I once read an interview that sticks with me to this day. If I were better at this blogging business, I would insert a link to this interview now so as to lend credibility to the fact it actually exists. But I can’t find it. This likely just means I’m not writing precise enough search parameters but I guess I can’t rule out the possibility I imagined it; fiction is, after all, a game of imagination.

That said, I’m pretty sure it happened.

The interview was with the late Nora Ephron and the piece I remember had her recalling a conversation she had had with the still very much with us Steve Martin. The gist of the interview, or at least the portion of it I recall, is that Steve (I feel like I can just call him Steve) once gave Ms. Ephron (I don’t feel I knew her as well) the advice that every character in every story ought to be interesting. Even if he’s the waiter taking the order and we never see him again the writer ought to endeavour to make that character interesting enough the writer would want to meet him.

I’m either paraphrasing or completely imagining this.

My point - and I do have one - is that in addition to our protagonists and our sidekicks, who I talked about last week we writers have the burden of having to use an assortment of lesser characters to further our plots and develop our characters.

But in addition to our good guys and our bad guys, we need any number of other people to help tell the story and they can provide unique challenges.

Certainly we have recurring characters beyond just our sidekicks. In both Deadly Lessons and Last Dance I created characters like Sandi, Winston's ex-wife and Teri, the sarcastic but occasionally sage-like server at Winston's favourite Italian eatery (I was queried by a book club why a number of my female characters' names end with 'e' sounds - something that was coincidental or at least not conscious on my part). And while I arrived at them rather organically - I didn't deliberately determine I needed to have an ex-wife and a waitress/confidante - they principally serve to develop depth to Winston's life rather than driving the crime elements of the story. Admittedly I essentially killed off Teri in Last Dance when I closed her restaurant, an homage paid to an actual favourite restaurant of ours, Chianti.

But into every life come plenty of people. Winston Patrick is a high school teacher. If we don't at least occasionally encounter some of his students then why place him there in the first place? At the same time, schools are full of kids - and that's a whole lot of people for whom to create interesting character traits. Sometimes, they serve little purpose but to reinforce and create mood in the setting - and hopefully a little credibility.

But Martin's words of wisdom stick in my craw, especially because I don't think he said them with an arrow through his head. I really don't want anyone who gets introduced on the page to be just a blur of a person about whom we wouldn't be at all interested. I find that can be challenging when I only need a character for a very limited purpose. He or she may simply need to provide a snippet of information. He or she may be needed to break up a routine occurring in a scene. It can be tough to find the balance between not having a completely bland character indistinguishable from any other and exerting a whole lot of energy and page space developing a character not likely to be with us for long.

Setting my books in a school - and thus far the crimes or mysteries in all three involve the lives of students - is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, there's a rich vein of story potential to mine with so many characters and their lives. I confess to occasionally feeling guilty, working in a school and with students as a day job, hearing their stories with one ear attuned to the potential story developing inside my head.

On the other, students as characters necessarily have limited shelf lives because they naturally graduate and move on to other things. To play them realistically, they need to be, well, lacking a certain amount of sophistication. Thirty year-old high school students may have worked for 90210 but they have the potential to seriously jeopardize credibility of the setting. And certainly I've met and worked with sophisticated and smart teenagers but they're generally not the majority so one can only expect so much complexity from them.

Furthermore, there's a danger in investing too much in wide character development of my teenaged characters - at least as a whole - when I'm not targeting my books towards an adolescent audience. Readers who aren't teachers or don't have kids of their own may have a limited interest in following their exploits. It's one of the failures of nearly every school-based television series: make them too smart and no one finds them believable, make them too real and no one wants to watch.

There were other bit players that surfaced in the first Winston Patrick adventures. In Deadly Lessons, Derek Cuffling is Sandi's brother and an actual competent lawyer Winston rather admires. I benched him in Last Dance but I'm planning for him to return in W3.doc in a meatier role than he was originally created for. Winston's church pastor, who was alluded to in Deadly Lessons and had a small role in Last Dance is a character I'd like to dig deeper into but I have yet to find enough of interest in him to know what to do with him.

Still, there's something to be said for Martin's maxim. Find something interesting about each of your bit players and they may be worthy of a reappearance down the road, either for another cameo or as a further fleshed out character. I know from plenty of improvisational experience how much the audience appreciates re-incorporation of an idea later on - as long as the character or idea being reincorporated is worthy of making a comeback.

Next week - how do you love a bad guy?

Sidebar: bonus marks to anyone who can find a link to the interview I referenced with Nora Ephron above.

Other sidebar: for those of you still interested, I mentioned a bit of a breakthrough last week in that I finally wrote some new content. Typically, these past few months have been a struggle of a sentence here, a sentence there. This week, I've risen early and am having writing sessions in the hundreds of words at a tiime. Progress, to be sure, that I hope will continue.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Thursday, 28 February 2013 8:40 AM PST

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In my genre in particular - not that I want to forever limit myself to the crime genre - more about that in another post - our heros tend to fall into one of two categories: the lone wolf solving the world's problems without consistant recurring secondary characters, roaming the country or the world like a heavily armed Littlest Hobo. The other is more of a dynamic duo approach, a principal crime fighter/detective/mystery solver with a partner, sidekick or at least recurring buddy that helps get the job done.

At times, the sidekick simply serves as a foil for the hero's idiosyncracies or a regular character against who he or she can bounce ideas. Other times, the sidekick has a critical role not only to the narrative but to the development of the character of the protagonist. He or she - and still it seems most often to be a 'he' - comes in a variety of forms.

In one corner, is the sidekick as comic relief, or at least a release in the story's inherent tension. Sometimes he is the affable but clumsy wannabe, who seeks to emulate the protagonist and is prevented from doing so by his own inabilities. Other times he provides the ethical clarity - or at least sounds the cautionary horn to the hero whose passion for solving the crime is pushing him into morally ambiguous territory. By the end of the story, we often learn along with the sidekick that despite his cautions, the hero's virtue was never really in question but juxtaposed against the sidekick's concerns we see the value in the unorthodox approach he has taken. The sidekick, in essence, is the voice that tests reason for the hero, and often does so while making us smile. This is often the sidekick relationship we see in television crime shows, for example, often, one suspects because it's easiest for the writer, forced to tell the story in just forty-seven minutes, to portray the differences in the characters juxtaposed so clearly against one another.

Sometmes, the sidekick forms a significant part of the brains of the operation. The sidekick often provides the technical support for the protagonist, possessing those skills the hero not only lacks but does almost as a badge of honour. Again in television, these so often appear as the computer geek, the scientist or other high keeper of high tech wizardry. They also seem designed to break the heavy tone of the story for a few moments with lighthearted banter or clumsy social awkwardness. In television, lest the viewers can't figure out we're supposed to experience comic relief, these characters are usually accompanied by plinky-plunky, cartoon-esque music so the viewer is hammered over the head with the 'lighten-up' moments in the narrative.

The other corner often has the sidekick as the muscle, the brawn to the protagonist's brain. To be sure, the hard-boiled detective is not immune from the action and violence of the story but the sidekick is the character who is often more prone to violence, sometimes even to wanton violence, and less likely, on the surface to be troubled by it. Robert B. Parker's Hawk comes to mind and certainly was influential to my understanding and appreciation of the genre. The reader, it seems, is supposed to admire the sheer unflinching courage and ability of this sidekick, while at the same time remaining most loyal and drawn to the hero. Ask Parker and he likely would have told you he would rather the reader aspire to be Spenser than Hawk.

The sidekick's bravado and physical prowess can often be shrouded in mystery not even the protagonist understands or knows of. Robert Crais developed this sidekick to great effect. His Elvis Cole detective hero is aided by Joe Pike, the mirrored sunglass wearing mercenary, always ready with firepower and military experience, unquestioningly coming to Elvis' aide in his pursuit of the bad guy. So effective has this secondary character been that Crais has now written books with Pike as the protagonist in his own right and Elvis making crossover appearances, in effect reversing roles and becoming Pike's sidekick.

In Deadly Lessons, Last Dance and W3.doc (still working on the title), Winston's sidekick is Detective Andrea Pearson, a Vancouver Police Department homicide cop Winston has known since childhood. I try to portray Andrea as the best of both major sidekick types. Certainly she provides the brawn for Winston; friends since chidlhood, she is fiercely protective of him the way a big sister might be, particularly as Winston, a high school teacher, is the reluctant amateur sleuth not known for his physical toughness. Sometimes too she is the brains of the operation, as Winston bumbles his way through the crime in question, Andrea helps to provide the detecting skill.

Ultimately, I'd like to develop the character further, perhaps even writing a book from her point of view as I expand my knowledge of who she is and get readers to want more of her. For now, it's a careful balance: the stronger and more prevalent I try to make her, the more potential she has to detract from the central character, who really was the nexus around which the stories developed. Even in Last Dance, my editor and I did occasional battle over the direction in which I was taking her character development. I like to think he was concerned because he sees a bright future for her too.

Feel like sharing? Who are your favourite sidekicks and why?

Next week: ex-wives and other recurring characters. How much do you use them and when do they wear out their welcome?

Sidebar: One of the principal purposes for writing this blog about writing was to get me writing again. After ten weeks, a minor breakthrough: while I had been re-reading and reviewing the work in progress, finally, this past weekend, I began writing new content in W3.doc. Baby steps to be sure but I'm hopeful this is an indicator that if I'm not over the writer's block wall I might at least have begun scaling it.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Thursday, 21 February 2013 8:39 AM PST

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There may be no such thing as a straightforward story.

In pretty much every novel, television episode, movie or other story format, we experience the main plot line, supported by smaller, 'B' stories, if you will. In some stories, not always the better ones, those stories will weave together with the main plot line, either supporting it as it moves forward or at the very least, not being a distraction from it.

Sometimes, it's the hardest part.

On the one hand, if my story is compelling enough, particularly, one would think, in the crime genre, ought that not to be enough? On the other, we want (I assume the readers are with me on this one) to get to know our protagonists really well, especially if we're trying to keep readers invested in a series based on the same protagonist. It is often these 'B' stories that are most revealing, where we step away from the mystery to be solved or crime to be thwarted and spend time getting to know our hero more deeply and experience some truth through his eyes. Here is where we typically find the love interests, the enemy from a former vocation, the genesis of a current obsession.

As the writer, it is where I do some of the deeper exploration of my characters. True, the situation in which we place our characters and how they respond to it can and ought to be illustrative of who the character is. But the more time we spend with these alter egos in our heads, the more we want to flesh them out and make them whole characters beyond what they're doing while snooping around or being shot at (not to give it away, but Winston does find himself in the path of many bullets in the third novel - see how I dropped a little nugget there?). And since we've given birth to these characters, we've got such a vested interest in seeing them grow to keep them real and fascinating for us. Of course, we also hope those subplots help the reader maintain their interest in them as well.

And that's where it gets tricky.

I have read novels where the secondary story has become such a part of the plot that it almost seems like it's the author's self indulgence I'm supporting rather than my own deeper understanding of and investment in a character. Oftentimes, the pages (upon pages, upon pages) devoted to backstory so completely bog down the flow of the narrative that by the time we reach the main plot line again we've forgotten about what it was we were reading. If you've read Harry Potter - books four through seven - you've experienced this first hand. True, sometimes those secondary characters who make up the inner depths of our stories cross over into the main plot - the hostage taking of the girlfriend, wife or children occurred in nearly every police drama television has ever produced.

But even there, we still seem to find out the deeper stories, flaws and values of our characters when they're engaged in the secondary story line than when they're engaged in the primary narrative. So it is important. The danger, at least for me, is finding the balance between exploring the character (I can do that on my own time) and slowing down the principal action to the point the reader loses interest in the story (it was my daughter's determination to slog all the way through the Potter series that kept me going, not any increased connection to his ever angrier character on my part). In Last Dance a couple of B stories kept popping up and ultimately weaved their way into the main story. I was pretty pleased with how that went. I arrived at them fairly organically, without having to deliberately think about finding more things for Winston to do. Other side characters, Winston's ex-wife, for example, I sometimes fear I keep around mostly for my own amusement; they flesh Winston out as a deeper character but don't often contribute significantly to the plot.

In W3.doc (still working on an appropriate title - that may be the subject of a contest at a later date), Winston will experience a pretty significant change to his life that I'm enjoying exploring. It makes him more vulnerable, more confused and throws his life into disarray. And to be fair, I anticipate mining this change in Winston's life not only for further B stories in future novels but it will also figure fairly prominently a couple of books from here (see how optimistic I can be?). But for now I'm trying to find a balance between spending enough time with this storyline to make it significant and not letting it get in the way of the main plot - a plot with which I am already occasionally struggling.

As always, stay tuned.

Next week: sidekicks and assorted sundry personnel.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

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Many writers and readers have seen the haunting image, either in books, movies or television, or in their nightmares: the dreaded blank page staring back at them, just waiting for brilliance to be unleashed upon it. Of course, for the contemporary writer, the blank page is most often represented by the lone blinking cursor, winking at the writer as if taunting, "Where's your muse, big boy?" It's that moment of trepidation of embarking on that new project, the yet unborn story ready to come to life (I suppose I could enter into the politically charged arena of just 'when an idea becomes a story and can no longer be terminated' but perhaps that's a raging debate for another column).

This must be even more prominent for journalists who have weekly, semi-weekly or even daily written output they are required to contribute. For the past nine weeks or so since I've committed to weekly output here there has been at least a small effect on the stress level, however internally imposed it is; there's no editor demanding my column with the threat of withholding a paycheque - though I'm certainly open to the idea.

For me, though, beginnings are the least fearful of places in the writing process with which I struggle. In fact, beginnings are often the very things that get in the way of my productivity. I suspect I'm not alone.

We've all had the experience of the sudden narrative inspiration. We wake up in the morning with the story that we've dreamed. Or we're driving in the car, wishing we had the tape recorder (yes I'm old enough mine actually has tape) with us to record that inspiring genesis to what will surely be a brilliant piece of work if or when I get the opportunity to sit down and write it. No, a lack of begginnings isn't the problem.

Too many of them is.

Of the many and sundry things getting in the way of my productivity, one of the more curious problems I never really thought I would face is that I have too many stories I want to write. Oh, to be so tortured, some would claim, especially those under such constant pressure to produce, well, constantly. But being distracted by story ideas is actually an issue. It's like Attention Deficit Disorder for writers.

Because the more excited I get about a story idea, the greater the distraction it is for me as I try to focus my efforts in the limited writing time I make available for myself. Sometimes it can be a little thing, a story I've heard on the top of the hour newscast or something I've seen on the side of the road while I've been driving home from the all too time consuming day-job. Other times an episode of a television show in which we've taken a recent interest will spark story ideas for episodes I'd love to write, and that's a whole other ball of wax that will come in a subsequent post. Look out, Michelle and Robert King; I'm gunning for your show.

If I was a writer of greater discipline I would be able to simply jot down the outline of these bursts of inspiration and file them away for another day when current projects and deadlines have been met. Of course, if I was a writer of greater discipline, I would have much more progress to report on the status of the third book, which, sadly, hasn't progressed much beyond where it was when I first started weekly production of these columns back in December.

Perversely, the longer I'm working on a story, the more earnestly I long for it to be over so I can move on to the next one. I couldn't wait to be finished Last Dance in its final days of first draft because I was so anxious to start writing this book, You know the one: the book that was supposed to write itself. Now I can't wait for it to be over - and I have a helluva lot further to go than when I first began feeling that way during the Last Dance days.

Opening lines are among my favourite things to produce. Not opening lines to a chapter, but opening lines to a book. I like them short and snappy and when I come up with one that I'm especially enjoying in the safe confines of my own head I want to get it down into a story.

Deadly Lessons began with "He was definitely snoring."  Last Dance opens with "This sucks," a line I thought was potentially risky as the first thing my publisher would see upon submission. The current book begins "Then her boob popped out. Right out." I'm particularly pleased with that one. It also serves as a potential boost in sales to adolescent males.

Of course, my sad reality is that while I have no shortage of ideas for new stories, my completion rate on any of them is sadly lacking. How wonderful it will be, I tell myself, when I just get this one finished I'll be able to write that story that I really want to work on.

And I suppose if one is going to be cursed with reasons not to be progressing, having too many ideas is perhaps less of a curse than no ideas at all. At least the winking cursor isn't alone on a blank screen for long.

Next week: subplots and B stories - how much is too much?

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

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Part of the goal of beginning a regular column on the blog, at least according to sources in the know, is to keep loyal readers (I know you're out there) abreast of developments and progress of the works in progress. Readers, and budding writers, I’m told, are interested in watching how a project develops, what stages of progression the writer finds himself or herself in and what processes are working or not working.

Publishers and other authors have told me that they truly have readers who are interested in following the process of a book's development. To be true, this is probably for writers who have many books and fans just salivating at the the thought of the next book coming out. For a writer working on book number three, I'm not certain how accurate an assumption this will turn out to be.

I find myself wondering just what it is that the blog audience wants to know. This assumes, of course, there is, in fact, a blog audience. Posting to a blog is not unlike working in radio, of which I have some, albeit extremely limited, experience. Unless one is having the listners call into the program, there really is no immediate way of knowing if, in fact, anyone is listening at all. A blog post is like that. Sure I could log into the statistical part of the site management tools to see how many people have popped by but surely half of those could have stumbled upon it by accident, also not entirely unlike working in radio.

On the one hand, how much does the blogging writer reveal about what’s happening in the story as it is developing? Too much, and I may as well be writing a serialized novel, like weekend newspapers used to do back when print wasn’t so expensive and people actually read the weekend papers. The idea itself isn’t so bad but if everyone is reading it while I’m writing it, who is left to read the final product? Too little and I’m basically keeping a scorecard of how much work is being done: today I wrote four pages, or 1, 167 words. Tune in next week for an updated total. It’d be like a telethon covering my writing.

So in the interest of not-quite-full disclosure, the latest saga starring Winston Patrick is currently titled W3.doc, though in the header at the top of the page I use the more colourful “Untitled Winston Patrick 3^rd Novel.” The publisher asked for something a bit more indicative of the storyline as they started thinking about advance marketing so I think I came up with something along the lines of “Failing to Appear,” since the general gist of the story has to do with a missing person. I subtly avoided the J.A. Jance novel of almost the same name by replacing the noun of the title with a verb. Hopefully she’ll never know, unless I can convince her to write something nice about it on the front cover.

Winston discovers one of his previous students has been long-since missing after a hunting trip. The student’s body was never discovered and the way the incident was handled both by the family and the school leads him to question the version of events provided and unravel an increasingly complex series of events that may paint an entirely different picture than what is initially presented.

So that’s the logline. Here’s where we are so far: Winston has found out about the missing student and is beginning to investigate.

Hmmm….it seems I may still have a significant ways to go.

On the plus side, over the last several weeks – which is a long time not to be progressing much on the story – I have re-read the work so far and still kinda like it. That’s a hopeful sign because I always worry that I’ll undertake a project and find that by the time it’s done – or in this case, nowhere near done – the story is a flop and I don’t want to continue with it. So far that’s not the case.

Next week: what the hell is holding me back? One of my big problems: too many beginnings.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

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On January 30, 2012, Last Dance was launched. Book launches are kinda cool, at least the two I’ve had. Generally, it’s a pretty favourable audience, made up, as they tend to be, of family and friends who already think you’re pretty terrific, regardless of the quality of the work you’re about to release. Heck, most of the time they haven’t read it yet and even if they had, they’re family and friends so they’re not likely to say something bad about it even if they didn’t like it. And anyone who isn’t family or friends is there because they like you, your work or both. Not exactly a tough crowd.

A year seems a pretty reasonable amount of time for reflection.

I’m guess that a key indicator of how successful the book has been – or hasn’t been – is sales.

But for a relatively new writer – unless you’re one of those new but unexpectedly wildly outrageously successful writers for whom the New York Times is writing stories about how wildly successful you are – finding out your sales numbers is once or twice per year at best experience. My publisher’s year end appears to be at the end of February. Given that my book only came out on January 30^th of last year, the numbers were, hopefully, artificially low.  This year should give me a better sense of how well the book has done. Stay tuned. I’m sure to report it unless it’s depressingly low. Then I’ll probably keep it a secret.

Another indicator may be the reviews that the book received. And to be sure, when Deadly Lessons came out I was hard pressed to even get the damned thing reviewed at all. Not that I’m bitter or anything – it’s been over six years – but I couldn’t even get The Vancouver Sun to review it. Here’s a book written by a Vancouver based author, who has even written for the Sun, with a story set in Vancouver and the same week it came out, our local paper was publishing reviews of big American titles.

Okay, maybe I’m still a little bitter.

Last Dance, on the other hand, did receive a fair number of reviews. It's almost as though reviewers won't look at your first book, perhaps thinking that getting published was some kind of fluke; a second book shows some staying power. Margaret Cannon, who Canadian crime writers will tell you is the key person one wants to have one's books reviewed by, said Last Dance is a "solid mystery with a sad message: Hate does kill." Don Graves of the Hamilton Spectator said it's "a story about searching for a life that can sustain the soul regardless of how uphill the battle shouldn't be."

Heady stuff.

Publisher's Weekly, the first reviewer out of the gate, said "Russell [that's me!] artfully lets Winston's own words paint Winston as a bit self-righteous, prickly and less discerning than Winston believes himself to be" and that the "initially straightforward plot takes a number of surprising twists, which suggest that a simple, reprehensible hate crime may be something else entirely." 

Still no word from The Vancouver Sun. Still a little bitter.

Overall, the reviews were mostly positive on both sides of the border so I can’t really complain. And yet, a year later, it is difficult to determine how I feel about how the book has done now that the momentum of events and press has slowed down. And as that momentum deteriorates, so grows the pressure to get the next book completed.

Sigh.

Next week: checking in on the progress of Winston’s next mystery.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 3:21 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 30 January 2013 4:48 PM PST

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Apparently the internet is not a passing fad. This is despite the litany of users who believe the internet to be no more than the world's largest album of cats in funny poses. My sister may also need to be taught that accidentally deleting her Safari icon on her computer has not, in fact, put the internet's existence in imminent jeopardy.

While many intended the internet to be this free lovin', down with the man, anti-corporate, open space (save for the military who actually created it with Al Gore) well, that didn't happen.

Faster than you can say "visit our website for more information," relatively speaking, presence on the web is beyond ideal; it's a requirement.

This, I've been assured, is true for authors.

Certainly, Amazon changed the way that books were sold beginning in 1994. It may have made it harder to do an in-store book signing but by all accounts, the reach of Amazon’s web presence was a game changer. And once an author was found on Amazon, it was only a quick search for readers to find out more about a writer, his or her work and biography. Gone are the days of the reclusive genius. Like other forms of celebrity culture, authors suddenly needed to be findable on the worldwide web. And just as importantly, they need to be ready to interact with readers.

“I’m waitinnnnggggggg.”

Of course, some authors are much better at this than others. Robert Crais, author of the Elvis Cole mysteries has a visually appealing site, with pictures of all his books, information about public appearances (this pre-supposes sufficient interest in one’s work to warrant a whole section dedicated to public appearances), biographical information and the requisite links to purchase information.

Having a website is one thing; finding content to make it interesting or unique is quite another. Best-selling crime writer Michael Connelly’s website includes a photo gallery that shows locations of scenes from his many novels, usually include an excerpt from the book in question, allowing the reader to get a visual sense of the settings in his books. He also includes some ‘bonus’ work, unpublished in other forms that readers can enjoy when they need a Connelly fix.

To be sure, really big name authors are usually the clients of publicists who take on a great deal of the writer's online presence, something not readily available to the smaller or burgeoning scribe.

Even there, some authors have been fortunate enough – and talented enough – to generate such enthusiasm from their fans that they readily take on the management of the writer’s website as a means of staying connected with their favourite writer. Canadian novelist Michael Slade, whose fans lovingly refer to themselves as Sladists, have been co-creating and managing the author’s online presence.

For us relatively new published authors – and complete simpletons when it comes to website development – developing content is a significant challenge; we don’t always get invited to that many public appearances we need to promote. My own site is incredibly easy to operate. Hosted by a large web company in the U.S.(it met my needs at the time) it offers the simplest interface. I need keep no files on my computer per se. There is no uploading to do. I simply click on ‘Add a Page’ and start writing the content or cut and paste it from whatever document I choose. The only down side is that with it being an American company, they did not have access to .ca domains, which means I point my website to the American address. It offers a blog, obviously, to which you can subscribe by RSS feed (hint, hint).

Even still I’m planning to migrate to a Canadian site; Netfirms is in the running as they’re the company I registered my domain name with when I finally got it but I’m very much open to suggestions.

Then there’s Facebook (no I haven't figured out a so-called vanity page yet) and Twitter, where I try to maintain some kind of presence but keeping the content fresh and alive on all three platforms is consistently a challenge, particularly when what I really would like to be doing is writing more and marketing less. My website still refers to Last Dance as having been released in January. That was, of course, January 2012. Time flies.

The goal, I know, is that Facebook and Twitter will drive traffic to my website and blog,which will channel interest into my books. But it's a lot of work and one can't help but wonder how much impact it's having.

Next week: Last Dance - one year later.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Thursday, 17 January 2013 9:45 AM PST

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I have, to date, met but one author – and I have met quite a number – who professes to genuinely enjoy the necessary evil that is the marketing component of the writing process. To be fair, it could be that we’re supposed to not like marketing – it’s the socially appropriate thing to say amongst a group of artists, which is where we generally encounter one another, book festivals, writing groups and the like. And in James’ case, having a bubbly, vibrant personality may make one more adept at the very people-intensive skill of selling books, generally seen to be a different skill set than the rather solitary one of writing them.

People think – at least I assume they think – writers are by their very nature solitary creatures. It seems logical the very nature of gathering publicity would be anathema to our personalities, which is clearly an exaggeration. Many of the authors I know or have met are very vibrant, large personalities who are outgoing and wouldn’t at all fit the stereotype of the quiet, bookish loner. Of course, I generally meet them at events where we’re surrounded by fellow authors. There’s also often liquor.

Marketing for authors falls into a few categories. The first is all of our professional associations. In Canada, most writers in my genre below to the Crime Writers of Canada, for example, and most other genres have their associations, guilds, and unions. Apart from networking among fellow scribes, most offer conferences open to writers and their fans and newsletters and information to keep readers informed about upcoming releases. Authors and their publishers are also often in search of contests that will bring public exposure to their works.

The most time consuming marketing – and often, it seems, the least effective – are the public appearances. My least favourite of these is the book store signing. In theory, at least as they appear on television - the author is brought out to the well decorated table where a line-up of eager book fans eagerly awaits, often with stacks of books in arm, looking for the signature and personalized message from their favourite writer.

It may come as a surprise that it doesn't generally look exactly like that.

Most often, bookstore signings involve a small table, sometimes near the front of the store, occasionally with some decorative draping cloth and two to four hours to kill, hoping beyond hope folks walking into the store will be sufficiently intrigued by my presence to want to come by, chat and buy your book - hell, even if they come out of pity. More often than not, unless the author is willing to step forward to greet each customer and attempt to engage in conversation there is a lot of quiet reflection time.

Other public appearances are certainly more enjoyable - at least in my experience. I enjoy events that involve public speaking, question and answer sessions and the like. That could be the performer in me, or my ego talking, but at least I'm not sitting alone at a table like a doll at an open display case. Perhaps not surprisingly, these events tend to sell more books: given the chance to speak with perspective book buyers the odds of sales seem to naturally increase.

Both of these types of events, of course take time and sometimes money. Many authors to whom I have spoken acknowledge how torn they often find themselves between needing to get out and do the requisite marketing duties and using that time to be doing what we allegedly do best: write books. And it isn't uncommon to invest significant moneys traveling to book fairs and conferences during which the book sales come nowhere near to covering the costs associated with attending.

Still, the publicity generated by these events is supposed to help with exposure and so soldier on we must. The more our names and our titles are seen in public - with authors in tow - the more readers will familiarize themselves with our work. Stay tuned for more public appearances, I guess.

Next week: my attempts at electronic marketing - from website to social media. I'll be open to suggestions.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 9:26 PM PST

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Snoopy was right.

This was actually the book that was supposed to 'write itself.' This is an expression I have heard about writing that has been expressed by people writing about writing but I have yet to hear another author describe having experienced the phenomenon.

To be sure, some stories seem to flow much more easily than others. Deadly Lessons more or less went that way (seriously, as I promised last week, the origin story of Deadly Lessons is coming in a subsequent column). Sure there was work involved but I don't recall having had so much angst and struggle with the direction of the story. I could be looking back at that initial novel through rose coloured glasses but I know that while there were elements of the story with which I struggled, by and large I had not only a very clear direction from the outset but also a pretty good foreknowledge of the paths I'd take from beginning to end.

The latest book or W3.doc as it's lovingly known, as cheesy as it sounds, originated overnight in a dream. And it really was one of those stories that arrived with such clarity that for the final two years in which I was working on Last Dance I was literally chomping at the bit to get to this third book that would, I assumed, write itself.

Of course it hasn't worked out that way. Like Last Dance before it, W3 has proven to be a challenge, not helped by the significant gaps of time between sessions of sitting down to write. I have blamed all kinds of factors (see post from November 28, 2011), not the least of which has been increasing doubts about the efficacy of the story: the longer it is taking me to write this book, the more doubt I have in the narrative itself.

But there is reason for hope. As I have taken to spending some quality time with the story so far, I have renewed faith in it - at its heart it's a missing person's story. Why I have struggled with it is that I'm realizing the story isn't completely flawed, it's actually just much more complicated than I had thought.

My first two books were fairly standard mysteries in that the premise of the book is trying to establish who is responsible for the central crimes. There are elements of that in W3 as well. But W3 really will focus more on the why of the crime rather than on the 'who dunnit' aspect. In fact, it will likely be pretty clear who dunnit fairly on; the question to be solved is more along the lines of what exactly did the doer do and why.

I'm hardly breaking new ground in the genre - far from it. It's just different territory for me and I'm discovering that the further I go into the story, the complexities involved require me to pay much closer attention to detail and discovery than perhaps I had in the past.

And as far as hope go, I went through significant doubt on Last Dance as well and nearly everyone who has read it and shared their opinions have told me they liked it better than Deadly Lessons.

If quality is determined by self-doubt, W3 ought to be outstanding.

Next week: a little about the thing I like least of the writing life - marketing.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 2 January 2013 4:03 PM PST

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When riding the Tube in London passengers are audibly reminded while exiting the trains to "Mind the Gap." For daily or regular London Transport users, the warning is largely irrelevant and likely is no longer even heard by weary commuters on their daily trudges into the city and back out to the burbs where all but the most-wealthy of London's workers must live. They simply step over the gap between train and platform and continue on their way, no twisted ankles or high heels stuck between terra firma and terra traina.

There's a parallel to writing.

In my case, the gap is the seemingly continually expanding span of time between sessions of writing the next novel in the Winston Patrick series, currently titled “W3.doc” on my computer, though the publisher already asked me some time ago for the title to begin advance marketing. I take that as a positive sign but also an increase in the pressure to, you know, write the damned book.

I experienced the gap in writing Last Dance too, wherein weeks and occasionally months would go by during which no real meaningful writing on the book went on.

This differs significantly from my experience writing Deadly Lessons; I wrote the first draft of that first book, start to finish, in about ten months. To be sure, those were the halcyon days of being on a six month sabbatical from work, pre-child, with really nothing but long stretches of day in front of me to in which to write my literary debut. That and golf, which became quickly evident was not something to which I should devote serious time. Having been granted a leave from work to write a master’s thesis I found that by the time my leave had come I had more or less completed it and turning to fiction seemed something worthwhile to do. It helped that it was a partially paid leave, which meant that for that one and only time in my life I was a paid writer. More on the Deadly Lessons origin story in a later post.

The real danger of the gap is maintaining, hell even remembering, the consistency of the story. On more than one occasion I’ve returned to the story after a significant gap only to find myself wondering what the hell was going on in the story. This happens to readers when they’ve been away from the text awhile but it’s deadly for the writer. We know eventually that our ability to get the details correct and the story flowing is critical to keep the reader from wandering away from the story in the first place.

In Last Dance, I actually found myself trying to pick up a scene following a pretty significant gap in writing productivity. I had to go back multiple pages in search of the identity of a character about who I was reading, only to figure out I had inadvertently changed a character’s name, which was why, of course, I couldn’t figure out who the hell I was reading about. No small thing either: the character whose name I had altered was one of the central protagonists and the homicide victim who is, in fact, the premise of the story.

So yeah, the gap is a challenge.

Which is at least in part why I’m not getting as much writing done on this holiday break as I had hoped and planned (and for those of you keeping score from the last two weeks’ postings, no, I haven’t written the discovery scene mentioned in both those posts).

Instead, I have gone back to the beginning, printing out the entire work in progress to date, which I plan to read from start to finish to make sure the story hasn’t gotten swallowed in the gaps between writing. I need to get a renewed handle on how I’ve developed the story so far, hopefully paving the way for renewed flow and output going into the New Year.

Makes for a pretty decent resolution too.

Next week: this story may be more complicated than I thought.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

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