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Guest Post by Victoria King-Voreadi, @VAKingVoreadi

There wasn’t much cloak & dagger mystery involved in researching our tale Interrogation Tango. Our anti-hero Georg Elser did it; there was never any doubt about that. He didn’t do it in the parlor with the candlestick – he did it at the Burger Braü Keller with a primitive yet nonetheless effective explosive device.

The GESTAPO blew a gasket because it was totally unacceptable for an Aryan German Lutheran worker to want to kill Hitler – the champion of the German working class. The second blow to any semblance of reason was that this nobody, with no specialized military training and no formal higher education, very nearly succeeded in assassinating Adolph Hitler just as he was reaching the apex of his national popularity.

Two specific questions intrigued Donald Schwarz and I about this story:

1) What was the personal motive and impetus that drove Elser, at great personal sacrifice and discomfort, to conceive of and execute his plan with no regard whatsoever for his personal safety or future?

2) Why was such effort invested by the powers that be to ensure that very few ever learned about this man’s quite successful failure?

Those questions made Elser and the men who spent a great deal of time interrogating him fascinating characters, to us at least.

Ideas for stories are everywhere and as writers we tend to observe those around us a bit more intently than many others. People watching had always been an absorbing past time for me but it took on new meaning when I began my studies in Dramatic Arts. Every social and professional group has its own code of conduct, its own unique patois, and each member adapts to and applies those elements in their own unique way within the group.

Some characters have internal or external conflicts with that social assimilation process which may stem from their ethical or moral canons, from mixed loyalties, or from their own uncertainties. Others may rebel against the “law of the jungle” thus creating a catalyst for conflict around them – this is often the crux of great love stories. The only certainty is that the more conflicted an individual is the more interesting and realistic their appeal as a character is to the reader.

Spectacular events may get our attention, but what keeps us turning pages is the human factor. The way characters react to situations, how they deal with the emotional impact of events are the elements that engage us deeply in any story. A factual account of any historic event alone has an encyclopedic interest at best. But when we are allowed to experience the event through the eyes of a well rounded character the story stays with us and instills within us a new found respect for those notable and unknown individuals that actually lived it!

Even “bad guys” have human motives for their choices and their actions on some level. Members of the NAZI hierarchy were passionately convinced that they were serving the best interests of their fatherland. It is essential that you allow your characters opportunities to show their depth. Even seemingly “easy” decisions are wrought with potential pit falls. Megalomaniacs are not aware of their self obsession but see themselves as the great protector. Our man Elser is considered a terrorist by some, a people’s hero by others, his action killed and injured many yet he had no sense of the potential “collateral damage”.

Whatever your genre great characters are what can elevate a piece of solid writing into the realm of master storytelling. Sometimes the keys to unlocking your character’s potential can be found in unassuming details, quirks that foreshadow other aspects and dimensions. Allowing your characters to reveal themselves to you is a mind-blowing experience!

Victoria King-Voreadi is the co-author of Interrogation Tango, a film noir anti-detective tale recently released by Iguana Books.

Victoria lives in the city of Herákleionon the island of Crete, Greece with her husband and two beautiful daughters. A freelance writer and translator in Greece since 1992 she has received two screenwriting grants from the EEU Media Programme for both original and commissioned feature scripts, has worked on local and foreign productions. Victoria met her co-author Donald E. Schwarz in 1994 while visiting New York and the two instantly struck up a creative partnership.

Connect with Victoria here:
LinkedIN
Twitter – @VAKingVoreadi
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Guest Post by Terry Ambrose, @suspense_writer



Purchase Book Here

I admit it; I do get some sort of perverse satisfaction from driving the Grammar Cops (GCs) crazy. It’s not that I’m a rebel by nature, but more that, as Polonius said to Hamlet, there’s a method in my madness.

Know the situation
Before I go any further, I want to point out that I am definitely not advocating throwing out the grammar books completely. In fact, I’ll probably stop reading a book with frequent typos, spelling errors, and bad grammar. However, I like writers who are flexible enough to break the rules when the situation demands it. The GCs in my critique group are fond of reminding me about the importance of proper grammar every time I stray from the righteous path. And I’ll be the first to admit that once in a while they catch me in a mistake. However, often the grammar they’re criticizing is in dialog. My response in those cases is that people don’t necessarily speak in grammatically correct sentences and my primary concern when writing dialog is first, last, and always, character voice.

Differentiating characters with voice
In my current WIP, I have two characters who are at opposite ends of the spectrum. One is a staid Englishwoman striving to maintain appearances, the other, a 12-year-old street kid. Obviously, Mrs. Montgomery, with her perfect grammar and diction, never has a problem with the GCs. The street kid, whose name is Lily, is always in trouble because she says “duh” and “like” far too often, uses street slang, and doesn’t take grammar seriously. The point is that no matter which of these characters are speaking, their voice always comes through.

Using voice to cut attribution
As writers, we have a variety of tools available to help readers easily identify our characters. How will word choices reflect the character’s background and culture? How will their grammar distinguish them? For me, breaking the rules is another tool in my writing tool belt; it’s definitely not akin to cutting off an appendage. And as a reader, if I can easily distinguish between characters based on voice alone, I’ll need less attribution and will enjoy the story more.

Voice makes dialog interesting
When I read a novel where all of the characters begin to sound alike, I get bored very quickly. I find myself starting to skim not only the unimportant descriptions and backstory, but also the dialog. At that point, I start wondering why I’m bothering to read that particular book. The real problem is that if I give up on the book, I may also be giving up on that author. Like many writers, I get very little time to read. When I do, it will either be a new author I haven’t read before or one I know will deliver. Part of that delivery is a good plot, but much revolves around the characters and their dialog. Make those character conversations sharp and snappy and I’ll be hooked and turning the pages to see what happens next.

About the author
Terry Ambrose started out skip tracing and collecting money from deadbeats and quickly learned that liars come from all walks of life. He never actually stole a car, but sometimes hired big guys with tow trucks and a penchant for working in the dark when “negotiations” failed.

In Terry’s new release, License to Lie, a criminologist and a con artist learn that with $5 million and their lives on the line, you can never trust a soul…even your own. T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Jaguar and The Border Lords called License to Lie “fast and well written, almost sure to satisfy discerning readers of thrillers.”

Learn more about Terry on his website at terryambrose.com or on his Facebook author page at facebook.com/suspense.writer.

_{by Khanh Ho, @LAMysteryWriter}

I’ve taken dozens of writing seminars—some good, some bad. Over time, I’ve done hundreds of exercises. And in my capacity as a college level Creative Writing professor, I’ve had the chance to assign writing exercises, too. So, I know: the best exercises get you into the groove. This one—the one I’m about to share with you–is by far my absolute favorite. This one is a keeper.

I did it in my first writing seminar with this really cool writer—let’s call him David—who gave off the aura that every professional writer of high class art fiction should emit: denim shirts; denim jeans; old leather belt with real silver accents; longish unkempt hair, never parted; scuffed, leather attaché case with a discreet imprint from a luxurious maker; cowboy boots; crows feet around the eyes. Kinda cool to a college freshman.

David had us bring in one object and tell two stories about it: one true and one false. We could not reveal the true one. We could not even give clues by creating deliberately crazy stories that would indicate falsehood. We were just supposed to tell two variations of one story. One girl brought in a brick that she supposedly rescued from a lava flow in Hawaii. Me: I brought in a stuffed animal and spun a totally false story of shoplifting at Arnie’s Toyland.

After each story was told, the class voted and discussed why we thought one story was true or false. This made for a fun class. You got to know a lot about your classmates by listening to how their minds work. You also began to realize that certain elements are important to the feeling of truth: detail, character, setting. These are the elements that make a story ring with authenticity, even if it is a bald-faced lie.

To do this exercise at home, without the audience participation element, pick an object and try to write a scene around it. If you’re working on a story, go ahead: use the object in the scene. You don’t have to write two variations. You just have to decide that the object is going to have a life of its own—that it will reveal all sorts of connections about the world it occupies.

This exercise is perfect for the mystery writer, because it is essentially a realist exercise. Mysteries live in the world of realism; they deal with the everyday world. No Hobbits or Space Creatures or Wizards inhabit this world of pulp. No zombies or vampires or barbarian warlords. Mysteries exist in the plausible world of our mind. And all mysteries—all–are locked in the objects that we hold, like flies trapped in the spider web of our own making.

Khanh Ho spent many years living in a small town in rural Iowa, teaching Creative Writing at Grinnell College—a small liberal arts college, nestled in a windswept prairie whose distinguishing feature is the presence of a Super Walmart. But then he had a light bulb epiphany: he’ll never produce writing if he persists in teaching it. So, now he is happily pounding away at the keyboard, knocking out not only his first mystery novel but, also, the first mystery novel featuring the first Vietnamese American detective. Why? Because, yes, he’ll be the first; yes, it’ll be a power trip; and yes, because he can! Follow him on his great adventure at www.losangelesmystery.com

Image: Patuska from MorgueFile

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Recently, there’s been a real change in attitude among some high-profile writers regarding promo.

And I’ll admit that it makes me a little nervous.

I was especially uncomfortable reading a post by J.A. Konrath last month: Konrath’s Resolutions For Writers.   You’ll have to scroll down to the section entitled 2013 to get to it, but he says:

I have 10,000 followers on Twitter, but I only use it occasionally Facebook? Haven’t been on there in eight months. I witnessed the rise and fall of MySpace. I’ve opted out of Google+ because I saw no benefits. LinkedIn? I can’t even remember my password.

He goes on to say:

I haven’t blogged or Tweeted in months. I’ve been busy doing what writers should be doing: writing.
And guess what? My sales have remained constant.

Writer Dean Wesley Smith stated in a post in October called The New World of Publishing: Promotion:

Author promotion is worthless (except for selling to magazines or major publishers). Period. Best thing an author can do is write the next story and book.

As much as I’d like to think that I think we can completely back off on promo, it just doesn’t feel right to me.  Maybe if I were as well-known as Joe, and had as many titles as Dean, I’d feel the same way.  It’s very tempting to say we just won’t promote—that there’s no need.  There’s just that little issue of discoverability.

When I have thirty books or more available for sale as ebooks, I might feel a bit more tempted to back off on promo because it would just be so darn hard to avoid coming across me on Amazon in the mystery section.  But with a dozen books written (a couple of them not even out for a few months), I don’t think forgoing marketing is the answer.

I’d also love to stop doing other things I dislike—housework, yard work, and paying taxes…but I have a feeling it would bite me back later.

And ditching promo—even my own anemic, indirect form of marketing—would bite me back later, too.

I do think that these writers have a point.  Dean Wesley Smith put provisos on his ban on promo…he says that publishers promote (you should promote when you have your publisher hat on, as a self-published author) and writers write.  So promote like a publisher—not like a writer.  He has ideas for doing this in his post.

I think we still, currently, have a responsibility to ourselves and our pocketbooks to do the bare minimum of promo.

What I think the bare-minimum is:

A website.  You can probably stop right there as long as the site is updated fairly frequently, has your contact info/email address on it, buy-links, books, etc.

And…

One additional way to find you.  This could be (not all of these…just pick what appeals):

A blog that you update at least twice a month (abandoned blogs look kind of bad.  At least have a goodbye post and disable comments.)

A Facebook page

A Goodreads presence (Goodreads can be a sort of scary, dark-alley kind of place for writers, so just go in remembering that you may not want to poke around much.)

And…I do think an email address is an absolute necessity for writers.  The readers should be able to reach us via email.  We can even set up an email address solely for reader contact.  Have it be a professional address (like your full name) and use a free email service like gmail.com, etc.

This being said…I’m not as uptight as I used to be about making sure my bases are covered on all the different platforms.  If I don’t like a platform (Facebook comes to mind), I’m not going to force myself to post there a couple of times a week.  But I will leave it up so that I can be be contacted there by readers or anyone else (very occasionally print media will contact me on Facebook for an interview.)

What are your thoughts on promo for 2013?  Are you backing off a little?  Or just being more forgiving with yourself for limiting your platforms (like me)?  Or are you still going full steam ahead?

Image: PinkLadyBug from MorgueFile