A Series Discussion

When we categorize fiction, we usually say it's either short or long, literary or genre, lighthearted or gritty, mystery or SF, etc.--but there's another distinction: Is it a series story or a standalone story?

Most of my short stores are standalones, meaning they're not part of an ongoing series using the same characters and locations. I like writing standalone stories because the plots and players are always new and interesting to explore. I can go anyplace I want to, in any time period, and live there for a while. ("A while" being the key phrase. That's probably the reason I'd rather write shorts than novels.)

Series differences

Having said that … I occasionally like to write "series" stories as well. One reason is that some characters and some settings turn out to be interesting and/or enjoyable enough (to me, at least) that I want to revisit them from time to time. Another is that a number of editors have told me that they, and their readers, like short-story series--and I'm not one to ignore that kind of hint. A third reason is that series installments (if they're subsequent stories and not the very first in the series) are sometimes easier to put together because both I and the reader already know the characters, and I can spend less time with setup and backstory and more time developing the plot--and plotting is probably my favorite part of writing. This works especially well if the stories are really short, as is the case of markets like Woman's World. I have found, though, that when I do write series stories, I tend to not write several in a row. I almost always sandwich one or more standalones in between series installments. That just seems to work better, for me.

I should also mention that there's one thing you have to consider with series stories that you don't have to worry about with standalones: continuity. If you're lucky enough to sell a few stories in a series, you'll find that you must keep careful track of facts about your recurring characters (primary and supporting), and locations and relationships as well. You don't want to carelessly change, say, the names of certain people, streets, restaurants, bars, and businesses later in the series. And if it seems that things like that would be easy for the writer to remember--well, they're not. You also don't want to repeat certain phrases, descriptions, or anything that might seem too repetitive, from story to story. Another thing to remember: Not everyone will read those installments in order. Every story in the series should be written such that it can stand on its own.

One more point. I'm not quite sure how to say this, but there seems to be a different feeling that goes along with the writing of each of these two kinds of stories. When I begin a standalone story I get a little tingle of adventure and daring and experimentation, of trying something brand new. (Yes, I know how silly that sounds, but it's true.) On the other hand, when I begin a series story, I feel more comfortable and secure because I'm on familiar ground--I already know the characters pretty well, and how they think and how they'll act. I'm not saying one "feeling" is better or worse than the other. Both are welcome, because they make me want to keep writing. 

Series notes and numbers

Personally, I have written and published eight different series of mystery shorts. The first of them began in 2001, with a bossy retired schoolteacher named Angela Potts, a character based roughly on my mother. Mom wasn't bossy and she wasn't a teacher, but she was quick-witted and she was curious about everything and everyone in my little hometown--she loved sitting in one particular rocker on her front porch and observing the neighborhood and every single car and pedestrian that passed by. Nothing happened in that town that she didn't know about.

So that's what got me started. But Mom's similarity to my protagonist ended there. My fictional heroine not only knows what's happening, she also doesn't mind interfering with those happenings, and investigating anything she finds the least bit suspicious. She especially enjoys "helping"--and irritating--the local sheriff, who was a student of hers in the fifth grade. Sheriff Charles "Chunky" Jones always allows her to butt into police business, not because he wants to but because he knows that "Ms. Potts" is smart and cunning enough to solve cases that he can't. Having his procedures criticized and his grammar corrected at every turn is, he figures, a small price to pay. So far, I've had more than 150 stories published about those two characters and their little Southern town, most of them mini-mysteries at Woman's World. 

In 2003 I started a different series of stories, this one about a small-town sheriff named Lucy Valentine and her mother Frances. Like Angela Potts, Fran Valentine is a former teacher, and in her retirement she's concerned mostly with two things: (1) assisting in the never-ending fight against crime and (2) finding Lucy a husband. (The first is easier than the second, since her daughter doesn't want a husband.) Around 100 of those Fran & Lucy stories, sometimes billed as the "Law and Daughter" series, have been published in more than a dozen different magazines, seven anthologies, and three story collections. (Woman's World published one of the Fran & Lucy stories in 2010, but the then-editor told me she'd rather I go back to the Angela mysteries, so I did.)

My third crime series, and one of those I've enjoyed the most, features Mississippi sheriff Raymond Kirk Douglas ("Please, no more Spartacus jokes") and his on-and-off girlfriend Jennifer Parker, who's a former lawyer and Ray's childhood sweetheart. Seven of these stories, which are much longer than most of my mysteries, have been published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and one in the short-lived Down & Out: The Magazine--and the latest installment is now hanging around in the AHMM submission queue. the Ray Douglas stories have been extra fun to write because most of them include not one mystery case but two or three different cases per story. 

My fourth series stars private investigator Thomas Langford, and also features a female partner-in-crime-solving: Tom's fiancee Debra Jo Wells, a paralegal at a local law firm. The first installment of that series was published in a special PI issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and holds a glowing place in my heart (thank you, Michael Bracken) because it won a Shamus Award in 2021. The next Tom Langford mystery appeared in Strand Magazine, the third in Black Cat Weekly (thanks again, Michael), and three more installments have been accepted for an upcoming collection of my detective stories. (I should note that, as usual, Tom's female counterpart is smarter than he is, and he knows it. After all, our stories are supposed to reflect real life . . .)

My fifth mystery series revolves around accountant Katie Rogers and her younger sister Anna, the police chief in (you guessed it) their small Southern town--three of the Katie & Anna stories have also appeared in Woman's World. My sixth series features Old West private investigator Will Parker, whose first story (actually a novella) appeared in one of John Connor's Crimeucopia anthologies; the second story was published in a private-eye anthology and was later selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories. My seventh crime series stars New Orleans shopowner Madame Zoufou, Queen of Voodoo, who has made three appearances so far, one of them in a Mardi Gras anthology. And my eighth series features private eye Luke Walker and his sister Lavinia (Vinnie), and is set in the 1940s in New Orleans. The first of those appeared in an anthology of stories by previous Edgar- or Shamus-winners, the second has been accepted and is upcoming in an anthology based on S.S. Van Dine, and the third is in progress. 

In summary, six of my eight mystery series are set in the present day, two are set in the past, seven are set in the southeastern U.S., three are about county sheriffs, three are about PIs, one's about a police chief, and one's about a voodoo sorceress, with helpful partners and amateur sleuths joining the cast in all of them.

What's your story?

So that's my background, with regard to series. How about the rest of you? Do you prefer writing standalone stories or series installments? Do you like reading short-story series? Do you have any favorites? If you've written series stories, are they set in a familiar (to you) area? Are they written with particular publications or markets in mind? Have you found that writing them is more fun than standalones? Which do you find easier to write? Have you found series stories easier to sell?

Whatever your experience is and your preferences are, I hope you keep reading stories and keep putting them on paper. 

I'll be back in two weeks. See you then.

Happy Independence Day!

 

Artificial Intelligence: 2025's Offering For Chicken Littles Worldwide

 "Y2K is gonna demolish the world's banking system."

                                                                            – Some Tech Guru to his Followers, Probably

"Ebooks will completely destroy the publishing industry."

                                                                 – An agent I met at a publishing conference in 2005

"AI is going to be the end of writing. All writing."

                                             – Far too many click-bait articles currently littering the Internet

It's 2025, and once again, the sky is falling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

See above.

Look, I get it. Doom-scrolling has practically become an olympic-level sport over the last decade. And yes, both of the examples I noted above were change events in their own distinct ways.

But Y2K didn't destroy the banking system (although it did manage to scare the pants off of multitudes of people who ought to have known better, plus, without Y2K would we have ever had the glorious piece of film-making which was Mike Judge's Office Space?). And neither has it done in online commerce, for that matter.

"Peter....whaaaat's happening...."

And ebooks haven't decimated the publishing industry. If anything, more people are making more money from writing, both fiction and non-fiction, than ever before. Not since the paperback revolution of the late 1950s and '60s, has the occupation of "author" been so democratized. And mentioning 2005 is important for context, too. Because 2005 was the year I got my first book deal. And in the six years that followed I wrote nine more books in rapid succession, all of them for money. All of them on contracts.

(And it was a good thing I had the fairly lucrative opportunity to publish so many books so quickly. Because I really needed the scratch!)

All of this is not to say that there hasn't been rapid, technology-induced paradigm change, especially in publishing. And yes, there certainly has been some consolidation among the "Big Five" traditional publishing groups.

And so what? Movies come in color, too, these days.

I am no more prepared to shed tears over the demise shake-up of the insular, competition-averse, NYC-centric "traditional publishing" system than any of those publishers would be ready to cry over the long breaks I have taken between writing projects.

And here, in a nutshell, is why I find the current brouhaha over AI "writing" so much hyperventilating.

Because, in a word, it sucks.

AI in its current iteration isn't, in the strictest sense, even the most basic form of "intelligence." AI possesses no agency, forms no opinions, sets no goals and doesn't know the sting of failure. It's really just a bunch of LLM ("Large Language Model") programs that have been fed massive amounts of data, much of it proprietary, all of it purloined. And when asked a question, it collates the data it possesses, and spits out an answer.

And, surprise, surprise, just around half the time that answer is at least partially inaccurate. Often wildly so. For straight research you're likely better off with a targeted google search. And even if it gets the facts correct, then there's its massive problem with proper citation of sources (see my own source for this contention here. Fascinating read. Well worth your time!)

Doesn't that sound actionable? Shouldn't the creators of the mass of content these AI companies stole without their consent in order to kick-start their "revolution" be compensated for their work being used for purposes for which it was never intended?

Absolutely. And the lawsuits are just now beginning to get filed.

And don't get me started on the loopy, elliptical nature of the "fiction" it will spit out on command. Aggregate all of the purple prose that is currently floating around out there, and shake it up and spew it out, and turns out, all you've done is make it even more unreadable!

Anyway, I'm currently on vacation (the Coast, natch.) with my family, so this will be a two-parter, and I'm gonna close for now. When I post again in a couple of weeks, I'm bringing examples and receipts.

In the meantime, how about you? Please feel free to share your own AI experiences, good, bad, or mediocre in the comments, and I will incorporate responses to them in next time's exposition of the myriad shortcomings of "Artificial Intelligence."

In the meantime, here's the view from our deck, courtesy of my son:

The fog rolling in at Ecola Head, with Ecola Head Lighthouse in the distance (photo: James Thornton)

See you in two weeks!

Music to Write by

I have always enjoyed having music on while I write but as I get older I find that lyrics are too distracting, so I go for instrumental stuff.

I was thinking about this because of something I discovered this week on Freegal --

A word of explanation (or explanation of a word.) Freegal is a free legal (hence the name) music streaming service which is available through some libraries.

It's a mixed bag; clearly some companies are not cooperating with it so you may find all the works of a performer and none of another, or an odd assortment  based on what shows up on, say, a compilation album from some minor company.  And before you ask, I don't know how much the artists are paid per stream.  I know at least one librarian is trying to find out.

Back to our story.  While searching for something else I found Nathan Barr's soundtrack album for Carnival Row, a fantasy TV series I had never heard of.  And, boy, it just worked for me. I tend to like soundtracks as background for writing, I guess because they are dramatic, emotional, and mercurial.

I sent a link to my sister, Diane Chamberlain, who also writes with soundtracks and she approved, so it is good to have my opinion  confirmed by a New York Times bestselling author.

Other soundtracks I like?  Danny Elfman's brooding, hypnotic work for the Batman movies.   

Also the Star Trek themes by many composers.

But there's more to life than soundtracks.  I am not a big fan of classical music, preferring early music.  One group I love is Hesperion XXI, which focuses on 16th-18th centuries, especially Spanish and Sephardic music.

Don't confuse them with the equally excellent Hesperus which performs early American music.

I also enjoy the Belgian cafe jazz of Jacques Brel. You may say that' isn't instrumental, to which I would reply: If you don't speak French it is.

So, writers, what do you listen to when you are creating your masterpieces?

And just for funsies, here is my favorite recording of a Jacques Brel song (not sung by him), complete with subtitles.

Some Great Books

The first half of the year will end in about thirty-five minutes on the East Coast of the US, so this is a perfect time for me to share my five favorite crime/mystery reads of the year so far. If you choose to check any of them out, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

In reverse order, they are ...

5. The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan - This excellent Sherlock-and-Watson-type amateur-sleuth mystery came out in 2024. It is the first in a series and was extremely well plotted with strong voices and witty, clever, and wonderfully descriptive writing. 

I wish the main character, who played the Watson role, wasn't as closed off as she was, but I expect the author did this to give her room to grow, as well as personal secrets--especially one big one--to reveal, in future books. But these are small issues in an otherwise strong book, especially considering it is the author's first published mystery (though not his first published novel).

4. Bearer of Bad News by Elizabeth Dini - This is a wonderful book, especially for an author's first published novel. It came out in April of this year. It's an intriguing story with delightful writing that often had me laughing. It has strong voice and characters, especially the main character, who has a nice arc. The writing was often insightful, with emotional depth. While mainly set in modern day, the book also has a historical component that is timely. Those sections can be dark (but not gory), but that element of the book is offset by the lightheartedness of the main character. I hope it is the start of a series.

The only drawback worth mentioning is that there were a lot of characters, and I had a bit of a hard time keeping track of who was who and who did what. I think if I had read the book with my eyes, I would not have had that problem. (That said, the audio reader was fantastic.) 

3. A Sinister Revenge by Deanna Raybourn - This is the eighth book in the Veronica Speedwell series, and it came out in 2023. It was a great read. It has a strong voice, as usual, as well as a charming setting, an interesting mystery, enjoyable characters, and the main character had a strong arc through which she grew and her romantic relationship was strengthened. 

I had some small quibbles with the resolution, which I won't go into because I don't want to spoil things. Just know they should not keep you from reading this book. If you like historical mysteries, I highly recommend this whole series, which is largely set in England in the 1890s. Start with the first book, A Curious Beginning.

2.  The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler - This book, which came out last year, is the first book in a new series by Osler. I enjoyed it so much, I read it in one day. It is set in 1898 Chicago and stars a gay female private eye. The book has a great voice, a charming main character, as well as an enjoyable supporting cast. It also has an intriguing plot. 

My concerns were minor (one scene in which the main character's thoughts went on too long for my taste, and there was one anachronism). If you like historical mysteries, you will want to pick this one up.

And my favorite mystery read of the year so far ...

1. The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter - This witty 2024 romantic cozy mystery has great voices, characters who grow, well-planted clues, a marvelous setting, and strong writing. I did have an issue with the main characters' failure to realize in a timely manner something that seemed obvious to me, but I am willing to let this issue go because I loved this book so much. 

What mystery/crime novels have you read this year that you have loved? I would appreciate your recommendations.

And, before I go, a little news. I am delighted that my short story "The Postman Always Flirts Twice" was named a finalist two weeks ago for this year's Macavity Award. This story won the Agatha Award in April. It was published in the anthology Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy. While I highly recommend you buy the book, if you would like to read my story, it is available for free reading for a limited time by clicking here. 

 

 

There’s a place for us.

 

            When I published my first mystery novel, I knew nothing about the mystery world and the writers, readers, reviewers and journalists who inhabit it.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  I’d written the thing in complete isolation, informed only by the hardboiled classics and my

twisted imagination.   So I brought my book to a mystery bookstore, The Black Orchid in New York run by Bonnie Claeson and Joe Guglielmelli.  Bonnie spent about two hours giving me advice, the first of which was to “Go to Bouchercon and hang out at the bar.”  I thought, this is something I know how to do.

            What I discovered has been as meaningful to me as publishing the books and short stories.  A big community filled with intelligent, witty, gracious and generous people.  I never would have expected this in a million years.  I assumed that writers were all introverted shut-ins, protective of their work and privacy above all else.  Not even close.  All I heard at that first Bouchercon was wall-to-wall counsel, useful information and welcoming words.  And encouragement.  Not just from the writers, but the booksellers, reviewers and magazine publishers, people like George Easter, Chris Aldrich and Jon Jordan. 

            I was hardly ever a shut-in, but I’m by nature an introvert who fancies solitary pursuits.  So I’m not naturally a joiner.  But in the mystery world, I fell in with a good crowd.  Aside from Bouchercon, I became devoted to Crime Bake in New England, which had some overlap with Bouchercon, but introduced me to a different sort of writer-oriented, and extremely involving conference.  Likewise Killer Nashville, ThrillerFest and SleuthFest.

            Twenty years later, I have a whole crop of lifelong friends.  I’m not a sentimental person, but I’m deeply grateful for these associations and all the experiences that have come from entangling myself in this hidden, delightful subculture. 

           

            I joined the New York Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, which is geographically enormous.  Richie Narvaez, then chapter president, was eager to bring more programming out to his far-flung domain, and asked if I could do something in Connecticut.  The result was CrimeCONN, a one-day conference co-sponsored by MWA/NY and the Ferguson Library in Stamford.  I teamed up with my longtime editor, Jill Fletcher, to create the programs and we’ve been doing it now for eleven years.  It’s been a rollicking success, and you should come next year, especially if you live in the Greater New York area. 

            I imagine most readers of SleuthSayers have been in the game a long time and are familiar with everything I’m writing here.  The people who really need to read it are the aspiring, at any age, who feel isolated as I did, in a state of doubt and confusion.  The social element is great, and I treasure it, but equally valuable is the ongoing education.  I walk away from every conference, including ours – especially ours – having learned something I didn’t know before, and wouldn’t if I hadn’t been there listening.  I may or may not find it useful for my writing, but I love to learn in general, and nothing makes me happier than gaining an insight that topples a pre-conceived notion, or a bit of knowledge that is entirely novel. 

            I’m not exactly sure why people pre-occupied with murder and dastardly criminal behavior would be such convivial companions, but there you go.  Through all this I’ve also become friends with people in law enforcement, and feel the same way about them.  They

don’t fit the stereotype at all, especially the detectives, attorneys and forensic experts.  They are universally bright, self-effacing and quick witted.  Even cheerful in a disarming, irreverent sort of way.  They tend to admire us fiction writers as much as we admire them, even though we often test their patience with our accuracy and fact-checking.  But they’ll tell you, “That’s okay.  You’re just trying to tell a good story.”

            Lilly Tomlin once said, “No matter how cynical you get, you just can’t keep up.”  That’s how it feels these days, and it’s easy to just succumb to the prevailing oppressive mood.  But just coming off our most recent CrimeCONN, I feel like declaring for the optimists – that there are good people in the world doing good work, and supporting one another, with thoughtfulness and generosity of spirit. 

Finding A Glimmer of Hope, A Thousand Pieces at a Time

Anyone who's taught writing (or, I suspect, most other topics) in the last few years would have found little surprising in the recent news about an MIT study revealing that people who make regular use of AI tools like ChatGPT quickly show a serious reduction in cognitive activity.  After only a few months, such users "consistently underperformed neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels."

Lydia the Tattooed Lady
Magnolia Puzzles
Artist: Mark Fredrickson

I've certainly seen evidence of this in my own students. (For those unaware, I teach composition and literature courses for a number of online schools on an adjunct basis.) More and more of them are not just choosing to make use of AI, but fundamentally feel they have no other option, because they lack the reading and writing skills necessary to complete assignments on their own.

The situation isn't helped by the increasing number of schools that have essentially thrown in the towel, designing courses that actively encourage or even require the use of AI while giving lip service to the idea of training students to use it "ethically and responsibly."

This makes about as much sense as training someone to run a marathon by having them drive 26 miles a day and eat a meal from every fast food restaurant they pass on the trip.  And yes, in case you were wondering, it does make teaching depressing as hell.

An aside: I want to be clear here that I'm not blaming the students, certainly not on an individual level.  They can't help growing up in a world where literacy is consistently degraded and marginalized; they can't help having screens shoved in front of their faces all day long, starting before they can talk. What I can say is that, if I was under 25 years old, I would be in a constant state of white-hot rage over the world previous generations propose to leave me: a world that is less safe, less clean, less kind, less thoughtful, and far lonelier than it should be.  I would be furious to live in the richest, most technologically advanced society in human history, while millions have no access to healthcare or secure occupations.  It's no wonder so many of them are on antidepressants.

Aspic Hunt
Art & Fable
Artist: John Rego

But to get back to today's specific crisis…

AI has, in a very few years, become a source of existential terror for writers and other artists--not to mention those in a score of other occupations it threatens to wipe from existence (including, ironically, computer programmers, since it turns out AI is great at writing code).  It's a little quaint to look back at the many giants of science fiction who confidently predicted that robots would free humanity from dangerous or tiresome tasks like mining or washing dishes.  We've still got plenty of people dying of black lung or scraping by on scandalously low minimum wage gigs, but folks who want to write or create art have to compete with machines pretending they can do the same thing.

Believe it or not, I've painted this picture of doom and gloom because I want to share a tiny glimmer of hope I've found in an unexpected place: jigsaw puzzles.

Puzzling as a hobby exploded during the pandemic, when so many of us were looking for ways to pass the time, and my household is one of many that got caught up in the craze (see the pictures here of a few puzzles we've completed in recent weeks).  Even now that the pandemic is (sort of) over, it continues to be a thriving activity and means of connecting a huge number of people.  There are puzzling competitions around the globe, popular puzzling websites and content creators online, forums for discussion and news, and a lot of companies (many small, many new) turning out high-quality, beautiful puzzles in every corner of the globe.

Princess on the Pea
Enjoy Puzzles
Artist: Larissa Kulik

Not surprisingly, some of these companies use AI to create the artwork for the puzzles.  I can't report that these companies are immediately run out of business, and no doubt they're doing fine, for the most part.  But I can report this: there are a lot of puzzlers who actively refuse to buy those puzzles, and they tend to be fairly vocal about it.  They want to know that the puzzles they do were created by real artists, they want those artists to be clearly identified, and they (or at least some of them) are willing to pay a little more for puzzles that meet those demands.

As AI writing and art becomes more widespread, maybe it's people like these we can invest a little optimism in.  Maybe there will come to be people who demand this of their fiction and poetry and essays, and who aren't willing to just hop on Amazon and download one of the 5000 AI "books" that pop up every day.  Maybe they'll be willing to pay, just a little more, for the knowledge that a real person created the thing they're looking at, and will benefit from their patronage.

Maybe there will be just enough of these people that reading and writing– real reading and writing, not a simulation– will continue to be a worthwhile, and occasionally even rewarding, way for a lot of people to spend their time.

It wouldn't take much.  After all, the number of people willing to pay money to read, say, short mystery stories has been a small part of the population for a long time.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to hope that it won't die out completely.

The Happy Sheep Yarn Shop
Ravensburger Puzzles
Artist: Nathanael Mortensen

That's my hope, anyway. In the meantime, I'll be continuing to follow my personal policy of never using AI– not for brainstorming, not for drafting, not for editing.  What possible satisfaction could I get from asking a machine to write something and then putting my name on it?

---

What Do *You* Want from a Protagonist? (Finally I figure it out.)

Oh a high today, as The Toronto Star (Canada's biggest newspaper) has compared me to Agatha Christie!  If I could have dreamed of anyone to be compared to, that's who. Now back to our regularly scheduled post…)

---

I don't know why I should have to be over 60 before I learn what I truly want from a protagonist.

Taking into account that I've read at least 30 books a year for 50 years, that is a hulking number of books to read before figuring it all out.  But figure it, I finally have, and I'm keen to share, to see if others feel the same.

This goes for the books I write myself, but more particularly, it goes for books I pick up to read for pleasure.  Back to that at the end of this post.

1.  A protagonist I can trust.

I was the first to admit this among my set, and I'll continue to say it:  I HATE unreliable narrators.  

I want to root for the protagonist.  I want to be their friend. When I find out the protagonist has been lying to me, it feels like a friend has betrayed me. Yes, I'm talking about Gone Girl, and others of the like.  While I admit The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is clever,  it is my least favorite book by Christie, and I don't want to read another like it.  It's been done.

I don't like being tricked by a protagonist. I don't want to become part of an author's experiment.

2.  A protagonist I can enjoy becoming, while I read.

This perhaps is the most important thing.  I read to escape.  I particularly like first person books because I can slip myself into the skin of the protagonist and become that person for the length of the story.

For this reason, I need to respect the protagonist.  Yes, they can be flawed, but I don't want to be forced into the skin of someone who is lacking in the morality I think is so important in life.  For the same reason, I want that person to be the sort where I can find what they think about intriguing, with knowledge that interests me.

I discovered this recently while reading the first book of a current series that is doing very well, which features a young, naive maid (current day) who solves crimes by noticing details.  Lovely premise, and I did respect the protagonist, but I found being in the mind of such a gal for three/four hours to be somewhat limiting.  In a short story, I could manage it.  But in a long work, I need the protagonist to be someone I want to *be* for a time.

 3.  An ending for the Protagonist that isn't going to make me cry.

This is why I write the sort of books I do.  I find the world a scary place.  If you have watched the person you love the most, die painfully far too young, it does something to you.   I want to know - that at least in my fiction - my beloved protagonist is going to survive and overcome the things that threaten them.

How does all this manifest itself in my own writing?  If I am writing a novel (I've written 20) then there is going to be humour as well as crime in the story, and the outcome will not be a bad one for my protagonist.  

There is enough dark in our world today. I want to add light.

So readers can pick up my books knowing that they won't read for 4 hours, only to find the character they have come to care about has kicked the bucket.  Instead, they will live to tell another tale.  And the reader will hopefully leave the book smiling.

Finally:  my husband just asked me what I was writing about for this blog, and I told him the topic, being what I want from a protagonist.  He immediately said: "Sales."

How about you?  Do you relate as strongly with a protagonist?  Or do you like to get into the skin of someone entirely different, no matter their morals? 

Compared to Agatha Christie by The Toronto Star, Melodie Campbell writes capers and golden age mysteries. Now available everywhere! Book 18, The Silent Star Murders

"The pacing is brisk, the setting is vivid, and the dialog is sharp. The Silent Film Star Murders is an enjoyable read with a conclusion that—even though I should have—I simply did not see coming."   

--Greg Stout , THE STRAND MAGAZINE

Speak Widely and Carry a Big App

 

The world’s your stage...

A mystery writer friend was delighted when a regional writing conference asked her to speak and offered an honorarium of $1,000. She arrived at the venue and discovered to her dismay that no one had bothered to tell her that she could sell her own books. (The organizers did not want to go to the trouble of asking a local bookstore to sell, and were too disorganized to spell out the DIY details.) She spent hours after her talk silently fuming while other authors sold books in a meeting space, swiping credit cards with Square readers.

Another friend, who writes in the horror genre, has grown accustomed to driving to any small conference that will have him. But when a library group in upstate New York contacted him, he calculated that he would need to drive 700 miles round trip. He declined rather than ask if they would consider chipping in for travel expenses. “I hate to bring it up,” he said. “It would be too awkward. Some of those peeps are my friends. But shouldn’t they give me something?”

Yeah, dude! I know it sounds nutty, but many civilians love hearing writers speak—and they are often willing to pay. You just need to know how to ask.

In the book world, it’s expected that an author will make bookstore or library appearances for free when on the road promoting a book. It’s now somewhat expected that you will make yourself available to Zoom with book clubs.

Beyond these, there are book festivals, library conferences, university speaker series, women’s clubs, corporate retreats, historic sites, and town hall venues that pay writers attractive fees to speak.

Strangely, many of these events don’t do book sales. The world of publishing is so opaque that outsiders reflexively avoid onsite sales because they seem like extra work. Reasons range from a) not knowing how to acquire and sell books themselves, b) not knowing that they can invite a bookseller, and c) feeling confused about how much time on the schedule they should allow for a book signing.

Worse, sometimes they will allow book sales, but think nothing of insisting on a 10 percent cut of sales. And they never understand why bookstores tell them to pound sand. “Do these people know how much we make on a book?” a bookstore owner once told me.

Most of the best-paying orgs hold a place of honor in the contact lists of major speaker’s agents. And yes, some speaker’s bureaus exclusively represent writers. Increasingly, such bureaus are embedded in the offices of the Big Five publishers. Why? Money.

Publishers have figured out that a cash payment plus book sales is lovely thing to behold. Authors should also grasp that when the average paperback royalty is seven percent, a $500 honorarium is the equivalent of selling 420 copies of a $17 paperback.

Speaker’s bureaus take a 20-25 percent commission on your speaking fee, but they are arguably worth it because they arrange the booking, book the travel, have someone standing by to deal with travel snafus as they arise on the road, and mail you a check with expenses when the whole thing is done.

They also have the chutzpah to do what most writers cannot do: ask people to pay them. We writers are coded to be payment-shy, which is why the worst publishers find us such easy prey.

The folks who work at the bureaus do what literary agents do. They advocate for us when we think it would appear gauche to advocate for ourselves. (Have you watched Uncle Harlan lately?)

That said, these bureaus are as tough to sign with as literary agents, but you don’t need one to handle the occasional speaking engagement that comes your way. You just have to be savvy and borrow a few tricks from their toolkit. I’ll mention two.

Speaker’s agents have a standard patter that goes something like this:

“Mr. Slapscribe is very much in demand, and we typically quote $15,000 for one of his appearances. However, I have seen him get much, much more, and I’ve seen him voluntarily take less because he was impressed with an organization’s past record of inviting mystery writers who wear unflattering fedoras. So don’t be put off by the fee. Fill out our questionnaire and bring us your best offer. We need to know what your organization can offer in terms of a speaker’s fee plus travel expenses. And we’ll go from there.”

It’s a spiel that asserts the price but still manages to sound welcoming. The “best offer” line is critical, because it invites event organizers with small budgets to throw their hat in the ring. They return to their team, hammer out their best package, and fill out the questionnaire. If the dollar amount falls below the bureau’s minimum, the agent typically routes the deal back to the author/speaker, saying: “Here—you can deal with this one yourself. There’s not enough money to interest us. But please, for the love of monkeys, don’t do too many of these cheap deals because word gets around.”

In our household, who do you think ends up dealing with the events my wife’s speaker’s bureaus reject? I hate talking about money with anyone, but when forced to do so, I do what any self-respecting writer would do: I hide behind my words.

Over the years, I have compiled my own questionnaire, adding all the questions I’ve seen on the documents of the name agencies and a few of my own. Now, when a fresh inquiry hits my inbox, I triage it immediately. Is it worth sending to her speaker’s agent, or can I handle it myself? (I can usually tell.)

Then I unfurl my own patter, according to a time-tested strategy. Is this an organization she has worked with before and adores? If they’re not “a friendly,” are they relatively nearby? Will a significant amount of travel be involved? Then I go from there. Here’s how you might do the same:

“Thanks for writing. I have always loved talking to your group. Do you mind filling this out for me? It probably touches on stuff that don’t apply to your event, but at least we will all be on the same page.”

“Thanks for writing. I am happy to travel within 60 miles of home to do these types of events. I’m wondering if your group can cover any travel expenses because I estimate this will take 6 hours round trip by car. Since you’re planning an evening event, I will will probably need to book a room for the night. Do you mind completing…”

“Thanks for writing. The festival sounds fun, and next May is doable, but since it’s in a different state, I’d need to see the overall package you’re offering guest authors before agreeing. Do you have something you can send, or do you mind filling out…”

The toughest one is saved for a certain type of inquirer who gives the impression that they are doing you a favor by asking you to work for free:

“Thanks for the invite. These days most of my author talks are paid, or they go on my waiting list. But I look at all the offers people send. All I ask if that you be up front and give me your best offer so I can consider it quickly in good faith. Attached is my questionnaire…”

Responding in this fashion usually weeds out the groups who are simply not organized. Some of them never write back. That’s fine. I am guided by two principles.

The first comes from the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, the computer scientist and attention management guru who famously does not respond to most emails, and forces his academic colleagues at Georgetown to boil their requests down to solid details before he will respond. The message is: Let’s not waste each other’s time. Summarize your expectations—all of them—in writing. If you can’t do this or find it onerous, we cannot work together.

The second is, humans are fallible. If an event organizer is not seasoned, it will not occur to them to mention that you can do book sales, or whether they can offer you a travel allowance, and so on. Inexperienced organizers are like deer in the headlights. They’re terrified. They are praying that you will make their problem go away by filling the empty slot on their schedule. If you say yes, they log you on the calendar and forget to tell you what is expected of you until it’s too late.

And that’s bad.

• If you knew that your hosts intended to post a recording of the event to YouTube, would you say yes?
• If you knew that they intended to sell tickets to your talk, would that change whether you did the talk for free?

Recently, for example, I have heard of two other annoying requests:

• If you knew that they insisted on seeing a copy of your talk or PowerPoint ahead of time, to make sure it was not “offensive,” would you agree?
• If they asked for a list of all your social media accounts to vet your level of “controversiality,” would you agree?

I swear I am not making this up.

Everyone’s circumstances are different, but a decent list of questions will unearth many of the issues that they will not think to share. The current version of my questionnaire lives on my website. Feel free to download the PDF, scrape and copy the text into a Word document, and tweak it with questions of your own. Send the document to correspondents, and see what happens. Three of the email openings I shared above raise the issue of some form of payment. The questionnaire asks it more explicitly. In the best-case scenario, prompted by the form, they will tell you if they can pay and how much.

Let me stress that it’s perfectly fine to do an event for zero payment. We do them all the time. We once participated in a well-run book festival where the only obligations were an hour-long talk on how one gets published (shoot me) and signing books for buyers in the sales room. They paid us $200 each for our time, and it was a lovely, 90-minute round trip through the mountains. We would do it again in a heartbeat. I’d just insist on a different topic.

I once did a Zoom event for an elementary school group for no payment, only to be surprised when a $50 check arrived in the mail with a school T-shirt, a mug, and a card signed by the students.

I will say that in the children’s book field, in-person school visits are no joke. They are often full-day events that involve leading one or more classrooms of squirming fifth graders in a writing lesson. Yeah—I would much prefer chatting on a four-person panel about how I do fiction research.

Many children’s book authors print flyers describing the type of events they offer for payment, and hand them out at conferences if anyone asks. Others post a one-sheet “explainer” PDF on their websites that school districts can download. Those docs spell out the types of talks they do, their ground rules, fees, and required deposit. (Example: the school district pays the writer a nonrefundable half-fee three months in advance to get booked on the schedule. That way, the writer does not book the flight unless money is in hand.)  

One of our friends, a bestseller in this field, states openly on his website that he charges for school visits because he’s a full-time professional author, and this is how he provides for his family. Can’t get any clearer than that.

It’s nice to work with people who appreciate what you have offered them. But far too many groups have gotten it into their heads that writers will do things for free because of the “good publicity.” And that’s just plain wacky.

My last tip comes from a young writer friend who has dealt with this attitude far too often. (You’ll see why I italicized that word in a second.) A while back he was asked to attend an event three states away for no pay or travel expenses. His room and board would be covered because he would crash with a fellow writer in the destination city. Rather than fly, he insisted on driving 521 miles in a single drive. (Times two, counting the return trip.)

“You’re kidding me, right?” I said.

“Naw. I’ll make money on the mileage alone,” quoth he.

He’d become such a pro at non-paying writer events that he counted on them to reduce his annual income taxes. For 2025, the US business mileage rate is 70 cents a mile. That means a 1,000-mile car trip to a nonpaying author event can, in theory, “earn” you a $700 income business tax deduction.

 
It’s the same sort of logic I have used to justify pricey conference expenses: “But we can deduct it!”

Said friend uses the QuickBooks mileage app to track out-of-town trips, not to mention his in-town “writer business” errands to bookstores, the library, the post office, the UPS Store, FedEx, Kinko’s, office supply stores, and driving to meet fellow writers for lunch. 

I asked my accountant about this, and he chided me for not doing it sooner. I prefer an app called MileIQ. (Both are subscription based, but even the subscription is tax-deductible.)

In closing, let me say that I wish you well, wherever such events take you. A world that wants to hear what writers have to say is a beautiful one indeed. It also better not make us angry. Long may we flap.

* * * 

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

What We Get Wrong About Violent Crime

 by Eve Fisher

On May 2, 2025, The New Yorker posted an article by Malcolm Gladwell, "What We Get Wrong About Violent Crime".  (LINK) Now I'll read about anything by MG - don't always agree with him, but he's generally interesting - and this was worth it.  

Here's the official story that sparks it:

"Late on a Sunday night in June of 2023, a woman named Carlishia Hood and her fourteen-year-old son, an honor student, pulled into Maxwell Street Express, a fast-food joint in West Pullman, on the far South Side of Chicago. Her son stayed in the car. Hood went inside. Maxwell is a no-frills place—takeout-style, no indoor seating. It’s open twenty-four hours a day. Hood asked for a special order—without realizing that at Maxwell, a busy place, special orders are frowned upon. The man behind her in line got upset; she was slowing things down. His name was Jeremy Brown. On the street, they called him the Knock-Out King. Brown began to gesticulate, his arms rising and falling in exasperation. He argued with Hood, growing more agitated. Then he cocked his fist, leaned back to bring the full weight of his body into the motion, and punched her in the head.

When the argument had started, Hood texted her son, asking him to come inside. Now he was at the door, slight and tentative in a white hoodie. He saw Brown punch his mother a second time. The boy pulled out a revolver and shot Brown in the back. Brown ran from the restaurant. The boy pursued him, still firing. Brown died on the street—one of a dozen men killed by gunfire in Chicago that weekend.

In the remarkable new book “Unforgiving Places” (Chicago), Jens Ludwig breaks down the Brown killing, moment by moment. Ludwig is the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and he uses as a heuristic the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s version of the distinction between System 1 and System 2 thinking."

System 1 - "Expressive Violence" - fast, automatic, intuitive, emotional:  hurting someone in a sudden burst of frustration, anger, confusion, or drug addled state.

System 2 - "Instrumental violence", acts such as a carefully planned robbery, whether of an individual or a bank. Or a serial killer. 

Now, according to Ludwig, our criminal justice system is largely based on the idea that most violence is System 2, instrumental, i.e., planned, BUT the real problem is System 1, expressive violence, i.e., spontaneous. "The ongoing bloodshed in America’s streets is just Maxwell Street Express, over and over again."  I totally agree.

South Dakota's incarceration rate is 370 per 100,000 residents, which is higher than the national average, and higher than any other democratic country in the world.  We are, as all our gubernatorial and legislative candidates are proud to say, "tough on crime."  Most inmates (around 80%) are in for non-violent crimes, mostly drugs and/or DUIs.*  Of the violent crimes, most are (in percentage order) in for assault, sexual assault, manslaughter, sexual assault of a child, robbery, first degree murder, burglary, kidnapping, child abuse, 2nd degree murder, weapons charges, arson, and stalking.  If you added up all the sex crimes, they'd outnumber assault, but that's another blogpost. Let's just say that there's a lot of sex crimes in South Dakota, and every week someone is arrested for one, but no one really talks about it.

*Sentences are harsh up here, and very little in the way of drug and alcohol treatment or rehabilitation is provided.  So a significant number are revolving door inmates - they get out, they come back, they get out, they come back...  

In my years volunteering in prison, I've met inmates convicted of any and all of the above.  And heard a lot of stories.  

The inmate who'd served 30+ years for a drunken teenaged bar brawl that got taken outside.  Both tried to kill the other, and one succeeded.  

The middle-aged inmate who'd tweaked out so often on meth that his brain was still addled after 20 years hard time, but he could clearly remember the time he was tweaked out, and his meth buddy was grabbing a beer that he thought was his, and he went ballistic and stabbed him.  

The inmate who killed his wife because he couldn't take one more minute of living with her. "What's wrong with divorce?" I asked. "Too damn expensive," he said.

The inmate who killed someone in a drug deal gone bad and left him in a car in the middle of winter outside of town...  Took a long time for that body to be found. 

The inmate who assaulted and damn near killed a guy who owed him 6 soups (Ramen, the prison favorite and a form of currency).  "What was I supposed to do, let him get away with disrespecting me like that?"

BTW, much of the violent crime in the prison is based on someone's perceived disrespect - which must be instantly dealt with, before other inmates start perceiving you as weak, i.e., prey.  

And many more.

Basically, almost all of the violent criminals I've met are System 1 criminals.  As Ludwig writes, 

"System 1 thinking is egocentric: it involves, everything through the lens of ‘What does this have to do with me?’ It depends on stark binaries—reducing a range of possibilities to a simple yes or no—and, as he notes, it “focuses more on negative over positive information.” In short, it’s wired for threats. System 1 catastrophizes. It imagines the worst."

I ran into this all the time in our AVP (Alternative to Violence Project) workshops.  We'd be doing exercises on the root causes of violence, on anger (which is always a masking emotion - no one runs out and gets angry because it's fun), on act/react, etc.  A lot of responses were, "Well, what the hell am I supposed to do when someone disrespects me?" "You let someone take your stuff, you'd better get them right away, or everyone'll think you're just a punk." "You HAVE to react, around here."  

Thankfully, we always had inmate facilitators who would explain that you didn't HAVE to do anything you didn't want to.  But first you had to learn to slow that reaction, that anger down...  Deep breaths. What's going on? Is this worth time in the SHU?* What would really happen if I just walked away?  

*Segregated Housing Unit, i.e., The Hole.

It didn't always work, and it often took a long time to become part of someone's way of thinking and acting, but when it did... it was remarkable.  Our facilitators, and our inmate graduates, stayed out of the SHU, and stayed out of gang wars.  Which were always based on respect/disrespect issues, i.e., System 1.

"Brown’s encounter with Carlishia Hood pushed him into System 1 mode. He made an immediate egocentric assumption: if he knew that special orders were a norm violation, then Hood must know, too. “Given that System 1 assumption,” Ludwig explains, “from there it is natural that Brown believed the person in front of him was deliberately holding things up.”

"Hood, meanwhile, didn’t know about the special-order taboo, so she was operating under her own egocentric assumptions. She “knew she wasn’t being disrespectful and deliberately trying to hold up everyone else in line, so the curse of knowledge led her System 1 to assume that Brown surely also knew that,” Ludwig writes. “So why was he getting so bent out of shape? She didn’t mean to be inconsiderate to the people behind her in line; she just wanted the Maxwell Street Express people to change whatever it was that she wanted changed on the burger.” Neither had the cognitive space to consider that they were caught in a misunderstanding. They were in binary mode: I’m right, so you must be wrong. From there, things escalated: 

Hood says to her son, who’s standing behind Brown, “Get in the car.”

Brown seems to think that comment is directed at him—another misreading of the situation.“WHO?!?” he says. “Get in the CAR?!?”

Hood says something that’s hard to make out from the video.

Brown says, “Hey lady, lady, lady, lady. GET YOUR FOOD. GET YOUR FOOD. If you say one more thing, I’m going to KNOCK YOU OUT.” You can see his right fist, clenching and unclenching, over and over.

She says something that is again hard to make out on the video.

He says, “Oh my God I SAID if you say one more thing, I’m going to knock you out.”

At which point he punches her—hard.

Hood’s son is standing in the doorway, watching the assault of his mother. Had he been in System 2 mode, he might have paused. He might have asked for help. He might have called 911. He could have weighed the trade-offs and thought, Yes, it’s unbearable to watch my mother being beaten. But, if I kill this man, I could spend years in prison. But he’s filled with adrenaline. He shifts into catastrophizing mode: There is nothing worse than seeing my mother get pummelled by a stranger. Brown punches her again—and again. The boy shoots him in the back. Brown runs. Hood tells her son to follow him. There is nothing worse than letting him get away. Still in System 1, the boy fires again. Brown collapses in the street."

And that, my friends, is what most homicides look like. Out of nowhere. No good reason. Shit happens.  

BTW, this is one of my favorite parts:  

"Much of what gets labelled gang violence, Ludwig says, is really just conflict between individuals who happen to be in gangs. We misread these events because we insist on naming the affiliations of the combatants. Imagine, he suggests, if we did this for everyone: “ ‘This morning by Buckingham Fountain, a financial analyst at Morningstar killed a mechanic for United Airlines.’ Naturally you’d think the place of employment must be relevant to understanding the shooting, otherwise why mention it at all?”

"The Chicago Police Department estimates that arguments lie behind seventy to eighty per cent of homicides. The numbers for Philadelphia and Milwaukee are similar. And that proportion has held remarkably steady over time. Drawing on data from Houston in 1969, the sociologist Donald Black concluded that barely more than a tenth of homicides occurred during predatory crimes like burglary or robbery. The rest, he found, arose from emotionally charged disputes—over infidelity, household finances, drinking, child custody. Not calculated acts of gain, in other words, but eruptions rooted in contested ideas of right and wrong."

Meanwhile, our criminal justice system is designed with the idea that people weigh the costs of their actions and act accordingly.  In the heat of the moment, especially if alcohol, drugs, and/or mental disturbances are involved, no one thinks about "Well, I'll go to prison for life if I do this", especially if they're young. Teenagers run on surging tsunamis of emotions that wipe out all sense of sense.  Too many adults - in and out of prison - are still emotionally teenagers, because they've never been taught how to deal with their emotions.  And these days our entire advertising system is aimed at getting you to buy (products, ideas, politics, wars) without thinking. We have got to spend time and energy training children, teenagers, and adults how to navigate life the way it is: constantly changing, often volatile, and sometimes downright violent and dangerous. We live in a world full of drugs, alcohol, guns, and violent social media content, and we're still commonly assuming our towns are Mayberry, and everyone's the Waltons. Gotta cut that OUT.  

Three other things we've got to cut out, according to Ludwig is to 

(1) "stop talking about criminals as if they occupy some distinct moral category." As I tell people when I've done presentations about AVP and prisons, everyone is one bad decision, one bad night, one bad choice, away from going to prison.  Everyone.

(2) "stop locking up so many people for long prison terms." Mass incarceration drains adults from troubled neighborhoods and their families, and the longer you keep someone in prison, without rehabilitation or education, the less able they're going to be to deal with the world outside.

(3) "spend more time thinking about what makes one neighborhood safe and another unsafe." Ludwig cites a randomized trial in New York City’s public-housing projects, which found that upgrading outdoor lighting experienced a 35% decrease in serious crimes. Help bad neighborhoods clean up.  

"[Ludwig] describes one of the program’s exercises, in which students are paired off. One is given a ball; the other is told he has thirty seconds to take it.

"Almost all of them rely on force to try to complete the assignment; they try to pry the other person’s hand open, or wrestle or even pummel the other person. During the debrief that follows, a counselor asks why no one asked for the ball. Most youths respond by saying their partner would have thought they were a punk (or something worse—you can imagine). The counselor then asks the partner what he would have done if asked. The usual answer: “I would have given it, it’s just a stupid ball.”  Exactly. It’s almost always a stupid ball."

Now to just convince them - and us - that almost everything is almost always a stupid ball.