When real life intrudes on fiction.

This week I had planned to do a final polish on my latest book, City of Darkness and Light. And then life intervenes...one horrible tragedy after another, terrorism, explosions, senseless deaths.
When things like this happen I find myself wondering about the books I write. My stories all involve small tragedies--at least one murder, lives torn apart, families devastated. And these are written for entertainment, clever clues, witty detectives, scary moments, suspense.

 We detach ourselves from the basic fact that killing another human being is the worst thing that a human can do. So I'm wondering if what I am doing is morally wrong, whether I am in any way glorifying killing and death.

I don't think this is true. I think I always write with true sympathy for those who have lost a loved one. I don't take death lightly. Some of my books, especially Evans Gate, have examined how the loss of a loved one tears a family apart. And in those of my books that are comedies, I never take the actual murder lightly.

And I know that people find our books comforting at such times because we try to make sense of the senseless. We find the murderer. We bring him or her to justice. We bring the closure that doesn't often happen in real life.  I'll get back to those final re-writes now.

Hug your loved ones today and let them know how much they mean to you.

Inspiration from an elephant.

 We writers are always being asked where we get our ideas from. My answer will be forever more simple. FROM AN ELEPHANT.

This is my advisory elephant. He was given to me for Christmas by my daughter Clare who said, "he is supposed to sit by your computer and give you inspiration when you get stuck in a book."
.
My other kids picked up on this immediately.
"He'd say 'how about if she was murdered by being sat on by ane elephant?'
How about if an elephnat tailed him through the city?
How about if it was a trunk call?
How about if it's part of a Mammoth Book of mysteries?

Okay they were all silly, but you know, I am finding that he is very wise in his suggestions. Mostly he says 'if it's not working now, go and take a walk. Or go shopping. It will come to you on the way back.' And you know, it does.

I am definitely a seat-of-the-panter when it comes to writing. No outline for me. Not even a story line to follow. I really don't know what is going to happen to my heroine next. I know a little, mostly about the environment she will enter. For example in the new Molly book, HUSH NOW DON'T YOU CRY, I knew that Molly would uncover some dark secret about a family at one of the Newport 'cottages'. I also had an image in my mind of a child's face in a tower window, laughing demonicly in a thunderstorm  So I start with that and stumble ahead.

So it's very comforting now to know there is an elephant sitting nearby who will come to my aid. Only one thing wrong--I haven't managed to name him yet. Any suggestions? Actually I've been waiting for him to tell me but he is inclined to be shy.....
What's that ? No, elephant, they are not going to hide the body in a trunk.

Where do I Go From Here?

I'm about to start a new book and as usual I'm in full panic mode. If I were a sensible author I'd start with the outline, plot out every scene and then feel confident that I could deliver a sound, enjoyable story. But I can't work this way. I wish I could, but I can't. If I wrote an outline I'd immediately lose interest in the story. And frankly I work best with the element of surprise. I start off knowing very little--usually a setting. For example: how about if I send Molly Murphy to one of the "cottages" in Newport R.I or how about if Georgie goes to winter on the Riviera with the wealthy Brits.
And then I start, plunging blindly ahead until she meets someone--in Naughty in Nice it's an encounter with a handsome Frenchman on the boat and then Coco Chanel on the train, and then the whole future of the story hangs on these encounters.
In the upcoming Hush Now, Don't You Cry--the next Molly Murphy book, due out in March, it is the character of the house and the family that owns it that creates the story--much more a story created through atmosphere than many of the Molly books. I also had to make sure that Molly, now married, still has a good reason to be a sleuth.

So the first 100 pages are, as I said, full panic mode. I'm taking baby steps, not quite knowing where plot twists might lead. And then I find a body, a character I didn't expect shows up and things liven up. I begin to see where we're going and the whole thing picks up steam. By page 200 I'm charging along, enjoying myself.
This is probably a stupid way to work, but it works for me. You see, I don't really know where my heroine is going. I'm following her, just watching and waiting, and thus I'm as surprised as she is when something happens to her. I'm not the puppet master, pushing her into a situation and I think this makes it more fun for the reader too.
In every book I've been surprised at what my heroine does, what she uncovers, whom she meets. Plots always go in directions I haven't expected, and remarkably, after 27 mystery novels, they all seem to come to a satisfying conclusion and there has never yet been a story where I've gotten myelf horribly stuck or written myself into a corner.

So now I start Molly book 12. And what do I know? Molly is pregnant and someone in New York is kidnapping babies. Sounds good, huh? I think there must be a good story there, waiting to be uncovered.  More about my methods in a couple of days.

Teach Me How to Write.

I'm just getting back my life after the Book Passage Mystery Writing Conference that takes place every summer at my fabulous local bookstore Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA.

It's always an intensive three days of workshops, lectures and private consultations during which around 80 hopeful mystery writers want to find the magic bean that will turn them into published authors. The success rate for this conference is rather impressive: Sheldon Siegel, Cara Black , Cornelia Read,Tony Broadbent, Tim Maleeny are a few of the graduates who not only made it to print but have won awards for their writing.

But every year I come away with ambivolent thoughts. Can anybody really be taught to write?

Some of the attendees I see clearly have the spark and all they need is some suggestion on pacing or focus or plot development. For others no amount of writing classes will ever make them a published author. It's rather like me and painting. I love to paint. I can create a pretty good picture if I copy reality or somebody shows me what to do, but my painting instructor can look at a scene, give a few magic flourishes with her brush and suddenly there it is in living color with an whole new twist to it.

Every year I am asked what writing courses I took before I started out. The answer, none. I taught myself to be a writer by writing. As a small child I lived in a world of pretend. I played the part of princess, good fairy, girl lost in the woods, even queen of my own country. Later I wrote down stories with myself as heroine. I wrote movie scripts I wanted to star in. And during my professional writing career I have usually written a book that I want to read but is not already on the shelf.

What I see at conferences is that everybody probably has one book in them--everyone's life has one riveting moment that makes a good story. But not everybody has the ability to leap from their own life into someone else's world. And certainly not everybody has the ability to tell a story so that it comes alive, so that we ask, "And what happens next?"

So are writing classes a waste of time?  I think they can be beneficial, especially for the writer who needs feedback and positive reinforcement as they work. It's hard writing into a vacuum and the writer needs to know that he or she is heading in the right direction. It's also useful to hone skills, find flaws. But to say to someone else, "This is how you create a character" is something I find difficult. I've never created a character. I think of a story I'd like to tackle and a character appears saying "Hello, here I am."  It's all an extention of that pretending world I lived in when I was four.

So my one piece of advice that I've given several times this weekend--if you want to be a writer WRITE. Learn to use words as a potter learns to use clay. Practice putting words down on a page. Learn to develop a plot over 300 pages, to describe people and places so that we know them and we are there. And unfortunately the only clear mantra for success is to write the book that nobody has written before.

What are your experience of writing classes? Good? Bad? Do they help?

Prequel takes Kindle by Storm!

More good news! The Amersham Rubies, which is a prequel story to the Molly Murphy books, is now available for pre-order on Kindle. And the best news is that it's free, free, free.

What's more, it's currently #2 on Mystery and Thrillers free on Kindle and #5 on all the free stuff on Kindle. How cool is that? And it has a gorgeous cover, doesn't it?  My publisher conceived the whole thing and did the cover

, hoping, of course to bring more readers to Molly. We'll see if that works.

I should warn you that it's just a story, not a whole book, but it gives readers a glimpse of Molly's detective powers and life in Ireland before she gets to New York. So tell your friends and reserve your copy.

Where the Heck am I going?

Celebrate with me--I've just reached the stage in my new book when the end is in sight--I can see where the story is going and I KNOW I'LL BE ABLE TO FINISH IT!! Heavy sigh of relief.

Every book is the same tortured process--panic at beginning, worry until about page 150 then gathering momentum on the downhill slope to the finish line.
All this could be avoided if I could just outline the story in advance.

The problem is that I can't. I've tried. I can come up with a reasonably good outline for a story BUT it would be nothing like the story I'd end up with if I just let the book grow and develop. And if I had an outline, I'd feel obliged to follow it. Hence the book would not be as good.

Luckily I have wonderful editors who trust that I'll be able to come up with a book in the required length of time and don't demand to see a proposal. If they did want one it would say "she finds a body and then bad things happen to her."

So I have to let my characters stumble through their world, having things happen to them, meeting people I haven't anticipated, finding bodies where I least expected them and in the end it turns out that my characters (or is it my subconscious) knew pretty well where we were going.

Today on Jungle Red Writers , the group blog I belong to, mystery icon Carolyn Hart blogs about exactly this. She can't outline either... and you know, I don't think she's done too badly outlineless.

I hope to finish my first draft by the beginning of April. I'll keep you posted!

Not going gentle into that good night.

I am currently between books. I've sent off Naughty in Nice and I have to start the next Molly book in January, so I'm reading up on Tammany Hall and Irish politics. We're in Arizona and the weather is perfect. The desert beckons, there are great restaurants and yet I am feeling guilty because I'm not working. I should be starting a short story. I should be finishing my travel book on Australia.

I have to face that I am not good at doing nothing. I feel the need to be working all the time. And this is not good because most of my friends have retired or are approaching retirement. They are happily playing bridge, taking art classes or volunteering. And I--I cannot picture a life without writing, without working to deadlines, without flying around the country and making speeches. I keep telling myself that it would be good to slow down and not push myself so hard, but in truth I don't want to.

Luckily both series seem to be in demand still, my sales are still good, so there is no need for me to slow down my pace, but I can't help looking to the future. Will there be a time I have to stop writing, and if so, what would I do with myself all day? It's a scary thought. So I'm interested to know what others contemplating retirement feel about it. Who else intends to go on working for ever? Who looks forward to doing nothing? Am I unique?

The TwentyFirst Century Writers Life

I'm a writer--and what I want to do is sit at my desk and write books. But I'm just back from vacation and the next two months have a schedule that would make the queen of England turn pale. Because these days writing is only half of an author's life. The other half involves selling the books.
Now you might naively think that selling the books is the job of the publisher and bookseller. Unfortunately it's also become a requirement of the author. When you have time check out my schedule at http://www.rhysbowen.com/ and click on Events. See what I mean?

I have two white boards next to my desk which started off as tools for me to jot down ideas and plot points as I wrote. They have been taken over as to-do lists. What I see before me at the moment is:
send out paper invitations to 50 people for launch party
send out email invites next week to about another hundred
make sure store has specially requested advance copies Royal Blood for event at Festival of Wales
coordinate with friend who want to fit in lunch at Festival of Wales in Portland
Coordinate with man who wants to fit in Welsh Society after event in Kansas City
Hair appointment before launch party.
Get handouts printed for fall events.
Arrange prizes for various events (vampire themed?)
2 guest blogs, 2 interviews, one radio as of now.
This doesn't include daily Facebook and Twitter stuff and regular fan letters.
And this is before I am on the road and doing pretty much an event a night for the month of September.

You might tell me that all this is my choice, and in a way that's true. There are some writers who never leave home, who hate to travel and hate meeting people. Some of them do pretty well. However when one is not Sue Grafton or Janet Evanovich the object is to try and make some of those bestseller lists so that the publisher sits up and takes notice. And unless that publisher is prepared to spend a hundred thousand or so on publicity the only way to be noticed is by personal contact and word of mouth. Someone finds my book, reads it and recommends it to a friend. It's building readers one at a time and it takes a lot of effort.

However in today's brutal world of publishing writers whose readership is not constantly growing find themselves axed. Besides, I have to confess that the personal contact with readers is one of the things I have come to cherish. To be in a strange city and have someone come up to me with all my books and ask if I mind signing the whole lot--well, that is special. When someone tells me that my book just got them through a difficult time, it makes the getting up at 4 a.m. to catch the 6 a.m. flight worthwile.

Once September starts I'll try to blog daily about my travels and I look foward to meeting many of you.

Recharging the Well

I'm heading to London today for a really BIG event: a reunion with 25 college sisters, some of whom I haven't seen for over 40 years. We are celebrating the arrival of the day we met, long ago in the sixties. We have arraged to stay in our old college dorms, we're eating one night in a local chinese restaurant (because going out for chinese food was about the only thing we could afford those days\) and we have a caterer coming in for the big meal on Saturday night. I'm currently staying with my two best friends from college and we've had some fabulous build-up days together but this morning we ste off with anticipation of two days of fun, food, drink and much laughter.

I've been away for six weeks and I'm finally ready to go home. I have the last third of a book to finish and my batteries have been recharged so that I think I can breeze through it.. Sometimes it takes foreign experiences, new lifestyles to take me out of myself enough that things become clear and I'm ready to go on.

I have two weeks after I get home before the chaos starts for the launch of Royal Blood and I'm zooming all over the country again. I don't think I'll finish the book in that time but I'd like to get a big chunk done so that the end is in sight.

I'll be putting up my fall schedule on my website next week, so look for where I' m going to be speaking.

What do you want, already?

This blog is a new venture for me--solo blogging is akin to solo sailing, which I have done. I'm at the helm and every decision counts. So I want to ask you--my friends, my fans and those who just like dropping in on interesting blogs:
what do you want in a blog? What makes you keep coming back to check out one particular blog more than another?
Do you primarily want news about what's going on in my life?
Do you want funny and quirky tales to make you chuckle?
Do you want insights into writing and research?
Would you like me to share some travel tales?
Would you like a day of writing tips?
Would you like regular guests--in which case what kind of guests?
If there's anyone you'd like to see interviewed on the blog, let me know and I'll do my best. I can't guarantee the queen,the pope or Obama, but apart from those I know a lot of people.  Is it fun if I can rope in a celebrity?

Do you enjoy pictures on the blog?
Do you like a blogger to post on regular days or just when I have something special to say?

And be honest... what don't you like?
So please, please let me know. A blog takes time and I want it to be worthwile for both reader and writer.
And to those of you who are already following me--thanks a million!

Where to begin?

I'm about to start a new Royal Spyness book and as usual I'm in terrified mode. I'm not one of those people who outlines, so I start knowing very little... where I'm going to set it (on the French Riviera) and some unpleasant things that may happen to Georgie (not going to tell you).

But the problem with every book is where to begin. Where do I come into this particular story which is part of someone's life? Some writers give us a body on page one. I am the other kind.. I like to set the scene, introduce characters and watch them interacting before anything too bad happens. Not quite as thrilling, I must admit, but that's just the way I work.

So I need to start on a gray, bleak day in London, to make the prospect of the Riviera more enticing.

But my WRITING TIP FOR THE DAY:  and write this in letters of flame ten feet high on your wall NOTHING IS WRITTEN IN STONE.
Toy with various opening scenes. Be prepared to toss out the first 50 pages if you realize you could have come into the story later, or just get started, to have something down in black and white,and then go back in the editing phase and polish up the beginning.
Obviously beginnings are important. People pick up a book in a store, read the first page and decide whether to buy it. That's why I'm always a little worried that I don't have a body. So my first page has to be witty and/or funny. I hope I feel in a witty mood today!

I'll keep you posted as to how I'm progressing.

Mystery Writing and Superstition

The moment I started thinking about superstition, I began to see links to being superstitious and writing mysteries. Are mystery writers particularly superstitious people, I wonder?

I think we are attracted to mysteries both as writers and readers, because the mystery novel attempts to make sense of the universe. A crime is committed that disturbs the fabric of the universe and it is up to the detective to solve this crime and thus restore the universe to wholeness. (This is one of the reasons I don't like the noir novel. Wholeness is never restored even when the crime is solved).

So essentially the mystery novel can do what we can't do in real life. As mystery writers we can restore harmony, see that justice is served and good triumphs. We know this doesn't happen in real life. Maybe that's what we also are trying to do with our superstitions--we try to control our luck, our fate and our universe. If a black cat crosses my path, from right to left, I will do well at that job interview. Or as yesterday's commenter put it, if I wear my special earrings I'll ace the interview. And of course wearing those earrings we do well because we feel invincible.

I just re-watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, in which they brew a potion of Liquid Luck. Harry pretends to give it to Ron who then plays quiddich brilliantly, thinking he can't lose. So what we all need is a secret vial of that liquid luck, don't we? Just a drop on the tongue for those really important occasions,