On Writing -- Editing

Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series

Years ago -- at least eight -- I tried reading Connelly's police procedurals featuring a main character named Hieronymus Bosch. (Rhymes with anonymous.) Named after the Dutch painter who depicted earth and hell as equally dark and dreadful, Connelly's Hieronymus Bosch pretty much sees Los Angeles like that, a fantastical nightmare.

At that time, I was enthralled with the TV series Castle. Maybe you watched it, too. Rick Castle was a crime novelist who, along with an attractive, New York City police detective solved crimes. Actually, it was probably the very attractive (and funny) actor Nathan Fillion who kept me watching each week. I liked his uncensored mother and independent daughter, too.

Anyway Rick Castle occasionally played poker with real life crime novelists -- James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Stephen J. Cannell and others. I decided to check out those real life writers. James Patterson first. He seemed to be the most popular at my local library. His books went out like hot cakes. I didn't like his books. I read two to be sure. Then Michael Connelly. I read two of his too. Didn't like them either. I never got to Cannell.

I could just never connect with Harry Bosch.

And then. And then. More like now. I've connected with the Harry Bosch character by way of Amazon's series Bosch. Somehow Titus Welliver, the actor who plays Bosch, makes him more likable, more sympathetic. And the series is well enough written that I don't find myself editing the teleplays.

Connelly's books I edit, sans red pen.

This passage is from Connelly's The Overlook. Our little-bit-unlikable hero and his bloodied former lover who happens to be an FBI agent are chasing a bad guy who in the past few minutes has killed two people, tried to kill Bosch, and engaged in a gun battle with Bosch's partner leaving him wounded.

     Bosch turned and saw Rachel come through the door, a smear of blood on her face.
          "This way," he said. "He's been hit."
          They started down Third in a spread formation. After a few steps Bosch picked up
     the trail. Maxwell was obviously hurt badly and was losing a lot of blood. It would
     make him easy to track.
          But when they got to the corner of Third and Hill they lost the trail. There was no
     blood on the pavement. Bosch looked into the long Third Street tunnel and saw no one
     moving in the traffic on foot. He looked up and down Hill street and saw nothing until
     his attention was drawn to a commotion of people running out of the Grand Central
     Market.
          "This way," he said.
          They moved quickly toward the huge market. Bosch picked up the blood trail again
     just outside and started in. The market was a two-story-high conglomeration of food
     booths and retail and produce concessions. There was a strong smell of grease and coffee
     in the air that had to infect every floor of the building above the market. The place was
     crowded and noisy and that made it difficult for Bosch to follow the blood and track
     Maxwell.
          Then suddenly there were shouts from directly ahead and two quick shots were fired
     into the air. It caused an immediate human stampede. Dozens of screaming shoppers and
     workers flooded into the aisle where Bosch and Walling stood and started running toward
     them.  Bosch realized they were going to be run over and trampled. In one motion he
     moved to his right, grabbed Walling around the waist and pulled her behind one of the
     wide concrete support pillars.

Just copying this from the book makes me want to tear my hair out. All these words! But they don't give the reader the feeling of an adrenaline charged, life and death race. William Bernhardt, the best writing teacher I ever had, said, "Show, don't tell." And Hemingway touted the mot juste which means the exact, appropriate word. These rules keep the story so close to the reader, that the reader sees it. Hears it. Feels it.

This passage should be built on short, sharp sentences. And don't insult the reader. "Maxwell was obviously hurt badly and was losing a lot of blood. It would make him easy to track." Really? No shit, Sherlock.

At least Connelly uses adverbs properly. Unnecessarily, but properly. How would I write it?

          "He's been hit," he said.
          Bosch picked up the blood trail on Third Street. They lost it at Third and Hill.
     No one moved on foot through the traffic in the Third Street tunnel. Or on Hill
     Street. Maxwell was gone. They'd lost him.
          Then to the left, a knot of people ran out of the Grand Central Market.
          Bosch and Walling ran toward the hulking two-story building. They picked
     up the blood trail again. They followed the wet, red stains inside. The stench
     of old grease and strong coffee hit them like a wall. Noise filled the cavernous
     hall. Guns held at their sides, they followed the blood. Through the maze of food
     booths and produce stands and retail stalls, the trail flickered in and out. It
     threatened to disappear beneath the crowd's milling feet.
          Ahead, shouts and two shots stopped time. Then shoppers and workers
     stampeded, screaming, toward Harry and Rachel. He grabbed her and pulled her
     to safety behind a concrete pillar.

And you can probably figure out an even better way to write it. It needs to read fast, raise the reader's heart rate, leave them breathless.

After finishing the 13th Harry Bosch novel -- four of them in the past two weeks -- I'm taking a break. Patricia Cornwell's The Last Precinct, also a crime novel, but it's safe to say, I'll be checking more Connelly/Bosch books out of the library soon. And I'm looking forward to the 5th season of Bosch.

Where I Was 3 Years Ago Today -- Nonfiction

In 2013 my daughter Grace invited me to write as a guest on her blog Sin and Inconvenience. This is what she published Tuesday, August 27, 2013, three years ago today. Facebook reminded me. And, yes, the novel in question is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle additions -- Murder on Ceres.

My first novel, first draft almost finished. How did I get here? If I were Michener I would start--In the beginning, God. This blog post begins only a little later than that, but well before cell phones and the internet.

I used to write and submit poetry for publication. Acceptance letters along with the standard thank you and a promise of two copies of the issue in which my poem would be published thrilled me. But in those pre-cell-phone days, it cost a fortune to call all my friends and relatives long distance to tell them the good news. Not to mention the expense of buying additional copies of said issue and postage to send those copies to friends and relatives.

I’ve worked for a small-town daily newspaper. I’ve seen my by-line and my name in cutlines enough. But the idea of a book with my name on the spine sitting on a shelf in the Edmond Public Library seems much too grand. It shimmers above me in the night sky, brighter than the moon. A dream, a desire, a star too brilliant to look at and too distant to touch.

Knowing that a novel was beyond me, my book started out as a short story. I’ve written short fiction. I took a course in college. I understand how it works. So all I needed was a prompt of some kind and a deadline. My daughter provided the prompt and the deadline allowing me to choose the genre.

I ignored her prompt and chose murder and science fiction. And I went to work.

The deadline came and went, and the work proved to be as undisciplined as I. The story would not limit itself to short fiction. So I reconsidered the situation and decided to do a little book, a murder mystery that takes place on a colony in low orbit around the asteroid Ceres. But I needed help.

I happened to attend a monthly meeting of Oklahoma City Writers, Inc. at which William Bernhardt was doing a two hour presentation on novel writing. He talked about outlining. An instant turnoff since my research paper days too many years ago. But he made sense and showed how to plan the structure of my book. He was talking about the actual nuts and bolts of constructing a book-length story.

Three years plus several months, three of Bill Bernhardt’s intensive writing workshops plus a conference here and there, and I am coming around the last turn on this full-length murder mystery science fiction novel.

Bill said write every day. Four hours a day. If I had done that the book would have been finished long ago. Did I mention that I’m undisciplined? I heard somewhere that Stephen King says to write four hours a day and read eight hours a day. Or was that Mark Twain?  The eight hours reading I could go for, whoever said it.

There was a recommendation that I join a writers’ critique group for support and critical input. But that meant I had to also give support and critical input. I left every one of those meetings feeling bad because I had said harsh things to people as earnest about their writing as I was about mine. Tact is not one of my virtues. And have I mentioned lack of self-control?

Then somewhere else the advice was to just write it all the way through, do not do any editing until the story is complete. What a good rule. But mine is a murder mystery. As I wrote I discovered things that needed to appear earlier in the story. That required a rewrite of a scene. Editing? Even sitting down to begin the next writing session without looking at what I’d done the day before was impossible. Reading the work from the day before required minor or major changes. Did I mention that I tend to break rules even when I impose them myself?

What have I learned these past three-hundred, ten pages, and counting? Somewhere I heard that the definition of the verb to persevere is to begin again, and again, and again. No matter how many times my discipline fails, my control is lost, and my rules are broken, I can begin right now where I am. My book will be written and I will be launched into the night sky to find my name on the spine of a book in the Edmond Public Library. Just gotta finish this book first.

Claudia Wagner

I was born in Oklahoma. I learned to read under my mother’s ironing board. I learned the importance of stories around the dinner table during holidays and in the cellar during storms. I started writing to entertain my classmates. I continued to write because classes or work required it. Sometimes I wrote to understand my life. I have been office help, a welfare case worker, a fast foods manager, and a roustabout in the oil patch. I have also worked for the USDA. I’ve managed a veterinary clinic, helped care for my dying mother, and been a Page at the Edmond Library. I am a woman, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. I believe the future of humanity is as unlimited as the Universe. And I believe that we as a species are imaginative enough and brave enough to move beyond the Earth into that Universe.

I Sing the Body Electric -- A Review

But first please click on and read I Sing the Body Electric. No, you don't have to read the whole book. It's a collection of short fiction. And this link takes you to just the first part of the first short story "The Kilimanjaro Device," but you'll get-it. This reminds me all over again why I am such a Ray Bradbury fan.

If you read this review first, you will miss the joy of discovery, the ah has, and the satisfaction of getting-it.

Much of Bradbury's fiction has been adapted for the screen -- both great and small. "The Kilimanjaro Device" was an episode on the old Twilight Zone television series. You can find it on Netflix or Amazon Prime, but beware. Twilight Zone is one of those series you can lose a whole evening binge watching. Though I think that watching this story as opposed to reading it, could deprive you of one of its most important facets.

If you've read it before, read it again just for the enjoyment. And then, if you're a writer, read it again analytically.

If I'd read Body Electric before, it was a long time ago and I'd forgotten it. And if it was a long time ago, it was before I had classes with William Bernhardt, so it's safe to say that I did not read it analytically. I may not even have "got-it."

My husband is a voracious reader and watches Barnes and Nobles' Nook sales religiously. He likes free and cheap. Yesterday B&N had I Sing the Body Electric on sale for 99 cents and he told me I should buy it. He knows that I read short fiction as resource material for improving my own writing, and who better to teach me how to write short fiction than Ray Bradbury?

Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite writers. I love stories with a twist, a surprise, and an inside joke that I get.

I was just finishing Career of Evil, the third in J. K. Rowling's crime novels written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith so I put Body Electric on the back burner. I'll soon have a review on Ms. Rowling's Cormoran Strike series. 

And finish it I did. Then I had no book to take to bed with me. A good book helps me to go to sleep. (Or keep me awake, as the case may be.) So I turned to Bradbury's I Sing the Body Electric. 

**  SPOILER  ALERT!  **

He opens the book with a quote from Walt Whitman. Be still my heart. That is a sure method of hooking me. And the first short story is "The Kilimanjaro Device." 

Now, I do not usually read reviews before I read a book, so I was not aware this was a time-machine story. Not that that would have kept me away, it's just that having read The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, I am automatically prejudiced against anyone's attempt to write time travel. They couldn't possibly come up to her high standards. 

(Yes, I know I have lots of irrational prejudices. But isn't that the definition of 'prejudice?' And I know it, so that's why I don't read reviews before I read the story. Think how many good stories I'd miss.)

What was immediately apparent, however, is that "The Kilimanjaro Device" is written in the first person. Another of my prejudices.

Using simplistic, unadorned language, the narrator recounts arriving in the area of Ketchum and Sun Valley, Idaho, after a long road trip. At this point, I was disappointed. This was not the Ray Bradbury I loved.

And then, and then!

 The narrator talks about being a 'reader' not a reporter. He's looking for an 'old man.' The old man who wrote 'Michigan stories' and the 'Spanish stories.' The stories about fishing and bull fighting. But he is adamantly not looking for the grave.

Okay, here's the twist. He's looking for Hemingway, who is dead and buried.

And there's another twist as he talks about 'right deaths' and 'wrong deaths.' 'Right graves' and 'wrong graves.'

What he does not say in the story but I know is that in the summer of 1961, Hemingway shot himself to death at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, and was buried there. I was a young teen and I did not yet know that famous writers committed suicide. I'd never heard of Ketchum, Idaho. A 'wrong death' and a 'wrong grave.'

And then Bradbury gives us the surprise.

     "At your service," I said.

     "And when you get where you're going," said the old man, putting his hand on the door and leaning and then, seeing what he had done, taking his hand away and standing taller to speak to me, "where will you be?"
      "January 10, 1954."

      "That's quite a date," he said.

The old truck that our narrator is driving is a time machine.

      There is a mountain in Africa named Kilimanjaro, I thought. And on the western slope
      of that mountain was once found the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one
      has ever explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

      We will put you up on that same slope, I thought, on Kilimanjaro, near the leopard, and
      write your name and under it say nobody knew what he was doing here so high, but
      here he is. And write the date born and died, and go away down toward the hot summer
      grass and let mainly dark warriors and white hunters and swift okapis know the grave.

Tote up all the "I saids" and "he saids" and the thoughts that we can see and feel and we have Bradbury's best inside joke. He's writing Hemingway!

Amazon Surprizes

My picture identified as "Customer Image."

The things you find on Amazon! A picture of me!

And it shows up right above a negative review of William Bernhardt's The Game Master.  Thank goodness the author of the negative review's name is attached to the review and I don't think there's much chance someone will think that I am Wesley A. Rasmussen.

When you click on my picture it brings up my very short, quite positive review -- the one I wrote on Amazon. I posted a more in depth review of Bill's book on my blog.

Finding my picture on Bill's Amazon page sent me to my Amazon page for Murder on Ceres and a more complete reading of it. I don't usually scroll down as far as my reviews. Kind of feels like bad luck, like getting the mail could be bad luck because it could be all bills.

Instead I found this wonderful review of my book:

"Under the heading of science fiction you can find all kinds of stuff from the weird almost supernatural to just plain good stories about real people in a future setting. This book is strongly on the good stories about real people end of the spectrum and I really enjoyed reading it because of that. I have been reading science fiction novels since I was a small boy. Since I was a small boy a long time ago I have seen many things come to pass already that were in those first science fiction stories I read. In following the recent news I have noted that we have now landed on a comet, and are very serious about our efforts to study the asteroids. What we are learning about working around these low gravity bodies in our solar system will most definitely lead to the future reality of the setting the author skillfully weaves into the story developed in this book. So the story is set in a future setting we are already taking steps to make a reality, and it is about real people with real passions and real problems. Add to that a mystery with a surprise twist at the end, and I found it to be a good read set in the future that could be identified with by the reader today." by KJPapa

His review is from last November. That tells you how often I check my Amazon page. AND I don't know who he is. I can't tell you how exciting it is to have someone you don't know write such a review of your book. And he "gets it." Science fiction about real people.

After reading his review, I'd buy my book!

Now if Amazon had just put a link from my picture to my book . . . .

Bernhardt's The Game Master -- a review

Let’s start with full disclosure.

William Bernhardt is my writing guru. He’s a brilliant, tolerant, and persistent teacher. If you have a book in you, he can help you get it down in black and white. And it matters not whether your book is fiction or nonfiction, a memoir or a cookbook.

Also thrillers are not my cup of tea. I find real life to be tense enough. Thrillers are generally too disturbing for me.

Having said that, I just completed Bernhardt’s new thriller. The Game Master is fast paced and intense enough that I need it set to music like an Indiana Jones movie, so I’ll know when it’s safe to look.

It gets off to a rocky start with someone I don’t know being treated most unkindly. In fact, if I had known when I started what I know now, I’d have started at Chapter 3. That’s when BB, the Game Master shows up playing in the final round of the World Series of Poker.

Then an FBI agent shows up and the chase is on. Paired with his ex-wife Linden, BB must escape from almost every conceivable (and some inconceivable) threats to life and/or liberty which then lead to one breath-taking dash after another to the next threat.

Until BB comes face-to-face (so to speak) with my favorite character, Alex. Alex has the endearing innocence of a curious child while he wields unlimited and amoral power. Like a baby rattle snake – kinda cute, but completely lethal.

It’s a global scavenger hunt with the obvious end-prize being BB and Linden’s kidnapped daughter and the survival of humanity.

Games abound – some ancient, some modern, some for children, and some for intellectuals – all bearing clues to the next step. The games were interesting in themselves. The twists and turns kept me reading and guessing.

Now it’s time to take a deep breath and get back to cozy mysteries!

S is for Sci-Fi/Murder Mystery

My first novel, Murder on Ceres, is a Science Fiction/Murder Mystery. “Why couldn’t you tell the same story on Earth, present day,” asked my writing teacher, William Bernhardt. (Please don’t judge Bill by my writing prowess. He is a much better teacher than I am student.) He has a habit of asking me hard questions. And I have a habit of getting defensive before I think about the answers to those hard questions.

But I do think about them. And why write my murder mystery as science fiction? That answer is “Because.”

Because I like murder mysteries. I like them as puzzles. They are all puzzles. Some are more puzzle than anything else.

John Lescroat adds the enticement of characters I would like to know personally. His characters age and change and grow from one book to the next in his series. (Plural – I tried ‘serieses’ and Word didn’t like it so I looked it up. The plural of series is series, just like deer is deer.)

Some mystery writers take me places in a way that makes me feel like I’ve been there. I’ve seen Venice, Italy, through Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti’s eyes. And I’ve visited many of the National Parks while following Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon who is a Park Ranger and apparently gets transferred a lot. Luckily for us readers.

Diane Mott Davidson has the murder mystery puzzle plus identifiable characters plus good recipes. And I like to bake.

When I was deciding what kind of murder mystery I wanted to write, I knew I wanted to follow a set of characters as they grow and age. That I can do. I like the idea of an exotic setting. As much as I love Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, those are the only locations I’m familiar enough with to write about. None of them seem very exotic to me. And I didn’t write recipes. I have family members who will tell you that I don’t even follow recipes very well.

So the search was on. What else did I like to read? Of course there were literary writers like John Irving and Margaret Atwood. Now I may have illusions of grandeur on occasion, but that is just not gonna happen.

And because I love Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan. I love their nonfiction even more than their fiction.

They inspire imagination. What will it be like to live off-planet, to emigrate from Earth to colonies scattered through the Solar System? How will humans be different? How the same? What will their everyday lives be like? Their problems? Their solutions? What will they call their washing machines?

These are subjects that could keep me interested enough, long enough to write a novel. And, in fact, these things are keeping me interested enough to get me well into my second novel. With concepts bubbling on the back burner for at least two more.

What I want to write are books I’d like to read. With my Sci-Fi/Murder Mystery crossover, I can develop my characters realistically in about as exotic a location as possible. And I believe readers will enjoy thinking about how things will be as much as I do.

Character Building -- An Essay

While I went about my daily business after posting yesterday’s “Briers and Brambles,” I couldn’t get the character out of my mind.

I often write flash fiction to practice some aspect of writing – world building, dialog, scene setting. Rather like an artist does studies of hands or ears or faces.

Yesterday was an exercise in tension building. At least that was the intent. As it turns out, there was the beginning of a character in that piece. A character that I think I’m going to like. At first I thought she’d make a great protagonist for a detective novel. Maybe a whole series of novels. Do I sound like a writer or what?

She was alive in today’s world. But I don’t write in today’s world. I write sci-fi/murder mysteries. I built my world in Murder on Ceres. It’s fully populated with characters I find interesting and satisfying. Dead and Gone is my next novel, currently a work in progress, as they say. It has the same characters in the same world. I didn’t need another character. There’s a new antagonist, but considering what happened to the antagonist in Murder on Ceres, that’s to be expected. 

So I put this woman out of mind. After all, I had important real world activities to perform – dishes to wash, appointments to schedule, an expired auto license plate to renew.

But she wouldn’t go away. So I'm giving her a chance to adjust to my world. She’ll have to move to the Denver Region and to the future where civilization is centered in shiny metal cylinders orbiting Mars. Can she give up her attachment to the Colt 45 Automatic, Model 1911? She’s just old fashioned. But is she too old fashioned?

Any new character sends me back to the basics I learned from William Bernhardt. He writes thrillers and other things. Most importantly for me, he teaches and he’s written The Red Sneaker Writers Book Series. And more particularly, Creating Character: Bringing Your Story to Life. (Available from Amazon. Click here.)

Its Appendix A: Character Detail Sheet is a revelatory exercise. I’ve learned that my new character was born on Earth; her name is Madeleine Denise – a name she hates; she’s generally brown like most people on Earth at this time; she doesn’t suffer fools; and she’s a damn good cop.

Look out Joe and Rafe and Terren. There’s a new character on the block.

With or Without Eyebrows

 without eyebrows and with

Photos by Bowtie Photography

    First of all let me just say the photos were taken by my everything-daughter Grace's boyfriend Bob O'Daniel. You can find examples of his work on deviantart.com under bowtiephotography. He was in no way responsible for my makeup.

   I wanted to write a book and have it on the shelves in the Edmond Public Library. A fairly simple want, don't you think?

   I attended classes with an excellent writing teacher, William Bernhardt. I wrote and wrote and wrote until I had what I thought was a pretty good book. I hired an editor, Grace Wagner (gfmwagner@gmail.com. She edits for other writers, too. Not just her mother. I'm lucky to have her in-house.) and enlisted Beta readers including authors, a retired police detective, a retired librarian, some analytical readers, and some recreational readers. Then rewrote and rewrote and rewrote. I understand this is necessary even if you get accepted by an agent and one of the Big Five publishing houses.

   I pitched Murder on Ceres and submitted it to agents and editors, all to no avail. I've listened to other authors tell horror stories about submitting manuscripts and never hearing back. About getting and losing agents and getting agents who didn't seem to push their books. The writing community is rife with bad news about the traditional publishing world. Publishing houses downsizing and struggling even with their legacy writers. Ebooks are taking an ever greater share of the market and the old vanity presses are being replaced by legitimate small publishing houses and self-publishing. All of which seems to be throwing the New York publishers into more of a muddle.

I am obviously (look at my photos) no longer in my 20's or 30's or, for that matter, my 50's. I don't have all the time in the world to get discovered amid all this chaos. So I self-published with Amazon's Create Space.

   Murder on Ceres is a beautiful book. It's listed on Amazon, available in both print and Kindle editions. Among many thousands of other books. To catch readers' attention, I must promote it myself. Which brings us to those two pictures. Our purpose the evening that Bob came was to make a photo for business cards.

   My hairdresser had advised me to wear makeup which I don't ordinarily do. Eye-liner, the whole nine yards. I bought makeup. Now keep in mind that during my single days and working-in-the-public days, my eyebrows were still dark enough to show up without using eyebrow pencil. They're almost as pale as my hair now. I stood in the makeup aisle quite a while trying to decide what color eyebrow pencil I should buy. Have you looked at makeup recently? Not only are there seemingly millions of brands, but each brand has twenty-eleven different colors of everything -- foundation, mascara, eye shadow, lipstick, eyebrow pencil. I chose the slate eyebrow pencil thinking slate is gray. Right?

   Now the only other time I'd used an eyebrow pencil was for my mother after she died. I had watched her apply her eyebrows many times and I did a pretty good job for her for that last time.

   I thought about my own eyebrows. They had always been fuller than Mother's, so it made sense to me that I should make mine rather full.

    By the bye, slate is very dark gray.

   Bob was setting up his equipment -- lights, those umbrella things, a matte black backdrop -- while I did my makeup. Pretty soon my husband came to see what was taking me so long. He stepped to the bathroom door. I was facing the mirror. When I turned to face him, he got such a look of startlement (Is there such a word?) that it scared me.

   He quickly recovered and, being of sound mind and sensibly cautious, he allowed as how he wasn't used to seeing me in makeup. Bob, also being of sound mind, didn't even stutter-step. He just told me where to stand, adjusted the lighting, and took the pictures.

   As he left, Bob asked if he could come back the next evening if Grace didn't like any of the pictures he'd taken.

   The next morning, bright and early, Grace called. "What were you thinking? Did you look in the mirror?"

   "I didn't think they looked that bad," said I.

   "No, Mother," she said in that tone. "They look fine for a stand-up comedian. Groucho-Marx-ish."

    Grace may be of sound mind, but when it comes to her mother she's never been sensibly cautious or even vaguely tactful. But she loves me.

   "Bob and I will be there this evening after I get off work. Do NOT put makeup on before I get there," she said. 

    I think she was right.

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