WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD CHARACTERS BY Guest Blogger Jayne Ormerod

“Stop jumping on the bed before you fall off and crack your head open!”

How many times did you hear that when you were young? Or perhaps yelled it to rambunctious children yourself? Okay, now raise your hand if you’re guilty of leaping fearlessly across the chasm between twin beds anyway, and managed to do so safely. I see I’m in good company.

Yes, I’ve knocked a few pictures askew, broken a lamp or two, maybe even left a few dents in the plaster wall, but I have never, ever, in all my years of bed jumping, cracked my head open. Leave it to my mom to always warn me about the worst possible outcome of any situation.

“Don’t run with scissors or you’ll poke your eye out.”

“Don’t get near the lawnmower without shoes on or you’ll cut your foot off.”

“Don’t lick the beaters while the mixer is on because it will yank your tongue clear out of your mouth.”

WRITERS ON WRITING By Angela G. Slevin

 

Sometimes, a writer needs a break from writing. Even though writers love it, any job can become a grind now and then. How do other writers keep at it, year after year, book after book? These three books on writing have given me back some pep in my writing step, along with good advice and tools that I hadn’t thought about in a while.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King stands out to me right from the start. It has a first, second and third foreword, which is unusual, and although I don’t read forewords, that piqued my curiosity. As I skimmed the shorter ones, I read, “This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit.” What?! I was disarmed by this honesty. And I felt like I was being dared to continue reading, just to prove Steve wrong, so of course I had to continue.

WRITERS UNITE: REJECT REJECTION! By Michael Rigg

Rejection Has Many Facets

 A well-known and respected periodical, which shall remain nameless,   provides a simple online mechanism for writers to submit their short   works of fiction for consideration. No need to suffer through thirty-   nine steps of instructions. And it provides an equally simple   mechanism  for tracking those submissions. Beyond a shadow of     doubt, the submission and tracking process are straightforward, not an     elastic affair with ever-changing rules. 

That simplicity belies something notorious, something to leave a hopeful author spellbound by the negativity and unable to cope. That something lies in the terms this well-known and respected periodical uses to describe the status of your submission.

Received. That’s understandable enough. They have received your magnum opus, the lifeboat to which your fragile ego clings, hoping soon to read the joyful status: Accepted. (I assume that’s what it is. None of my submissions have been chosen for publication—yet.)

But then, there’s that word they use to describe stories not selected for publication: REJECTED.

Rejection—it’s something most, perhaps all, writers have experienced. What a horrible word, rejection—in any form. What a mean-spirited, ghastly thing, rejection, a word, many-faceted, each aspect more horrific that the last.  

According to the Cambridge English Dictionary (Cambridge English Dictionary: Definitions & Meanings), rejection refers to:  

-the act of refusing to accept, use, or believe someone or something;

-a letter, etc. that tells you that you have been unsuccessful in getting a job, a place on a course of study, etc.; or

-the act of not giving someone the love and attention they want and expect.

With one hurtful word, the writer’s repulsed, like a lice-ridden enemy hoard scaling the castle walls. Like a seething bacterial infection struck down by the miracle of penicillin. Despondency reigns, emotions ripped apart, like a torn curtain. That damnable magazine and its editor. They aren’t giving us the love and attention we want and expect. Barbarians all, those who inflict rejection on us!   

I confess. I don’t understand why the editor of this esteemed periodical insists on being such a psycho, a saboteur of young and innocent writers who put their faith and trust in this publishing powerhouse that their hard work will be recognized and rewarded.

But the solution is simple, elegant perhaps. Were I a secret agent, able to enter quietly through a rear window into the periodical’s inner sanctum, I’d scurry about in a surreptitious frenzy and plant this idea:

Replace the word rejected with the word DECLINED. 

What a pleasant way to be told ‘No.’ “We received your submission, reviewed it with glee, and decline to publish it at this time. Warmest regards and best wishes for a successful writing career.” Certainly, it’s kinder and gentler that the current “Eff Off, you unworthy, spineless mendicant. Your story stinks and we REJECTED it, just as we reject YOU.” 

So please, kind editor, switch to using Declined. Where you lead, other editors (and agents) will follow! After all, wouldn’t you agree that Rejected is for the birds?

STRENGTHEN YOUR SUBMISSIONS STRATEGY PART 4, by Max Jason Peterson

Please note that for this post, I kept the pictures at their "original" size to be sure you can see them, since they're nitpicky Excel details.

For those who are fans of this series, I'm getting into the nitty gritty details now. If you follow along, you'll soon be creating your own spreadsheets and getting fired up by your submission statistics. For instance, today I'm celebrating having made 100 submissions of [redacted novel title]. 

For those who want to catch up or review where we are:

Part1

Part2

Part3

Please think about what level of detail would work for you. You can be minimalist or go all out.

ENTERTAINING CRIME by Judy Fowler

  Why do we enjoy trials and stories about murder?

  Take South Carolina v. Murdaugh, as entertaining as a great           screenplay. 

 Murdaugh—a creep who never saw a vulnerable person he wouldn't     fleece—had us on the edge of our seats when he chose to take the           stand.  He cried in the jurors' direction and offered alternative facts to     them to escape accountability.  

 In a “fun and games” moment, his attorney pointed a rifle at the prosecutor. The possibility of reasonable doubt made my adrenaline kick in. The defense's hope of winning the day was alive right up to the last two minutes of the film—I mean trial. I bit my nails and hoped Alex hadn’t fooled any jurors. 

When they found him guilty, my dopamine kicked in. Shouldn't I have felt sad?

Why did I behave as if I'd been to a show? To understand my reaction, I went to acuriosityofcrime.com and re-read their June 2022 research on nineteenth-century inquest protocols in “Murder as Entertainment.” 

The English or Welsh coroner from the 1800's "who believed a death to be suspicious” sent warrants to collect twelve to twenty-four jurors for inquest duty. "It was to occur as soon as possible after notification of death." No need to ask the boss for time off next month. Duty began in two hours.  

And where did jurors do their service? "The morgue, or often where the body had been laid out on their bed." 

Talk about an adrenaline rush. You're home—adding a lump of coal to the fire. A knock at the door results in your immediate departure for a third-floor walk-up in a dodgy neighborhood. You trudge up several flights to a tawdry bedsit where a fresh corpse lies on the bed. 

The room is packed with other jurors. Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced comes to mind. 

I'm embellishing, but it might have happened like that. 

Inquest duty stories from older relatives may have inspired Christie to write And Then There Were None. In it, a letter from a stranger induces ten people to drop everything and travel to an isolated location where they play judge, jury, and defendant.

Back to our 1800's juror. He was required to “peruse the corpse for signs of poisoning or violence.” If a juror tried to turn away after just a "quick gander," "the inquest was voided and any investigation had to stop."

Not all jurors could take the pressure. In one case, “A drunken juryman took offense and became noisier and more difficult to control as the inquest went on.” In another “the details of a poisoning were too much for the foreman of the jury and he fainted. Everyone waited until he had recovered enough to rejoin the proceedings.”     

The body remained on public display while "the jury gathered to hear testimony from everyone who had something relevant to say." The suspects could question the witnesses without being "obliged to say anything to criminate" themselves.  

Jurors asked questions, too. Imagine the tension in the room as suspects gave their alibis in the room with their possible victim, the victim's friend and all those over-stimulated jurors. Maybe their adrenaline rush remains in our collective memory when we watch Dateline.                                                       

After completing that sort of jury duty I'd rush home for a strong cup of tea. But lots of jurors must have headed for their local pub to wind up their friends and receive free pints of ale for telling and re-telling their story. 

If high-octane story-telling lit the fire that continues to burn in us for true crime and crime fiction today, and if a spark from that fire landed on me... then I'm not to blame for staying up late reading a whodunnit or for perking up when I hear the jury is back.     

But should I forgive myself for writing murder mysteries? A journalist once asked crime fiction authors Jonathan and Faye Kellerman if they felt guilty using murder as a vehicle to amuse people. Faye said no and that their "readers find murder stories entertaining because—in the end—those who hurt us are held accountable, cases are resolved, and the law wins.”

 

 

HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY by Sheryl Jordan

 

April Fool’s Day, also called All Fool’s Day, is celebrated annually by different cultures around the world on April 1^st. While the celebration may be different for each culture, the common theme includes playing hoaxes or practical jokes on others, often yelling “April Fools!” afterward to signify the April Fool’s Day prank.

I never really thought about how April Fool’s Day came into existence until I began researching it for this blog. The origins of April Fool’s Day remain a mystery, but many theories exist.

Some theories say it dates back to the 1500s in various countries where people were told about different events happening and they would travel to see the event, but it didn’t exist. This was known as a “fool’s errand.”

WHAT'S IN YOUR "TO BE READ" PILE? by Curious George, PHD

 

Writers hold one truth to be self-evident: To write, you must read! Stated more eloquently by William Faulkner in a 1951 interview for The Western Reserve, "Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out." And from Ben Johnson, the Seventeenth Century English playwright, "For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style."

So for writers, "Reading is Fundamental." But there are so many books and so little time. How can we possibly fit them all into our busy schedules? The answer, of course, is that we can't. But we try. Oh, how we try. Some writers keep a list. Some writers have e-books filling the "cloud." And some writers have a physical location for their "To Be Read" pile. A bookshelf, maybe. Or a plastic bin filled with books we're going to get to, as soon as humanly possible. There are probably as many approaches to the "TBR Challenge" as there are writers.  

This week's guest blogger, Curious George, PHD, wants to know about YOU.  What books are on your TBR list? Where do you keep your books? How do you figure out what to read next? George is, well, curious!  (And by the way, PHD stands for "Piled Higher and Deeper," which describes George's TBR stack.)  

Take a few minutes and give us some feedback about your TBR preferences and practices. Inquiring minds want to know. 

1.