-
Novel Development From Concept to Query - Welcome to Algonkian Author Connect
Haste is a Writer's Second Worst Enemy, Hubris Being the First
AND BAD ADVICE IS SECONDS BEHIND THEM BOTH... Welcome to Algonkian Author Connect (AAC). This is a literary and novel development website dedicated to educating aspiring authors in all genres. A majority of the separate forum sites are non-commercial (i.e., no relation to courses or events) and they will provide you with the best and most comprehensive guidance available online. You might well ask, for starters, what is the best approach for utilizing this website as efficiently as possible? If you are new to AAC, best to begin with our "Novel Writing on Edge" forum. Peruse the novel development and editorial topics arrayed before you, and once done, proceed to the more exclusive NWOE guide broken into three major sections.
In tandem, you will also benefit by perusing the review and development forums found below. Each one contains valuable content to guide you on a path to publication. Let AAC be your primary and tie-breaker source for realistic novel writing advice.
Your Primary and Tie-Breaking Source
For the record, our novel writing direction in all its forms derives not from the slapdash Internet dartboard (where you'll find a very poor ratio of good advice to bad), but solely from the time-tested works of great genre and literary authors as well as the advice of select professionals with proven track records. Click on "About Author Connect" to learn more about the mission, and on the AAC Development and Pitch Sitemap for a more detailed layout.
Btw, it's also advisable to learn from a "negative" by paying close attention to the forum that focuses on bad novel writing advice. Don't neglect. It's worth a close look, i.e, if you're truly serious about writing a good novel.
There are no great writers, only great rewriters.
-
Forum Statistics
16.1k
Total Topics12.9k
Total Posts
-
AAC Activity Items
-
0
Felonious American Presidents in TV and Film
I’ve been thinking, lately, about the theme of “American presidents who commit felonies.” I don’t know why; it’s just been on my mind recently for some reason. Obviously, through Wednesday, May 29th, 2024, no former United States President had ever been convicted of a felony. But if, say, in the day after that, a former United States President were convicted of a felony… or 34 felonies… he’d be in the company of the people on this list. Yes that’s right, welcome to our little list of fictional presidents from TV and film who have committed felonies. As I just said, these are fictional examples, so if some real guy who was elected the President of the United States of America committed anything equivalent to these things in real life, it’d be way, way worse. This list does not include movies about real presidents, like George W. Bush or Richard Nixon. Why? Because technically, those guys did not commit felonies. I’m not including satires like Wag the Dog or Canadian Bacon or My Fellow Americans or VEEP… nothing wry and smartly designed as criticism. Nope, this list contains a few movies and TV shows where the president of the United States is a criminal and it’s not funny at all. Also, I’m not including criminal presidents who aren’t in movies or TV. Do you know how many comic book villains get elected to the presidency? Lots. Lex Luthor! Norman Osborn! Lastly, I will note that this isn’t a comprehensive list. There are some great movies with very bad presidents that I have left off. It’s a genre thing; I’m keeping the genre to “political thriller,” to keep things more realistic. So, for example, both John Carpenter’s Escape from New York and Escape from L.A., which feature (respectively) Donald Pleasance and Cliff Robertson as two very bad U.S. Presidents, are not literally on this list. P.S. There are spoilers on this list; in many cases, I’m discussing the stuff of cliffhangers and plot twists. Without further ado, let’s round up the unconstitutional suspects! Your Candidates: President Fitzgerald Grant III, Scandal Man, Tony Goldwyn’s President Fitz went below-and-beyond the call of duty many times, from shady dealings to literally smothering a Supreme Court Justice with his bare hands. President Alan Richmond, Absolute Power In this 1997 Clint Eastwood film, screen-written by William Goldman and based on the novel by David Baldacci, Gene Hackman plays U.S. President Alan Richmond, who, after a woman rejects his insistent sexual advances and defends herself, permits the Secret Service to kill her, and then helps cover up the murder. President Robert Diaz, The Blacklist Benito Martinez’s Robert Diaz is a super-duper corrupt president! While he’s running for office, he kills a teenager in a hit-and-run and proceeds to cover it up. He blackmails, conspires with the Secret Service to have his wife assassinated… lots of bad stuff, here. President Charles Logan, 24 Gregory Itzin plays Charles Logan, one of the major antagonists in the 24-verse. A former Vice President-turned-President, he ushers the U.S. government into an enormous web of corruption. President Caroline Reynolds, Prison Break In Prison Break, Patricia Wettig plays Vice President Caroline Reynolds, who, conspires with an organization to kill her brother and frame her opponent for the murder. When the organization no longer wants to work with her, she has the president assassinated and becomes president, herself. President Frank Underwood, House of Cards If you’ve even heard of the show House of Cards, you know it’s about a very corrupt politician named Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) who shimmies his way into the presidency. He blackmails, extorts, murders, and does generally whatever else it takes to get himself to the top. Also, the list goes on and on. Dishonorable Mention: President Greg Stillson, The Dead Zone Remember when Martin Sheen played a generally good president in The West Wing? Well, earlier in his career, he starred in The Dead Zone, a David Cronenberg adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Dead Zone, and played a demagogue who runs for president. He’s actually a genocidal maniac; the thing is, his grand plans for genocide have not been enacted yet, because the whole deal with The Dead Zone is that Christopher Walken is psychic, so he can see what people will do, and he can clearly see Stillson becoming president and then starting an unsanctioned nuclear war. But no one else knows. So, he kind of counts. View the full article -
0
The Best Reviewed Books of the Month: May 2024
A look at the month’s best reviewed books in crime. * Abir Mukherjee, Hunted (Mulholland Books) “A welcome alternative to the typical cops-and-robbers tale … Plot twists are largely presented without the strain of incredulity, the suspense is always weighted with emotion, surprising revelations are carefully constructed — and the ending is unexpected, daring and truly beautiful.” –E.A. Aymar (Washington Post) Joyce Carol Oates, Butcher (Knopf) “The book has the feverish energy, narrative propulsion and descriptive amplitude — sometimes to excess — of much of her earlier work … Undoubtedly one of her most surreal and gruesome works, sparing no repulsive detail or nefarious impulse. In the end, though, the purview of the novel is larger than one might think, becoming an empathic and discerning commentary on women’s rights, the abuses of patriarchy and the servitude of the poor and disenfranchised. Oates, as is her wont, succeeds in creating a world that is apart from our own yet familiar, making it impossible to dismiss her observations about twisted natures and random acts of violence.” –Daphne Merkin (New York Times Book Review) Emiko Jean, The Return of Ellie Black (Simon and Schuster) “Jean successfully pivots from romantic-relationship fiction… to crime thriller here. She paints a bleak but not entirely depressing picture of abused and underestimated women who manage to survive.” –Barbara Bibel (Booklist) Craig Whitlock, Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy (Simon and Schuster) “A masterly investigation into one of the Navy’s worst scandals in modern times … His reporting is astonishingly detailed … Whitlock is particularly good at revealing the way that Francis profited from the “entitlement” of Navy officers.” –Nicholas Niarchos (New York Times Book Review) View the full article -
0
Eight Books By Authors Who Have Also Engaged in Journalism
I’ve lived a dual existence for most of my adult life, and that’s given me a lot of pleasure. On the one hand, I’m a journalist who chronicles the “adventures” of companies that are in the always-evolving media and entertainment business. On the other, my soul is never happy unless I’m writing fiction. Swimming in two lanes came out of necessity. I couldn’t count on creative writing to pay the bills. Yet as it turned out, journalism became addictive, especially when I talked with media executives about what they were planning to roll out in the future—new shows, new technology, new ways of attracting advertisers. Then one day, my two worlds collided in an idea for a novel. The journalism work had “wired” me to imagine what media companies will be like a few decades into the future. How would they influence our thoughts and behaviors even more than they already do? What kinds of executives, or political operatives, would run them? And how will celebrity culture change? Those questions led me to write to two speculative novels that involve high-stakes struggles between power-hungry leaders and an eclectic band of people who rebel against their incursions. There are also some comedic and romantic threads running throughout. First came my novel The Juice, soon to be followed by a second book, Universe of Lost Messages (now available). While Universe is a sequel, it stands on its own, so you don’t need to read the first book to get into the story. It’s hardly unusual for writers to travel down both the journalism and creative writing paths. For some, reporting about real-life events has sparked a deep passion for topics that they explore in books. Journalism also hones research and interviewing skills, which are often critical for developing fictional stories. And then there’s that “got to keep the lights on” element. Here are some books by authors who have also engaged in journalism that I admire: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert While Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love deserves all the applause it’s received and she has written many other books, Big Magic is the one I’ve returned to again and again. It explores Gilbert’s journey as a creative writer and the sometimes-inexplicable ways that inspiration can emerge, grow, or flat-out disappear. Magic also provides some advice about how to stay the course when doubts or rejections become dispiriting. Gilbert is a raconteur par excellence, and the book is filled a lot of entertaining stories about the folks she’s encountered and lessons learned. She touches on experiences that reflect her serious case of wanderlust and curiosity about different types of people. As a journalist, her stories have appeared in Spin, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. Answered Prayers, Truman Capote The recent FX series Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans gives readers new reasons to visit (or revisit) Answered Prayers. Truman Capote’s development of the novel is a running storyline throughout the TV show. The book was published after Capote’s death. But while he was alive, it attracted notice, and notoriety, after he sold four chapters to Esquire—one of which contained thinly veiled characterizations of some of his well-known friends. And it was deeply unflattering. While readers may not agree with his storytelling tactics, Capote’s gifts of observation and sometimes biting wit make Answered an engrossing read. Answered is billed as fiction, but Capote had previously displayed his gifts as a journalist with the nonfiction book In Cold Blood. The Casserole Courtship: A Shell Beach Novel, by Elizabeth Guider Mix together romance, food, and a gorgeous beach and you have the basic recipe for Elizabeth Guider’s The Casserole Courtship: A Shell Beach Novel. But there’s something more to the sauce that makes it unique: her realistic way of describing relationships. That moves this book far, far above the average romance novel. Casserole takes place shortly after an older man loses his wife. Three women are attracted to him and ply him with various dishes. It’s a bit of a mystery, whom he’ll end up with. As Guider explained in an interview with me, she had a very strong vision of the women’s backgrounds and dreams. And those storylines make the book especially engaging. Guider is well known in the entertainment industry as a journalist who rose to become a top editor at The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. And that’s how I first came to know her. American Gods, Neil Gaiman Neil Gaiman explained why he’s no longer a reporter in a blog post filled with exasperation regarding the way he’s been characterized in the press. But before he honed his creative writing craft and his popularity went off the hook, journalism helped pay the bills. There’s a lot of Gaiman graphic novels, children’s literature and adult fantasy fiction to choose from. But American Gods is the novel that sparked the most raging fire of delight in my mind. It tells the tale of a character who seems like a real loser—fresh out of prison, with a cheating wife that turns up dead. He’s sucked into fantasy realm with characters inspired by a wide variety of myths. They lead him into a war within a shadow realm below everyday existence. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Márquez Before Gabriel Garcia Márquez gained fame as a novelist, he was a journalist, and he worked at that trade in Paris, Bogatá, and New York. Although he wrote many fiction masterpieces whose magic realism style is captivating, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Años de Soledad) is the book I will probably be rereading for the rest of my life. The novel is densely constructed with strange events and richly envisioned characters who inhabit a town in Márquez’s native country, Colombia, over the course of seven generations. (A dream about a city made of glass? Yeah, he had me right there.) While the book flies high into the realm of fantasy, it is grounded in storylines that relate to Latin American history. Pattern Recognition, William Gibson William Gibson famously said, “The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” And that certainly springs to my mind when thinking about his novel Pattern Recognition. While it appears to take place in the present, there is also some speculative-fiction storytelling at play. This first book in Gibson’s three-part “Blue Ant” trilogy has an espionage storyline focused on mysterious film clips that are creating incredible underground buzz. Following the breadcrumb trail is Cayce Pollard, a so-called coolhunter; she has a psychological sensitivity to logos and advertising that allows her to predict hot trends. About 10 years before Pattern Recognition published (in 2003), Gibson drew a lot of attention with his first major news article, a controversial cover story in Wired: “Disneyland With the Death Penalty.” Singapore reacted by banning Wired from the country. 10% Happier, Dan Harris In 10% Happier, Dan Harris recounts his exploration of various forms of religion and spirituality, which he reported on extensively for ABC News. The former Good Morning America and Nightline host uses a combination of humor, skepticism, and self-examination throughout the book. Along the way, he relates his experiences in the high-pressure news business, one-time addiction to drugs, and conversations with self-help gurus and disgraced pastors. Eventually something really clicked for him: meditation. He explains how meditation helped to reset his mind. In the process, he provides readers with an easy way to either explore the practice from scratch or deepen their knowledge of mindfulness practices. Bleak House, Charles Dickens When he was a teenager, Charles Dickens began reporting on the law courts of London, and within a couple of years he was contributing to two major publications. Thus began a journalism career that extended through much of his life. While all that was going on, he churned out masterpiece works of fiction that turned him into a literary icon. Of all the Dickens works I’ve read, Bleak House remains my favorite. On the one hand, it’s a scathing indictment of the British legal system. On the other, it’s populated with extremely endearing and (at times) comical characters—from two young people whose inheritance is evaporating away as an endless legal case drags on, to a philanthropist who is so obsessed with an African tribe that she neglects her own brood of children. *** View the full article -
0
Expand Your Mind with These Psychedelic Mysteries
Acid has had a long and colorful—way too colorful!—relationship with crime fiction. LSD or lysergic acid diethylamide was first synthesized by Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman in the pre-fabulous year of 1938, but almost as soon as Sandoz Labs introduced the stuff as a psychiatric tool ten years later, the chemical compound started making surprise cameos in detective fiction. Why is that? Well, for one, LSD was itself mysterious—this microscopic drop could blow open your mind and send you to infinity inside an hour. Also, for a multitude of reasons, some solid, some hysterical, LSD came equipped with a fear factor. Long before the counterculture got their hands on it, the CIA and other orgs started administering acid tests to military personnel, government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and random Joe and Jane Citizens, sometimes without the subject’s slightest inkling of what kaleidoscopic Escherian maze they were about to get lost in. But there’s a third reason why crime writers gravitated toward psychedelia, maybe the most important reason—it’s a detective’s job to get drugged, smacked around, bonked on the head, and sent down a nightmare spiral toward the truth. For mystery writers of every stripe, LSD was simply irresistible. The crazy sugarcube had it all—shock, color, dramatic freakouts, danger, reality vs. fantasy, and the sense that nothing was ever what it seemed. Here is just a microdose of the mystery tale’s long and strange trip. M.E. Chaber, The Splintered Man Some claim that pulp masterpiece The Splintered Man (1955) by M.E. Chaber (real name Kendell Foster Crossen) is the first fictional appearance of LSD in crime fiction—where it’s used as nothing less than a Nazi weapon of mind control! Supersleuth Milo March, ordered back into active duty, learns he is to kidnap a recent defector from the East Germans. One subway ride later, March hooks up with a Frau Fatale, blows his cover, and gets handed over to an ex-SS running high-dose acid experiments—talk about a bad trip! P.D. James, A Mind to Murder Interesting then that just eight years later, in PD James’s second and arguably best Adam Dalgliesh mystery A Mind to Murder (1963), LSD is presented as something less than the liquid menace. Here it’s being used to treat patients in a British outpatient psych hospital—right alongside shock therapy and art therapy. With characteristic deference, James is even-keeled about this newfangled psych tool. “It’s a remarkable drug…the patient is flushed and restless and quite withdrawn from reality.” Quite! John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink Cut to John D. MacDonald’s Nightmare in Pink (1964)— the second in a high stack of Travis McGee classics. “One drop of a tasteless, odorless substance can turn you into something they come after with a net,” Trav warns as he’s coming on to Dr. Daska’s private variation, the dreaded Daska-15, an LSD compound that gives “consistently ugly hallucinations.” For hardboiled McGee, the ride is even rougher than expected. “I bought a paper. The stairs tilted sideways. The railing felt like a wet snake. I shoved seven keys at seven keyholes and they all fitted and all turned, and I stumbled into a pink room and curled up on the bed, my knees against my chest…have a cup of nightmare.” Riot on the Sunset Strip (1967) It was just a matter of months before the still-legal LSD hit the teenybopper circuit like an atom bomb, allegedly sending some of them jumping off roofs in the hopes that they might fly. Teensploitation flicks like American International’s Riot on the Sunset Strip (1967) were quick to pick up the sin-sational crime element. The movie is about a troubled young daughter of a cop who doses just to be “one of the gang” and ends up the victim of gang rape. Dragnet, “The LSD Story” That same year, the Hardboiled Cops Meet Trippin’ Teens Genre reached its zenith in what might be Dragnet’s most famous episode, “The LSD Story”, written by Jack Webb himself under the pen name John Randolph. When Joe Friday and Bill Gannon work the MacArthur Park beat, they discover a face-painted freak named Blue Boy with his head in the sand—like, literally. They yank him out and shake down his pocketful of sugarcubes as he rants about “Reality, man, reality! I could see the center of the earth! Purple flame down there with a pilot light!” Needless to say, the story you saw was true. The names were changed to protect the innocent. By the time Helter Skelter was published in 1974—featuring the terrifying Hawaiian Hamburger from Hell incident—LSD and murder had become, unfortunately, a matter for True Crime. Vincent Bugliosi’s paperback won the Edgar Award that year and, for a time, seemed to be the most ubiquitous bedside object in America. Overtime, though, as nightmares faded and our understanding of LSD began to expand, mystery writers started approaching the topic with greater sensitivity and finesse. James Lee Burke, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead The unspeakably great James Lee Burke’s In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993), sixth title in the magnificent Dave Robicheaux series, finds our hero-detective drinking a stiff one spiked with acid, but instead of freaking out and jumping off a roof, he ends up in fantasy conversation with the phantom of Confederate General Hood and the soldiers under his command. Incredibly, the hallucinated General gives trippin’ Robicheaux good advice about how to solve the case! T. Jefferson Parker, California Girl T. Jefferson Parker’s California Girl (2004), my personal fave of his many masterpieces, looks back on Orange County ‘68 when the discovery of a decapitated young woman leads to a rogue’s gallery of culty hippies, Vietnam vets, gonzo reporters, and Timothy Leary and Dick Nixon themselves. In one of the most memorable scenes, Investigator Nick Becker, working his first case as lead detective with the county sheriff’s department, takes an accidental dose of Orange Sunshine, goes home in a daze and makes tender love to his wife through the afternoon before collapsing in a vision of purple tulips, red Ford Country Squire station wagons with simulated wood-frame paneling, blue fire hydrants, and a thousand images of the dead girl’s speaking but disembodied head. The LSD-laced mystery, it seems, has finally grown up. **** View the full article -
0
When Romance Is a Mystery: Books Where Finding Love Is Like Solving a Whodunit
If you’ve spent any time at all on the singles scene, you’d be forgiven for thinking it would be easier to solve a murder mystery than actually finding ‘the one’. And as unlikely as it seems, romance novels share many of the same tropes as a good Golden Age Whodunit. Rather than trying to hunt down a blood-thirsty killer, in a romance, our protagonist is desperately hoping to solve a different type of puzzle. And it’s one that the greats, like Sherlock and Poirot all struggled to figure out: the mystery of true love. But with any luck, the leads of a good love story can dodge the red herrings and eventually meet their match, but not before they’ve eliminated all the other suspects: THE RED HERRING “It’s disquieting to reflect that one’s dreams never symbolize one’s real wishes, but always something much worse…”, Harriet Vane in Dorthy L Sayer’s Gaudy Night. Every classic murder mystery is stuffed full of those fishiest of clues – the pesky red herring. And a good romance is no different. We’ve all wasted time chasing the wrong person before, convinced by all the signs that they are indeed our perfect match. For a great tale of wrong-footed romance, check out YA rom-com She Gets The Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick. It sees Alex and Molly team up to help each other win over their respective crushes. But, of course, their targets turn out to be false leads – because as the two embark on their plan to get their girls to fall for them, they begin to fall for each other. The novel was inspired by the author’s real-life love story, lending it a sweet resonance beyond the written word. See also: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby THE OBVIOUS SUSPECT “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four Occam’s Razor states that the simplest solution to any problem is usually the correct one, and in the world of detective fiction, that would make a very dull novel. Still, as Sherlock Holmes said, sometimes you have to strip away the extraneous theories to find the simple truth that, despite seeming impossible at first, is now glaringly obvious. In the brilliant Emily Henry’s ‘People We Meet on Vacation’, best friends Poppy and Alex are complete opposites, and appear at first to be a terrible love match. But in reality, the answer to all Poppy’s problems has been right there in front of her all along. It might take Poppy a while to figure that out, but it’s so much fun watching her do it. See also: Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfield, Normal People by Sally Rooney THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY “I have to warn you. I promised my mother, a long time ago. She said I had to give folks a chance to walk away.”, Jack Reacher in Nothing to Lose Sometimes, like in Murder on the Orient Express, a detective makes the difficult decision to let the villain walk away. Should the ‘bad guy’ be given the chance to reform their ways? Or perhaps their crime might not be as simple as it first seems? These question is no easier to answer in the world of romance. Take Christina Lauren’s beautiful ode to ‘the one that got away’, Love and Other Words, for example. The novel sees Macy spend a decade carefully gluing the pieces of her broken heart back together after walking away from the love of her life. But when Elliot, crashes back into her world, she has to decide if she is really ready to trust him again. Sometimes, it’s better to let go than to keep hanging on. See also: One Day by David Nicolls, P.S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern THE ONE WITH THE ULTERIOR MOTIVE “The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it,” Hercule Poirot in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Every suspect in a murder mystery should have a secret. Even if they don’t turn out to be the killer, each character has something to hide from the detective and a reason to lie. It’s the detective’s job to find out what their real motives for deceiving them are. And for a singleton, every prospective date should be interrogated too. All too often, you’ll find that your too-good-to-be-true beau is not all that they seem… In Delia Owen’s bestseller, Where The Crawdads Sing, Kya is seduced by handsome local jock (and playboy) Chase Andrews. Eventually succumbing to his charms, Kya believes they may have a future together, despite their radically different backgrounds. But when Kya discovers he is engaged to another woman, his motives become very clear: Chase was only ever after one thing. See also: Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding, Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler *** View the full article -
0
Why Books Set at Resorts Are So Fun to Read (and Write!)
There’s nothing quite like going on a vacation with a good book. And when the story is set at a resort or on a yacht, well, it’s a bonus. And it was while I was on vacation with my family, reading a great mystery set at a resort, the idea for my first travel story popped into my head, and Beneath the Surface was born. Our family was vacationing in Croatia, Dubrovnik to be exact, and as I walked the old city and looked out at the azure Adriatic Sea, I spotted a super yacht cruising by. And I wondered, wow, I’m on vacation over here on land but that must be amazing to just zip by, sitting in your own ship’s hot tub, drinking champagne, admiring the old walls and the charming fishing villages. And that’s when I decided: I’m going to set my next novel on a mega yacht. Unbeknownst to my husband who ironically had decided we all needed to visit Montenegro since we were so close, and we did. It turns out, the only people who were visiting Montenegro when we were there were Russian Oligarchs hiding their yachts. Literally, at restaurants and bars the only people there were crew members from the various luxury ships. Our hotel room faced the marina, and it was great fun watching the various yachts come and go, one more over the top than the next. At night, the yachts lit up with neon and some had dance parties happening as we watched. It truly was like watching a TV show—Above Deck, shall we say. We even discovered an app that if you type in the name of the yacht, the app pulls up all the details. So off I went in my imagination and The Kingsley family’s weekend trip on a yacht was born. My characters enjoyed plush accommodations, first-class service including five course meals and an endless supply of champagne. John, the oldest son and his wife, Rachel, lamented the fact their room wasn’t as large as Ted, the younger brother, and his wife Paige’s. And when their sister Sibley arrives by helicopter, a very fun scene to write, it’s clear there is turmoil ahead. Their short trip from Newport Beach, California, to Catalina Island wasn’t as exotic as sailing around the Mediterranean, but my characters and I had a lot of fun. Serena, Richard’s sixth wife, plays the hostess during the voyage, wowing the rest of the family with frequent ballgown and outfit changes. If you read the story, I hope it’s a great escape for you, too. In another happenstance, while I was still writing Beneath the Surface, my family and I were on vacation in the British Virgin Islands and we took a boat to a deserted island, where much to our surprise, Jeff Bezos and his kids were having a private lunch on the sand. We watched as security boats zoomed past us, a full kitchen was created, and two workers raked the sand to perfection. By the time the guests arrived, the tiny island had been transformed into a mini resort with outdoor dining, fresh flowers on the table, and I’m sure, exquisite food. As we sailed around the corner after watching the show for a bit, we encountered Bezos’ mega yacht, a truly magnificent site. Later that evening, when Bezos departed by helicopter, the entire crew—hundreds of people—lined the deck and waved farewell. Yacht life is a nice life, indeed. When my editor asked for a book two of The Kingsleys, I was excited to go on virtual vacation again. This time, the patriarch, Richard Kingsley, and the gang checked into hotel rooms at my favorite resort in Laguna Beach. The resort in the book is called Twin Palms but it is based on the real resort, The Montage Laguna Beach, and I had so much fun staying there for the months it took to craft the story—in my mind. Fun fact, our family first stayed at this hotel in 2000, when we lived in Ohio, we were there on vacation, and we dreamed of someday living in Laguna Beach because of that experience. I’m telling you, it’s a magnificent place. The hotel spills down a cliff, all the rooms facing the Pacific Ocean. A signature design of the hotel is the mosaic swimming pool and it’s breathtaking. I smile describing it even now. My characters, of course, stayed in the finest suites on property, enjoyed drinks in the ocean-breeze-cooled piano bar lobby staring out over the pool and the sparkling ocean beyond. Ted, the youngest son of the Kingsley clan, had a drunken afternoon on the beach, while John, the oldest son, kept his young girlfriend Krystle occupied by giving her his room key and unlimited spending privileges at the resort’s boutiques. She even visits the imaginary jewelry store on property and buys herself an impressive ring. I loved imagining her shopping sprees, and her spa makeover. Paige, the daughter-in-law who is in charge, doesn’t have as much fun at the resort as I’d like for her to have—she’s too busy holding onto power—but when the Santa Ana winds begin to blow, she proves to be up to that challenge, and more. Perhaps she’ll have a chance to relax in the next story. Of course, since I write suspense with a big dose of family drama, not all goes well for the Kingsley family members on their vacations, on the yacht or at the resort. Trouble ensues, and murder, too. But that’s part of the fun, of course, for those of us who like to read and write crime fiction. Vacation can be murder, as they say, and to me that’s the best type of story to read. And write. I cannot wait to see where the Kingsley Family—those who survived, that is—head to next. *** View the full article -
0
The Death of Mr. Dodsley is a Charming Biblio-Mystery From a Master Stylist
Death of Mr. Dodsley, first published in 1937, is a “biblio-mystery” from a Scot who combined ministry in the Episcopalian church with a varied and successful literary career. John Ferguson was in his heyday described as “one of the most delightful stylists in the genre,” yet he has largely been forgotten during the seventy years since his death. This story centres round the murder of a bookseller in London’s Charing Cross Road, long regarded as a home-from-home for bibliophiles. Richard Dodsley’s corpse is found lying on a carpet in his shop by Constable Roberts in the early hours of the morning. For clues, the Scotland Yard detectives Inspector Mallet and Sergeant Crabb do not have much to work on, although they find three cigarette ends and a woman’s broken hair-slide at the scene of the crime and notice that several books are out of position on the shelves. Further, they discover a note indicating that, a couple of months before his death, Dodsley consulted a private detective, Francis MacNab. During “the Golden Age of Murder” between the two world wars, both Father Ronald Knox and Canon Victor Whitechurch achieved a considerable reputation in the field of literary detection. John Alexander Ferguson (1871– 1952) is rather less well-known, perhaps partly because his series detective was, for all his amiability, a relatively low-key character who is not quite as memorable as many of his peers in vintage crime fiction. Not much has been written about Ferguson over the years, so I shall take this opportunity to sketch an outline of his life and work. Ferguson was born in Callander in Perthshire and worked as a clerk on the local railway before becoming ordained as an Episcopalian minister. His ministry took him to places such as Dundee, Guernsey, and Glasgow, and it was not until he was in his forties that he began to carve a literary reputation. Shortly before the First World War, he achieved success as a playwright, thanks to his widely admired one-act play Campbell of Kilmohr, set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Professor Alan Riach has said that the play concerns “the predicament of a Highlander confronted with the sly duplicity of a Lowlander’s military interests. It would have some resonance after the First World War in its treatment of loyalty and betrayal. In the 21st century, in the context of the international popularity of the TV series Outlander, it warrants reappraisal.” In 1915 Ferguson became school chaplain at Eversley, an exclusive girls’ school then based at Sandgate, a coastal village near Folkestone in Kent. The following year, he wrote a paper for the Folkestone War Refugees’ Committee on how the town could best help Belgian refugees. 1918 saw the publication of his first thriller, Stealthy Terror, and on the Kent Maps Online website, Professor Carolyn Oulton points out that: “In a memorable scene in Folkestone, the narrator watches human ‘butterflies’ on the Leas, as they gather round a military band. The bandstand had been erected in 1893, when Folkestone ranked as one of the more fashionable Victorian resorts. But as Ferguson’s readers would have been well aware, the Leas promenade gives on to what would later be designated The Road of Remembrance, along which thousands of soldiers had passed on their way to the trenches.” The novel, which recounts how John Abercrombie, a medical student who is staying in Berlin shortly before the war, is drawn into taking charge of a secret document, enjoyed success on initial publication and also, decades later, as a green Penguin paperback. Two more thrillers, The Dark Geraldine (1921) and The Secret Road (1925), followed; the respective settings were Perthshire and India. The Man in the Dark (1928) was subtitled An Ealing Mystery; although the story is as much a thriller as a conventional whodunit, Francis MacNab, Ferguson’s Scottish sleuth, plays a part. In 1976, the book was dramatised for radio broadcast on Radio 4. Murder on the Marsh (1930) is a detective novel principally narrated by the journalist Godfrey Chance, who acts in effect as MacNab’s “Watson”. MacNab is asked by Ann Cardew to solve the puzzle of her father’s strange behaviour. Shortly after this, James Cardew dies. There is no obvious sign of foul play, but MacNab wonders if an ingenious crime has been committed. Ferguson then changed publishers, and Death Comes to Perigord (1931), perhaps his best-known detective novel, appeared under the legendary Collins Crime Club imprint. The greatest strength of this mystery is the unusual setting, on the island of Guernsey. It was followed by two more Scottish novels, Night in Glengyle (1933), an adventure story, and The Grouse Moor Mystery (1934), which has an “impossible crime” ingredient, before Ferguson turned to writing about London in this book. By the time Death of Mr. Dodsley was published, Eversley School had relocated to Lymington, on the Hampshire coast. Although Ferguson remained school chaplain for a while, the dedication to the novel indicates that at the time of publication he was living at Cerne Abbas in Dorset. Thereafter he moved to Culross before retiring in 1946. His final mystery, Terror on the Island (1942), again benefited from his knowledge of Guernsey. His non-criminous work includes Dalgarney Goes North (1938), a novel in which he returned to Scottish history and chronicling the aftermath of the ’45. Dorothy L. Sayers was among Ferguson’s admirers. She heaped praise on Night in Glengyle, saying in the Sunday Times that “your reviewer quite forgot to be cunning and was properly taken in by the surprise-packet at the end,” although, like her successor as crime critic for the Sunday Times Milward Kennedy, she was less convinced by Ferguson’s adherence to the tenets of “fair play” detection. In the first major full-length study of the genre, Masters of Mystery (1931), H. D. Thomson described Ferguson as “one of the most delightful stylists in the genre.” Ferguson’s determination to vary the backgrounds of his books as well as the type of stories he wrote strikes me as interesting and rather impressive, and it is good to see a novel of his back in print in Britain after a very long absence from the shelves. _______________________ From Martin Edwards’ introduction to John Ferguson’s The Death of Mr. Dodsley, reprinted by permission of the publisher, British Library Crime Classics. Introduction copyright © 2024 by Martin Edwards. All rights reserved. View the full article -
1
-
1
Looking For a Good Freelance Novel Editor?
Excellent points! I wish I'd known this eight years ago. -
0
The Best Debut Novels of the Month: May 2024
The CrimeReads editors make their picks for the best debut novels in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Nicola Solvinic, The Hunter’s Daughter (Berkley Books) In Solvinic’s debut, a decorated cop kills a man in the line of duty and is confronted with an onslaught of suppressed memories about her father, a serial killer. She then confront a new killer who seems to be copying his dark rituals. The story unfolds like a dream, and Solvinic penetrates deep into her characters’ tortured psyches. –DM Alana B. Lytle, Man’s Best Friend (Knopf) In Lytle’s chilling debut, a young woman who has recently given up on her dream of acting encounters a young scion who can introduce her into a world of wealth and privilege she has always coveted. But soon the compromises begin, and she finds herself increasingly cut off from her earlier life, with disturbing suggestions as to why. Lytle writes compellingly about this decadent world and the costs of belonging. –DM Sam Garonzik, A Rough Way to Go (Grand Central) An atmospheric beach town and a father at loose ends combine to strong results in Garonzik’s well-crafted debut. When a body washes up in the surf, we find ourselves thrown headlong into a gripping murder mystery, as an out-of-work father investigates a shady hedge fund and a dead financier, all with a plucky three year-old at his side. –DM Fiona McPhillips, When We Were Silent (Flatiron) Fiona McPhillips breathes new urgency into the private school thriller with this tale of justice delayed. In When We Were Silent, Louise Manson enrolls at an elite Dublin academy with a singular goal: expose the swim coach as a sexual predator. Decades later, she must confront her past traumas when another of the school’s coaches goes on trial for abuse. McPhillips infuses her story with deep sensitivity and righteous fury, for a compelling and thought-provoking read. –MO L.M. Chilton, Swiped (Gallery) Another send-off of modern dating, this time with an extra-fun twist! Chilton’s unlucky-in-love heroine finds herself under suspicion of murder after the shocking demise of multiple men with whom she’s matched. Who is the culprit killing off all these (admittedly mediocre) dating prospects? And why are they so determined to pin the blame on her? –MO View the full article -
0
Lily Samson on the Great Rise of Suburban Noir
I remember seeing a clip from David Lynch’s Blue Velvet as a teenager: Kyle MacLachlan reaching down into a grassy field and discovering a severed ear crawling with ants. It was such a disturbing and surreal image that it stayed with me for years to come. Later in life, I discovered articles that cited it as a symbolic moment in Lynch’s films, one that captured the dark undercurrents of suburban life in smalltown America, the strange happenings behind white picket fences. The Sunday Times (UK) has predicted that 2024 will be the year of suburban noir. In recent years there have been a glorious glut of thrillers set in cozy country settings à la Agatha Christie, or exotic holidays abroad. But thrillers are, apparently, returning to the domestic. I had no idea that I was going to be on trend when I sat down to write The Switch two years ago. I chose the setting because I enjoy writing in cafes and I live close to Wimbledon Village, a suburb in South London that has a character all of its own. It’s leafy and beautiful, with a green common sporting a pond surrounded by geese and ducks; a quaint high street with old-fashioned shops selling wine or designer dresses or fancy kitchenware. The houses are grand and owned by millionaires. I enjoyed strolling down its streets and savouring the property porn. I’d catch glimpses – through lavish drapes of wisteria, or over the top of security gates – of windows framing living-rooms that looked so impeccable they belonged to a set from The Crown. I would wonder if beneath the veneer of luxury the inhabitants were just as fraught and troubled as the rest of us. One day, one of these wealthy characters looked up from trimming their ceanothus and gave me a slightly anxious glance. There had been a recent spate of burglaries; I think that everyone walking past was making him nervous. Their lives, I realised in surprise, were not always one of satisfied abundance, but of fear too. This is the perverse delight of reading suburban noir: it takes this common experience a step further, enabling us to play voyeur, to twitch aside the curtain and dive into the lives of those we speculate about. This was why The Girl on the Train was such a huge success. It’s the commuter equivalent of Rear Window: we’ve all had that experience of being bored on a train, gazing out through the window into a passing house, and wondering who might live there. When I came to write The Switch, I was inspired by a short story by Roald Dahl, The Great Switcheroo, originally published by Playboy in the 70s. Two men who live opposite each other plot to swap wives in secret, in the dark, without them knowing, by sneaking into each other’s houses at night. It’s a dark, dirty, bizarre, uncomfortable, outrageous story with a moral twist in the tale as the men get their comeuppance. What if, I wondered, I played with this conceit but reversed the genders? What if two women decided to swap their male partners? I created a heroine, Elena, who is in a stagnant relationship with Adam. They get a six-month housesit in Wimbledon village, finding themselves elevated into a level of luxury they could never normally afford. There they meet a dazzling couple: Sophia is like a Hitchcock heroine, whilst Finn has Cary Grant looks and charisma. When Sophia makes an indecent proposal that they swap partners in secret, without the men knowing, Elena is shocked. But despite her moral concerns, she agrees. The partner-switching becomes a dangerous addiction and soon escalates, for Sophia’s intentions are complex and there is a game behind her game; I wanted the darkness and danger to slowly creep into their suburban lives like a fog that gradually thickens… “Domestic noir” is a term that Julia Crouch coined in 2013 to mark a new trend in thrillers – a shift away from gritty police procedurals or adrenaline-fuelled spy stories towards traditionally female concerns, epitomised in novels such as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl or Louise Candlish’s Our House. As Crouch states: “In a nutshell, domestic noir takes place primarily in homes and workplaces, concerns itself largely (but not exclusively) with the female experience, is based around relationships and takes as its base a broadly feminist view that the domestic sphere is a challenging and sometimes dangerous prospect for its inhabitants.” Suburban noir plays on classic feelings of fear and curiosity. Just how well do we know our neighbors, that family across the street whom we wave to when we pass them on the way to work, or see them taking our their trash? Can we trust them? What’s really going on behind their smiles and cheery hellos? This is fascination of Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris, one of my favorite domestic thrillers, where Grace is trapped in a marriage to a psychopath. They host dinner parties where she must cook to perfection, where she cannot give away the slightest hint that she is living in hell: her life depends upon it. Her suburban marriage becomes a web she cannot untangle herself from. The need to keep up appearances is taken to its most toxic extreme. In Kia Abdullah’s Those People Next Door, a family moves to a suburban paradise that is blighted when their neighbors tear down a Black Lives Matters sign; as enmity rises between them, played out in nasty games, social media and finally, in court, themes of racism and prejudice are explored with nuance. Suburban noir often deals with themes of invasion. Our homes should be a safe space, a refuge from the demands of daily life. In horror films such as Funny Games, the destruction of home security is pushed to full-blown extreme; in domestic noir, its depiction is more subtle. In Adele Parks’ I Invited Her In, a female friend who comes to stay becomes a nightmare when she seduces the family’s son; in Nicola Sanders’ Don’t Let Her Stay, a step-daughter moving in becomes a disruptive presence when she plays a sociopathic game of switching on the charm to conceal her manipulative, destructive schemes. Of course, all suburban noir also owes a debt to the great J.G. Ballard, who was fascinated by the way that architecture and place shapes our lives. He famously spent his life living in Shepperton; in his novels he explored the violence that simmers beneath the surface of gated communities, whose bored inhabitants secretly crave destruction. His classic, Kingdom Come, begins with an opening that says it all: “the suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world…” *** View the full article -
0
How to Have Sex in Historical Fiction
With Bridgerton Season 3 hitting our screens and as we prepare to drop everything to binge-watch Lady Whistledown’s love story, it’s worth noting what the show has done to our period dramas and just how far we’ve come —no pun intended. Before Shonda Rhimes’s first season thrilled our nerves and tore our expectations to shreds, we were used to the sedate, even polite, pacing of Downton Abbey where illicit sex was heavily frowned upon and women had orgasms strictly off-screen. Bridgerton arrived like a wild thunderstorm on a spring day, just when we were reeling from prolonged lockdowns and social isolation, and turned everything we knew on its head. Here was Daphne Bridgerton exploring her sexual desires, having multiple orgasms, and seemingly having a bloody good time in bed. Season 2 was one of delayed gratification, but in the end, it didn’t wait for Kate and Anthony to be sedately married, and we were witness to some hot outdoor sex and some interesting Regency undergarments being slowly peeled off. A Note on Regency Clothing How much clothing would need to be taken off for historical sex? Well, Regency clothing didn’t have the problems of the Victorian tight corset, or multiple laces and hoops. Instead of a tight corset that a Victorian woman may be suffocating in, Regency women would have worn stays – light, cotton garments that showed off the boobs and were comfortable to wear. So, to get down to the action, you might have to work your way through a coat or tightly-buttoned jacket, a hat (bonnet or cap) without messing up the hair. And gloves and shoes. And that’s just the outer garments. Then make your way through an empire-style dress with a high waist but without the multiple hoops and bustles of other time periods, a petticoat or two, stockings, and then the stays worn over a chemise! So, in short, a lot of clothing! As we lap up Season 3, let’s look at some assumptions about women and sex that haunt our period fiction and take a peek at what some authors like to do about it. Assumption One: Women simply do not have sex, my dears If we read and watch the court presentations, tea dances, Almack’s strictly-gatekept balls of usual Regency fiction, we may be forgiven for thinking that women in the Regency period thought only about ball gowns and marriage prospects and that their body was an untouched landscape. I worry that if we devour a genre now, in today’s day and age, and we gobble up repressive tropes about women and sex, we are in danger of sticking with and perpetuating these tropes today. Olivia Petter says in her article Mind the Pleasure Gap that young girls are taught about the dangers of sex—unwanted pregnancies and diseases—and not about healthy desire or how to explore it. She says, “A new survey has shown that two in three women are doing things during sex that they don’t enjoy” and are reluctant to ask a partner to stop. To me, fiction, even historical fiction, has a responsibility to show a more sex-positive view of women and women’s bodies. I’m also glad for the novels that explore queer relationships, including the witty and wonderful novels by Olivia Waite and Marianne Ratcliffe, as this allows us to give our leading ladies a more diverse and varied sex life. Assumption Two: Men sow their wild oats before they get married, but women remain untouched virgins This is a scary vision of what society expected of women, but also the pressures women continue to feel to keep their sexual desires private or unexplored today. When we are introduced to a woman and man in period fiction, we are ubiquitously told that the man has lived a varied and vigorous sexual life, whereas the woman has been brought up strictly and is a virgin. Lisa Kleypas plays with this by moving outside the realms of the ton and the marriage mart and making her heroines seamstresses and actresses with an independent life. Bea Koch reminds us, “Regency history [is full of] heroines who break the mold…” She not only writes about the artistic endeavours and scientific pastimes of the Regency’s famous real-life women, but each woman also comes with her list of known lovers. Koch says, “In truth, a lot of the sex happening during the Regency was firmly outside the bonds of marriage.” The interesting thing about the Regency period is that not only was it okay for a woman to have a screaming good time in her marital bed, it was also trop de jour that upper class women may take a lover or two. Many Regency authors cover this up with today’s relatively repressive sexual mores and don’t talk about a woman’s multiple lovers, but in my next book, An Unladylike Secret, a supporting character, Lucretia Underwood, openly – and hilariously – talks about wanting multiple lovers. Assumption Three: If they do have sex before they are married, there is a darned good reason for it that has nothing to do with a woman’s sexual desires There are many examples of period fiction where if a woman has had sex before her love interest awakens her to its wonders, then there is a jolly good reason for this. Maybe she was sexually exploited. Maybe she was forced into prostitution and/or was a kept mistress. Sex for the sake of sex and desire are not as easily explored. While some of Mary Balogh’s stories also follow these tropes, what I admire about her work is that she allows her heroes and heroines to explore their sexual desires and focus on sexual desire as something important in its own right. When I wrote my first Regency novel, Unladylike Lessons in Love, one of my editors asked me, “Is Lila a virgin before she meets Ivor?” My other editor responded, “I think she seems quite sexually aware.” My response: I refuse to ask my heroines if they are virgins or not. Assumption Four: When they do have sex, women wait demurely for it to be after they fall in love Men are unabashedly not held to this standard in Regency fiction. In fact, it is a show of virility to say that the leading man has had liaisons. But even when writing the main love story, we are supposed to help the couple fall in love first. In my second Marleigh sisters novel, Unladylike Rules of Attraction, there is a powerful attraction between Anya and Damian. We see their physical attraction to each other and their vigorous banter and palpable tension. Things get steamy under the bedsheets before they fall in love. (I lie. The action is in a garden and not under the bedsheets at all.) Tessa Dare pushes against this prevailing trope by giving her heroines an independent life and strong ideals, so that by the time they meet their love interest, they often fall in lust first and explore this before they fall in love. Assumption Five: Good women have sex in a strictly missionary position There is of course the memorable vertical scene in the first season of Bridgerton. I have a scene on a table in Unladylike Lessons, and my leading ladies like to sometimes lead in the bedroom too and, at times, tend to be on top of things, if you know what I mean. A few tips for sex in historical fiction: –Make full use of the fact that Regency clothing does not come off fast! Instead of speeding through that bit, can it be built into the action? –Use the repressive tropes to your advantage by letting the heroine fight against them and assert her agency. The tropes can also help in delaying gratification and letting romance build slower. –Use the sex not just to do a few swoony scenes but also to develop the emotional relationship between the people involved –Do your characters talk during sex and can you use this to develop the story? –Let the characters learn more about themselves through their sex life. Make sure they’re growing as people, growing in how they see each other and how much they like each other –Can you name body parts instead using overdone euphemisms? Were there any interesting names (and props!) used in your chosen historical time period? –Whatever your ideals about sex – consent, female agency, pleasure, paying attention to one another – show them to us through the action. –But, my dears, mostly, enjoy! *** View the full article
-