Joyce Simons

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If You’re Planning to Kill Someone, Learn How to Do It Right

Killing someone on the written page is almost always fun. But like so many activities, it’s rarely done as skillfully by amateurs as by professionals. Which is why it’s important to learn from the masters.

It’s one of the reasons why I attended this year’s Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in Corte Madera, CA. I’d never heard of the conference until I read about it in Hallie Ephron’s excellent how-to book, Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel. And I’d never heard of Corte Madera either. How could an independent bookstore in a small corner of Marin County host a conference that attracts mystery writers from near and far?

I soon learned what can be accomplished if you’re passionate about crime novels and compassionate toward those of us hoping to launch careers writing them. Tucked away behind rows and rows of smartly organized books of all kinds, and a staff as helpful as they are knowledgeable, were two meeting rooms big enough to hold scores of participants and an illustrious faculty. (I didn’t count the number of participants but there were 27 faculty members, resulting in a teacher/student ratio so high that it was impossible not to interact with them one-on-one at some point during the four-day conference.) My first impression upon arriving at the bookstore reminded me of the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland, where visitors queue up outside a room that feels so small that it makes you wonder if you’ve just signed up for an adventure in claustrophobia. And then the doors to the ride open, and you just know that you’re on the threshold of an unforgettable thrill ride.

Book Passage

And so it went for the next three days. Just when I started to wonder how something might turn out, I was led to a little pot of gold. Here are just a few highlights of my conference experience:

  • Dinner with bestselling author and fellow Francophile, Cara Black, on opening night during which we compared notes on writing mysteries set in France. Very humbling! Cara has written 17 novels in the Aimée Leduc series and won all sorts of honors from the French government for her accomplishments.
  • Chatting over wine and cheese with Sara Blaedel, one of Denmark’s most successful crime writers, about the way the three-act structure she defines gives her the freedom to make discoveries during the writing process.
  • Being high-fived by Vilaska Nguyen, a San Francisco Public Defender, for getting my novel to the point where it’s ready to be pitched to literary agents. At a panel discussion of legal and forensics experts, Vilaska demonstrated the three fundamentals of cross-examination on a poor, unsuspecting audience member with such panache that he left me crying with laughter.
  • Taking a coffee break with author and editor Joe Clifford, who had an uncanny ability to fill my head with absurd little earbugs, like: Did you know that Popeye could have gotten as much iron from watermelon as from spinach? Who knew?
  • Practicing pitching my novel to bestselling author Mary Kubica, who warned me that she wasn’t sufficiently negative to be a decent pitch partner. But she gave me the best possible pitch experience for just that reason. Her patience and encouragement put me at ease and her feedback was invaluable.
  • Challenging award-winning author Tony Broadbent to write his next novel about the zombification of Shakespeare’s Juliet after she drank Friar Laurence’s sleeping potion. But only after learning from medical expert and crime author D.P. Lyle that it’s possible to zombify someone temporarily, though not without the risk of permanent damage.
  • Meeting the utterly charming crime author William C. Gordon, who sponsored the scholarship I won to the conference, and asking him to sign a copy of his latest novel as: To my best friend Joyce, from “the money,” Willie Gordon. Later, when I peeked at what he had written, I discovered that he had obliged me.
  • Enjoying champagne and brownies with FBI agent and author George Fong as he described the most extraordinarily brutal killing spree he investigated during his 27-year FBI career.
  • Being transfixed by the legendary Isabel Allende as she spoke to the audience about her life, her work, and her new lover!
Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende at the 2017 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference

If it feels like I’m dropping names, just know that the intimacy of the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference makes it impossible not to rub elbows with the authors you admire. What I neglected to mention is that at least 30 events (classes, panel discussions, writing intensives, etc.) were held over the four days, not counting the private consultations we could schedule with faculty members and meals we all shared throughout the conference.

I’d like to wind down this post with a story that has little to do with the conference but has everything to do with the element of surprise that’s critical to a good mystery, and echoes the moments of synchronicity that I felt throughout my four days at Book Passage.

At the end of a staggeringly long first day at Book Passage (my flight from Seattle to San Francisco had been delayed by hours, so I arrived somewhat zombified myself), I requested a Lyft ride back to my hotel. Lately I’d been thinking a lot about Sam Shepard, playwright, actor, and as many of my female friends agree, “the perfect man.” The man who won ten Obie Awards, wrote 44 plays, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff died last month and the world lost a staggering talent. When Geoff my Lyft driver arrived, he asked me what brought me to Corte Madera. I explained how I’m trying to transition to a career as a mystery novelist. And then he told me about his good friend who spent his entire career trying to get out the story he wanted to tell, and died feeling like he never succeeded, though he had achieved a certain degree of celebrity. I wondered who it was but dared not ask since it was clear that Geoff was still mourning the loss of his friend. So instead, I extended my heartfelt condolences. And then Geoff thanked me and said, “Maybe you’ve heard of him. His name was Sam Shepard.”

Meeting Geoff reminded me that if you set your intention, the universe often gives you what you need even if it doesn’t match what you think you want. I would have loved to meet Sam Shepard. But the stories about him that inspired me on that Lyft ride could only have been shared by someone with the perspective of a good friend. Going into the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, I had hoped to meet a literary agent who would offer me representation right there on the spot. But the people I met and the feedback I received helped me improve my pitch and my chances of finding the right agent for me.

So on that note, I’d like to thank Kathryn Petrocelli, Karen West, and the rest of the amazing team at Book Passage for organizing, coordinating, and in so many other ways, making the 2017 Mystery Writers Conference possible– and making it the terrific experience it was. It’s easy to focus on your enjoyment of something and not consider the months and months of intense planning, research, and hard work it took to bring it to life.

Which is an apt metaphor for reading and writing a novel, when you think about it.

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We’re All in This Together

This morning I woke up at the crack of dawn and zipped to the Seattle ferry terminal to avoid delays at the start of this busy Labor Day weekend. Crossing Elliott Bay by ferry is a wonderful experience, especially on a beautiful day like today. But once in a while, you encounter someone who doesn’t realize—or just doesn’t care— that, like it or not, we’re all on this journey together.

Washington State Ferry

Like this morning, for instance. By the time I arrived, the Seattle holding area was already reaching capacity. Cars were sitting in the first dozen or so vehicle lanes waiting to board the ferry. New arrivals like me were proceeding to empty lanes waiting to fill up. And then the driver of the little red Kia in front of me decided that, rather than proceed to lane 13 or 14, she’d just pull into lane 3 with her tail sticking out so far that none of the cars behind her could pass her. I was dumbstruck. For a nanosecond, I calculated whether I could pass her without scratching her car or mine. Not a chance. So I beeped at her. She rolled down the window and, with a look of innocence that made me want to nominate her for an Oscar, asked, “What?”

Well, she asked so I told her what. “You’re cutting the line,” I said patiently. No reaction. Then I pointed out that when the ferry worker who monitors the holding area arrived, he’d more than likely ask her to back out and go to the end of the line, which might not fit onto the next ferry. And then an amazing thing happened. Not only did she apologize, back up, and proceed to lane 13 or 14, but so did another car that had cut the line by squeezing its arse into lane 2.

Taking a journey of any kind doesn’t mean we have to share the experience with our fellow travelers. You can sit in your car and I can sit in mine, and we never have to interact. But if I do my part and you do yours, then chances are we’ll both arrive without a scratch. So what does any of this have to do with writing mystery novels?

Quite simply, it’s this: “No man is an island,” as John Donne wrote, even if we’re riding a ferry to one. We’re all “a part of the main.” Next week I’ll be heading to the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, where I hope to find a literary agent who will believe in me and my work, and offer to shepherd my novel to the best possible publishing deal. But I’m not planning to sit in my car with the windows rolled up while he or she does this alone. We’ll be in this together. When it comes time to promote and market my novel, I expect to play an active part, even though it’s in my nature to let the experts do their bit while I focus on writing the sequel(s).

To improve my luck when opportunity knocks, I’ve been preparing for this next step in the journey by reading piles of books about marketing your work if you’re an author. My favorite book of this type so far is Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday because he takes an holistic approach to the creative process, positioning your work, marketing it, and building a platform. In it, he writes, “If the first step in the process is coming to terms with the fact that no one is coming to save you—there’s no one to take this thing off your hands and champion it the rest of the way home—then the second is realizing that the person who is going to need to step up is you.”

I’ve completed the fun and agonizing work of getting my manuscript to the point where it’s ready to be submitted to literary agents. Now I’m gearing up for the fun and agonizing work of getting it “the rest of the way home” which, to me, means securing representation and a publishing deal in order to get my book on store shelves, in public and private libraries, on Amazon and other online retailers, and more generally, in the consciousness of the book-buying public.

But it all starts with an appreciation for the fact that I may have started out on this journey by myself but I’m not continuing it alone. It’s something that the lady in the little red Kia might not have considered when she snuck into lane 3, but hopefully she’ll remember it on the ferry ride home.

I can’t wait to meet my fellow travelers at Book Passage next week. So until then, I’d like to thank Ryan Holiday for his wisdom. But most importantly, I’d like to thank someone who I’ve waited to thank since I started this blog: my editor, Diane O’Connell of Write to Sell Your Book. I’ve spent my entire career working with editors, so I know a good one when I see it. And Diane is the best, hands down. I decided to shoot for the stars when I went looking for an editor, and I got my wish. Diane gets me, she gets my work, and she makes it better. Best of all, during our very first conversation when I told her I was looking for a top-notch editor who would be as invested in my success as I am, she made it clear that she wouldn’t have it any other way. Who wouldn’t want a companion like that along for the ride?

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Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

These days, all my social activities with friends who are parents of school-age kids have been put on hold while they gear up for the new school year. If I had kids, I’d be swinging from the rafters at the thought of having my weekdays (or part of them, anyway) back to myself. And then I thought that I do have kids; they just happen to be of the canine variety. And it got me thinking: is it really impossible to teach old dogs new tricks?

I have one new dog, who’s six years old and highly trainable. No problem with new tricks there. And I have one older dog, who’s twelve and has never been trainable, not even by the best trainer I know. Getting her to sit on command reminds me of the scene in Skyfall when the villain, played by Javier Bardem, bemoans the senselessness of Bond’s refusal to do what he wants and ends by lamenting, “It’s exhausting.” In fact, I often try to mimic his accent when I say the same thing to my “senior” dog.

Javier Bardem in SKYFALL

And then I realized that transitioning to a new career means I have to send myself back to school and be open to new tricks. Luckily for me, I love learning new things. In just the past month, I’ve signed myself up for three new learning experiences:

  • Survival strategies, which combines practical self-defense techniques with tactical handheld weaponry. I do not like guns, though I enjoy target practice. And I loathe knives except to slice, dice, chop, julienne, and otherwise cut food. I’m more of an air horn girl. One blast of that thing should send an intruder careening toward the exit signs. But it’s not a suitable accessory for a small purse. Better to know how to wriggle out of an attacker’s grip and run to safety brandishing pepper spray if need be. It’s something that my protagonist, Maxime Martin, had better know how to do too, sans pepper spray.
  • The University of Washington’s Certificate in Private Investigation. At the recommendation of crime novelist Ingrid Thoft, to whom I’ll forever be grateful for turning me onto this program, I applied for admission and I’ll be sitting in the classroom this fall. I can’t wait to learn how to “uncover the facts and expose the truth,” according to the program description, because Maxime will need this know-how for the sequel to my first novel, A SCANDAL IN NICE.
  • The Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, which was recommended to me by Hallie Ephron, author of my favorite how-to book, Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel. This conference starts in a couple of weeks, about the same time that my friends’ kids will be facing their first day of school.

I’ve never been to a writers’ conference, so I don’t know exactly what to expect. And being reasonably new to mystery writing, I had never heard of the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference. So I googled it and found a blog post by mystery writer Katherine Bolger Hyde. What a find— and what an inspiration! She describes how she struggled for ten years to launch her career as a mystery writer. And then, in the space of about ten months, she applied for a scholarship to this conference, won the scholarship, attended the conference, met literary agent Kimberley Cameron, became her client, and ended up with a two-book deal.

It didn’t take this “old dog” (though I prefer “young pup,” but let’s be real) more than ten minutes to follow the scent to the Book Passage website, sniff out information about the scholarship, send in my submission, think good thoughts, and prepare to wait for a reply.

And last week I got the news: I am the recipient of this year’s William Gordon scholarship! WOOT!!!

So while my friends’ kids gather their school supplies and agonize over what they’ll wear on their first day of school, I’ll be doing the same things. Only I’ll be jetting down to San Francisco to begin my schooling at this four-day conference.

Thanks to William C. Gordon for funding the scholarship, Kathryn Petrocelli at Book Passage for her delightful emails, and Hallie Ephron for her suggestion that I check out this conference. But most of all, thank you to someone I’ve never met or had contact with—Katherine Bolger Hyde—for taking the time to blog about her experience and inspire someone a thousand miles away to follow in her footsteps.

San Francisco, here I come!

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How to Find a Literary Agent

For most of my career, I worked in tech on engineering teams. I contributed to some amazing products, many of which you probably use today. And I was fortunate enough to collaborate with some of the most intelligent and dedicated people one could ever dream of working with. I built dream teams. I was given the privilege of helping other leaders build their dream teams. I woke up each morning, sometimes for months on end, looking forward to going to work because of the people I got to work with. And at the end of a 50-, 60-, or 70-hour work week, I was content because the human interaction energized me even if my brain and body were dead beat.

And then I became an emerging novelist. I now crave what I once took for granted. Writing is a solitary endeavor and I’m a bit of a social critter. It’s time to build a different kind of dream team.

Part of that undertaking requires me to surround myself with people when most often I’d rather spend my time plotting the next adventure of my protagonist of THE KNITTING DETECTIVE series. But the good news is this: A SCANDAL IN NICE, my manuscript for the first novel in the series, is ready for submission, according to my editor. So now it’s time to find representation. And if I have my way, the literary agent that decides to take me on will be the third leg of this three-legged stool. I am nothing if not an optimist.

So, with my editor’s assistance, I began my search for a literary agent this week. Here are the websites I trawled to find qualified members of what I intend to be my next dream team…

publishersmarketplace.com

This website describes itself as “the biggest and best dedicated marketplace for publishing professionals built on the foundation of Publishers Lunch, read by 40,000 industry insiders and considered ‘publishing’s essential daily read.’” Much of it is also free. You don’t need to sign in or sign up unless you want to access certain pages that are available to paying members only. But you can search members (in my case, members who are literary agents), select genres and specialties (in my case, mystery), and enter additional terms to pinpoint who you’re looking for. My search yielded 238 results with enough information about each matching member to decide whether a query to that agent has the potential to bear fruit.

Now that’s no small task. It requires me to visit each agent’s website, read his or her bio, see the titles they’ve sold, read some of their tweets, get a sense of what they’re looking for beyond what they wrote in their marketplace profile or website bio, discover whether they’re open to submissions, and decide whether they’ll enjoy and really want to get behind the cozy mystery I wrote. It has taken days to winnow down the list. But there’s gold in them thar hills. And cross-referencing it with the other sources mentioned below are helping to uncover it.

ThrillerFest Agents/Editors

“This is the official list of agents, editors, and publishers who will be attending PitchFest 2017 at ThrillerFest XII.” The agents who attend this event are very clear about what they’re looking for. So it’s one more way to vet my short list of agents to pursue.

Just to be clear, I didn’t think of a cozy mystery as part of the “thriller” category of fiction, but evidently it is. In fact, the über genre, according to Wikipedia, is crime fiction. Within that genre are many subgenres, including detective fiction (about professional or amateur detectives), which is also a subgenre of mystery fiction. Within detective fiction, you’ll find the cozy mystery subgenre “in which profanity, sex, and violence are downplayed or treated humorously.” Now I know that Wikipedia isn’t 100% accurate 100% of the time, but it’s often my go-to website when I kick off a research project. And though I still feel an itch to flowchart all the subgenres of crime fiction, it has given me my bearings. My protagonist, Maxime Martin, could be thought of as the immaculately conceived progeny of Miss Marple, though I’m told this description doesn’t do him justice because he’s a sexy beast. But I certainly don’t feel the need to be explicit when I write about his forays into sex and violence. Humor lets me treat them with a light touch.

The takeaway here is: know your genre. And then find the conferences and pitch events where agents who represent that genre are likely to look for new authors. If you’re lucky, they’ll have searchable lists of agents too.

Poets & Writers

pw.org “is the nation’s largest nonprofit organization serving creative writers,” and features a handy dandy Literary Agents database. None of the subgenres previously described are available in the list of filters, so I choose “commercial fiction” because genre fiction like mystery falls into this category. And I’m in outstanding company. According to Writer’s Digest, “Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Stephen King are all prime examples of commercial fiction authors.” No one is going to confuse my knitting detective with Moby Dick.

My search yields about 70 results. Which is a lot less than the 238 agents I found on publishersmarketplace.com just by searching within the mystery genre. But it doesn’t matter. I’m starting to see some of the same names again and again, and that’s a good thing. It tells me these agents are serious about finding new writers, and they’re working hard to make it easy for writers like me to find them.

QueryTracker

QueryTracker is a website that helps authors find literary agents. Ding ding ding, jackpot! Without paying to be a premium member, I can find agents who represent my genre (here we go again: this time I latch onto “mystery” in the list), and I can hide agents who are closed to queries at this time. I can even slice and dice some of the data that’s consolidated on this site, like where the agent is located, which authors they represent, their preferred format for receiving queries, etc. And it doesn’t hurt that I can use this site to keep track of the queries I send (hence its name).

I add this arrow to my quiver, and head to the penultimate website on my list of resources.

AgentQuery.com

This site claims to be “the internet’s largest free database of literary agents.” I don’t know how accurate that claim is, but the price is right! I can select my genre (here we go yet again), and filter my results to just those agents who are actively seeking new clients.

Searching of any kind is rarely an exact science. And remember, I’m cross-referencing results from several sites. In other words, I’m casting my net far and wide— but not too far and not too wide— and hopefully there are no gaping holes in my net that would let my dream agent slip through it.

MS WishList

I tend to think of this site as Twitter’s little brother. Which is a good thing because it lets me scan the types projects that participating literary agents are looking for or wish someone would write, without all the overhead of trawling Twitter the mother ship. For example, some agents are looking for Amish cozy mysteries, while at least one agent is being very particular about wanting a cozy mystery “that features beverages.” Alrighty then! But click an agent’s name, and it takes you to their Twitter handle where you can do more of your research around what they’re looking for, what they’re tweeting, and what matters to them.

The Grinch on Mount Crumpit

So there you have it. Six resources that form a subset of what’s out there. But it’s a solid start. I’ve done my search, and I’m doing my part to make myself attractive to agents. I blog, I post, I tweet— with care. Sometimes I feel like the Grinch on top of Mount Crumpit bemoaning all the noise, noise, noise in the digital world. So I’m trying to do my part to add value, and hopefully create content that people care about. But only your comments will tell me if I’m getting it right.

So thanks, this week, to my readers who have commented on what I’ve written so far. I thirst for the feedback. And if there are any topics you’d like me to cover in future posts, I hunger for those too. Think good thoughts that my three-legged stool is just around the bend. And check back to see the results of my quest to find representation. In the meantime, please keep the comments coming!

 

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Storytelling, Serendipity, and Burt Bacharach

Last week, my editor tweeted this quote by Herman Melville:

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

It immediately reminded me of a lesson I learned from storytelling teacher Brian McDonald. In his book INVISIBLE INK, he writes about armature, which is “the idea upon which we hang our story” in the same way that a wireframe lies unseen beneath a sculpture. A mighty theme — or any theme, for that matter — is not a single word, like “love” or “greed”; it’s a fully-formed thought, a moral of the story, a grammatically complete sentence. And he illustrates his lessons with examples from well-known stories. I quote him often, and I echo his examples. (Do you know the theme of The Wizard of Oz? It’s not “home” or “There’s no place like home.” If you want to find out, write to Brian or write to me. Or better yet, read his book!)

So I retweeted the quote along with a snippet of Brian’s advice, and got to thinking about how long he and I have been out of touch. Great teachers are a rare commodity and a precious resource. Brian is one of the best teachers I’ve ever studied with. Ever. And his book is a treasure trove of information about how to write a great story.

And then last night, I went to my favorite jazz venue in Seattle to see musical genius Burt Bacharach. I love Burt Bacharach. I grew up listening to his music, and hearing his songs all these years later gives me such a sense of nostalgia. Getting tickets was serendipitous. I had seen one of his ex-wives promote her autobiography on TV last fall, which inspired me to read her book and google Burt to see whether he was alive and well and maybe even performing. And jackpot! He was coming to Seattle. But then I checked the concert dates, and I had just missed him. By a couple of weeks. Heartbreak. And then I read that he had suffered an injury that required him to postpone his appearance. Poor Burt. But happy me! The rescheduling opened up a table for two, which I snapped up before you could whistle the opening notes of “The Look of Love.”

Burt Bacharach at Jazz Alley, July 13, 2017
Burt Bacharach at Jazz Alley, July 13, 2017

So there I finally was last night, eagerly awaiting Burt’s arrival on stage, with memories of Brian’s wisdom swirling around in my head, when the lady at the next table turns to me and says, “You look familiar.”

We had only a handful of minutes before show time to figure out how we knew each other, and we still can’t remember how we met. But we figured out that we both attended the Austin Film Festival the year that I was a semi-finalist in its screenwriting competition and Brian won the festival’s Sci-Fi Screenplay Award. I say something along the lines of how that’s probably the last time I saw Brian. And then the woman, whose name is Heather Hughes and who’s a successful screenwriter, pulls out her phone and shows me a photo of her good friend Brian’s recent wedding to his long-time girlfriend, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Austin as well. And all this is happening while Burt’s band is starting to warm up and he’s winding his way through the crowd to reach the stage.

It all made me think about how exciting it is to stumble upon moments of serendipity, even if people wouldn’t believe the intertwining of coincidences if they turned up in a work of fiction. But a good mystery series, among which I hope to count THE KNITTING DETECTIVE, sometimes relies on serendipity to move a story along. Not always, but often because the protagonist overlooked an important clue, and the universe has to help him or her get back on track.

I’d love to thank Burt for an awesome night of beautiful music and magical nostalgia. And I’d love to thank Heather for recognizing me on her left when she could have easily spent the entire evening looking only at the stage on her right, and for initiating a lovely conversation. But the person I’d like to honor in this post is Brian McDonald. He gave me the tools I needed to tell beautiful stories, which has always been my life’s ambition. I just needed the right teacher to come along at the right time to teach me what I needed to know to set me on the path to achieving that dream.

Now how’s that for a bit of serendipity?