Writing

May 2nd, 2011

True crime or sure justice?

A fellow at a book panel in Newburyport, Mass. last week asked an interesting question of his panel of mystery writers. Why write mysteries? Why not write something else?

Luckily I was second in line, behind Linda Barnes , for this one (left to right in photo, Linda Barnes, yours truly, Hallie Ephron, and moderator and author Dyke Hendrickson), giving me a few minutes to collect my thoughts. Why write crime novels? Why not westerns? Poetry? “Literary” novels?

newburyport 2 250x166 True crime or sure justice?

Newburyport Literary Festival mystery panel (David Goosh photo)

Why, indeed.

I answered the question but now, with time to consider it more, I’ll answer it a little better.

I’ve been reading about a case in New Hampshire, where a woman named Krista Dittmeyer, just 20 years old, was found dead in a pond at a ski area. Her car was parked nearby, flashers on. Her 18-month old daughter was still strapped in her car seat , unharmed.

Krista is from Portland, Maine, a waitress by occupation. In her photo, which runs with all the stories, she’s pretty and cheerful, looks like somebody who was full of fun. Her relatives say she was a good mom, loved her little girl. Her boyfriend, the child’s father, is in jail for drug trafficking—twelve grams of coke and a couple grand. Relatively minor f but enough to take him out of circulation.

As I write this it’s been almost a week and no cause of death has been released. David Hench, police reporter for the Portland Press Herald, has done some good stories on the case, explaining what the lack of hard information could mean. Requests for toxicology reports could mean no obvious cause was found. Or investigators know what happened and are looking for evidence to bolster their case. In the meantime, the public waits and wonders.

Did she leave her home voluntarily? What was she doing in Conway, N.H.? If she was abducted and killed, did the killers deliberately spare the child? If it wasn’t foul play, why would she leave her child unattended in a deserted,dark place? What the hell happened?

Most likely police will figure it out, with the autopsy, countless interviews, unraveling the case in that patient, dogged way good cops do. They don’t give up easily. In a cases like this, assuming it’s a homicide, they don’t give up at all.

But there’s a chance, I suppose, that they haven’t and won’t figure this one out. The Maine State Police have a whole web page devoted to unsolved murders. They go back years, the cases that are cold but not forgotten. And while I don’t know how the Krista Dittmeyer case will play out, I do know one thing: it this were a crime novel, and I were writing it, the killer or killers would be brought to justice.

I’ve been told that mystery novelists have a fascination with crime. Maybe, but mostly they have a need to see justice done. It hurts them to see real life crime. Their response—and mine—is to create a world where bad guys don’t get away with it, where good vanquishes evil, where you know that when the books ends, this crime will not stand.

I can picture a book based on a case like this one: the child alone in the car is an opening scene that gives me chills. But I’m going to settle for watching the newspapers for each report, and waiting for the truth to come out. I hope that, just like in a crime novel, it does. And if justice is needed, it is served out in spades.

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April 18th, 2011

Across the Pond

Recently made the acquaintance of Declan Burke, the Irish crime writer. Declan is posting Kindle titles by Irish crime writers on his website. All good stuff. Declan was good enough to include me. As he put it, “Irish-Americans are more Irish than the Irish.” I highly recommend you check it out.

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April 17th, 2011

Aspiring writers want to know

When I do events, the audience is made up mostly of two types of people—readers and writers, the aspiring kind, looking to do whatever it takes to get published.

In Portland, at the Maine Festival of the Book, a few weeks back, an aspiring writer named Karla came up after and handed me a card. On it she had printed out her questions. Karla, who was quite pleasant, asked if I could answer her questions when I had a little time. “I know you’re busy,” she said. Well, who isn’t, right? But I have a little time on this rainy Sunday morning so I’ll attempt to answer a few of Karla’s questions.
What organizations are useful to join? (Mystery Writers of America, etc.?)

I’m not much of a joiner but MWA is useful. It’s best known for the Edgar Awards but there are other program, directories, etc. If you want to feel you’re linked to the bigger world of mystery writers, sign right up.

What events, conferences, etc. are the best to attend to find agents?

I’m doing a panel and workshop at the New England Crime Bake conference in Massachusetts in November. It’s an annual event, usually sold out. Well worth attending. Lots of writers, agents, others associated with the genre. They’re all willing to share their experiences. Learn from our mistakes. Beats trial and error anytime. If you’re not in New England, there are equivalent conferences around the country.

How important is a literary agent?

Very. I’m a great believer in doing what you do best. I write okay. I’m not a good negotiator. I’m not good with details, especially financial ones. I don’t know a bunch of publishers to pitch my work to. A good agent lets the writer attend to the writing and takes care of the rest. I’ve had two agents in my career and both have been great. Writing the books is enough to contend with. A good agent leaves you feeling you’re in good hands.

That said, it may be difficult for an unpublished writer to land a literary agent. It can be done but if you’re finding the agent hunt a hard slog, it might be best to get the first book in print with a smaller press without an agent. It may be a bit easier to get someone to represent you the second time around.

Well, I guess that’s enough for today. The sun is coming out and there’s a dead elm that snapped off during this morning’s windstorm. Time to rev up the chainsaw. I’ll continue with Karla’s list next time.

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April 11th, 2011

My past catches up

A couple of friends from my days in the newsroom, reporter Doug Harlow and photographer Dave Leaming, came by to visit. We talked about old crimes and former cronies—a good talk, much of which will never make it to print. Here’s the news that was fit to print.

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March 27th, 2011

On cops and other tourist attractions

Just back from a few days in Ireland. Lovely visit with my daughter Emily Westbrooks (check out her blog) and her husband Michael in Dublin. They’re northsiders (and don’t you forget it) great hosts and tour guides. We spent time on the Aran Islands (Inishmore, specifically), Galway, the Wicklow Mountains, the Boyne Valley (Newgrange passage tomb, not to be missed) and a variety of pubs and locals. Musical highlight? A silk-shirted Neil Diamond tribute artist, singing his heart and lungs out in a pub in Bayside called The Racecourse. Oldtimers and teenagers singing along. Yes, you had to be there.

But holidays with a crime novelist are a little different. And Emily and Michael know that when I’m along for the trip, you have to be prepared for some detours. Galway? Lovely city, lots of music and good food, overflowing with college students. But Galway also is the setting of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor novels. So I got up early one morning, left the hotel for a walk. Down toward the city center, picturing Taylor and friends (and many more enemies) walking these streets. In the old part of the city, where we ate at a great pub called McSweggan’s, I found myself wondering what Jack Taylor would think. (pretty posh, far from his hard cases).

On Quay Street, the pedestrian street not far from the Spanish Arch, a busker kid was singing Irish songs with two young women accompanying him on guitars. Travelers plying their trade for the tourists. On the docks, where the River Corrib spills into the bay, I’m picturing a body found in the mud along the quay. Or maybe in one of the decaying fishing boats tied up here. A tourist notices an odd smell. Calls the garda. A crowd gathers. The body is in the cabin. He’s wearing boots and tight jeans, Yankees T-shirt. No fisherman.

In Dublin we toured Ballymun, one of the poorest sections of the city, graffiti sprayed everywhere, council housing (like American housing projects) half empty, some windows boarded over, some showing drying laundry. Concrete and security fences, and Traveler’s horses grazing on grassy vacant lots. On the way to see Dublin play Mayo in Gaelic Football at Croke Park I walk past a beat-up coach bus idling outside a row of crummy flats. People with tattered luggage are boarding. Romanian Gypsies, I’m told. They’re bused into an area, do their thing (mostly panhandling) and then move on.

The economy is in the news, of course, but my morning news report is from the Dublin crime beat. An 18-year-old kid in Inchicore, west side, is chased down by a group of thugs and stabbed to death in a car park. The next morning, four people are arrested. Garda are looking for more. “How far to Inchicore?” I say. I no longer get the look that says, “Wouldn’t you rather tour the Guinness brewery?”

Because they’re used to it. When a rough patch of the city comes up in conversation, it’s often prefaced by, “You would like this.”

It goes with the turf, this fascination with the darker side of life. The urge to go to the places that come with a warning, “Don’t go there alone. Or after dark.” Places full of dark alleys, lurking strangers, but brimming with stories. The stuff of books.

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February 25th, 2011

Just Say No to Drugs

I’m not offering unsolicited lifestyle advice, just paraphrasing something a book editor told me years ago as we were discussing proposed McMorrow plots.

This editor was pretty much hands off when it came to telling me what to write. But she said this with a vehemence that got my attention then and has stuck with me since. “No drugs.”

Her words have come back to me of late as I consider McMorrow No. 10. I’m in the mulling stage, starting to write bits and pieces, ideas, descriptions of characters, portions of the plot. Ideas come and go, some survive and some end up on the writing-room floor. This is the most mysterious part of the process: thinking, waiting, mulling, being taken off guard when an idea or an extension of an idea suddenly comes to mind. Do you “think” of these things, these fabrications? I don’t think so. I think you just feed in some raw material and then put yourself in a frame of mind to receive something back.

In the middle of the night. Driving on the highway. I had an idea today as I was driving in a snowstorm, ostensibly concentrating on keeping the car between the guardrail and ditch. And poof.

But no drugs. Yes, back to that.

I read a lot of newspapers, everything from my local weekly to Maine dailies to Al Jazeera. But it’s struck me of late that nowadays most of the crime in McMorrow’s neck of the Maine woods is related to drugs. People robbing banks for drug money. People robbing pharmacies for drugs. People doing home invasions for drugs (story in today’s Waterville Morning Sentinel about a guy who invaded a house, taped a woman to a bed. He thought a drug dealer lived there, instead it was just some random lady. Whoops. So long, sucker. Better intel next tie. Some people just aren’t cut out for a life of crime.)

Anyway, to my point. If 80 percent of the crime around here is drug-related, why not write a crime novel with a drug plot. The answer: drugs are cliche. Drugs are boring. People who commit crimes to feed addictions just aren’t particularly interesting. They’re like laboratory rats. Poke the lever, get the reward. Ho-hum.

Unless the guy goes to rob the drug dealer. Except she’s not a drug dealer. She’s a 65-year-old woman, living quietly. Alone. She goes to a drawer to get money and instead takes out a gun. Shoots him dead. Doesn’t call the cops. Loads him in her car. Drives him down a remote road in the boonies and rolls him out of the trunk into the woods.

Why not call the cops? Why not be screaming into the phone? There’s a man in my house and he was trying to rob me and I shot him. Come quick. I don’t know if he’s dead.

Because there is a reason she’s living quietly. Alone. There’s a reason this woman who lives with her cat, keeps to herself, moved to this country road because it was quiet and peaceful, keeps a loaded Glock 26 in the kitchen drawer. Why she was able to put a round in his chest, another in his head, that he was dead before he hit the floor. A reason why she’s burning the blood-stained carpet in her woodstove, that she’ll go about her business tomorrow as if nothing had happened, nothing at all. Groceries. A movie on Netflix. A romantic comedy.

Why? I’m waiting. Driving down the road. Listening to music. Waking up in the middle of the night.

It will come. And that’s why this business never gets old.

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February 2nd, 2011

What’s in a name?

I’ll let you in on the sort of deliberations authors have as books begin to take shape.

Let me begin by saying I’m not a great title guy. Title creation is like writing advertising copy and a very different skill from writing a novel. I know I’m not alone in this. I know writer friends who have been dead set on terrible titles for their books, only to have an editor or publicist save them from themselves. PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, the first Brandon Blake, got its moniker after a brainstorming session at Down East Books. A group effort and a fitting title, in the end as the book was about one shakedown after another. Everybody’s a crook at heart.

Generally, though, I invent a working title for a book in progress (have to name the folders something, right?) with no intention of keeping the first one. Then I keep a running list as things pop into my head. In this case, a title emerged pretty quickly. Early in the writing of Brandon Blake No. 2, due out in September 2011, I referred to the novel as PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE. This was a reference to young Blake’s tendency to see things in those terms (good and evil, yes and no, right and wrong, bad guys and the rest of us) and his new job as a rookie patrolman with the Portland Police Department. In Brandon’s world there’s very little gray. And once he assigns someone or something to either of his two categories, that’s it.

You can trace this to his upbringing (homeschooled by his alcoholic grandmother, abandoned by his dad before birth, left behind by his wayward bartender mom) and his youth. Whatever the reason, it makes Brandon’s budding law enforcement career a little rocky. This, after all, is the era of community policing, where cops have be mental health workers, marriage counselors, and social workers. And at the same time they have a weather eye out for the serious bad guys out there. (and there are many). Talk about multi-tasking.

It’s a tough job, police work, and Brandon throws himself into it. So much so that his mentor, a sensible veteran cop named Kat, finds herself having to pull Brandon back, caution him to ease up. “Blake,” Kat says. “Chill.” For Brandon, way easier said than done.

Oh, but back to PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE. Somewhere along the line, writing the book for the last few months, I got kind of sick of the title. You stare at anything long enough, it begins to change shape. I’m thinking, black and white, what’s so mysterious about that? Black and White. That’s kind of boring. Black and white—maybe I decided on it too early. Black and white—how ’bout ….

PORT CITY DEATHTRAP.

The plot centers on the people living in an apartment house on a run-down,drugged-out street. Stuff happens to these people and most of it isn’t good. So this house is sort of a deathtrap. Hence the new title.

So midway through the process, I start referring to this book as PORT CITY DEATHTRAP. In this blog. In conversations and notes to people who need to know. Agent, trusted readers. I even send the manuscript along to my publisher, Down East Books, with DEATHTRAP in the header. My editor, Michael Steere, is a bit surprised. He says he liked BLACK AND WHITE. He got the Blake reference. The designers were even playing with some cover designs based on the black-and-white. DEATHTRAP, Michael says in his very diplomatic way, is dull. Uncompelling.

So I think about it. And I figure he’s right. BLACK AND WHITE is relevant to the story and the character. And with the right image, it can be ominous. So PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE it is. I open the latest draft, do a search and replace. And DEATHTRAP is erased, sent into book-title oblivion.

And the lesson for me?

Titles can be overthought and overwrought. Most times it’s best to go with the gut. Brandon would agree with that. There are good titles and bad titles. Nothing in between.

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January 12th, 2011

Back to the Future

It’s snowing like a banshee in my neck of the Maine woods. Good day to sort things out in the study, get ready for the next book. This is an odd time in the novel-writing cycle, which goes like this:

The notes

You mull ideas, hope to settle on one. Hit the road for research. Sketch out the plot and characters. Write the book to the end, them go back and do the fixes, the changes, stick in the ideas that came to you along the way.

Read it through. Read it again. And then you send if off. In this case, PORT CITY DEATHTRAP went to my agent, Carol White at The Helen Brann Agency. Carol liked it, which is not a given. Soon I’ll hear from my editor, Michael Steere at Down East Books, with his notes, questions, comments. I hope I got the guns right.

But for now the book has left the building. The study is quiet. Today went in and picked up legal pads. Rumpled Stickynotes. (There’s a desktop under there!) Bits of paper where I scrawled an idea that came in the middle of the night. Some are indecipherable. Some have names of characters who didn’t make the cut. I see reminders to self: Layer in more weather … should it be a Glock 19 or 26? … What is Nessa thinking? … Should Lil Messy die? …

I addressed most of the questions. Some I ignored. The rejected ideas went one way and the story went another. But now it’s gone.

It’s an almost-melancholy feeling, kind of like walking through your kid’s room after they go off to college. You neaten stuff up, feel nostalgic. A little hollow.

So now it’s time to kiss some of these characters goodbye. After six or more months up as my constant companions, we’ve moved on. Lily the trustfunder. Winston, the charming restaurater. Cawley the biker. Chantelle the crackhead and her baby, Lincoln. Samir and Edgard, Sudanese-born brothers navigating America in Portland, Maine.

You get pretty used to having these people around, sitting down in the morning to see what they’re doing, having your little chats on the page. And then you say goodbye. Hand them over to agent, editor, publicist. This private thing you had going with your group of made-up friends, it comes to an end. Sure you’ll read about them—in editing, at signings— but it isn’t the same.

So on to the next book. Turn away from Brandon Blake. Check back in with Jack McMorrow. Hit the road. Start filling notebooks. Scraps of paper. Invent another group of characters to hang with.

In the study. In the quiet. In my head.

Strange business, this writing thing, you think?

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December 5th, 2010

Clearing the Decks

I’m about to head off into Jack McMorrow land on this snowy Sunday, beginning research for McMorrow No. 10. It’s always a clean-start feeling, beginning a new book, wide open, full of possibilities. A year from now, if all goes well, I’ll have a McMorrow story in hand (and Brandon Blake No. 2, “Port City Deathtrap,” coming out). In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few other stories, from the ones that piled up around me when I was on the DL.

I read most of most days for the past few weeks, the books stacked around me. Some were in preparation for an upcoming trip to China (now derailed by injury, alas) and others were pure recreation. The China books were fascinating, taught me that our very different cultures are blending, little by little. In the future, we’re all going to be globalized. I can’t wait. And I recommend “Country Driving” by Peter Hessler, “Mr. China” by Tim Clissold, “Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper” by Fuchsia Dunlop. Excellent writers. Tremendous reporters. Amazing places. You’ll never read the words “Made in China” the same way again.

I also jumped back into Ken Bruen’s books, thrilled to find a couple I hadn’t read the first time through. “Ammunition” and “The Dramatist.” Good outing by Inspector Brant in southeast London, and by Jack Taylor in Galway. Think James. M. Cain in Britain. Tough. Funny. Furious. Writing as stripped down as a race car. You don’t dare take your hands off the wheel.

From there it was Stuart Neville’s second book, “Collusion,” which I picked up at Kingdom Books, Dave and Beth Kanell’s shop in Vermont. This one followed “Ghosts of Belfast,” another dose of caffeinated, streamlined prose. Neville’s hero is back, locked and loaded, and pitted against the one assassin good enough to match him. It’s New York City, Belfast, violence, doomed love, a book that moves so fast you need a seatbelt.

So good I forgot to eat lunch.

And then I put on the brakes (like the car metaphors?), thanks to my friend Andrea who kindly sent the shut-in a book called “Affinity,” by Sarah Waters. It’s a Gothic historical novel, set in and around a women’s prison in London in the 19th century. At first I thought it too slow-moving, the period language thick, especially after Bruen’s and Neville’s sandblasting prose. But then Waters began to put me under her spell. The plot centers on 19th century Spiritualists, a true phenomenon of the time, people (mostly women), looking to connect with the “other side” through mediums. The protagonist is a lady who visits Millbank prison as some sort of community service, gets involved with a medium who is locked up for frightening someone to death. It’s totally different from what I usually read, but beguiling. I’m halfway through and find myself looking for the book when I have an hour to kill.

So there you have it. Shanghai and Chengdu, Belfast and Galway, a prison cell in Victorian London. All without leaving my chair.

Now I’m out of the chair but off to Prosperity, Maine. A powerful thing, the imagination, no?

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November 17th, 2010

Thoughts from the Chair

I’ve had a lot of time to think in the past month, sitting in my chair, ice water pumping through the “immobilizer” on my leg, crutches propped beside me, Mozart cranked up. And of course, much of what I think makes its way into a book. So in the future you may see these notions pop into a Jack McMorrow or Brandon Blake novel. Most of life, as they say, is research.

* It’s a very vulnerable feeling to be stuck in a chair, hooked up to a machine, alone in the house. My wingchair is on the north side of the house. The side door, entering the kitchen, is just out of sight. The door to the woodshed and barn is behind the kitchen, way out of sight. Needless to say, I can’t get up. Or if I can, it takes a few minutes.

I’ve told friends to just let themselves in. If the music isn’t on, I hear the kitchen door slide open. The storm door shut. Footsteps coming toward me. I lean forward to see who it is. So far, it’s been somebody I know.

Maybe I’m getting paranoid, stuck here with my leg up, but what if the door opened. The storm door closed. I heard someone in the kitchen. I called, “Come on in.” My visitor didn’t call back. But I heard the footsteps coming this way. Saw boots. Jeans. Leaned forward. A stranger. And he’s carrying a …

* On crutches, the route to the car is through the woodshed and the barn, a long level walkway. There’s a door into the shed from the back. It’s held closed by an iron hook. There are three doors to the barn on the first floor. There is one on the second. Crutching my way through the shed, concentrating on the steps, planting the rubber tips carefully, I don’t look to my right, into the workshop. Where the door leans open. And someone stands in the shadows. Waiting.

* At night, I heave myself into bed. The ice machine is pumping. I’m attached to it by a long, thick rubber hose. Getting out of bed requires me to throw off the covers, reach down to the connector. I squeeze the two tabs to release the hose. Drag my bad leg across to the edge of the bed. Ease the leg over the edge, and propping it up with my good leg, slowy lower it to the floor. I reach for my crutch. Brace myself. Hoist myself to my feet. Elapsed time: thirty seconds. An eternity.

* Driving by, he sees the guy on the crutches, his leg bound in a brace from thigh to ankle. Looks painful. Looks like it must hurt. Looks like they must’ve given him some serious meds. Oxycodone. Oxycontin. Might be worth popping in, after the wife leaves for work. But maybe worth watching, make sure there’s no dog. No alarm. Nobody else in the house.

The next morning, the wife pulls out, takes off in a hurry. He waits. Makes sure she hasn’t forgotten something, gonna roll back in. Gives her twenty minutes, time to get down the road. No dog. The door to the house fell shut behind her, no evidence of it locking. He pulls into the driveway. Takes the carton off the seat, the one he uses every time. Speedy delivery!

The door opens. He hears the guy call. “Come on in!”

If y0u insist.

* So that’s what goes through your mind when you’re stuck in a chair. You write the stuff down. Think some more. Wonder if it might not be a bad idea to tuck a handgun between the cushions. Nice light Sig-Sauer .223. Just in case the next time someone cometh, it isn’t the Iceman.

Until next time …

PS I flushed the meds, fyi.

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