11th Book Contract Marks 50 Years of Writing

Posted on May 14, 2015 by CarolynMay 14, 2015

Fifty years ago this week I began my writing career as an editorial assistant for the NEA Journal, then one of the country’s best education magazines. I just signed a contract for my eleventh book, Thunder Beneath My Feet, a middle grade/young adult novel set during the powerful New Madrid earthquakes in late 1811 and early 1812.

Those eleven books represent a relatively small part of my output. For twenty years I worked mostly on magazines, including as the editor of Industrial Research & Development News. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna, Austria, published this international technical quarterly.

I didn’t enjoy editing technical articles from experts who spoke English as their second (or third or fourth) language and left in fear the bureaucratic writing style would damage my writing. On the plus side, I formed close friendships with wonderful people from different cultures, and the interactions of colleagues from some fifty countries fascinated me.

My Favorite Job

The job I held the longest (almost five years) and liked the most was as editor of Synergist, a magazine published by the National Center for Service-Learning, iWashington, D.C., for leaders of secondary and postsecondary student volunteer programs. Over those years, service-learning blossomed and moved into the elementary schools.

Much of my time went to locating model programs and soliciting (and editing heavily) articles from the outstanding educators who ran them. I also traveled around the country to write and photograph inspiring programs. I resigned to become a freelancer when I thought I had taken the publication as far as it could go under the politicians who then determined what we could publish.

Computers began to replace electric typewriters while I edited Synergist, and editors and designers struggled to stay close to the “bleeding edge” as publications moved into desktop publishing. Such programs as PageMaker enabled quick, relatively inexpensive turnaround and prompted the golden age of the newsletter.

Freelancing

Over the next twenty-plus years, writing and editing monthly newsletters paid my mortgage and covered most of my basic expenses. Relying on my journalistic skills, I took on many topics, including career tips for dental hygienists, innovative programs for chambers of commerce, and issues affecting sales of oil production equipment.

My major steady client over those years was Communications Concepts, a small company that produced a series of monthly subscription how-to newsletters for corporate communicators. I did most of the planning and wrote most of the articles. For each issue, I interviewed four to six people from around the United States and Canada, reviewed a book or two, and edited a contributor’s article.

The publisher gave me considerable autonomy, and the articles kept me up to date on the field. The newsletters also gave me credibility with other clients and led me to a sideline of teaching graduate-level continuing ed writing and editing courses and giving workshops for writers’ groups.

Other freelance assignments included subbing for an ailing magazine editor, writing a calendar for the National Portrait Gallery, writing the proceedings for a Library of Congress conference, writing and editing textbook material, and covering an International Red Cross meeting in Geneva. For several years I financed much of my travel in the United States and abroad by writing and photographing travel articles.

Most of the magazines and newsletters, and several of the newspapers, that I wrote for died years ago.

The Nonfiction Books

I wrote my nonfiction books between 1984 and 1994. My first two (and most profitable), Guide to Student Fundraising and Financial Fitness for Teens, were works for hire. I had a lot of fun but earned few dollars writing (with Betty C. Ford) Adventure Vacations in Five Mid-Atlantic States. Living in the D.C. area, I earned more respect than income from writing a young adult political biography, Elizabeth Dole, Public Servant.

My hair grayed at the same time the opportunities for lucrative, interesting assignments diminished. Both employees and freelancers felt the effects of the changes technology brought to communications programs and of employers’ increased tendency to equate the ability to type and use a spell-checker with the ability to write and edit.

The Transition to Fiction

Now what? I decided to go back to my original goal of writing novels. I hadn’t been a mystery fan until such excellent writers as Sara Paretsky, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Margaret Maron showed women could carry a mystery as the main character rather than sidle on the page as a male protagonist’s damsel in distress or lust interest. I enrolled in a class for beginning mystery writers taught by author Noreen Wald and began a long transition from nonfiction to fiction.

One of the great things that came from that class was a critique group of novice mystery writers, all of them now published. We met weekly, with two or three always presenting chapters for review. My first draft took a long time, and so did sales for most of us.

Finally a Novelist

At one low point, I debated whether to continue trying to sell a mystery. I pulled out the manuscript of a children’s book I had written years before and asked the group to critique it as I revised. In 2007, that manuscript, The Feedsack Dress, became my first published novel.

At another low point, I again questioned whether to give up on writing mysteries. While mulling that over, I greatly enjoyed researching the devastating but little remembered New Madrid earthquakes featured in Thunder Beneath My Feet. My initial marketing experience was frustrating, so I put that manuscript aside when I sold my first mystery, Show Me the Murder, in 2011 (published February 2013).

Midway through writing the fifth of the award-winning Show Me series, I returned to Thunder, doing a light revision and then searching for a publisher. I found one on my fiftieth anniversary as a professional writer.

Now I have to finish book five and decide what to write next.

To learn more about the earthquakes and read an excerpt from Thunder Beneath My Feet, go to the navigation bar and click on Other Writings/Works in Progress/Thunder Beneath My Feet.

—Carolyn Mulford

International Women’s Day Quiz

Posted on March 8, 2015 by CarolynMarch 8, 2015

I came back to my desk on March 8, 1969, and found a chocolate and a postcard wishing me a Happy International Women’s Day. A Russian colleague had left those for me and every other woman in my section of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

Even though the first National Women’s Day originated in the United States in 1909, I’d never heard of International Women’s Day. It has received better publicity in the United States since the United Nations began celebrating it in 1975.

In honor of the day, I offer a short quiz, part of one written originally for the Columbia, Missouri, branch of the American Association of University Women.

Who do you know?

Match the following former or present heads of state to their countries. Why did all of these countries elect a woman before we did?

1. Angela Merkel a. Chile

2. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf b. Ireland

3. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner c. South Korea

4. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga d. Germany

5. Michelle Bachelet e. Liberia

6. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir f. Brazil

7. Violeta Chamorro g. Nicaragua

8. Mary Robinson h. Argentina

9. Chandrika Kumaratunga i. Lithuania

10. Dalia Grybauskaitė j. Iceland

11. Dilma Rousseff k. Sri Lanka

12. Park Geun-hye l. Latvia

When did women get the vote?

Match each country with the year women got the vote. Hint: The United States wasn’t the first or the last.

1. New Zealand a. 1971

2. Switzerland b. 1955

3. Mexico c. 1947

4. Ethiopia d. 1920

5. United States e. 1893

Here are the answers. Who: 1. d, 2. e, 3. h, 4. a, 5. j, 6. g, 7. b, 8. k, 9. l, 10. i, 11. f, 12. c When: 1. e, 2. a, 3. c, 4. b, 5. d

—Carolyn Mulford

Glimpses of Chile

Posted on December 15, 2014 by CarolynDecember 15, 2014

For decades I traveled Peace Corps style: riding buses and trains, staying at B&Bs and austere hotels, and buying most of my food in markets and small restaurants. Traveling on a low budget took extra time, planning, and effort, but it enabled me to experience life in unfamiliar countries somewhat as the natives did.

Gone are the days. I’ve reconciled myself to touring with a group of curious, well-traveled retirees on two-week trips planned and directed by people who make sure hotels and restaurants meet high standards and know where to find a bathroom every two hours.

In November I took such a tour of Chile and Argentina, two countries I’d avoided in my do-it-yourself days because their governments made lots of people disappear. Comfort, congenial companions, and the organizers’ good mix of places and personal encounters made the trip enjoyable and stimulating.

What we saw and heard aroused my journalistic curiosity. I can’t satisfy that, but here are some glimpses of things in Chile that intrigued me.

Protests in Santiago

Although we saw the shacks that trumpet poverty on the way from the airport, most of Santiago looked like a pleasant modern city. Jacaranda bloomed in parks. Well-dressed people (almost all white) rode a clean, quiet subway. Restaurants (seafood is huge) and ice cream places abound. We had some really good ice cream in unfamiliar flavors, and lots of young (and not so young) people were eating cones in the street.

We saw many new high-rise apartment buildings, some near blocks of old mansions that had been turned to other uses—businesses, apartments, schools. Despite a high literacy rate, quality education is more goal than reality, we heard, with the public schools bad and the private ones expensive.

The most surprising, and encouraging, thing to me was the number of protests. For years after the 1973 CIA-assisted coup that ended with leftist president Salvador Allende’s death, protestors tended to vanish. Thousands of others fled the country, with some returning after the repressed but more prosperous citizenry astonished General Augusto Pinochet by voting him out of office in 1988. (The United States gets some credit for helping Chile improve its economy.)

When we went for a walk in the central area, unionized government workers were gathering with signs to push the legislators to put a pay raise in the new budget. Stilt-walkers and drummers added a festive air. We saw small groups of protestors marching in the street several times. Police were plentiful but not obtrusive. They didn’t wear riot gear or carry military arms.

My cynical reportorial self wondered—but couldn’t investigate—who really staged these peaceful scenes.

A British tourist told me he saw a different scene from his hotel window early one morning. Police used water cannon against a group of young protestors, targeting one man in particular. A Chilean said he was probably an anarchist making trouble. A defensive excuse? Probably, but anarchists (like looters) do mix with protestors.

Put the protests in Santiago in context. International television news was showing report after report of looters and arson in Ferguson, Missouri. For months the area police had shown they didn’t know how to handle demonstrations. When I lived in D.C., people were brandishing signs whenever I passed the White House.

Lakes and Volcanoes

One reason for the trip was to see Andean scenery. The warm-up was Chile’s low-lying agricultural heartland, where grapevines, fruit trees, and corn often line the highway. The first two provide major exports. I can testify that the fruit was excellent. My companions enjoyed the wines. As to the corn, it forms a major part of the local diet, turning up in casseroles, stews, and salads.

Osorno Volcano

The most scenic area was to the cooler south around the pretty Patagonian resort town of Puerto Varas. Here our hotel looked across the huge Lake Llanquihue to the snow-topped, cone-shaped Osorno and the long, irregular Calbuco volcanoes. A few years ago an eruption spewed masses of sand-colored ash, most of which drifted east into Argentina. A ten-inch layer of ash drove nearby residents away and killed forests, crops, and the tourist trade. People have returned to the towns, and their beautiful gardens attest to the ash’s nutritional properties.

We made several interesting side trips.

• A horse-breeding ranch where huasos, a father and son, showed how they compete in rodeos quite different from ours. No roping, no bull riding, no bucking broncs. Competitors receive points for maneuvering a steer cuddled between their sidestepping Andalusian horses in prescribed patterns without harming it. Dressed in traditional garb that includes a flat-brimmed hat and a heavy, hand-woven poncho in the ranch’s colors, the horsemen eschewed lassos, and their large, round-tipped spurs didn’t harm the horses. A kinder and gentler rodeo tradition.

Market in Puerto Montt

• A Saturday market in Puerto Montt where shoppers found a variety of fresh seafood, large vegetables, and such other items as cheese. One of our most intriguing finds was a picoroco, a barnacle. The gray, tulip-shaped shell contained a white mass that shoppers took home or ate at the vendor’s stand with lemon juice. I preferred one of Chile’s favorite staples, empanadas. Turnover-sized and shaped, the empanadas held ground meat and potatoes, seafood, or cheese. In the market we saw some Native American faces.

• Petrohue Falls, a national park where green water from a lake rushes through lava formations. The low falls don’t equal the Great Falls of the Potomac near D.C., but the view of snow-capped volcanoes in the distance adds beauty.

Petrohue Falls

In Puerto Varas, we were near the last-held ground of the Mapuche. The Spanish conquistadors and their descendants (plus some other Europeans) pushed the indigenous peoples who survived attacks and diseases toward the colder, less hospitable south just as we forced native tribes west. Today the Mapuche make up approximately four percent of Chile’s population, and they’re still struggling for their rights.

A Mapuche activist and culture preservationist talked to us about the Mapuche philosophy of life, government persecution for such acts as displaying their flag, and the ongoing fight to regain the land the Pinochet government took from them and awarded to his friends. The preservationist also noted that the Mapuche, by choice, have no written language. His grandparents say the words lose their true meaning on paper.

Our program director told us that eighty-five percent of Chile’s people have mestizo (mixed) blood, and that most of them deny it.

Like most other countries, Chile has a ways to go to build a true democracy. From my limited reading and observation, class constitutes a bigger problem than race, and economic and educational inequality presents one of the country’s greatest challenges. We face the same challenge.

I filtered my observations of Chile through others’ opinions and my experiences in other countries. The friendliness of the people made me root for them. The tour didn’t give me any expert knowledge, but those few days will help me understand what I read in their history and literature and what I see on the news.

—Carolyn Mulford

Interview: Judy Hogan Shares Her Writing Techniques

Posted on December 18, 2013 by CarolynDecember 18, 2013

Judy Hogan; Photo by Mark Schmerling

Judy Hogan has led the writing life for fifty years. In October 2013 one publisher released her second mystery, Farm Fresh and Fatal, and another her fifth book of poetry, Beaver Soul. She also has written two nonfiction books, founded and served as editor of Carolina Wren Press (1976-1991), and continues to teach courses in writing fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction (e.g., diary/memoir).Her mystery series reflects her deep roots in social activism and in North Carolina. The first book, Killer Frost (Mainly Murder Press, 2012), involves educational and financial fraud on a historically black college campus, a setting she knows well. Farm Fresh and Fatal focuses on another familiar place, a farmers’ market, with vendors holding different views on sustainable agriculture and genetically modified produce.

I interviewed Judy about why and how she writes mysteries.

Q: You’ve written poetry and prose, nonfiction and fiction. Why did you choose to write traditional mysteries?

I started reading mysteries in 1981, when I was forty-four. My eldest child had gone off to college, and I had a little more time in the evening when I was too tired to work. I began with Golden Age authors my father recommended. He’d been reading them all his adult life, and I’d never understood why. He was a minister who escaped by reading mysteries? A puzzle I now understand. I read Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, P.D. James.

In 1990, I was having a writing vacation (to write poetry) on the Gower Peninsula in Wales, and instead of ranging around the cliffs, I was housebound with a sprained ankle. My landlady in the B&B, who could never get me to watch the telly because I wanted to read mysteries, said, “Judy, why don’t you write a murder?” I began to plot one set in a B&B, with my landlady as a character.

I didn’t know I was writing a traditional mystery. It was later in a workshop with Margaret Maron that I learned that. I did try to publish The Sands of Gower. I even had a nice rejection letter from Ruth Cavin, the legendary editor at St. Martin’s. I had always thought that writing poetry was my best genre, and maybe that’s true, but I found mysteries fun to write, and in them I was able to do some things that I couldn’t do in my nonfiction writing. I could invent characters and put them together and see what they would do, and in this way learn things I didn’t know I knew about myself and other people. That’s the magic of fiction for me. I also like happy endings. Some books have tragedy, but there’s still a sense of completion and a transformation.

Q: How did your experience writing essays, memoir, and poetry help you in writing your mysteries?

I think all writing you do helps other writing. I keep a diary, write in it every morning, and that has proved a good way to clear out my mind of trivia. Then I write a poem, an essay, or get ready to write fiction. I had learned in those other forms that I wrote better and more effectively, in a way to touch other people more, if I went deeper, and the part of me that I call the Muse, or the true creativity, came into play. So I came closer to my writing goals. I don’t usually have characters wake me up, but they definitely come alive in my mind. Over the years I had already developed a good relationship with my Muse, and pen to paper had become natural, comfortable.

Mainly Murder Press, 2013

Q: You present issues important to you in your mysteries. Those issues help propel the plot, motivate the characters, and establish the setting. Even so, the mystery dominates the message, and your endings surprise readers. What techniques did you use in conceiving and writing Farm Fresh and Fatal to assure storytelling didn’t cross over into preaching?

The thing about fiction and mysteries in particular is that you have a moral universe. I have a heroine and various admirable characters, and then I have a killer and some characters who are annoying in one way or another. My killers aren’t usually purely evil, but they have become desperate or in some way, lost their perspective or become obsessed. So the basic plot of the mystery serves me to highlight problems in the community that in some way “spawn” a killer.

Once I have my idea of the problem I want to focus on (and I’ve worked on all the ones I take up with the activist side of my personality) and set up the good and bad characters, the murderer and the suspects, the plot tends to highlight the situation in the community that worries me. I like speaking this way about issues, and after being involved in local politics, this suits me better. I often upset people in a grassroots effort because I tend to be blunt, and even the good guys sometimes become pompous and don’t like to hear someone speak the truth. I can speak all the truth I want in my books and make fun of people who annoy me, even kill them off!

Q: You introduce a lot of characters in the early chapters but manage to make each one distinctive. How do you go about choosing and creating characters?

I have an ongoing heroine/sleuth, Penny Weaver, loosely based on me, my age, a poet, with many of my interests, but her voice is a little more satirical than mine. Her lover/husband Kenneth was her first sidekick, and then a character I wholly invented, Sammie Hargrave, an African American, came to life, and I liked her so much that I found her an ideal sidekick, more even than Kenneth, who tends to worry about Penny’s always seeming to end up face to face with the murderer. Sammie also balances Penny’s usually good behavior. Sammie will deceive, take on criminals with karate moves, and is generally ready for anything.

I use Elizabeth George’s Write Away strategies for character and plot development. I write down all the characters I need. After this many books, I already have a lot to choose from, since an interracial group of activists works on issues in my fictional Riverdell.

Actual people sometimes get me going. People are each so different when you get to know them, and their quirks help me make them unique and provide humor, hopefully. My goal is that each one lives individually for the reader. I still work at that, but they come alive better if I know how they talk, behave, what their background is, what their “core need” is and what they do when they can’t have what they believe they need. The Muse helps. I often ask her questions re characters and plot, and she makes suggestions, which I almost always follow. Knowing the characters well helps me plot.

Q: One of your ongoing themes is rocky relationships between mothers and their adult daughters. Are you taking a personal risk here? What do your daughters think of the scenes between Penny, the main character, and her somewhat unstable daughter Sarah?

Oh, my. I’ve given my books to my two daughters, and I don’t think either one has read them, and perhaps they won’t recognize themselves, though they have both, and my son, too, given me pause over the years. In the end my life is richer because my kids gave me a hard time, even to our needing some therapy as a divorced family, to get them raised. Those conflicts are still vivid to me. It’s easy for me to write scenes between adult children and their parents. My oldest is fifty-one, and my youngest is forty-one, and I hope they don’t take offense if/when they read the books. I’m taking the risk.

Mainly Murder Press, 2012

Q: What are you writing now? What’s next?

Saturday, December 7, I wrote the last words of the first draft of Pernicious Poll. It’s about North Carolina’s new harsh voting law, which in its effects is quite discriminatory against African Americans and the poor.

I hope to get the very first mystery I wrote out next. I’ve revised The Sands of Gower, and I think readers will like to go back to when Penny met Kenneth. Tormentil Hall, which comes after Farm Fresh, also takes place on Gower in Wales, and I think the readers need the first novel to enjoy fully the eighth. My publishing sequence is going to be mixed up, but that’s already true.

Q: Many people look forward to leaving their day job and writing mysteries as a second (or even primary) career. What’s the single most important advice you give the person who wants to become a mystery writer?

Love doing it, do it because it makes you happy, whether you sell it or not. Write what you wish to write–the advice of Virginia Woolf, Louise Penny, Carolyn Hart, Elizabeth George. Go for broke, and then get good feedback you trust. It might be a group, or one person. I didn’t find that critique groups worked for me, but I now have two readers. Both love to read mysteries, both are honest but essentially like what I do. That is helping tremendously. They find the things I miss or didn’t make clear. Of course, read good books. The best models make the best writers.

Q: What have been the most satisfying comments on Farm Fresh and Fatal?

I was fortunate to have a blurb from Carolyn Hart: “Farm Fresh and Fatal features an appealing protagonist, an intriguing background, and well-realized characters. Readers will enjoy these characters and empathize with their successes and failures. In the tradition of Margaret Maron.”

A writer friend of mine, Sharon Ewing, wrote one. Your close friends sometimes aren’t that impressed with your writing, but Sharon reviewed the book, quite thoughtfully and appreciatively, on Amazon. She said, “The first sentence of the book plunges into the action that will carry the reader to the fast-paced turns and twists of the final chapter.”

Then recently, November 30, Ruth Moose reviewed it in a little paper in Southern Pines, The Pilot. She wrote, “Hogan writes with passion and knowledge about genetically modified foods that can produce ‘tomatoes that bounce like ping pong balls,’ and the community of those who know and love the earth.” She made my day. Newspaper reviews are hard to get in these times. You can read the full review at http://www.thepilot.com/search/?t=article&s=start_time&sd=desc&d1=5+years+ago&q=Book+Review%3A+Farm+Fresh+and+Fatal.

Judy, thanks you for sharing your expertise.

—Carolyn Mulford

Finishing Line Press, 2013

For information on ordering autographed copies of her mysteries and poetry, email judyhogan at mindspring.com or visit her website (http://judyhogan.home.mindspring.com) or blog (http://postmenopausalzest.blogspot.com).

Copies of her mysteries (in paper and e-book format) are available from major online bookstores and mainlymurderpress.com

Copies of Beaver Soul may be ordered from Amazon (search Finishing Line Press chapbooks) and Finishing Line Press.

Part 1: Three Writers’ Conferences Serve Different Audiences

Posted on May 20, 2013 by CarolynMay 20, 2013

At local meetings and on national listservs, writers often ask for advice about which conferences to attend. Having attended many, I can only say that the best conference depends as much on what the writer seeks as what the conference offers.

This spring, with promoting Show Me the Murder my top priority, I chose three annual conferences serving different audiences:

Missouri Writers’ Guild conference for writers with varied interests,
Malice Domestic 25 national convention for mystery fans,
Marshall (MO) Writers’ Guild workshop for their members.

Here, in Part 1, is what the state conference offered.

This estimable annual three-day conference (http://www.missouriwritersguild.org) features solid how-to presentations on topics appealing to beginners and professionals but focusing on writers hovering between those levels. Attendees are serious writers eager to establish careers.

From my conversations and observations, more than half have finished at least one unpublished manuscript (usually a novel) but don’t know much about the route to publication. The self-publishing and social media sessions here (like everywhere else apparently) drew a big crowd.

Many come to the conference hoping to hook an agent or a publisher. Quite a few skipped the how-to seminars to concentrate on pitching to the half dozen East and West Coach agents and regional publishers in scheduled five-minute sessions and in informal conversations. One of the advantages of a relatively small (around 200) conference is that you can sit next to an agent at a meal or corner her (usually not him) in the bar or hall. The toilets are off limits.

Agents who fly from either coast to the heartland usually agree to look at anything that might possibly interest them. And almost every year at least one writer signs with an agent or sells a manuscript to a publisher. Even those who don’t sell get valuable feedback.

This friendly conference also gives writers a chance to socialize, exchange information, and feel part of a community. Writing may be a solitary activity, but networking never hurts.

As for carrying out my special agenda, I handed out bookmarks and a fast pitch for my new mystery series to dozens of writers/readers from around the state.

—Carolyn Mulford

Book review: Writing Teachers Will Relate to Mystery’s Setting

Posted on January 4, 2013 by CarolynJanuary 30, 2013

Anyone who has taught a basic English or creative writing course will recognize some of the characters and situations in Killer Frost, a debut mystery by Judy Hogan.

Most of the book takes place at a financially and academically distressed historically black college in North Carolina. An idealistic untenured professor wars against the administration to bring ill-prepared but determined students up to standard and to give gifted ones a chance to soar. He brings in Penny Weaver, a dedicated white writer/teacher, to take over both the remedial and the creative writing classes.

Hogan obviously knows both groups of students well, and some of her best scenes involve teaching rather than detecting. Finding the killer takes second place to rescuing the students from poor teaching, bad conditions, and the burnt-out and corrupt staff. The victims’ behavior had given faculty and students reasons to want to murder them.

The major subplot revolves around Penny’s disconcerting attraction to the professor who hired her (both are happily married). A more effective subplot involves her difficult relationship with her single-mother daughter.

Some of the numerous characters in Killer Frost live on the page. Unfortunately some students get lost in the classroom, and neighbors overpopulate Penny’s diverse community. Most talk too much and act too little—until the fast-paced climactic scene, which ends with a satisfying twist.

Killer Frost, by Judy Hogan, Mainly Murder Press, 2012, 244 pp., $15.95 in paperback and $2.99 in e-book; ISBN: 978-0-9836823-8-7. For more information about the writer, her work, and where to buy the book, go to http://judyhogan.home.mindspring.com.

Missouri Writers Gather to Take the Next Step Nov. 10

Posted on October 28, 2012 by CarolynOctober 28, 2012

Whether you’ve been published for years or want to expand beyond Twitter, the Columbia Chapter of the Missouri Writers’ Guild’s annual conference offers tips and tactics to help you improve your writing.

The conference, The Write Direction: Taking the Next Step, meets 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. November 10 at the Unity Center, 1600 West Broadway, Columbia.

Award-winning writers will share their special skills and small publishers will tell how and why they select manuscripts. The sessions include

* Novelist Bridget Bufford on creating characters through archetypes,

* Nonfiction children’s author Matthew Murrie on finding your perfect pitch,

* Missouri poet laureate William Trowbridge on humor in serious poetry,

* Short story writer Donna Volkenannt on structuring stories for passion and profit.

Editors from Mozark Press, AKA-Publishing, and High Hill Press will explain their operations and, in a separate session, evaluate the first page of manuscripts submitted anonymously by conference participants.

To read the schedule and session descriptions and to register, visit the Conference page at http://www. ccmwg.org. Warning: Registration fees (members, $40; nonmembers, $45; students, $25) go up November 6.

Full disclosure: I helped organize the conference and will moderate the publishers’ sessions.

The Publishing Process Nears the Final Stage

Posted on October 20, 2012 by CarolynOctober 21, 2012

The Publishing Process Nears the Final Stage

My heart rate jumped last week when I received two boxes of advance readers’ copies, uncorrected page proofs of Show Me the Murder. Nine years after a news story sparked the idea for my protagonist and thirteen months after I submitted the manuscript to the publisher, the final product is only four more months away.

I will read (aloud) one last time for typos and begin sending out copies to local, regional, and special-interest reviewers. The publisher will send out review copies to national publications, correct any typos, and print books for release in late February.

A year and a half is a long time in this age of instant communication, but that’s standard in traditional publishing. Here’s the basic process.

The pitch: I described the book to an editor at Killer Nashville in August 2011. She invited me to submit it.

Submission: I submitted the manuscript in September 2011. A few weeks later the editor told me she liked it and had sent it up the line.

Acceptance: The publisher offered me a contract in December 2011. The legal department asked for details on what real places, people, and products appeared in the book. My interpretation: The lawyers wanted to be sure I hadn’t libeled anyone.

Contract signed: January 2012.

Developmental editing: This step typically focuses on big-picture issues, but in February 2012 the editor and I spent more time (roughly two weeks) working on style questions. (Most publishers have their own style manual, usually a variation of the Chicago Manual of Style.)

Copyediting: This step focuses on consistency of style, but in May 2012 the editor also caught a couple of content errors (e.g., a person in the wrong room).

Proofing: I read the entire manuscript aloud to catch typos, missing words, and similar errors in July 2012.

Cover: An editor emailed me the image in September 2012.

Final proof/review copies: My copies arrived in October 2012. I hope to find no typos. Why send out uncorrected review copies? Because magazines operate with a three- or four-month lead time.

Release: February 2013.

An Interview with Elizabeth (the Great) Peters

Posted on April 24, 2012 by CarolynOctober 16, 2012

Mystery fans are honoring Egyptologist Barbara Mertz, best known to them as Elizabeth Peters, author of the beloved Amelia Peabody mystery series featuring a strong-minded early archaeologist. Fellow authors will interview Barbara April 28 at the annual Malice Domestic Convention.

That reminded me that I interviewed her 20 years ago on how she made the transition from academic to accessible and entertaining nonfiction (look for Red Land, Black Land) and from nonfiction to genre fiction, first Gothics as Barbara Michaels and then mysteries as Elizabeth Peters. At that time (1991) she already had 50 books to her credit.

What she told me still applies, so a shortened version of the first of my two articles follows. It appeared in Writing Concepts, December 1991, under the head “Egyptologist tells how she writes as two novelists.”

Today Barbara Mertz is better known as Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, the authors of bestselling novels noted for strong story lines, well-defined characters, accurate settings and serious themes both masked and emphasized by humor.

Thinking back to the beginning of her writing career and the development of her writing style, Mertz says, “I’m a big reader. I think that’s probably the most important thing for anyone who writes—reading enormously. You end up being imitative at various stages of your life. You imitate the writers you admire. I think that’s a useful stage, too. It teaches you some of the techniques of syntax and how to get an idea across. And eventually, one hopes, you develop your own style.”

Developing your voice takes time. She found hers in nonfiction much more easily than she did in fiction. Publishers rejected her first novels. She says, “I had not found my voice. It’s a rather pretentious terms, but I think it’s true that there’s a certain kind of thing that each person does well, and you can mess around trying this and trying that.”

You also need to learn what works, and sells, in your preferred genre. Mertz says, “You have this awful crisis between writing for the market and being totally cynical, giving up what you like to do just to sell something. … I think you have to consider the market, but I just don’t think anyone can write his or her best by playing solely to the market.

She broke in with traditional Gothics—“Victorian settings and spirits and haunted castles and that sort of thing.” Once established, she moved to modern settings and wandered from the formula. She found the restraint on humor frustrating.

So she became Elizabeth Peters, a mystery writer noted for her humor. The styles and content produced under the two names differ enough that many readers don’t realize that Michaels and Peters are the same person. Yet Mertz says she doesn’t consciously make her writing style fit the pseudonym.

Michaels and Peter strike different tones. “Peters is a lot sillier,” Mertz says. “I am more sarcastic, and the dialogue is, shall we say, sappier and more sardonic. The whole tone of the books, the commentary, is humorous, but I’m still talking about serious things. Most of the things I’m saying, whether they’re hidden under a guise of humor or not, are serious ideas. Definitely the Michaels books are more serious in tone. Peters makes fun of everything—of pomposity, of staid ideas, of prejudice.”

An Opportunity to Promote Reading

Posted on April 1, 2012 by CarolynJanuary 28, 2013

The Missouri Center for the Book (MCB) board of directors elected me to a three-year term at the March meeting. Librarians and college professors dominate the 18-member board, so part of my function will be to work with the writing community.

MCB is an affiliate of the National Center for the Book, Library of Congress. In Missouri, the mission is to

bring together authors, publishers, librarians, scholars, teachers and readers;
promote the state’s literary heritage and community of the book;
promote public interest in books, reading and libraries;
strengthen and celebrate the role of books in the human endeavor;
recognize the contributions of Missourians involved in the literary arts.

As a child, I read any book I could get my hands on and longed for more. Books entertained and educated me and became a crucial part of my life. It’s an honor and an obligation to work to bring such experiences to others.

New Madrid Earthquakes Remain a Mystery

Posted on February 20, 2012 by CarolynFebruary 20, 2012

New Madrid Earthquakes Remain a Mystery

No one knows what caused a series of major earthquakes centered near New Madrid, Missouri, and felt in much of the eastern United States 200 years ago, according to geologists at the “It’s Your Fault” conference, University of Missouri, February 18, 2012.

I attended to hear whether any new information would affect my Thunder Beneath My Feet manuscript (nothing did) and when to expect the next big ones (no one knows).

Experts can tell big earthquakes occurred in the state’s southeast corner about 1450 and 900 and at similar intervals for 5,000 or so years. They don’t know whether other catastrophic quakes are coming in 300 years, 50 years, or never. Some theorize that the few modest quakes and countless tremors since 1812 are aftershocks that will eventually end.

Professor Eric Sandoval, a member of the Missouri Seismic Safety Commission, called the New Madrid seismic zone one of the most difficult to understand on the planet. Located in the middle of—rather than on the boundary of—a tectonic plate, this zone doesn’t fit the models that apply in most of the world, including California.

New Madrid resembles a seismic zone in northern China, said Professor Mian Liu. Models indicate low hazard, but quakes have killed hundreds of thousands. He emphasized that over a few centuries quakes in such zones may occur in different locations. Why? Nobody knows for sure. Recorded history deals with only a fraction of earthquakes, and much of what happens deep beneath the earth’s surface remains a mystery.

I live about 300 miles from the New Madrid earthquake epicenter, close enough for a 7.+ quake to bring down chimneys and spires. Until geologists find more clues to the mystery, I won’t know whether my quake insurance makes sense.

Show Me the Murder Comes Out in 2013

Posted on February 17, 2012 by CarolynJanuary 28, 2013

The first book in my Show Me mystery series will be published in February 2013 by Five Star, an imprint of Thorndike/Gale/Cengage.

Moving a book from initial idea to print distribution takes years. For me, the most exciting part of the process is writing the first draft. I also enjoy rewriting to shape the whole, to strengthen each chapter, to add punch to each scene, to find the exact word or phrase. The next three to five passes, when I try to function as an editor, don’t thrill me so much.

As Show Me the Murder wends its way through the publisher’s editorial, design, and production process, I’ll polish the second book in the series and entertain myself by writing the third.