By popular demand, a re-blog on DYI Kindle e-books; I did it, and so can you

DYI KINDLE e-books.

I did it!

Okay, that I should be a we, because my husband is the one with the patience, but between the two of us we converted all seven of my books into Kindle and put them on sale for .99 with only one exception, Troubled Sea at 2.99. We tried to do the ninety-nine cent bit with this book, as well, but Amazon deemed the file too large, which is a heads-up when writing my next book; keep the word count down. You can see all of my books on Amazon at
http://amzn.to/ro70QS

We also used Smashwords for all other digital formats, but that's a whole 'nother blog.

The tedious—but in the end, rewarding—exercise began with my decision to reclaim the rights to my books, and take over my writing destiny. This was not the easiest decision to make, as there are many authors out there who would kill for a publisher, but as a purely business decision, I think I did the right thing.

So now what? Pay someone to convert seven books? Not on my budget. We tackled the project ourselves and now I'm sharing with you what we learned. Was it easy? Nope. Was it worth it? Yep.

When I ended my publishing contracts, I asked for, and was granted, the rights to the cover art. This was a huge help, because the books were already for sale on Amazon, so we got to skip the new cover art process.

We are not techies, so I am going to lead you through these DYI steps in plain old English that even we understand. READ THE WHOLE BLOG FIRST, THEN BEGIN**.

1. Establish an account with Amazon Digital Text Platform. READ THE FINE PRINT! Yeah, I know, a pain in the you-know-what, but it will save you time, and even more pain.

2. Your manuscript MUST be in MS Word. If it is not, you gotta make it so.

3. Open your MS Word manuscript, SELECT ALL, and COPY.

4. Close MS Word.

5. Open Notepad in your computer's program list under Accessories. Then click EDIT and PASTE. (This will put your file in Notepad. Notepad will remove all previous formatting from your MS Word file.)

6. Click on EDIT and SELECT ALL in Notepad.

7. Click on EDIT and COPY.

8. Open a new file in MS Word.

9. Click on EDIT and PASTE. This will put the file from Notepad into a new (CLEAN) MS Word file to work with.

I know, this seems a little convoluted, and I am sure there are other, easier, methods, but this one worked for us, seven times, and was entirely FREE (my husband's favorite word.)

10. You now have a clean new file to work with. Go to your toolbar and click on the "start new paragraph sign" (if you can't find it, hit ctrl+shift+8) so you can see the paragraph marks and space dots (no double spaces between words allowed) in your manuscript. Click on EDIT, and SELECT ALL.

Format FONT to Times New Roman, 12 point. You can adjust font sizes as necessary for chapter titles, etc. later. We had NO luck with other fonts.

11. Click EDIT, SELECT ALL. (VERY IMPORTANT) and Format paragraph as follows:
Alignment Left
Outline level Body Text
Left and right 0
Special First line
By .5
Spacing before and after 0 point
Line spacing Single
Click OK

SAVE AS: Your book title

Now comes the fun part. You have to edit the manuscript. Change font sizes where necessary for chapter headings, and (this is important) insert page breaks at the end of each chapter. Make your manuscript look like it is supposed to, and for crying out loud DO NOT USE TABS.

**Whenever you see a warning in all caps and bold, rest assured this was a mistake we made.


If you do not have any photos in your document, SAVE AS Web Document (HTML). You will now have two* files to use for uploads; one in HTML FORMAT AND an MS WORD DOCUMENT. Hang in there with me, there is a reason for this.

It is now time to see how your book looks on a Kindle. To do this, guess what? you have to have access to a Kindle ebook reader. Use the email address that you set up for downloading Kindle books, and send an email:
(your username) @free.kindle.com
SUBJECT: convert.
Attach your WEB (HTML) document to this email (if no pictures)
Attach the MSWORD document (if there are pictures)
See, I told you there was a reason for two* types of documents!
Send the email.

Turn on your Kindle, make sure the WiFi connection is on, and within minutes, just like magic, your book will appear. If everything looks good, you are READY TO PUBLISH!
If not, go back to your word document, correct, save as Web Page, and re-upload to Amazon. I think I did this at least ten times for each book.

When you have it right, go to YOUR Amazon's Digital Text Platform account, follow the instructions, and upload your book.

If you have followed instructions, your book will be available for sale at Amazon Kindle store within a few days. If not, start over. Try it, let me know how it works for you. If you have questions, feel free to contact me at jinxschwartz@yahoo.com or kindlejunkie@yahoo.com.

All good things must end: Last day of Mystery We Write Christmas tour

I AM LOOKING FOR YOUR COMMENT! LAST CHANCE TO WIN A FREE e-book.

After two weeks of blogs by fifteen authors, we have reached the part where we give away the books we promised. This entails going back to all the blogs, seeing who commented, then drawing names from from a hat to keep it clean. I will be doing this on Sunday or Monday, so you have time to go the the following blogs, look up my blog, and make a comment!

Here is a list of the blogs:

Nov. 25 – Earl Staggs http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com/ 
Nov. 26 – Anne K. Albert  http://anne-k-albert.blogspot.com/ 
Nov. 27 – Beth Anderson http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com/blog/
Nov. 28 – Ron Benrey http://blog.benrey.com/
Nov. 29 – Pat Browning http://pbrowning.blogspot.com/
Nov. 30 – John M. Daniel http://johnmdaniel.blogspot.com/
Dec. 1 – Alice Duncan http://aliceduncanblog.blogspot.com/
Dec. 2 – Wendy Gager http://wsgager.blogspot.com/
Dec. 3 – M. M. Gornell http://mmgornell.wordpress.com/
Dec. 4 – Timothy Hallinan http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/
Dec. 5 – Jackie King http://www.jacqking.com/blog/

Dec. 6 – Jean Henry Mead http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com/  and http://theviewfrommymountaintop.blogspot.com/
Dec. 7 – Marilyn Meredith http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/
Dec. 8 – Mike Orenduff http://thepotthief.blogspot.com/

Earl Staggs, my fellow Texan and last, but by NO means least, guest on this MYSTERY WE WRITE blog tour

BOOK GIVEAWAY! Earl will be giving away a print copy of Memory of a Murder and a copy of the Short Stories fo Earl Staggs (e-book version) to lucky commenters randomly picked at the conclusion of this tour. Don't wait to leave your comments, because this tour is rounding up!

Derringer Award winning author Earl Staggs has seen many of his short stories published in magazines and anthologies. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine and as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. His novel MEMORY OF A MURDER earned thirteen Five Star reviews online at Amazon and B&N. His column “Write Tight” appears in the online magazine Apollo’s Lyre. He is also a contributing blog member of Murderous Musings and Make Mine Mystery. He hosts workshops for the Muse Online Writers Conference and the Catholic Writers Conference Online and is a frequent speaker at conferences and writers groups.  Email: earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net  Website:  http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com/

Today Earl shares with us: HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED

Once he’d figured it all out and knew whodunnit, Adrian Monk, everyone’s favorite OCD TV detective, would say, “Here’s what happened.”

Then he would tell how the crime occurred. As he described it, the audience viewing at home saw the event take place on the screen exactly as it happened in the past.

What better way to let an audience know what happened in the past than with both a narrative retelling AND a visual reenactment?  They can do that in movies and on TV.  Writers do not have that luxury, but we still have to tell our readers, “Here’s what happened.”  We call it backstory.

We have different ways of presenting backstory. We can have the narrator stop telling the current story and tell the backstory.  If it goes on for a long time, however, we run the risk of   boring readers and tempting them to skip over the “info dump” completely.  Imagine Monk telling what happened without the visual reenactment.  His show would never have lasted as long as it did.

One way to bring in backstory -- our version of a visual reenactment -- is to “show” what happened before, complete with dialogue and action exactly as it happened.  That requires, first of all, a clear transition to the past so readers aren’t confused about where they are in the story.  Once that’s done, the scene plays out just as it did before. Here’s an example, beginning with a transition:

Jane would never forget the day Dan left. She’d walked in the door and saw his bags packed in the foyer.  She’d hurried into the dining room to find him sitting at the table.

            “What’s going on, Dan?” she asked.

            “I can’t take it anymore.  I’m leaving.”

            Yada, yada, yada.

When the reenactment is finished, another clear transition is needed, of course, to bring readers back to the present without confusion. 

Another way to work in backstory, and a favorite of mine, is to bring it out in dialogue between two characters as part of the current story.  Like this:

            Jane knew Margie had something on her mind and waited for her to speak.

Margie took a sip of her wine and set her glass on the table, rotating it slowly with her hands. After several moments, she said, “Jane, you never did tell me why Dan left.”

            “I’m not sure myself. I came home and saw his bags packed and sitting in the foyer.”

            “Didn’t he say anything?”

Jane turned to the window and looked out. “I asked him what was going on.  He said he couldn’t take it anymore and he was leaving.”

            “Couldn’t take what anymore?”

            Yada, yada, yada.

Another method is a quick flashback.  Here’s how that might be done:

Dan had left two years ago.  She’d entered the house to see his bags packed and sitting in the foyer. When she asked him what was going on he said, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving.” She still didn’t understand why.

A short flashback like that is not a major intrusion to the current story and chances are, you won’t lose the readers. It lacks the immediacy and drama of a reenactment, however.

In a story called, “That Night in Galveston,” I used a slightly different form of flashback. Amanda Barnes is kidnapped by a crippled, disfigured man with a gun and forced to drive to a vacant warehouse. She doesn’t remember the man and has no idea why he is doing this.  As she drives, little bits of information she’d wiped from her memory from twenty years before flash from her subconscious mind.  Here’s one of them:

Darkness. . .waves crashing against a pier. . .sounds of an amusement park in the distance. . .someone down on all fours. . .screaming. . .begging. . .

Shortly after that one, there’s this one:

Three men standing over him. . .yelling. . .kicking. . .swinging something. . .

And a little later, this one:

Gordie standing over her. . .pulling her to her feet…forcing a pipe into her hand…“Hit him, you little bitch, or I’ll hit you with it”. . .

Amanda is pulled into the past even further when something flashes from before she ran away from home and hitchhiked to Galveston.

A thick, burly man entering her bedroom. . . holding a finger to his lips to say, “Don’t wake your mother. We don’t want her to know our secret.”. . unable to breathe under his weight. . .biting her lip to keep from crying out from the pain he caused her inside. . .

This altered flashback method worked well in this particular story. It was a graphic, dramatic, and efficient way to bring out the backstory. I liked it so much I gave it a name:  “backflash.”

In many of our stories, we can’t get away from backstory. We have to tell our readers, “Here’s what happened.”  Part of our challenge is to do it in such a way that readers are not confused or bored and with minimal interruption to the current story.

By the way, if you’d like to know how Amanda escaped her fate, “That Night in Galveston” is one of the sixteen stories in my collection, SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS.  You’ll find more information about it over on my website:  http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com

While you’re there, you can visit with my special guest for the day. 

You can also read Chapter One of MEMORY OF A MURDER, my first mystery novel, which earned thirteen Five Star reviews.

And please don't forget to sign up for the drawing on December 9. The first name drawn from those who leave a comment will receive a print copy of MEMORY OF A MURDER.  The second name drawn will have a choice of an ebook or print copy of SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of sixteen of my best short stories.

 

Anne K. Albert, my MYSTERY WE WRITE guest for today. And she's the one who organized this blog tour!

Anne will be giving away e-book copes of Frank, Incense, and Muriel to some lucky commentors at the close of thie MYSTERY WE WRITE blog tour (December 9), so comment away and good luck! See below for details.*

Anne K. Albert’s award winning stories chill the spine, warm the heart and soothe the soul…all with a delightful touch of humor. A member of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and married to her high school sweetheart for more than a quarter of a century, it's a given she'd write mystery and romantic suspense. When not writing she loves to travel, visit friends and family, and of course, read using ‘Threegio’ her cherished and much beloved Kindle 3G!


So, heeeers Anne!

Thanks for featuring me, Jinx, on Day 13 of the second 2011 Mystery We Write Blog Tour. What a fantastic virtual ride this has been! I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

Speaking of rides, I understand you live part of each year on a boat moored in the Sea of Cortez. How exotic! Being more of a landlubber, myself, I spend a great deal of time writing in my van. Weather permitting, of course. I call it as my ‘cone of silence’. It’s an ideal place to just focus on writing. There are no disruptions, no internet connections, no telephone calls, and no friends or neighbors to distract me. It’s a sanctuary in every sense of the word.

Jinx – Describe your writing process.

Many authors plot their stories. They know the beginning, middle and end before they put a single word to paper.
Writing for me is more akin to being a fly on the wall.
I sit at the computer, or grab a pen and pad of paper, and focus on my characters. Like magic, I’m transported to their exact location and time. I’m there with them. I see, hear, feel, taste and smell everything they do. And like my characters, I have no idea what will happen next. Nothing is more exhilarating that watching the story unfold, and thinking, “Wow. I didn’t see that coming.” It’s a total rush!

Jinx – Tell us about your book.

FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL is set the week before Christmas when the stress of the holidays is enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves. Tensions increase when a friend begs Muriel to team up with a sexy private investigator to find a missing woman. Forced to deal with an embezzler, kidnapper, and femme fatale is bad enough, but add Muriel’s zany yet loveable family to the mix and their desire to win the coveted D-DAY (Death Defying Act of the Year) Award, and the situation can only get worse.
I’m proud of what readers are saying.
     One on Amazon said, “Anne K. Albert's…wit shines through this lightly suspenseful novel and her characters ring sweet and true. Can't wait to read more about Muriel, Frank and the rest of the gang.”
Author Marja McGraw said, “Laugh out loud funny in places, and that's my favorite kind of book. I was totally entertained by Frank, Incense and Muriel.”
     Night Owl Reviews gave it 5 stars and a Top Pick Award. “If you’re looking for a story with a little bit of humor, a whole lot of suspense and plenty of insanity, then you’ve found the perfect story.”
Frank, Incense and Muriel is also recipient of the prestigious 2011 Holt Medallion Award of Merit. J If you’d like to read a sample, click here: http://amzn.to/pg67sx

Thanks again, Jinx. I’ve enjoyed my virtual visit with you today. Happy writing, happy reading, and of course, happy boating!

Visit Anne online at her website http://fictionforyou.com/ and blogs http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/ and http://muriel-reeves-mysteries.blogspot.com/. She is also on Facebook www.facebook.com/annekalbert and Twitter www.twitter.com/AnneKAlbert.

*Remember to leave a comment and be automatically entered her comment-to-win contest.
CONTEST DETAILS: Comment to WIN! Three names will be selected at random from comments on all 14 of Anne’s Mystery We Write Blog Tour guest appearances. Winners will receive an e-copy of FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL, book one of the Muriel Reeves Mysteries. Visit http://tinyurl.com/3hzpqvv for her schedule and contest details. Good luck!

Didn't win? You can buy a copy http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Incense-and-Muriel-ebook/dp/B004CLYDRO/

Beth Anderson, my MYSTERY WE WRITE guest for today

BOOK GIVEAWAY! Beth will be giving away a copy of Night Sounds, Murder Online, and Raven Talks Back at the end of this tour (December 9) to a lucky commenter to HER blog at http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com

Beth Anderson is a multi-published, award winning author in several genres including romance and  mainstream crime fiction. A full time author, she now lives in Washington state. She has appeared on Chicago's WGN Morning Show, The ABC Evening News, as well as numerous other radio and cable television shows. She has guest lectured at Purdue University, Moraine Valley College, and many libraries and writers' conferences. She loves music, particularly jazz.

Today Beth is sharing with us:  The Part They Never Tell You About When You Start Writing A Novel

    I’ve seen it in so many writers and I’ve done it myself. Write a little, stop. Write a little, stop. Put it down, put it away where you don’t have to look at it, under your bed or hidden in a computer file where even Bill Gates couldn’t find it. Anything to get it out of your sight and off your mind, because you don’t WANT to write today. Today stretches out into tomorrow, into the next day, and eventually you find you’ve wasted a week, a month, a year, and have not even one page to show for it, when what you originally SAID, and meant with all your heart, was, “I want to write a book.”

Sound familiar? I thought it might, but here’s what you need to realize: Someone a lot smarter than I said, “Writing is mostly re-writing.” And it is. Pages of great prose don’t just fall there by accident while you’re staring out the window thinking about something else. Oh sure, sometimes a brilliant thought or phrase or an unexpected scene does pop up and you don’t have a clue where it came from, but that’s one of those magic days when you’re blessed with some otherworldly sense and it flows from your fingers. It happens, although not often enough. You usually have to work at it.

Most days it’s just slogging away, hating what you just wrote, KNOWING you’re the world’s biggest fake because your dialogue is the suckiest ever, your narrative would bore any reader half to death, and nothing jells. That’s when you really have to buckle down and keep at it, because that’s the part you seldom hear about in author interview blogs. Published authors rarely want their readers to know what really goes on behind the scenes.

What happens is, if you’re smart and you want to be published any sooner than 2075, you keep noodling with it until it does jell. I would venture to say most of what most authors write is done like that. You sit there and force yourself to keep writing whether you like it or not. And then, when you save it and go back to it the next day, you’ll either find that it’s not nearly as bad as you thought and a few words will salvage it, or it is as bad as you thought. If it is, you go back and start noodling with whatever’s bothering you until you get it right. That’s how I do it, anyhow.

I don’t recommend my method for everyone. Many good authors say they keep on writing till it’s completely done and then they go back and fix everything. That works for them. It doesn’t work for me, and I’ll tell you why.

If I know something isn’t right with a scene I just wrote, I can NOT go on until it is right, and sometimes that means a day or so shifting words, paragraphs, deleting this, adding that, sometimes swearing the whole time, but I have to get it right. Then, and only then, I can move on. The good news about doing it that way is, when I write THE END, it’s as good as I can get it At That Point.

THEN I go back and fine-tune it, and that can mean any number of rewrites. That’s when I give into my motto: Write like a lover, edit like an ex-wife. THEN, when I think it’s perfect, I have others go through it for typos (yes, they do find them)and continuity or anything else they may spot that my feeble mind missed (and that happens). (Often).   

So when I hear that tiny voice that says something’s not right, experience has taught me that if I don’t listen, an agent or editor will nab me on THAT VERY SPOT sure as God made little green pears like the ones sitting on our kitchen counter. It always happens. Every time. I go back until I find where it went wrong and fix it. I’m probably OCD that way.

You may be completely different. Things like that might not bother you. They bother me. OCD again.

The point I’m making is, writing a novel isn’t just a matter of sitting down and typing out a book in a month or two and sending it off. It almost never works that way except for rare authors I known who are certified writing machines. Most of us have to re-write until boiling hot blood spurts out of our foreheads.

Writing a novel isn’t always fun. You don’t end every day thrilled with what you wrote. You may have to completely rewrite it tomorrow, and the day after that, and maybe the day after that. But you’re still making progress, and isn’t it better than writing nothing at all?

If you want to get published and stay published, you don’t have a choice. You have to do rewrites and you have to keep at. You may have to do even more rewrites when an agent or editor gets hold of it. Grabbing that elusive gold ring called success in this business is about keeping after it day after day no matter how bored you are or no matter how disheartening it is, because keeping at it at least gives you a chance at getting where you want to go.

Ron Benrey: Mystery We Write guest for today

BOOK GIVEAWAY: RON WILL BE GIVING A COPY OF DEAD AS A SCONE AND THE FINAL CRUMPET TO A LUCKY COMMENTER AT THE END OF THE BLOG TOUR ON DECEMBER 9, 2011.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004Q9U18W

http://www.ronbenrey.com/
http://blog.benrey.com/

Ron Benrey writes cozy mysteries with his wife Janet. Ron has been a writer forever—initially on magazines (his first real job was Electronics Editor at Popular Science Magazine), then in corporations (he wrote speeches for senior executives), and then as a novelist. Over the years, Ron has also authored ten non-fiction books, including the recently published “Know Your Rights—a Survival Guide for Non-Lawyers” (published by Sterling). Ron holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a juris doctor from the Duquesne University School of Law. He is a member of the Bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Please welcome Ron Benrey as he writes about The Proud Tradition of Writing Mystery Fiction

When a contemporary author sits down to write a mystery novel, he or she becomes part of a proud tradition that stretches back more than 150 years. Surprisingly, the basic idea hasn’t changed in a century and a half: a mystery novel depicts a detective—either a professional or an amateur sleuth—solving a crime.
    The enduring longevity of mystery novels attracts hordes of new novelists each year—authors who like to read mysteries and want to write them. When I say “longevity,” I mean it. Mystery novels fifty, sixty, even a hundred year old—classics written by Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan Doyle, and other masters of the craft—are sold in bookstores today, and are routinely purchased by current fans. I can’t think of another fiction genre where new authors must compete with so many writers buried decades ago.
    Another important aspect of mystery fiction’s durability is that the tens of thousands of mysteries published during the past century-and-a half have created specific expectations among readers that today’s writers must meet. Many of these genre conventions go back to the pioneering 19th century mysteries written by Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Conan Doyle.
    1. A Plot Built Around a Puzzle
    Although it sounds like a cliché, the fundamental uncertainty at the heart of every mystery novel remains Who done it? Many successful novels raise other questions. How done it? Why done it? Will the villain be punished or get away? Will the hero survive the final denouement? Will the heroine achieve her other goals? The importance of providing a compelling puzzle prompts some mystery authors to say “plot is everything” in good mystery fiction. I won’t go that far, because successful mystery novels have introduced a galaxy of unforgettable characters—from Sherlock Holmes to Miss Marple, from Nero Wolfe to Spenser. Nonetheless, while readers savour fascinating protagonists, the chief reason they read mystery fiction is to enjoy stories that present fascinating puzzles.
    2. High Stakes for the Antagonist
    For many years, mysteries were called “murder mysteries.” In time, “murder” became a redundant word, because the overwhelming majority of mystery novels involve a murder or two. The fear of being punished for committing a murder gives the villain the strongest possible motivation to oppose the hero or heroine. The determined antagonist will create significant problems for the protagonist to overcome—and often land the sleuth in deadly peril.
    3. The Need to Play Fair With the Reader
    Readers anticipate that the protagonist of a mystery novel will eventually solve the puzzle and name who done it, typically in the closing chapter. Everything must come together at the end, but in a way that makes sense given the clues (and other information) available to the protagonist and the reader. It’s not playing fair to pull the killer out of a hat, so to speak.
    4. Sparkling Dialog
    Good dialog is important in every fiction genre, but mystery novels place an especially thorny requirement on dialogue: A fictional sleuth does most of his or her investigating by talking to other characters. Consequently, dialogue often communicates the lion’s share of essential information about the crime and the clues to readers. This shines a strong spotlight on the cleverness—the sparkle—of dialog.
    I have co-written three mystery series with my wife, Janet. One of them—the “Royal Tunbridge Wells Mysteries”—was designed from the get-go to echo the classic British mysteries written by Agatha Christie and Ngiao Marsh. We worked hard to get the traditional “sound” and “feel.”
   
    Here is a synopsis of “Dead as a Scone,” the first novel in the series:
    Murder is afoot is the sedate English town of Royal Tunbridge Wells… and the crime may be brewing in a tea pot!
    Nigel Owen is having a rotten year. Downsized from a cushy management job at an insurance company in London, he is forced to accept a temporary post as managing director of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. Alas, he regrets living in a small town in Kent, he prefers drinking coffee (with a vengeance), and he roundly dislikes Flick Adams, PhD, an American scientist recently named the museum’s curator.
But then, the wildly unexpected happens. Dame Elspeth Hawker, the museum’s chief benefactor, keels over a board meeting—the apparent victim of a fatal heart attack. With the Dame’s demise, the museum’s world-famous collection is up for grabs, her cats, dog, and parrot are living at with Flick and Nigel—and the two prima donnas find themselves facing professional ruin.
    But Flick—who knows a thing or two about forensic science—is convinced that Dame Elspeth did not die a natural death. As Flick and Nigel follow the clues—including a cryptic Biblical citation—they discover that a crime perpetrated more than a century ago sowed the seeds for a contemporary murder.

Pat Browning, my MYSTERY WE WRITE guest for today

Pat Browning was born and raised in Oklahoma. A longtime resident of California's San Joaquin Valley before moving back to Oklahoma in 2005, her professional writing credits go back to the 1960s, when she was a stringer for The Fresno Bee while working full time in a Hanford law office. 

     Her globetrotting in the 1970s led her into the travel business, first as a travel agent, then as a correspondent for TravelAge West, a trade journal published in San Francisco. In the 1990s, she signed on fulltime as a newspaper reporter and columnist, first at The Selma Enterprise and then at The Hanford Sentinel.

Her first mystery, FULL CIRCLE, was set in a fictional version of Hanford, and published through iUniverse in 2001. It was revised and reissued as ABSINTHE 0F MALICE by Krill Press in 2008. An extensive excerpt can be read at Google Books --http://tinyurl.com/23pojdm.

The second book in the series, METAPHOR FOR MURDER, is a work in progress. ABSINTHE takes place on a Labor Day weekend. METAPHOR picks up the story the week before Christmas. Log line: Reporter Penny Mackenzie tracks an offbeat Christmas story and finds herself in the middle of a murder and the mysterious desecration of an old Chinese cemetery.

Pat's articles on the writing life have appeared in The SouthWest Sage, the monthly journal of SouthWest Writers, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her web site at http://patbrowning.weebly.com is under construction.

Pat's subject for today? Give your character a little status

Quoting award-winning author Marcia Preston, who writes as M.K. Preston: “Often we know something but don't know that we know it. I think that's especially true of story structure; we have story-arc ingrained in our breastbones, but often don't translate that subconcious knowledge into the stories we try to write.”

Marcia’s SONG OF THE BONES won the 2004 Mary Higgins Clark Award for suspense fiction and the 2004 Oklahoma Book Award in fiction. You can read about all her books, with excerpts, at her web site: http://www.marciapreston.com/

At a recent Pen and Keyboard meeting Marcia spoke on building characters. She covered back story, actions, dialogue, point of view, status – status? That’s not status as in social or professional standing, but status as in domination. One character gets the upper hand over another character.

To illustrate status here’s an excerpt from my mystery, ABSINTHE OF MALICE. Reporter Penny Mackenzie is at work in the newsroom when her college crush shows up after a long absence. Status of the two characters is constantly adjusted and negotiated, with Penny finally gaining a slightly upper hand.

***

Elmo dropped my calendar, which slid under my desk as it hit the floor, and hustled off toward the back room.

I leaned down to retrieve the calendar, a maneuver that made my head swim. Maxie cleared her throat loudly enough to be heard in the next block. I sat up and looked into a pair of dark blue eyes. Thirty years flipped by in a heartbeat.

“Hey, babe,” Watt Collins said. “How’s it going?”

He was as ruggedly handsome as ever. Face just a little thinner maybe, dark hair smudged with gray, same long, thick eyebrows above eyes still hot enough to melt wax. His expensive white cotton shirt was open at the throat, sleeves turned back at the wrists. Faded Levi’s hugged his hips.

“Forgive me for staring,” I said finally. “My life just passed before my eyes.”

He flashed a smile, took a business card from his back pocket, laid it on my desk. Watt Collins Investigations. A toll-free number, nothing else.

“Investigations? Sounds mysterious. What brings you to Pearl?”

“Family business. I grew up about ten miles from here, remember?”

What family? All dead, if I remembered correctly. And why would he look me up after … was it this life or the last?

I rummaged through a drawer, located a card and handed it to him. Penny Mackenzie, Lifestyle Editor. The Pearl Outrider, Central California’s Best Little Newspaper, Between the Mountains and the Sea. Local phone numbers—office, home and cell phone. There it was, in black and white, proof that I had no life of my own.

“Lifestyle Editor. I’m impressed.” He tilted his head to sneak a peek at my left hand, looking for a plain gold band, a sparkly engagement ring, a white band left by a previous ring on a tanned finger.

My lucky day, his smile said. “You look sensational.”

“Oh, please!” I couldn’t remember my last diet. Exercise? Who, me? Shaggy hair—too late now.

He looked at my card again. “So you’re still Penny Mackenzie. Does that mean I wasn’t the only one dumb enough to let you get away?”

He’d lost plenty of sleep over it. I could tell by the absence of bags and shadows under his eyes. “Married to the job,” I said. “Life couldn’t be better. I don’t cook, I don’t iron, and I sleep in the middle of the bed.”

I jerked up one hand to push hair out of my eyes, knocked a couple of phone directories to the floor, kicked them under the desk, and smiled up at him. “Home, sweet home.”

***

In her talk Marcia listed several aspects of status: an air of confidence, eye contact, stillness or saying nothing, and self-control. Re-reading my excerpt, I can see that I had some hazy understanding of status without knowing it. I do know I would like to tweak it a little to make the character of Penny a little stronger but, as Penny says about her shaggy hair, “too late now.”

Marcia also discussed her method of sketching complete life stories for her characters before she begins a book. The sketch, she said, “is for your eyes only. If you have trouble, writing your sketch in first person helps you sink into that person.” Only when her sketches are complete is she ready to write her book’s first draft.

“You learn who your characters are on the first draft,” she said. “I never feel that I know my characters until the third draft.”  To illustrate both character sketches and giving characters status, she read excerpts from her work in progress.

I bummed a ride to the Pen and Keyboard meeting because I knew from past experience that Marcia Preston is well worth hearing whatever her topic. I was still living in California when I met her in March of 2001 at the now-defunct William Saroyan Writers Conference in Fresno. Marcia was then editor of Byline magazine and was publishing her first mystery, PERHAPS SHE’LL DIE.

At the Saroyan conference she gave a workshop on how to write a short story. I still have the cassette tape. In fact, I roughed out a short story after listening to it a few years later. The short story, like everything else I’m writing, is still waiting in the wings … but stay tuned.

Fast forward to Oklahoma on September 10, 2011. At the Pen and Keyboard meeting, Marcia referred us to a Writer’s Digest article, “How to Raise Your Characters Above the Status Quo” by Steven James.

Things move in ever-widening circles. Pen and Keyboard is an affiliate of Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. (OWFI). Steven James will be keynote speaker at OWFI’S annual conference May 3-5 in Oklahoma City. Looks like I’ll be bumming another ride.