Innehållsförteckning för February 2014 från The Writer

FOR MOST OF US, February is the dead of winter. Yes, there’s Valentine’s Day – a hot spot in one of the chilliest months. (And we pay homage to that holiday in these pages.) But by and large, come February most of us are hunkering down in front of fireplaces or space heaters trying to keep our bodies warm and our imaginations fired up. Instead of focusing on the chill of winter, however, we decided to focus the pieces in this issue on the dead of winter. Of course, it was a short leap from there to expand our theme to thrillers, murder mysteries, suspense novels, crime stories and even eulogies. We don’t mean to be morbid or morose. In fact, we believe you’ll find the stories in this issue…

The Welsh call February y mis bach, which means “the little month,” and in Poland, the second month of the year is known as luty, or month of ice or hard frost. The theater critic Joseph Wood Krutch once said: “The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.” Despite its short length and miserable weather (at least at The Writer HQ in the very New England to which Krutch alludes), February has boasted some significant events for the literary world over the years. Here’s our timeline of notable February moments in history for writers and readers. 1792 George Washington signs the Postal Service Act, federalizing mail delivery and making letter writing a much more reliable form of communication. The act also made…

Without a firm grasp of character and pacing, a love story can easily slip into a tragedy. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, it’s time for some good old-fashioned love advice. Six romance novelists spill their quick and dirty secrets. "Have your hero and heroine connect in such a way that makes the readers believe they are soul mates, and together they can get over any hurdle that tries to block their paths.” —Brenda Jackson, The Westmore lands series "The secret to writing a good romance: Don’t give the reader everything (relationship, love, sex) too early, but in such a way that they don’t feel they’re waiting at all.” —Jamie McGuire, Beautiful Disaster "Build romantic tension by bringing your hero and heroine together early and often. Avoid plots, settings and…

If you write about grown-up characters for grown-up readers, sooner or later, you’ll need a touch of sex. Crafting a raunchy, intimate or downright dirty erotic scene is excellent practice even if you’re not sketching 50 shades of anything. Here’s how to sharpen your skills by trying your hand at a realistic, physically and emotionally engaging scene that excites your reader’s senses. 1. Use your words. It’s easy to be clichéd, vague or unintentionally ridiculous when writing sex. Squeezed into a pair of skinny jeans, nice nates and bodacious booty look exactly the same but in prose, there’s a big difference. As writers, we need to overcome inhibition and find the right terminology to control the mood and characters we’re creating. When I teach smut writing, I ask workshop participants…

Jawaharlal Nehru on Mahatma Gandhi 1869-1948 A glory has departed and the sun that warmed and brightened our lives has set, and we shiver in the cold and dark. Yet he would not have us feel this way. After all, that glory that we saw for all these years, that man with divine fire, changed us also—and such as we are, we have been molded by him during these years; and out of that divine fire many of us also took a small spark which strengthened and made us work to some extent on the lines that he fashioned. Lee Strasberg on Marilyn Monroe 1926-1962 Marilyn Monroe was a legend. In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For…

You’ve spent the better part of 25 years writing novels. What do you value most about living as a writer? It doesn’t seem like 25 years – but I suppose that reflects at least some of the value of spending a life with words, characters and plots that twist and turn. It’s something of a cliché to say every day is different, but wrapped in that trite observation is more than a significant amount of undeniable truth. To successfully write – and not just the “psychological thrillers” that I favor but just about any old kind of fiction – one has to be able to create an inner landscape, where all the elements of the novel live a very real (if perhaps bordering on the hallucinatory) existence. But I suspect…

Lee Harvey Oswald created two widows that day, aside from his own: Jackie Kennedy and Marie Tippit, wife of J.D. Tippit, a patrolman with the Dallas Police Department. As Mum told and retold it, Marie got up at dawn to make her husband’s breakfast, their three young children still abed. Officer Tippit’s humdrum beat was Oak Cliff, a neighborhood of houses and swing sets and smiley dogs, but at thirty minutes past noon every cop radio in the city of Dallas crackled with instruction. Officer Tippit had just been home for lunch – Marie, again, a sandwich and fried potatoes – and with his full belly went on the lookout for a “thirty-year-old white male of slender build.” He found one hurrying along East 10th Street and guess who it…

One situation after another was brought to Cress’s attention. Theft, violence, trespassing, school suspension, police reprimands. Yet Carswell Thorne, when given a chance to explain, always had a reason. A good reason. A heart-stopping, pulse-racing, awe-inspiring reason. Like the sun rising over Earth’s horizon, her perception began to change. Carswell Thorne wasn’t a heartless scoundrel at all. If anyone bothered to get to know him, they would see that he was compassionate and chivalrous. He was exactly the kind of hero Cress had been dreaming about her entire life. With that discovery, thoughts of Carswell Thorne began to infiltrate her every waking moment. She dreamed of deep soul connections and passionate kisses and daring escapades. She was certain that he simply had to meet her, just once, and he would…

New Orleans offers a feast for the senses: hot jazz, theatrical performances, a vibrant literary scene and, of course, plenty of food. Over spicy gumbo and a cool Sazerac cocktail, or powdery beignets paired with chicory coffee, writers can encounter life-changing experiences at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. The city is an invaluable source of inspiration for novelists Dorothy Allison and Michelle Wildgen. “[New Orleans] has some real grit to it, but also a lot of beauty,” Wildgen says. Allison calls it a “marvelous literary community,” and the festival in particular provides opportunities to connect with other writers at panels, workshops and readings. Housed in cafes and boutique theaters throughout New Orleans, the TW/NOLF strives to expand the knowledge and experience of its attendees. Allison first spoke at the…

All of my research was done: the weeks upon weeks of reading, the staggered interviews. I’d finished my procrastinating, too, and the crazy carb loading that I’ve come to recognize as part of my windup process. The deadline had crept close enough to be un-ignorable. I tapped away at my keyboard, trying to tell the story. And failing. CLUNK, went the sentences, horribly. Clunk, clunk, clunk. I wrote some more. Clunk. Distantly, in a small and insistent part of my brain that I was determined to disregard, I understood the trouble with the piece, a profile of an artist ascendant. The story I’d found in talking with her could not have been clearer or more apt, and she’d been brilliant in conversation. But she’d been anxious, too, or so I…

Alexandra Styron is the author of Reading My Father, a memoir about her life as the daughter of the renowned novelist William Styron, whose own novels include Sophie’s Choice and Lie Down in Darkness. Alexandra Styron is also the author of the novel All the Finest Girls, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. Her prose is controlled, precise and evocative. In her memoir, for example, she describes her father’s writing habits this way: “His prose, laid down in an elegant hand on yellow legal pads with Venus Velvet No. 2 pencils, came at a trickle. He labored over every word, editing as he went, to produce manuscripts that, when he placed the final…

Cold winter months can awaken the gory side of a writer’s imagination. The Twitter community dissects the blood and guts of a good story. Sally Kilpatrick @SuperWriterMom You know fun stuff is going down when you have to Google ICU visiting hours and first step of embalming. #amwriting Kelley @nanogeekette Strangely enough, my muse doesn’t want to write a nice novel. It wants to write ALL THE HORROR. Andy Baker @andybakerwriter Waiting for somebody better to die. #obits#journalism #ethics Dean Lombardo @DeanLombardo1 Skipping chapter 13 of supernatural horror novel for research purposes, not because of superstitions. On to writing chapter 14. #amwriting Michael Vain @KnightofShadows #amwriting Only 6 chapters to go on my #horror novel edit/rewrite. Looking forward to putting this rabid little puppy to bed. Bill Pope @Underbundle I…

Iam not a Writer. Sure, I write, but I do not consider myself a writer with a capital “w.” Writers have a passion for prose. They don’t go a day without putting pen to page (or keys to computer). Writers take their craft very seriously. They look for details in the obscure and vivid moments in the mundane. Writers spend years editing and tweaking so that characters, plot and settings are alive. Words are oxygen, and stories are carbon dioxide. This is not me. Over time, I’ve learned that people who consider themselves writers are not writers by choice, but by need and desire. They are simply compelled. I thought I wanted to be a writer in high school because it was easy. I wasn’t necessarily talented, but it came…

Excerpt originally published October 1, 2006 • Tampa Bay Times When I first read this passage, I was struck by the inventiveness of Tom French’s approach. Two charismatic animals – a chimp and a tiger – had been killed violently at the local zoo, and French understood that they had significance to the community that went beyond the breaking news stories. The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, French was equipped and trusted to try something unusual. This would be a feature obituary with a parallel narrative: Herman and Enshala. But the language became that of the eulogy: “Let us pay respect to fallen royalty.” What follows is a narrative, not on the occasion of death, but on the adventure of life. In five paragraphs, he offers tiny…

She dreamt uneasily. She could see a boat adrift, first in the distance, then suddenly closer until she realized that she was on the boat and surrounded by water. Her first thought was panic, to search about her and find someone to tell the important news that she was unable to swim. But each time she turned to look, her perch on the edge of the boat grew more precarious, and the wave action would sweep the small craft upward, balancing momentarily on wave edge, then falling away, sickeningly, bouncing her about, out of control. In her dream she looked for something solid to hold on to. As she seized the mast of the boat and clutched it with all the strength she could muster, an alarm went off, ringing,…

AS A BOOK DEVELOPMENT EDITOR (and an author), I’ve helped authors create successful nonfiction books. One of the biggest trends I’ve seen recently is the growing number of nonfiction writers who are turning to self-publishing. This can be empowering for them, but without proper planning, it can lead to disappointment. For example, I have one colleague who self-published a book on personal finance and then was frustrated when it didn’t sell well. But as far as I could tell, he had done absolutely no investigation of competing titles. His book sounded like every other book on personal finance. And without a strong platform to support the publication, he didn’t have a chance of reaching readers. If he’d spent some time researching the competition before writing his book, he would have…

Most people imagine the life of a full-time writer as very solitary. Chuck Wendig, author of Blackbirds and Mockingbird, calls it the Hobbit style of writing. You go into hiding, he says, and then you “emerge from the cave in four weeks.” That practice is true for many writers. But there is a range of personality types – and processes – in the writing world. Many writers are introverts who prefer the cave, but many others are extroverts who need to be out in the world. What determines whether you are an introvert or an extrovert? It may not be what you think. Laurie Helgoe, author of Introvert Power, says your personality type is determined not by how shy or outgoing you are, but by how you process the world…

INFORMATION in this section is provided to The Writer by the individual markets and events; for more information, contact those entities directly. F = Fiction N = Nonfiction P = Poetry C = Children’s Y = Young adult O = Other $ = Offers payment WriterMag.com Subscribers to The Writer have online access to information on 3,000+ publishers, publications, conferences, contests and agents. Go to WriterMag.com and click on Market Directory. Subscribers to The Writer have online access to information on 3,000+ publishers, publications, conferences, contests and agents. Go to WriterMag.com and click on Market Directory. AGENTS F N C Y 3 SEAS LITERARY AGENCY Represents authors of romance, women’s fiction, science fiction/fantasy, thrillers, YA and middle-grade fiction and select nonfiction titles. Accepts queries by email only. Contact: Michelle Grajkowski…

Lori Roy’s crime novel Until She Comes Home is set in a Detroit during deep social rifts in 1958. The New York Times called the story a “quietly shocking account of the tiny tremors in the life of a city that warn of cataclysms to come.” How did Roy build suspense? How did she get the facts right? A condensed version of her answers follows. STRUCTURE The first 50 pages are critical to get your story off to a good start. Think in terms of a playwright or a screenwriter: the inciting event and the key incident. Those are the moments that tell us what the story’s going to be about. Draw the reader into the story and then that key event is the event that turns the status quo…

I’m writing a novel about a family of seven. The novel is about the whole family, but I keep wondering if I should focus on one character as the main character. Can a novel have multiple characters as main characters? Main characters, also called protagonists, are the central focus of a story. Don’t gauge main character status based on how often a character appears in the novel. Some characters play prominent roles but still somehow inform another character’s experience. Main characters are the ones in the middle of the action and the conflict. Their choices have consequences; their actions bring about significant change. While many novels have only one main character, some have more than one. Joyce Carol Oates’ novel We Were the Mulvaneys tells the story of a family…

For most writers north of the equator, February is one of the darkest and coldest months of the year. We found products to keep your writing space illuminated all winter long. MATCHBOOKS View your office in a more rustic light with matches from this clever set. Out of Print modeled the matchbooks after the covers of five banned classics: Slaughterhouse-Five, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, Fahrenheit 451 and Song of Solomon. Each matchbook comes with a brief overview of its history of banishment. Start at $8. outofprintclothing.com GLASSES Protect your eyes from late-night strain with a new pair of glasses from Warby Parker. The company – named after Jack Kerouac’s characters Warby Pepper and Zagg Parker – makes prescription eyewear affordable through vintage-inspired styles with a contemporary twist.…

If you are the family plumber, you come to expect a call when Cousin Clyde’s pipes spring a leak. When you are the family writer, you come to expect the call when Cousin Clyde’s arteries burst and someone asks you to write the eulogy. The word eulogy comes from the Greeks and means "to praise," literally, to speak "good words." Shakespeare’s Antony who protests to the Roman masses that he has come to "bury Caesar, not to praise him," spends most of his famous oration firing up the rabble with a list of all the great things the late emperor had done for them. If I had my choice, Shakespeare would write my eulogy, and Antony would deliver it. By my count, I’ve written five eulogies: one for my next-door…

Editor’s note: The provenance of the following piece goes back to the fall, and the Boston Book Festival and a chance meeting with the popular best-selling author John Katzenbach. We both attended a launch party at a bar, and the conversation turned to craft. He’s a writer. I’m an editor. What more is there to say? A few days later, Katzenbach emailed me to say Grove/Mysterious Press would be reprinting his 1987 best-seller The Traveler at the end of the year – “nothing like a serial killer novel for the holiday season,” he wrote – and he had crafted a new preface to accompany the release. Turns out, the preface is an essay of sorts on writing suspense. Who do you kill? Where do you put the bodies? Who are…

Monica Wood is one of those writers you hear about from deeply committed readers, the kind whose list is intense and revelatory – and that changes the game. “Have you read Ernie’s Ark?” they might ask. And suddenly you know you have something grand on the horizon. Wood has written several novels, contributed to anthologies and produced other books that are classroom staples about writing and storytelling. In 2012, she delivered When We Were the Kennedys: A Memoir from Mexico, Maine, her story about growing up in the 1960s in a Catholic family in a mill town in northern New England. The book begins with her father’s unexpected death at age 57 (Wood was 9) and thrusts the reader into the heart of a family in mourning and into the…

Marissa Meyer began her career writing fan fiction inspired by Sailor Moon, the Japanese manga TV series. Forty fanfics and more than a decade later, Meyer is the New York Times-best-selling author of The Lunar Chronicles, a YA series that reimagines classic fairy tales as a futuristic sci-fi epic. Using her education in creative writing, children’s literature and publishing coupled with a vibrant imagination and world-building prowess, Meyer created a story so compelling and exciting that teenagers count down the days to her next release. The series’ third installment Cress, following Cinder and Scarlet, ushers in Meyer’s Rapunzel character and a new set of challenges for her dynamic and lovable teenage characters, including a cyborg Cinderella, spaceship-piloting Little Red Riding Hood and a moon-ruling evil queen. How does the 29-year-old…

The “n” in the title on Contrary’s website banner is backwards, fitting for a literary magazine guided by the editorial statement, “We insist that all of our content is contrary. And, we insist, so is all of yours.” The 10-year-old digital publication includes pieces on unexpected love discovered during a year of working at Kentucky Fried Chicken, the surprising poignancy of garage sales and Sherman Alexie’s steamy meditation on the 1979 pop song “My Sharona.” Alexie’s poem got three million page views, says poetry editor Shaindel Beers, noting that if Contrary were a print publication, editors couldn’t afford to generate even 1,000 copies. “The Internet is freeing,” she adds. “We can get more readers, do more with the magazine.” One component is a blog rich with thought-provoking posts on the…

In his gray suit, black shirt and tan Panama hat, James McBride looks like he’s dressed for a gig. Turns out he is: The author of the novel The Good Lord Bird is at the Texas Book Festival in Austin to read and play sax with a gospel/blues band he put together for the book. “That’s why I’m dressed in this getup,” he says. “You don’t think I’m gonna go around looking like the Blues Brothers all day, do you?” McBride arrived on the literary scene with his 1996 memoir The Color of Water, the story of his Polish immigrant mother and African American father. The Good Lord Bird, his third novel, also tackles racial issues. The narrator, Onion, is a 10-year-old slave boy kidnapped by the firebrand abolitionist John…