Tag Archive for: debut novel

Full Circle for a Debut Author

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by Shari Randall

Many thanks to the Stiletto Gang for inviting me to be part of the, well, gang. This year marks my debut as a novelist with the January 30 publication of the first in my new Lobster Shack Mystery series, Curses, Boiled Again! I’ll be sharing the debut author journey with you here on the third Friday of the month.

As I gear up for my first author panel as a novelist, I
can’t keep a verse from the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime” from going
through my mind: “How did I get here?”
The panel will be held at the same library in Virginia where
I was a children’s librarian for more than 12 years. We’ll sit in chairs in the
same room where I sang “We’re Going On A Bear Hunt” for toddlers, introduced
The Reptile Lady, and dressed up as Professor McGonagle for a Harry Potter
birthday celebration. Talk about a crazy journey!
Fast forward to my panel. I’m thrilled that two of my
favorite authors and friends will be with me, Donna Andrews and Sherry Harris.
How did I get here?
Many writers can point to the moment they started on the
road to becoming a writer – a prize for an elementary school poem, a spot on
the high school yearbook, a sale to a magazine.
My road started as a voracious reader in the library of Our
Lady of Mount Carmel School in Meriden, CT. The librarian, Mrs. Macri, was an
energetic lady who wasn’t much taller than her students but tried to gain a few
inches on us with very high stiletto heels. How I marveled at those heels. (And
how I still marvel at those who can wear them!)
One day in fourth grade, a thick book on a high shelf caught
my eye. Mrs. Macri saw me looking and pulled it down for me. “Oh, you’ll like
this,” she said as she put the book into my hands. She didn’t say, “Oh, that’s
too old for you” or “Try something easier.” The book was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
I didn’t just like it, dear reader. I devoured it and
started trying to write my own stories.
That started my lifelong love of mysteries.
Fast forward through unfortunate high school poetry, an English
degree, work at my hometown newspaper, editing for a Boston publisher,
freelancing, teaching, doing a masters in library and information science, to
my job in a mid-sized library in the lower level of a shopping mall in a county
of almost a million people near Washington, DC.

Deep into years of budget cuts, our teen section was looking
particularly tired. I was searching for grant money to buy fresh copies of
books when I came across the We Love Libraries program from a writers group
called the Sisters in Crime. I did some research, got my boss’s okay, and
applied for the grant.

We won! One thousand dollars with no string attached. Let me
tell you, ain’t no party like a librarian party where you can buy books with
somebody else’s money!
Four Sisters came to the check presentation ceremony: GM
Malliet, C. Ellett Logan, Terri Bishop, and Ellen Byerrum. They told me about
the local Chesapeake chapter, the Chessies, and the yearly short story
anthology. Did I write? Did I know anyone who had a short story to enter?
Did I ever! Me.
The thrill of having that first short story published, and
holding that book in my hands, is something I’ll never forget. I thought it would be different with this novel, but the thrill is the same with Curses,
Boiled Again!

Eight years, two short stories, four novels (one published,
one ready for submission, one in pieces, one in a drawer awaiting the light of
day) and scores of blog posts have been part of my journey from that grant and
inspirational meeting with the sisters of the Chessie Chapter.
Am I grateful? You bet. As the Sisters say, you write alone,
but you’re never truly alone with sisters. My novel wouldn’t have happened without them. Thank you,
always, Chessies and Sisters in Crime.
I’ll send a copy of Curses, Boiled Again to one commenter – please share something that makes you feel grateful. Thank you for stopping by!

When she’s not committing murder (on
the page, of course), Shari enjoys walking the beach near her house, traveling
and eating the local cuisine, reading, and dancing. She’s currently trying to
talk her husband into a tango class.

She’s had two short stories published
in the Chesapeake Crimes anthology series: “Disco Donna” in Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays
and “Keep It Simple” in Chesapeake
Crimes: This Job Is Murder.  A third,
“Pet,” will be published in Chesapeake
Crimes: Fur, Feathers, and Felonies in spring 2018. You can see what’s new with
her at https://us.macmillan.com/author/sharirandall and check out her mermaid
obsession on Instagram @sharirandallauthor.

What I’ve Learned So Far

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By Kay Kendall

Are you writing
a book…or contemplating doing it? If so, here are things I’ve learned since
finishing my debut novel. Maybe these tips will help you, or at least you’ll
find them interesting.

1. Keep reading.
Just because you’re writing your own book, that doesn’t mean you can stop
reading other ones. In fact, I’ve read more, not less, since I began to write
fiction. I submerged myself in the mystery/suspense genre for almost two years
before I started Desolation Row—An Austin
Starr Mystery. Picking up the tricks of the trade by osmosis suits me
better than gulping a dozen dry how-to tomes. Of course, I read those too!

2. Keep a writer’s
notebook. Brilliant thoughts are fleeting. You need to pin them down before
they get away. Because I write about the sixties, I often find character traits
and plot points when reading obituaries in the New York Times, for example, and if I don’t capture those flashes
of insight, they will leave me. I annotate my clippings and put them in my
bulging notebook. Some ideas are for the second book I’m writing now, while
others will fit in the third or fourth of my Austin Starr series. I’ll be
delighted to find the clippings a few years from now when I start writing the
relevant stories. My mind is like my bulging notebook, and sometimes things
fall out because of crowding. It’s far easier to keep the physical clippings
together. Or online digitally.

3. Keep note-taking
material beside your bed. Lesson learned the hard way. Early in my
transition to becoming an author, I’d be on a hot streak writing a first draft,
go to bed, wake up at two in the morning, have a fantastic revelation about
plot, turn over and go to sleep, confident I’d recall everything in the
morning. Wrong! Scintillating night thoughts went poof in the light of day. Twice was enough to teach me to keep
paper and pencil on the night stand. Whatever the technology you choose, be
sure to keep it handy. A tiny voice recorder works too, or making notes on your
cell phone or tablet.

4. Keep up with your
pals. Writing can be a lonely pursuit, and trying to get published these
days is a killer. I needed all the support I could get, and my friends stepped up
and stayed there right beside me on my journey. They kept me going through the
darkest days and have been my staunchest supporters and shared my joy upon
publication. I’ve also made new friends as I’ve joined writers’ critique groups
and associations. Many writers are said to be introverts, but I’m not. Two new
pals who write mysteries are extreme introverts, and I keep in close touch with
them and actively encourage them to mingle with other writers. I’m a staunch
believer in the truth of what Barbra Streisand sang back in the sixties.
Remember this? “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

5. Keep walking
the dog. Or running, spinning, or dancing.
Whatever exercise you used to do before you became an avid or full-time writer,
don’t stop. Health gurus are adamant that sitting all day is a terrible habit
that can lead to early death and/or dementia. Besides, when I’m on my exercise
bike, I zone out and then, given enough time, ideas for my writing zone in. The
mind-body connection is worth protecting with sufficient exercise. Even when
I’m on a deadline, I try to stick to this rule. However, it’s time for a true
confession. I have trouble with this one, actually walking the talk.


6. Keep the faith.  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Go confidently in the
direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” When I first saw
that quote on a coffee mug for sale at Whole Foods a decade ago, I was too
scared to pick it up. How dare I think I could write a novel? But I forced
myself to buy that mug, and after using it for two years and writing my first
manuscript, I began timidly to call myself a writer. I began to have faith
that I would finish a book and eventually get it published. When the first one
didn’t sell, I wrote the second. My friends (see #4 above) helped keep me
going. I persevered until the second manuscript sold and became Desolation Row. Now my work in progress
is Rainy Day Women, and I’m outlining
the third, Tangled Up in Blue.  I
have faith I will complete those because I’ve pushed through the dark times,
“getting by with a little help from my friends.” Footnote to the Beatles for
that one, plus maybe you can tell by my book titles that my amateur sleuth
Austin Starr is a huge fan of Bob Dylan.

7. Keep on keeping on. Once I found what works to make my writing life roll along
as smoothly as possible, I’ve kept on doing it. Sometimes I find guidelines in
how-to articles suggesting that my
way is not the right way. The best writing coaches add the caveat, though, that
there is no perfect method of writing a novel.
I’ve
now been at this venture long enough that I’ve come across some authors who do
have habits similar to mine. While most experts advise that a first draft
should be done as rapidly as possible, without editing as you go. I find I
cannot do that. Just can’t. Feeling a little guilty, I wrote my way through Desolation Row, editing obsessively,
until one day—lo and behold—I found an interview in which the bestselling
author explained that he always began his writing day by editing what he’d
written the day before. Well, what a relief! I was okay. Now I count this as a
lesson learned. As we used to say back in the day, just keep on truckin’. 

~~~~~~~
Kay Kendall is an international award-winning public relations executive who lives in Texas with her husband, five house rabbits, and spaniel Wills. A fan of historical mysteries, she wants to do for the 1960s what novelist Alan Furst does for Europe in the 1930s during Hitler’s rise to power–write atmospheric mysteries that capture the spirit of the age.

Discover more about Kay’s debut book, DESOLATION ROW, here at
http://www.KayKendallAuthor.com

True Writing Crime

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By Cindy Jones

I’m thrilled to be a guest of the Stiletto Gang today. However, now that I find myself in the bosom of mystery writers, I feel the urge to confess a crime.

I stole a house.

What can I say? I needed a house for my novel. An English Country House to be exact. We don’t have them in my neighborhood so I looked on the internet. Bingo. When I found the house, I knew it was perfect. I studied the pictures, read everything I could find, and began lifting that house, brick by brick from the website, via my imagination, into my story. I did not reproduce any pictures or commit plagiarism, and if the operation had stopped there, I could live with it. But I visited the scene of the crime (in England). And that’s when it got bad.

The downside to helping yourself to another person’s house (without actually seeing it) is that you might get it wrong. If my understanding is flawed or incomplete, the depiction will seem inauthentic. So there I was driving on the wrong side of the street in a foreign country, worrying that I might have missed the point of the house I’d already appropriated for my book. Or missed the point of English Country Houses, which might mean I’d missed the point of England, for all I knew. What if I had to re-write the whole book? My hands started sweating and butterflies danced as I anticipated actual reunion with the house I’d spent years imagining.

When I finally found the sign on a rural road in the middle of nowhere directing me to my Manor House’s parking lot, I was giddy with excitement. A man on a backhoe was shoveling dirt. I got out and stretched my legs, making sure I had my camera. The man on the backhoe asked if he could help me. When I told him I was there to see the house, he told me they were closed.

What?

Backhoe Man did not care that I had come halfway around the world to see my house. The fact that the concierge at my hotel spread misinformation about their hours of operation was my problem, not his. The fact that I was an unpublished novelist in love with his house was also my problem. He would not even allow me walk close enough to glimpse the house through the thick copse of trees.

Really?

We got back into the car and pretended to leave. My mother (who loaned me her wedding dress when I needed a queen costume in 6th grade) masterminded the plan to stop the getaway mobile at the end of the driveway long enough for me to run up and look at the house. Backhoe Man was shoveling dirt again. There was no time to lose.

Frightened and desperate, I snuck up the drive. It was worth it. The house rose magnificently from the grounds, far more beautiful in reality. I memorized the look of the old bricks, the swirly glass windows, the serene grounds. I’d gotten it all completely right. I hated to leave. But it was too late. Backhoe Man saw me looking at his house. He dismounted and came after me, not even civil.

I offered to pay.

Writing can lead to a life of crime. Being creative—joining unlike things to make something new—is not a crime, but sometimes acquiring the unlike things to be joined raises problems. (My sisters never greet me without first narrowing their eyes and asking, “Is that mine?”) The English Manor house is just the tip of the iceberg.

So don’t show me your membership roster or your high school yearbook—I’ll be memorizing names to use in my next novel. Don’t talk on the phone around me, I harvest unguarded conversations. Do not tell me secrets because secrets are pure gold in my business. Above all, do not reveal your humanity to me, because I will take that glimpse of your inmost heart and apply it to my character, breathing your life into my creation so that my fiction might resonate with readers I’ve never even met.

If you would like to tour the house I virtually stole for my novel, check out My Jane Austen Summer. The House first appears in all its glorious splendor on page 42—brick by virtual brick.

**The gracious Cindy is giving away a signed copy of My Jane Austen Summer to one lucky Stiletto Gang reader!  Just leave a comment sometime on this post between now and Sunday, April 24 at noon (Central Time), and Cindy will randomly drawer a winner!  Thanks, Cindy, and good luck, everyone!

About Cindy:  Born in Ohio, I grew up in small mid-western towns, reading for escape. I dreamed of living in a novel and wrote my first book in fifth grade. After a business career, husband, and the birth of four sons, I wrote My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park, winner of the Writer’s League of Texas Manuscript Contest. I have a BA from Mary Washington College, an MBA from the University of Houston, studied creative writing in the SMU CAPE program, and belong to the The Squaw Valley Community of Writers. I live with my family in Dallas where I have discovered that, through writing, it is entirely possible to live in a novel for a good part of each day.

Introducing Rebecca Rasmussen and The Bird Sisters

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I met Rebecca Rasmussen not long ago, when a mutual friend suggested we get together (thanks again, Melissa!).  I love finding new authors in St. Louis, and I was thrilled for the introduction to Rebecca.  She’s a multitasking wife and mother who also teaches creative writing at a local university.  As if that’s not enough, her fiction debut, The Bird Sisters, hit bookstore shelves on April 12 so she’s embarked on a cross-country road trip to promote it.  I’ve had the pleasure of reading the novel, which introduces us to delightfully different–and, okay, eccentric–Twiss and Milly, better known as “The Bird Sisters.”  Since I couldn’t find a way to bring you all to my lunch with Rebecca, I figured a Q&A was the best way for everyone to get to know her–and Milly and Twiss–better.  So here we go!

Rebecca, the sense of place in your novel is lovely and fully actualized. What was the reason you chose the rural setting of Spring Green, Wisconsin?
I am deeply attached to Spring Green, which is where my father has lived since I was a girl. My brother and I would go back and forth between his house and my mother’s, which was located in a small suburb of Chicago. For us, Wisconsin was magical. There we were able to swim in the river, cover ourselves in mud, and tromp through the woods. There we played with barn cats and snakes, lightning bugs and katydids. I’ve always preferred rural landscapes to urban ones. Wild over tame. It’s like the old bumper stickers from the ’80s used to say: escape to wisconsin.

Milly and Twiss are such unique, singular characters.  Have you known anyone like them?
My older brother and I are a lot like them. My brother is a great adventurer like Twiss, and I am more cautious like Milly. When we were kids, my brother was the one who’d set off on all-day adventures in the woods, and I would straggle along behind him hoping not to get caught up in the tangle of pricker bushes behind our house. As we’ve grown older, we’ve grown a bit more moderate. He can sit still for a whole hour now, and I don’t jump on his back when I sense danger nearby. We love each other the way Milly and Twiss do. I can’t bear for him to be sad, and he can’t bear it for me.
I took away from your story a certain symbolism of the damaged birds. What do they represent to you?
The novel began for me with lines I happened upon in an Emily Dickinson poem: “These are the days when Birds come back/A very few—a Bird or two—/To take a backward look.” I have always loved birds on a literal and metaphorical level, and like most children I was deeply fascinated with their ability to come and to go whenever they pleased. In the novel, the older Milly and Twiss have spent their lives nursing birds back to health, mostly because an ordinary starling struck their car at a fateful moment when they were young. On that day, the sisters no longer possessed the power to change their futures and so they took this little bird back to their leaning farmhouse, hoping it would recover from its injuries and take flight for them.

If you had to pick only one scene as your favorite, what would it be, and why?
One of the most wonderful things about small farming towns to me is when the townspeople gather together to celebrate something: a marriage, a graduation, or even the end of the summer in some places. Town fairs are especially magical to me. I love to think about spun sugar, apples in barrels, and pies sitting on checkered tablecloths. Put a town fair in a historical setting; add a little bit of quack medicine in the form of bathtub elixirs, a propeller plane, and a goat named Hoo-Hoo; and there you have it: the climax of the novel and also my favorite scene.
A debut novel is, for many writers, their heart and soul; we open a vein and give so much to our firstborn. What did it feel like to finally complete your story?
I was alone when I typed the last words, and it was very late at night. A part of me wanted to wake my husband and my daughter, to open a bottle of champagne, and to celebrate with the people I loved most in the world. What I ended up doing was taking a walk to the waterfall and millpond up the road. I remember the way the moon looked in the sky. I remember the sound of falling water. I remember the call of an owl high up in a tree. I remember the lightness of my heart, my feet. If giving birth to my daughter was the first great accomplishment of my life, finishing my book was the second.
Wow, that’s beautiful.  Thank you for sharing and for visiting us at Stiletto, Rebecca! 
For more about Rebecca Rasmussen and The Bird Sisters, please visit her web site.

A Glass Slipper in a Stiletto Heel

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by Laura Spinella

When the fabulous Susan McBride invited me to guest blog at The Stiletto Gang, I was intimidated. I haven’t owned a pair of stiletto heels since—well, frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever owned stiletto heels. Not by lack of desire, I simply have feet more akin to a duck than a diva, and therefore have never been a candidate for sexy footwear. But considering I was to lead with my writing and not my wardrobe, I figured I could muddle through.

I suspect there’s every chance you’ve never heard of me, Laura Spinella, or my book, which was released in January via Penguin Group. BEAUTIFUL DISASTER is Southern set women’s fiction with a heavy thread of romance. And by heavy thread, I mean there’s a chapter or two where stiletto heels and all the connotations fit like a glass slipper. It’s my debut novel, which makes me new to publishing. However, not so new to writing or life; I have plenty of experience there. I’ve made a modest living freelancing, but I didn’t write a novel until I was flirting with forty. I always knew I’d write a book; I just didn’t have a timeline in mind. You know how it goes. First there was one kid, and then there were two. This was followed by moves from sun-baked states to places where snow on April Fools’ Day is no joke. Eventually, I glanced down and there was a third kid. Today, he and I meet eye-to-eye, though I still find myself asking, “How did you get here?”

The truth, in part, is that I didn’t sit down to write a novel until public education took over childcare. But, mostly, I didn’t do it earlier because I didn’t know enough about life. When you write book you have to think for a lot of people. Inherently, novels involve conflict. It’s the author’s job to craft an entire world from scratch, filling it with characters and issues and outcomes that will satisfy the reader. Before forty, I had enough trouble doing that for real, never mind in a book. So here I am, at a beginning.

A debut novel can do a lot of things. It can satisfy a dream, make you Uber-popular in the car pool line, and incite opinions from strangers. Odd as it is, those strangers will decide if you’re the next Alice Hoffman or if the Author’s Guild should confiscate your laptop. It’s interesting when a debut novel skyrockets. Reviewers and readers will talk about it as if the author never hammered out a single sentence before penning their breakout novel. A book like that is often viewed as an epiphany. That or the writer cracked their head on the bathroom sink, grabbed a Ziplock bag full of ice, and proceeded to a computer where the debut novel bled from their head onto the page. I’d bet you every pair of stilettos in the Jimmy Choo collection that said author’s book had more than one inception, preceded by numerous novel attempts. And knowing the amount of attempts it takes, I feel fortunate to have made it this far. Ten weeks in and I’ve experienced some of the highs and lows of a being a published author. I’m invested now, carefully constructing my sophomore effort. Hopefully, it won’t suffer a sophomore jinx. Either way, one thing is for certain, in front of me is a debut novel with my name on it.

Thank you for having me, ladies. I don’t know if I’ll be a writer in my next life, but I’m definitely coming back as a 7 ½ narrow. For more info on BEAUTIFUL DISASTER or other inane tidbits, visit my website, http://www.lauraspinella.net/.

Laura is giving away a copy of BEAUTIFUL DISASTER to one lucky Stiletto Gang reader! Just leave a comment on her post through Sunday at noon. She’ll randomly pick a winner on Sunday afternoon! Plus, if you visit her blog and post a comment any time through March, you’ll get another chance to win!