Querying agents? Remember to respect and engage

By Steve Weddle

As you know if you've read this site since we launched in 2009, I'm known as the somber, forgiving, helpful person around here.

Over the past decade, we’ve had some here who would make jokes about what was going on in publishing, about something an author had done or said. We welcomed the silliness, as we hope to offer a variety of voices. As you know, this is a serious business meant to be taken seriously.

And we’ve had critics here at DSD post unforgiving looks at some actions out there on the bookternet, usually something characterized as “condescending” or “jackassery” from a best-selling author. I, as you know, have never poked fun nor taken any other authors “to task” for something they’ve done. We are all doing our best out here.

No, I’m the helpful one, the one with tips and hints and honest looks at the business. Which is why I wanted to bring Boomerang for email to your attention.

In the course of querying agents and getting a publishable draft together, authors can make use of many tools and tips, and Boomerang is one of the best, so let’s start there.

Boomerang for email. You can use this for Outlook or Gmail or, likely, a dozen other email programs. While Boomerang does many things, this is the killer for me:

Remind you if you don’t hear back: There are times you need to make sure you follow up within a specific time frame after sending a message. You can select to only be reminded if nobody replies, or regardless. This way you won't let messages slip through the crack and will never forget to follow up with people.

Yes. If you email someone, you’ll get a reminder after a week or two if they didn’t respond to you. Sure, you can drop that email in your “Follow Up” folder and check it during your Friday afternoon cleanups and action captures (or whatever system you use), but wouldn’t it be easier if you just got an email notification?

This would be exceptionally helpful when you’re querying agents. Agents are busy people, often bombarded with dozens of manuscripts each year, nearly all of them far worse than yours. Why should your manuscript suffer because of this? Set Boomerang to remind you after two weeks if you haven’t heard from an agent. Maybe set it for every two weeks on a recurring schedule, or more often if your manuscript is really great. Depending on the quality of your work, every couple days might be appropriate.

Also, keeping in mind how busy agents are, be sure to clarify what type of novel you’re sending. If you’re sending a mystery novel that’s of passing quality, be sure to let the agent know it’s a mystery novel. But, if it’s really, really good, then it’s probably a “literary mystery.” Even better, if the mystery novel is really, really, really good, then it’s probably a “literary thriller.”

Now, let’s unpack that a little. If your mystery contains a murder, that’s great. If it contains a murder and a foreign country, then it’s a thriller. If it contains a murder, a foreign country, and a chase scene, then it’s what we call “cross genre.” Think of something that contains both science and fiction? Science fiction is a really successful type of cross genre. A murder mystery is also cross genre, because it contains murder and mystery. Cross genre is very popular, so be sure to mention that if you want to sell a bunch of books.

Keeping in mind how busy agents are, staying on their radar is essential to getting a good book deal. Let’s face it. Most books out there are not very good. What keeps a great writer from a great book deal? We all know the answer: social media. To get an agent to notice you, you’ll want to send in a manuscript (or at least the part of the manuscript you’ve finished). But you’ll also need to engage with the agents on social media. Agents are always talking about how they’re looking for “engaging” stories. Be sure to engage. Follow the agent on Twitter, Instagram, Ello, Facebook, Mastodon, and so forth. Show the agent that you are following everything he or she is saying. Respond. Retweet. Drop in little reminders, such as, “Oh, what a cute cat you have. This reminds me of the cat in the book I sent you last week. #Twinning.”

Finally, be sure to let the agent know that you understand the business. When you’re querying your novel with agents, include some cover images you think would be appropriate for your novel. You think agents are busy? Try publishers. You think a publisher has time to make all those covers? No. Sometimes a publisher has to hire that done, so be sure to tell the agent whether you have a friend who can make the cover for you, or whether you know how to use CorelDraw or something similar. Publishing is looking to save money. Let the agent know ways you can help.

And, speaking of helping, I trust that this has. I’ll be taking a break from social media, but Dave White has offered to field any cards of thanks or comments you might have. Reach out to him at @Dave_White if you feel the urge. You’re welcome.

Year of an Indie Writer: Week 18

by
Scott D. Parker

One of the ideas we had when we created Do Some Damage ten years ago was to talk about the writing process. We've done that, and continue to do so, but sometimes there's some advice so good, you just walk away from your keyboard.

Advice from a Veteran Writer

The Monday post on Dean Wesley Smith's blog was a fantastic way to kick-off the week. With permission, Dean shared writing advice from Joe Lansdale. A fellow Texan who lives in Nacogdoches, Lansdale lays out his philosophy of writing in a multi-page post from Facebook. I know it's multiple pages because I printed the thing out to have near at hand when I'm feeling low about writing.

Read it. Just read it.

A couple of days later, Dean excerpted a paragraph from Joe's piece. Pay attention to the last sentence.

“Write like everyone you know is dead. To hell with everyone else’s opinion when you write. Write for yourself. I don’t have a perfect reader in mind. That works for some, but it makes me write for them which means I might not be writing for me. I have no idea what anyone else will like. I only know what I like, so I write for me. It’s a wonderfully selfish moment. When I’m done, and the book or story is out there, then I hope a lot of folks like it. But face it, you can’t be universally admired, so don’t try to be.”

Yet More Writerly Advice

On the most recent episode of Fatman Beyond, writers Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin took questions from the audience. Usually, it's about the movies and comics and such. This time, we had a guy ask about writing advice. Paraphrased, here is what I captured from each of them.

Kevin: Your voice is your currency.

It's my voice. Like it or not, but it's me. Tell your story at all costs. That's what you've got. Live and die by your voice. You can't guarantee success, but you can make it perfect for you. So if no one else comes to the show, it's still you.

Nothing bad ever came from you doing you.

Marc: Always be making something. You'll get better at it. You'll keep making mistakes, but you'll learn, and then make new ones and then learn from those.

Iteration is what it's all about. Because someone may not buy your first or second or whatever thing, but when they finally sit up and take notice, you'll have a "barnful" of stuff that you've been making all the while.

You can't get better by reading or listening, but by making the thing. Make that thing true to who you are.

Encourage Others Because It Comes Back Around

How often do you talk to other about your writing career? For me, not often, but when those moments occur, I try to make it worthwhile.

I've got a new co-worker at the day job. Yesterday, she mentioned she wanted to write a book. I asked her what held her back. She came back with the same kinds of barriers you frequently hear, but it boils down to this: the critical voice keeps getting in the way and the idea of writing an entire book is so daunting, one just doesn't begin.

I chatted with her, giving her the pep talk I give to other writers--and sometimes myself--about writing with abandon and joy, track your daily word count as a default cheerleader, and keep that pesky critical voice out of your head.

I also told her that writing "The End" on drafts never gets old, but the first time is a Cloud 9 experience.

I also mentioned she out to set a start and end date (Memorial Day to Labor Day) and let that be her bookends.

She got excited. I did, too, because talking about writing and encouraging others is a thrill.

Peter Mayhew

Hats off to Peter Mayhew, arguably one of the greatest cinematic sidekicks/partners in all of moviedom. Met him once here in Houston, late on one of the days, might have even been a Sunday. He was tired. My boy and I were, too. I'm not a huge autograph guy, but I wanted to meet Mayhew and be the millionth person to tell him how much I enjoyed his work. He was nice and gracious. Based on what I've been reading, that was how he was all the time.



That about wraps things up for another week. Hope y'all have a good weekend, and tune in next week when I'm going to review five of my favorite podcasts starting on Monday.

May the Fourth be with y'all. And go get some comics today!

Amateurs Need Not Apply: Being a professional writer

In January, Nick Mamatas wrote about advice people should stop giving to writers, and #1 on the list was a kick in the gut to many.

1. Don't Give Up
Consider your audience. Who are you telling not to give up? The illiterates, the douchebags, the certifiable graphomanics, the people who think watching a movie is the same as reading a book? Some people should give up. Most people should give up. Find out whether someone has any potential first before arbitrarily telling someone to waste years of their lives, and worse, moments of the lives of editors who have to look at their nonsense.

I agree with some of Nick's points wholeheartedly. Other points, I can only agree with within a certain context. Initially, I thought about responding to some of the points I didn't completely see eye to eye on, but over time, I realized that the real issue with advice to writers is that it often lacks common sense. Nick's first point underscores that. Why are people running around, telling aspiring writers to follow their dream, to fight the good fight, to not give up, when they often haven't read anything the person's written? I think it's often because we don't want anyone to burst our bubble or tell us that our dream is just that, and will never be reality.

Look at the faces of all those people on American Idol who get told they'd be better off sticking with flipping burgers. Who would want to be responsible for making someone feel that way?

And yet it's often an inherent unwillingness to be honest with people, to tell them the harsh truth when necessary, that keeps people from correcting mistakes, from learning, from improving when possible and from switching gears when it makes sense.

The intent of this post isn't even to focus on aspiring authors and whether or not they should pursue their writing dream. I'm just going to give a few tips to avoid burning bridges.

#1. Write clean. If you're going to write a cover letter, write sentences. Spell the words properly. Be appropriate with the content. If you can't write a cover letter properly, chances are I won't be reading your story. No, it ISN'T my job to read whatever you send me, and read all of it, and see the genius through all your mistakes. It's YOUR job to demonstrate that you take your writing seriously enough to convince me I should publish your story, instead of another submission. Or, in our case, instead of dozens of other submissions.

#2. Did I mention that you should be appropriate in your communication, and with your content? Guys, stop sending your photos to my author email account. I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE. That will not change whether I like your story or not, or publish your story or not. And I'm married, so not only is what you look like NOT relevant, this is really inappropriate.

#3. Don't argue with an editor over a rejection. Everybody gets rejections. Telling the editor they're wrong and you'll show them is only going to ensure you're remembered for all the wrong reasons. Be polite, even if you're silently calling them a $@!%head.

For heaven's sake, people, the writing world is a small world, especially within genre fiction. Editors change publishers all the time. And we talk.

#4. Follow through on your contracts unless you have legal or legitimate grounds not to. If your story is accepted for publication, and an editor takes time to edit the story with you, and it's about to be published, and you've even provided a release selling the rights to the story for publication, do not pull the story from publication so that you can enter your edited-for-free story in some writing contest. Maybe some editor won't care that you wasted their time. I mean, there might be one in the known universe someone. But it's more likely that your name will go straight to the top of their shitlist. (And yes, Spinetingler has one. We have a manure file.)

(I'm not saying this applies when you haven't signed a release or been edited. If a publication has been sitting on your story for months with no word, you have the right to follow up on it, and even to withdraw it. Just understand reasonable timelines. It's not uncommon for work to sit for a year before publication. Don't email someone a month after you've submitted a story and flip out on them because you haven't heard anything. If your story was accepted but you haven't done a contract or edits or heard anything for ten months, you should definitely follow up with them.)

#5. If you sold your story and it was published, accept that fact. Say you sold your story to a magazine, anthology or ezine. You provided a release agreeing to terms. You received payment for your story.

YOU DON'T GET TO 'UNPUBLISH' IT AND GIVE IT AS AN EXCLUSIVE TO ANOTHER PUBLISHER. It's not an exclusive. It's been published. It's been read. YOU WERE PAID. Do I really have to explain this?

And why the hell aren't you celebrating your publication, and mentioning your publication credits?

#6. Even if something that was published is out of print, or off the internet now, it was still published. That means that if someone reviewed your work and wasn't favorable, and you subsequently badger the publisher to remove the story, that doesn't mean the reviewer will take their review down. It doesn't mean it's an unpublished story that you can submit as a new story to a publisher, either. And if you're such an idiot that you use publication online as a means of editing, suck it up. You put your mistakes out there for the world to see, and the only person in the world who's likely to think sunshine springs from your arse is your mother.

You can't ask people only to like you, and not expect an honest response from them. It doesn't work that way. You have the right to dislike a book or a movie or a short story or a play or a song or TV show. Other people have the same right.

People, this is why when you start to be published you learn to critique the work and not the person. If someone gets personal and dirty with you, being upset is understandable. If someone doesn't like your story, learn to deal with it. The world is a big place. There are people who don't like Harry Potter, either, and JK Rowling did just fine with her sales.

#6. Respect people's time. Wasting the time of editors or agents is never a good idea. Time is money. Every person out there has obligations. Don't impose on people and assume they have all the time in the world to give to you. Don't waste people's time. This connects to #4 and #5.

#7. Follow the submission guidelines.

The next person who emails me to tell me their story isn't formatted properly, who submitted it without formatting it according to our guidelines because they thought they were such hot $!@& that the guidelines didn't apply to them, because they're special, will have their emailed author photo that was sent to my personal email printed and tacked dead center in our dart board.

#8. Make the most of every opportunity. Every person you're in contact with is a potential contact. Every encounter with them contributes to your reputation. If you have a bad reputation, you'll miss out on some opportunities. It's even possible you'll miss out on a lot of opportunities.

#9. Be careful about publicly criticizing publications. Don't look down your nose at any legitimate publication venue. I remember when people told me being published online wasn't really being published. Then, I was told Spinetingler wasn't a real publication. Spinetingler is MWA-approved and what we publish can be submitted for the Edgars. Not really published my ass. And we pay.


I'm sure there's a lot more I could say, but there comes a point where people stop processing it. However, under all of these tips, there's a fundamental principle at work, and if it's the foundation of your behavior as a writer, you'll be fine. Be professional. Treat your writing professionally, and treat all your communications professionally.

On a personal note, I've realized I can eventually overlook or forgive most things, especially if a mistake is made by a new writer who's still learning the ropes. However, there's one thing that's unforgivable, and it ties to this final tip:

#10. Be willing to learn. Especially when you're starting out, at least try pretending to be humble. If you respond as though you know it all, it's a sure sign you don't. The smartest people in this business take advice, process it, and then decide if it's good or bad. The dumbest ignore everything because they already know it all.


And I'll tell you right out that if you aren't willing to learn, there isn't a thing I can do to help you.

In the end, every writer sinks or swims based on what they put on the page. There's no amount of good advice in the world that will help you if you won't listen to it.

There might be some who read this and think I'm a real bitch. I'm mean.

This is my personal time. This is when I could be writing my own work, or playing pool with my husband or walking the dog. I've chosen to take the time today to give some blunt, practical advice, so that the people who really do want to succeed and are willing to learn will hopefully avoid making a few mistakes along the way.

If all you come away with after reading this is that taking my personal time to provide some common sense suggestions for aspiring authors makes you think I'm mean, well, there probably isn't anything you ever need to hear from me anyway.

Tone: You Know It When You See It

by
Scott D. Parker

Like Russel yesterday, when tone came down as the subject of the week, I groaned inwardly. How the heck do you talk about tone? Remember that saying a congressman or judge once said about porn: that he'd know porn when he saw it but couldn't quite put forward a definition? That's how I see tone.

Tone is also a bit like your life's journey: you can only see the signposts from the perspective of age and wisdom. When you break-up with your first love, at the time, it's like the world is crashing down and everything else is meaningless. With time, you can see that the new trajectory your life took was infinitely better.

The same goes with tone. Like Jay and Russel wrote, one of the mechanical things you can do to evoke a particular tone is choosing certain words to fill your sentences and paragraphs. Certain authors have a particular tone. You can read one paragraph of Charles Dickens and you know the author's tone. The same is true for Chandler, Hammett, Burroughs, Chabon, or dozens of other writers. Some authors can even mimic a certain tone. In the afterward to his new Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk, Anthony Horowitz mentioned that he kept a list of certain words that he used over and over again. He did such a good job with capturing the tone and feel of Doyle's language that I sometimes forgot that Doyle wasn't the author.

Yes, you can set out to create a certain tone and wordsmith your way to that desired end. Take, for example, most network TV crime dramas. Because of the structure and the language choice, many have a similar tone. Does that make them bad? No, but if you don't like that particular tone, you probably won't like the shows.

Word choice alone is only a means to an end. In some ways, it's something that' too mechanical. An author's tone emerges over time, over the thousands of words written. Tone might be the thing only readers can discover. Yes, it's true that tone can materialize in prose, but if you want to get a good sense of your own, personal tone, read your own non-fiction, including blogs entries and emails. I have speech-to-text software on my computers and one of the things the program does during setup is to analyze your writing. If only there was an option for tone I'd have the answer to what mine is.

I'll admit that I'm not too seasoned a writer of prose to know if I have a prose tone or not, but I can easily recognize my tone in emails, especially professional ones.

Can you recognize your own tone in your prose or non-fiction?

Tones of Fun*

By Russel D McLean

I’m not sure how happy I am talking about this weeks subject.

Tone.

I really don’t know what to say about it. I don’t have much in the way of practical advice and in a sense, I think tone is often a matter of instinct and something you can only see as part of a far larger picture.

Tone is a funny thing. It’s one of those almost instinctual tools in a writer’s box. But despite it seemed like a vague, woolly-thinking kind of idea, its an essential thing to have.

Without having control of your tone, you’re screwed.

But what is tone?

And how can your control it?

Tone is what conveys the mood of your work. Tone is omnipresent in your writing. Tone comes from your word choice, your sentence structure, your point of view. It is the result of all those tiny little choices you make by writing.

Put one thing wrong and tone can go out of the window.

Tone is of course the great problem of the internet generation. We communicate by text almost all the time these days. I have friends whom I know more by their tone in emails than I do by their tone in conversations** And it’s amazing how many times tone can be misinterpreted. Sometimes you just accept that a person has a certain tone, but if you don’t know them then you cannot forgive them seeming rude because you don’t know that they aren’t. It’s the frightening thing about reading a text – all we have to go on are the words in front of us. And if they are mis-used, then often the tone can be misinterpreted and the intent of a communication ruined.

Tone is reliant on being in control of everything else you are doing in a piece of work. Tone comes at the end. tone is the result of all your hard work. My fellow DSDers have said that tone is attitude, that tone is atmosphere, that tone is voice and so much more. It is indeed all of these. And more.

If your tone is wrong, you fix it by working at the meta-level, by fixing some smaller, more intricate process such as your word choice, your structure, your point of view, whatever. All of these other things working in unison are what produce tone. Inconsistencies in tone come from elements of your work not working in harmony, like gears of the wrong size grinding together. On their own these elements may be brilliant, but together they produce something atonal and unsettling.

In the end, what I’m saying is that tone is not something you look at initially. Tone is something you allow to emerge from your work. Writing is like putting together a jigsaw in some ways. You are working with all these disparate and apparently unconnected pieces but when you find the right way to put them together, you can produce something quite unexpected and often entirely beautiful.

*You may groan, but I worked for ages to find a pun title for this entry…
**Not because we’re shut ins but often because we live in different countries. As Tony Hancock said when he took up the Ham Radio, “I’ve got friends all over the world. All over the world! None in this country, but all over the world…”

This guy's a character

By Jay Stringer

Character week, huh? I'll have me some of that.

When it comes to craft, many writers talk of character like some magic, alchemical thing. There's a point when this mysterious creature takes over in the writers head and leads the story. It sounds mystical and exciting, and I know I'm guilty of that kind of talk too. But sometimes I talk to people who are really intimidated by this. They'll sit and write, and wait for that moment when the character will appear fully formed in their head. When that moment doesn't come, they wonder if they're doing it wrong.

So let's take a step back and burst this myth. There's nothing magical about this process, and you're not doing it wrong. Well, you might be, I don't know. You might be doing it with crayon in the dark. Probably wrong. But then, you're also a visitor at DSD, which means you have taste, so that's another vote for not doing it wrong.

First things first, what is character? We all know this one, right? It's the person in your story. Well.....no. Well.....kinda. Well....yes. Well......shut up. Sure it's perfectly acceptable and standard these days to use the word in that sense, but it's something more.

If I type it into google I get this definition;

See, to my mind we're already making this easier here. Character isn't some magical person that will leap fully formed from your head and onto the page. Character is a trait, or a collection of traits, that are revealed about a person. They are shown in how your super spy reacts to adversity as he tries to defuse a nuclear bomb, or how your sexy forensic scientists deals with her crisis in faith (while defusing a nuclear bomb.)

Character isn't something that you need to have pinned down at the start of the story. It's something that is revealed at the story progresses. This is what story telling does. Plot reveals character. We know virtually nothing about Indiana Jones at the start of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, except that he needs to shave and he's wearing the fuck out of that leather jacket. But after 115 minutes of seeing him get beaten down, shot, bruised and bloodied, but still finding a way to climb back up, we know everything we need to about this guy's character.

So, don't sweat it. There is no secret formula that you're not aware of. There's no magic circle of writers who are forbidden from sharing their secrets (though that would explain the hooded man stood behind me as I type this, reaching for his swor......brb.)

Where was I?

Right, so. Plot and character go hand in hand. More than that, plot and character are the same thing, if you boil it down and do it right. There are beats in the plot that will face your spy/sexy scientist/monkey with a choice, and the way they react to that choice tells us a little more about who they are.

See those times when writers talk about the character taking over? That's what that is. It's that point when, partway through a first draft, we get a handle on how our spy/sexy scientist/monkey/superhero has been responding to choices, and we can take educated guesses on how they will respond to the ones that are yet to come. And then, being people who are revealing their character page by page, they go and surprise us. They make a different choice. The reader will be shocked, but that's nothing compared to how the writer feels.

Creating Characters (and see, now I'm playing fast and loose with the rules, because I've switched back to the other usage of the word) is pretty simple. In fact, my key to handling this bit is the same as my key to all writing -which probably blows my whole month's worth of useful comments right here- is ignore the big things. You build a plot one beat at a time. You build a character one piece at a time. You write the novel one page at a time. If you ever stop to think of the big things, you're just giving your brain an excuse to freeze up.

Think of your first chapter as an outline for a short story. For that, you only need a few aspects of character, and a few basic details of their identity. Start telling your story. At the end of the first chapter -the end of the short story- face your character with some choice that they were not expecting. Are they going to get in that car? Are they going to pick up the phone? Are they going to hide that dead body or call the cops? Do they like coffee with cream? From that reaction, you reveal your first layer of character, then you build from there.

Plot informs character and character informs plot. If I start a murder mystery with a guy who does the wrong thing when he finds a dead body, thats cool, but why does he do the wrong thing? I'm not a fan of "just because." I need a reason why my guy won't simply pick up the phone and call the cops, as most of us would. So then I realise, well, he's got a reason to run away from the cops. But what would that be? What reason would be so ingrained in a person that even knowing that they are innocent is still not enough for them to override their fear and call the cops? Well, hey, what if he was an ethnic minority. What if the reason it was ingrained in him was generations of alienation and rivalry? Bingo. And hey, this new found aspect of his character will have an impact on every decision he makes for the rest of the book. Bingo bingo. And now he has opinions, he has a voice, he has a family history and he's not afraid to tell me about them. And, hey, try making him a woman. Or a child. Or an alien.

As I said last week, I'm going to try and hold myself to giving some practical tips each week. last weeks list works for both plot and character, since they're the same thing. But here's a few simple things you can do, and it involves a little more work that last week.

-What single event or trait makes your character different to everyone else?

-What single thing does your character see in him/herself that others don't?

-What single thing does everyone else see in your character, that he/she doesn't?

-What is the most honest thing your character has ever done?

-What is the least honest thing your character has ever done?

-For each one, write a paragraph of dialogue, of your character answering the questions.

-Then think of the simplest way to show each one in a story.

Add what you've gotten this week to what you came up with last week, and if you've not gotten a story by now, you're really not trying.

Making The Time 2.0

By Jay Stringer

Something we've talked about a number of times on DSD is making the time. Dave has talked about making the time to write, the tough-love that if you want to be a writer you have to get down and do it. There have been day-in-the-life diaries on here that show how some of us make that time.

I've talked about something equally important; finding the time to read. It's easy -too easy- to fall into the excuse of, "if only i had the time to read." I seem to get in trouble one way or another when I bring that up, but it is a trap. Find the time. Doesn't have to be a lot of time. Doesn't have to be a major sacrifice.

And it's not just us. This is one of the regular topics among writers and readers. It's probably frequent enough to make it onto Dave's list of writing cliche's, but then it's because it's also true.

As far as I know there isn't a machine yet that can fit more hours into a day. There's still no magic button that stretches things out or freezes everything around us so that we can chill out and read, or stress and write.

If you're anything like me, time is an evil thing. An old work colleague once came up with the phrase 'job creep,' which was his phrase for all the extra jobs that crop up during the working day. You get to work in the morning with a list of about 637 things to do, and by lunch time the list has swelled to 742, even after you'd started clearing it.

Writing can be like that, sometimes. It takes a whole lot of work just to stand still. You might start the morning with a work count of 20k, and then after four hours and much typing you have a word count of 19k. They are better words, it's not time wasted, but to any outsider you would seem to be standing still at best.

I adapt my colleagues old phrase to life creep. You start the week with a million things to do, and the list just keeps getting bigger. Some of them are chores, they are done out of duty. Some are done out of love or respect or friendship, and you don't begrudge them, but you also wouldn't begrudge a little break every now and then.

And on top of the day job, the night job, the washing, the ironing, the cooking, the shopping, the kids, the husband, the wife, the travelling, the stressing and the many buckets of coffee, you also have to fit life. You have to find time to unwind, to watch a movie or read a book. To dress up as a Klingon and re-enact battles that won't happen for several centuries. Then you have to find time to write, and you secretly start to begrudge the people at work who lead "simpler" lives; those who go to work, then go home, and don't spend all their spare time having to cram in all these other things. Their lives aren't simple either, but that doesn't really interfere with that bit of you that wants to hold a grudge against somebody.

And being a writer or a reader, the person you most hold a grudge against is yourself. If you were better as a writer, then you would have more time. If you were better as a reader you wouldn't be needing to make time. If you didn't just flat out suck, then chapter 22 wouldn't sag under the weight of its own disappointment.

And to make matters worse, you get some limey guy preaching at you from a website, busting you to make more time. Screw him, huh?

Making the time has always been pretty straight-forward for me. I like to read books and comics, I need to write, and I like to watch movies and TV shows. Added in to all of this is a full time job that often takes us 6 days a week. I've always taken the -to me- logical step of cutting out the one optional thing from my day. Sleep.

I'd work a full day, then come home and be normal for a while, or go shopping, or get some exercise or be sociable, then I would read for awhile, write as much as I could, watch a few episodes of THE WIRE (or whatever box set I was working through) do a bazillion emails and then slip into bed in time to get two or three hours sleep before doing it all over again.

I've hit a point now where that needs to stop. My body, and more importantly my brain, at 30 has decided that it wants to sleep like a normal person. The people at my day job would rather I turn up in a state approaching alive and my body is a fair way off 'in shape' simply because of the way I stretch myself. I'm also noticing that my writing is starting to suffer for the first time from my brain needing more sleep.

So i'm here to ask a question rather than preach at you. I've told you how I do it. I find a way to stretch the day out for as long as I can. I reckon there's probably a number of you do the same. But for the rest of you, you crazy people who manage to sleep and still make the time, how the hell do you do it?

5ive for Writing

By Steve Weddle

Don't listen to Jay Stringer. He says "writers' block" is bunk. (I'm going with plural possessive on that one, as I think if it exists, it exists for more than just me.)

Jay's point was more complicated and nuanced, of course, but I don't have time for that.

As writers, we get stuck. We end up headed down some path running too fast to trip over roots, then the phone rings and we have to stop. Or we get stuck. Or it rains for four days non-stop and floods your basement because the damned vapor wrap behind the siding is goofy and you suddenly have new priorities. Or you took one too many glasses of "writing lubricant" and end up typing in some odd version of Esperanto.

So you're stuck. Blocked. Whatevs.

Debut author Hilary Davidson (THE DAMAGE DONE) said she's been known to get to that spot and write something along the lines of "Chapter Seventeen: Dan gets home to find that Roger has broken in and stolen Francine's locket, which he then tries to sell to Becky." (BONUS: Listen HERE to Hilary being smart and me being a dork -- an mp3 snippet from our upcoming DSD podcast interview thing.)

So there's one way to break the writers's block. And I've heard some others. So let's share. Oh, crap. Number these things to make the reading easier. OK. Hang on.

1. Write a placeholder chapter

Write explanation for placeholder chapter here and then go on to the next idea.

2. Kill someone.

Yeah, I probably should have saved this for the fifth one, because, seriously, where do you go from there? But that's what I've tried to do. If you get stuck, get rid of something. Add some conflict. Honestly, until your novel is finished, it completely sucks. When it's done, maybe it sucks less. But while you're writing it, don't be afraid to mess some stuff up. I mean, I'm not saying I know what the heck I'm doing. I'm just numbering some ideas to make it sound like I have something worth paying attention to. If you're stuck somewhere, toss in a hand grenade. What have you got to lose? If you had something to lose, you wouldn't be stuck.

3.  Never end your writing session at the end of a chapter/paragraph/sentence.

I stole this from somewhere and I'd link you back there, but I forgot who suggested this. The idea was to stop writing in the middle of a sentence. That way when you pick up the next day, you're just moving along in the middle of things and less likely to get stuck. I can't do that. I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't wrap things up.

4. Ink on paper

If you get stuck 20,000 words in or 50,000 or wherever, then maybe you need to print out some pages and read. Maybe you find something printed out that you can use. Foreshadowing. A clue you'd dropped and then forgot about. Reading and re-reading not only kills your soul, it also means you miss stuff. It's kinda like having the same person write a story and proof it.  You made the mistake once, so you're likely to gloss over it again. Having another set of eyes helps. Having another way to interface with your writing is pretty good, too.

5. Aw, crackers. I promised you five.

OK. Maybe you can come up with a fifth trick to break writers' block. Maybe I'll think of one later. So help me think of some ways. And while you're doing that, check out the cover that John Hornor Jacobs did for the DSD collection: TERMINAL DAMAGE -- which will be available laster this month. Seriously, you need a cover? Send cash to Mr. Jacobs.

The 12 Step Plan

By Russel D McLean

Its one of the few times I’m gonna do this. I don’t like giving advice because, hell, I feel like I’m only getting my start in this gig too, and who the hell am I to tell you anything?

But the inbox has been getting more and more requests lately from folks who want to know “how do I become a published author?”

I don’t know the answers, really. Just go for it, is about as good as I can get. But maybe I do have some ideas about you can improve your chances, some guidelines, you might say. Mostly about attitude and expectation, because I’m not (yet) gonna tell you how to write. That’s a personal journey, and I don’t know if I can make blanket statements about it. (although if you want writing advice about structure etc, here's Wee Billy Shakespeare's 10 Rules O' Writing as told to Declan Burke) But in the meantime…

Call this the McLean twelve step plan. It does not come with any guarantees, but most of this worked for me. When I finally figured it out. Your mileage may vary. But then that's the nature of this crazy business we call writering, right?

Oh, and before we begin, I should warn Dave White up front that I might just be using footnotes.

Step 1) You gotta remember that you are not a prodigy.

You’re not gonna write that masterpiece right off the bat. You will have to serve time as an indentured wannabe. If you haven't already followed one of Mr White's links from the other week, then listen to this wise lady (who breaks one of my cardinal writing rules by overusing one word, but she’s talking to you and when you’re talking, you can get away with some things that are unforgiveable on the page*). And understand it took your humble beardy hero somewhere around sixteen years to get where he is now (I started taking everything very seriously at around fourteen).

Step 2) Don’t think you can buy your way into the business. There are no quick fixes.

Here it is: Anyone who pays to be published is a sucker. I’m sorry, but what other kind of job do you pay other people to employ you? A publisher’s that impressed by your work, they’ll be paying you.

And, yes, some folks have done well with self publishing. But those folks went all out and didn’t go through some half-arsed vanity press paying through the nose for half-arsed, ugly product. They took the hard road, and often for reasons other than the, “I’m taking my ball and going home” reasons so many head to the vanity presses. And trust me when I say they are the HUGE exception rather than the rule, and that many of them face even harder trials after publication, especially with trade reviews and some bookstores. Yes, some people can do it, but they are so lucky, the odds are pretty much incalculable.

Look, there are reasons why the industry needs gatekeepers, and I hate to break it to you but you may not be ready for publication right away. And no amount of money thrown at vanity publishers is gonna change that.

Step 3) Listen to criticism. Especially from folks who might just know what they’re talking about.

I know its tough, but when an editor says something, listen to them. Sure, some of its bullshit, but most of it actually turns out to be useful. These ladies and gents tend to know what they’re talking about**, so take what they say and think really hard about it.

Step 4) Write.

I know it sounds obvious, but as I once heard some corny American talk-show host say, “You gotta do to get it.” You want to be taken seriously as a writer, put in the hours. Put in the sweat. If its tough, you know you’re doing it right.

Step 5) Read

Yawn, yawn, I know.

This is the one you hear all the time, but if you ain’t reading other people’s work, why the hell would you expect anyone to read what you write? Add to that, you’ll start to get an idea of how this writing business works – its all about connection with the reader. When you know how you read, you can start to figure out how you write. And, yes, TV shows and movies can also help with story structure etc if you approach them in the right way. Matter of fact, I learned a lot about structure watching movies. But even though I advocate the usage, love and assimilation of other media, listen to me when I say, YOU STILL GOTTA READ.

Step 6) Remain humble in all things

The best writers I have met tend to be the ones who have a sense of humility, who know and understand their limits… and then work to exceed them. They do not blow their own trumpet, constantly tell everyone how they are the best damn writer in the world and everyone else can kiss their arse***. This humility will come in handy later when you realise that not everyone in the world is going to love you or your books. In fact, I’d recommend a sense of humour, too. Laugh at yourself. A lot. Trust me, it’ll make things easier in the long term.

Step 7) Redraft. And when you done that, redraft again.

Writing is rewriting.

Deal with it.

Step 8) Make the time.

If you’re going to constantly moan about not starting that big book because of lack of time, don’t bother. Now, we all get caught up in things. I am currently behind on a big project because of the way real life has intruded. But I’m still writing. Every day. Now, you don’t have to write every day, but if you don’t write on at least a good percentage of them, what’s the point? Its like signing up to a gym to lose that mass from your stomach and then whining when you don’t lose the weight after not actually going to the gym****

Step 9) Be true to who you are.

The wondrous Joelle said it best in her first post: you can’t fake your voice or your style, so don’t try. Be comfortable with who you are as a writer. This may take some time, but when it happens, oh you’ll know it and you’ll feel the benefits.

Step 10) Love what you do

While maintaining that humility about yourself I mentioned earlier, you also have to be excited about what you write. Love your words. Love your stories. You characters. Genuine enthusiasm always shines through.

Step 11) Writer’s block? Sod that.

The words not coming? Don’t whinge about writing block. Just get off your arse and write something. Anything. Even, say, a 12 step plan for those who would foolishly try and follow your chosen career path. There’s a reason journalists make good fiction writers. Reporters can’t piss about waiting for the muse to strike, to slightly misquote the very wise Tony Black.


Step 12) Get yourself an agent. A good one. They’re easy to find, although hard to court.

Agents are invaluable. I’ve said that before. Now I’ll say it again. But trust me when I say that you need to be wary when choosing an agent. Look at their client list. Look at their records. If they’re legit, likelihood is they’ll have a website with much of this information free to view. You’ll see the books they’ve sold and the people they work with, and this’ll help you work out if they might be a good match. And if they ask for money up front… run like buggery.

So, there it is. My 12 step plan. There are no guarantees, but maybe some of this will help you... or dissuade you from ever asking me for advice again...

And if that 12 step plan ain't enough for you, howsabout this one from D-Wayne and Larry Love?




*According to one independent source, I used the word “homage” on the night of THE LOST SISTER launch at least thirty times – what can I say, I found a good gag and I stuck with it.
** Except for the plainly cruel rejections – like my famous, crumpled, battered “my kids didn’t like it either” letter that still earns me a good laugh every so often.
***Well, maybe James Ellroy might make such grand statements. But he’s Ellroy and exists on a very different plane from the rest of us mortals.
****there may be some biography here. Or not.

Scott Phillips Interview, Part Two

by Jay Stringer

Yesterday We kicked off an interview with author Scott Phillips. I think if i hold him for any longer, qualifies as a missing person and the cops will come looking. I better get this thing wrapped up quick. So back to it, we pick up the interview with Scott's second published novel, THE WALKAWAY....

- THE WALKAWAY blew me away. Where did this story start for you, had you got a scene or a plot you'd been carrying around for awhile?

I thought I might write about Charlie Arglist's kids, ten or fifteen years on, but that didn't gel. Then I thought about writing about Dot and Gunther from the end of the Ice Harvest, which would allow me to bring back many of the characters in the first book. And then I remembered a day when I was driving up the inramp onto the 405 freeway in Los Angeles and saw a man, eighty years old or more, in a suit, hitchhiking. It struck me as odd, and then later I wondered if he hadn't just escaped from the Veteran's Hospital just up the road (where, incidentally, my grandfather used to work as a barber).

-Gunther was just a cameo character in THE ICE HARVEST and I honestly wasn't expecting to like him as much as I did. By the end of the book I just wanted to keep reading about him. He seems like a real throwback to the stoic good guy which plays off well against the charm of Wayne Ogden, did you intend for them to work that way?

I didn't expect to like him that much either. I knew from the end of the Ice Harvest that he was kind of a taciturn, grumpy guy, but as I wrote it, and as his fragmentary memories came back to him it occurred to me that he might just be one of those guys who's not very good at showing his emotions. Wayne, on the other hand, was pure id. The clash of personalities between him and Wayne wasn't thought out from the beginning, in fact Wayne was going to be an offstage presence, someone from the past whose actions would have been alluded to and remembered, but not experienced firsthand.

- I've seen you blog about a project called Smut Sarge, is this a Wayne story?

It's "Supply Sarge," actually, but I like "Smut Sarge." Yeah, I had written two short stories about Wayne as a teenager, and he really stuck with me. My agent at the time I started it was having trouble selling a novel I'd written and told me that editors kept telling her they wanted another one just like the Ice Harvest, short and pulpy. So I thought I'd write about the year Wayne came home from WWII and tried to be a civilian and failed, utterly.

-Part of the structure of THE WALKAWAY seems to play with the conventions of a mystery novel, except that instead of a detective we have an old man and the puzzle he's trying to solve is his own memory. Am I reading too much into that?

I think that's right, though again it wasn't conscious on my part. There are characters who know quite a bit--Dot, for one, and Sally. But there's no mystery in the traditional sense. My editor at the time, Dan Smetanka, called it "more of a 'novel novel.'"

-Another element that slowly reveals itself through the book is just how much this is a simple love story, and has an emotional core to it that I don’t often see in Noir or crime. Was it hard to get the balance right between the darkness and the love story?

For Gunther the love story--mostly for his wife, but also for his unacknowledged son and grandchildren--is what makes the darkness he's seen worth living through.

-Again I’m curious about the process. The story takes place over two different time periods, and they seem to be written in different voices. Did you write them separately?

I was a third or so of the way through the novel, set entirely in the late eighties, when I started worrying about all the people who were going to be buying it expecting another Ice Harvest. And around that time I realized that the 1952 story was getting short shrift, getting mentioned in that cursory "he remembered the time he...." or "she thought back to that night at the cabin" manner. It wasn't reading very well. So just for the hell of it I started writing that second chapter in Wayne's voice, starting with his arrival at the train station, and I thought, yeah, that's what this needs. So I shoehorned that in as the second chapter and set every second chapter in 1952, in the first person, and tried to get a good Fawcett Gold Medal, Lion Books feel to it. In fact you can read those even-numbered chapters separately, and they make perfect sense as a really short novel (the odd chapters, set in the eighties, require their other half to be intelligible, however.) "Supply Sarge" is very much in the vein of the Wayne chapters of the Walkaway.

-What drew you to the 1950's for THE WALKAWAY? And why does crime fiction still fit so well in that era?

That whole postwar period works well for crime fiction, whether in the US, Europe or Japan, because things had been turned on their heads for a while and suddenly there was this other upheaval of returning vets, occupation, etc. It was a great time to be crooked, I imagine.

-Lets pretend, for a second, that I was the sort of idiot who would interview you without having read COTTONWOOD. How would you describe the book to me?

It's the story of the first few violent years of a Kansas town as seen through the eyes of a randy photographer/saloonkeeper. It works in the story of the Bloody Benders, a family of killers who lived in Kansas in 1872-73 and killed upwards of fifteen travelers, drained their blood and buried them in their orchard.

-I noticed a lot of references to the town Cottonwood in THE WALKAWAY. I've also heard you mention somewhere that Wayne made passing references to classical literature because his grandfather was a scholar, but you didn’t write about his grandfather until later on. Do characters come to you fully formed, or do you go back and work in little details like that later?

They don't come fully formed, generally. Usually I'll come up with a detail like that and go back. And it's Wayne's father he's thinking of as a scholar, but it's passed on from the grandfather. It doesn't last, though--neither Wayne's daughter nor his grandson follow in the tradition.

-I'd like to take another look at your writing process. You’ve written stories set in a number of different time periods now. Do you approach the writing differently for each era?

Not really, except when I'm writing a period piece I try and immerse myself in the culture of the era as much as I can. I read a lot of old newspapers.

-What's your technique to writing and editing dialogue, do you read it aloud? Do you steal from real conversations ? I often lift whole conversations from my work commute.

I just make it up, mostly, but if I hear something that's too good not to use I'll put it in. I just heard a story from my Mom about a guy who was in trouble wit his wife for sleeping around, and he said, "Honey, if I could un-fuck her I would." You'd better believe that's going in there somewhere. And I'm a great believer in reading aloud, though I often do it sotto voce, just to see if the rhythm's right. One thing I learned early on from James Lee Burke was that it has to scan, just like a poem.

-Had any problems with writers block, or any tips for readers of our site who might have?

I've had periods where I was just writing badly. I'm a great believer in Charles Willeford's formula: Just write something down, anything, and then you have something to revise, and if you revise enough you can conquer anything.

-I think one of the things I notice most about your work is a sense of mundanity, but I mean that in a good way! It's as if you look for the normal element buried away in a lewd story, and the lewd element buried away in something normal. Do you set out to do that?

I do. It's when the everyday cracks open and a little bit of weirdness spills out that I find my stories. Or vice versa, where the mundane flows into the bizarre, like when Bill Gerard in "Ice Harvest" says he'd rather be home in Kansas City watching his grandchildren open presents instead of torturing information out of Renata the strip club owner. I really did think that that was a believable motivation for him: Goddamnit, this really fucks up my nice Christmas I had planned.

-Okay, we're into the home stretch now and then we can let you out of the DoSomeDamage basement. James Ellroy recently said that writing was going to be 'survival of the fittest' and down to 'how bad do you want it?' What are your thoughts on the state of the publishing industry?

It's a huge fucking disaster, so much worse now than when I started off. I no longer count on making a living writing books, but books have given me enough exposure that I get a little action with comic books and TV and movies. I now look at writing books the way I used to look at writing short stories: something I do for pleasure and exposure and if I make some money at the same time, great.

-If you could change one thing about the whole industry, what would it be?

Demolish the big chain bookstores and the blockbuster mentality that they bring with them.

-I've always found there's very little transparency, and a lot of people not getting credit for the work they do. Is there anyone you'd like to mention or thank from behind the scenes?

My agents, past and present, including David Hale Smith, Nicole Aragi, Sylvie Rabineau, Abner Stein, and the late Paul Marsh; my editors, especially Dan Smetanka, Maria Rejt, Dennis McMillan and Patrick Raynal; and any number of anthology and magazine editors, not to mention the people working with and for all the above. I owe each of them more than I can say.

-Who would win in a fight between Daredevil and Spiderman?

I'd have to know why they were fighting. Did Spiderman find out about Foggy Nelson fucking Aunt May?

-Well, given Matt's seeming mission to work through the whole female half of the marvel universe, maybe it was him and not Foggy? Okay, we'll let you go now. Next up for me is clearly going to be reading Cottonwood. What have you got coming up next?

The Wayne Ogden novel coming from Phoenix Books, that should be out in September. I'm also working on a novel called Nocturne le Vendredi for les Éditions la Branche in Paris, which is part of a series of thirteen books by thirteen authors, all of which will be adapted for French TV. I'm really hoping I get to adapt it myself. Also working on a comic series with artist Roger Peterson which we'll be pitching soon called The Paradise. And a couple of film projects working with Jedidiah Ayres as co-writer. So it's a busy year coming up.

-Sounds like it. I hope we haven't left you too damaged to work.

And that's all, folks. A huge thank you to Scott for taking the time to talk to us. If you're familiar with his work, i hope this expands on his stories and gives you something to think about. If you're new to Scott, what are you waiting for?

Just before I head off, you should check out Scott's reading of his short THE CUCKOLD AVENGED, over at Seth Harwood's CrimeWAV site. There's some great readings over there, and you can subscribe to it via itunes or rss.

Scott Phillips Interview, Part One

By Jay Stringer

Here at DSD we don’t want you to feel safe or secure. We don’t want you relying on the same things day after day. Sometimes, we want you to come home, switch on your computer, and find that four favourite blogger has been tied up and locked in a trunk, and there’s a ransom note waiting for you. Sometimes, we like to do the same thing to authors, too.

So we’re starting this week with something different. Weddle is missing, and presumed, ummmm, missing. You’ll get the ransom note in the mail, okay? And joining me in the DSD basement is author Scott Phillips.

Scott’s work needs no introduction, but we’ll give you one anyway. His first published novel, The Ice Harvest, was adapted into a film starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton. The film is a fun and well made slice of Christmas noir, but the book is amazing. Its tight and fast, and won’t let you stop reading even if you really want to go to the bathroom. He followed it up with an even better book, The Walkaway, and has written screenplays and short fiction. But you’ll get to read all about that in the interview so I’ll shut up now.

You can catch Scott over at his blog and you could also check out the shiny new issue of Crime Factory which features Scott as well as DSD luminaries Weddle and White, and some fella named Bruen. But now, onto the first half of the interview.

-What’s your favorite swear word?

Hobotaint! Or Hobo Taint, if you prefer

-Lets go back to the beginning. What started you off reading crime fiction?

I got interested in crime movies long before I started reading crime fiction. I used to work at a revival theater where we were always showing Bogart movies--"Maltese Falcon," "Sierra Madre," Big Sleep"--but for some reason I wasn't motivated to seek out the books. The first one I remember reading was Jim Crumley's "The Wrong Case," which I took with me one summer on a working trip to Europe. That's the one that got me started. I also remember reading Jim Burke's first Robicheaux novels before I was really heavily into the genre, mainly because I knew him. I had him for Freshman comp at Wichita State, and his very serious attitude toward writing made a big impression on me. Then I discovered the original Black Lizard series, back before Random House bought the name, and started on Thompson, Helen Neilsen, Harry Whittington and that group. I got to be friends with Crumley about twenty years ago and he turned me on to a lot of good writers--Kent Anderson, Jon Jackson, Rick DeMarinis Robert Sims Reid and that whole Missoula crowd. I also met Dennis McMillan and Chas Hansen around that time and they got me reading Willeford.

-Any particular favorites?

Too many to name, though Willeford was obviously major influence, as was Crumley. I just did three excellent books in a row by friends of mine: "Last Known Address," by Theresa Schwegel, a cop novelist worthy of Anderson or Price; Ken Bruen's "Once Were Cops," which is maybe the darkest thing he's written; and "Bury Me Deep," by Megan Abbot, which is the best of her four so far, and that's saying something. Lots of others, though. I'm reading a lot of short stories by writers like Jedidiah Ayres, who I'm writing screenplays with, and Frank Bill and Tom Franklin. I could go on for days in that vein.

-Interesting that you were a fan of the movies before the books. You have a very lean and economic writing style, would you say this was influenced by films at all?

I don't think so. I do tend to imagine scenes visually as I write them. I worry sometimes that screenwriting affected my style by stripping it down. Typically I write spare prose and then go back and liven it up. Cottonwood was written in a more florid, 19th-century style than the others.

-Cottonwood is the one I haven't read yet. I look forward to it. When did you start writing?

As a child. I used to write short stories and plays in school. My first real attempt at a novel came in my late twenties, an un-publishable piece of shit that nonetheless proved to me that I could write a big stack of finished pages.

-Did you go straight from that unpublished novel to THE ICE HARVEST?

No, I stopped writing fiction for a while, though I made some attempts. Wrote the beginning of a science fiction novel then abandoned it. Mostly I was writing scripts at the urging of an actor friend who was quite well known in France at the time and wanted us to make a movie together. That didn't happen, but I ended up in LA where I co-wrote a movie called Crosscut. I found the finished product dispiriting and decided to go back to fiction for a while, which is when I wrote Ice Harvest.

-What took you to France, and did it change the way you see or write about your home country?

I went over as a teenager as part of a sister cities program and ended up going back year after year working for various University exchange programs. In my twenties I moved there full time. I suppose it gave me the luxury of seeing the place I grew up from a distance, culturally, but it also instilled a sense of foreignness in me. I don't really feel completely at home in either place.

-The first Chapter of ICE HARVEST has an almost short story feel, which I think helps suck the reader into the book.

That was an incident I'd seen one afternoon, a drunk getting his hair caught on fire and the bartender taking away his cigarettes and lighter and then pouring him another drink. I wrote it and rewrote it, always intending it to b the start of a novel, but it didn't gel until I put it into the third person. In first person it sounded like a poor imitation of Crumley, which of course it was.

-The setting is interesting. Firstly it's not set in the present, but then it also doesn't go back to the 30's-50's era that period Noir so often does. And it’s also set in Wichita. What was it about the story that lead you to 1979 in Wichita, and did this make it a harder sell to publishers?

1979 was just a very vivid year for me. It was the year I turned eighteen, the first time I really fell in love, two of my grandparents died, I made my first trip to France. It was also the year I started going to strip clubs with my pals, so I had a good feel for the era. As far as it being Wichita, that was never a problem. I also wanted to have a lot of snow and ice on the ground, not for any sort of metaphoric reasons but because it presents so many interesting problems and offers up so many ways to describe the look and feel of things. It only became metaphor after my good friend Chas Hansen suggested the title. Actually, Wichita's winters tend to be mild, but in '78-'79 (rather than '79-'80, as in the novel) we had a really cold wet winter with snow constantly on the ground and ice constantly on the road.

- The book has a real lack of moralizing, there's never a moment when you as the author appear to be judging anybody. Is this in there right from the first draft, or do you remove your own voice during the editing?

That's interesting. If I write a character who's nasty I often find myself getting fond of him or her. I'm very sorry I killed off Wayne Ogden in the Walkaway, because I've now gone back and written about him three times, and each time I had to go back into his past, since he dies in 1952. I intended him to be a character Willeford might have written, but I think he's also got some kinship to Ken Bruen's Brant. That said, I'm not there to judge, just describe.

-Along the same lines, the book is very trusting of the reader. You never stop the story to explain characters motives, and you don't give an explanation of the crime that Charlie and Vic committed just before chapter one. Was this an approach you learned as you went along?

I hate obvious exposition. Drives me nuts. And sometimes I don't know the answer myself. I have to keep myself curious or I lose interest. Jim Crumley once told me that he'd written the beginnings of any number of novels that he abandoned after a hundred pages or so because he realized he knew the ending and just wasn't interested any more.

-I'd like to ask a couple of questions about the film. Did you learn anything from watching the adaptation process that you've taken with you into your own writing?

It affected my screenwriting more than my fiction writing. Just adapted William Gay's book the Long Home along with Jedidiah Ayres, and I always felt I was betraying the author when I made even the most necessary changes. That's a strictly visceral reaction, though, not a realistic one.

-Were there elements of the story that would work on paper but not on film, or vice versa?

Not necessarily. In retrospect I think we all agree that the change in the ending was a mistake, but the test audiences hated the original ending so much we all--myself included--at the time thought it was the thing to do. And of course it was shot in May, so the snowstorm was out. We settled for some fake snow on the ground in patches and a cold, nasty rain.

-I think the only choice that I had to stop and think about was Charlie himself. In the film there is more of an attempt to portray him with the dreaded word 'sympathy', and to lessen his culpability in what happens. Do you think this was necessary to make the film work as a 90-minute story?

I think it's purely and simply the fact that John Cusack is a likeable onscreen presence. I always found Charlie likeable; in fact my theory was that Charlie skated by on his charm.

-It was ICE HARVEST that secured you an agent, right?

It was indeed.

-There are people reading DoSomeDamage who are still looking for that magic person. Do you have any advice for them?

My advice right now would be to get published on one of the better-known internet sites--Plots with Guns, Thuglit, etc.--and then start approaching agents. It's a really good way to raise your profile, and before long others know your name and work, and soon enough the agents will, too.

Interview Continues Tomorrow