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Monthly Archives: December 2010
Monthly Archives: December 2010
In a dream, I received the answer to the problem with my Nano novel (Xenophile): make it a mystery. It’s hard sf, and a lot of the issues I want to explore in this series are pretty esoteric, and I was looking for a way for readers to connect with the characters on some familiar ground to make the harder sf elements easier to swallow. I decided that making them a detective/law enforcement team for hire out on the frontier of human settlements could be a good way to go.
I’ve been reading and watching more Mystery lately. All the subgenres. Police procedural, cozy, thriller, science fiction, history. Gee, this is great stuff, I thought. Why don’t I enjoy mystery stories more often?
Then I tripped over a story that made me want to throw things, and I remembered. Oh, yeah. That’s why.
The number one problem with the mystery genre? The entire genre. Yes, I’m going there!
The number one problem with the mystery genre is caused by trying to avoid the number two problem. The number two problem is caused by the number three problem. So let’s go over them in reverse order:
3. The murderer comes out of nowhere.
This is a noob mistake, right? You can’t have four suspects through-out the story and then suddenly pull a fifth suspect, a character the reader has never even heard about, out of the hat in the final scene. The problem is that if you bring all the suspects on stage, you run into the Problem#2.2. It’s really obvious who the murderer is.
When I lived in Africa, there was only one channel on TV, and even that channel only aired shows a few hours a day, mostly old re-runs of oddly chosen foreign series. One of the shows was a West German detective show. It was great to watch, because, unlike with American shows, I could never predict who the murderer would be. After a number of episodes, though, that changed. Pretty soon, I could predict which suspect would be guilty with fair regularity. (The murderer was usually a jobless young man, whose motive was always greed.)With American mysteries, especially on TV, a lot of candidates can be eliminated based on politically correct stereotypes. If a poor, black man is accused of committing the murder to get drugs and an old, white Senator with a Southern accent is accused of doing it to cover up an arms deal, you can bet it’s going to be the Senator.
Most people would say that writing an obvious murderer is the biggest mistake a mystery writer can make. But I think there is something worse.
1. The murderer is absurd.
To me, the biggest mistake a writer can make is to distort the characters for the sake of being unexpected. Credibility is sacrificed to surprise.
Myster writers have pulled off genre-changing surprises. All sorts of creative ideas have been tried. “The butler did it!” was at some point, new. Everyone did it; no one did it (the death was faked); the detective himself was the murderer! And so on.
That’s fine, as long as the writer has paid their dues and planted their clues throughout the story. But you can’t just explain a motive into existence. Sure, if you have two suspects, and one is an angry young man and the other is a sweet old grandma, you can write your story giving the young man an alibi and the grandma an extreme jealousy of her knitting partner’s Christmas cookie recipe. But that is not going to convince me grandma would poke her partner through the eye with a knitting needle. Because, in real life, angry young men commit the majority of violent crimes, whereas jealous grandmas just bitch on the phone to their granddaughters (oh, do they), and I need more than a writer’s need for a surprise ending to convince me otherwise.
Oh, but it gets worse. Mysteries are usually written in series. I’m willing to suspend disbelief about the number of times a sleuth can encounter murderers, even serial killers (though they aren’t actually that common), the number of times a sleuth can be shot and survive with no discernible long-term health issues, the number of times the sleuth can innocently date the murderer before she realizes his true nature while thinking deeply on the matter tied up in the trunk of his car.
But what I cannot forgive is when the writer takes a major supporting character, who, up until now has shown every sign of being endearingly quirky but in no way murderous, and suddenly makes that person the murderer in the latest case. For the sake of surprise. The old “Watson is really Moriarty!” trick. Right. That is surprising. But it’s also stupid. Because crap like that happens only in mysteries.
That’s not say that major characters can’t be suspects or murderers. But don’t confuse motive with character. Someone can have amble motive to murder, yet to murder would be a violation of their character. I would rather guess the murderer in a mystery before then end, but be kept guessing about how the characters will deal with it than sacrifice characters for a cheap twist.
There is a great version of Happy Christmas (War is Over) by the three tenors, Pavarotti-Domingo-Carreras, but the You Tube version has terrible sound. I heard this version of I Heard The Bells for the first time when searching for songs on You Tube. I was looking for the older version, but I fell in love with this one.
I’ve looked over the songs I’ve posted, and wow, did I find every sad Christmas song in the world? Time for some holly jolly joy and all that.
Burl Ives Have a Holly Jolly Christmas is one of my all-time favorites. I will always imagine him as a snowman.
I don’t watch soap operas, and I have no idea who these people in Jingle Bell Rock are. What I do know is that they can’t sing, which makes the whole song remind me of a drunken office party. In a good way. (They aren’t actually as of bad singers as your co-workers, don’t worry.)
I love Carol of the Bells, and I couldn’t decide which was my favorite version. I went with The Bird and the Bee, but Trans-Siberian Orchestra is also very cool.
I thank all of you who have patiently waited for the print version of Conmegence. After numerous delays, all of my own accidental and unwanted contrivance, I have finally managed to approve the print version for sale. It should be up on Amazon’s site in about a week.
I will also be selling autographed copies, if anyone wants one. These won’t be available before Christmas. (I know this will disappoint the vast hoards of people wishing to give autographed copies of my book as gifts, but just think, you could buy it in January and avoid the rush next year.) You can put in an order now, and not pay until it is ready to ship in mid-January. Just let me know, in a comment or a private email to: tara@taramayastales.com
It’s taken me awhile to work out all the kinks of this self-publishing business. It’s not that hard; it’s not that easy, either. It’s been worth, and a lot of fun, but given the hiccups I’ve experienced, I’m glad I eased in with my anthology, Conmergence, which I felt less nervous about “ruining.” I now know that even if it takes me a while to get things out there, even if my schedule is not as fast-paced and coordinated as I would like, it’s still worth doing. And I’ve reached the conclusion it’s worth doing again, which is why I will be bringing my fantasy epic, The Unfinished Song, out as well. As with Conmergence, I will bring the ebook out first, and the print version will be available a few weeks later..
The hardest thing about being an indie is the fact that since you CAN check your sales day by day, or minute by minute, it’s very hard NOT to. If there is a day, or even an hour, that I don’t make a sale, I feel very depressed. Joe Konrath has said one shouldn’t compare oneself to other writers, but of course he says this because as writers we compare ourselves to other writers all the time. Most of the time, comparison makes me feel quite despondent, because I can list, with a fair amount of certainty, indie writers who are doing much better than me. Other times, it reassures me, because they’ve written about how slow things started out in the beginning, and built up slowly.
It’s winter and it’s cold and wet, the baby has a cold and so do I, the baby was up all night and so was I, and I can get gloomy. I feel that no one will ever want to read my books, even if I publish my whole fantasy series. I will be compulsively checking my sales page, and see no change hour after hour. Then I remind myself that after all, even if that should come to pass, I will have lost nothing. I will not be worse off than I was before. I will be writing, which I always knew was in my hands, but sometimes lost sight of. I will be publishing, publishing, which I always thought was in someone else’s hands, but now need not be.
I have had trouble in another area of my life because, I was told, my interests are too wide ranging. I try too much, and often cannot chew all that I bite. I feel frustrated because I don’t have the time I’d like for writing, and publicizing, and I wonder how I’ll ever build up my sales if I don’t have time to let people know about this book or the ones to come.
But on the other hand, when I look over what I am doing with my life, there is nothing that I would excise. Not my children–I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t think I have too many–not my soul mate, not my academic career, not my love of travel, or social activism, not my curiosity about a million things that have no obvious purpose. If I cannot do as well at any one thing as I would like, at least I am glad because I tried too much–and loved too much–and not too little.
One of the paradoxes of the holidays is that they don’t always bring us joy. Sometimes they make us feel more lost, depressed and alone than ever.
Or maybe winter does that on its own. The winter holidays are ancient, older than any of the religions we practice today, and I think they were meant as an antidote to winter blues. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
If you are feeling alone or depressed this holiday, please reach out and let someone reach you.
Today’s theme is Christmas treats. I looked for the muppet song, Christmas Smorgasbord, but couldn’t find a version I liked. Hard Candy Christmas isn’t really about candy, but it’s a great song and it always makes me want candy, so here you go.
Candy. Cake. Cookies.
What could be better?!