany and France during the occupation. Can’t get much grimmer than that.
How about you? Does location fit prominently in your choice of where to set your stories? Do you pick places that are familiar, or those that are foreign and exotic, so you have to learn about them? A good trick for getting a travel write-off. How do you select the books you read? Does location play a role? Think about it.
Now, lest you think I live in one of these cold, dark, grim places . . . you’d be wrong. I don’t want to live there. I just want to read about them. Jeez, in San Diego, if the sun isn’t out 350 days, I’m depressed.
by Lynne | May 18, 2015 | Uncategorized
Some years ago, I wrote a follow-up novel to Time Exposure, a mystery about the Civil War. However, because I had changed the ending of Time Exposure just before it was published, suddenly my new story, the follow-up, would no longer work.
I know what you’re thinking. Silly, as a fiction writer, you can make anything work. You can change names, faces, hair color, locations, and personality traits. You can even kill off a character and bring him/her back to life. Hmm.
So, if I want to complete this new, older manuscript, I would, by necessity, have to revisit my earlier work and see how I could take the ending as it is currently written and revise it (believably) in the follow-up book.
Since my mysteries take place in the past but are solved today, I can use science and technology to do exactly that.
Take DNA, for instance. As a rule, if DNA is found at a crime scene, it may be matched to a suspect. However the percentage of DNA certainty diminishes when siblings are involved. Since full siblings share 50% of DNA, it is difficult to narrow the suspect pool to one person (or sibling.) Aha! This gives me wiggle room for a revised ending. I shall say no more.
The next big question is, do I seriously want to dust off this old manuscript and re-write it? Or do I want to write a completely new story? I’ve got mixed feelings. Part of me wants to re-visit the old story and not leave it buried in a drawer. Perhaps it deserves the light of day and with a total re-write, it is really a new book. Right?
The other part of me wants to jump into something completely new and banish the old manuscript to obscurity.
I’d love to hear what you think and what you have done, or what you might do, in a similar situation. Did you dust off your old manuscript, polish it up, and publish it? Or did you re-bury it in your desk drawer and begin afresh?
Ideas welcome.
by Lynne | May 11, 2015 | Uncategorized
While I was preparing for my talk at the Bowers Museum on the Nazi confiscation of art and my book, Deadly Provenance, I came across the following link about a battle between a museum in Norway and a family demanding the museum return a Henri Matisse painting, said to have been seized by the Nazis under the direction of Hermann Goering during WWII. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/matisse-norwegian-museum-was-once-nazi-loot
Almost seventy years after the War, art pieces are still being recovered, and, hopefully, being restored to the original owners or descendants thereof.
You might consider this situation a no-brainer. The painting winds up in museum, which believes they bought the piece legitimately from a collector or dealer. Paperwork seemed in order. And then suddenly a family or individual fights to reclaim it. What’s really going on?
Let’s back up. The Nazis looted about twenty percent of all Western art during the Second World War. Today, more than tens of thousands of items remain displaced, destroyed, or missing. At the end of the War, many of these confiscated pieces were found and returned to nations Germany had occupied, with stipulations that they be returned to individual pre-war owners. However, after the first few years, instead of continuing to track down the owners (many of whom died in the war) or their families, (many of whom died in the war,) some governments and museums chose to keep the works in storage or on display, effectively appropriating them as their own.
Despite a number of world and national “conferences” on this issue, there is a wide array of outcomes from restitution claims ranging from decade-long legal battles to resolution through mediation or arbitration. Why all this confusion?
Probably the easiest answer is “provenance.” Defined, provenance is a list of the previous owners of a work of art, tracing it from its present location and owner back to the hand of the artist. Think about this. How often and for how long do you keep receipts for items you purchase? Even important, high-priced items. Now consider — your country is at war. You and your family are arrested, taken from your home. Your home is then ransacked and used for enemy purposes. What would have happened to those receipts?
In many ways, it’s fortunate that the Germans (here the ERR or Einsatzstab Reichsletter Rosenberg, the agency in charge of confiscating the art and cultural objects from undesirables) kept such immaculate records. Lists exist of the items they hoarded, from whom they were stolen, when and where they were stored ie: the Jeu de Paume in Paris, etc. Without these documents and lists from heroines like Rose Valland, (photo of Rose and of Cate Blanchette who played Rose in The Monuments Men) a French curator who kept track of the plundered works of art, this work would have been lost forever.
More and more lost pieces of art are being recovered every day around the world. It remains to be seen, whether the original owners or their descendants will ever get them back.
by Lynne | May 3, 2015 | Uncategorized
A writer friend asked me this question: “Do you think the same people who read your blogs read your books?”
Good question and I wish I had an answer. I can track readership of my blogs, specifically by social media links ie: Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Google +. But I have no way of knowing whether any of these readers have read my books, unless, of course, they tell me.
So this blog is really a query to my writer friends. “Do the same people who read your blogs read your books?” Or put another way, “Does your blog motivate people to purchase and read your books?” Or, “Is blogging a good tool to market your books?”
I’d love to get your thoughts.
So, first I had to create a new timeline. Where does this book fit in with the others? What year does the book take place (the modern story, in my case, since the back story can be any time.) What is the main character’s role in this book? Is this a prequel or a sequel to the others?
