Category: Uncategorized

Sometimes we have to shake things up a little bit in our lives.

I’m doing a lot of that this week. A lot. And, as a person who doesn’t accept change well, it’s been an interesting week. I took off to the mountains with my husband (unheard of.) I was actually able to relax (again…unheard of.) And now (drum roll please)–

Each Thursday I’m going to be posting on mysteries and food on the Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen blog.

I know what you’re thinking. “Elizabeth cooks?”

Riley Adams is a cook. Riley Adams is my pseudonym for Penguin/Berkley. I’m writing the Memphis Barbeque mystery series for them (first book to debut Memorial Day weekend of 2010.)

Yes, all right. Riley and I are the same person and I’m not a cook with a capital C. This will be a fun learning experience for me—the other authors on this blog are wonderful in the kitchen. Just go over there and check out the recipes. I’m excited to be a part of their group, plan to learn a lot, and hope to share what I learned from growing up around some fantastic Southern cooks.

Twitter? We’re there: it’s MysteryLoversKitchen. Facebook? It’s Mystery Lovers Kitchen under groups.

Also, I’m pleased to report that I’m hosting a special series on conventions on Mystery Writing is Murder. Tomorrow, Alan Orloff will be giving us tips to get the most out of our attendance at writing conventions: before, during, and after the conference. On Friday and Saturday, Galen Kindley will explain how to pitch an agent at a convention. I’m really looking forward to reading these posts, since I’m a convention newbie.

Now I’d better go rummage through my recipe box….

When this post publishes, my husband and I will be on our way to pick up our daughter at Brownie camp. She was only gone for two nights, but since she’s 7, we thought the short stay would prove a good introduction to resident camp. The idea was that she’d go there, love it, not be homesick at all, and then would want to graduate to a weeklong camp next summer.

As luck would have it (okay, it was careful planning), her two-night camp coincided with our son’s weeklong camp.

So my husband and I happily made arrangements to stay at a historic mountain inn in Highlands, North Carolina.

When we arrived at the inn, we were suddenly just us again—no children. Just like when we first married. The inn was picturesque and, when we checked in, we discovered that we were the only guests staying in the entire guest house. Our room had a balcony with rocking chairs. We had a bottle of wine, already chilled. We smiled.

Then my cell phone rang. “Mrs. Craig? It’s the camp nurse. No, no, she’s fine, really. Fine. Don’t worry. It’s just…well. Her braces? They fell out of her mouth during supper. What should I do?”

So…you got it. I’m now 100% thinking about my daughter. Was she upset the braces fell out? Is she okay? How did the darn things come out, anyway?

I immediately had my Mom hat back on. My husband looked completely horrified at the sudden manifestation of the Mom hat. But then I took it off. It was 7:00 p.m. She was three hours away from me. Really, there was nothing I could immediately do. So I made a list of what I should do tomorrow: email my daughter and tell her everything was fine and that—upside!—she now got to eat anything she wanted, and call the dentist and get them to reinstall the appliance as soon as she gets back from camp. For free.

I had to stop myself from wearing the Mom hat.

When I’m writing, I have to stop myself from wearing the editor hat. My tendency is to write for a few pages, stop, frown, and say, “This stinks.”

For me, editing as I go completely messes with my creative flow. I know some folks can write and edit simultaneously, but I’m not one of them.

Ways to get rid of the editor hat (until it’s time to edit):

Highlight the section of the page that’s bothering me so I can find it later.

Jot down ideas for changing the story’s path or the character’s personality. Maybe I don’t like the way John has behaved in the story up to that point. Change it for future text and then edit the previous problem during revisions. Make a note of where in the WIP I took the character or story on a new path.

Don’t read what I’ve already written.

At the end of a writing session, jot down a paragraph-long brief outline of where I want to pick up the next day and how I plan the scene to go. This eliminates the need to read previously-written text to see where I left off (and keeps me from picking it to death.)

Relax. Take a deep breath. Shut up my inner critic. Move on with writing.

To me, the best time to clean out the car is at the gas station.

So on Saturday, I busily pulled handfuls of camp newsletters, empty sandwich baggies, empty sunscreen bottles, a cardboard box, etc., out of my car while it was filling up with gas. (Yes, this was clutter that had collected in the few days since I’d last fueled up.)

There was a man at the pump behind me who apparently watched me as I cleaned. I didn’t pay attention to him at first, but then—after making several trips from the inside of the car to the trash can—I noticed that he was smirking at me.

I realized that I’d pulled a prodigious amount of paper trash from my car. In fact, I’d filled up half the can. I smiled weakly at him. “I…uh…have kids,” I said.

“Noooooo. Really?” he asked.

His sarcasm earned him a glare, but I had to admit he had a point. Who else but a parent would be driving a minivan that seats seven people? That has a bumper sticker on the back emblazoned with the name of an elementary school? That has a booster seat in the middle row, easily visible through the open, sliding door?

I had stated the obvious and he’d called me on it.

When I first started writing fiction, I found it really easy to use unnecessary adverbs—frequently in dialogue. You know: ‘’he said, knowingly’ and ‘she retorted angrily.’ Then I realized I could just show that the man was a know-it-all by what he was saying: “Actually, the circumference of an ellipse is determined by finding the complete elliptic integral of the second kind.” And I could show that the woman was angry by what she was saying. “Good for you. But do you know where the laundry hamper is, Mr. Smarty Pants? Because the gym socks lying on the floor are the reason we’re arguing.”

If you’d rather show tension via body language, you could have him smirk. Or he could heave a long suffering sigh. She could have tightly pressed lips or bunched shoulders.

When we state the obvious, we’re selling our readers short. They can tell how our characters are feeling by their body language and dialogue. The last thing I want is to have a reader put down my book with a “Nooooooo. Really?”

I read really quickly. But usually I don’t automatically gravitate toward books on the shelf that are thick when I’m browsing at the bookstore.

Thick books usually equal lots of characters, complicated plot lines…maybe even a family tree or a map at the beginning of the book.

If I see a family tree at the beginning of a book, it’s going back on the shelf. I wish I had that kind of time, but I don’t.

Long Book Avoidance doesn’t happen when it’s an eagerly awaited sequel or part of a series I’m reading. I just finished the many-paged Private Patient by P.D. James. But I start out with an advantage with series books—I already know some of the characters.

Right now I’m writing 70,000–75,000 word books. I think my reading preferences have seeped over into my writing preferences. Maybe someday I’ll want to make a stab at some epic saga of a book, but that day has definitely not come yet.

Thoughts on Word Count:

Personally, it’s not something I like to think about when I’m writing. But I can tell if I’m in the right ball-park with my word count as I’m writing the first draft.

One editor (Moonrat’s) thoughts on word count for debut novels: summing up, the highest word count she’d recommend for a debut would be 100,000 words. She thinks that some editors would rather see 80,000. She says:

“There are practical reasons for this rule! It’s not (entirely) that editors are close-minded pigs. The reason is 100,000 words casts off at about 480 typeset pages. That would make your book…well, a lot of pages–astronomically expensive to produce. Since literary fiction (particularly debuts) sell in smaller numbers than genre fiction, the potential profit margin on your book would be even lower than on another debut. Publishers would be very, very wary of the financial risk they were undertaking.”

If you’re looking for just general, ballpark information on word counts for various genres, try: http://tinyurl.com/lm2dyu . Ronnie Smith, the author of this article, is careful to remind the reader that these are generalizations.

As for me, I’m going to look forward to the day when I can study a novel’s maps and family trees to my heart’s content.

Yesterday evening I went to the grocery store to pick up some milk.

The grocery store is huge.

It’s a super-sized Bi-lo and it took me a long time to even get to the milk. I really should have had my walking shoes on instead of flip-flops. And I got all distracted on the long walk to the dairy section and ended up buying all sorts of things. But I’d only intended to get milk, so I hadn’t gotten a shopping buggy or a basket at the front of the store.

So here I am, juggling a bunch of impulse buys, and hoofing it all the long way back to the cashier.

When I was a kid, we had a tiny A&P grocery store in my hometown of Anderson, South Carolina. When I lived in London for a while in college, there was a Safeway near where I lived (close to the British Museum) that was a nice, small store. Birmingham, Alabama had the cozy-feeling Piggly Wiggly.

But now…it’s mostly just gigantic stores.

My husband’s sister and her husband live in Kenya. They came to North Carolina for a visit and I took them to the Costco warehouse (pictured) the day after they got off the plane. I figured they needed to stock up on some stuff.

It was complete culture shock for them, which clearly I should have realized. Any place that has 2 gallon containers of green peas takes time to adjust to.

Many times I really want to just pick up some milk.

Since books are escapes for me, I’m happiest reading about places that introduce me to a simpler, quieter place. British villages, small Southern towns, anyplace set in the past are my favorite escape settings.

In Pretty is as Pretty Dies, I wrote about a small town with a strong sense of community. There wasn’t a super center in the whole book.

Because sometimes it’s nice to just downsize my world.