In Memorium

I first met Susan Rogers Cooper, in 1990, when Elmer and I had the Grand Opening of our bookstore, Mysteries & More, in Austin, Texas. She had this gorgeous red hair and was wearing a white dress. She was beautiful and as we became friends I learned she was even more beautiful inside. We became BFFs, traveling to mystery cons together and rooming together each time we went.  

Our husbands hit it off and I can't remember how many holidays we spent together, mostly at Thanksgiving oy 4th of July. Usually at their house but a couple times at mine.

She and Don had a teen-age daughter, and by her Senior year, Evin, wanted to do a little part-time work in the store. She and Elmer worked that out, giving him some needed Tuesday afternoons off. 

Flash forward to 1998:

I really wish I had pictures from way back in the 1900s (circa 1998) when Susan & I went to New York City, but we didn't have cell phones back in those ancient times  to photograph everything right then and there. 1998  was the year we were both nominated for a Edgar award. That's the annual mystery writing prize given by The Mystery Writers of America, in case you might might not have heard of such things. Susan was nominated for Home Again, Home Again for Best Paperback Original while I was nominated for Best Critical/Biographical for Deadly Women, along with my Co-editors Dr. Dean James, and the late, Ellen Nehr.

 Naturally, we were astounded to be nominated, BUT in the same year? Fortunately, Susan's book is fiction and mine is non-fiction so we weren't in competition with each other. Neither Susan nor I won, but the nominees are forever etched in MWAs Edgar Awards database. And it did always looked good on our resumes. 

 Although, we admitted not winning was a bit of a let-down at the
Edgar Awards Banquet on Thursday  night, Susan and I had a great time in NYC. On Wednesday, we rode the ferry and saw the Statue Of Liberty. We didn't go up because we were meeting Carole Lee Benjamin, a fellow mystery writer who lives in Greenwich Village. The Village had been known as the epicenter of the 1960s counter-culture and Carole Lee graciously showed us around. 

On Friday, our last day before heading home on Saturday and while walking down one of the Avenues, trying to decide our plans for the day, I spotted the famous Waldorf Astoria. That hotel has been mentioned in so many books and movies, so I said, "let's go look it over." When we arrived I said, "Come on, let's go inside." We looked around, the lobby was quite elegant. I managed to coax Susan into the open bar. It was probably around 10:30 in the morning they were only serving cokes. So we sat, snacking on the these fabulous toasted walnuts and trying to figure out what other placed we might like to see. 

Susan said she'd always wanted to have lunch at Tavern On The Green in Central Park. Since I've never known to be shy, I jumped up, walked out of the bar and spotted the Concierge's desk. The gentleman there was quite busy with a couple of people ahead of me and the phone ringing, but when he asked if he could help, I said my friend Susan and I wanted to go to lunch at Tavern On The Green, and did we need reservations?  He said, "One moment."  He spoke quietly into a phone, then turned back to me, "You have a reservation at 11. I'll have one of the doormen get you a taxi."  He didn't ask if we were guests of the hotel. Guess he just assumed we were.

We had a great lunch then walked thru the little tavern shopping mall where I bought a pair of art deco grape earrings. We eventually walked back out the restaurant's front door.  It had a beautiful green awning portico and the young doorman asked if we'd like a ride through the park. We said yes and a white horse-drawn carriage stopped right in front of us. We climbed aboard and before we could even think twice, our tour guide was pointing out the lake and the Bow Bridge and the Dakota Building where many celebrities lived. It was where Yoko Ono still lived, and also was where John Lennon had been gunned down in 1980. Our tour guide then called our attention to the "IMAGINE," black and white tile mosaic circle made in John's honor and the Strawberry Fields garden.  After we got back to our hotel room, we talked way into the night and laughed about our crazy day. 

For years, on many mystery convention trips we would room together, but that NYC one was most memorable. 

Years later, we even took a cruise to Cancun, which included swimming with dolphins and high-lighted by my friends,  musician/singer/songwriters Mike Blakely and John Arthur Martinez both from Marble Falls. John even gave Susan his autographed straw sombrero. We always had a great time together, and we always laughed so much.

 I still can't imagine this world without, Susan,  my Best Friend Forever. But if there is a heaven, I can't help imagining Susan, along with Don Cooper and Elmer Grape lounging on a big cloud somewhere swearing they've been waiting on me. We'll be talking talking and laughing about leaving "Austin City Blue" and "Houston in the Rear View Mirror."

The Female Detective : 1864

The physician, Arthur Conan Doyle, published his first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet,” in 1887. Recently, I was surprised to find an earlier detective book, The Female Detective, written by James Redding Ware and published under the pseudonym Andrew Forrester. It is a collection of short stories published in 1864, is narrated by Mrs Gladden, the first British woman detective.

Mrs. Gladden’s friends assume she is a dressmaker but she is quite clear that she is a professional detective, and in a charmingly feisty manner defends this by saying “ … if there is a demand for men detectives there must also be one for female detective police spies.”

Her approach to investigating crimes anticipate the methods of Sherlock Holmes. Mrs. Gladden physically examines crimes scenes and looks for clues. Sherlock Holmes is famous for using inductive reasoning, born from medicine – moving from observation to hypothesis – and also deductive reasoning, also born from medicine – from theory to conclusions. This dual reasoning has persisted to this day in all detective novels and was, surprisingly, first used by Mrs. Gladden.

In one story, The Unraveled Mystery, a doctor consults Mrs. Gladden on a gruesome murder case. A carpet bag had been found containing an unidentified body, cut in pieces and missing its head. The doctor goes through evidence, via inductive reasoning, based on skin and hair examination, and concluded the body was that of a foreigner. Mrs Gladden then goes on to conclude that he was also murdered by a foreigner because the murder weapon was a knife, more often used by foreigners, and this interesting piece of deductive reasoning: “We have here in London foreigners who are ready to assassinate.”

The last quote is amusing but shouldn’t take away from this fascinating set of short stories – they are interesting in logic, detective work and for how they set the historic precedent for modern detective novels. These stories and the introduction to them have many elements still present in detectives novels.

Using first person narration, still common in detective novels, Mrs. Gladden argues that detectives are necessary and follows this with evidence when police were rather incompetent and she was not – again, this notion still persists – the detective succeeds where law enforcement fails. Even the somewhat prejudiced view of foreigners ready to assassinate is tempered with her strong sense of that justice to be served for all, including the foreigner who was murdered and she concludes that the police are too prejudiced to care about this murder.

The notion that detectives in novels hold the moral line, right wrongs and do so despite those in power continues to this day. Mrs. Gladden’s many, shall we say, definitive views, are also very much a part of the detective novel history. An interesting example is Mrs. Marple who was both charming but also held many rather definite views and the novels have been edited to cut out language that today is considered racist, although many of us understand that Agatha Christie was a woman of her time, using language of her time and the word 'racist' may be a bit harsh. In the new rendition of Mrs. Marple in Holmes, Marple & Poe by James Patterson and Brian Sitts, Mrs. Marple has lost the inappropriate racial language, upped the empathy but remains very definitive about how repugnant she finds those who break the law and the limits of decency. We now often call this definitive view of the world ‘voicey’ and it is crucial in detective novels where moral lines are often drawn with a voice that refuses to compromise with evil. 

The language of the stories in The Female Detective is old school and I found myself having to reread parts till I understood fully what was meant. It was well worth the effort. It’s a lovely look at life back then when the profession of detective was not a woman’s one. In fact, few professions were open to women at all. Mrs. Gladden makes it quite clear that she is not a dabbler in crime, but rather, a professional who investigates them. Quite remarkable for that time in history. Although I’m still making my way through this book, this article was due and I couldn’t think of a more interesting subject than the first female detective story in British fiction.

By this point you may be wondering why I mentioned Sherlock Holmes but not The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in Graham's Magazine in 1841 that precedes this set of short stories and is, in fact, the first detective story. The reason is rather embarrassing: I have not read Edgar Allan Poe. However, I have read all the Sherlock Holmes stories and feel comfortable speaking a bit about them. After this particular dive into detective history with the first female detective, I’m waiting for the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe to arrive in the mail to feed my new curiosity about early detective novels.

It Turns Out I'd Never Read The Mysterious Affair at Styles

A few months ago, I was wandering Barnes & Noble and came on a display table of Agatha Christie novels. As you might imagine, it was a large display. Now, I'm a book cover guy. A good cover is what stops me at random displays, and Christie novels reliably have inventive covers. Working on a solid budget helps. 

The cover that caught my attention that day was The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). It's a terrific design. The earth tones and Tudor house give an immediate sense of Very English Manor. The woods and tall grass reach for the house, dispelling any sense of peace. This is ominous, somewhere mysterious affairs are likely to occur. To underscore that, a shadowy dude has clear business with the place.

This edition--there have been many--is from Vintage Books (Penguin Random House), published in 2019. "The First Hercule Poirot Mystery" exclaims the header. I knew that, and I even knew it was Christie's first published novel. A well-received first novel. None of that kept me at the display table.

Fickle memory held me there. I couldn't remember if I'd read the book.  

I felt like I must've. I haven't read all 65 Christie novels, but I'm a Poirot fan since my mom introduced me to the character. Surely, I'd read how the guy was introduced. And yet, I couldn't remember a single detail or faded personal take. In some ways, Christie is a victim of her own success. The novels became best-selling products, and those consistency demands created a blurring factor. Christie forged many of today's mystery tropes--and then used them throughout her long career. 

Also, I couldn't trust the multimedia angle. I'd almost certainly seen a PBS Masterpiece Mystery version of Styles. David Suchet nailed the role and became my definitive Poirot. No, mes ami, I couldn't be sure I'd read the novel version.

I bought the book. 

Two things struck me when I cracked that intriguing cover. For one, I hadn't read The Mysterious Affair at Styles before. Nothing was familiar about it. Two, I'll repeat that last thing. This book wasn't familiar Christie. Her novels are always engaging, with deceptively simple prose. Often a sly wit sneaks in. This first Poirot has that, but it's wrapped in Hastings' rash and sometimes clueless perspective. He fancies himself up to the sleuthing job. Christie makes it wonderfully clear that's not the case. 

This first Poirot is fussy, but the fussiness is organic, not Christie torturing the character that . She has no running gags to manage. This Poirot is a known ex-detective but a diminished one, a war refugee living in an Essex cottage provided by Style's matron (and soon our murder victim). This Poirot gets antic, running off literally at each critical turn in the case. 

The crime is over-intricate, as Christie plots can be. There are too many clues, and there are too many red herrings. She was still learning here and deserves full credit for inventiveness. A flaw here that would repeat in later novels is a focus on how ugly the bad guys are. And here, as in other of her novels, that ugly person gets described as dark and foreign ("alien," in Styles). Writers are products of their place and time. For our place and time, HarperCollins has been editing her re-releases for sensitivity.

Spoilers: It's the dark-haired alien guy whodunnit at Styles. I was never fooled by that, but I also wasn't sure where she was going with it. Christie always has another trick up her sleeve. She did, and I hadn't guessed it. Should've. Didn't. Hat tip, and that trick I won't spoil.

Like many famous novels, the making-of story is fascinating. Christie wrote Styles in 1916 while she was a Red Cross volunteer, rising from nurse to apothecary assistant. The WWI home front effort, the displaced Belgians, and not least the knowledge of toxicology are all large parts of Styles and give it deeper roots than some of her stories. 

Multiple U.K. publishers declined the manuscript before The Bodley Head eventually bought the rights. Christie's relief at becoming published led her to sign a bad deal. She would get only a ten percent royalty after 2,000 U.K. copies sold, and she was tied down to five more books. 

Christie certainly got the last laugh. Her success after The Mysterious Affair at Styles is almost unfathomable. Estimates of her sales range 2 to 4 billion copies. For perspective, that is 3 to 6 times more than the Harry Potter series. Only Shakespeare and the Bible have outsold her. And she is still selling, to include at bookstore display tables near you.

Writers of the World: Bifurcate Now!

I am not a lawyer, accountant, or literary agent, but I do think that seven years working in the trenches of a children’s math magazine at Scholastic taught me a skill that is apparently lost on the accounts payable clerks who toil for two different literary agents that I will not identify: I know how to multiply a gross figure by a decimal and calculate exactly how much to send me, the freaking author.

Maybe you don’t have such problems. You are blessed with an earnest, hardworking, bookish agent who throws her heart and soul into repping you. Her only fault is that she’s a one-woman agency, somewhat scattered, and your royalty checks and statements routinely reach you about 90 days after the publisher sent them to her. Earning interest in Cat Lady’s account, in other words, and not yours.

Or maybe your agent is a crook or employs a felonious bookkeeper.

The remedy for all this is a beautiful word with Latin roots: bifurcation. That means the publisher pays each of you your share of the royalties directly, without mingling your cashola with the agent’s.

Two minutes of research reveals that in the Devonian epoch, publishers directly paid writers, who were then responsible for paying their agents. That arrangement was altered in the Pleistocene, when it was decreed that writers could not be trusted with Other People’s Money and that agents were infinitely more trustworthy.

Moreover, when checks, royalty statements, annual tax statements, and currency itself had to be hand-chiseled on stone tablets, it was so much easier for the publisher to send a giant wad of money to, say, sixteen agents, and let them dole out minuscule amounts to the respective writers. Relieved that of that onerous paperwork (and the associated labor costs), publishers could get on with the rarefied work of curation.

But OMG, guys! Have you heard? Funds can now be electronically electroned to the money store of your choice, so why not bifurcate? It’s the smart thing to do.

I have ghostwritten a number of books for business people, many of whom instructed their literary agent to enact bifurcation on Day 1. It’s what you do in the “real” world of business. To people who think seriously about money, publishing’s financial traditions appear quite dumb.

In one email that I probably should not have received, the literary agent chided her client—the fellow whose book I was writing—saying bifurcation was fine to do with domestic (ie, US) contracts, but would be somewhat more complicated with foreign rights. She was only half right. It can be tricky. If I were doing a foreign deal today, I’d try to bifurcate, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on bifurcating payments on domestic royalties.

I took the fork most traveled by...

Why would you want to bifurcate? First, because the money owed to writers goes missing all the time. The most egregious case is the one involving the literary agency that represented Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, not to mention the estates of Edward Gorey, Mario Puzo, Peter Matthiessen, Joseph Heller, Studs Terkel, and many more. The firm’s bookkeeper embezzled $3.4 million over seven years. Apologizing profusely to their clients, the principals of the firm watched as their weeping former employee was sentenced to two years in prison, then filed for bankruptcy. By all accounts, a respectable firm ground into the dust by greed.

Second, I’d bifurcate because one writer’s personal stash of dead-wood agents can quickly pile up like cordwood. I’m a mid-lister at best, yet in my career, my money has flowed to the offices of a total of six literary agents. Back in the day, I befriended a scrappy young agent who landed me a few book deals. He departed for a new firm, still agreeing to rep me but leaving his former employer responsible for paying me royalties on my “old” projects. When another agent of mine left her longtime agency, she and her longtime employer decided to split my rights between them. (No one bothered to ask what I wanted to do.) The dead-wood agency would send me royalties on my US rights, and “my” agent would rep my foreign and all other subsidiary rights.

It was nuts. At one point, I was getting checks from four different agencies, but only firm one repped me for reals. The others were, as I say, dead wood.

Talk about scary: At one firm, the longtime principals had retired, entrusting the distribution of royalty checks to—who else?—their progeny and grandchildren. At another firm, when the two principals began suing each other, they at least had the decency to teach their clients the B-word.

It was a tedious process, bifurcating payments with every print and audiobook publisher with whom my wife and I had ever signed a deal with. We set up bifurcations with Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Audible, and Brilliance Audio. We got good at it, and once we were done bifurcating with our LIVE agents, I moved on to prune the dead wood.

Here’s what you do:

Get out copies of all the contracts you have with a single publisher. To make this easy on yourself, just deal with the publishers in your nation of residence to start. In other words, money that is coming from a US publisher to you, a US writer. If you’re a Canadian writer, you have my permission to bifurcate from your US agent and your US publisher. That transaction should go smoothly. But I’m neither a lawyer or accountant (as noted above).

At the top of your most recent royalty statement you will find the contact info of your publisher’s royalties department. On your royalty statements, you will see that your publisher has reduced you to a number. Write down your official author number, and fire off an email to this effect:

I’d like to bifurcate the following contracts—noted here by date, name of book, etc. My agent of record, noted in Paragraph Whatever, is Eustace Simoleons, of the Rackhamup Simoleons Literary Agency. The split-share on each of the birfucations should be 85 percent to me, the author, and 15 percent to the aged yet highly esteemed Mr. Simoleons. Mr. S and his numbskull assistant are cc’d on this email.

Note: If you have contracts at the same publisher that involve another agent, you’ll have to go down that route too.

Since they are no longer having to chisel money out of stone, I have found that royalty department drones have free time on their hands, and will most likely respond quickly: “Wow, a human wants to talk to us! Thank you for writing, Scribulous J. Scrivener! We’d love to help you set up that bifurcation, but Mr. Simoleons must assent before we proceed.”

Numbskull assistant will prod Mr. Simoleons to respond. If he’s still quite sagacious, Mr. S. will instantly comprehend that you have handed him a reason to reduce the annual hours paid to said nitwit. (“Sh*t—if I can get all my authors to do this, I might be able to fire my idiot assistants and drop payroll,” he will think, albeit privately to himself.)

If, on the other hand, Mr. Simoleons is shady or neurotic, he will phone to convince you that it’s in your favor to let him (man)handle your money. Hold firm. Say it’s a business thing, and you’re happy to get your attorney involved if it would make him feel more comfortable. (Only say this if you are not bluffing.) When you surmount that hurdle, the royalty department will send you a contract addendum like this:

We refer to the agreement (the “Contract”) dated TK, between Scribulous J. Scrivener (the “Author”), and Edified Press, at 123 Highly Overpriced Office Towers, NYC, (“the Publisher”), concerning BOOK TITLE (the “Work”).

It is hereby agreed as follows:

1. Paragraph TK of the Agreement—(ie, the so-called Literary Agency clause) is hereby deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following:
2. “Fifteen percent (15%) sums due Author under this Agreement shall be paid to the Author’s agent: Eustace Simoleons, Agency name and address (the “Agent”), whose receipt of funds shall be a full and valid discharge of Publisher’s obligations.
3. “Eighty-five percent (85%) of all sums due the Author under this Agreement will be paid directly to the Author at: Scrivener’s address. Receipt of those funds shall be a full and valid discharge of Publisher’s obligations.”

Nothing in these two paragraphs will be deemed to have changed the amounts otherwise payable by the Publisher under this Agreement. In all other respects the Agreement remains in full force and effect in accordance with its terms.

ACCEPTED AND AGREED:

Signed by Publisher

Signed by Author

Yes, you can get a lawyer to look at this, but I would recommend having the publisher draw up the doc first, so you don't incur excessive legal expenses on consultations with your attorney and their subsequent drafting of the doc. The agent is not required to sign, because the original contract was always between you, the author, and the publisher, with only one graf inserted to redirect your money to the agent.

You will need to execute this document for every book you have at this publisher, and at every other publisher that brings your work to market. You’ll do it for all the the other businesses that have signed subsidiary deals with you.

Not gonna lie to you. It will take time. While you’re at it, instruct the publisher to set up direct deposit as well, and agree to receive your royalty statements via email or their online royalty portal. The documents you sign today probably will not impact your royalty statements or payments for a year. Because publishing.

Once the new agreements start kicking in, however, you’ll forever get your 85 percent and the agent will get their 15 percent. At the end of the year, the publisher (not the agent) will send you your tax docs. Yay you!

From this moment forward, I predict that you will never hear from your dead-wood agents again, just the ones continuing to rep you. Although, because these idiots really cannot do math with decimals, you may occasionally get a check in the mail remitting you 85 percent of an agent’s 15 percent payment. (Yes, this has happened to me with two agents’ offices, several freaking times in a row.)

Once, I got an anxious call from the scion of a once-great literary agency who said, “Um, we just got a call from someone in Bulgaria who wants to do a deal with your book? Can you handle it?” (Translation: “Please don’t make us have to work after all these years of cashing grandpa’s checks.”)

JFC, publishing is stupid, but you don’t have to be. Bifurcate.

---

See you in three weeks.

— Joe

josephdagnese.com

It’s In the Details

To be, or not to be; ay, there's the point.

To die, to sleep—is that all? Ay, all.

.

No, to sleep, to dream—ay, marry, there it goes,

For in that dream of death, when we awake,

And borne before an everlasting judge,

From whence no passenger ever returned,

The undiscovered country, at whose sight

The happy smile and the accursed damned,

But for this, the joyful hope of this,

Who'd bear the scorns and flattery of the world,

Scorned by the right rich, the rich cursed of the poor,

The widow being oppressed, the orphan wronged,

The taste of hunger, or a tyrant's reign,

And thousand more calamities besides,

To grunt and sweat under this weary life,

When that he may his full quietus make,

With a bare bodkin? Who would this endure,

But for a hope of something after death,

Which puzzles the brain and doth confound the sense,

Which makes us rather bear those evils we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Ay, that. O this conscience makes cowards of us all.

                                        – Hamlet, Act III, Scene i

Thanks for reading this far. If you have even the most passing acquaintance with the most famous speech in the English language (or, if we're being honest, in any language, including made-up ones like Klingon!), you've probably already noted that the above just feels...off.

And you are not wrong.

The above is quoted from the First Quarto, an early version of the text of Shakespeare's play about the famous "melancholy Dane." As such it understandably reads more like a rough draft of the more polished, harder-hitting version from the First Folio, a later, more complete collection of Shakespeare's plays–and thus most familiar to modern audiences.

Current and prevailing scholarship holds that Shakespeare himself never made the least effort to preserve the text of any of his plays. Both the First Quarto and the First Folio (to say nothing of several other editions of both) were compiled and published by people other than Shakespeare: the Quarto during Shakespeare's lifetime (1603) and the Folio seven years after his passing (1623)

As nearly as we can tell, the plays in both of these editions were compiled from the scripts of the actors who trod the footboards of places like The Globe and Blackfriars when Shakespeare's company first produced them.

And for all that, each version is that much different. For comparison's sake, here is the more familiar version of Hamlet's famous fourth soliloquy:

To be, or not to be; that is the question:         

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep—

No more, and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to—'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life,

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns                            

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

See? It just feels right. Especially if you're a Shakespeare fan. The cognitive dissonance a Shakespeare fan likely feels when first experiencing an alternate draft of the Bard's work can be likened to listening to a live performance of a song one is well familiar with, and hearing someone blow a passage, a drummer lose time, the singer off-key. You know what sounds right to you.

If you've ever felt that way (and we all have!), then you know what it's like to be jarred right out of a book by something that just...doesn't...fit. Maybe you're scoffing at how a character reacts in a given situation "Ha! The narrator catches his wife cheating with the garbage man and he introduces himself, shakes the guy's hand offers to swap his expensive foreign for the garbage man's Bondo-encrusted 1983 Honda Prelude?!?!"). It's possible this is a twist introduced by the author, meant to disconcert and intrigue the reader (Gotta keep those pages a-turnin', after all!), or perhaps it's comic? Being played for laughs?

If that's the case, well and good. But if it's just a result of the author screwing up, well, like I said: jarring. 

And as an author, the last thing we want is for the reader to be pulled out of our story. Right? Right!

And with all the things it's possible for an author to get wrong, it can get worse: the author might write historical fiction.

Yep.

Historical fiction.

Which is what I write.

Well, historical crime fiction.

Why write a subcategory of fiction that requires not just the usual array of cheap parlor tricks, um, I mean, professional writing, well-drawn characters, memorable dialogue, vivid settings and a satisfying ending, but also a metric ton of research, all of it guaranteed to suck the author down rabbit hole after time-wasting rabbit hole?

Because it's fun.

Duh.

Challenging? Yes.

Maddening? For sure.

But, you know. Fun.

Unless you get something wrong. And someone lets you know it. Nowadays. In the Age of the Internet.

That can be....well. Not so fun.

I got to thinking about this sort of thing and how to best avoid the larger pitfalls particular to the writing of historical fiction just last week while reading a novel by an author I like and respect, with a long track record in successful fiction sales. This new novel is, to my knowledge, this particular author's first foray into writing historical fiction.

And no, I'm not going to reveal this author's name. Mind your own business Er, uh, That would be unprofessional. 

First things first: this author did so many things right in this book. They did their homework, the amount of background/historical research they did permeates the book, and the writing is solid.

That said, I got jerked out of the narrative within the first fifty pages. Why? Something so simple.

This novel is set several decades in the past, and yet at one point, the first-person narrator talks about a visceral rush of excitement they experienced thusly: "My adrenalin spiked."

There is simply no way anyone in the era in which this novel is set would describe that sensory experience in that way. No. Way.

Now, granted, I'm a history nerd. Got my MA in it, I teach it, and I've a bunch of nonfiction books  on historical subjects (mostly political corruption). So it's entirely possible most readers wouldn't catch the above mistake.

But if we're being honest, it only takes one.

Am I going to reach out to the author in question and say anything about the above historical malapropism? Of course not. Again, this author got so much right, including several wonderfully accurate runs of dialogue.

Plus, I have a life.

But there are folks out there who are passionate about the minutiae. Especially in this age of hyper-specialization, where the details are ready available for confirmation at the end of your internet connection.

So how to avoid a flub like the above mistake?

Simple: immerse yourself in the conversational tone of the time about which you're writing. Read diaries, watching documentaries produced during the era in question (if they had film technology during that time). Check out the published correspondence of local people who correspond (see what I did there?) with the general make-up of your characters.

In any number of ways it's a lot like learning another language. When you can think in it, you've mastered it. I have two current works in progress: one a short story set in 1890 Seattle. The other, a novel set in 1844 Washington, D.C. The research that has gone into both of these projects is considerable, but I am confident in my ability to "talk" like any number of my characters. It takes hard work, a fair amount of research, and a ton of imagination, but hey, we're writers. Isn't all of this sort of our jam?

Try it. It works.

And that's it for me this go-round. Tune in next time to see how to successfully navigate the potential pitfalls of nailing the sorts of specialized historical analysis/fiction writing that concern members of the following thriving hobbyist subcultures sure to know if you've erred in describing those things near and dear to their hearts:

You haven't lived until you've had a member of this club show up at one of your readings.

Wouldn't we all?

You gotta admire the passion.

I know which one I'm voting for!

Okay, I'm out.

See you in two weeks!