How do we look to them?

If I asked you, "What do people from other countries notice most about us when they visit the U.S?" What would you guess? My own guesses would be that we're rude, loud, rich, and stupid. That we're trying to control the world. That we're so stupid we believe what the (government, news media, people who are really in control, choose one) tell us.

As you probably know, I'm an inveterate traveler and I've had a lot of opportunity to hear what others think of us. You might be surprised. I'm especially amused by comments I've heard from foreigners who've actually visited and aren't just repeating what their own media (or ours) have told them.

Here are some real-life examples.

From an Australian I met in South Africa: "Your restaurants serve too bloody much food! They bring you a plate that a normal person couldn't eat in a week."

From a Chinese girl: " I love your blue sky."

From a Turkish man: "I hate to drive in America. It's boring! Why do you obey the traffic laws? We don't."

From a young German man: "Americans are fatter." This, after puzzling for some time over the question, How are Americans different from Germans?

From a teacher leading a group of Hawaiian school kids from Hampton, Virginia to Washington, D.C.(Okay, I know Hawaii is in the U.S. but the Eastern seaboard is a looong way from Hawaii.)

"Nevermind the history. They're only interested in two things. Your squirrels and your lightning-bugs."

I love that! It puts us in our place. We're neither the best, or the worst, or the richest, or the ugliest. We, like they, run the gamut. And you'd be surprised to hear what they notice when they visit.

I'd love to know what you've heard from foreign visitors to our shores. It might make an interesting book.

Rethinking social media

How should a writer spend his time?

Writing books or Tweeting, Blogging, Facebooking and updating the old website? How much of your time should you spend doing what you do and how much time advertising it?

How's your platform?

I'm getting bored with this.

For years we've been told the only way to sell books, especially ebooks, is by maintaining a high profile online, but it's beginning to look like that Internet bubble we watched pop at the turn of the millenium. It's getting out of hand. Would you like to read a novel written in 10 days? Current wisdom says that's all the time you've got if you want to turn out a book a year.

Here's how I figure it: Take one of the lucky few who, like myself, don't need a day job and can write full-time. You're advised to spend 80% of your time in social media on topics that have nothing to do with selling books. If  more than 20% of your Facebook presence is about your books, your friends will feel like they're being used. And they might be right. Okay. You're also advised to spend 80% of your writing time promoting yourself, 20% actually writing.

Hasn't Amanda Hocking switched over to a traditional publisher so she can actually have time to write? I have news for her. The traditional publishers also expect you to promote yourself. Agatha Christie, too shy to speak in public, would never have made it in today's market.

Back to the numbers: Let's say I work a standard 40 hour week, and I don't take any vacation.  52 weeks X 40 hours/week = 2080 hours/year pursuing my dream. 80% of my social media time is stuff like photos of my dogs, what I did last night, happy birthday to friends, etc. and 20% is stuff like photos of my new book cover, check out this review, etc. But 80% of the time I spend with my laptop on my knees, is spent on these pursuits vs 20% on making up stories. What is 20% of 20% of 2080 hours/year? It's 83.2 hours/year. Working 8 hours/day that's 10.4 days per year. To write a book.

Who's actually doing this? Nobody much, I think. I've recently discovered how very naive I am. Other writers are making up alter-egos (called "sock-puppets") to toot horns for them. They're hiring agencies to tweet for them, often several times a day. They're hiring people to write reviews for them and post on Amazon. The more honest ones are hiring people to teach them how to tweet. Isn't that like "tutoring tooters to toot?"

I promise I'll never do that. If you read something I allegedly wrote, you can be sure I wrote it. If you read a review of one of my books, you can be sure I had nothing to do with it. But I'm seriously considering stopping this lunacy and writing a book.

Don't miss it if you can!

Come to Barnes and Noble, Jefferson Ave, Newport News, VA on Saturday July 28th (the day after tomorrow) between 2 and 4 p.m. I'll be signing my new hardcover from Five Star, Death of a Second Wife. 

Going first class

Airfares make no sense.
How much does it cost to fly New York to London, roundtrip, in say, December, on a major airline? I found prices from $640 to $43,000. Same dates, same airports. Okay the $43k flight does take you through Hong Kong, but nonstop flights still range from $640 to $19,000. This makes no sense.
Prices vary by date, by airline, by number of stops, and by website. But the biggest differences are between classes: Economy to First. Travellers on the same plane have paid vastly different prices. Why? Comfort.
I've heard that airlines are phasing out first class because it's a money loser. Huh? They say it's because no one actually pays these exorbitant prices. Companies make deals to fly their employees for less.
I've also heard that airlines lose money on economy seats but make up for it on first class.
Both of these cannot be true. Somebody's lying.

Sleeps on a plane

I used to wonder why anyone would pay for anything better than economy seats. That was before they started shrinking the seats and my bones got some age on them. I still, for short flights of three hours or less, think economy is perfectly okay. I'm a medium sized woman. But for long flights, I'm going for the upgrade.
Some airlines have added a new class called Economy Comfort, or something similar. I took one of these on a recent Washington to Amsterdam flight and found the extra room to be well worth the extra $165.
 Some airlines are upgrading Business Class until it's as nice as First. It's all about room, and how much your seat reclines. For overnight flights, there's nothing like a bed. I like to use Seatguru and compare. But there is a difference between "lie-flat" and "flat bed" seats. Lie flat seats do flatten out but they're still on a bit of a tilt. Flat Bed seats are better for sleeping.

Let me tell you about a perfectly wonderful Upper Class trip I took on Virgin Atlantic. VA is not paying me to say any of this. It was a splurge, but not a huge splurge. I paid a bit more than double what it would have cost me to fly Economy.
The flight attendants greeted me with a glass of champagne and I suppose I could have drunk myself blind for no charge but I didn't want to arrive hung-over. My seat was more like a little suite, with everything I could possibly need built in near my head. I had chosen the "Sleep Zone" so I wouldn't be disturbed. They gave me jammies and a place to change, a pillow and blanket of course, and a toiletries kit (which they give everyone) It was so nice I could hardly get to sleep, wanting to savor the whole experience. Nevertheless, I did doze off and arrived in London feeling ever so much better than I usually do. You can go to the fast lane for Immigration.
To freshen up before hitting the streets of London, I went to the Upper Class lounge in Heathrow, where they take charge of your luggage while you eat anything you want for breakfast, shower in a truly luxurious private room with big towels, a hairdryer, lotions, etc, and hang around until you're ready to leave. You could even get a manicure or a facial.
Totally worth it.
Advice? Start with Kayak or whatever to get an idea of the price range. Choose an airline and go to their website to book. Consider upgrading on long haul flights. And as always, don't forget to bring your sense of humor.

Like the feel of paper? Oh, really?

In the battle of ebooks vs paper, the comment I hear most often from people who like paperbacks best is, "But I like the feel of paper. You know?" This is usually accompanied by rubbing the fingers together in a "feeling" gesture.

Are you sure? You don't like the feel of paper plates, do you? How about those paper gowns you get at the doctor's office? May I suggest that it isn't really the feel of paper you like, but it's the easy answer. It avoids the real answer(s) which, in most social situations, would take entirely too long to explain. And no one really wants to hear it, anyway.

Here's my take on the real reasons some people prefer paper and the real reasons some people prefer the e-options.

Paperback:
1. If you leave it on the seat in the boarding area, you aren't out much.
2. You can write on the pages or even tear them out, if you want to.
3. If you enjoyed it, you can hand it to a friend with a casual, "Don't bother to return it."
4. There's no cybertrail so no one will ever know you read it.
5. You can throw it at the wall.

Ebooks:
1. You don't have to go to the store to get it.
2. The pages don't turn yellow.
3. They're never out of stock.
4. Some of them are free and many cost much less than a paper version.
5. You can carry thousands of them in one hand.

All things considered, I have no intention of giving up any of my options. I'll still buy paperbacks, hardcovers, and ebooks.

My Bucket List. What's on yours?

In South Africa last month my five companions kept mentioning that they'd just ticked another item off their bucket list. I've never had a bucket list--not an actual list. So I decided to do one. Here's mine. I'd like to hear about yours.

Now, I'm not putting everything on this list. As I started jotting things down, I saw that they all had something to do with travel. They were all places, not events or activities. More thinking and I realized I do have achievement goals as well, but they are too personal to share. Goals like: win a Pulitzer Prize, marry Prince William, head up a Space Shuttle crew, play guitar like Eric Clapton. Oh, I said I wasn't sharing.

Here's my list:
1. Gobekli Tepe, Turkey
2. Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
3. Return to Luxor, Egypt
4. Ride the Orient Express
5. China
6. California Wine Country
7. Mount Desert Island, Maine
8. Casablanca
9. Paris (That's right. I've never been to Paris!)
10. Amazon Rain Forest

What's on yours?

That's a French accent, isn't it?

This is the last installment of Karen Krause's adventure in audiobook narration, and I'm so sad. I had no idea so much was involved. When writing my travel mysteries, I never think about how many of my characters are not American. From now on, I'll think about it. Frankly, I think the quality of the book Karen and her husband produced are way above the others, many of them produced by large studios. But the refrigerator? In the kitchen, several soundproof walls away?

IF IT’S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM?

Our first recording session was rough, but we eventually learned what days were high air traffic days and what times were best for outside noises.

With all of the technical issues under control, I was able to concentrate on performance.  I’d already done my pre-recording work defining characters and accents and making notes regarding same. 

Now, I thought this would be the easy part, since I’ve created hundreds of characters in my life on stage.  And in some ways it was.  But trying to keep track of twenty or more characters and voices is a bit like doing vocal gymnastics; hopping, jumping and twisting from one voice to another in the space of a breath.  There are
characters from different countries, from different parts of countries, old and young, male and female, angry, stubborn, lost, excited . . . .

But, I remembered, we are recording.  I can take time between characters if necessary.  No need to rush or keep pace as I would in front of a live audience.  We can edit out the pauses later.  Even with this luxury, keeping the different accents and voices separate requires concentration and focus.  Especially when there are several different characters speaking in the same scene. 

My dear husband stopped me numerous times to point out that I had used the wrong voice for this character or that one.  There was even once when I heard the all-too-familiar “Stop” from the next room.  I believe the character I was reading was French.

“That was Irish, wasn’t it?” I said meekly.

“I think so.”

There weren’t even any Irish characters in this particular story.  Too bad.  I do a mean Irish accent, if I do say so myself.

We finally reached the end of our recording, and I emitted a sigh of satisfaction.  Now all we had to do was edit and do some re-recording of spots missed.  Easy for me, since the editing would fall upon my husband’s shoulders.  I would read the manuscript twice with the recording to make sure we were word-for-word, but the rest of the work was his.

We had been told it takes about two to four hours to edit one finished hour of recording.  I’m sure the people who gave this information had never worked with my husband.  He has the best ear of anyone I know.  And he doggedly listened to every millisecond with that ear; carving out all of the mouth sounds, clicks, background noises, and things that for the life of me I couldn’t hear, even when he told me what I was to listen for.  I told him, “You have to lower the bar.  If it’s too perfect, it won’t sound natural”.  He tried, but I honestly think if we hadn’t had a deadline, he might still be editing that first book.

We met our deadline.  It was a long, somewhat rocky journey, but we both came out at the end proud of what we’d done and with the desire to continue. 

After sending off the completed audiobook, my husband looked at me and said, “We’ve finally found something we can do together.”  I wrinkled my brow.  “But we’re doing it in separate rooms,” I responded.

I will leave you with a few of the things we learned on our journey.

1. A soundproof vocal booth is HEAVEN!

2. Don’t lose the human element.  It’s acceptable to be a step below perfection.

3. You can be intense without deafening the engineer.

4. Don’t overdo the accents.  It’s more important the listeners understand the words than you impress them with your French accent.

5. Stay hydrated.  It’s not enough to drink lots of water right before a session.  It takes a day or two to get the vocal cords “oiled up”.

6. Patience is a virtue. 

7. Don’t forget to turn the refrigerator BACK ON after the session is over.

8. Did I say, patience is a virtue?

Thanks, Karen. Thanks for the laughs and the education.

PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES

Today we learn what the green apple slices are for. This post from narrator Karen Krause is the third of four, telling us what audiobook producers go through. It takes me back to a frustrating day I spent recording a tape to go with a slide presentation on gems and minerals I made for my science classes. I live in the flight pattern for jets from Langley Air Force Base.

PLANES, TRAINS AND MOUTH CLICKS

Once my husband’s ears stopped ringing from my unintentional assault on them, we went through the checklist.

Copy ready?  Check.  Microphone on (well, we tested that already) . . .  Computer up and running?  Check.  Refrigerator off?  Check.  Furnace off?  Check.  Dogs shut up in the back room?  Check. 

Let’s do this thing!

We had deliberately waited until evening, after most people had finished the day and gone inside to do whatever people do between supper and bed, hoping the outside noise would be at a minimum.  All was peaceful and quiet.  Perfect.

I took a drink of water and began the introduction.  So far, so good.

On to the first chapter.  I’d already read and reread the manuscript, made character notes, and marked spots that needed special attention when being read aloud.  I took a deep, calming breath.

“Chapter One”

“Stop!” I hear from the next room.

“What?”

“Don’t you hear that?”

I tilted my head and listened.  Ah, jet noise.  Our house is not in the direct flight path, but during certain wind or weather patterns, the air traffic is rerouted so that it passes near us.  It’s not loud enough to notice during normal activities, but is quite obvious in the recording.  I sighed and waited for it to pass.

“Okay, start again, Chapter One.”

“Chapt—no, it’s coming back.”

“Sounds like they’re in a pattern.  We’ll have to wait till they pass.”

Two emails, a trip to the bathroom, and a water refill later, I finally sat back down in front of the microphone and listened.  No jets. 

We were well into the 7^th or 8^th page before the next jet interruption.  Or was it a helicopter?  “Patience is a virtue”, I said to myself.  This was to become a phrase I would repeat daily.

Finally, we got into a rhythm, and I was getting into the performance of the characters, when again from the next room I hear, “What are you doing in there?”

“What?”

“It sounds like you’re chewing or smacking.”

“No.” 

“Well, take a drink.  Do something.  It sounds awful.”

Ah, the green apple slices.  That’s what they’re for.  You can chew it; you can suck it; you can bite it but not chew it; you can chew it but not swallow it.  The reports disagree on exactly how to best get that apple pectin working on your dry mouth, but green apple is universally touted on all the voice-over sites. 

It didn’t work for me.  I tried water.  I tried apple juice. I tried cinnamon.  I tried drying my tongue.  It got better, but it appears I am cursed with a noisy mouth.  It would just have to be added to the list of things to edit out post-recording.

When the neighbor turned on his compressor, which he often does when working on his car, we called it a night.

Despite, jets, passing cars, my mouth smacking, and neighbor intrusions (there really weren’t any trains, but I thought it sounded good in the title), we made it through the first chapter. 

Our feet were wet and we were ready for more.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Today, Karen Krause brings us the second installment in the adventures of a newbie audiobook narrator. Go to Audible, iTunes, or Amazon to hear a sample of her recording of my Death on the Aegean Queen.

With the first hurdle cleared (getting the contract to produce a book), the real work began.  Now we had decisions to make.  How do we set up the recording space?  Which microphone do we use?  Which pre-amp?  Do we use a compressor?  Which program will we record into and edit with?  How do we map out a schedule?  It seems with every question we answered, a new one materialized.

Fortunately, for me, we had my husband’s experience to guide us.  As a musician, songwriter, and composer, he’s logged hundreds, possibly thousands, of hours recording, editing, and manipulating sound.  He already had the basics we needed to produce a quality recording.  The fact that his expertise was in music rather than the spoken word, meant we had some adjusting to do; but for the most part, we had all the tools we needed.

We set up a spare bedroom as our sound booth.  Old duvets lined the walls and hung in strategic positions to baffle the sound and muffle outside noises.  After testing various microphone/pre-amp combinations, we settled on the one we liked the best.  We set it up in a portable isolation box to isolate the sound even more.  I brought in my water and green apple slices (which I’d been told I would need, but wasn’t really sure what to do with), sat down in my chair, my copy on the music stand in front of me, eager to finally get into the “fun” part.

I couldn’t see or hear my husband.  He was in front of the computer in the room adjacent to mine, holding a copy of the manuscript in front of him so he could follow along for continuity. 

“Are you ready?” he yelled. 

“What?” 

“I said, are you ready?” he yelled, louder. 

“Yes!” I yelled back.

“Ow!  You don’t have to yell!  I can hear you through the headphones!”

We were off to a great start.

Okay, what are the green apples for?

Recording an Audiobook: What does it take?

In preparation for producing Death on the Aegean Queen as an audiobook, I first considered doing the narration myself. Thank God, the good people at ACX talked me out of it. It's harder than you think and VERY few writers can do it. Okay, let's get someone competent to do it. I listened to the audition tapes of a bunch of producers (that's what they call the person or group that can turn your book into audio) and chose the lovely Karen Krause because her voice sounded much like my viewpoint character, Dotsy Lamb, sounds in my head.

But narrating an audiobook is not just a matter of reading it. You mustn't cough. Your clothes mustn't rustle. Sit up straight. What if a plane or a garbage truck goes by? How do you eliminate everything but the words?


I asked Karen to tell us more about the process and I'm posting the first half of her answer today. Second half tomorrow.

WE’RE RECORDING AN AUDIOBOOK!?!

Books have always been a passion of mine.  My family moved a lot when I was young, so making friends was hard.  My books became my best friends.  In the summers, I would climb the nearest tree and sit for hours reading; imagining myself living the lives of the characters in my books.  As I grew older, and busier, I no longer had hours for reading, but had to steal the time from my grown-up responsibilities. 

Then I discovered audiobooks.  Wow!  I can read and clean the bathroom?  Or read while I drive to work?  Or read and weed the garden?  Heaven!

And then one day I realized, “I can read and share my passion with the world”.  I wanted to narrate those audiobooks I loved to “read”.  So, I started auditioning. 

Now, I’m no stranger to rejection.  I’ve been singing and acting on stage since I was seven years old, and I know how brutal the audition process can be.  So, I didn’t expect much to happen at first.  I was prepared for weeks, maybe months to go by before I was offered a book to narrate. 

After a long night of recording and editing, I sent off my first audition, tried to tell myself not to expect anything, and went to bed.  Six hours of fitful sleep later, I went downstairs to find a message waiting.  They loved my audition and would I accept a contract to narrate and produce the book?

“I’ve been offered a contract.  S**t!  What do we do now?” I practically screamed to my husband, who was to be my director and engineer. 

Excitement.  Terror.  Anticipation.  Trepidation.  Insecurity.  Emotions were flying around inside of me like dust in a Kansas windstorm.  I mean, I was as confident in my abilities as any actor (we can all be crushed for days, even weeks, at the whim of a scathing critic or director), but I’d never done anything quite like this before.  This was true storytelling, an art in and of itself.   What if I really suck at this?  I took a deep, calming breath and said to myself, “There’s only one way to find out.” 

And thus began our journey into the world of audiobook production. 

Reining in the Research Monster

I love research. Before I even begin plotting a mystery I've visited the site of the story, taken photos, made notes in my journal and just sat for a good while soaking up the smells and sounds of the place. Later I lock horns with my tax accountant over whether I: 1) learned anything of use in my mystery or 2) had fun. Huh? I can't have both? I'm starting my fifth Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery. This one is set in Oxford and although I've been there maybe 8 to 10 times, I did go last summer and stayed in the oldest (spookiest) college on a B & B basis. My room at Jesus College was in the oldest wing of the oldest quad. While lying in my little bed on the top floor overlooking Turl Street (locals say "The Turl") I imagined mine was the room T.E. Lawrence had when he was a student there. It could have been. They don't know which room was his.

Other writers do it differently. Some do no research. Some write the first draft, then research all the questions that have come up while writing. One writer I know, asked what to do about a chemical element with specific properties not found in any natural element, said, "Forget it. Make one up."

I hit the ceiling.

"You can't make up an element! It needs an atomic number and they're all taken!" That is, all the natural elements have been assigned a neat square on the periodic table and the man-made ones are all quite heavy, radioactive, and any new ones they may find probably won't last long enough in the lab to even take a photo of it.

That's the chemistry teacher in me talking.

Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey

But back to research. Today I'm using the Internet to find out all I can about, Glastonbury, King Arthur's (alleged) burial place and bones, and King Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. These all figure into the story that's still in the ether of my head, but the research is so engrossing, I'm in danger of doing what I've done before. That is, going off on a tangent and forgetting why I'm doing this.

I actually went to Glastonbury two years ago and I'm kicking myself now for taking our guide's advice. She said, "Don't bother going to the Abbey. There's nothing there." I now know that her definition of nothing and mine are greatly different. I should have gone. But at the time, I didn't know it would every figure into a story.

Meanwhile, If you know some good websites for information on any of the above mentioned, let me know.

Walking with Lions

Young lion at Lion Encounter

The number of African lions in the wild has decreased 80% to 90% in the last thirty years. I'm sure you already know why: growth of human population and habitat shrinkage. In Zimbabwe, we found a wonderful program designed to return lions to the wild. For a small fee (proceeds going to the rehabilitation project) the seventeen members of our group were allowed to take a walk through the grassland with a couple of lions.  Eleven months old, they were already about the size of hefty german shepherds.

It's a four stage program. In stage one, young captive lions are moved to the rehab property, but still fed and protected. They are used to human contact and cannot, themselves, ever be truly wild. In stage two they are released, but into a protected area where they hunt for themselves and hopefully form or join a pride. If the pride seems stable enough it is released into the real wild. The cubs born into this pride of lions are truly wild. Success.

Me and my walking buddies

I had to do this while still on crutches thanks to my pulled hamstring muscle and worried that the lions would see my crutch as a threat. No problem. Everyone was given a walking stick (Why? I'm not sure) so my crutch was just another walking stick. The guides also had walking sticks and they used them to distract the animals. Lions have really short attention spans and are easily distracted.

What's it like to pet a lion? Nice, but they aren't as soft as our cats. Their hair is a bit coarse. Another thing. All the wild animals we saw, lions, zebras, giraffes, cheetahs, buffalo, monkeys, wildebeest, impala, et al, look ever so much healthier than the ones you see in a zoo. Slick coats, bright eyes, easy gaits. Makes sense when you think about it.

The program is still pretty new, and the fate of the African lion is very much in doubt but if you want to know more, you can visit their site, www.lionencounter.com or their facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/lionalert/posts/119399634867741.

Zimbabwe vs South Africa

I'm not a political person so this is the first and last time I'll blog about politics. Probably. My visit to South Africa and Zimbabwe over the last few weeks has left me with some vivid images. In South Africa I honestly expected to find all that Cumbaya stuff following the elevation of Nelson Mandela to the presidency to be fraying a bit at the edges. I was wrong. Looks like South Africa is doing fine. Sure they have problems, but the unlikely cooperation between former president, F. W. de Klerk, and former prisoner, Mandela, has not only avoided civil war, it's brought about prosperity and an air of optimism.

Mandela's Cell on Robben Island

I toured Robben Island near Cape Town and saw the jail cell Mandela called home for 18 of his 27 years behind bars. When not breaking rocks in the limestone quarry, Mandela conducted school, call it Robben University, teaching prisoners and guards alike. After his release, now a national hero, he spoke out in favor of cooperation rather than civil war. Former president F. W. de Klerk and former prisoner Mandela worked together to establish what we now see. A country full of optimism and energy. Never friends, Mandela and de Klerk put country above personal considerations. Mandela, now 93 and frail, lives in a very nice house in Johannesburg.

Honest-to-god Zimbabwe money

Zimbabwe,has taken the other road. Following the switch to majority rule in 1980, they took a scorched earth approach to land management with the result that practically no agriculture or production of anything else is left. The economy spun out of control. Inflation devalued their currency to the ridiculous degree you see in the photo. This was a real bill. Now their official currency is the U.S. dollar. How did we get so lucky? Actually, Zimbabweans will accept almost any currency: dollars, rands, euros, socks. They really like socks. Most of our group left a pile of clothing in our rooms when we checked out. Now these are educated people with a strong work ethic. They're stuck. Their government is disfunctional and elections are rigged.

While in Johannesburg, we toured Soweto, the district where riots made international news in the 1970's. Soweto is looking better. They still have some squalid tin-and-cardboard camps, but now they they're full of refugees from Zimbabwe.

"First find the lion, then I'll give you a blanket."

No one's ever said that to me before.
But last week in Kapama Game Reserve on the western fringe of Krueger Park in South Africa our guide, John, came out with that statement and I said, "Okay." As the Southern Hemisphere heads into winter, temperatures in the bush plummet when the sun goes down. Pleasant during the day, cold at night. We'd been exploring the brush and washed-out ravines since late afternoon in our Toyota Land Cruiser, challenging its four-wheel drive to the limit.

John was on the radio with another guide a mile or so away and learned they'd spotted a pair of lions sleeping in the tall grass. Nearby they'd also found a fresh wildebeest carcass and both lions had bellies rounded by their big meal. These lions are wild, but life on the Game Reserve has accustomed them to people. People in Land Cruisers, John told us, the lions don't consider worth their notice. People on foot are dinner.

Of course, we wanted to find them. That's when John looked at us, now shivering in our lightweight shirts, and said, "First, we find the lion, then I'll give you a blanket."

We took off down dirt roads without markers, then veered off into untrodden bush, bouncing over small acacias as we went. There they were. Mr. and Mrs. Lion, lying in the tall grass a few feet apart, and so oblivious of us they hardly blinked when our spotter shined a spotlight right in their eyes.
What a life!

The Cape of Good Hope

I'm back from a wonderful trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe, on crutches and without my luggage. It was a "pinch me, I can't believe I'm here" experience with something astounding every day. I'll post photos in the next few blogs, but today's pics are from Cape Town and the Cape of Good Hope, as they are the ones I have on my iPad. The others are on my camera which I can't recharge until I get my wires and things. They are in my luggage which is in Spain.

In Cape Town, we stayed at Southern Sun The Cullinan, near the waterfront. Gracious, airy, and staffed by some of the nicest people you could ever meet, I could have spent the whole time there. My four friends and I started with the Green Market, where we went wild haggling and buying things for which we have absolutely no use, but what bargains!

The first official day of our tour took us to the Cape of Good Hope, the southwestern-most tip of the continent, where I expected to see whales and seals, but what we actually saw were penguins (Jackass penguins, so named because of the noise they make), ostriches, baboons, cape zebras, and dassies. Dassies are the only living members of the genus Petromus, and we found them among the rocks at the top of Cape Town's Table Mountain. Very cute.

Next, we visited Boulders Beach and its colony of Jackass penguins. They are severely endangered and like all penguins, TOO cute.

I really didn't expect to find zebras and baboons so close to Antarctica but there they were, flourishing, only a mile or so from the windswept Cape. Here, I'll violate the rule of good blogs and post more photos than text. You're supposed to do it the other way around, but I don't care to leave any of these out.

Turkish Oddities

As I traveled through Turkey, I ruminated about the plot for The Man on the Istanbul Train. I knew I'd need to go to the Haydarpasa station, take photos, and swipe a train schedule. I knew I'd need to take notes on the tram lines in Istanbul and on any archaeological sites we encountered in the Anatolian Plateau. I didn't know the Egyptian Spice Market would play such an important role so I didn't take nearly enough photos there. (Thanks, YouTube)

I did get some great shots of things I'll bet you've never seen.

How about an exploding cucumber?  Ecballium elaterium grows wild there. If you touch its spiny seed pod with a credit card or something it explodes, sending a poisonous mixture of seeds and gunk about 10 ft into the air. I got a glob on my shirt.

How about a huge, disc-shaped boulder tucked into a slot in an underground city? In Cappacodocia, we walked through the narrow passages of an entire, multilevel underground city used by early Christians when their new religion was still outlawed. These boulders, rolled across the passages would wall invaders out, or maybe in, horrors! Guaranteed. It reminded me of a scene from Indiana Jones. In this photo you have to look closely at the top center and find the curved edge of one on the left side of the passage.

When they want to unwind the nearly invisible silk threads from a cocoon, the rug weavers dunk the cocoons in hot water, then poke at the mass with a sort of whisk broom, The broom picks up several dozen threads which are then spun into a . . . thread. A bigger thread, but still almost invisible. They use natural plant dyes, which fed beautifully into my story because my protagonist, Lacy Glass, is a botanist who specializes in plant pigments.



Have you learned something today?

The Cost of ePubbing

Five minutes ago I put The Man on the Istanbul Train on Amazon Kindle. It will be "In Review" for a day or so, then "Live" and available for $3.99. This morning's action cost me nothing, but getting it to this point has cost me $1500. I'm posting this for other writers, not for sympathy.
You don't have to spend a penny to ePub but the end product will likely show it. Here's how my expenses break down:  Editing-$900, Cover design-$400, Formatting-$200.
I did not skimp. I retained the best editor I know and the best cover designer I know. You gets what you pays for. The result is a novel I'm proud of, but which will need to sell for some months before I break even.
Authors? Readers? Leave me a comment. Worth it?

Preparing for a long flight

I fly to South Africa next Saturday. Well, actually Saturday and Sunday because I leave Washington on Saturday evening, change planes in Amsterdam Sunday morning, and arrive in Capetown Sunday evening, 23 hours later. A flight of this duration can bring on deep vein thrombosis (DVT), dehydration, red eyes, jet lag, and increased susceptibility to scores of airborne diseases. So I'm girding my loins for the long haul.

Why can't it be like it used to be? Back in the 60s, it was fun and luxurious and cheap. Was it really? In the 60s you could fly from New York to San Francisco in 6 hours for about $326. Your seat probably boasted a 34" pitch. That's the distance from your seat to the one in front of you.

Today, New York to San Francisco, Economy, will set you back about $550. The flight still takes about 6 hours and your seat will have a 31" to 33" pitch. You could fly business class and get a seat with 37" pitch, but that'll cost about $3150.

Wait a minute! Corrected for inflation, that $326 in 1965 would be $2230 today. Not much less than business class today and your seat would have been considerably smaller. And that $550 we pay today would have been $80 back then. So airline prices haven't really increased over the past forty years or so. It's just that, in the 60s all seats were like the ones in the front of the plane today. So how did the average person swing it? They didn't. They went Greyhound.

Are the seats really that much smaller or are we just larger?

Let's not talk about that. Preparing for this flight, I have purchased compression socks, an inflatable neck pillow, and a Nada chair (a device that moves the stress on your back to your knees.) I'm going to hydrate like hell ahead of time, and I've loaded my iPod with sleepy-time music. Forget the melatonin pills. I have them but they don't work on me.  I will blog occasionally while away and let you know whether any of this stuff worked.

Guest blogger today is mystery author, Susan Oleksiw.

Beginning the Next Book

Over the last few years I’ve become very conscious of the little habits I have that get me into the next book. I don’t like to think that I rely on these—it makes me sound superstitious, but in all honesty writers often are superstitious. We have our little tics, like wearing our favorite yellow sweater when we write to our agent, or only using a certain kind of notebook (I favor Moleskins) when we travel. My habits when I begin a new mystery make sense, but they are compulsions nonetheless and help me get into the story.

I like to bring out a few photographs of the area where I’ve set the story, and in particular a house of other location that I plan to use. This is often a place I have seen a number of times and I know who is going to live in it, and which important scenes will take place there. Using real locations is one of the ways I ground a story. I believe strongly that something in a story must be real—a location, a particular crime or event, a character drawn from real life. A story that is one hundred percent fiction will feel thin. I use real locations and places to give the story greater heft.

Sometimes a story idea includes questions I can’t answer, and I head to the library (or the Internet) to do some basic research. This impetus to get answers must be controlled, or I’d spend my entire life doing research and never writing. I do enough to answer my basic question (when did a particular historical event occur; how does a particular bit of machinery work), knowing I can go back later if necessary.

The beginning of the story is also not quite the beginning—it is, for me, the odd bits of dialogue and visuals that start popping into my head. A character who is as yet unnamed, and barely visualized, will suddenly start spouting lines of dialogue or revealing phrases or expressions. I don’t know yet where they will go in the story, but I know I will use them. I jot them down in the file I’ve set up for this book. I call this part “keeping the story warm.” It’s one thing to get an idea—writers get those all the time. But getting an idea that keeps returning again and again means you’ve got a good one, one that will work. And once that becomes evident, the characters start emerging, throwing out their sparks in lines of dialogue or sudden tumbles into a crowd, or some other distinctive act or behavior. These too I write down. Sometimes I only have an impression of what a scene will be—one character stops at a fish store but instead of buying fish overhears a conversation that changes what she plans to do, or the fish seller warns her against a particular purchase. There’s more to the scene, but I won’t know that until much later. Right now I’m just recording the odd bits that come to me, knowing their place will become evident later.

After a few days or even weeks of this, I understand what the story is about. I have a sense of the whole. This can’t be forced, or induced. When I have a vision of the entire story, I write a single paragraph of the story’s “aboutness.” Sometimes this reads like a very brief plot summary, and if so, then I set it aside. The story isn’t quite ready. But usually, the paragraph is a brief synopsis of the entire novel. It’s important for me to remind myself here that this is a beginning, a vision of the distance to be traveled, and it does not preclude changes, additions, or discoveries that will lead me to rewrite that paragraph as I move along. The sense of the “aboutness” of a story gives me something coherent to work within, but it is malleable.

Will all this preparation, the story is warm and growing. The characters are alive in my imagination every day, jostling for attention, eager to get into life. This is when I begin writing, which for me sometimes feels like a form of transcribing. I know the characters, I know much of what they’re up to, and I know where they live. The rest is discovery.

Susan Oleksiw’s next book, The Wrath of Shiva: An Anita Ray Mystery (Five Star/Gale, Cengage), will be available in June 2012. She is also the author of the Mellingham series featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva, who first appeared in Murder in Mellingham (1993). Her Reader’s Guide to the Classic British Mystery (1988) is, well, a classic.

Your first narrator

Audible.com has a catchy slogan this month. "Thank your first narrator." They're referring, of course, to Mother's Day this Sunday, and suggesting that an audiobook would be a nice gift.
This started me thinking about mothers (and fathers) as first narrators. As a former public school teacher, I believe one of the most important things a parent can do is read to their child. And you can't start too early. A kid doesn't have to be old enough to understand the words to enjoy sitting on Mom or Dad's lap and listening to a story. It establishes a link in the child's mind between a book and comfort. This becomes a love for books which tends to translate into success in school.
My mother sat on the sofa, my brother on one side me on the other, and read us bedtime stories. I'll never understand why she loved reading us The Five Little Peppers (boring) and hated Winnie the Pooh. I loved Winnie the Pooh, but she wouldn't read it unless I insisted. It's taken years of therapy, but I have my own copy now.
That said, I know a lot of my friends listen to audiobooks on road trips. It's a safe alternative to texting or phoning. But I've discovered a new use for writers or those who'd like to become writers. I don't know how it works, but listening to a book on audio helps me to see its construction better. Maybe it's because my mind isn't occupied with turning pages and not dropping the book. I'm not good at multi-tasking.
If you've any thought of buying or gifting an audiobook, may I suggest the newly released Death on the Aegean Queen, narrated by the wonderful Karen Krause, or Death of an Obnoxious Tourist, narrated by the equally wonderful Connie Terwilliger? They're on iTunes, Audible.com, and Amazon.
And if you know anyone expecting, buy them a book for the new baby.

Do you need an editor?

Yes.

I don't care how smart you are or how brilliant your use of the language may be, you need an editor. I consider myself  pretty adept at English grammar, punctuation, and sentence construction. My mother was an English teacher and she had thumb screws at home for any child caught committing a grammatical error.

Look at this randomly selected page from my latest book, The Man on the Istanbul Train after my brilliant editor, Chris Roerden, got through with it. I thought it was perfect when I sent it to her. She strikes out superfluous words, reorders clumsy phrases, and reminds me to make ellipses non-breaking. Most people don't know what a non-breaking ellipsis is, let alone how to avoid breaking one.

But more important, an editor sees where you need a sensory image, where a character isn't behaving as that character would, and where someone's using a cell phone he lost in the last chapter. An editor will tell you you have too much backstory when your best friend won't.

I think we, who are moving into the world of epub, must be careful. When the publisher of my Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries, Five Star/Cengage, produces a book, they do the editing for me. I pay nothing for that service. Writers, let's not let the standard slip. Cough up the money and get your book edited. Polish it until it shines.

BTW, the preceding blog wasn't edited by anyone.

New ITW Anthology: Love is Murder

The International Thriller Writers association is one of the best resources out there for writers of mysteries and thrillers. I'm tempted to call it our best-kept secret, but it isn't a secret. It's easy to join and the benefits are many. So I'm excited to tell you about their new Anthology, Love is Murder, not to be confused with the annual mystery conference of the same name, which is a fun weekend, by the way.

You can read all about it at: http://www.thebigthrill.org/love-is-murder/

You get 30 original short stories by wonderful writers like Lee Child, Heather Graham, D.P. Lyle, William Bernhardt, Andrea Sokoloff and (Golly. Now that I've started naming names, I hate to stop because I'll be leaving out  brilliant writers.) This volume is edited by Sandra Brown and if you pre-order by May 28 through any of the sites on the link above, you'll also get a free excerpt of Sandra's soon-to-be-published, Low Pressure.


You may want to check it out. I certainly will.

Front Porches with Swings

I wish all houses had front porches.  I have a front door with a tiny stoop and I only meet my neighbors when they walk up and ring the bell. This isolates me. My world is split into inside and outside.

What happened to the front porch with a swing attached to the ceiling by two S hooks? Television happened. And air conditioning. The pleasantest spot after 5 o'clock used to be on the front porch. At least in the southeastern U.S. and from April to October. Not so much in the north, where the outdoor season was more like June, July, August. And not so much in the large cities where the liveliest entertainment was on the stage. Plays, opera, concerts, and so on.

But in Demopolis, Alabama or Sewanee, Tennessee it was the front porch where families sat and fanned themselves, rocked, swung, and threw up their hands at neighbors passing by on the sidewalk--or down the road, in little towns like the one I grew up in because we had no sidewalks. Passing neighbors often came up and rested a bit at the homes where the stories were worth a stop. Like my grandparents' porch where the stories were as good as anything on Broadway. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the southern story-telling tradition develop into a sort of art form.

The southeastern corner of the United States has spawned more than its fair share of great writers in spite of the fact that it isn't known for using good English. From Faulkner and Poe to Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe and Eudora Welty, the southern literary tradition is so firmly established it's sometimes capitalized, like an official title. These writers follow the cardinal rule of story-telling: Don't be boring.

On the front porch, stories were told and re-told and exaggerated until they ceased to resemble the events on which they were usually based. Almost. Credit for the fact that they didn't completely abandon all truth goes to the wives.

My grandfather was the story teller and he sat in a straight-back chair, ceding the swing and the rockers to his audience. By deep dusk listeners usually spilled down the steps, sat on the wide concrete sides, or stood with one foot on the bottom step unwilling to commit to an actual visit. You weren't visiting until you sat down.  My grandmother came out after she finished the supper dishes, offered iced-tea, and took a seat. My grandfather would continue his story with one eye on my grandmother, waiting for her interruptions whenever he wandered too far from the way it really happened.

Grandfather: He was doing ninety miles an hour . . .
Grandmother: That car wouldn't do more than forty.
Grandfather: Drank about a gallon . . .
Grandmother: A gallon, my foot. A gallon woulda killed him.

Children were not really welcome on the front porch. We were supposed to be catching lightning bugs or playing hide-and-seek. Kids needed exercise and did not need to hear some of the details in the stories. That's why I sneaked away from the game and hid under the forsythia beside the front steps.

Categorizing Your Novel

Hi All,


My guest today is award winning author, Pamela S. Thibodeaux, Co-Founder & Lifetime Member of Bayou Writers’ Group in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and a fellow author at Five Star/Cengage. Multi-published in romantic fiction and creative non-fiction, her writing has been tagged as, “Inspirational with an Edge!” ™ and reviewed as “steamier and grittier than the typical Christian novel without decreasing the message.” 


Here are some of Pamela's thoughts:


My Five Star novel,  The Visionary, released on November 16, 2011 and is categorized as Inspirational Women’s Fiction. This is how the publisher and I see the novel, but not necessarily how others see it. Reviewers have termed this novel romance, paranormal, fantasy, sci-fi and Christian -- all of which are OK but not exactly 100% accurate.
This led me to thinking How DOES one categorize a novel?
One of the major parts of a proposal is category and the advice of many is to go into a book store and find out where your book would fit on the shelves. Among the thousands of titles out there, this can be quite a challenge.
Since publishers feel it’s a bit arrogant to say “My book belongs on the shelf with the other Best Sellers,” let’s look at the different categories and see how I came about determining mine as Women’s Fiction.

Inspirational isn’t hard to explain - undeniably “Christian” I do not write within the conservative guidelines required by many CBA publishers - therefore, Inspirational better fits what I write. In fact, my writing has been tagged as “Inspirational with an Edge!” ™ since my debut novel, Tempered Hearts in 2000.

Women’s Fiction is also not hard to understand. Romance is defined by certain criteria - 1 couple; boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, couple lives happily-ever-after. Since The Visionary has a set of m/f twins as the main characters, that immediately threw it into a genre other than romance. Women’s Fiction is normally defined as a contemporary novel that deals with women’s issues...ie: divorce, domestic violence, empty nest syndrome, etc. and a WF novel usually has a strong romantic thread in it. Since The Visionary deals with the twins’ journey through childhood abuse into wholeness, and into new life and love, Women’s Fiction seemed appropriate.

So why then has it been termed paranormal, fantasy & sci-fi? According to the definitions I found, Science Fiction is based on "imagined future scientific or technological advances."(IE: Time Travel). Paranormal is defined as, “Beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation: such paranormal phenomena as telepathy; a medium's paranormal powers. Considering the gift of visions my heroine has, I guess paranormal does apply to this novel.

On the other hand, Supernatural elements, are, "manifestations or events considered to be of supernatural origin. Attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature." Supernatural are events like those listed in the Bible ... Parting of the Red Sea, burning bushes that are not consumed, God speaking through a donkey, fire from heaven burning up sacrificial offerings that have been so heavily doused with water there is no natural way fire is possible, feeding thousands with five fish and five loaves of bread, walking on water, etc.
These elements are present in The Visionary and are based on the book of Joel (2:28), where the Lord says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions."

Am I upset that the terms “paranormal,” "science fiction" or "fantasy" are used in conjunction with this novel?

Of course not!
If those terms will encourage someone who wouldn't normally read "Inspirational, Romantic Women's Fiction" to pick up the book and have their own personal experience with a supernatural God, then I'm all for it!

Do you need an editor?

My dear editor, Chris Roerden, returned my manuscript for The Man on the Istanbul Train last weekend and the next couple of weeks will find me bent over my keyboard, making changes. None very big, mind you. No whole chapters to delete or anything like that. Mostly polishing it up. In fact, Chris thanked me for sending her such a clean manuscript.

For that, I thank my mother who was an English teacher and who brooked no sub-standard grammar around our house. I always made A's in English. Does that sound arrogant? Well, I did. Just sayin.'

The two questions most often asked by new and aspiring writers are: Do I need an agent? and Do I need an editor? We'll leave question 1 for another time, but I'd like to answer question 2.

Yes.

On the right, you will see a photo of one page plucked (I swear) at random from the stack of courier, size 12 literary gemstones. See what I mean? Look what it takes to polish up my grade A work! Very few of her handwritten notes are corrections of my grammar or punctuation. Like I said, I got that. And as for the bad grammar in that last sentence, I meant to do that.


Chris suggests inverting some of my sentences to give them more punch. Other comments are things like: "You've already said that on page 133," "I don't get a clear picture of this," and "Why didn't the police check the pockets in his trench coat?"

It's devilishly hard to see problems like this when you're so close to the material. You can't see the forest for the trees. Scratch that. Cliche.

Scorpion House is up on Kindle!

Serendipity: The art of finding something good when you're not looking for it. (my definition) If you read Scorpion House you'll find a bit about ancient Egyptian herbal medicine woven into the story. It's all, as far as I can determine,  accurate. But how I came by this information was pure serendipity.

Strychnine tree on Kitchener's Island,
 near Aswan, Egpyt. Misclassified, but
who cares?

First off, my MS degree is in Botany with a major in Plant Physiology. My research was primarily on an obscure compound called phytochrome, a blue pigment present in some plants but in such tiny amounts you'll never actually see any. When I went to Egypt, I already had the characters of Dr. Lacy Glass and her soon-to-be-friend, Dr. Paul Hannah in my mind. If Lacy's area of expertise was to be plant pigments (chosen, I'll admit, for convenience since I already knew something about it) how was I to work that into a story about archaeology, ancient Egypt, and exploration? Pigment. Color. Paint. Dye. Paint on walls of tombs. Dye on fabric. Linen fabric also found in tombs. Got it.

I needed to know more about all the ways the ancient Egyptians used plants. They ate them, of course, they used herbs in making medicines, and vegetable dyes on fabrics. But which ones, specifically? What plants grew along the Nile around 1500 B.C. and what did the people know about how to use them? As I made my way down river from Aswan to Luxor and finally to Cairo, I asked every guide, scoured every bookstore, and learned exactly nothing. Plants? Medicines? Recipes? Why are you asking? Strange woman.

Ricinus communis, near Aswan, Egypt.
Ricin is the most toxic compound known.
 A ricin pellet in the tip of an umbrella killed Georgi Markov.

On my very last day, our group was in Cairo with a morning scheduled for the Egyptian museum. I needed a lot more time than that but, omigod, our guide got the time mixed up and made us leave an hour early. I had barely gotten started when I had to leave through a veil of tears.

There's a book shop on the right as you leave the museum and I glanced at the display prominent at its entrance. An Ancient Egyptian Herbal by Lise Manniche, an Egyptologist and a true expert in the very things I needed to know. That book, now falling apart, and my email contacts with Dr. Manniche, have helped me no end in writing this story.

Is everything in the book 100% accurate? Of course not. It's fiction.