Guest Post - Why I Became a Crime Writer by John Barlow

Why I became a crime writer.

At the beginning of my writing career I was labelled a ‘literary’ writer. That was fine, and I tried to live up to it. About three years ago I had an idea for a cycle of stories based on the Grimm’s fairy tales, but modern, grown-up versions. Literary ones. I wrote several of these stories. In one of them a snowy-white Hollywood starlet gets poisoned on LSD at an orgy of seven midgets. I did it as an American noir, and I showed it to my agent. Do it as a full-length novel! she said.

The novel, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JERRY PICCO?, was shown to half a dozen big publishers in New York. But there were no takers for my porno-noir about a drugged-up fifteen year-old virgin and her well-hung midget lover. Strange. The crime publisher Mulholland very nearly bought it, then shied away. The novel was quickly forgotten, and I moved on.

However, last year I brought the novel out as an ebook, using the pseudonym Joe Florez. I did it as a way of testing the emerging ebook market, and I quite enjoyed the process. At about the same time I made an unusual discovery: my uncle John had been an arms dealer. He was also suspected of stealing munitions from the British army, and when he boarded a flight home from Amsterdam in 1984, British police were waiting for him at Heathrow. It was too late; he was found dead on the plane, his throat cut.

There are all sorts of theories as to what Uncle John had been doing. Apparently he’d made a lot of trips to Libya, and there was also rumours that he was supplying para-military groups in Ireland. His widow claimed publically that he’d been in contact with an organisation (which she wouldn’t name) that wanted him to work for them under cover. She vowed to fight for the truth, but nothing ever came of it. John was quickly forgotten.

What struck me as curious, when I saw the press cuttings and learned something about the case, was that I’d never heard about it before. He was actually a half-uncle on my father’s side, but nobody had ever mentioned the nature of his death or the job he’d been doing. After getting used to the idea that he might have been involved in some pretty awful things, what amazed me is how family life went on regardless, presumably as it had done while he was flying off to Tripoli back when Gaddafi was at the height of his terrorist-supporting powers. Uncle John had two young daughters and lived in a pleasant suburb of Leeds. He had a normal life.

I decided to write a crime novel about this contradiction. HOPE ROAD is not about Uncle John himself, although it is set in Leeds. It’s about a criminal family, and specifically about a ‘non-criminal’ son in that family. I was interested to explore what it might be like to grow up with a career criminal for a father, yet to reject that background and ‘go straight’. That’s what my family must have been doing all those years, tactfully rejecting one of their own, not only the manner of his death, but also what he did.

As I developed my main character, John Ray, I began to think about structure. I wanted him to be an amateur sleuth, using his family’s connections to solve a crime. But I also wanted to bring out the tensions inherent in this situation, and to do this I decided to give him a girlfriend: a police detective. As the novel grew, it drew more and more on the dynamics of this relationship. The detective is called Denise Danson, and I reckon she might get her own plot in a future novel.

Finally, as I was writing the book, two more things happened. Firstly, HOPE ROAD involves a subplot revolving around fake money, and quite by chance I got the opportunity to meet a real money counterfeiter. I learned a lot of details about the ‘funny money’ trade from him, especially about what it’s like to ‘pass off’ counterfeit banknotes in large numbers. Initially it was nerve-wracking to meet a professional criminal. But then I thought back to my own family! Secondly, the West Yorkshire Police were kind enough to offer me access to Leeds CID. I was assigned a detective, and I consulted with him on matters of police procedure and other plot details. Since I was writing about the very same Special Crimes department in Leeds, I considered this a sign: I’d made the right decision to turn to crime.

You can buy HOPE ROAD from Amazon.co.uk, or from various other vendors (see John’s website).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HOPE-ROAD-cime-mystery-ebook/dp/B006LWJ75K/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1323875230&sr=1-1

http://www.johnbarlow.net/

Guest Post: The Serialisation of Novels by Lisa Gus

One Thousand & One Nights spotlighted the shrewd Scheherazade keeping her execution at bay by leading on a rapt King Shahriyar, night after night, with cliffhanger after cliffhanger.

Say hello to the timeless art of serialization. This distinctive publishing model has been around the block a few times, appearing throughout history, and now, making a much-needed comeback in these wired and fast-paced times of Kindle Fires and always-on cloud computing.

As the somewhat lower-tech (but far more influential) paper-and-ink printing technology advanced into the 17^th century, serialization was used to produce more economical runs on the movable type. Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers of 1836 are said to have taken the practice of serialization in publishing to the next level, paving the way for the writers we know today as “American classics” to make their debut in literary periodicals.

Heck, it was considered unprofessional for authors to publish in a standalone volume before strutting their stuff in one of the many well-respected lit rags.

The popularity of serials continued into the early 20^thcentury, only to meet a gradual demise at the hands of broadcast entertainment, which drove periodicals to focus on delivering information, rather than entertainment. Surprise, surprise.

Radio killed the serial star.

It wasn’t until the turn of the century that the said star awoke again from its dormancy and started giving off some much-needed light –the Charles Dickens model inspired the likes of Tom Wolfe, Stephen King, Michael Faber, Orson Scott Card, Neil Stephenson, and others. The advent of the World Wide Web and its rapidly-evolving transparent nature helped speed along the process a great deal.

Now, the star of serialization is shining on YOU. And begs the question – is it still worth it?

I had a very interesting conversation a few weeks ago with fellow author, Irving Podolsky, who pointed me to a developing discussion about this matter by Jane Friedman. There, several important caveats were brought up, along with success stories, important observations about reader behavior, and more. Needless to say, I recommend you stop by and check it out.

Now, in my chat with Irving, we were discussing the rather mixed reader involvement in the freebie serialized fiction experiments on his own website, as well as that of my own Curiosity Quills Press. Instead of regurgitating the entire conversation for you, dear reader, I will break it down into a series of Pro’s and Con’s for serializing a work, as we perceived them:

Pros:

·                         - Rapid turn-around for works-in-progress, since you can release a book in bite-size pieces that can be individually polished instead of waiting for the full work to be written.

·                         - Intimidating length of the complete work is not as big an issue, since readers get to enjoy it in much more easily digestible portions.

·                         - Potential path towards building up a name for yourself, and a fan base, by showing new readers what you are capable of without the commitment of a full-sized volume.

·                         - Fans become a massive pool of real-time critiquers, able to point authors in the right direction if you falter in your delivery. After all, if they didn’t love how you started, they wouldn’t still be reading at the point where you went wrong.

·                         - A dedicated community of fans often is willing to step up with assistance in translation, cover art, and other help for their author. Who wouldn’t want to show the community they are appreciated, while getting out of as many pre-publication expenses as possible?

·                         - In addition to manpower, dedicated fans can go as far as helping fund a project into being through donations. Kickstarter, anyone?

·                         - Having actual fans waiting for your next installment can be a great motivator to continue, if you are feeling uninspired or suddenly lured away by other plot bunnies.

 Cons:

·                                     - Difficult to publish at just the right pace to keep everyone happy – someone will always feel it’s too slow or too fast, and lose interest.

·                         - Author is in firm control of how and when the reader gets to enjoy their story, which can potentially ruin enjoyment.

·                         - Your readership and fan base are only as strong as the amount of readers and fans whose interest you manage to keep throughout the serialization.

·                         - Though readers don’t have to commit to BUYING a full-sized volume, they must still commit to the storyline, the characters, the plot – things that are firmly in the author’s hands, to potentially mangle, reimagine, or worst of all – abandon without finishing. That’s a big commitment to ask for.

·                         - Readers need to actually remember to stop by at the right interval to read up on your latest installments. With shrinking attention spans and growing entertainment and productivity options offered by the World Wide Web, your humble serialization can easily be drowned out and forgotten.

Needless to say, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution to your self-publishing problems. Nor is it something to run from like the plague when considering the format for your next potential project.

It is nothing more or less than a way of feeding parts of your work to the reader in a scheduled and organized fashion – one that can be enjoyable, fun, and exciting for both the writer and their fans. Providing, of course, that said writer manages to get his/her fanny in gear and push out the promised content in a timely and well-edited fashion.

With the days of Scheherazade long gone, and the classics of literature having been relegated to dusty classrooms and libraries, the most prominent sort of entertainment – the visual sort – is now leading the charge by shifting its weight from film to serialized television programs, where viewers can take in an episode or twenty at their own pace – especially with a DVR or a handy Netflix subscription. If the show is compelling, viewers tune in week after week. If it’s not – they tune out.

Obviously, then, if there is a clear and present danger to serializers – it’s that while potential success is as big as your fan base, potential failure can occur before you ever gain a following. A chicken-and-egg dilemma that makes the question of serialization’s viability a continued topic of debate.

Which side do YOU stand on?

Written by Lisa Gus, marketing director of Curiosity Quills

In her own words: I am...a mother, a wife, a daughter, a granddaughter, a slave to a very persnickety cat, a writer, a foodie, a shoe hoarder, a people watcher, a conservationist, a screenwriter, a reluctant (bit apparently prolific) blogger... So who am I, really? Still figuring that one out. Update as I go along ;-) 

 
This post is part of the Curiosity Quills Blog Tour 2012
Curiosity Quills is a gaggle of literary marauders with a bone to grind and not enough time for revisions - a collective, creating together, supporting each other, and putting out the best darn tootin’ words this side of Google.

Curiosity Quills also runs Curiosity Quills Press, an independent publisher committed to bringing top-quality fiction to the wider world. They publish in ebook, print, as well as serialising select works of their published authors for free on the press's website. 

Guest Post by Erik Hanberg - An American Explains Thanksgiving

An American Explains Thanksgiving 

My most recent novel, The Marinara Murders, is set at the beginning of a cold winter in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The climax of the book takes place on Thanksgiving Day. 

 

I recognize that many readers of Booked Up live in the UK and likely don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. My hunch is that you’re aware of it, but have never been to a Thanksgiving dinner. Just like I’m aware of Boxing Day, but have never been to a Boxing Day … ah, high tea? candle ceremony? ritual unboxing? (Truly, I don’t get Boxing Day.) 

Anyway, here’s a quick primer on an American Thanksgiving. 

• Thanksgiving is always on the fourth Thursday of November. This creates an awkward question about whether to take the day after as a holiday as well. Bankers don’t get the day off, but a lot of other people do (unless you work in retail, then the day after Thanksgiving is a terrible terrible day). 

• In New York, Macy’s throws a big parade with floats and giant balloons. Most people not in New York are too busy sleeping, cooking, or cleaning to watch it. 

• For some reason, the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys always play football on Thanksgiving Day (by which I mean American football, of course, and not football football). 

• There are no gifts given at Thanksgiving. Independence Day (the fourth of July) and Thanksgiving are about the only two holidays or occasions where gifts or cards aren’t expected. You can bet retailers are figuring out a way to change this. 

• Thanksgiving dinner is a massive dinner, traditionally consisting of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberries, and rolls. The dinner is eaten fairly early in the day, as if to give everyone time to recover from the food coma before they have to go to bed. 

• Thanksgiving is basically the first day of Christmas. Everyone complains about Christmas music and decorations before Thanksgiving, but after that, it’s wall-to-wall Christmas. 

I hope this has been enlightening. Now I’m off to start my next book. It’s about St. Boxing, who rode through the land the day after Christmas helping people break down their empty boxes to make them easier to store (or something like that).

* Thanks to Erik for taking the time to educate me, it explains a lot! I just wish I could give  a definitive answer on what the heck Boxing Day is all about but it's a bit of a mystery. I'd love to make up some mad British tradition, but if I could manage that I'd probably be a writer not a reviewer. You can read my review of The Marinara Murders here. You can read more from Erik at erikhanberg.com

Guest post By Scott Nicholson - Creative Spirit and Art

Creative Spirit and Art

By Scott Nicholson

http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/

My modern Gothic ghost story Creative Spirit was inspired by an actual haunted manor, set high in the foggy Appalachian Mountains. The Cone Manor was built just before the 1900’s by industrialist Moses Cone, who very loosely serves as the chilling antagonist Ephram Korban in the novel. Cone bought up thousands of acres of prime ridge lands and built a magnificent estate, though he didn’t spend a great deal of time there due to poor health and the demands of running an industrial empire manufacturing denim jeans.

Art and music center around many of the ghost stories that swirl around the manor house, and perhaps it’s fitting that the main floor of the house is now a mountain craft shop. (The house was used for some opening scenes in the Stephen King movie “The Green Mile.”) There were portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Cone that occasionally slid from the walls and would be found the next morning leaning against one another. Piano music can often be heard softly playing even when the building is empty. 

People who spend the night in the manor, snowed in during bad weather, report hearing furniture moving around upstairs though the building is empty, and doors often open and close by themselves. I toured the entire house once, which is where I got the idea for the cramped basement, and the creepy upstairs rooms that have “boxcar siding” for walls but are oddly shaped.

The element that served as a prominent scene for the book is the widow’s walk, a porch-like area on top of the house that was a fixture of seaside houses, where the “sea widows” would scan the ocean looking for the return of a loved one. The actual manor view is of valleys and ridges, and I borrowed those for the novel, along with the numerous chimneys in the manor, which seem to suggest Cone was rather cold-natured. Or maybe he had an affinity for fire, another element of the book.

Even after he died, he didn’t find peace, as his body was reportedly dug up because of rumors that he’d been buried wearing jewelry. The grave robbers, upon finding nothing, allegedly left his corpse propped up against the granite monument to his memory. Another legend says the marked grave is not his actual burial site at all.

I couldn’t say for sure whether the actual manor is haunted or not, but it sure gets creepy in Creative Spirit! I hope you journey inside the story and find out for yourself…if you dare.

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Scott Nicholson is giving away 15 percent of his ebook revenues in September to people who spread the word about his books! Giveaways are at http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com. Scott Nicholson is author of The Skull Ring, Speed Dating with the Dead, The Red Church, Drummer Boy, and nine other novels, seven story collections, and six screenplays.

You may also want to take a look at my recent review of Creative Spirit and Scott's video showing a little of the manor (The Manor was the original paperback title of the book, changed for e-book release) 

Guest blog post by David Brown - Creating a Fantasy World

I reviewed David's book Fezariu's Epiphany back in June and although not so long ago I would have said fantasy wasn't my thing he is one of a few authors who have been changing my mind on that count. As part of a blog tour David has kindly written a guest post for me, so read on to find out more about how he created the world of Elenchera for the book.

The beauty of creating your own world is the flexibility to do whatever you wish with the land, the races that live there, the languages and even the rules of science. I’m always conscious in creating fantastical elements of not writing something too outrageous that will leave readers rolling their eyes in disbelief. Elenchera has many races that can live for thousands of years but you won’t find any creations that are invincible. Even the gods that rule in the earliest Shards can be wounded and slain and indeed that’s exactly what happens to them.

Creating Elenchera I knew I would want to retain many of the standard elements that really define fantasy. Elves, dwarves and dragons are involved in the history from the earliest Shards and continue to thrive for quite some time. I also wanted to create races of my own and this is something of a challenge. How do you create something unique? I’ll be honest and say I don’t really think I have but what I have done is to take an element which may have been prevalent in previous fantasy works and redefine them for Elenchera.

Anthropomorphic races are nothing new. History records tales of such beings long before the likes of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were even starting their fantasy masterpieces. I decided early on that I not only wanted some animals in Elenchera with the ability to speak but I wanted anthropomorphic beings as well. In the early history the continent of Emeraldon sees a beautiful unicorn known as Valkinia emerge from a sparkling waterfall, a blessing from Mother Nature almost, and this unicorn creates a richly diverse race known as the valkayans. These are a combination of talking animals and anthropomorphic beings that control half of the continent and endure through the ages even when colonialism comes to their shores and they are bound and enslaved. There are so many animals in our world that it is easy to create unique beings.

Elenchera has a rich and varied history so some Shards (periods of Elencheran history) will involve different races, lands and battles. The great thing about building such a large and varied world with such a full history is that there’s always a new character to encounter!

Thanks to David for his insight, it has shed a new light on the places and races in the book for me, and it's interesting to hear some of the thought process too.

David blogs at http://blog.elenchera.com/ and tweets as @elenchera.