My newsroom mysteries kill off editors .. but corporations are killing off journalists far faster

Sometimes I miss working at a newspaper. I miss the interviews.  I miss finding the stories. I miss the writing. I even miss the burned coffee and the crazy hours.

One day, I missed it so much I made up my own newsroom. I staffed it with a bunch of quirky creative types, and then I developed my hero - a reporter who was extra nosy and particularly vigilant about covering the news.

Then I ... well, I knocked off an editor. Fictionally speaking, of course. I wrapped it all up into a murder mystery, and readers seemed to enjoy it, which I very much appreciated. So I'm writing a sequel.

They're a little far-fetched, of course. But writing them makes me feel good. I actually feel in touch with the industry - to write my stories, I have to stay abreast with what's happening in real life.

Then I read stories like the one I read this week - about so many hard-working, dedicated journalists at the Times-Picayune who've been cast aside like yesterday's news. And I realize you don't really need my mysteries to read about murder in the newsroom.

Corporations  - working in the name of progress - are killing off newspapers far faster in real life.

Sprinkling details throughout a story can be devilishly tricky

I always found the phrase "the devil is the details" somewhat charming.

It's sounds very dramatic. Sinister, even. In reality, it's hardly that. It's simply a way of describing a situation that's time-consuming and, well, devilishly tricky to finesse.

I'm coming across it now as I try to add some realistic details to Paper Cut, my sequel to Death on Deadline. They're both newspaper mysteries, but in Paper Cut, there's a scene that takes place next to a printing press that's running at full speed.

It's important to me that the reader understand how immense and loud these contraptions are - a traditional newspaper press, after all, is huge - it stands nearly three stories tall. It's impressive-looking, too; a solid strip of paper is woven through rollers in a complex web. Once the press gets up to speed, an offset press can put ink on that paper and assemble the pages in the correct sequence to the tune of up to 70,000 copies an hour

It can be a dangerous piece of equipment. And if someone yells "Stop the presses!" it's a big deal.

I think the tricky part is balance - I want to add enough detail to capture the reader's interest, not lead a  tour. I want drama and ambience ... but there's not a test at the end.

I once read that details are like spices - if you can recognize them and point them out, there are too many. Right now, I'm striving for that perfect blend.

It takes a village to raise an indie writer

I made a book trailer the other day for my book, Death on Deadline. It is 60 seconds long, and I forgot the words about seven times. It was shot by a professional videographer on his lunch break.

I'm paying him in cupcakes and effusive thanks.

My book cover was created by a friend (Claire Innes-Wilbur)who happens to be an extremely talented graphic artist. Her payment? My everlasting gratitude.

My book was edited literally dozens of times - by my husband, by my writer and editor friends and even by my ever-patient sisters. When it came time to format and post it, I was lost. My good friend Traci Bauer, who helps manage a daily newspaper, takes night classes and spends literally no time on herself, came to my rescue.

My next book cover is being drawn by an accomplished artist friend, Chuck Todd. He has a wonderful children's book out that he illustrated - There's a Hummingbird in my Backyard - and he and I are working out ways to cross-promote each other. I'm incredibly excited.

Writers - especially indie ones like me who are just starting out - need help. I'm happy to say we can often find it. I've found the indie authors I've met to be incredibly supportive.

The people who have helped me have been absolutely wonderful, even when I pestered them with e-mails and shoved sentence after sentence in their face, insisting they choose which feels better.

I talked to a good friend the other day, and when I mentioned to her that my book sales were up that month, she expressed surprise. Then she quickly explained herself. "It's just, well... there are so many e-books out there," she said.

I agreed. There are. And some are absolutely terrible. But many aren't.

With the right village of support around you, it's a lot easier to help readers tell the difference.

When do deadlines really become deadly?

Years ago, I watched a cocky young reporter have a meltdown while covering a major election. The clock was ticking, editors were hovering and he realized, suddenly and sickeningly, that no coursework had prepared him for pressure like this.

He started to cry. Then he started to hyperventilate. It wasn't pretty.

And this was when newspapers were relatively fat and happy, when seats were filled and shareholders were content. Not like now, when executives have sliced and diced newsrooms, leaving only the few, the brave and the very, very tired.

I was thinking about that the other day as I read David Callahan's piece in The Huffington Post, one that analyzed the case of Sari Horwitz - the Washington Post reporter recently suspended for plagiarism that occurred while she was covering the Arizona shootings.

See, Horwitz isn't some young hotshot. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner. And in her apology, Horwitz mentioned the stress of the tight deadlines she was under. But plagiarism? This is ... worrisome.

I don't know Horwitz; I don't know anything about the situation. But I know deadlines. I know that feeling of rising panic and the power it takes to quell it. I still remember how my heart would start beating faster and how I would count backwards to calm myself and slow things down. I know the feeling of how everyone is counting on you and how you better not screw up.

I don't work in a newsroom anymore. I can't even imagine how tough it is today - with staffs that are skeletal and expectations that are still sky-high.

I would never condone plagiarism, obviously. It's inexcusable. In Death on Deadline, plagiarism and the power of information are a big part of the story. That's fiction, of course. But I have to wonder if the issues caused by tight deadlines and corporate cutting might just be bleeding into real life.

E-book world is easy, even for techno-saurs

I'll be the first to tell you I'm a writer, not a salesperson. And I'm sure not the technical type.

But I finally, yes finally, put my book up for sale in Amazon's Kindle store. I had hemmed and hawed forever. I thought it would be too technical. I wouldn't know what to do. I'd get confused. Blah, blah, blah ... excuse, excuse, excuse. Then one day, I just realized that nobody was going to do it for me.

So I ventured tentatively onto the KDP site, the Kindle Digital Platform for self-publishing. http://kdp.amazon.com
After a few false starts, I uploaded my book. Just. Like. That. It was actually pretty easy, even for a techno-saur like me. And I'm even selling a few copies - not only here, but on Kindle UK. (Go figure). Maybe I'll be realy popular in Europe - you know, the David Hasselhoff of self-publishers, if you will. Or ... not.

So if your e book is completed and you just have a case of nerves, take a deep breath and dive in. It's really not that bad. I swear.

Smile, lady - you're in chapter three

There's this woman where I work who drives me crazy.

Oh, I don't know her name. I don't even know what department she works in. I just know that I have already cast her as a character in my next book.

Sometimes, I can't help it. I see a person in real life and I know - I just know - that they're a perfect character for one of my stories. One time I was sipping on a mocha in a Barnes & Noble cafe in Springfield, Mo., and I saw America Miles, the protagonist in my novel, Death on Deadline.

Yep, that woman sitting two tables across from me, flipping through a magazine and minding her own business, had come straight from my imagination. She had the hair. She had the bone structure. She even had that little worry line between her eyebrows. I couldn't stop staring. I was mesmerized. She finally looked up and gave me one of those little polite smiles - you know, the kind you give when some weirdo is looking at you - and I had to look away. But it was very exciting.

Not so much with this lady. I see her nearly every time I go to the cafeteria. Our cafeteria is big and it's busy and to my eyes, it looks a bit understaffed. So the men and women serving behind the counters are basically working at full tilt to keep everything running smoothly.

So this lady - whom I have cast as perhaps a pretentious, uncooperative clerk - usually minces in with a self-important swagger and then proceeds to bluster and bitch constantly in line, complaining about anything and everything until the person behind her is about ready to crack.

Unfortunately that person is usually me.

"Geez, these chicken nuggets are taking forever!!" she sighs after two minutes.
"No curly fries today? You'd think there'd be curly fries today," she pouts after three.
"I just don't see what the holdup is in these lines," she whines after four, shifting her considerable weight.
"I'm still here - it's just taking forever!!" she calls to her friend after five.

For the record, her meal is usually ready in about five minutes. Not that I'm counting.

Aaargh. It's so annoying. But I just stand quietly, practicing my calming zen breaths, studying her petulant red face and overly mascaraed eyes so I can describe them perfectly in my next story.

Meanwhile, the poor woman behind the counter is smiling politely, sweating profusely, just busting her butt trying to move everyone's orders through. Maybe I have it all wrong, though. Maybe I should be telling her story - perhaps a tale of revenge against annoying, unappreciative customers.

Psst. Hey, buddy, wanna buy a book?

I thought writing the book would be the hard part. I never even thought about selling it. But that was long ago, before this brave new world that empowered authors to write, edit, publish and sell their own novels.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's great - it feeds my instant gratification gene. Being in newspapers for so long, I'm spoiled. I'm used to seeing my words in print practically the day after I write them. The time-honored tradition of query letters, agent meetings and ego-bruising rejection letters sounded not only frustrating but a little bit terrifying.

Ebooks are a great alternative. It's a simple, cost-effective format for a starving artist. And according to Amazon, sales are brisk - it sells about 180 ebooks a month compared to 100 hardcovers.

Of course, agents and publishers tend to know what they're doing. I'm flying blind. But here's the most challenging thing - I'm not a salesman. Not at all.

Remember that 1980s John Cusack movie, "Say Anything?" Well, there's this part where he's trying to explain to his soon-to-be-girlfriend's dad about his career motivations, and he says:

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."

I feel for him. Because deep down, I just want to write. But I know I have to promote, or I might as well be writing in my diary. So I'm learning. I'm learning to tell people I wrote a book - and even add that they should read it - without blushing or squirming. I'm putting together my own press release. I'm watching. I'm reading. I'm figuring out how to market, to "brand." But it still feels strange.

"You have to make a decision," my husband tells me. "Do you want to be an author or don't you?"

Cough! Look over here! Oh, hi. Have you read Death on Deadline yet? It's on sale at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/deathondeadline for only $2.99. You should check it out.

Live in the moment; write the same way

Live in the moment - how many times have you heard that phrase? A lot, I'd wager. And it makes sense. Why waste time dwelling on the past or anticipating the future when you have the present right here, right now, right in front of you?

The phrase pertains to writing as well, and it took me quite awhile to learn that. I'm an overthinker - maybe some of you are, too. You can't just write a story or a chapter or a freelance piece. You anticipate who's reading it, and when. You think about who it might offend, or who it might please. You think about where it will go after you write it, and what will happen to it then.

In small doses, those thoughts are great. It's important to know your audience, and to anticipate their likes and dislikes. And you certainly aren't going to be a successful freelancer if you're a writer who is consistently offensive. That just makes sense. But too much? That's just paralyzing.

In Anne Lamott's witty, wonderful book, Bird by Bird, she tells about trying to describe to a class of novice writers the process of writing - about the sometimes miraculous process of writing - about how a blank page becomes a line and a line becomes a paragraph and a paragraph becomes dialogue in a story that actually starts to flow. And how before you know it, the page is filled, and you've done it - you've written something.

And then, she says, her students will raise their hands and ask, "How do you get an agent?" Because they're not concerned about the process. They're interested in the profits. They're not in the present; they're way in the future.

When I was writing "Death on Deadline," I created a character named Wayne Grubbs, and I made him up simply for comic relief. I knew I wanted him to be a bane for my protagonist. I wanted him to be an awful journalist. I wanted him to be stupid, but not so dumb he was a caricature. I liked what he added to the tale. But then, I lost my focus. I stopped thinking of the story. I kept rewriting him over and over - afraid of who he would offend, afraid his remarks might rub someone the wrong way.

I wasn't writing in the moment. I had became a marketer, not an author. And it wasn't good. Because it wasn't the right time.

Pretty soon he wasn't even funny. I took him out. And then I missed him. So one night, I put him back in, and just wrote what I felt. I created him the way I thought a major corporation would - as a semi-trained "para" journalist that they wouldn't have to pay as much. I made him funny - well, my version of funny, at least. And then I left him alone. I think we were both happier.

We live our lives a moment at a time. Let's write the same way.

So what's on your nightstand?

Show me an eager writer, and I'll show you an avid reader.

And chances are, I'll also show you a nightstand stacked high with titles just too interesting to put away. In fact, if your nightstand area looks anything like mine, you probably hope you don't have to make too many late-night bathroom trips, because it's a dangerously cluttered trail.

I wish I could tell you that the area around my bed is rife with the classics; everything from Homer's Odyssey to Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.

Um, no. I'm hardly that scholarly. In fact, confession time: I had to read Gulliver's Travels in high school and I found it so boring, I nearly cried. Now, before you condemn me for my lowbrow appraisal, let me just say that since then, at the urging of my far more literary sister, I have read more Swift, specifically his satirical essay, "A Modest Proposal," in which he suggests eating children as a way to eliminate them from becoming an economic burden.

Okay, that was pretty funny. Though it was obviously satire, it apparently shocked all his compatriots and almost made me forgive him for the whole Gulliver debacle.

So no, my literary mix usually doesn't include the classics. But to make up for it, I do try to be eclectic. And I am most definitely prolific. I keep a little bit of everything going so when I do sit down to write, I'm inspired by all types of genres, voices and views.

Here's a sampling of what pages I've been turning before I click off the lights. How about you?

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. I'm a little behind the times on this one; it got a lot of hype awhile ago after Kingsolver wrote about how she and her family decided to go rural for a whole year. They'd either raise it, grow it, buy it locally, or do without. I just started it, and so far, it's a pretty entertaining read.

Fifty Acres and a Poodle (A story of Love, Livestock and Finding Myself on a Farm) by Jeanne Marie Laskas. What can I say? I must be having some rural fantasy life going - which is ironic because even my mother would tell you I can barely keep a single plant alive. But Laskas has been a columnist for the Washington Post Magazine, she's a great writer, and when I saw this, I just couldn't resist. Maybe this will be the spring my garden will actually grow.

Dare to Die by Carolyn Hart. You knew there'd be a murder mystery in there somewhere, right? Hart is a superb storyteller, and I actually thought I'd read all the offerings in her Death on Demand series. But this is a new one, and I know it will be great.

Lust, Loathing and a Little Lip Gloss by Kyra Davis. Yes, it's chick lit. But I'm a chick, so that's okay. And Davis is a fun writer - I've read a few other books of hers, starting with Sex, Murder and a Double Latte, and it was was a fast-paced, good read.

Haunted by Heather Graham. Heather, where have you been all my life? You've been in the romance section, that's where, and I never go there. But Graham's paranormal mystery/romances are like literary popcorn; I read them one after another, and they never disappoint. And lucky for me, she is an extremely prolific writer. (She's not the actress, by the way - it's a different Heather, surprise, surprise). I love her. I envy her. I can't wait to start reading this one - right now.

Can't choose? Blinded by choices? Let me help!! After all, I don't call this blog Death on Deadline for nothing. (www.smashwords.com)

You don't need a Kindle to read an Ebook

So you can't afford one of those fancy, portable Ebook reading devices? Don't worry. You can still get in on the Ebook craze.

Ebooks are cheap (sometimes free), they're portable (you can put them onto a USB stick and carry them on your keychain), and all you need to read them is your computer. You can download them into the format of your choice.

Many people (me, too) believed for a long time that Ebooks could only be downloaded onto a Kindle or a Reader or a Nook or any of those devices. And I'm not knocking those - I think they're great. But they're also pricey, at least right now. In fact, at this point, I think I could either afford the device or the books, and I'm choosing the books.

The truth is when you buy an Ebook on a site like www.smashwords.com, you can choose your format. Smashwords, for instance, will even guide you if you're not sure what you're looking for. If you just want to download a PDF file, save it to your desktop and read it off your computer - or print it off chapter by chapter and take it work - no problem. There's even a version for those little Palm devices that so many of us are addicted to. And on most sites, you only have to buy once. So if you do opt for a Kindle mid-chapter, you can download another format for free.

Give it a try. There are lots of digital bookstores out there; you might find a new, affordable addiction. Now, ahem, at Smashwords, I've heard good things about that Death on Deadline book for a mere $4.99, but there are actually thousands of titles to choose from. More are added every day.

Happy Reading!

Death on Deadline - excerpt

"...I wandered over to my computer desk. On top of it sat an old, portable manual typewriter – a relic that belonged to my dad, a leftover from his early days as a writer. I never used it, of course; I couldn't imagine pounding those heavy keys every day, but there was something about it I really liked. It was inspiring. It reminded me of my journalistic roots. I ran my hands over the smooth keys and thought of the hands that had painstakingly typed out words, letters and stories before me. These days, I’d take all the inspiration I could get.

To the side of the computer desk, in the kitchen, is the back wall of the apartment, with three parallel windows. In the daytime, they flood the place with natural light and now, at night, the lights in the surrounding homes twinkle, reminding me I’m not alone. It’s a good feeling.

Because, even though I rarely admit it, living alone can be a little daunting. Oh, it’s not the X, it’s not anybody. It’s just good to know sometimes that others are around. That’s why I like Yowza – it’s nice to have another heartbeat in the house.

I stretched. Good night. After a quick brush and a floss that would leave my dentist frowning, I slid under the covers and let my head fall against the pillow. I almost reached for a book on the nightstand, but I knew I’d never make it through the prologue.

I ran through tomorrow’s agenda in my head; it seemed like it would be pretty quiet. That was the last thing I thought before I dozed off.

I couldn't have been more wrong...."

From Death on Deadline, Chapter One. Available at www.smashwords.com

The History of Me

I once worked for an editor who spent her weekends at Renaissance fairs, dressed as a princess and carrying her two ferrets around in a basket.

I once worked for a publisher who used to nervously tap his testicles in board meetings.

And I once worked for a section editor who used to use words like "conversate," and tell me that my story ideas had "passed mustard," instead of "passed muster."

I didn't kill any of them. Just for the record. You know, in case you ever have to testify on my behalf. That's not why I wrote "Death on Deadline." No, I wrote my soon-to-be-published novel, "Death on Deadline" because of the the zucchini bread. See, at one of the newspapers where I worked, I remember I came in from an assignment one day to find a gaggle of reporters gathered around a table, wolfing down on a loaf of zucchini bread. I helped myself to a slice. It was, in fact, delicious.

"Wow, where did this come from?" I asked the circle. Everyone shrugged, their mouths filled with crumbs. No one had any idea. It was then I realized that if someone wanted to off a group of journalists, the easiest way to do it - aside from poisoning the local liquor supply - would likely be to slide some nasty food their way because, let's face it - if it's there and it's free, reporters will eat it.

So is that enough of a premise for a book? No, of course not, silly. But that, combined with 17 years of working with quirky reporters, ferret-loving editors and testicle-tapping publishers just might be.

So I decided to give it a try. "Death on Deadline" is a murder mystery that takes place in a newsroom, and it's funny. Except for the whole murder part. But still. And it's all fiction, so if you worked with me, and you think I gave you the stink eye the whole time, don't worry, you're not in there. THIS time.

So, I hope you like it and yeah, I hope you buy it. And if you don't, that's okay, too. Because I'm guessing if you're checking out this blog, you're probably a writer, and you're probably watching your pennies. But regardless, I hope you like the posts; feel free to add your own thoughts about writing. Anything motivational is always welcome, believe me. And if you used to work in newspapers, share a story or two. Because you know what? I still miss them. And all the free food.