How Social Networking Kills the Creative Spirit

You want to hear some hard truth? Do you promise not to get mad at me? Promise?

Okay then. Here it is. Your social networking habit? It might be hurting you.

Yes, I know it’s fun. Meeting new people, reconnecting with old friends, discussing the price of tea in china with strangers, staffing up your mafia, finding out your Princess personality, etcetera, etcetera. But every minute you spend on Facebook and Twitter (I'm not even going to try and list the gajillion other social networking sites available) is another minute you aren’t writing, or reading. Nurturing your creative spirit.

The Muse is a delicate flower, a fickle Goddess. She must be treated with respect and dignity. She must be nurtured, given the proper nutrients: water, sunlight, fertilizer, a touch of love. If properly taken care of, she will reward you with great things: a bountiful garden of words, a cornucopia of ideas. But if you neglect her, she will forsake you.

And none of us want to be forsaken.

I read an essay last week that broke my heart. It was one writer’s honest, true assessment of her burgeoning Twitter addiction. She openly admitted compromising her family time so she could spend hours a night talking to strangers on Twitter. Her online world became more important that her real one. And I get it. I see how easily that happens. Especially when you’re a new writer, and networking is so vital to your future success. (I am so thankful Facebook and Twitter came along after I was already published.) A little encouragement—that tweet that gets retweeted, the blog entry that starts people talking, that link you sent that helps someone else—it’s heady stuff. A classic, undeniable ego stroke, and for a lot of us, that’s just plain intoxicating. (Yes, some of us not so new writers fall into the Twitter trap too…)

But when does it become a problem?

I can’t answer that question for you. You may want to ask yourself some hard questions though. Namely, how much time are you really spending online? Can’t answer that offhand? Spend a week keeping a log of all your online activity. Not just Twitter and Facebook and Goodreads and Shelfari. Track your email consumption, your blogging, your blog reading, your Yahoo groups, your aimless surfing and your necessary research. Be honest. Don’t cheat. Add that time up at the end of the week and take a candid, truthful look at the results. I guarantee you’ll be surprised at how much time the Internet takes.

Then ask yourself these questions:

Is the Internet as a whole compromising my writing time? Am I reading less because I’m spending more time online? Why am I doing this? Am I reaching out to strangers because I’m not feeling the same sort of support at home? Am I lonely? Blocked? Frustrated?

Because here’s the heart of the matter. Writers? Our job is to write. And I don’t mean pithy status updates and 140 character gems that astonish the world. I mean create. I mean writing stories. I mean taking all that energy and time you’re spending online playing and refocusing it into your work.

You know why it’s so easy to say that and so hard to back it up with results? Because Twitter and Facebook are FUN! And you’re talking to other writers, so you can sort of kind of tell yourself that this is really just research, background. You’re learning, right? You're connecting with your fans, with your readers, with your heros. Very, very cool stuff.

Listen, if you get inspired by social networking, if watching successful authors launch successful campaigns helps spur you on to greatness, fabulous. I have been greatly inspired by some posts, links and attitudes on Twitter. I think it’s so important to try and have a positive experience out there in the world, and I follow people who exude positivity, who are following the path I want to follow.

But if you’re forsaking your Muse, taking the easy way out, then you have to do a bit of self-examination and decide if it’s really worth it. I am “friends” with people who are online every single time I open my computer and go to the sites. And I can’t help but wonder – when are they working? When are they feeding the Muse?

An editor is going to be impressed with your finished manuscript, submitted on time. The jury is still out on whether they’re impressed that you can Tweet effectively or that you’ve rekindled that friendship with the cheerleader who always dissed you in school.  

The thing about social networking is a little goes a long way. I love Twitter. It’s my number one news source. I follow interesting people, I’ve made new friends, and more importantly, I’ve gained new readers. It’s a tremendous tool for me. But I’ve also (hopefully) mastered the art of Twitter and Facebook. I can glance at my Tweetdeck, see what I need to see, read what I need to read, then move along.

Facebook, on the other hand, became a problem for me last year, so I gave it up for Lent. I spent six weeks only checking it on Tuesdays and Fridays. The first two weeks were hell. I was missing out! Everyone was on there having fun except me.

And then it got better. At the end of the six weeks, I added things up. I wrote 60,000 words during my enforced Facebook vacation. That was enough of an indicator to me that it was taking time away from my job, which is to write.

Now Facebook is a breeze. I’ve separated out my friends, the people I actually interact with daily, so I can pop in one or twice a day, check on them, then keep on trucking. I’ve set my preferences so I’m not alerted to every tic and twitch of the people I’m friends with. I don’t take quizzes or accept hugs. Ignore All has become my new best friend. Because really, as fun as it is to find out that I’m really the Goddess Athena, that aspect isn’t enriching my life.

I read Steven Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART recently and was so struck by his thesis, that artists fight resistance every moment of every day, and the ones who are published (or sell their work, etc.) are the ones who beat the resistance back. Twitter, Facebook, the Internet in general, that’s resistance. (And to clarify, resistance and procrastination aren’t one and the same. Read the book. It’s brilliant.)

For professional writers, the social networks are a necessary evil, and as such, they must be managed, just like every other distraction in our lives. I still have my days when I find myself aimlessly surfing Twitter and Facebook, looking at what people are doing. Getting into conversations, playing. But I am much, much better at feeding my Muse. I allot time in my day to look at my social networks, but I allot much more time in my day to read. And most importantly, I have that sacred four hour stretch—twelve to four, five days a week—that is dedicated to nothing but putting words on paper.

There’s another phenomenon happening. The social networks are eating into our reading time. Readers have their own resistance, their own challenges managing their online time.

Yes, there are plenty of readers who don’t have Facebook or Twitter accounts, who may read this and laugh. But many of us do, and if we’re being honest with ourselves, every minute spent conversing online is another minute we aren’t reading. I can’t help but wonder if this is what will ultimately drive the trend toward ebooks, since one out of every three readers prefer to read electronically now. One in three, folks. That’s a large chunk of the market.

So how do you turn it off? How do you discipline yourself, walk away from the fun?

It’s hard. But what’s more important? Writing the very best book you can possibly write, or taking a quiz about which Goddess you are? Reading the top book on your teetering TBR stack, or reading what other people think about said book?

For writers, you have to set your priority, and every time your fingers touch the keyboard, that priority really should be writing. The rest will fall into place. I hypothesize that while the Internet is taking a chunk of reading time, most readers still read a great deal. Which means we need to keep up the machine to feed them, right?

Does this post sound like you? Are you easily distracted? Frustrated because you can’t seem to get a grip on things? There are a bunch of great tools out there to help you refocus your creative life. Here’s a list of the websites and blogs that I’ve used over the past year to help me refocus mine.

Websites:

MinimalMac

43 Folders

Zen Habits

Bloggity

The Art of Non-Conformity

Books:

The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

The Creative Habit – Twyla Tharp

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life – Winifred Gallagher

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 

Take fifteen minutes a day off your social networking and read one of these. I promise it will help you reprioritize your day.

Because really, what’s the point in being a writer if you don’t write?

What do you think, 'Rati? Are you overdoing the online time? Any tips for making the best out of your Internet experience? How do you find the balance?

Wine of the Week: 2008 Quattro Mani Montepulciano d'Abruzzo

What the F**k is Ladylike?

The indefatigable Sarah Weinman did a Dark Passages column for the LA Times a couple of weeks ago about female characters with dark histories. She cited some great examples of authors who use their female protagonists to tread into the traditionally male territory of overwhelming violence: Karin Slaughter, Mo Hayder, Gillian Flynn.

There is a common denominator in all of these fabulous authors' characters: the woman has a tortured past. They are damaged goods. Abused, debased, yet, like the phoenix from the ashes, rising above their beginnings to become strong, compassionate female leads who step in where even males fear to tread.

But here's my question.

Why does a strong female lead have to have a tortured background? Can a female protagonist make it in the fiction world if she's not been broken first?

I daresay the answer is no. Because it just wouldn't be ladylike for the female lead to have an unrequited bloodlust, now would it?

I know this isn’t a female-centric phenomena – it’s a crime fiction phenomena. There are plenty of male characters who are driven by a tortured past. John Connolly’s Charlie Parker comes to mind: if Parker’s wife and daughter hadn’t been brutally murdered, would he have ever become the man he is today? Of course not. But, and here’s a big but, for the most part, the male characters who are driven by despair didn’t have the violence done to them. To those around them, yes. To their loved one, (who many would argue are an extension of ourselves, and as such, what you do to them, you do to me.) The reality is, though, there aren’t a lot of male characters in crime fiction who’ve been raped or tortured, then struck out to find vengeance by becoming a cop, or a PI, or a spy.

To me, this ultimately harkens back to the archetypal female mythos - the soul eater, the strong woman who devours men because of our magical abilities - we bleed and don't die. Therefore, we must have some inherent evil and that evil must be contained. Generations have tried to tamp down the Lilith that resides in all of us, just waiting to be freed.

So it seems goes the strong female lead in fiction. If, and only if, she has been raped or beaten or otherwise horribly misused, has lost a sibling or a parent to violence, will she be allowed to acknowledge her bloodlust. The violence done to her unlocks the deep-seated resentment, and society understands—not condones, mind you, but understands—because of what she's been through.

In other words, society has conditioned us to tamp down our feminine wiles, to stow away our power, to hide behind our men and only emerge once we've been raked over the coals through some unspeakable violence.

Bullshit.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

What in the hell is that all about???

Why can't a woman be strong because she's strong? I know we're talking about fiction here, and we need to have a weakness that's apparent in order to "relate" to the characters, but I'm always amazed at just how many female lead characters fall prey to this. Mind you, and this is an important caveat, there are instances of this that mold the character into who they become that won’t work any other way.

Karin Slaughter's Sara Linton is a perfect example. She is so touched by the evil that's done to her that it's now imprinted itself on her psyche, and we know that evil begets evil. They can smell it hopping around in the veins, whispering the siren's call filth vile exremous hate that emanates from the very cells of the blood they've permeated. She has no choice but to go forth and battle evil, because it follows her everywhere she goes, sensing her weakness, and her strength.

Our Zoë Sharp's Charlie Fox is another that can be cited here as an appropriate product of an unspeakable violence. Zoë's books work for me because there's an unanswered question that rides through the series. On the surface, Charlie becomes a monster, a killer, because she has been forced to become one through the monstrous act that's done to her. But did she? Or was there latent evil in her system? Would she be who she is despite the despicable actions of her teammates? There are many people who don't turn into a killer after violence is done to them. I think there resides a small possibility that Charlie would have ended up exactly where she was regardless of her rape. Charlie is my favorite kind of character, the moral person who does immoral things. Her struggles with her new reality are some of the most nuanced in modern fiction today.

But many, many writers take this path—the tortured backstory—as a shortcut to give their women depth, and it can fall flat.

On the surface, it’s a psychological windfall. We cheer because it's the underdog syndrome, the need to root for a character who has glimpsed the depths of hell and can come back to tell us all about it. Don't get me wrong, some of my favorite books have female characters who've had some roughness in their past. I'm not saying this is wrong, or bad, or you shouldn't do it. It's just a phenomenon that I find fascinating, a trend that I'm not sure is a good one.

Why?

Because we're victimizing our heroines to make them appear more heroic.

When I was first writing Taylor, something was very one-dimensional about her. Looking back, I understand now that she was too perfect. I asked an old English professor for advice and she said something vitally important: she needs to have a weakness. That was an a-ha moment for me. Oh, I thought. She needs to have a weakness. Okay. I can do that. Now what would that be????

You can see how easy it would be, at this particular point in time, to insert an unspeakable evil into her past that makes her what she is. Weakness, though, bespoke weak to me, and that was exactly the opposite effect that I wanted. My girl wasn't going to be weak. She was going to be kick ass, and not because she was driven by a demon, it's just who she was. So in the first book, Taylor smokes. That's her weakness, her humanizing factor. And it works for me. She doesn’t have a big secret in her closet, a tragedy that drove her to become a cop. She chose that route because it was the right thing to do. Many might find her boring because she is a moral person doing moral things because of an overarching desire to rid the world of evil. I don’t know.

Just for the record, I am, obviously, a feminist. But I like being a wife, being a nurturer. I like men, too. I have a lot of male friends. I have brothers, and a father who taught me to never back down from a fight. I find that the vast majority of guys are good, honest, and true. All that said, I hate that women aren't paid equally for their work, are so often debased and treated like their voices have less meaning than a man's. I will become highly annoyed if you suggest to me where my place is or neglect to treat me like a lady. But I've worked in male-dominated environments before, and I learned very early on that there were two ways to get a leg up. One, sleep your way there. Two, earn the respect of your team. Guess which route I took?

And I'll tell you, earning the respect of your team means showing absolutely no weakness. So when it came time to write my female character in a male world, there was no chance she'd be showing any either. I just don't know how to program that way.

So. Am I completely off base here? Would you rather see the damaged soul find redemption? Or is it okay for women to finally come into their own in crime fiction? Look at the double standard that exists when it comes to sex: I know if there was a female lead who acted like the men, we'd all get into trouble. It's not ladylike to have desires and act on them - that makes you a slut. But a male character can screw his way through the book and no one bats an eyelash.

How is this any different?

Wine of the Week: 2007 Feudo Arancio Nero d'Avola Sambuca di Sicilia paired with a hearty puttanesca sauce.

(Oh come on, you knew that was coming....)

Who’s Thrilling You Now? The New Guns of the Thriller Genre; an Author Panel

August 4, 2009

by Jonathan Maberry

A couple of years ago a bunch of hot new thriller writers broke onto the scene with novels that won awards, made best-seller lists, and established these authors as serious players. Fast-forward to today. How is the reality being a published author different from the promise? I spoke with a few of these New Guns about their life in the writing game.

JONATHAN MABERRY: You’ve passed the ‘First Novel’ milestone now and have written other novels. What’s changed between the night before that first book release and now?

J.T. ELLISON: Nerves. Without a doubt. I was so scared before my debut – excited, but scared. I knew things were going to change drastically as soon as the book hit the shelves. I was desperately afraid of speaking in public, so I ended up worrying more about that than the performance of the book. Now, I worry about the logical things I can’t control – placement, reviews, if readers will enjoy it, will that TV spot I did get bumped for bigger news, did I sound stupid on the radio – instead of the illogical fears.

BRETT BATTLES: There’s nothing like your first release. You’re on a high for several months prior to your pub date, eagerly awaiting the day you can walk into a bookstore and see your novel on the shelves. As the day approaches, you check your ranking on Amazon, at first once a day, then twice, then when there is less than a week left, you’re probably checking multiple times each 24 hour period. You hang on every email you get about your book, wondering what new news there is. And when the day comes, you realize that you are something you’ve never been before. A published novelist. When your second comes out, you’re still excited, but the territory you’re crossing is no longer unknown. You start comparing what happened with your first release to what’s happening with your second. You start to worry about whether your sales will go up or go down. The unbridled excitement you experienced with your debut is tempered now by your growing knowledge of the publishing world, and a more discerning eye toward business. This only increases with each release. Don’t get me wrong. You don’t become jaded (though some do), and you are still excited and overwhelmed by the fact that your work is out there for the world to see. It’s just with experience comes knowledge, and you use that knowledge to start looking long term.

JASON PINTER: Once the euphoria of having your first book published wears off, you realize just how much work goes into not only continuing to publish, but trying to maintain a career doing it. I still get those same shivers at every milestone with every book (when I see the first cover concept, when I get galleys, when I hold the finished book in my hands for the very first time), but now you always have to be looking ahead to the next book, the next idea, and how to get more readers to dig your work.

ROBERT GREGORY BROWNE: There was a certain giddiness I felt the first time out that has all but disappeared. I look forward to a release now, sure, but with a slight emotional detachment that wasn’t there with that first novel. Back then I was a novice, a newbie, so everything was shiny and bright and exciting. Now that I’ve settled into this new rhythm of write-edit-release, I find myself getting much more excited about the next book than the books currently in the stores.

KEN ISAACSON: I guess the biggest change is that there’s now a standard against which my work will be measured. I wrote SILENT COUNSEL, my first, in a vacuum. I could have finished it, done nothing with it, and no one would have been the wiser. I know how lucky I was to have had it published, and now it’s only natural that my next book will be compared to that yardstick. Had SC completely flopped, that would have absolutely stung, but there would be nowhere to go but up (unless just slinking away in shame was an option). But I was extremely fortunate in that the book has met with a respectable amount of success, so I definitely feel the pressure to produce. That’s a big change for me—having to impress someone besides my mother.

MABERRY: Ever writer I know hits a moment when they realize that the writing game isn’t at all how they imagined it. Talk about your moments of realizations.

ELLISON: It was in 2008, right as my second novel was released. I was writing the fourth book in the series, editing the third book, and promoting the second, all at the same time. I had a week that was the perfect storm. I was on travel, on deadline, edits being mailed to me while I was out on tour, putting aside the work in progress to tackle revisions in the hotel before I went to speak. No one prepares you for the level of intensity that confluence of events brings. When you’ve lived and breathed a debut for however many years before you get published, and suddenly you’re under contract for several books and you have to put the pedal to the metal, it can be a shock. But who would change it? Not me. I thrive on pressure, so this is nirvana.

BATTLES: Not sure I’ve ever had that moment. So far it’s everything I imagined and more. Of course, I didn’t put a lot of expectations into it at first. I just thought what would happen would happen. If anything is a little different, I think it’s the way publishing has been forced to change (and continues to change) in recent year. Sometimes I would be nice to have been a writer back in the days when all a writer had to worry about was writing his or her next book. But that’s not our reality, so that’s fine with me. I have no problem rolling with it.

PINTER: This is a little different for me because I worked in publishing for over five years before I left to write full time. I’ve worked with a lot of authors, and have seen many, many different roads to publication. For me, it’s realizing just how much authors have to do beyond the writing of the books. Between corresponding with readers, traveling for conferences and signings, maintaining all sorts of social networking sites and contributing to two blogs, it’s quite time-consuming. Every writer I know hits a moment when they realize that the writing game isn’t at all how they imagined it. Talk about your moments of realizations.

BROWNE: I think that most new writers have dreams of hitting The List, even though we know the odds against it are strong. But then reality sets in and we realize that it takes a number of factors, and sometimes a number of books, to get there. And because that first book was written over a long period of time and we had all the time in the world to get it right, we can sometimes be blindsided by the stark reality that this is a job and you have deadlines and you can no longer write at a leisurely pace. So you have to learn to get it right, right now. Suddenly The List is no longer all that important. You just need to write a great book in a very short period of time and not let anything else distract you.

ISAACSON: Book of Revelations, Ch. 1, v. 1: The book does not write itself. This stuff is work. As much fun as it is (at times), unless you actually go to the computer and bang on that keyboard, it’s going to be a long, long time before that book is done. Book of Revelations, Ch. 1, v. 2: The book does not sell itself; neither shall anyone else but you. Write the book, turn it over to the agent or publisher, and move on to the next project. Oh, that’s not what happens? There is a lot more—here’s that word again—work to do. Promotion, promotion, promotion.

I find myself thinking of it in terms that Stephen Covey talks about in his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” where he describes the importance of finding the proper balance between production and production capability (the “P/PC balance”)—doing something (production) vs. working on your ability to do something (production capability). Covey gives the example of running a car—you need to find the right balance between driving and proper maintenance. Spend too much time driving and not enough time maintaining, and the car will fail. Spend too much time with it in the shop, and the car won’t be available to drive.

In the writing game, I think it’s the same. The struggle is to find the right balance between writing and promoting. Spend too much time writing, and not enough promoting, you’ll produce great books, but no one will know about them (and no one will read them). Spend too much time promoting and not enough writing, everyone will know about you, but there won’t be anything for them to read. Find the right P/PC balance!

MABERRY: Celebrity comes in all wattages. What was your first celebrity moment? What is celebrity like months or years in?

ELLISON: I don’t think of it as celebrity, more like notoriety. It’s hard to avoid when you write in a small but exceptionally literate town like I do. I’ve been blessed with excellent publicists, who have gotten me on air and in print, and as a result people do recognize me. But it’s always at the most inopportune moments – at the salon after a grooming session, or rushing into Publix for something to make for dinner. I am a rather informal person, and it never fails that someone recognizes me when I have no makeup, gym shorts and a ponytail going on. But hey, that’s life.

BATTLES: Author celebrity is not like movie star celebrity, or political star celebrity, or sports star celebrity. First, with the exception of a few top level authors, most people don’t know our names. And even with the top level authors, most people don’t know what an author looks like. With the exception of Stephen King and perhaps one or two others, most authors can walk down the street without being recognized. So, for most of us, celebrity is only a sometimes thing, and those sometime things are a very small percentage of our years. They come at fan conferences or at book signings and festivals. To a certain extent it’s fun, but on a deeper level when a fan approaches you and is obviously very nervous to talk to you, it’s kind of surprising. I mean, I’m still me. I’m still the guy who spent many a party a little shy to talk to the cute girl across the room. I go shopping, I wash my own clothes, I cook my own meals. But to be nervous to talk to me? And then I remember just a few years ago when I went to my first Thrillerfest, and there was the great Lee Child. I was SO nervous to talk to him, I’m not even sure I ever introduced myself then. Which just goes to show me that Lee was probably thinking the same things I’m thinking now when that happens with my fans. One of the best moments, though, I will say was at a conference signing when this guy walked up with my book to get signed, stuck out his hand to shake, and said, “Mr. Battles, you are one bad ass writer.” That was priceless.

PINTER: Celebrity is a very relative word. Not many authors get ‘recognized’ the way movie stars, musicians, or even some hobos do. My first ‘wow’ moments came from my first fan letter, when I realized that not only were my books now being read by the public, but that somebody not only enjoyed my book, but took the time to write me a letter about it. The second was the time I was in line at my local bookstore, and I noticed the guy in front of me holding a copy of THE MARK waiting to pay for it. That was unbelievably cool.

BROWNE: I almost laugh at the thought of being a celebrity. But I guess we are celebrities in certain circles. The first time I actually felt that way was at a conference, when a bookseller approached a writer friend and me at a conference and wanted to have her photo taken with us. She was extremely nervous and I couldn’t quite understand why. I’m still not sure. The only kind of celebrity I’m interested in is the kind that kicks in when a reader is in the bookstore or library or grocery store and gets excited about a book with my name on it, the same as I did when I was a kid roaming the stacks at the library.

ISAACSON: Celebrity wattage, huh? No “dimmest bulb in the box” cracks, please! The first “celebrity moment” I can remember was just a soft glow. It was at the BEA in 2007, a few weeks before SILENT COUNSEL was released. I’d spent a number of months getting my website up and running, and establishing a presence on the web, and I thought I’d done a decent job. I was walking down an aisle in the Javits Center, gawking at all of the free stuff the publishers were handing out, and a complete stranger stopped me and said, “Hey, you’re Ken Isaacson. I’ve seen you online. Is your book out yet?” I thought, “OK. This is cool.”

More recently, I find it extremely rewarding to be part of what I’ve come to know as a close knit community of writers and readers. I go to as many conferences as I can, like Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, and CrimeFest, and it’s great to get there and feel so at home with people who have become “old friends.”

MABERRY: Talk about your current book.

ELLISON: My latest title, JUDAS KISS (the third installment in the Taylor Jackson series) was a first in many respects for me. It was my first non-serial killer book, the first that I did a more-than-cursory preparatory synopsis, and the first that had elements from an actual case. And strangely enough, a whole subplot that wasn’t based on a real case made it into the local news when a middle-age man was arrested for running a teenage sex club. Life truly does imitate art. I so enjoyed writing this book – I put my very black and white character into a gray area, and let her fight her way through. It helped me grow as a writer.

BATTLES: Here’s what it says on the cover flap [of SHADOW OF BETRAYAL]. It pretty much covers what the new one is about. “The meeting place was carefully chosen: an abandoned church in rural Ireland just after dark. For Jonathan Quinn—a freelance operative and professional “cleaner”—the job was only to observe. If his cleanup skills were needed, it would mean things had gone horribly wrong. But an assassin hidden in a tree assured just that. And suddenly Quinn had four dead bodies to dispose of and one astounding clue—to a mystery that is about to spin wildly out of control.

Three jobs, no questions. That was the deal Quinn had struck with his client at the Office. Unfortunately for him, Ireland was just the first. Now Quinn, along with his colleague and girlfriend—the lethal Orlando—has a new assignment touched off by the killings in Ireland. Their quarry is a U.N. aide worker named Marion Dupuis who has suddenly disappeared from her assignment in war-torn Africa. When Quinn finally catches a glimpse of her, she quickly flees, frantic and scared. And not alone.

For Quinn the assignment has now changed. Find Marion Dupuis, and the child she is protecting, and keep them from harm. If it were only that easy. Soon Quinn and Orlando find themselves in a bunker in the California hills, where Quinn will unearth a horrifying plot that is about to reach stage critical for a gathering of world leaders—and an act of terror more cunning, and more insidious, than anyone can guess.

PINTER: My latest book is THE FURY, the fourth book in my Henry Parker series, which will be released on October 1st. I conceived of this book at the first in a two-part series, that concludes with the publication of THE DARKNESS on December 1st. In THE FURY, Henry Parker is devastated to find that he has a long lost brother, but that the brother was savagely murdered. Henry is forced to not only come to terms with a thirty-year old family secret, but the truth about his brother’s short life and brutal death. And what he finds is only the beginning of something far more sinister.

BROWNE: My latest book, which was released on June 30th, is a thriller about hypnosis and reincarnation and one of the most unique serial killers you’re likely to encounter. It’s called KILL HER AGAIN, and stars a disgraced FBI agent who’s battling visions she can’t explain as she investigates the disappearance of a four year-old girl. And like all of my books, just when you think you know where it’s going, I pull the rug out from under you. So watch out.

ISAACSON: SILENT COUNSEL asks you to suppose something unimaginable: What if your child were killed in a hit-and-run? And the one person who knew the driver’s identity—his lawyer—couldn’t tell you his name because the court held it was privileged information?

The book examines how two concepts that we like to think are one and the same—law and justice—often diverge. With disturbing results. As a mother, how would you deal with your unspeakable rage at a legal system that places a legal technicality above the search for your son’s killer? And as a lawyer, how would you deal with your ethical obligation to remain silent, when you know in your heart that the right thing to do is to help the mother find justice?

It was a real kick to see that shortly after SILENT COUNSEL’s release, it spent an entire month on Amazon’s list of Bestselling Legal Thrillers with only two titles ahead of it—John Grisham’s THE APPEAL and Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

MABERRY: Tell us about your next book.

ELLISON: THE COLD ROOM releases February 23, 2010. I haven’t quite figured out how to pitch this one, so I’ll use my publisher’s tag line – He can only truly love her once her heart stops. Yes, I’ve stumbled into the ultimate forbidden territory with this book – necrophilia. My villain is a classical music-loving artist with a secret housed deep in his basement. It was by far the most difficult book I’ve ever written – structurally, because it’s heavy on the police procedure, and emotionally – because the villain scared the crap out of me and invaded my dreams. My research was fascinating and disturbing, and it took me a few months to recover from the whole writing process.

BATTLES: I’m just finishing up the next Quinn adventure, due out next summer. Right now we’re calling it THE SILENCED, but that’s not official yet. This one will be Quinn’s most personal yet, pushing him in ways he never expected to be pushed. We’ll finally get a look at what Quinn’s life was before he became a cleaner, and how that affects his life now. And as always there’s going to be plenty of action.

PINTER: My next book is THE DARKNESS, which will be out in December. Here Henry finds that his brother’s murder is the tip of a much bigger iceberg. And when this book ends, Henry’s world will have changed forever. These two books were inspired by James Ellroy’s brilliant L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. I wanted to write a story that, like Ellroy’s, would seem on the surface like an isolated incident (i.e. the Nite Owl massacre), but in fact was the cover for a much bigger story.

BROWNE: The next one will be in stores in July of 2010. It’s called DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN and is the story of a Hispanic-American reporter who’s investigating the slaughter of a house full of nuns down in Juarez, Mexico, near the Texas border. He soon finds himself caught up in a world of drug smuggling and death cults and realizes this may be the last story he ever gets a chance to tell…

ISAACSON: What if it were legal to gamble on the time someone else is going to die? It is, if you invest in a life insurance product called a viatical. In a viatical settlement—designed to provide the terminally ill with much needed cash—an investor purchases someone else’s existing life insurance policy, paying that person a lump sum and taking over the premium payments. When that other person dies, the investor receives the death benefit. But the transaction’s a gamble, because if the investor misjudges how long that person will live, he could end up paying those premiums for a lot longer than anticipated.

In DEATH BENEFIT, when the sister of a Newark, New Jersey law firm client dies in her sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning, third year law student Elliot Lerner is asked to determine whether anyone could be held responsible in a wrongful death lawsuit. As he looks into the circumstances surrounding the death, he learns about viatical settlements. And he learns that if the investor’s gamble looks like it’s not going to pay off as planned because the cost of ongoing premium payments is exceeding expectations, there’s only one way to eliminate that cost. DEATH BENEFIT is the beginning of a series in which we’ll be able to follow Elliot’s career as he graduates from law school, becomes a young lawyer, and hopefully flourishes in the legal profession.

Thanks to our panel!

JT ELLISON
Website: www.jtellison.com
Blog: The Tao of JT and Murderati (Tao is soon to be housed on my website but for the moment it’s JT’s Blog and on Fridays, find JT on www.murderati.com
Twitter – @Thrillerchick
Facebook JT Ellison http://www.facebook.com/JTEllison
JT Ellison photo by Chris Blanz

BRETT BATTLES
Website: http://www.brettbattles.com
Blog: http://bbattles.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/brett.battles
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/brettbattles
Photo credit for the author photo Moses Sparks

JASON PINTER
My official website: http://www.jasonpinter.com
The Man in Black blog: http://jasonpinter.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jason.pinter
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jasonpinter
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/jasonpinter

ROBERT GREGORY BROWNE
Website: http://www.robertgregorybrowne.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-Gregory-Browne/67597906429
Blog: Murderati
Connect with Rob on Twitter: @rgregorybrowne

KEN ISAACSON
Website: www.KenIsaacson.com
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/ken.isaacson

The Idea Box

“Where do you get your ideas?”

It has to be the most frequently asked question in fiction. I can’t remember a single event that I’ve done that it hasn’t come up. And the answer, of course, if everywhere. We’re writers. There is little that escapes our notice. Our job is to observe, synthesize and report back our findings in new and different ways. The magic of that process can’t be quantified – give fourteen mystery writers the same newspaper article and instruct them to write a story about the topic, and you’ll get fourteen different stories.

The question that readers should be asking us is: "How in the world do you keep all the billions of ideas you have on any given day in any semblance of order?"

I’m no different from any other writer. I never know what will trigger my imagination. It could be something as simple and natural as an exceptionally fluffy white cloud passing overhead in a crisp blue fall sky, or as complex as the murder of a young pregnant mother. There are times that I seek out new inspirations, and other times that something odd catches my eye and I think, hmmm, that might be an interesting story.

I also subscribe to the belief that if a story idea is solid, it will stay with you, growing and fermenting over time, without too many influences or excess research. Which can be difficult to deal with when you’re first starting out, because you’re juggling about 1,000 different ideas about how to make your story better, and the thought of one of them slipping away is tantamount to inspiration genocide.

But it’s not. I’m here to assure you – those scattered idea that you don’t write down can sometimes be the genesis of something exceptional.

Anyway, I’ve gotten myself off track. What I wanted to talk about today was my idea box.

It started as a few cuttings from the local newspaper, or printouts from websites, that I stashed in a file folder and shoved in my drawer. When something would leap out at me, I’d throw it in the file and leave it alone. As time went on and my repertoire for idea building grew, I started throwing jotted down scraps of ideas into the folder too: lines of dialogue that amused me, amorphous scenes, pictures of kitchens. Imprints, really. Imprints of ideas, of possibility. These aren’t the IDEAS themselves, they are the germs, the bacteria of my mind’s eye. The microscopic beings that find their way under my skin and eventually force me to scratch.

When I get stuck—and yes, that does happen, even though I’m resistant to call it writer’s block because block, I think, is your story’s way of telling you you’re going in the wrong direction and being stuck is something wholly different, more a necessarily evil to the thought process—I clean. I organize. I shuffle, realign, file and trash. I rearrange the furniture, delete long overdue dead files, read, catch up on scheduling issues, sort out my archives, anything that’s not inherently creative in nature. I’ve come to welcome these spurts of agony, because something wonderful always comes out of it in the end.

The last time I was really and truly stuck, I organized my ideas file.

It had grown to an idea drawer while I wasn’t looking. Folded up newspapers lazily shoved into the space where the folder should go, post-it notes stuck to printouts – it was a mess. No rhyme or reason. Just a collection of whimsies, stowed out of sight until I might need them.

But isn’t that what a creative box should be? Isn’t there something magical about knowing it’s there, that you’ve dropped your little bits of inspiration into one secure place to ferment? I liken it to Dumbledore’s penseive – an aggregator of memories swirling around in some sort of transparent fluid. The idea box is just that – the repository for lost ideas.

So I took an afternoon and organized my drawer. I went to Staples and bought a smart looking expandable file folder that has a hard top and sides, and offloaded everything from the file that became a drawer into the box. I cut out the newspaper articles, sectioned the stories out into subject and geographical region, and slipped the cleaned sheets into the box. Then I stashed it right behind my chair, so I can look at it anytime I want. Just knowing it’s there is fine with me. I don’t need to open it and lovingly finger the papers inside. That, I’ll save for the next round of proposals, or when I need a random subplot.

If these thoughts and ideas mature and make it out of the idea box, they will be transferred to their attendant book box. I read Twyla Tharp’s THE CREATIVE HABIT last year and was surprised to find I already used the same organizational method for projects as Tharp: the individual book box.

Every book I write has it’s own plastic, sealable box. Everything related to that book goes in the box as it’s written. That way, I always know where everything is. By the time I’m done with the book, the box is full to the brim: each draft of the manuscript, the copyedits, the author alterations all go in, on top of the research material, notes, music, etc. When I finish a book and it’s gone to ARC, I take all my notes from their yellow legal pads and stash them in there, too. And then I put them away.

I have to say, this is a really good system. I got to test it out with the fourth book in the series, THE COLD ROOM. Because the box had been put away. Stored. Done. Complete. Smiley face on top (okay, no smiley face, but you know what I mean.) And when my editor wanted me to make a change, it was easy to see exactly where I’d been. I pulled out the box, pulled out the notes to refresh my memory on its impetus, scanned through the original CEs, and went from there.

And since I use a Brother touch labeling system, it was simple to print out a new label for the box with the new title. And soon, the box will go away again, nestled deep in the closet with its friends, and I’ll reopen the next box. And the next. And the next.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my process lately, looking for ways to make things even more streamlined. I have tried a number of different methods for idea storage. There are a number of online avenues to do this. Most everything I do is online now – calendar, to do list, email, goals, even ideas, which I clip to Evernote.

But I’m resistant to the idea of doing away with my boxes, simply because I just love those moments when you spill everything out onto the floor in front of you and comb through the mess looking for that one little spark that will help you move along. There must be some chaos to the creative process. I think we can stifle ourselves if we try to do everything to perfection.

So, where do you keep your ideas?

Wine of the Week: Gnarlier Head Old Vine Zinfandel

The Shots Heard Round The World

You may be aware of the shot heard round the world that emanated from my backyard this week. Sports legend Steve McNair was shot and killed on the 4th of July. Murdered, in his own home, in his own living room, on his own couch, a stone’s throw away from the house that he built, known officially as LP Field, but still referred to by most Nashvillians as The Coliseum. The place where giants and gladiators stride on any given Sunday for our entertainment.

As far as stories go, it’s sad. Terrible even.

But this is Nashville. Which means there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

 ______________________

Steve McNair was a good guy. As an athlete, he was a glorious God. In a quick glance at his football career en totale, from little Alcorn State in Mississippi to the Houston Oilers to the Tennessee Titans, he is referred to in reverential tones, a tough and humane player who never complained, never shirked his duty, always set the example on the field. He will be remembered well, I think. I’d say there’s better than an 80% chance he will be posthumously inducted into the Football Hall of Fame. And Steve deserves to be in Canton, there’s no doubt about that.

But Steve didn’t make the news this week because of his skills and dedication to the game. Steve made the news this week because he was cheating on his wife with a 20-year-old waitress from Dave & Buster’s, an obviously unstable little girl who racked up a DUI, a semi-automatic purchase and a murder, all in three days.

Steve is in the news because he cheated on his wife with a girl who shot him dead in his own living room, then killed herself.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? It’s a classic locked-room murder scenario – inside the locked house with no signs of forced entry are two dead bodies, one riddled with bullet holes, some close contact shots, and a second, smaller body, with a contact wound to the right temple, laying on the murder weapon. The two persons involved were in a rather public relationship despite the fact that one of them was married. The two persons involved were not known to have any domestic assaults on record, were law-abiding citizens, and seemed to be in love.

So what really happened in the early morning hours on the 4th of July???

That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.

______________________

On the surface, this does look like a straightforward murder/suicide. But this is Nashville, and nothing is ever what it seems. Here’s what we know for sure.

* In the wee hours of Thursday morning, July 2, Steve’s mistress, Sahel Kazemi, was pulled over for a DUI. Steve and another unidentified person were in the car with her, but were allowed to leave in a cab. Steve returned and bailed her out in the morning.

* Sometime later that day, Sahel legally purchased a semi-automatic weapon in a private sale.

* On Thursday July 2, Sahel also put her furniture up for sale on Craigslist: "NICE FURNITURE. TV, COUCH, COFFE TABLE AND MORE - $1 (hermitage)."

* On Friday night, July 3rd, Steve was on his usual rounds, out on the town for the night. A woman approached him in a lakefront bar and accused him of slipping her a roofie last year. She threatened him, saying her boyfriend was going to kill him.

* Friends saw Steve and Sahel talking in the Escalade he’d bought her for her birthday. They didn’t seem to be fighting.

* Steve was sent home by himself in a private car around 1:00-2:00 a.m. Sahel was waiting for him when he arrived.

* Sometime on the morning of July 4th, Steve’s friend came to the house they shared (this seems to have been a bit of a “bachelor pad” for the boys), unlocked the door, went inside and saw the bodies. Instead of calling the police, he called a third friend. More than 45 minutes elapsed between his arrival and the eventual 911 call.

* Steve was shot four times, twice in the chest and once on each side of the head. The first three shots were from a distance of at least three feet, the last temple shot was at close range.

* Sahel was shot once, a contact shot to the right temple.

* The gun, the same gun Sahel purchased on Thursday evening, was found beneath her body.

* Her hands tested positive for gunshot residue, Steve's hands had no trace.

______________________

Steve was a big, big supporter of the restaurant and bar industry in Nashville. And it wasn’t exactly a state secret that he played around on his wife. It was something that I couldn’t ever reconcile about him – this was an unbelievably accomplished athlete who had the respect of every single person who’d ever met him – but boy, did he like the ladies. Drove me nuts. Be the same man Saturday night as you are Sunday morning, and you get a lot more respect in my book.

Steve was dear friends with the owner of a few establishments that we frequent, and it was in one of these establishments where we met Steve for the first time. This was several years ago, when he was still Air McNair, the quarterback for the Titans.

We were sitting at the bar, and Steve came in with his driver. He sat next to us. We chatted a bit. He was sweet. I was struck by two things: one, he had a gigantic watch with diamonds the size of tennis balls on the bezel, and two, he was unfailingly polite and good-natured to all of the fans and well-wishers (and even the lone detractor) who came by to shake his hand and wish him luck on Sunday. Despite our proximity for the evening, I didn’t want to ask for an autograph. That’s not how we do it here in Nashville.

Celebrity in Nashville is a business. You can’t shake a stick in this town without running into someone hugely famous. Whether it’s Starbucks or PF Chang’s or Venetian Nails or Magic Mushroom or Joe’s Crab Shack or Whole Foods or Sunset Grill, you’ll see someone. But no one really does anything about it.

You see, Southerners are unfailingly polite. They know how to mind their own business, (which they do exceedingly well on the surface, but fail miserably in reality - how else would we get the good gossip otherwise?) But it wouldn’t be right to accost a famous person while they’re minding their own business. That’s how the likes of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban and the legions of other celebrities that now call Nashville home can go out to Starbucks on a Sunday morning unannounced and be left alone – we’re too polite to stare and point. Instead, you’re likely to get a nod and a smile, and that’s it. Lovely for them, really.

But for the athletes, well, if you’re sipping rum and coke in a little suburban bar, you’re probably going to have a few folks stop by to wish you well.

Strangely enough, the night Steve died, he was doing just that.

 _____________________

 
Being a mystery writer in Nashville has its ups and downs. We have plenty of crime, more than enough to make my novels realistic. I’ve had two pretty farfetched scenarios that I’ve made up in my twisted little head make the news in real life. Three, now. The opening of my debut novel is, ironically, set on the 4th of July, with my protagonist, Taylor Jackson, sitting at her desk while the fireworks are shot off, wondering what crime scene she’s going to be called to.

Any minute now, she’d be answering the phone, getting the call. Chance told her somewhere in her city, a shooter was escaping into the night. Fireworks were perfect cover for gunfire.

On this 4th of July, Randy and I had a most surreal night. We were downtown to have dinner and watch the fireworks. There was a storm brewing; one of Nashville’s nasty tornado-inducing thunderstorms was on the way. The city decided to move up the fireworks to 8:10 p.m. so people could take cover as the storms rolled through. Of course, you can’t time out Mother Nature, so the rain started in earnest after the second or third firework. We were standing on 3rd Avenue, in a restaurant parking lot, under an umbrella, with the fireworks blasting into the sky to our left backlit by lightning, and the whirling lights of police cruisers attending the McNair crime scene to our right, both in perfect view of one another. I couldn’t tell if we were all celebrating America’s independence, mourning Steve’s death, or what.

They’d removed the bodies by this point, and the rumor mill was churning in full gear. The first news broke that he’d been found in an alley and it was a murder/suicide, both those reports were quickly backed away from. It took ages for the media to report that the bodies were inside the house and that Steve did own the property. As a matter of fact, after the very first presser our Public Information Officer Don Aaron did, there was nearly a four-hour lag until the media got anything new. And let me tell you, four hours of not talking to the media in this town is probably a new record.

Some of the early gossip had Steve’s wife, Mechelle McNair, as the shooter, having found her husband in flagrante delicto with a younger woman. There was also talk of his new business venture, a restaurant he’d opened earlier in the week, and some of the folks he may have gotten involved with there being responsible.

The fascinating thing is, this investigation is playing out in the news just like the damn books I write, step by step, unraveling the pieces day by day. The police are doing a stellar job of not jumping to conclusions. They are being methodical. They are using state of the art forensics, managing the media, keeping everyone at arms length and staying away from classifying this as what it seems too quickly. They are doing one hell of an investigation, and I applaud them. Because there are plenty of what ifs and pieces that aren’t adding up just right.

Some of the what ifs:

* What about the woman who threatened Steve at the bar? Where is she and where is her boyfriend?

* Why is Sahel's ex-boyfriend Keith Norfleet so convinced she was leaving Steve to reunite with him?

* Why don't the police consider him a suspect, especially in light of this?

* Why did Sahel tell her sister Steve was getting a divorce that would be final in two weeks? (There are no divorce filings on record.)

* Why did she up and put her furniture for sale?

* Was the mistress pregnant? Why won’t the police say yes or no definitively?

* Why did she suddenly buy a gun of her own? (Steve was arrested for a DUI years ago and had a firearm in his possession, we know he had guns.)

* Was Steve having yet another affair, one which Sahel found out about?

* Why did Steve leave Sahel in the back of a police car when she was asking for him to come talk to her? (Here's video of the arrest.)

* Why didn’t Steve’s friend call the police immediately upon finding the body? And why did he move the shell casings at the scene?

* Why would a girl who was head over heels in love with a very, very rich man suddenly snap and decide to kill him?

* How many people had keys to the condo where the bodies were found?

* What really happened between 2 a.m. and 10 a.m.?

These are just a few of the unanswered questions floating around town right now. I have to think like the mystery writer I am with this - it's not easy to stage a suicide well, but it has been done. The methodical shots to Steve's body seem off to me: shoot him in the head, then step around the body and shoot him twice in the chest, then administer the coup de grace to the opposite temple up close? Does that sound like the grouping of a 20 year old in love?

As you can imagine, the murder of one of our own, of possibly the biggest sports star we have, has shaken a lot of people. We’re in the spotlight, and so far, I think Metro has shown themselves to be competent and capable. As of Wednesday afternoon, this was ruled an official murder/suicide. The case is closed pending final toxicology reports.

My prayers go to Mechelle and the McNair kids. I hope that someday, they’ll be able to separate the man they thought Steve was from the man he showed himself to be in the end.

So what do you think happened? Is this a classic locked-room murder/suicide, or is there something more sinister afoot? I mean really, we are crime fiction lovers...

Wine of the Week: 2006 Bivio Italia Tuscan Red Bivio means "fork in the road" in Italian, so I couldn't resist using it here today. Maybe if Steve had taken a different road, he'd still be with us. Regardless, the wine is luscious!