Hilary Davidson Always Tells

By Steve Weddle

Hilary Davidson has been a guest, a subject, or a topic at DoSomeDamage 836 times in the last five years. That’s not surprising, of course, as she has a hardback or paperback book dropping every three months.

Hilary’s debut novel, The Damage Done, won the 2011 Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and the Crimespree Award for Best First Novel. The book was also a finalist for a Macavity Award and an Arthur Ellis Award. The novel’s main character, Lily Moore, is, like Hilary, a travel writer. While their personal lives have little in common, they do share a few things, such as a love of vintage clothing, classic Hollywood movies, and Art Deco design. The second book in the series is The Next One to Fall (Tor/Forge, 2012) and the third is Evil in All Its Disguises (Tor/Forge, 2013). Read the reviews. Hilary’s first standalone novel, Blood Always Tells, was published by Tor/Forge in April 2014 and released as a trade paperback in March 2015.

On the occasion of the paperback publication of Blood Always Tells, Hilary took a break from racing across the airport to answer a few questions.

DSD: You've had hardbacks and ebooks and paperbacks and anthologies and magazines come out with your name in them. How is a paperback release different from the others? What makes it special?

Hilary Davison: I get excited over any book release, but paperbacks are near and dear to my heart because that's what I grew up reading. Part of that was convenience — from the time I was 12, I had at least two hours a day of commuting time, and I spent it reading. The other part of the reason was financial: why buy a hardcover when I could buy two or three new paperbacks with the same amount of money? So when a book of mine comes out in paperback, I feel like it's reaching an entirely new audience. I'll buy paperbacks by authors I've never heard of, just because they sound interesting. Hardcovers, no. More than anything, I'm excited to get the book into more readers' hands.

DSD: You just did a Noir at the Bar recently. By my count, you've done 87 of these. Do you find them much different than when you read by yourself in a bookstore? How are these different?

HD: I love doing events with other writers. I know it's not the same as musicians jamming, but there's a similar collaborative spirit behind it. Everybody brings something to the table, and you never know what's going to happen, or how it will all turn out. It's different from doing solo bookstore events, because those don't change much from town. At a Noir at the Bar, I can read whatever I want because I'm not trying to sell anything!

DSD: We're coming up on crime fiction conventions and conferences from now until, heck, December, it seems. What kind of panel would you most like to see and what sort of authors would you want to see on it?

HD: I was just at Left Coast Crime, and I love that conference's mix of serious panels and fun ones. I was on one panel about violence in crime fiction, and another that was basically a game show. Both were great. One change I'd like to see is more genre-mixing on panels. By that, I mean don't put all the cozy writers on one panel and the hardboiled/noir ones on another. One of my favorite panels at LCC was the Cozy-Noir Summit that Katrina Niidas Holm moderated. Mixing it up is a great way for readers to discover new authors, and it makes for lively conversations. Also, I think audience members should be able to throw things at panelists who set their books in front of them. It's a panel, not an infomercial.

DSD: Do you start with a scene and work out? Do you start with an outline and follow it? Are there points you want to hit – a climax at the end of act two, for example.

HD:  All I've learned from writing my books is that I can't outline. The upside is that the endings of my books are a surprise to me as much as anyone. That's also the downside. It's a tough way to write, stumbling blinding in the dark until I hit on something that makes sense. Honestly, it makes for a lot of false starts and wasted words. The one thing I hold onto is knowing the emotional arc of the story. I know what my main character is struggling with, and what demon s/he will face. That was definitely true of BLOOD ALWAYS TELLS. I knew the words Desmond Edgars was going to say in the last scene, even though I had no idea how I was going to get him there.

DSD: Do you feel as if you have become a better writer throughout the Lily Moore series and would you have done things differently in the early books?

HD: I think writing is one of those jobs where the more you do it, the better you get. I know there are exceptions to this, but it's generally true. What I struggle with is wanting to do new and different things with each book, so I feel like my learning curve is steep. The standalone I'm finishing now is largely narrated by a man who killed his wife. I've told plenty of short stories from a villain's point of few, but it's much tougher with a novel.
There's probably nothing I would change about the characters or the emotional arcs of my early books, even though I'd love to go back and clean up the writing. The ending of THE DAMAGE DONE will always break my heart. The first part of BLOOD ALWAYS TELLS has the same effect. There are legit reasons for certain characters to die, but that doesn't make me feel any better about killing them.

DSD: You recently won a Derringer Award for your short fiction. What’s it like to be a winner? (asking for a friend)

HD: Winning the Derringer meant so much — in no small part because writing short fiction is my true love. Novels break my brain and cause me no end of angst. They're satisfying when they're done, but until that moment, late in the game, they're actually kind of hellish. Stories are different. Writing short stories is more like a game of "What if?" I have the opening scenario in mind when I start writing, and then I follow it wherever it goes. The genesis for "A Hopeless Case," the story that won the Derringer, is awful: when I was in high school in Toronto, I walked down to a subway platform just as a woman jumped in front of an incoming train. But writing about a person in that scenario makes me process it differently. Instead of being horrified by what happened, I'm creeping under the person's skin, trying to understand them. Even when the subject matter is dark, it humanizes it.

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Hilary Davidson's Blood Always Tells is a twisted tale of love, crime, and family gone wrong, by the multiple award-winning author of The Damage Done and Evil in All Its Disguises.

Sign My Book, Please

By Holly West

Update 4/28: The winner of the copy of BLOOD ALWAYS TELLS is Ray Garraty. Thanks for playing, everyone!

Comment on this post by Sunday, April 27, to win a copy of Hilary Davidson's new novel, BLOOD ALWAYS TELLS.

I made this video four years ago, long before I got published:



I do blather on a bit so I'll save you the trouble of watching it. Basically, it's about attending book signing events and how much meeting my favorite authors in person inspired me to start writing myself.

Last night, I was reminded how much they still inspire me.

I went out to Mysterious Galaxy Redondo Beach, to see Hilary Davidson speak about and read from her latest novel, BLOOD ALWAYS TELLS. I'm a big fan of Hilary's Lily Moore series, and as soon as I heard about BLOOD, I knew it would go to the top of my reading list as soon as it came out (that is, if I ever finish THE GOLDFINCH. I'm on month three reading that one, folks).

Since I just got it last night, I can't provide a review, but here's the book description:

"Dominique Monaghan just wanted to get even with her two-timing, married boyfriend, a washed-up boxer stuck in a toxic marriage to a dangerously spoiled socialite. However, an elaborate blackmail scheme soon lands her in the middle of an unexpected kidnapping...and attempted murder. But who is actually out to kill whom?

Desmond Edgars, Dominique’s big brother, has looked out for his wayward sister ever since their mother was convicted of murder many years ago, so when he receives a frantic phone call from Dominique in the middle of the night, he drops everything to rush to the rescue. But to find out what has really happened to his sister, the stoic ex-military man must navigate a tangled web of murder and deception, involving a family fortune, a couple of shifty lawyers, and a missing child, while wrestling with his own bloody secrets..."

Sounds good, eh? To be honest, in Hilary's deft hands, it can't help but be good.

Hilary Davidson reads from BLOOD ALWAYS TELLS at Mysterious Galaxy Redondo Beach
Photo by Holly West

Sitting in the audience, listening to Hilary discuss the origins of the book, the themes she explores in it, and how she goes about writing a book, I felt energized. It re-ignited my passion for what I do. It made me want to go straight home and finish plotting my own work-in-progress.

I make no secret of the fact that 99% of the books I read are eBooks. It's not that I prefer eBooks over paper, it's that I mostly read at night, and my eReader allows me to read in bed with out disturbing my husband. If I was single, I might very well read more paper books, who knows?

As a result of my eBook reading, I naturally buy fewer paper books and I also go to fewer book signing events. I still meet many authors at conferences, but it's just not the same as seeing them individually, talking about and reading from their books. Since MISTRESS OF FORTUNE and its sequel are both eBooks, I realize that I've missed out on having this experience myself and to tell you the truth, it makes me a little bit sad.

Hilary Davidson and Holly West
Photo by Travis Richardson

The fact is, before I was published, attending book signing events was an important part of my development as a writer. They fueled my dreams and motivated me to keep on going. Meeting people who'd done it reminded me that it could be done, even if the goal of finishing my own novel seemed very far away at the time.

Now, as a published author, they function in much the same way. The authors I respect most continue to grow as writers and don't sit back and rest once they've achieved one level of success. They push themselves and remind me that I need to push myself. It's not about competition, it's about steady improvement, figuring out where I want to go with my writing and then working to get there. It's about supporting my favorite authors and the bookstores that host them.

And most of all, it's about reading great books. Ultimately, it's always about the books, which is how it should be.

Speaking of great books, let's have a giveaway! I'll send a signed copy of BLOOD ALWAYS TELLS to one commenter selected at random on Sunday, April 27.

Talking BLACK WIDOW with Hilary Davidson

via http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/

By Steve Weddle

Hilary Davidson is familiar to all DoSomeDamage readers, no doubt.

A handful of Hilary on DSD:

Evil interview

The MacGyver interview

5ive for writing

The phone call (the full podcast from 2010 is still available here)

If, for whatever reason, you don’t know from Hilary, check out her Official Bio Page of Biography.

She’s written guidebooks and novels, all the while working on short stories. Now she’s collected the best of the short stories in THE BLACK WIDOW CLUB.

Over the past three or four years, she’s been nice enough to answer 163 of my questions. I pressed my luck and asked her a few more about this new book, which you can buy right now.

Out of all you’ve written, why collect these stories? 

I resisted the idea of putting a collection together for a long time, because I figured my stories were easily available online. I put up a short fiction page on my website a long time ago, with links to various places that published my work. But a number of those sites pulled down their archives — or disappeared completely — and I started to get emails from people asking where they could find stories like “Insatiable,” which won a Spinetingler Award in 2010. So the push came from necessity. I realized that most of my early stories were homeless.

What makes them such a good collection?

From my perspective, it was interesting to go back and examine the twisted path I’ve traveled. From a reader’s perspective, that twisted path includes stories told in wildly different voices. THE BLACK WIDOW CLUB is a diverse collection, and yet there’s a thread of betrayal that courses through each story. I’m interested in how people’s most intimate bonds can be used against them.

Since readers had been asking about different stories, I decided to crowdsource the lineup. I wanted to get a sense whether the stories I liked best resonated with other people, so I asked on Facebook and Twitter what readers would like to see in a collection. There were several stories that people mentioned over and over. One that people were passionate about was “The Black Widow Club,” which first appeared in Needle. That story ended up giving the collection its name. Most of the stories that people recommended ended up in the book. The ones that didn’t were recently published, and I felt that they were easily available.

Why now?

Aside from the vanished-archives issue, I wanted to get people ready for my next book, BLOOD ALWAYS TELLS. It’s my fourth novel but my first stand-alone, and it’s a big departure from my Lily Moore novels. I hope readers who enjoy that series will still embrace it, and I thought I should get them ready by reading my short stories. If you’re scared off by my short stories, you aren’t ready to read BLOOD.

Putting these stories together, how did you feel about the opportunity to go back in and mess around a bit with each of them?

Not really. I considered doing that, but in the end I pretty much left the stories as they were. I did find typos as I read them over, and I corrected those.

How do you balance short fiction with novels? How do you say ‘no’ to story requests from anthos and mags?

I write short fiction between drafts of novels. I love doing that, because I’ve always got ideas for stories dancing in my head, and I can finally write one or two or maybe even three between, say, the first and second drafts of a novel. Thinking about other characters, their histories and their voices, gives me perspective and lets me come back to my book with a clear head.

Sometimes I get strange requests. I’ve had editors ask if I had “anything lying around” that they could publish. Unless they want to publish dustbunnies, the answer is always no. I write my short stories the same way I write my novels. I wish I had an inventory of stories sitting around, but I don’t. I have no problem saying no to most requests. The exception is charity anthologies for a good cause. Sometimes I’m mired in a novel and I just can’t tear myself away to write a new story, even though I want to. But I will try my damnedest to do it. I just finished a story for an anthology to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. It’s Joe Clifford’s brainchild, and the book — BADLANDS: TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND — will be out from Zelmer Pulp by the end of the year.

Do you find yourself putting more weight into your sentences and images when you write short stories instead of a novel? Having read most of your stories and your novels, I get the sense that the novel has more of an open feel.

With short stories, a writer has so little time to rope readers into their world that you can’t waste a word. With a novel, there’s more trust that you build over time. Crazy as it sounds, a novel is more like a relationship, while short stories are a one-night stand.

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Thanks to Hilary for taking the time to talk about THE BLACK WIDOW CLUB.

Hilary Davidson: The EVIL Interview

By Steve Weddle

First, consider looking into some Red Cross First Aid training.

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Pleased to bring back one of our most frequent guests, Hilary Davidson, who has the world's largest Pinterest page.

Hilary's been here a number of times, including the MacGyver post, the NoirCon post and the Series Characters post. Plus, of course, 39 other times.

This week, she stops by to talk about her new Lily Moore novel, EVIL IN ALL ITS DISGUISES.

"Davidson knows how to write a galloping page-turner, 

and the plot twists are plentiful."—Quill & Quire

In this third Lily Moore book, the setting is a hotel in Acapulco, where guests check out, but can never leave, as the song says.

We first met Lily in THE DAMAGE DONE and saw her later in THE NEXT ONE TO FALL. Now she's back.

DSD: This series is known for the exotic locales, the fashion, and the movie-buff fun. What are the blessings and curses that come along with this? Do you find yourself reaching readers who might not otherwise pick up detective fiction?

Hilary Davidson: The exotic locations have certainly lured in a lot of people who claim they don’t normally read mysteries, and the Peruvian tourism board has bought boxes of my second book, The Next One to Fall, to give away at trade shows. I was worried they’d hate me for killing a tourist at Machu Picchu, but it turned out they didn’t really mind. (I don’t think the Mexican tourism board will take to Evil in All Its Disguises the same way, though. There’s too much real-life Acapulco crime that ended up in that book.) My love of old movies and vintage clothes is something I got from my grandmother, so it thrills me when readers connect with that. The downside has been that a few people think exotic locales + fashion + old movies = cozy, old-fashioned mysteries. The books are tough to pigeonhole, but they tend to be dark, so I’ve heard from a few disgruntled cozy fans.

DSD: How have the characters changed, especially Lily?

Hilary Davidson: Lily Moore has been evolving through the three books, and she’s become a tougher, resilient character. Before The Damage Done, she tended to run away from her family and relationship problems, rather than confront them. But her life changed dramatically in the course of that book, and that forced her to change. In The Next One to Fall, she was dealing with grief and struggling to pick up the pieces of her world after everything fell apart. In Evil in All Its Disguises, she’s recovered from some of those wounds, but she has a lot of baggage from the past that she’s dragging around with her, and she starts to understand that unless she confronts it, she’ll always be chained to it.

DSD: How difficult is it writing an amateur sleuth? Don’t you sometimes wish Lily could get a search warrant?

Hilary Davidson: Definitely! That was one of the great things about writing Evil in All Its Disguises. On the one hand, Lily is trapped at an Acapulco hotel that has armed guards who won’t let anyone leave the grounds. But being trapped means all bets are off inside the hotel, so Lily isn’t worried that they’re going to call the cops on her for breaking into someone’s room. Lily’s got a “bad girl” side, and that really came out in the latest book.

DSD: Are book tours necessary in the age of Twitter and Facebook?

Hilary Davidson: I love Twitter, but I don’t think it can replace a book tour. It’s wonderful for meeting people and getting into interesting, sometimes crazy, conversations. I treat it like my virtual watercooler because I work in a corner of my living room, and I have no coworkers unless you count the incredibly squawky blue jays in the courtyard behind my building. But would be a mistake to think that most of the people who follow me on Twitter are into my work. Some people are just there for recommendations of gluten-free restaurants or for the llama photos, which is fine with me. A lot of people are on Twitter just to promote their own work, and they don’t care what I’m doing — they’re only following me in the hope that I’ll follow them back so they can sell me their stuff.
I’m a big believer in book tours, even though I know a lot of writers who disagree with me on this front. I don’t believe touring is for everyone. For starters, are you the kind of person who will turn into a resentful rageball if you see there are only five people in the audience? Don’t go on tour. Touring gives you the chance to hang out with booksellers and librarians, and to meet up with bloggers and other authors. Generally speaking, local media won’t cover your book unless you’re visiting the area on tour. I think there are a lot of ways to connect with readers — Alafair Burke’s video chats come to mind as an excellent idea I want to steal next time around — but there’s nothing better than meeting in person.

DSD: What’s the biggest mistake you made as a debut author? Or what’s one thing you’d change if you could “debut” all over again?

Hilary Davidson: I would take all of the ARCs I sent to media outlets and give them to booksellers and librarians instead. Because I’d worked in magazines for years, I was obsessed with media coverage, and I didn’t realize how much more important it is to get your book into the hands of book pushers.

DSD: Publishers Weekly mentioned the “Poe-like” creepiness in EVIL IN ALL ITS DISGUISES. Where’s the Poe in this one? Is there someone buried in one of the hotel rooms?

Hilary Davidson: Well, actually… no, wait, I shouldn’t be all spoilery. But there’s always some Poe in my books. In Evil, a lot of it is tied up in the Hotel Cerón itself. When I started writing it, “The Fall of the House of Usher” was on my mind, and I pictured the hotel crumbling from within, and its rottenness being a metaphor for the people running it. But as I got into writing the book, I realized that the story was really about revenge, and that almost every character wants vengeance on some level. That includes Lily, even though she denies it to herself. Revenge brought me back to another story by Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado,” and it worked its way into the book. Mind you, when that reviewer made the comparison to Poe, they might have just had the subterranean passageway filled with rats in mind. Or maybe the snakes? It’s hard to say.

DSD: Some readers have seemed torn whether to classify this newest Lily novel as a cozy because it has some stronger elements than the previous books. Is this a fair reading of the book? Does it matter?

Hilary Davidson: BookPeople’s Scott Montgomery has told me how hard my books are to categorize. From a marketing point of view, this is a bad thing, because it’s easier to sell a book you can put into an easy-to-recognize category. A lot of people who read the phrase “amateur female sleuth” expect a book to be cozy. I don’t really mind how the books are categorized, unless readers feel cheated or disappointed. I know a few cozy readers hated the dark ending of The Damage Done, and others who were disturbed by Lily’s suicidal thoughts in The Next One to Fall. I don’t have a sense yet about what they think of Evil. It’s by far the most romantic of the books, in spite of the rats and snakes and the creepy Poe-like atmosphere. Honest! (Hey, come back, cozy readers! Why are you running away???)

DSD: What's the one genre novel you'd love to write but probably won't?

Hilary Davidson: I’d love to write science fiction. One of my all-time favorite authors is Harlan Ellison, and I think I learned how to write a short story by reading his. I don’t really see it happening in the near future… but you never know.

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And now for a little something for you. Caption this photo of Dan O'Shea and Hilary Davidson. The best caption wins a copy of EVIL IN ALL ITS DISGUISES. Post your captions -- and your whatevers -- in the comments. No wagering.

Series Characters: Guest Post from Hilary Davidson

By Hilary Davidson

First, thanks to my friend Steve Weddle for letting me loose on DSD today. I promised him I wouldn’t break anything, but that was only to get him to stop hovering. You know how he is.

Actually, you do know how he is, by which I mean kind and generous to fellow writers. He asked me to stop by because my second novel, THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, came out a couple of weeks ago. It’s the follow-up to THE DAMAGE DONE, and it picks up three months after the first book ends. Both novels feature Lily Moore, travel writer and accidental sleuth. I’m on tour now, and one question that keeps coming up at events is about how hard it was for me to pick up from where I’d left off, especially since THE DAMAGE DONE read like a standalone and left Lily in a very dark place at the end.

The truth is, I always intended to write several books about Lily. A big part of the reason why is that I couldn’t imagine putting Lily through the hell she goes through in THE DAMAGE DONE without following up with her later. At the beginning of THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, she’s still shell-shocked and grieving deeply. Her best friend, Jesse, has conned her into coming to Peru with him — since they both work in travel, it’s a business trip for them — and she’s sleepwalking through it, dragging her ghosts after her. At Machu Picchu, she can’t appreciate the beauty of the stone city without thinking about death. When they find a dying woman at the bottom of an Inca staircase, it’s as if the dark thoughts in Lily’s head have taken on a physical form. But later, as she hunts for the woman’s traveling companion, and discovers a trail of dead and missing women behind him, she becomes determined to get justice.

Writing the second book with Lily forced me to confront an ongoing debate about series characters and whether or not they should change. At my first Thrillerfest in 2009, Lee Child made an argument for writing a protagonist who never changes, one who goes from book to book as essentially the same person. He said that readers, when they love a character, just want to see more of that character, not an evolution that changes him.

At the time, I couldn’t have disagreed more. I love series characters who evolve over the course of several books, as Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch does, and as Spenser in Robert B. Parker’s early novels did. When I think of a character who remains the same from book to book, I think of Nancy Drew.

It was only when I was in the middle of writing THE NEXT ONE TO FALL that I started to reconsider that position. There are so many obvious ways in which Lily changes over the course of that book that I had to stop to consider what hadn’t changed about her. I also wanted to parse out the temporary changes — grief, at the start of the new book, has made her listless and passive, which is entirely unlike the Lily in the first book… and quite unlike the one in the rest of THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, who starts to come back to life as she goes after justice for the dead and missing female victims.

I realized that many of the changes aren’t so much to Lily’s character as to her perspective. When Lily encounters the sister of one of victim, who is hunting for her missing sister in Peru, it breaks her heart on one level, because it reminds her of her own search for her sister. At the same time, this woman drives Lily mad because of her stubbornness and her reckless behavior — not entirely unlike Lily’s own in THE DAMAGE DONE.

In so many ways, Lily is the same. She’s still a woman haunted by her family history, one who has classic Hollywood movies running up against verses by Edgar Allan Poe in her head, one who uses modern technology to listen to Frank Sinatra songs, one who just can’t let things go. The bad-girl side that was suppressed in the first book comes out in the second, but it was always there, lurking beneath her smooth veneer before it cracked. Even her desire for justice, which gets ever more powerful in THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, contains an echo from the first book: Lily didn’t find justice then, so she’s damned sure she’ll get it now.

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Get your own copy of THE NEXT ONE TO FALL

Of Commodes and Commodification

By Steve Weddle

You know all those RED CARPET shows they have for the Grammys and Academy Awards and all? How they devote all that time to the packaging of the thing being sold? I kinda get the feeling that's what we're doing with our recent discussions about books.

Look at those shoes.

Did you see what she said about 99c ebooks?

Print or digital? Paper or plastic?

We're talking about books, not writing. Not stories. I mean "we," here and not "you people."

But for a second, maybe we can worry a little less about price-point and a little more about plot.

Here's why we talk about ebooks and pricing and self-pubbing -- it's quantifiable. It's easy.

We can have arguments about ebooks. I can say a thing about PDFs being more available than pieces of paper. I can say something I know I'm right about. It's provable. I think that's probably why we've got so many blogs and tweets and updates about a thing we can get our hands around -- because we can get our hands around it.

We're talking about moving widgets, after all.

I didn't start writing so that I could read blog posts on marketing. I didn't get up early in the morning, crack open some Raymond Carver, and dream of the day I could post my thoughts about price point. But this is where we are. And it's goofy.

Is it important to know that lowering your ebook from $4.99 to $2.99 will increase your revenue by increasing total sales? Damn right it is, especially if you give a damn about the revenue. And you should.

Is it important to know whether a blog tour helped more people find out about your debut romance? Damn skippy. You're devoting your time, your effort, your writing to this thing.

I'm just hoping those of you with talent spend as much time writing your fiction as you do tweeting links to your blogs about ebook market strategies. Heck, I hope we all at DSD do, too.

So the next time you're getting worked up about some publishing crisis, as Dave mentioned yesterday, you might want to think about taking that time and energy and devoting it to that story you never have time to write. I'll try to do the same.

Not for me to spend 5,000 words blogging about how you need to write your opening sentence, but using the same energy to get our own stories written.

That said, I think some of the best work we can do out here on the Internet is to point folks to books they should read. That in mind, check out the newest (Feb 14, 2012) from Hilary Davidson, THE NEXT ONE TO FALL.

"Lily Moore is one of the most appealing 'amateur' sleuths I've encountered in years. The vivid sense of place - Peru, in this case - is everything one would expect from a seasoned travel journalist like Hilary Davidson, the story is deliciously twisty, the characters engaging. I know I can't be the only reader looking forward to more Moore." - Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of I'd Know You Anywhere


"An atmospheric mystery with an ending that packs a punch. Lily Moore is a passionate and tenacious heroine." - Meg Gardiner, author of The Nightmare Thief


"Hilary Davidson knocks it out of the park. If this book doesn't get your motor running, have someone check you for a pulse." - Reed Farrel Coleman, three-time Shamus Award-winning author of Hurt Machine

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.

DSD now on Kindle

By Steve Weddle

Since this blog started 13 months ago, we've worked to improve things in terms of style and content.

Yes, we lost a Canadian, but we replaced him with two Americans. I'm not sure what the exchange rate was, but this has worked out so far.

We've worked on some theme weeks and even have our first collection, TERMINAL DAMAGE, done and nearly ready for your reading pleasure.

And now we have an improved option in terms of delivery.

Sure you can read the Do Some Damage blog on the computer. But that ain't good enough for us. Now, through the magic of fairydust and cutrate pharmaceuticals, you can now get your DSD fix each morning delivered to your Kindle.

Each morning at about 3 a.m. eastern time in the US of A, the blog gets updated. (Unless it's Jay's day, then, you know, eventually.) Here's what it looks like on the Kindle.

The sign-up fee for this is $1.99 a month, which gets you all 30-ish posts per month. I don't know why it's that price, which is set by Amazon. Whatever portion of that money makes it from Jeff Bezos's bank account to ours will be spent on lottery scratchers and whip-it cans.

So if you subscribe to DSD on Kindle, each morning you get the DSD blog sent right to you. I've subscribed to a number of magazines and newspapers, utilizing the FREE 14-day trial option Amazon offers. I sign up for the L.A. Times for a couple of weeks and end up with screens and screens of book reviews and feature articles. Want to see whether you like the New York Times Book Review? Trial subscription. Same thing with the Do Some Damage blog. Give it a shot on the Kindle and see what you think.

One of the little pieces of sweetness I like is that you get access to DSD archives. Check out the "section list" at the bottom of the screen.

If you missed Russel's bookselling post or Dave's discussion of Rutgers recruiting, you can just scroll back and catch up.

At first I thought that paying to subscribe to a newspaper I could get online for free was dumber than paying for water. But then I did the trial-subscription thing and understood. Delivered into your hands is pretty cool.

Anyway, if you have a Kindle and want to get the blog sent to you each morning, you can click HERE for a free 14-day trial subscription.

As if that ain't good enough, the DSD Podcast Season The Second -- or if you're in the Britains, Series Two -- should kick off soon. We're planning many more interviews and special guests, plus autographed photos of Jay Stringer, as those seem oddly popular now.

Keep in mind that debut novels from DSD's own Joelle Charbonneau and friend-of-the-show Hilary Davidson are coming out this month.

Kindle. Terminal Damage. Podcast. Debut novels. Phew. Getting kinda busy around here.

Interviewing Hilary Davidson - The MacGyver of Murder

By Steve Weddle

What do David Foster Wallace, New Orleans cemeteries, and Pompeii brothels have in common? Hilary Davidson. (I figured I'd just tell you, right? I mean, c'mon.) Davidson's debut fiction, THE DAMAGE DONE, is due out in October, but it's hardly her first book. The Canadian New Yorker has written about 20 nonfiction books and a gazillion travel articles, interned at HARPER'S, and is now one of the busiest freelancers around.

Oh, and she's a heck of a crime writer. But to say Hilary Davidson writes about crime is like saying Casablanca was a war movie. The characters and stories she develops transcend any genre, digging their fingernails into the back of your soul, dragging their way down into the core of your being.
Her stories have appeared in CrimeSpree, Beat to a Pulp, Thuglit, and many others.

Steve Weddle: Though THE DAMAGE DONE, due October 2010, is your first novel, you’ve written 20 non-fiction books, articles for 40 magazines, and gobs of stories. How is the anticipation for the novel different? Does it feel all new all over again?

Hilary Davidson: I've been excited about getting work published in the past, but the thrill from fiction is the greatest. Aside from some essays and interviews I've done, the journalism has a limited shelf life. Most of the books I've written have been travel guides for Frommer's, and while I love finding new places to write about and mapping out walking tours, I know that people eventually toss those books away. I'm really hoping that they don't do that with THE DAMAGE DONE!

SW: Did you begin thinking about writing violent, brutal, murderous fiction when you worked as an intern at HARPER’S MAGAZINE in the 90s? What was that like?

HD: Working at HARPER'S was an incredible experience, because I got to work with people who were at the top of their game. Lewis Lapham was the editor-in-chief then, and the magazine was publishing pieces by writers like David Foster Wallace, who would come into the office to work and hang out. He was writing what became his very famous piece on cruise ships then, and I was supposed to help him out by doing the extra bits of research. It turned out that he didn't need a researcher but a sounding board, as he'd written a 40,000-word story. Listening to him talk and watching him cut pages of gorgeous prose was an education in itself.

But hanging around with geniuses made me see my own writing dreams as completely out of reach. I wanted to be practical, and I figured that, if I were lucky, I'd go home to Toronto and get an editing job. That's exactly what I did, but things didn't work out as I'd planned. Magazine editing was interesting, but I wanted to write. I pitched stories to my magazine, and they laughed at most of them. Then, one day, I scored with an idea that they loved... and they assigned it to a freelance writer. Frustrated, I started freelancing for The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper in Canada. The more I wrote for them, the more I felt like I could make a go of a writing career.

I was terrified about quitting my job, because I was single and had no idea how I'd support myself if the writing didn't pan out. I waited to quit until I lined up steady gigs with different magazines. I ended up being really fortunate as a freelancer, but being too busy was my excuse for not writing fiction for years. I'd write bits and pieces, but until I started treating fiction the way I treated journalism, I got nothing finished.

SW: What have you learned as a freelancer that has helped you with your fiction?

HD: The most useful thing is the most boring: routine. I've been self-employed for 11 years, and if I didn't stick to my very dull writing routine, I'd get nothing done. When I started working on fiction, I waited for inspiration to strike, and it took me a long time to acknowledge that my inspired days were few and far between.

I also learned to deal with rejection, because I’ve had so much of it. Everyone tells you not to take rejection personally, which is easier said than done. The key thing is not to let a story rot in your computer because someone said no. My rule is that a rejected story gets sent out again within 24 hours.

SW: In addition to your travel writing and your fiction, you also write about celiac disease. What the heck is that?

HD: It took me a long time to find out. Celiac disease is a genetic disorder that roughly 1 in 100 people have, but hardly anyone has heard of it. It causes an autoimmune reaction when you eat gluten, which is in wheat, barley, and rye. I was sick for years with headaches, stomach problems, ulcers, and joint pain, and finally got tested for celiac in 2004. The only treatment is a gluten-free diet. My health problems cleared up after being on the diet for a few weeks.

The months after I was diagnosed were an odd time. I was overjoyed at feeling well for the first time in my life, but sad because I assumed that my career as a travel writer was over. I felt like I'd never eat out at a restaurant again, let alone visit another country. But as I got used to eating gluten-free and learned what to avoid, I got bolder. The irony was, when I started traveling again, I learned it was easier to eat gluten-free in Europe and South America than it is in North America. I started a website in March 2008, the Gluten-Free Guidebook, to help other celiacs who wanted to travel. I shared things I'd found, and that led to people from different countries sending me tips and writing up reports about their cities or countries. It's been incredible. Now that the gluten-free diet has become trendy, there's a lot of interest in the subject.

SW: What is in the room with you right now that you could use to kill someone? In a story, I mean, since you’re no longer an intern and, presumably, aren’t as keen to murder anyone.

HD: Let's see... there's my antique letter opener, which could double as a dagger, and I have some cables lying around that I could use to garrote someone. There are a couple of gargoyle bookends that would deliver quite the blow to the head, and a brass picture frame with sharp edges that cut deep. That's just at my desk, for starters. Think of me as the MacGyver of murder.

SW: Did you learn anything as a restaurant reviewer for Toronto Life that will make my life easier when I’m dining out? Tips? Tricks? Secret code words?


HD: I wish! The key to being a truly good restaurant reviewer is never to let the restaurant know you're writing a review. I've written chef profiles for dining magazines, and I know what tricks they pull when they see you coming. It's not like they can magically cook better food, but they will have waiters fussing over you, they'll send little amuse-bouche plates out of the kitchen, and your wineglass will never be empty.

SW: When you toured the cemeteries in New Orleans, were you impressed by the number of crypts, as opposed to dug graves? Did you get a chance to tour any of the crypts?

HD: You've just hit my little secret: I love cemeteries, and I seek them out wherever I travel. I have a soft spot for New Orleans, because my first-ever freelance feature was about St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. I got a full dose of the folklore -- including the tale of how voodoo priestess Marie Laveau's daughter was struck dead by a bolt of lightning in the middle of a midnight ceremony -- and got to see inside a few crypts. Creepiest fact? Crypts could be rented. It takes about a year for a body to be "naturally cremated," as they put it. Then you can rent the crypt out again.

I try to work my fascination with cemeteries into my work, both with fiction and nonfiction. I put a tour of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn into my New York guidebook, and there's a lot about graveyards in the Toronto guidebook I write every year. I blame my cemetery love on the fact that I grew up in Toronto. There's a huge cemetery there called Mount Pleasant, and people use it like a public park. You can't visit it without seeing cyclists and people with those jogger baby strollers. Toronto is a strange, gothic place.

SW: I read somewhere that you did some work in a brothel in Pompeii. Is that something you can discuss?

HD: I have to admit, I got there more than 1,900 years too late to see the place in action, but even the post-Vesuvius scene was very interesting. The brothel had great frescoes, including several that were painted above certain doorways. The frescoes advertised the sexual specialty of the lady working in each room. Outside, down the street, a penis was etched into the stone to guide travelers there. You can't beat ancient Rome for decadence.

SW: What makes crime fiction appealing to readers and writers?

HD: There are probably as many different answers as there are readers. For me, there's something elemental about crime fiction. I mean that when you take a character and strip away the normal social mores and conventions, what remains is raw and unpredictable. As a reader, I want to see them get there -- or else learn how they got there.

When I think about the novels I enjoyed reading last year, I remember characters more than I do plots. I'm thinking of books like Megan Abbott's BURY ME DEEP, Jason Starr's FAKE I.D., Sophie Littlefield's A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, Dave Zeltserman's PARIAH and Sean Chercover's BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD -- I'd follow their main characters anywhere. Ken Bruen's LONDON BOULEVARD grabbed me the second I picked it up, like all of Bruen’s books do, because of the character's voice. Their characters live on in my head.

As a writer, crime fiction lets me put characters into extreme situations and access powerful emotions. When THE DAMAGE DONE begins, my main character, Lily, has just come back to New York because she's been told that her sister, Claudia, is dead. Then Lily discovers that the body belongs to a stranger who'd stolen her sister's identity, and that her sister is missing. Claudia is a grifter and an addict, and Lily doesn't know whether she's playing a deadly con game or if she's in trouble. Hunting for Claudia forces Lily into some ugly situations, and makes her dredge up parts of her past -- like their mother's suicide -- that she'd rather keep buried.

SW: What’s your favorite room in your house?

HD: My husband and I live in a one-bedroom apartment in New York, so I don't have many rooms to choose from. But my favorite place to be is at our dining table. We have a row of south-facing windows that make me feel like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. I haven't bought a telescope to watch my neighbors with... yet.

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For more on Hilary Davidson, check out her site.