Watching the Deals-3

Recent Romance Sales:

Annie Windsor's BLOODLINE, the first in a paranormal trilogy, the story of a warrior-witch, a NYPD detective and the terrible murder that brings them together, to Charlotte Herscher at Ballantine, in a very nice deal, in a three-book deal, by Nancy Yost of Lowenstein-Yost (World). "Very nice deal" means $50-99,000.00.

Molly O'Keefe's JIGSAW HEARTS, about a tortured journalist hiding from the world and the FBI agent sent undercover to investigate him, to Wanda Ottewell for Harlequin Superromance, in a nice deal, in a three-book deal, by Pam Hopkins at Hopkins Literary Associates. "Nice deal" means $1-49,000.00.

Marie Bostwick's untitled, again to Audrey LaFehr at Kensington, in a nice deal, by Jill Grosjean at Jill Grosjean Literary Agency.

Roxanne Rustand's INTENSIVE CARE, in which a couple who marries against all odds faces a serious accident, bringing into focus their joy, mistakes, and heartbreak, to Johanna Raisanen at Harlequin Everlasting, in a nice deal, by Roberta Brown at the Brown Literary Agency (World).

Sharlene MacLaren's LOVING MISS MERIWETHER, in which a young Bostonian woman travels to Kentucky to assume the job as schoolteacher, but finds tender love instead, and SARAH, MY BELOVED, in which a woman travels to Kentucky as a mail-order bride only to find her intended has married another, to Christine Whitaker at Whitaker House, in a nice deal, by Joyce Hart at Hartline Literary Agency (world).

Deborah Wright's THE HISTORY OF LUCY'S LOVE LIFE IN 10 1/2 CHAPTERS, in which Lucy, fired from her job as assistant to a scientist, retaliates by stealing her boss' prototype for a time travel machine, meeting history's most famous lovers, and trying to discover the true nature of love and if the love of her life has been right under her nose, to Alicia Bothwell Mancini at Plume, by Melissa Chinchillo at Fletcher & Parry, on behalf of Simon Trewin at PFD UK (NA).
UK rights to Little, Brown.

Kristin Harmel's THE ART OF FRENCH KISSING, in which a charmingly neurotic record exec in search of the perfect kiss in Paris stumbles upon much more with a headstrong journalist with a family secret while she tries in vain to save the public image of her volatile, zany rock star client, to Rebecca Isenberg at Warner Five Spot, in a nice deal, by Jenny Bent at Trident Media Group (world).

Recent Mysteries Sold:

Darlene Franklin's GUNFIGHT AT GRACE GULCH, a reenactment of a famous gunfight during Oklahoma's centennial goes terribly wrong, to Susan Downs at Barbour, in a nice deal, by Tamela Hancock Murray at Hartline Literary Agency.

Lisa Harris's BAKER'S FATAL DOZEN, in which a baker goes missing and a woman is hot on the trail of a sticky scandal that begins with murder, to Susan Downs at Barbour, in a nice deal, by Joyce Hart at Hartline Literary Agency (World).

Nancy Mehl's A BIRD IN THE HAND, in which a woman is working hard to get her late aunt's rare bookstore on its feet when she discovers an old map tucked within the pages of a book, to Susan Downs at Barbour, in a nice deal, by Janet Benrey at Hartline Literary Agency.

Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award winner Karen E. Olson's WATERLOGGED, the next Annie Seymour mystery, moving to Kristen Weber at NAL, in a two-book deal, by Jack Scovil at Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency (NA).

From Publisher'sMarketplace.Com.

And, just to keep things in perspective, remember that the most expensive book ever published is hitting the shelves this Fall: Random House paid $8,000,000 for the new book from Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain. Thirteen Moons arrives in October.

How They Do It -1: Nora Roberts

In a recent article, Nora Roberts explained her work ethic as well as how she works.

First, she writes 8 to 5, Monday through Friday.
Second, she does this consistently.
Third, she limits her commitments: she relates that she may not see anyone other than her family for days, or weeks, at a time.

As for how she works, she doesn't plot nor does she outline. She works on one book at a time, and completes it in three drafts. Beginning with a key character, or setting, or event, she builds a story from there - crafting a story that she would want to read.

For example, in her latest - Angels Fall - she began with the key idea of a woman who sees a murder, but she is not close enough to stop it, and too isolated to be able to get other help in time. Later, when she reports the killing, she isn't believed.

"That's how I build," Roberts said. "What's the situation? And here is basically the setting I'm thinking of. ... What is she doing there? Why did she come there? Did she live there? Did she move there? Is she visiting, passing through ... and why doesn't anybody believe her? Oh, well, maybe nobody believes her because she's not only new in town, but she's a little bit crazy. Oh, that's good!"

At the age of 55, Nora Roberts has had 165 published works under both her name and the pen name JD Robb. What's her secret? "I think I have a really strong work ethic, plus I really love the work. I think if you love what you do, you do a lot of it. I have a lot of discipline ... and I have a fast pace."

Rules for Writing Romantic Suspense

Nora Roberts has an article entitled Crafting Romantic Suspense available online. While it doesn't have a rule list, it does have lots of info.

Deidre Savoy has a good how-to article, as well: her view being that romantic suspense is a full romance and a full murder mystery, combined.

From Becci Clayton, there are seven rules for writing romantic suspense (go here for the full article:

1. Romantic Relationship - First and foremost, these stories are romance.

2. Logical Suspense Plot - As with any suspense story, any error in logical suspense will not be forgiven by the reader.

3. Include Sexual Tension - ... a careful balance must be created between the suspense and the romantic relationship and the internal and external conflicts.

4. Insure the Correct Use of Language - ... A romantic suspense tends to be more spare and "clean" or "everyday" where straightforward romance tends to have a more emotional, intimate descriptive flavor.

5. Get the Details Right - ... If you are writing a story set in the early 1960's, DON'T put a laser sight on the murder rifle. They weren't available to the public yet....

Not as well defined as other genres, eh? Perhaps reading through books considered "Romantic Suspense" helps .... And before you think contemporary works, like that of Nora Roberts, Suzanne Brockmann, and Catherine Coulter, remember Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Oh, and there's a sub-sub-genre here: humorous romantic suspense, with Jayne Ann Krentz leading that pack.

Author Interviews Worth Your Time

From Elizabeth George, the mystery novelist and creator of the Inspector Lynley series (currently on PBS) an interview that includes the advice to write an author a note of appreciation for their work, when you stumble across something that really moves you.

American Grand Master Lawrence Block has an interview which includes the savvy encouragement to write what you would like to read. Lots more here.

Robert B. Parker, creator of Spenser and Jesse Stone, talked about his writing process: five pages a day, no outline. Yep, that's right: no outline.

P.D. James told Salon Magazine that she loves the way that writing mysteries allows her to bring order out of disorder, and while she mentions many great mystery writers (Chandler, MacDonald, Hammett), her favorite author of all time: Jane Austen - because of this shared love of order.

Carolyn Hart, master of the cozy mystery, joins with the advice to write what you want to read - ignoring the market, as well as how she fell into cozies.

Many more writer interviews are available for free downloading at The Paris Review. The masters are here: Truman Capote, TS Eliot, Dorothy Parker, Shelby Foote, PD James, John Irving.

For more mystery writer interviews, try Houston's Murder By the Book site.

Rules for Writing Mysteries

Writing a murder mystery is different than other kinds of fiction. There are rules to follow, and there's the trick: to tell the story of a killing (or more) in an entertaining manner, when it's been done so often before, and so well.

Masters of the craft have offered their own insight. Listen to Agatha Christie give some tips during a BBC interview.

One of my personal favorites is James M. Cain, who advises (in the preface to Double Indemnity):

"I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort."

Online, you can read the excellent Atlantic Monthly article written by Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder.

Elmore Leonard has 10 Writing Rules, the full context appearing on his website with an edited version below:

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

American Grand Master Hillary Waugh offers the following six rules:

1. All clues discovered by the detective must be made available to the reader. (This is where Fair Play comes in.)
2. The murderer must be introduced early. (This doesn’t mean he has to make a personal appearance, but the reader must know of his existence.)
3. The crime must be significant… usually murder, though kidnapping, blackmail, theft and the like will also do.
4. There must be detection. The solution must not be stumbled on; it must be sought and found.
5. The number of suspects must be known, and the murderer must be among them.
6. Nothing extraneous may be introduced.


Finally, from the creator of Phylo Vance, S.S. Van Dine, the following, oft-quoted twenty (20) stringent rules are proscribed:

1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.
2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.

3. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.

4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering someone a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It's false pretenses.

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions - not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker.

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusion through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved the problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

7. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader's trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.

8. The problem of the crime must be solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic seances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio.

9. There must be but one detective - that is, but one protagonist of deduction - one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn't know who his co-dedutcor is. It's like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story - that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest.

11. A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is too easy a solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person - one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion.

12. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders; the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature.

13. Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al. have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irredeemably spoiled by any such wholesome culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds.

14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure.

15. The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent - provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face - that all the clues really pointed to the culprit - and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying.

16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no "atmospheric" preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action, and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.

17. A professional criminal must never be shouldered with the guilt of a crime in a detective story. Crimes by house-breakers and bandits are the province of police departments - not of authors and brilliant amateur detectives. A really fascinating crime in one committed by a pillar of a church, or a spinster noted for her charities.

18. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident of a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such and anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader.

19. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plottings and war politics belong in a different category of fiction - in secret-service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gemuetlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader's everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions.

20. And (to give my Credo an even score of items) I herewith list a few of the devices which no self-respecting detective-story writer will now avail himself of. They have been employed often, and are familiar to all true lovers of literary crime. To use them is a confession of the author's ineptitude and lack of originality. (a) Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by the suspect. (b) The bogus spiritualistic seance to frighten the culprit into giving himself away. (c) Forged fingerprints. (d) The dummy-figure alibi. (e) The dog that does not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar. (f) The final pinning of the crime on a twin, or a relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent, person. (g) The hypodermic syringe and knockout drops. (h) The commission of the murder in a locked room after the police have actually broken in. (i) The word-association test for guilt. (j) the cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unraveled by the sleuth.

Source: Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Fiction
by S.S. Van Dine (pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright) - originally published in the American Magazine (1928-Sep),and included in omnibus Philo Vance Murder Cases (1936).

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Book Awards

There are an unbelievable amount of awards giving to good writing. First, there are the overall, famous ones:

Caldecott Medal
Man Booker Prize
National Book Awards
National Book Critics Circle Awards
Newbery Medal
Nobel Prize for Literature
PEN/Faulkner Award
Pulitzer Prize.

Then, the less famous but still a big deal:

Audie Awards
Bram Stoker Awards
Coretta Scott King Awards
Hugo Awards
IACP Cookbook Awards
James Beard Foundation/KitchenAid Book Awards
Michael L. Printz Award for Teen Literature
National Academies Communication Awards
Nebula Awards
Newbery Medal
Philip K. Dick Awards
Quill Book Awards
Whitbread Book Awards.

And then, those specific to a genre and therefore, for these writers at least, should be listed at the top of this post:

Mystery:

Anthony Award
Agatha Award
Barry Award
Derringer Award
Dilys Award
Edgar Award
Gumshoe Award
Hammett Prize
Herodotus Award
Macavity Award
Shamus Award

Romance:
RITA
RNA's Romance Prize
RRA
Sapphire Award
Zircon Award

For a long, long list of book awards, check out literature-awards.com.

And, if you want to know where the bar is set, check out Julia Spencer-Fleming's debut novel, In the Bleak Midwinter - which won more mystery awards for a debut novel than ever before in 2003 (Anthony, Agatha, Dilys, Macavity, Barry, and the St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery, together with a nomination for the Gumshoe).

Watching the Deals-2

For the second week of August, some interesting deals as reported in Publishers' Marketplace:

Debbie Macomber's KNIT TOGETHER: Discover God's Pattern for Your Life, has sold with the book being described as "saying that when we come to recognize our deepest longing, we can discover our potential and reach for our dreams, with her own journey of discovery weaved throughout the book," to Chip Macgregor of FaithWords (formerly Warner Faith), in a major deal, by Wendy Lawton of Books & Such Literary Agency (world). Major deal? $500,000+.

Brenda Mott's COWBOY ATTITUDE, "in which a heroine searching for her missing sister must rely on the aid of her former fiance while trying hard to keep her old feelings of love from resurfacing," to Victoria Curran at Harlequin Superromance, in a nice deal, by Michelle Grajkowski at 3 Seas Literary Agency (world). Nice? $1-$49,000.

Catherine Mann's MIAMI DYNASTY, part of an upcoming Desire continuity series, to Melissa Jeglinski at Harlequin, in a nice deal by Barbara Collins Rosenberg at Rosenberg Group (world). Catherine Mann is a RITA Award Winner, as well as National Readers' Choice Award Finalist. Nice? $1-$49,000.

Cynthia Polansky's REMOTE CONTROL, "about a 31-year-old Jewish control freak with an unlikely last name, who dies in a medical mishap and calls upon her supernatural status to "rescue" her widowed husband from the sexy clutches of their gold-digging, thrill-seeking blonde accountant, with disastrous results," to Karen Syed at Echelon Press, in a nice deal (world English). No agent reported here. Nice? $1-$49,000.

Abby Gaines's ACCIDENTALLY WED, about "a reality show stunt gone wrong resulting in a marriage where happily ever after is the last thing on anyone's mind," to Victoria Curan at Harlequin, in a nice deal, by Pamela Harty of The Knight Agency. Abby's real name is Adele Gautier. Nice? $1-$49,000.

Shiloh Walker's UNDER REALM, "the launch of an edgy alternative fantasy series," to Cindy Hwang at Berkley Sensation, in a two-book deal, by Roberta Brown of the Brown Literary Agency (World).

Hank Phillippi Ryan's PRIME TIME, the first in a series "featuring a 40-something TV reporter who discovers a link between a suspicious car accident and hidden messages in spam emails while juggling an on-camera world that values beauty more than journalism," to Ann Leslie Tuttle at Harlequin Next, in a nice two-book deal, by Kristin Nelson at the Nelson Literary Agency (world). Nice? $1-$49,000.

Saralee Rosenberg's ALL IN THE CARDS, "a humorous, heartfelt romp through bedrooms, boardrooms, and backyards, making unlikely heroines out of two bickering, its-your-day-to-drive moms," to Lyssa Keusch at Avon, for publication in late 2007, by Deborah Schneider of Gelfman Schneider.

What's an ISBN?

ISBN stands for "International Standard Book Number," and it is a ten-digit number identifying books being sold internationally.

Why have one? ISBNs distinguish one title (or one edition of a title) from one specific publisher. That particular ISBN remains with that particular title/edition, which helps in the book's marketing not only to booksellers, but to libraries, universities, wholesalers, and whatnot. Think of it as that edition's SSN.

What do its four divisions mean? (1) Location of the publisher (national or geographic group); (2) Publisher; (3) Title or edition of a title; and (4) Validation, which is a single digit shown at the end, providing the ISBN's accuracy. If you see an "X," think Roman numerals - here, it stands for 10.


Source: isbn.com

Learning the Publishing Industry From Your Chair

Thanks to the Web, there are several sites that will educate you about the publishing industry. It's up to you to read their content regularly and do your homework on what's selling and what's not - and why.

Of course, you need to do your footwork, too. Check out what's being touted in the grocery store's book section, as well as WalMart's and Target's book aisles. Roam through there and see what people are wanting to read. Do it regularly. It goes without saying that you're also going to be doing this at the local bookstore. Talking to the worker bees there - "what's hot this month?" - can be very enlightening.

As for the sites, there are a few that attempt to do this forecasting/prediction business for you. Publisher's Marketplace, for one. BooksInPrint IntelliMarketing looks pretty, too.

However, as one of my famous, very successful, author role models recently warned me, "remember whatever wonderful things that are said are simply whatever the publisher or agent or whoever sent to PM. It isn't exactly unbiased."

And, there's another negative: they're not free. PM costs around $250/yr for the privilege of accessing its site information, for example. And, you have to email BooksInPrintIntelliMarketing in order to learn its cost. Now, that's skeery.

So, we come back around to the free web sites. Here are a few:

WriteNew's long list of industry links
PublishingIndustry.Net's MostRead Links Page
BookWire.Net
USATodayOnline's Book Section
ParaPublishing's Collection of Statistics - a must read
Yahoo News on Books/Publishing
Google News - nice to create a news alert here for your particular interest - say romantic suspense, or cozies

2006 Winners of Bulwer-Litton Fiction Contest: Laugh a Little

Jim Guigli, of Carmichael, California, has won the overall award in the 24th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with the following entry:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

From the Contest's site:

"An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873).

"The goal of the contest is the essence of simplicity: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "pursuit of the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

"The contest began in 1982 as a quiet campus affair, attracting only three submissions. This response being a thunderous success by academic standards, the contest went public the following year and ever since has annually attracted thousands of entries from all over the world."

In the Romance category, Dennis Barry of Dothan, Alabama, won with:

Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine.

In the Detective Fiction category, Derek Fisher of Ottawa, Ontario, claimed the prize with this entry:

It was a dreary Monday in September when Constable Lightspeed came across the rotting corpse that resembled one of those zombies from Michael Jackson's "Thriller," except that it was lying down and not performing the electric slide.

You have more self-control than I do if you can leave the contest site without surfing thru their Special Salute to Breasts Category, as well as the Vile Pun finalists - here, the winning pun from Dick Davis of Circle Pines, New Mexico:

As Johann looked out across the verdant Iowa River valley, and beyond to the low hills capped by the massive refrigerator manufacturing plant, he reminisced on the history of the great enterprise from its early days, when he and three other young men, all of differing backgrounds, had only their dream of bringing refrigeration to America's heartland to sustain them, to the present day, where they had become the Midwest's foremost group of refrigerator magnates.

To read the runners up, as well as the entries in varying categories, or to educate yourself on the rules in preparation for next year's contest, go here.