Recently, I was part of the virtual writing workshops sponsored annually by the Eden Mills Writers Festival. My task was to impart what wisdom I’ve managed to gather having written thirty novels, including, most recently five Priscilla Tempest Mysteries. Lots has been written on the subject, but having shared some of my experiences, good and bad, at the Eden Mills Writers workshop, I thought it might be useful for any would-be authors out there to reprint a few of my thoughts. What follows are final observations and opinions…

 7. TOUCHY SUBJECTS

Gender Identification

Once upon a time, popular fiction was dominated by men. That is no longer the case. The male reader has all but vanished. Women account for over eighty-five percent of fiction book sales. Whereas men once dominated bestseller lists, it should come as no surprise, given sales figures, that women have taken over. 

All of this is to say that when deciding on the gender for your detective, you would be wise to choose a woman. I love writing about women. My experience is that they are more interesting in life and therefore much more fascinating to write about. Mind you I had a great deal of help and inspiration writing the Priscilla Tempest Mysteries thanks to my collaborator Prudence Emery, a unique character in life who was the inspiration for Priscilla in the novels.

Murder! 

Murder tends to be the least talked about subject when it comes to writing mysteries. Can you write a mystery or a thriller without killing someone? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle occasionally allowed Sherlock Holmes to solve a mystery without a dead body, but otherwise, the answer is no. In small English towns where no one ever kills anyone, someone is always getting killed. In Iceland where there is virtually no murder, murder mysteries abound. Why, they even occur with regularity at the Savoy Hotel. The less likely the setting, the more likely murders will occur. I occasionally have a problem with the more murderous aspect of mystery writing. The reality of murder, having covered a few as a young newspaper reporter, is ugly and tragic. The thought of actually taking a human life, sickens me. How could you ever do that? And yet in the world I create, I commit murder all the time. I must admit it’s my least favourite part of writing a mystery—I try to keep the ugly details to a minimum. It’s better for my peace of mind when the murders happen offstage. 

Our fascination—obsession?—with murder is everywhere in TV documentaries, non-fiction books, even in the theatre. Shakespeare led the way, of course. He had no hesitation when it came to spilling gallons of blood when it suited his purposes and his audiences of the day loved it—as do audiences today. If you don’t want to kill someone, at least in that world of yours we keep talking about, then you should probably write something else. There are lots of alternatives, but none that are nearly as much fun as solving a murder.

The elephant in the Room

The elephant in the publishing room currently is AI, Artificial Intelligence. American publishers are on edge attempting to come to terms with its use. Book contracts are being cancelled as editors decide that AI has been used. 

My feelings about AI? 

Well, if you resort to using AI to write your book, then what are you doing writing a book? The pleasure—and the pain—is the writing. Challenging yourself to create something, good or bad, that is uniquely yours. Getting AI to do it for you—what combination of fun and/or agony is that?

However, the AI train has already left the station, whether any of us likes it or not. It’s become unavoidable. For the writer AI can function as a helpful research tool when you need to quickly find out how long it took to take a cab from Waterloo Station to the Royal Albert Hall in 1968 (about 14 minutes). But we all must be very careful when using it.

The Pigeon Hole

My daughter Erin worked for a long time on her first novel about a young, indigenous woman struggling to survive in the Inner City and then returning to her roots at the reserve where she was born. Something like that. Well, intentioned, but it went nowhere. Undaunted, Erin then sat back took a look at the market—at the type of novels she was reading—and decided to write something more commercial. Tell Me My Name fit perfectly into that pigeon hole labelled the domestic thriller. She soon found a publisher. Next year she will publish her second novel, Pitch Dark Night. It’s even better than her first effort. Now, she has a clear eye for where she fits into the publishing world, and she has adopted a formula that seems to work for her brand of domestic thriller: a cottage, a city, a couple in conflict. Oh, yes, and she works to find an irresistible hook that immediately pulls the reader in. Erin’s formula—at least for now. 

The point here is not just to extol my daughter’s talent—considerable!—so much as to point out that she is realistic about the marketplace and how she fits into it. I hate to say it, but you are much more likely to find a publisher, if that publisher has a clear idea of where to place you within the realm of genre fiction. 

The French publisher of the Priscilla Tempest novels enthusiastically marketed them as cozy British mysteries. Prudence Emery, co-author of the books, and I never thought of the books as cozy mysteries, but there you go. That’s the pigeon hole we have been shoved into. Many of the manuscripts I read are neither fish nor fowl as far as genre is concerned. They are sort of mysteries but what kind?  My advice is not to leave the publisher or the reader wondering where your novel fits in.

8. MANY WAYS TO SKIN THE CAT—OR PUBLISH A NOVEL

When my first novel was published in 1985, Coles was Canada’s major bookseller. They were basically warehouse outlets specializing mostly in discounted remaindered books. There were lots of independent bookstores, but an independent such as the Albert Britnell Book Shop on Yonge Street was the Toronto book store in those days. But if they carried your book at all, it was only a few copies. The staff at Britnell proudly showed me the three copies, spine out, they had of my novel hidden at the back of the stores.

Back then, there were no beautifully designed big box stores, no Internet obviously, and therefore no Amazon. A small cadre of traditional publishers ruled the book industry. If they didn’t like your book, that was it, there were no alternatives. You simply didn’t get published.

Today, that has all changed—very much for the better. Book publishing has become democratized. Authors are no longer reliant on traditional publishers. If publishers are not interested, then you can publish it yourself—independently. Not only is this possible, but it is now entirely accepted, a viable alternative to the old way of doing things.

No matter what you think of the company, Amazon has entirely changed the way things are done in book publishing. While traditional publishers tend to be closed forts that grant access to select few, Amazon has opened its gates. If you have a book—come on in. You are welcome! Amazon will happily publish your book and provide you with the same landing page as a Stephen King or a James Patterson. All you have to do is market your masterpiece—the really tough part, but Amazon will even help with that. The cost? There is no cost.

9. PARTING WORDS OF ADVICE…

Get an editor. We all need one. If you have the money, hire someone. There are lots of online choices. Try to avoid friends. They will usually tell you only what you want to hear. 

Social Media. Facebook, Instagram at the very least. Create a website for yourself. Free websites are available. Write a blog on Substack. There is no cost and you may even become popular enough that you can monetize your site—although I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting that to happen. Traditional publishers will expect you to play the social media game. Does it help? I’ve scratched my head for years debating with myself whether it does, but I still do it, anyway—and you should too.

Traditional publisher? Or independent? My advice always is to take a shot a finding a traditional publisher. It’s difficult, but you never know, you may have the next Big Thing in book publishing. You won’t know unless you try. Put on your armour, and be prepared for rejection. 

An agent, yes or no? When I started out, finding an agent was almost impossible. I was fortunate in that I worked at the Toronto Star and nudged against Toronto’s literary world and was able to attract an agent.

 These days, literary agents have an online presence and they will let you know if they are looking for new clients and what kind of material interests them if they are. The same is true of many publishers. A surprising number accept online submissions without an agent. Still, it’s best, to get an agent, if you can.  

Length: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, still considered the great American novel contains forty-seven thousand words. I often remind myself of that as I continue to fuss over  the number of words in whatever novel I am writing. 

The most common advice everyone hands out is, don’t worry about length, just write the best novel that you can. Good advice. However, if you’re just starting out, I would for aim somewhere between sixty-five and eighty-thousand words. My novels average 72-75,000 words. The Secret of the Savoy, which comes out next year, is seventy-three thousand words. I say what everyone says, don’t worry about the length. Even though I always worry about length—and you probably will too.

Hollywood: Ah, yes, we can’t leave without addressing the illusive dream of Hollywood. Every writer, it seems, seeks that holy grail of validation buried somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. I toiled away in that sun-kissed land of hope and dreams for close to six years. I actually managed to do something most people out there never do, I got a movie made. I was very much the exception that makes the rule. 

Death at the Savoy, the first novel Pru and I wrote together was quickly optioned by a couple of Hollywood producers. Six books later, nothing has happened. This is the grim reality of hoping and dreaming that your book will be turned into a movie, or, more likely these days, a streaming television series. It can happen, and there is seemingly insatiable appetite for mystery and suspense on streaming services, but even if there is interest it can take five years on average to get your book in front of a camera. Meantime, concentrate on the job at hand, creating the best possible novel that will attract the one audience you desire more than anything—readers!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Bestselling author Harlan Coben has written a book about writing titled Plot Twist: Life, Craft and the Messy First Draft. Coben writes about his life as a writer, dispensing advice along the way for over three hundred pages. However, the book’s best advice is in Chapter Three. He even puts it in bold letters so the reader can’t miss it: “Only writing is writing.” The late British novelist John Braine said it even more succinctly: “A writer is a person who writes.” 

At the end of the day, Coben and Braine and everyone who does this professionally repeat the same mantra: writing is writing. You must set aside everything else and write. No excuses. There is no other way. When I started out, banging away on a manual typewriter, writing draft after draft was arduous business—so many strikeouts, so much cutting and pasting and rearranging to the point where your eyes crossed in confusion and producing a clean, showable draft, seemed hopeless.

But now there is writing software—and writing life, well, not perfect but a whole lot easier. Writing is just as hard as it ever was but the mechanics are now so much easier. If you make a mistake now, software like Microsoft Word, easily makes the correction so that you are always working with a clean draft. Your first draft can also serve as an outline. You can easily comeback later and rewrite. The old saw about writing is rewriting? Absolutely true—just a lot easier.

So set your coffee to one side, straighten your shoulders, take a deep breath and plunge into the other world you have created. It’s all there right in front of you, the brightly lit stage is set, get to work directing your characters. You don’t need inspiration, events are unfolding in your mind, perhaps more slowly some days than others, but that’s the nature of the world you have created. It makes no difference, you are there writing…writing…nothing but writing…the only thing that counts…writing…