Category Archives: Mystery

Why Do You Read?

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Why do you read? For pleasure or for instruction?

I read for pleasure and instruction. Because I’m still writing, I read for instruction, books like John MacDonald’s The Deep Blue Good-By. I’m reading this because I’m writing another mystery and I haven’t read that many mysteries. I’m also reading for pleasure and it takes me to a place I’ve never been before.

Reading is important to me. It’s instructional to me as a writer. Without reading, how do I know how to write? Perhaps through watching TV? Never. Or reading books other than those I want to write? That is counter productive, at least for me.

Say a writer reads children’s stories, but the writer writes mysteries. A writer should read the type of story he/she wants to write. Although some writers don’t do this and yet they are successful writers. The reason they are successful writers is that whatever they read, the pattern of writing gets inside of them. And because reading is instructional, whether they know it or not. It may be instructional in an unconscious way, but it’s there, waiting for reader to write. Or not. Obviously, not all readers become writers or we would be inundated with writers and their books.

If I read a mystery, I learn how to write drama, suspense and sometimes humor. Or say the writer reads autobiographies and yet writes humor. Still the writer learns through reading autobiographies how to write successfully.

It’s like learning to read. Did you read cereal boxes? I bet you did. You want to learn things, you want to learn how to read and write. Eventually, reading becomes unconscious. You just sit down and read, forgetting that once you didn’t know how to.

When I teach creative writing I always bring a story to dissect. How does the writer achieve the effect he/she wants? By dissecting the story my students learn how the writer does this. Not that my students go home and write a good story. It takes practice to learn to how to write well.

For the reader, the story may keep the reader in suspense or the reader may laugh (or smile) at the humor in the story or the reader may sit back and think about the story. If the reader finishes the story and wants another: this is evidence of good writing.

Now that we’ve discussed reading, I’d like to know why YOU read? For pleasure? To be carried to a world you never thought about? To see the future? To entertain your child? Or for instruction for yourself?

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Sue Powers’ fictions have appeared in numerous publications. Some were published by Saturday Evening Post, New Millenniums Writings and Blue Earth Review and many others. She was a recipient of a fellowship and grant from the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Prose, and two of her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her mystery, She’s Not There, will be published soon. She’s now writing another mystery.

My Brother Richard

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I wrote a mystery that my writing group disliked. My writing group only accepts and critiques literary works, and the mystery I wrote isn’t literary. So they rejected it.

But there are people to whom I value their opinions. And they liked it. So I decided to self-publish the mystery. But when I went to self-publish my book, it wanted me to embed my fonts. I have no idea what that means, so my brother took over. My brother is an environmental engineer and quite brilliant (he got a 100% in math on his GRE plus he now has a PH.D.) So I let him take over, fully confident he would do the right thing.

Now I’m waiting, as there were changes to be made. His wife is reading my mystery and the changes I made. We’ll see what she thinks. Meanwhile, I’m writing another mystery. This one involves a murder where the first one involved a missing person. It requires a lot of reading.

So I’m reading Tripwire, by Lee Child. I’ve gotten ideas from this book, and now I’m just curious how it ends. There are other authors I could read, but I want to finish this book first.

Here’s hoping I finish my second mystery and it is good enough to be self-published!
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Sue Powers is an accomplished short story writer. She has a book of short stories entitled A Surprising Measure of Subliminal Sadness that is seeking a publisher.

My Mystery

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I wrote a mystery that my literary writing group told me wasn’t very good. But when my friends who are mystery readers liked it, I began to think maybe it wasn’t so bad. Then one friend told me she was infatuated with my characters and another said it was going to be great. Well that really put me to thinking about self-publishing this mystery.

Self-publishing isn’t easy. Did I want to put my mystery in Kindle? Have it be a paperback? Hardcover? There’s Ingram Spark and Create Space (Amazon) – both offer self-publishing.

To gain more information, I joined Ingram Spark’s blog. Their first blog was about ‘metadata,’ which they said I need it for my strategic marketing plan. (As if I have one.) Metadata is about the title, subtitle, price, publication date, ISBN and any other information so readers can find your book.

Your metadata should be as descriptive as possible, including elements such as what genre the book fits into, who is telling the story, and keywords or information that will appeal to the intended audience.

Specific descriptive information that includes terms like “beach read,” “Italian cookbook,” or “authoritative biography” will help put the book title on the radar of readers who are looking for a certain kind of book.

Now I have to join Ingram and create a name that is NOT Indie. So I’ve been thinking about names. SJP Words; SJP Bookworm; SJP Woodworks; SJP Press (sounds like I’m a publisher). The reason I need a name is because people might have questions or God forbid complaints. That way they can contact me.

I also need some ISBN numbers. One for Kindle, Nook and other readers. Another for softcover. And the last for hardcover.

Plus I need a good book description so readers will know what the book is about. In my case, it’s just about a woman who disappears. It just so happens that the woman is the ex-wife of a mobster and someone is following one of the people who are investigating.

All this just because I wrote a mystery.

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Sue Powers is essentially a short story writer. She often asks herself what business does she have writing and publishing a mystery? Yet she has – it’s called She’s Not There. And she’s writing another mystery!

Marketing and Writing

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How much time do you spend writing vs marketing? I would imagine it depends on what you are writing. Say you’re writing a novel, a non-fiction book or a mystery. It takes a considerable amount of time to write these. But if you’re writing short stories, it takes much less time, so you can do more ‘marketing’ (I.e. getting your stories published.)

Short stories are different from full-length manuscripts. First, you don’t need an agent. Second, the first step is to get the story published. Lastly, once you’ve completed your book, then you can start marketing it.

In the days before Internet, writers would get fan mail in the post, actual physical letters, (some still do) and they would answer those letters. There are some great pictures of Hemingway standing up at his typewriter answering his letters every afternoon.

When people would do interviews, they would go on physical tours, to bookstores, or to fairs or different venues. Charles Dickens used to go around speaking. I believe people still go on physical tours to market their book.

Try and think of how you can integrate marketing in a sustainable way for you that’s creative and also meets the goals of what you want for your writing. Do you want to sell more books? Or do you want to become famous? It’s rare for an author to be come famous. So set your goal to sell more books. (By the way, I once had a student who wanted a formula to become famous author!)

Publishers rarely market their books other than putting them on their website. So it’s up to the author to market her book. The exception is Windy City Publishers. They’re a hybrid publisher that does the marketing for you. Of course they’re rather expensive, but if you are fed up trying to publish your book the traditional way, this may be the way to go.

There are other ways to self-publish. BookBaby is one of them. BookBaby offers print, e-books or print and ebooks. Plus it’s an affordable e-book self-publisher with no sales commission, plus your book gets an ISBN number through them. There’s also Amazon who publishes your book on Kindle.

I’m sure there are other self-publishing companies. Investigate and get back to me.

Practice, practice!

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Red reading small 2

After many drafts, I can finally say I’ve written a mystery book and it’s done. Done, but I dumped it. Hang in with me. I’ll tell you why.

I’ve been a short story writer since the day I could write. Then I suddenly found I had the time to try something longer. Having always wanted to write a mystery, I decided why not write one? I’ve the got time, I’ve got writing skills, what could wrong?

Well just about everything. The first draft was terrible. I forgot to follow the rules of a mystery where one clue leads to another. But the narrator had a voice that some in my writing group actually liked. Good omen, I thought.

So for the following next drafts, I concentrated on the rules of mystery writing, but the narrator’s voice got lost. It was dull, flat, uninteresting. Even I thought so.

Despite my best efforts, the following draft did not improve all that much. I began to feel mystery writing was simply not my genre.

So during a break from it to gain some perspective, I decided not to let my writing group read the final draft. I mean, really: How many times could I ask them to read the same thing over again? I wished to remain in the group, not bore them to death. But they said they were invested in it. So I had to give in and let them read my last draft.

The feedback was this: Neither the characters nor the plot were interesting enough to keep readers reading! Needless to say, they were right. That clinched it. Into the garbage it went. (Not really – I just set it aside.)

So I bought a book on how to write a mystery. Read it cover to cover. And now that I’ve gotten the hang of it and know my characters better, I’m thinking I may start writing a new mystery.

And that’s where I’m at now. It really does take practice to perfect one’s craft if you want to write something worthwhile. So I’m plugging along. Learning the mystery writing craft, i.e. perfecting my plot, my pacing, my characters.

Wish me luck. I get the feeling I’m going to need it.

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S.J. Powers (aka Sue Powers) has a dazzling array of publishing credits and she’s also won a few awards, such an Illinois Arts Council fellowship in Prose.. Despite some very nice rejections, she is still searching for a publisher for her collection of stories, A Surprising Measure of Subliminal Sadness. 

She lives in a Chicago suburb with her partner, two cats, one bird and a snake (the snake is on loan) and can be reached at firegut@sbcglobal.net.

Mystery Writing—Oh Dear!

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Bored woman writing immensely long essay.

 

 

I’ve been doing something I’ve always wanted to do: writing a mystery.

Sounds easy, right? Especially if you’re an accomplished writer. Think of a premise and the book should practically write itself. Well not exactly.

If you’ve been a literary short story writer all your life, you might want to create something more than just a good plot.

So I’ve created these goals for myself:

First, add a main character who develops as the plot develops. Which is what I’ve tried to do. But this has turned out to be more challenging than I ever thought.

Second, create 200+ pages. This is definitely a challenge for me. I’ve never even written a novel. In fact, I think the longest story I ever wrote was only 20 pages. Now to write ten times that and make it engaging.

Still, I’m plunging ahead.

But I’m back to being a beginner again. I will admit as a beginning story writer, I once wrote a story from the point of view of a grape. Yes, a grape. You’d think it would have been all downhill after that. But apparently there was enough going for the story that I got encouragement to keep writing from an editor at the New Yorker.

Needless to say I continued. Through my marriage, through the raising of my kids, through going back to school for my master’s degree, and through various jobs. It was hard not to listen to the characters’ voices roaming in my mind, even with toddlers yelling in my ears. So I kept writing. But perfecting my craft took years.

Now I have a book of stories, still waiting to be published…. Should I give up on finding a publisher and self-publish? At what point should I consider this? At the point of despair? I’m nearing that point.

But I’m not giving up. Instead, I’ve switched genres and am now writing a whole book, not a single short story, or a series of stories. An entire book based on a mystery.

But writing a mystery book is totally different from writing a short story. It’s a whole new genre. A whole new beast. Like going from being a water creature to now having to acclimate yourself to living on land. And that’s where I’m at, still acclimating myself.

Except I don’t have thousands of years to adapt. I have to finish the book, fully acclimated or not. And along the way, I have had to ask myself: Is the book interesting? Is the pacing right? What about the narrator? Is she engaging? Do I have too many sentences that begin with “I”?

My writing group thinks it still needs more work, and so do I. So I’m going to keep at it. After all, isn’t an author just an amateur writer who perseveres?

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Sue Powers, aka.S. J. Powers, has received a Prose fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and praise from her writing group. Her story, 13 Rules, won first place in the fine literary magazine, New Millennium Writings. She is now working on a mystery entitled She’s Not There.

 

Blog Your Book

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Guest blog by The Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer

Woman at desk thinking

Writers write to share their story with readers. That’s it in a nutshell. Of course, getting paid is nice, but don’t count on it. Getting your writing out in the universe is the objective.

Writing your book can take a really long time, sometimes years. And all this time you are likely floundering along, rewriting and editing, stuck in a bubble that lacks feedback or motivation. But finally, you deem the book done.

Now your choices are traditional publishing, self-publishing, or sticking your masterpiece in a drawer….

What about blogging your book?

  • Set up your blog.
  • Post short installments of your book weekly. This will build a following on Facebook or other social media sites.
  • Encourage constructive comments, the operative word “constructive” i.e. useful and insightful.

Maybe you’ve already established a following by blogging funny stories about your children or pets. Collect them and publish them in book form. You already have your audience.

If your genre is fiction:

  • Finish each post with a cliffhanger, and never miss an opportunity to market your book-in-progress everywhere you can.
  • Develop an enticing tagline.
  • Publish a weekly or monthly e-newsletter to your followers with side notes about your book.

Make it short, and make it frequent, the keys to effective blogging. When you finish your book, you will already have readers and feedback.

Postscript from Sue Powers:

Pat Childers, the Oldest Living Middle-Age Writer, is writing a mystery, working title You Name It, and I’m writing a mystery [as S.J. Powers] called Twist.

Stay tuned…..