Discover Mystery contest, Part II

The winner and four finalists for the Discover Mystery contest of Poisoned Pen Press were named today, and needless to say, my name wasn't among them. I'm a bit bummed, of course, by not winning, though I knew, with nearly 200 entries, it was a longshot. But I'm not hatin'. I'm proud of my novel, An Untidy Affair, and I know there are other publishers. Affair one day will find a home.

The winner is Ronald Sharp, whose novel, Human Pest Control, will be published in October. (That struck me as a particularly short publication schedule but what do I know.) Congratulations Ronald, and best of luck. (I'm assuming Ronald reads my blog, although I have absolutely no evidence that is the case. But I put my congrats out there anyway.)

The other finalists are:

Slone's Last Dance by Bill Butler; In the Market for Murder by Dawn Marie Fichera; Who Killed Julian Emery by Susan Lumenello; and Mortgaged to Death by Bruce Rolfe.

Congrats also to the finalists.

On Poisoned Pen's website, I asked publisher Jessica Tribble whether those who didn't win would have any feedback as to why. Given the likelihood that there'd be a large number of entries, she said no, we wouldn't hear anything from them -- only who the winner was. She wouldn't have the time to provide much of anything else.

So once again, I face rejection and don't know why. But I'm going to keep writing. I enjoy it and know that one day, lightning will strike.

Thanks for reading and keep writing and submitting.

Random thoughts

Hello, my readers. Sorry I have been a little distracted for the last couple of weeks. Whenever possible, I have been planing for my next novel but I have been interrupted a lot.

The main reason for the disruption in my work and in blogging was my daughter's high school graduation. Or more precisely, getting her out of high school.

For reasons I won't go into on this blog, my daughter was short a course credit required for graduation. So, since early May, my wife, daughter and I worked many hours getting my daughter to complete an online course in three weeks -- work that should have taken three months. In the end, her principal set a 4 p.m., May 25, deadline for the school to hear from the online administrators that she had passed the course or she couldn't walk with her class at the graduation ceremony the following day.

They got the fax notification at 3:42 p.m., with just 18 minutes to spare.

I stressed out enormously over this graduation. Education is extremely important and something my wife and I greatly value. So getting my daughter out of high school and moving her onto the next major stage in her life development was important. I have earlier blog posts about being a worrier but I was probably more stressed about this graduation-thing than any other thing in quite some time. (There are other details I haven't mentioned regarding my daughter's graduation, so I wasn't just going nuts over the ceremony.)

But she walked and we were all proud.

On Sunday, my oldest daughter and I attended the Indianapolis 500, which we do every year. It was a thrilling race in incredible heat. But she and I survived it and had a wonderful time. I have been a Dario Franchitti fan for many years so I was pleased that he is now a three-time winner in what I think is the world's greatest auto race.

All that is to say I haven't gotten as much writing done in the last two weeks as I should have. But I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.

So, keep writing and thanks for reading.   

ABNA finalists for 2012

The three general fiction and three young adult fiction finalists in this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest were announced yesterday. Congratulations to all six of you. Enjoy the next two weeks as Amazon customers read your excerpts and vote. And good luck to you all.

The finalists in the general fiction category are: Alan Averill (The Beautiful Land), Charles Kelly (Grace Humiston and the Vanishing), and Brian Reevers (A Chant of Love and Lamentation).

You will notice all the finalists in this category are men. But women, keep the faith because the finalists in the young adult category are: Cassandra Griffin (Dreamcatchers), Rebecca Phillips (Out of Nowhere), and Regina Sirois (On Little Wings).

And you noticed only females made the finalist in YA this year.

Not sure who I favor in general fiction. Haven't read any of them. (And they had all better be better than my entry this year.) But I have a favorite in YA, though I won't say who.

We will just have to see.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Discover Mystery contest and Schrodinger's Cat

I was thinking today about Schrodinger's Cat, the thought experiment in quantum theory -- stay with me on this, please -- as it might apply to my entry into Poisoned Pen Press' Discover Mystery contest.

As with Schrodinger's experiment (and this is the short version, and I hope I get this correctly), the live cat is placed in a sealed steel box that also contains a vial of acid. If the vial breaks, the cat dies. But since we cannot observe anything inside the steel box, according to quantum theory, the cat is both alive AND dead in what is known as superpostion of states. When we open the box, the superposition is lost and we know if the cat is dead or alive. In essence, there is no single outcome unless it is observed.

I entered the Discover Mystery contest months ago, and the winner will win a small cash prize and a publishing contract with Poisoned Pen Press, a small indie publisher in the mystery genre. They specialize in finding new talent and new voices in the genre (which sounds a lot like me, by the way). The submission period ended on April 30 -- they had nearly 200 entries -- and Poisoned Pen hoped to declare a winner by the end of May.

We are a little past the middle of the month and there hasn't been a word. And I am still sitting on pins and needles. I sometimes look at my entry, which is An Untidy Affair, and some days all I see are its strengths and other days all I see are its potential weaknesses. Emotionally, I am all over the way.

But today I thought of Schrodinger's Cat. Since the announcement of the winner hasn't been made, and in any event, I haven't observed an outcome, I can say I have both win and lost the contest. And if I stay with having won, I make my life a lot happier.

So that's what I'm going to do, choose the happier choice. And it should serve me well, at least until someone opens that damned box and looks upon that stupid cat.

Thanks for reading and don't give up on writing.

A new novel

Started the outline for a new novel today. I don't like to do sequels. (Someone at Writer's Digest once told me why write numerous books in a series if you haven't sold the first one yet. It would be a huge waste of time and creative energy.) But this is a continuation of story with private eye David Blaise.

The first novel was set in May 1985. This novel is set several years later. But I like the plot and the characters and, frankly, it could be a stand-alone, not just a book in a series.

I plan to write, in longhand, eight or 10 pages of outline and see what I have from that. And I decided to do this now, instead of in the fall, because I plan to attempt the first draft in June, as part of the NaNoWriMo in June.

It will be more difficult than in November, when there is a holiday. There is no holiday in June but with graduation, and open houses, and college preparation and registration, I have a lot going on it June. (I can barely wait until August when we send our daughter off to school. I don't remember it being this hectic when I started college.) Plus I have a story for an anthology to finish in June. Lots of stuff for my brain to handle.

Anyway, my untitled book should get underway on the first of June. And if for any of a number of reasons it doesn't get finished in June, I can always attempt it in November. It's a wonderful detective mystery story that's begging to get out. So, I'm going to let it.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.   

In the beginning . . .

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)


This is very true. Where to start is an arbitrary thing. But it also an important element of storytelling.

As I look at novels today -- and, more importantly, as I consider the advice of other writers, agents and higher ups  in the literary food chain -- I see that modern novels need to have some action very near the beginning. I don't always think that is the best approach but what you hear is that there needs to be action near the beginning to hook the reader in.

That is why I shortened the first chapter of both my last two novels in order to get to some action sooner.

But the actual beginning is still somewhat arbitrary. With The Last Tontine Survivor, I kill off an old guy in the first three pages. But there is a reason for his death dating back seven decades. While I do cover that period later in the novel, I could have started there.

And the ending -- the bad guys are vanquished and the protag survives. But she is entering a new phase in her life and I could have written a little more about what that happens to be.

I like the way the Harry Potter series starts and finishes. It doesn't start when Harry is born, or just before them, when his parents are terrible danger. It starts when Harry is 15 months old, on the day his parents are murdered. (That's Oct. 31, 1981, just in case you were wondering.) And at the end, there is an epilogue, which set 19 years into the future. Or, more correctly, 19 years after the conclusion of most dramatic events of the series. (Which means, the last scene in the last book won't occurred for another five years, in Septemeber 2017.) But even then, Harry and his friends are only in their mid- to late-30s, and presumably have much more life to live. And more stories to tell.

While I sometimes struggle with where to start, I generally know where to stop. It's at the end, which is where I am now.

So thanks for reading and keep writing.

The End