knitting detective

November 18, 2018 By Joyce Simons

Exposing Your Roots

Last week I attended my first New England Crime Bake, a conference for crime-fiction writers and readers. Every year it seems that Crime Bake sells out within weeks of registration opening up, and now I understand why. It’s small (about 300 attendees), it has an outstanding lineup of speakers (this year’s guest of honor was the legendary Walter Mosley), and it offers access to well-known literary agents and editors who are there to help writers like me pitch our manuscripts.

As with any new environment, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Sure, there would be people milling about, brandishing canvas bags stamped with the manacled red lobster that is Crime Bake’s logo. There would most likely be more women than men. And I suspected that many of the attendees would be “of a certain age,” as they say in France. But what took me by complete surprise was the sight that greeted me at the opening session. I had chosen a seat at the back of the ballroom to survey the landscape, and spotted a woman who seemed to have sustained a massive head injury. Swaths of black hair were missing from the back of her head. I silently applauded her fortitude for attending this conference following what must have surely been a traumatic incident.

And then she turned her head slightly, and it occurred to me that something didn’t look quite right. I pointed my iPhone camera at her and enlarged the image for a better look. That’s when I realized I wasn’t looking at a head injury; I was looking at a bad dye job. This woman had neglected to color the hair on the back of her head. In “Diamonds are Forever,” James Bond said he didn’t care what color a woman’s hair was as long as the collar and cuffs matched. I might add that it doesn’t matter as long as the front and back match too.

It made me acutely aware of how many people see what’s in front of them (say, in the bathroom mirror), and don’t pay as much attention to what may be lurking behind them. It’s a strangely apt analogy for the job of a crime writer. According to Dan Brown, our job is to control the flow of information to the reader. We get to drop clues in the right places to sustain the reader’s curiosity without giving away the ending. We get to show them what we want them to see, shine a light on things we want them to notice, and distract them from what we want to withhold until later.

Three panelists and a moderator:
David Handler, moderator Hank Phillippi Ryan, Walter Mosley, and Joe Finder
at New England Crime Bake 2018

In each of the novels in my Knitting Detective series, my goal is to marry the uniqueness of the setting with a crime that could only be carried out in that place. It’s a challenge I love because I get to immerse myself in the history, culture, customs, patois, etc. of the French city or region where the story is set. Right now, I’m struggling to piece together the puzzle of how a string of murders maps to a local legend. And my experience at Crime Bake couldn’t be timelier. Not only because we all helped each other move our projects forward, but also because the lady whose photo I snapped reminded me of the importance of sustaining suspense from start to finish, striking the right balance between revealing and concealing information, and resolving the mystery in the most satisfying way possible.

Thanks this week go to my fellow Crime Bake attendees, especially Meg Ruley, Hank Phillippi Ryan, and Paula Munier, who made themselves available to me for specific feedback and advice. As Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Kate Flora said it best at the end of conference, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Amen.

October 27, 2018 By Joyce Simons

Place as Character

If you’ve ever watched Sex and the City, then you know that New York City is the series’ fifth lead character, so much so that in one episode Carrie calls it her “boyfriend.” Whether or not you’ve seen or even like the series, it’s an outstanding example of capturing the spirit of a place and making it integral to a story. Could Sex and the City have been as successful if it was set in Chicago? Paris? Hong Kong? I doubt it. Some story lines would not have been possible and others would have been dramatically different, as would the whole gestalt of the series. Just off the top of my head, I remember pivotal scenes set in Yankee Stadium, St. Mark’s Place, Columbus Circle, the New York Public Library, and on the Staten Island Ferry. There are even guided tours of the most iconic locations featured on the show.

I like the idea of the map above. But there’s a big problem with it that only someone who knows NYC would pick up on. As the song goes, “The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down.” That means “downtown” should be at the bottom of the map. Even putting it left would be better than right. I’m all turned around when I look at this map. It makes me think that whoever created it doesn’t know NYC all that well.

It’s a mistake I don’t want to make in my own stories.

I’m currently plotting the origin story of The Knitting Detective series, which reveals how Maxime Martin became an amateur sleuth, and I’m setting it in Brittany. A Scandal in Nice takes place in Nice (obviously) and each subsequent story will be set in a different city or region of France. My goal is to get to know each of those locations as well as I know NYC (where I grew up) and Nice (where I spent many months) in order to do it justice. If my stories inspire readers to travel to those places and discover their wonders, then I’ll have done my job well. There’s no other country I know of that has such a rich variety of history, customs, food, culture, etc. from one city to the next. And this phenomenon is made all the more wondrous when you consider that all of France could fit inside the state of Texas.

The challenge is to create a story that works because it’s set in Brittany. And not just the entire region of Brittany, but a specific departément that embodies its maritime past, rugged coastline, historic sites, plethora of offshore islands (some accessible on foot at low tide), megalithic monuments, and reputation as a land of mystery, myth, and superstition. Add to that the fact that it has its own language (Breton), and there’s a lot of material to leverage.

Just yesterday, I shared the plot I had sketched out with a friend and fellow writer who’s a critique partner. I knew it had many moving parts and was on the complex side. What I didn’t realize was that it had too many parts, too many complexities. So when she advised me to use Brittany as a character, I knew it was back to the drawing board for me! Time to simplify my plot and amp up the complexity of my characters– including the setting. And what a wonderful time of year to immerse myself in a setting as lush as it is spooky. What better place to hide and then reveal a dead body or two?

One way to tap into the spirit of a place is to study its legends. You could say that Brittany has its own share of origin stories. They’re fantastical and eerie, and at least one features the devil himself. When I stumbled upon it, I knew it was the story around which I would weave my own. So while many of you will be celebrating Halloween with parties and trick-or-treaters, I’ll be doing copious amounts of research that I love doing to create a convincing backdrop— and foreground— for an old-fashioned murder mystery.

Wish me luck! Maybe one day people will line up to follow a Knitting Detective itinerary through France.

Thanks this week go to two new friends and fellow writers: Megan my critique partner and Corinne my Bretonne language exchange partner, who introduced me to l’Ankou, the personification of death in Breton mythology. I can’t wait to hear what they think of my next plot outline— and to plan my visit to Brittany to make sure it’s authentic!

July 1, 2018 By Joyce Simons

Art and the Rewrite

A few weeks ago, I received feedback on my novel from from several readers, including one high-powered literary agent. And after taking the time to weigh and synthesize their feedback, I decided to tweak my novel for two reasons. First, I want it to reflect my best work. And second, I want to make it as easy as possible for an agent to sell.

But now that I’m deep in the tweaks, they’re taking longer than I expected. The process reminds me of what it’s like to knit something intricate, and discover after a few rows— or worse, a few feet— that you made a mistake. There’s nothing quite as agonizing as pulling out row upon row of knitting. I once spent an entire afternoon unraveling and reknitting a pattern only to discover than I had missed an even earlier mistake.

The challenge with rewriting a mystery is that it’s quite the little tapestry. You have to plant clues without calling attention to them, and introduce red herrings without making it obvious that you’re trying to send your reader down the garden path. It’s sort of like baking a cake only to realize you left out an egg. I wouldn’t know how to fix that cake. But tweaking my novel is feeling a lot like baking a soufflé because it’s one delicate operation.

The good news is that we’re talking about tweaks, not major surgery, because I took the time to get my plot (mostly) right. If I hadn’t, I’d be reliving a tough lesson I learned when I was about 16. I was taking a life drawing class at the Brooklyn Museum of Art with my friend Suzy. I never thought of either Suzy or myself as artists. But she was a dancer, so she had a deeper understanding of the human body than I did. Our instructor, Chuck (his name is still seared into my memory because I had a painful lesson to learn), had us do a five-minute sketch of a young woman. I drew an outline but something didn’t feel quite right. So I used every artistic technique I knew at the time to improve it. When I glanced over at Suzy’s sketch, it seemed overly simple. Poor Suzy. I hoped she could stand up to Chuck’s critique.

Thankfully, Chuck told us not to sign our drawings. We pinned them all up on a wall and one by one, he pointed out everything that was wrong with them. When he got to Suzy’s, I braced myself. I didn’t want to see her decimated right there on the spot. He said something along the lines of, “The torso is a bit too long, but that’s alright. This artist is off to a decent start.”

Phew! Crisis averted! Bullet dodged!

When he got to mine, I tried to act as cool as a cucumber. I didn’t want to incur the jealousy of my classmates for my impressive execution of chiaroscuro. I hoped Chuck wouldn’t lay on the praise too thickly, though I secretly wished he would gush just a little. Here’s what he said:

“I feel really bad for whoever drew this.”

Wait, what?!

“This artist drew a torso that’s much too short and they tried to cover it up with all this fancy shading. The only thing they can do is start over.”

OMG. Talk about wishing a hole would open up in the floor and swallow me. Right then and there, I learned the hazards of putting lipstick on a pig. And I’ve been a little paranoid about repeating that mistake ever since.

The funny thing is that if you didn’t learn a lesson completely the first time, it’ll resurface in a new guise. A few years ago, I wrote a screenplay that wasn’t quite working but I couldn’t put my finger on why. So I showed it to my friend Brian McDonald, one of the best teachers I’ve ever studied with. Brian is a passionate proponent of getting your armature right because it will dictate and support every dramatic choice we as writers make. I remember sitting next to him on a park bench in Capitol Hill as he read my script. I think I even whipped out a pad and pen to take notes. But I could have fit his assessment inside a fortune cookie:

“You have the wrong theme.”

Good grief. There it was: the answer to the mystery. I changed the theme, wrote another few drafts of the screenplay, and reached the quarterfinals of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting (a career milestone for new or even experienced screenwriters).

Thankfully, I did due diligence on my novel’s armature and outline before drafting pages. I didn’t get it 100% right but I certainly don’t have to start completely over. So back I go to the proverbial drawing board to unravel some of the tapestry I wove and put it back together in a way that’s just as beautiful but more solid.

Thanks this week go to Chuck for teaching me a hard-learned lesson. I have no idea what became of him or whether he was a successful artist in his own right. But thanks to what he taught me, I plan to persevere in my rewrite without chiaroscuro, without lipstick, and with just enough paranoia to make sure my theme supports my plot, my plot supports my story, and my readers are thrilled with the result.

May 12, 2018 By Joyce Simons

A Nerd’s Take on Feedback

A few years ago, I decided to change careers. The only problem was that I had no idea which career to pursue next. I tried to think my way to the answer. Whatever I was meant to do in this lifetime must be something that came naturally to me, I reasoned. But I was a little too close to the subject (i.e., me) to be objective. And besides, if you want to know what your passion is, it’s best to feel—not think— your way to the answer.

So I turned to my friends. I asked them to list the things they felt I was really good at. I collected their responses, put them in an Excel spreadsheet, and normalized their answers. (For instance, I considered “running” and “jogging” to be essentially the same activity for the purposes of this experiment, though none of my friends listed either activity— or any other sporty activity for that matter). Then I sorted the activities by frequency (how often they appeared).

I was blown away by the unanimity of my friends’ answers. Storytelling topped the list. Drawing relationships between things came second. I had no idea at the time that writing novels about someone who pieces together seemingly unrelated clues would hit the mark.

Fast forward to the present day, and I’ve created several spreadsheets to track my progress as a novelist. You might consider it a nerdy way to manage my second career but, as I always say, there’s a lot of comfort to be found in nerdiness. Nerds are reliable. So is data. Try as you might, you cannot argue with data.

One spreadsheet tracks responses from agents I queried. I wish I received more personalized rejections but I understand the time constraints of people who are inundated with query letters and sample chapters. Unfortunately, they offer no meaningful data to explain why I received more “not a great fit” responses than “please send me the full manuscript” (though I’ve received several of the latter— yippee!).

So, in search of meaningful feedback by avid mystery readers, I entered a competition. Several judges read and scored my work, and most of them were kind enough to write comments to substantiate their numerical ratings. Normalizing those comments was a lot trickier than normalizing activities I’m good at. But the end result was just as clear-cut. The writing was “excellent” and “evocative.” What was lacking was “more dialog,” which struck me as ironic because my background is in screenwriting. Other comments confirmed some niggling concerns I had about other aspects of my novel. But, as I wrote earlier, you can’t argue with data. It turns out I wasn’t alone in identifying those areas (which, thankfully, are not plentiful). As one judge wrote, “with just a few small tweaks, you’ll have something really special.” And other judges echoed that sentiment using different-but-similar noun-verb-modifier combinations.

In the end, after I recovered from the disappointment of not having won the competition, my experience turned out to be immensely rewarding. I’m not yet ready to go back to my manuscript and tweak it on the advice of a handful of anonymous judges. It’s already in the hands of several literary agents. But when I have an agent and publisher, I’ll happily use this data to inform any revisions that will render my novel more successful. For now, I have already begun using it to draft my next novel. And who knows? Maybe this sequel will be recognized instantly as “something really special” without the spreadsheets to back it up.

Thanks this week go to judges 735, 613, 740, and 724 in the Daphne du Maurier Award competition. Some of your comments made me cringe (because I should have caught those issues myself), and some made me laugh out loud (especially the ones about my protagonist’s peculiarities). But all of them provided valid— and valuable— data that I’m putting to good use!

February 16, 2018 By Joyce Simons

Men Who Knit

In the days before #MeToo and Times Up, I used to bristle whenever I heard a sexist remark. For example, a man at my gym once gushed, “You can leg-press over 300 pounds? Not bad for a girl!” Never mind that he bulked up his biceps at the expense of working on his knitting-needle legs. Qualifying a compliment with a little sexist flourish is more than I’m now willing to brush aside.

But sexism works both ways. Men make sexist comments about women, and women make them about men. What has changed for me is that my ability to recognize a remark as sexist has skyrocketed while my ability to ignore it has plummeted. So I practically gave myself a case of whiplash the other day while shaking my head in disbelief over this comment from a female literary agent:

“If your protagonist knits, shouldn’t he be a woman?”

Shepherd knitting

The answer is an unqualified no.

But on second thought, allow me to qualify my no. As I like to say, every interaction is an opportunity to learn something new. So here we go.

If you’ve been watching the Winter Olympics, you may have caught a glimpse of Finnish snowboarding coach Antti Koskinen knitting at the top of the course. He took a break just long enough to give his Finnish snowboarder Roope Tonteri a fist pump and then returned to his knitting. If Mr. Koskinen knits, should he be a woman? I don’t think so. Kudos to him for not just knitting on the slopes, but also for doing it during a globally televised event!

Antti Koskinen knitting

If you think that Mr. Koskinen is a highly evolved 21^st century male, then you might be surprised to learn that men have dominated the history of knitting through the ages.

Two thousand years ago, men invented fishing nets by knitting them, and began to wear woven clothes — also by knitting them. Fast forward a millennium, plus or minus a couple centuries, and knitting guilds came into existence — and were populated exclusively by men.

Knitting guild

It wasn’t until the 16^th century when a man invented a knitting machine that many men stopped knitting because it was more efficient to produce machine-made textiles. Although in Colonial America, boys who didn’t have access to this knitting machine still knit socks and other sundries. Which is not to say that only male colonists knit. But it is to say that not all colonists must have been women because they knit.

The same goes for knitters during the two World Wars— yes, British and American women knit things (socks, mittens, helmet liners) for soldiers but so did schoolboys. (Read more about “bros and rows” on HuffPost.com.)

Knit Your Bit poster

Today, men who knit may seem like an anomaly, perhaps because we’ve become accustomed to the image of Miss Marple or our own grandmothers knitting shawls and tea cozies. But here’s just a smattering of living celebrity men who knit, according to knitcrate.com:

Ashton Kutcher
Christopher Walken
David Arquette
George Lucas
Keifer Sutherland
Russell Crowe
Ryan Gosling

In fact, according to CBS News, “a lot of guys are taking up knitting, especially as the hobby surges in popularity on college campuses, in coffee shops and at the many yarn stores that are sprouting up in cities across the country.”

As the saying goes, everything old is new again. Knitters used to be exclusively men, now they’re predominantly women. But men who knit are on the rise! And I like to think that women as well as men might prefer reading about a seductive Frenchman who has mastered the art of knitting to reading about a Miss Marple clone.

Thanks this week go to the folks at HuffPost, CBS News, and NBC Sports who are giving men who knit their well-earned place in the spotlight. Vive le tricoteur !

Christopher Walken knitting