by
Scott D. Parker
Of course there’d be weeks like this.
It’s been rather quiet this week at the home offices of Quadrant Fiction Studio. The biggest news was the approval of the paperback version of EMPTY COFFINS. It is now available for all y’all who like to feel paper under your fingers when you read a story.
DAY JOB BENEFITING THE WRITING JOB
I’ve been a technical writer/marketing writer for my entire career. I now work in the marketing department for an oil and gas firm here in Houston. The types of deliverables we generate constantly give me ideas on how to promote my fiction writing. SEO was the big lightbulb moment this week. A co-worker of mine gave me some instructions on how to best utilize proper metadata, tags, and keywords to promote effective SEO. I thought I knew what I was doing. Turns out, I was a little off base. As soon as I learned what she taught me, I started working it into the deliverables at work.
And also began working on it on my author website.
Every day is learning experience in life. It’s only how we apply it in our lives that makes each day a step better than the previous one.
WRITING LESSON LEARNED THIS WEEK
I wake around 4:30 to 4:45am and exercise then write until 5:50am. Sometimes, I get distracted in the morning or do some sort of busy work. I did that on Thursday morning, but figured I’d get in the words come lunch.
Until I got to the office, logged into email, and discovered I had to attend a meeting from 11:00am to 1:00pm. Well, there went the lunch writing time, leaving Thursday’s word count very low.
Think I’ll blow off the morning writing session again anytime soon? Nope.
AUDIOBOOK OF THE WEEK
Let me be frank: Scott Brick is my favorite narrator. I might even pay to have him read the phonebook. I have listened to many books he’s narrated, but two authors stand atop my list of great writers + great narrator = awesome experience. One is Clive Cussler, specifically the Isaac Bell adventures. The other is Brad Meltzer. I am listening to Meltzer’s THE FIRST CONSPIRACY: THE PLOT TO KILL GEORGE WASHINGTON. I hold two degrees in history and even I barely knew this story. Seltzer tells an utter engrossing story so well, you forget you know the end of the story. Seltzer’s words as spoken by Brick is magical. I’ll provide a full review when I’m done, but this is already the book to beat for Best Book of 2019.
BLOGPOST OF THE WEEK
“Second-Hand Sales” was posted on Tuesday by Dean Wesley Smith on his blog. He discusses how it’s a good thing to have our books in print and available at used bookstores. Ultimately, if you have a decent back catalog and you earn a fan via a used copy of your book, it’ll give your writing career a boost.
Give it a read. Comment if you want. He moderates all comments but lets almost all of them through.
That’s it for this week. I’m already starting on the publication process of the next Calvin Carter book, HELL DRAGON. It’ll hit stores on 1 March.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Thursday, January 17, 2019
The Evil We All Do
By David Nemeth
Prior to 2004, Google brought forth the idea of "don't be evil". Some held hope that this would come true, but alas, it did not. Facebook is the easy target for evilness. If they had access to your soul, Zuckerberg would sell it in a cyborg heartbeat. In fact, some of you have left the time suck that is Facebook and moved on, all while turning a blind eye to Amazon.
Most of us look the other way when it comes to Amazon. I know I do. Hell, over at Unlawful Acts, I have purchase links to Amazon. I'm a Prime subscriber and I even subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. And that's something I need to address, something I think we all need to address.
But let's forget about Facebook knowing your every move for one second and look hard at what Amazon is doing to its warehouse workers.
Timed toilet breaks, impossible targets and exhausting, “intolerable” working conditions are frequent complaints. Staff have been paid less than the living wage, and it even emerged drivers had faced fines for “early” deliveries. (The Daily Mirror)Even when Amazon gives raises, its workers fume.
But in Amazon warehouses across the country, many longtime workers are fuming that — based on the information they have received so far — they may end up making thousands of dollars less a year.
Yes, Amazon is increasing wages, which will benefit most employees. But it will no longer give out new stock grants and monthly bonuses. Some workers believe that means their total compensation will shrink.Hell, even the white collar workers have got it bad.
At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: “I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.”)So while you think it's great that you left Facebook 'cause you need to protect your privacy––that you're making a stand against the man––I ain't too fond that you're out there shilling for Amazon reviews to try and beat that algorithm. Fuck the guy standing 12-hours a day at the printing press shipping your $17.99 print-on-demand book out. Am I right? But at least you're off Facebook.
Not cool, bro, not cool at all.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Crime fiction resolutions
Have you broken your New Year's resolutions yet?
They aren't the best way of changing your behavior, but so what? Everyone does it, we might as well join them. I have a list of resolutions I'll keep when writing crime fiction, and I hope you will join me:
They aren't the best way of changing your behavior, but so what? Everyone does it, we might as well join them. I have a list of resolutions I'll keep when writing crime fiction, and I hope you will join me:
Stop typing "cordite"
Unless you are writing about World War One, no. "Gunpowder" is what gunshots smell like. If you've never smelled gunpowder, it's not too far off from firecrackers and the like.Glocks are now banned.
Just say "pistol" for John Browning's sake. I read one story where "glock" was not capitalized. So Glocks are the new bandaids or kleenex, they are what people who've only seen guns on television call a gun.The Hayes Code
Crime cannot pay! Sure it does. Ask the President. I am sick and tired of the sheltered, middle-class perspective in crime fiction, where the thieves can't get away with it and anyone who uses drugs that aren't prescribed by a bartender or doctor must be a bad person. It only shows how sheltered you are. Yes, a junkie will steal your television, and then help you go look for it, but look at the statistics on drug use. Find me a teenager who hasn't copped Adderall for finals week. This was on The Sopranos season one, written twenty years ago, but I'm still reading stories where we know someone is untrustworthy because their jacket smells like cannabis smoke.Police State Fan Fiction
If your sleuth washes their hands like Pontius Pilate once they turn in their suspect, do you read the newspaper? Have you heard about stop & frisk, and how prosecutors pile on charges to force innocent people to plea bargain and avoid serious prison time? There are good cops and justices out there, but unless they acknowledge the widespread injustice, you are perpetuating the Blue Wall of Silence that protects police who are violent toward minorities, and prosecutors who make their careers by railroading people. Chicago police went to prison for running a torture room that coerced black men to confess to crimes they didn't commit. Texas prosecutors have served time for hiding evidence. Show me sleuths who work for The Innocence Project, or at least recognize that the system has serious problems. One darling P.I. character sent the victim of a pedophile to jail for killing his molester, and assured us that a good cop would make sure he was safe in juvenile prison. In Louisiana, where they don't even fund public defenders any more. I threw that book across the room. I train with police, I like stories about police, but if you trade puff pieces for access on ride-alongs, you are a hack.Classism and racism gotta go
I just read a story where a white guy who loves Japan kicked a yakuza's ass in a fight, and also got a respectful nod from a Japanese native for knowing how to speak the language. Hello, the '30s were over a while ago. Enough with the patronizing Orientalism. This is like those '80s ninja movies where we had to watch Sho Kosugi lose to some white rando. Pardon me while I put the scene where Bruce Lee breaks Chuck Norris's neck on repeat forever. When I wrote Blade of Dishonor I made Mikio the best fighter because I grew up watching kung fu and Jackie Chan movies in Chinatown, and we all laughed at guys like Steven Seagal who never got hit in their movies. My favorite Seagal fact is when he trash talked a real fighter and tried to claim he was the reason for Ronda Rousey's success, Gene LeBell choked him until he pooped himself.High School BS
Speaking of people taking for others' success... grow up. It's a hard enough road out there, without back-stabbing self-serving narcissists parachuting into the genre and demanding that we recognize their genius. I try to help newer writers when they ask me, and sometimes I miss when they are users who will badmouth people behind their backs, tell lies, and then side with them for personal gain. Reality usually catches up with these guys, after no one will deal with them and they have to start their own press "to keep it real" (meaning: forget everything they said when they were drunk). Unfortunately they often hurt the careers of new writers who don't know better. Here's a hint: if all someone ever talks about is themselves, and claims they love your work but show no evidence of having read it--or anything written after 1940--maybe walk away. Just don't turn your back.
So, happy new year! Write better, not more. This garden's full of roses, just watch out for the pricks.
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Those Who Keep it Brief
To divert my brain at my job yesterday and to fill it with something interesting, I took a pause from work and went, as I'll do from time to time, to Wikipedia. I decided to read about one of my favorite composers, Erik Satie (1866-1925). The Frenchman, of course, is famous for his musical "miniatures", short compositions such as the three Gymnopedies for solo piano, and the six Gnossienes, also for piano. Brief as each of these pieces are, between one and four minutes long, I never get tired of listening to them. Over the years, I've listened to them, as well as other Satie pieces, countless times. For all their brevity, they have a quality that never ceases to beguile me. They seem so simple as music, but in actuality, they're complex. They somehow sound playful and melancholy at the same time. They're rich, beautiful, slippery, mysterious. They're not quite like any other music that's ever been written. This, to me, really is art of the highest sort - endlessly fascinating work done with maximum economy.
Satie had his own views on the matter of size and duration in art and expressed them well (words that I think apply to writing as much as they do to music and which, in writing, I do my best to put into practice). To quote how Wikipedia puts it: "Generally [Satie] would say that he did not think it permitted that a composer take more time from his public than strictly necessary".
Now I doubt Satie, an artistic innovator and experimenter if ever there was one, meant there should be literal prohibitions on how people produce their art, but as a general principle to follow, when it comes to taking time from the public (your listeners, your readers, whoever) he was dead right.
But I think I've already gone too long and so...
Monday, January 14, 2019
Holiday Reading Review
By Marietta Miles
Joe Clifford
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄
My first step into Joe Clifford’s gritty and poetic world was 2013’s JUNKIE LOVE. I recall chilling on a family vacation, sitting by a crowded pool, hopeful about an interesting new read. While everyone laughed and played in the sun, I was caught up in Joe’s dirty tale, shaking my head, dropping my jaw, and needing to read more.
JUNKIE LOVE is bleak, vivid, and, at last, inspiring. Joe’s ability to see the smallest, yet most telling, side to a character paints this story with heartbreaking or uplifting detail. Each thoughtful touch, and there are so many, in JUNKIE LOVE is another stone in the path Joe has purposefully led you along.
This is an important book for those who like to be moved by what they read. Ambushed and haunted. By reflecting personal experiences within the world of addiction, Joe Clifford reaches beyond genre and shakes the reader awake. The book is literary shock and awe.
Yet, Joe has also delivered the expertly written Jay Porter series. This collection is classic mystery, with a rural-noir setting, and surprisingly dark enough to appease even my murkier leanings. Each installment is expertly paced and planned to incorporate individual themes and overall story. Porter’s attempt to save his junkie brother. The search for a missing journalist following the trail of more wrongdoing by Porter’s hometown enemies. The storylines are imaginative and deep, his characters are flawed enough to seem real, two important aspects to a great book. It’s good to remember, for all of his “Wild Card” persona, Joe has spent a large portion of his life learning and honing his craft and the Jay Porter series shows his hard work.
Now Joe Clifford has jumped head first into a terrifying, psychological thriller, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY and this may be his best, yet.
I could not put this book down. Joe has an unmatchable knack for building backstory and developing interesting personalities, so it’s a gift when are introduced to new creations. Alex Salerno might just be one of my favorite leads. She is tough, but fragile and flawed by the light of day and her story is remarkable. A survivor.
Burdened with a tough childhood and nearly destroyed by a traumatic and brutal assault, she pieces her life together day by day just to get by. When a tenacious young college reporter asks to interview her about her abduction and her escape for a school paper, the project sets off an emotional and dangerous chain of events.
The interview leads Alex into an investigation of a seemingly unrelated murder case in her hometown. A teenage girl has been missing for years, and though a body was never found, a man suspected of her murder was identified and sent to a mental hospital. Things aren’t as they seem, and Alex begins to think the suspected killer, a mentally-challenged man named Benny, has been wrongfully accused.
The story, for the most part, is told from Alex’s perspective, but we are also given the chance to see events from Benny’s point of view and this enriches the story, keeps the pace quick and fresh, and allows your heart to break for the indignities he has suffered.
If you enjoy thrillers with a psychological bend, Alex’s apprehension over returning home is well detailed and her very real fight for sanity is clear, you are going to love THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY. If DARK PLACES and THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW sent shivers down your spine and drove you to search for more such writing, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY should be your next read.
The Reasons to Read Female Authors
By Sandra Ruttan
I was at home, reading a book the other day ...
And I read myself right into a wall of boobs.
Everything seemed to happen at chest level. Although there were the odd moments when the gaze drifted down to the legs, boobs were the focus.
The protagonist never saw a pair of breasts he didn't like, and for a guy who described himself as lacking ambition, down on his luck in the midst of a prolonged dry spell, he sure ran into a lot of boobs. Not 14% of the way in he was bedding the first woman, so at the time the story should have been having its call to action, he was calling for God.
The story's first turning point? Him bedding another woman. The reader isn't even at the 30% mark before the protagonist has had sex three times. With two of those occurrences at significant story markers I was starting to wonder if the book had been mislabeled mystery instead of erotica.
Then I picked up this other book and when something bad happened, the male author had the girl feel longing in her breasts. Let me tell you something; when something bad happens I may feel like my heart sinks or my stomach drops, but in no way are my boobs involved in responding to my emotions. Boys, they don't even naturally perk up when a handsome man walks into the room.
There were a couple of things I took away from those reading experiences. One was the clear conclusion that the author is a breast man. The other was that I couldn't straddle the gender line anymore.
I made a vow. I will read more female authors, and there are plenty of reasons I can think of for all people to set this goal.
Now, I may have started that oversimplified list of cliches as a way of venting over the absolute crap I was being subjected to (a low-level older guy who's amounted to nothing in his life and is nothing special to look at doesn't even have to try to have women just throwing themselves at him within a couple minutes of meeting him, legs spread - talk about a fantasy) but my resolve was serious.
I took my tongue out of my cheek and actually asked the question. Why should people read more female authors? And, while an exploration of the benefits of reading one gender risks reading like a criticism of the other gender, it wasn't hard to see that there were some very good reasons to consider author gender when selecting books. I had a draft of a rough post pulled together, and then I decided to do a little google search, and found that I wasn't alone in my thinking.
Why should everyone read more female authors?
1. A lot* of male writers are focused on their own self-importance. And just in case you need that opinion validated by a man:
2. Solidarity. Women haven't been given the same acceptance as men, so the female readership must right that wrong and help correct the imbalance an industry built on sexism created and continues to perpetuate. Studies have shown that it's common for male authors to command as much as 68-75% of review and feature coverage provided to authors by literary magazines and review columnists in both Britain and American. The New York Review of Books "shows a stronger bias. Among authors reviewed, 83% are men." The New York Times Book Review was notably better, with men only dominating 65% of the review space.
3. Female authors tend to focus on the quality of the work. Face it, when chances of getting nominated for any awards are slim to none, why worry about that? When the reviewers aren't going to focus on your work anyway, because you don't have a penis, you don't write for them either. You write for the readers.
4. A lot* of men are writing stereotypes, while women are injecting the breath of life into real characters, regardless of gender. "It’s in their depictions of both genders that female writers have the edge. I’ve grown weary of reading novels by men that portray women in one of four categories: the angelic virgin who manages to tame some quixotic lothario who’s spread so many wild oats that he has shares in Quaker; the pestering harpy who nags her boyfriend or husband, sucking all the fun out of his life; the slut who eventually gets murdered as payback for her wanton ways; the catalyst who is only there to prompt the man’s actions and is therefore not a human being at all, just a plot device. I find female writers are much more incisive in their writing of men, recognising that several billion people cannot be simply reduced to a few repetitive strains."
My recent read is far from the only book I've encountered where female characters seemed to be included for no reason other than to serve as a sexual pincushion. Do these men look at their young daughters and anticipate the moment when some man is leering at them for nothing more than their body parts?
Don't reward these male writers by keeping them in print. They need to go. NOW.
This actually brings to mind the controversy over George Pelecanos' By The Book piece, where out of over two dozen authors of influence noted, not a single one was female. I had my say on the topic - with statistics and sources to support my claims about how women aren't treated equally in publishing or in the mystery/crime genre - and don't want to simply rehash all of it. But in the same way that I emailed my favorite author recently about a quote I recall from about a dozen years ago, some things stay with me more than others. In the wake of the Pelecanos fall-out it was the attitudes of some male authors I know that grated on me and caused more ire. The fact that they just couldn't be that concerned about it, like it was no big deal, betrayed their comfort level with a system designed to keep women at least a peg below their male counterparts. In the same way that not recognizing that being white has afforded generations of people more opportunities and benefits that people who aren't white haven't enjoyed, the very definition of white privilege, not recognizing that being male has provided access to opportunities women have been denied is gender privilege. That saying, 'If you aren't for me, you're against me' applies. If you aren't willing to recognize the issue and actively work towards equality then you are perpetuating gender inequality.
Why yes, everyone is allowed to like what they like and read what they want. Even a white supremacist is afforded the freedom of speech that allows him to proclaim himself superior because he's pasty. And every decent person's freedom of thought is allowed to consider him scum for saying as much.
In the same way, a man who lives solely off the influence of other men (and insults the only woman he references in his NY Times piece) is fair game to be criticized and questioned for being sexist and by defending him you align yourself with his sexism. The most honest words are actions. If a professional writer can't bring themselves to think of one writer of the opposite gender they can say something good about, there's a problem, and it's indefensible.
If you aren't reading strong novels by black authors, you aren't looking hard enough. If you aren't reading great works by Indigenous authors you aren't looking hard enough. If you aren't reading worthy literary offerings by Hispanic authors you aren't looking hard enough.
If you aren't finding great works by female authors the problem isn't with the women.
6. Female authors cover all genres and subgenres. Women write hard-boiled and noir stories, and women write erotica and women write westerns. While I was taught when studying journalism that a good writer can write anything, given the facts, women actually do write everything.
7. Women are certifiable bestsellers. Since 1940, the percentage of women making the NY Times bestseller list has reached par, and this is in spite of a system that actively works against them by prioritizing review space for male authors and hiring more male writers than female writers. This means that they write great stuff that a lot of people are willing to pay money to read.
8. Our daughters. Let's model a world of achievement for them, instead of perpetuating one of gender limitations. We do this by showing them that they can do anything, that they belong everywhere. We show them this when the words of a woman sit in the hands of a man who isn't ashamed to read a female authors. We show them this when women are consistently (and equally) nominated for awards and when they win these awards. The future is what we make of it, and our actions convey messages to a watching world. Ladies, if not for yourselves, then tell the next generation of women that they can accomplish anything a man can.
9. Only women truly understand the intricacies of gender dynamics for women and how they manifest themselves in our day to day lives. It may sound simplistic, but in the same way that men were hardwired to fight to slay beasts and best others to show their worth as a mate and provider, women were being hardwired to compete at what we might call the feminine arts to elevate their chances of marrying well so that they could be provided for. These days are over. Women no longer need a man to bring home the bacon or give them permission to get a new dress, and yet much of the cattiness generations of conditioning has produced remains as girls compete with other girls for the affections of men. Hell, ladies, why do you want a man you have to "win"? Don't you want a man who worships the hell out of you because he loves you for you, not because you were prettier than the other girl or made yourself fully available when nobody else would?
I've lived this. I was in grade 9 and developed a crush on a particular boy. Not the first, certainly not the last. Unbeknownst to me, another girl liked him. Given that he did have free will, it really should have been down to him to decide if he liked either of us, but the other girl happened to be friends with some pretty tough girls I knew by reputation only. I met them the night they cornered me outside a dance and my 5 on 1 experience was of being beaten until my jaw was permanently damaged. A very decent guy stepped in and pulled them off of me.
I never hit back. And that doesn't make me weak. It makes me better than. But it also taught me that girls see other girls as rivals, instead of allies, and it's made it hard for me to make friends with other women, which is my own problem.
10. Besties before testies. I'm putting it on a T-shirt.
I've been open about the fact that I've had a tendency to read more male authors. I was always a bit more of a tomboy and I grew up with primarily boys my age in close proximity, so if I wanted to go outside and play much of the time I was playing street hockey with the Townsend brothers or fort-building with Ed.
Perhaps the cattiness and viciousness of so many girls I knew deterred me from embracing other female authors as quickly as I should have, for those personal reasons I mentioned. I get books sent all the time with covers that strike fear in my heart, of pages of fashion references and make-up tips and hair primping, and I thought about reaching out to female authors to ask them to recommend other female authors and realized I didn't even know enough that I could approach to get a worthy list together. It's a shame, but I also don't need to be friends with anyone to come up with my own list of writers I recommend.
The more female authors I've read, the more I've appreciated the depth and scope of their work. I have no doubt that when I pick up a book by Val McDermid that I'll lose sleep. Every character she writes compels and her stories are entertaining, shocking, intriguing. The same can be said for anything I've ever read by other bestselling female authors, but I can go far off the conventional bestseller list and name plenty of other female authors who have given me hours and hours of reading pleasure. B. Fleetwood wrote 2 early contenders for my favorite reads 2019 list, since I read them too late last year to consider them for 2018. Imogen's Secret and Imogen's Journey had me up all night. I read them back to back within a couple of days. Other books on my favorite reads list from last year included Hannah Moskowitz's Salt, which was a fantastic YA story about family and redemption and monsters. With all due respect to Joe R. Lansdale (Hap & Leonard!) Terror is Our Business: The Dana Roberts' Casebook of Horrors would not have been the same without the contributions of Kasey Lansdale. Rebecca Roanhorse knocked it out of the park with Trail of Lightning. Another favorite from last year was Nancy Springer's The Oddling Prince.
What I note looking at some of my choices is that, no matter whether the women were writing male protagonists or female protagonists, all of their characters were ones I wanted to spend time with, ones who resonated. I could go even deeper with my reading - Mindy Tarquini's Deepest Blue is an entertaining folktale that looks at family secrets and grief over loss. Jenn Stroud Rossmann looked at ethnicity and identity and what defines family, as well as grief, in The Place You're Supposed to Laugh. Creatures of Want & Ruin by Molly Tanzer pulled back the layers of gender stereotypes in the 1920s and gave us real women who were heroes in the face of evil, and they didn't need no stinking man to take care of them.
Sara Gran's Come Closer is one of my all-time favorite books. While others celebrate Lucy Maud Montgomery for her obvious literary contributions, I'm a sucker The Blue Castle's Valancy, who defied gender expectations for her time and decided to - shock, gasp! - do what made her happy.
I was thoroughly entertained by every story I read in The Dame Was Trouble - a collection of Canadian female authors writing female protagonists in settings contemporary and futuristic. And let's not forget two of the best short story writers I know - Patricia Abbott and Sandra Seamans. Everything they write is superb, made all the more impressive by how hard it is to write great short stories.
There are men well worth reading. The last thing I want to do is attack gender stereotypes by perpetuating other biases. I love men. I married a fantastic one, who has inspired me to read a wide range of works by authors of all ethnic groups, genres and genders.
However, I'll be looking hard at the men I consider reading in the future. If I have a reason to believe there's bias on their part I won't be spending my time with them. I am anxious to embrace diverse authors and read widely in the years to come, and I will not knowingly support any author who perpetuates a system intended to hold back others because of their race or gender.
And if you get women wrong? I'm out of there. Particularly in crime fiction circles, we all know the majority of mystery readers are women, so it's long overdue for male authors to get off their horny horse and have protagonists that look at women with respect, in their eyes, instead of at chest level. Male authors that can't do that need to at least be honest with themselves and their readers and go write erotica.
*I've said 'a lot' because I don't want to paint all male authors with the same brush. With generalizations there are always outliers. My goal is true equality; however, I also realize that in order to equalize things, sometimes the pendulum has to swing the other way for a while before it levels out. So for the next several years we should see more diverse authors being published. We should be seeing less from white males. It's part of the equalizing process, and it is essential to align publishing with the population; if we continue to ignore an increasingly diverse society that does not adhere to the same biases we cease to be relevant. White men will still be published, and read, but it will be a little harder and the wheat will be separated from the chaff. If this means that the racist and sexist authors get swept curbside, then that's a great thing.
I was at home, reading a book the other day ...
And I read myself right into a wall of boobs.
Everything seemed to happen at chest level. Although there were the odd moments when the gaze drifted down to the legs, boobs were the focus.
The protagonist never saw a pair of breasts he didn't like, and for a guy who described himself as lacking ambition, down on his luck in the midst of a prolonged dry spell, he sure ran into a lot of boobs. Not 14% of the way in he was bedding the first woman, so at the time the story should have been having its call to action, he was calling for God.
The story's first turning point? Him bedding another woman. The reader isn't even at the 30% mark before the protagonist has had sex three times. With two of those occurrences at significant story markers I was starting to wonder if the book had been mislabeled mystery instead of erotica.
Then I picked up this other book and when something bad happened, the male author had the girl feel longing in her breasts. Let me tell you something; when something bad happens I may feel like my heart sinks or my stomach drops, but in no way are my boobs involved in responding to my emotions. Boys, they don't even naturally perk up when a handsome man walks into the room.
There were a couple of things I took away from those reading experiences. One was the clear conclusion that the author is a breast man. The other was that I couldn't straddle the gender line anymore.
I made a vow. I will read more female authors, and there are plenty of reasons I can think of for all people to set this goal.
- We aren't obsessed with boobs. The world is far more than peaks and valleys for us.
- Our protagonists don't send dick pics.
- We can go more than 5 pages without thinking about sex.
- We see men as creatures to be understood, not simply ridden.
- We don't trip over our dicks on our way to telling a good story.
- Our stories are more than recaps of our mastubatory fantasies.
Now, I may have started that oversimplified list of cliches as a way of venting over the absolute crap I was being subjected to (a low-level older guy who's amounted to nothing in his life and is nothing special to look at doesn't even have to try to have women just throwing themselves at him within a couple minutes of meeting him, legs spread - talk about a fantasy) but my resolve was serious.
I took my tongue out of my cheek and actually asked the question. Why should people read more female authors? And, while an exploration of the benefits of reading one gender risks reading like a criticism of the other gender, it wasn't hard to see that there were some very good reasons to consider author gender when selecting books. I had a draft of a rough post pulled together, and then I decided to do a little google search, and found that I wasn't alone in my thinking.
Why should everyone read more female authors?
1. A lot* of male writers are focused on their own self-importance. And just in case you need that opinion validated by a man:
"(M)any male writers, particularly younger ones, approach their work as if they – and not the books – are what’s important. They obsess about establishing a reputation, while ignoring the importance of just writing something good. I recall one highly ambitious young man telling me all the awards for which his first collection of stories would be eligible and rating his chances of winning each one ... He never mentioned that he’d like his book to make a connection with readers and speak to our times. All he wanted was prizes."
2. Solidarity. Women haven't been given the same acceptance as men, so the female readership must right that wrong and help correct the imbalance an industry built on sexism created and continues to perpetuate. Studies have shown that it's common for male authors to command as much as 68-75% of review and feature coverage provided to authors by literary magazines and review columnists in both Britain and American. The New York Review of Books "shows a stronger bias. Among authors reviewed, 83% are men." The New York Times Book Review was notably better, with men only dominating 65% of the review space.
"I’ve been publishing novels for almost 20 years. In that time, I’ve become increasingly aware of similar double standards in the industry. A man is treated like a literary writer from the start, but a woman usually has to earn that commendation.
"Last summer, I attended a literary festival where a trio of established male writers were referred to in the programme as “giants of world literature”, while a panel of female writers of equal stature were described as “wonderful storytellers”.
3. Female authors tend to focus on the quality of the work. Face it, when chances of getting nominated for any awards are slim to none, why worry about that? When the reviewers aren't going to focus on your work anyway, because you don't have a penis, you don't write for them either. You write for the readers.
"Female writers, on the other hand, seem more concerned with just writing good books ... Female novelists in the same situation are usually more interested in talking about books, in engaging with their readers and in sharing a platform with another writer rather than trying to dominate it. They seem grateful for the opportunities publishing has brought them, rather than accepting it as their due."
4. A lot* of men are writing stereotypes, while women are injecting the breath of life into real characters, regardless of gender. "It’s in their depictions of both genders that female writers have the edge. I’ve grown weary of reading novels by men that portray women in one of four categories: the angelic virgin who manages to tame some quixotic lothario who’s spread so many wild oats that he has shares in Quaker; the pestering harpy who nags her boyfriend or husband, sucking all the fun out of his life; the slut who eventually gets murdered as payback for her wanton ways; the catalyst who is only there to prompt the man’s actions and is therefore not a human being at all, just a plot device. I find female writers are much more incisive in their writing of men, recognising that several billion people cannot be simply reduced to a few repetitive strains."
My recent read is far from the only book I've encountered where female characters seemed to be included for no reason other than to serve as a sexual pincushion. Do these men look at their young daughters and anticipate the moment when some man is leering at them for nothing more than their body parts?
Don't reward these male writers by keeping them in print. They need to go. NOW.
"(I)f the men in a novel behave as if women are simply there to have sex with or to tell them how brilliant they are, what does that say about the novel’s relationship to gender?"5. Men have something to gain by maintaining the status quo, so many aren't concerned with any need to get women right or alter their approach to women in their work, while women tend to "get" men and present a more realistic perspective of gender and society.
"Having been expected to bring up families while running a home and catering to society’s expectations of what women should be, they have a better grasp of human complexity. My female friends, for example, seem to have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in men’s heads most of the time. My male friends, on the other hand, haven’t got a clue what’s going on in women’s."
This actually brings to mind the controversy over George Pelecanos' By The Book piece, where out of over two dozen authors of influence noted, not a single one was female. I had my say on the topic - with statistics and sources to support my claims about how women aren't treated equally in publishing or in the mystery/crime genre - and don't want to simply rehash all of it. But in the same way that I emailed my favorite author recently about a quote I recall from about a dozen years ago, some things stay with me more than others. In the wake of the Pelecanos fall-out it was the attitudes of some male authors I know that grated on me and caused more ire. The fact that they just couldn't be that concerned about it, like it was no big deal, betrayed their comfort level with a system designed to keep women at least a peg below their male counterparts. In the same way that not recognizing that being white has afforded generations of people more opportunities and benefits that people who aren't white haven't enjoyed, the very definition of white privilege, not recognizing that being male has provided access to opportunities women have been denied is gender privilege. That saying, 'If you aren't for me, you're against me' applies. If you aren't willing to recognize the issue and actively work towards equality then you are perpetuating gender inequality.
Why yes, everyone is allowed to like what they like and read what they want. Even a white supremacist is afforded the freedom of speech that allows him to proclaim himself superior because he's pasty. And every decent person's freedom of thought is allowed to consider him scum for saying as much.
In the same way, a man who lives solely off the influence of other men (and insults the only woman he references in his NY Times piece) is fair game to be criticized and questioned for being sexist and by defending him you align yourself with his sexism. The most honest words are actions. If a professional writer can't bring themselves to think of one writer of the opposite gender they can say something good about, there's a problem, and it's indefensible.
If you aren't reading strong novels by black authors, you aren't looking hard enough. If you aren't reading great works by Indigenous authors you aren't looking hard enough. If you aren't reading worthy literary offerings by Hispanic authors you aren't looking hard enough.
If you aren't finding great works by female authors the problem isn't with the women.
6. Female authors cover all genres and subgenres. Women write hard-boiled and noir stories, and women write erotica and women write westerns. While I was taught when studying journalism that a good writer can write anything, given the facts, women actually do write everything.
7. Women are certifiable bestsellers. Since 1940, the percentage of women making the NY Times bestseller list has reached par, and this is in spite of a system that actively works against them by prioritizing review space for male authors and hiring more male writers than female writers. This means that they write great stuff that a lot of people are willing to pay money to read.
8. Our daughters. Let's model a world of achievement for them, instead of perpetuating one of gender limitations. We do this by showing them that they can do anything, that they belong everywhere. We show them this when the words of a woman sit in the hands of a man who isn't ashamed to read a female authors. We show them this when women are consistently (and equally) nominated for awards and when they win these awards. The future is what we make of it, and our actions convey messages to a watching world. Ladies, if not for yourselves, then tell the next generation of women that they can accomplish anything a man can.
9. Only women truly understand the intricacies of gender dynamics for women and how they manifest themselves in our day to day lives. It may sound simplistic, but in the same way that men were hardwired to fight to slay beasts and best others to show their worth as a mate and provider, women were being hardwired to compete at what we might call the feminine arts to elevate their chances of marrying well so that they could be provided for. These days are over. Women no longer need a man to bring home the bacon or give them permission to get a new dress, and yet much of the cattiness generations of conditioning has produced remains as girls compete with other girls for the affections of men. Hell, ladies, why do you want a man you have to "win"? Don't you want a man who worships the hell out of you because he loves you for you, not because you were prettier than the other girl or made yourself fully available when nobody else would?
I've lived this. I was in grade 9 and developed a crush on a particular boy. Not the first, certainly not the last. Unbeknownst to me, another girl liked him. Given that he did have free will, it really should have been down to him to decide if he liked either of us, but the other girl happened to be friends with some pretty tough girls I knew by reputation only. I met them the night they cornered me outside a dance and my 5 on 1 experience was of being beaten until my jaw was permanently damaged. A very decent guy stepped in and pulled them off of me.
I never hit back. And that doesn't make me weak. It makes me better than. But it also taught me that girls see other girls as rivals, instead of allies, and it's made it hard for me to make friends with other women, which is my own problem.
10. Besties before testies. I'm putting it on a T-shirt.
I've been open about the fact that I've had a tendency to read more male authors. I was always a bit more of a tomboy and I grew up with primarily boys my age in close proximity, so if I wanted to go outside and play much of the time I was playing street hockey with the Townsend brothers or fort-building with Ed.
Perhaps the cattiness and viciousness of so many girls I knew deterred me from embracing other female authors as quickly as I should have, for those personal reasons I mentioned. I get books sent all the time with covers that strike fear in my heart, of pages of fashion references and make-up tips and hair primping, and I thought about reaching out to female authors to ask them to recommend other female authors and realized I didn't even know enough that I could approach to get a worthy list together. It's a shame, but I also don't need to be friends with anyone to come up with my own list of writers I recommend.
The more female authors I've read, the more I've appreciated the depth and scope of their work. I have no doubt that when I pick up a book by Val McDermid that I'll lose sleep. Every character she writes compels and her stories are entertaining, shocking, intriguing. The same can be said for anything I've ever read by other bestselling female authors, but I can go far off the conventional bestseller list and name plenty of other female authors who have given me hours and hours of reading pleasure. B. Fleetwood wrote 2 early contenders for my favorite reads 2019 list, since I read them too late last year to consider them for 2018. Imogen's Secret and Imogen's Journey had me up all night. I read them back to back within a couple of days. Other books on my favorite reads list from last year included Hannah Moskowitz's Salt, which was a fantastic YA story about family and redemption and monsters. With all due respect to Joe R. Lansdale (Hap & Leonard!) Terror is Our Business: The Dana Roberts' Casebook of Horrors would not have been the same without the contributions of Kasey Lansdale. Rebecca Roanhorse knocked it out of the park with Trail of Lightning. Another favorite from last year was Nancy Springer's The Oddling Prince.
What I note looking at some of my choices is that, no matter whether the women were writing male protagonists or female protagonists, all of their characters were ones I wanted to spend time with, ones who resonated. I could go even deeper with my reading - Mindy Tarquini's Deepest Blue is an entertaining folktale that looks at family secrets and grief over loss. Jenn Stroud Rossmann looked at ethnicity and identity and what defines family, as well as grief, in The Place You're Supposed to Laugh. Creatures of Want & Ruin by Molly Tanzer pulled back the layers of gender stereotypes in the 1920s and gave us real women who were heroes in the face of evil, and they didn't need no stinking man to take care of them.
Sara Gran's Come Closer is one of my all-time favorite books. While others celebrate Lucy Maud Montgomery for her obvious literary contributions, I'm a sucker The Blue Castle's Valancy, who defied gender expectations for her time and decided to - shock, gasp! - do what made her happy.
I was thoroughly entertained by every story I read in The Dame Was Trouble - a collection of Canadian female authors writing female protagonists in settings contemporary and futuristic. And let's not forget two of the best short story writers I know - Patricia Abbott and Sandra Seamans. Everything they write is superb, made all the more impressive by how hard it is to write great short stories.
There are men well worth reading. The last thing I want to do is attack gender stereotypes by perpetuating other biases. I love men. I married a fantastic one, who has inspired me to read a wide range of works by authors of all ethnic groups, genres and genders.
However, I'll be looking hard at the men I consider reading in the future. If I have a reason to believe there's bias on their part I won't be spending my time with them. I am anxious to embrace diverse authors and read widely in the years to come, and I will not knowingly support any author who perpetuates a system intended to hold back others because of their race or gender.
And if you get women wrong? I'm out of there. Particularly in crime fiction circles, we all know the majority of mystery readers are women, so it's long overdue for male authors to get off their horny horse and have protagonists that look at women with respect, in their eyes, instead of at chest level. Male authors that can't do that need to at least be honest with themselves and their readers and go write erotica.
*I've said 'a lot' because I don't want to paint all male authors with the same brush. With generalizations there are always outliers. My goal is true equality; however, I also realize that in order to equalize things, sometimes the pendulum has to swing the other way for a while before it levels out. So for the next several years we should see more diverse authors being published. We should be seeing less from white males. It's part of the equalizing process, and it is essential to align publishing with the population; if we continue to ignore an increasingly diverse society that does not adhere to the same biases we cease to be relevant. White men will still be published, and read, but it will be a little harder and the wheat will be separated from the chaff. If this means that the racist and sexist authors get swept curbside, then that's a great thing.
Sunday, January 13, 2019
The Widows, by Jess Montgomery
I’m delighted to welcome Jess Montgomery to Do Some Damage. Jess and I met at the 2017 Bouchercon in Toronto, and it immediately felt like we’d been friends forever. Her novel, THE WIDOWS, hit stores on Tuesday. It’s set in southern Ohio in the 1920s and has two strong female main characters (one of them a trailblazing female sheriff), union organizing, coal miners…everything you could want in a historical fiction. It didn’t start out that way, though. Here’s Jess to talk about how a secondary character turned into something much more. - Claire Booth
By Jess Montgomery
THE WIDOWS is set in 1920s Appalachia, as two women investigate murder and fight for their community.
One of the women is Lily Ross, inspired by Ohio’s true first female sheriff in 1925—Maude Collins, who became sheriff after her husband was killed in the line of duty. There was no mystery around his death in real life—he was killed while stopping a man to serve him a warrant. Maude, who had worked as her husband’s jail matron and lived in the county-owned sheriff’s house, was asked to fill in for her husband. She then went on to win re-election as sheriff in her own right in 1926.
In THE WIDOWS, Lily doesn’t buy the story of her sheriff husband Daniel’s murder—that a prisoner he was transporting got the best of him and escaped. Even before accepting the role of sheriff, she begins digging for the truth.
Marvena Whitcomb is the other narrator in THE WIDOWS. At the novel’s start, Marvena is already a widow of a coal miner, a union organizer, a long-time friend of Daniel’s. Her older daughter is missing and she goes to find Daniel for help, not knowing he’s dead. At his house, shortly after his funeral, she meets Lily for the first time.
The women start out regarding each other with understandable wariness. Daniel has never told Lily about Marvena, so this childhood friend—who he had been helping since the death of Marvena’s husband—raises a lot of questions. What’s more, in addition to being a union organizer, Marvena is a moonshiner, scrabbling to make ends meet for herself and her two daughters. Lily is not quite sure what to make of Marvena.
Marvena, meanwhile, regards Lily as soft and spoiled—a woman with a respectable position, living in a fine house in Kinship, the county seat, with a high school education and protected by Daniel.
As the women work together and get to know each other, their views of one another deepen and thus change. Marvena realizes that Lily has a lot more depth and strength than she thought, while Lily comes to understand the tenderness underlying Marvena’s tough character. They grow from wary, to working together by necessity, to true friends. Only together can they solve the intertwined mysteries of Daniel’s murder and the missing daughter, and ultimately face the challenge of saving their community from a bloody battle between rebelling miners and the more well-armed hired guns of the coal company.
I knew from the beginning that THE WIDOWS is primarily Lily’s story. But as I wrote, and tried to crack the enigma of Daniel’s character, I realized he had this childhood friend, Marvena. She quickly grew from being a mere mention, to a minor character, to a secondary character, to a dual narrator along with Lily.
Part of that was practical—Marvena knows details that are key, that Lily can’t know. In addition, Lily is a grieving widow from the end of chapter one on. So, I wanted to provide a bit of relief to the reader, as well, and give Lily some time and space to transition from shock to determination to find out the truth.
But as I kept writing, I also realized I wanted to explore the friendship between these two—as well as the strictures that might otherwise keep them from being friends, and how they overcome that.
It’s ultimately their willingness to see each other as individuals, and to allow their friendship and trust to develop, that enables them to solve the mystery together.
------------
Jess Montgomery is the author of the Kinship Historical Mysteries. Under her given name, she wears several other literary hats: she is a newspaper columnist, focusing on the literary life, authors and events of her native Dayton, Ohio for the Dayton Daily News; Executive Director of the Antioch Writers’ Workshop at University of Dayton; and is an adjunct mentor in the Seton Hill University Low-Residency Writing Popular Fiction M.F.A. program.
THE WIDOWS is available through IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, or order it from Aunt Agatha's Bookstore, where it is January's Book of the Month.
By Jess Montgomery
THE WIDOWS is set in 1920s Appalachia, as two women investigate murder and fight for their community.
One of the women is Lily Ross, inspired by Ohio’s true first female sheriff in 1925—Maude Collins, who became sheriff after her husband was killed in the line of duty. There was no mystery around his death in real life—he was killed while stopping a man to serve him a warrant. Maude, who had worked as her husband’s jail matron and lived in the county-owned sheriff’s house, was asked to fill in for her husband. She then went on to win re-election as sheriff in her own right in 1926.
In THE WIDOWS, Lily doesn’t buy the story of her sheriff husband Daniel’s murder—that a prisoner he was transporting got the best of him and escaped. Even before accepting the role of sheriff, she begins digging for the truth.
Marvena Whitcomb is the other narrator in THE WIDOWS. At the novel’s start, Marvena is already a widow of a coal miner, a union organizer, a long-time friend of Daniel’s. Her older daughter is missing and she goes to find Daniel for help, not knowing he’s dead. At his house, shortly after his funeral, she meets Lily for the first time.
The women start out regarding each other with understandable wariness. Daniel has never told Lily about Marvena, so this childhood friend—who he had been helping since the death of Marvena’s husband—raises a lot of questions. What’s more, in addition to being a union organizer, Marvena is a moonshiner, scrabbling to make ends meet for herself and her two daughters. Lily is not quite sure what to make of Marvena.
Marvena, meanwhile, regards Lily as soft and spoiled—a woman with a respectable position, living in a fine house in Kinship, the county seat, with a high school education and protected by Daniel.
As the women work together and get to know each other, their views of one another deepen and thus change. Marvena realizes that Lily has a lot more depth and strength than she thought, while Lily comes to understand the tenderness underlying Marvena’s tough character. They grow from wary, to working together by necessity, to true friends. Only together can they solve the intertwined mysteries of Daniel’s murder and the missing daughter, and ultimately face the challenge of saving their community from a bloody battle between rebelling miners and the more well-armed hired guns of the coal company.
I knew from the beginning that THE WIDOWS is primarily Lily’s story. But as I wrote, and tried to crack the enigma of Daniel’s character, I realized he had this childhood friend, Marvena. She quickly grew from being a mere mention, to a minor character, to a secondary character, to a dual narrator along with Lily.
Part of that was practical—Marvena knows details that are key, that Lily can’t know. In addition, Lily is a grieving widow from the end of chapter one on. So, I wanted to provide a bit of relief to the reader, as well, and give Lily some time and space to transition from shock to determination to find out the truth.
But as I kept writing, I also realized I wanted to explore the friendship between these two—as well as the strictures that might otherwise keep them from being friends, and how they overcome that.
It’s ultimately their willingness to see each other as individuals, and to allow their friendship and trust to develop, that enables them to solve the mystery together.
------------
Jess Montgomery is the author of the Kinship Historical Mysteries. Under her given name, she wears several other literary hats: she is a newspaper columnist, focusing on the literary life, authors and events of her native Dayton, Ohio for the Dayton Daily News; Executive Director of the Antioch Writers’ Workshop at University of Dayton; and is an adjunct mentor in the Seton Hill University Low-Residency Writing Popular Fiction M.F.A. program.
THE WIDOWS is available through IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, or order it from Aunt Agatha's Bookstore, where it is January's Book of the Month.
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