Meeting my readers

There's no such thing as an average reader

I was privileged to spend time with the novelist Sylvian Hamilton in the years leading up to her too-early death in 2005. We talked about books and writing, and she shared some of the exciting aspects of being published, like the creation of the cover design for what was sadly destined to be her final book, and her scrapbook of fan mail. Back then, if a reader enjoyed a book, the only way they could communicate this to the author was by writing to them, usually via their publisher. I remember Sylvian’s delight whenever a new card or letter arrived, and how carefully she added them to her collection.

These days, readers have a plethora of ways to contact authors and give their verdicts on books they’ve read. No Stranger to Death has been reviewed on Amazon (all 5-stars, so far), GoodReads and blogs, and I’ve received messages from readers via my own blog, Facebook and Twitter. I also have friends who live locally who’ve told me to my face what they thought. However, last week was the first time I met total strangers who had read my book. I attended the monthly get-together of a local book group, and a few days later, I stood up in a village hall to do a reading and answer questions. Here are some of the things these experiences taught me.

Readers don’t care how a book gets published

None of the book group members realised I had self-published No Stranger to Death. Some had bought it from a shop, others had used Amazon, one had taken it out of a library. Their motivation for choosing to read it was that I was a local author and ‘it looked good’. While I was selling and signing copies in the hall, no one asked who my publisher was. That said, an elderly gentleman expressed concern that he had ‘only’ borrowed a copy from the library: did I get any income from that? I was happy to reassure him that Scottish Borders Council had purchased the libraries’ copies from me, and told him about PLR. 

You can never know your characters well enough

Although I don’t go as far as noting my characters’ shoe sizes and favourite foods, I‘ve lived long enough with them in my head to know how they would react in most circumstances. But I was completely thrown to be asked what Zoe Moreland’s star sign is. My confession that I didn’t know earned the response that she must be a Scorpio, due to her ‘emotional strength’.

Everyone experiences a book differently

I asked the book group if anyone had guessed whodunit. They had all suspected different characters, one of whom was a kindly doctor, the least likely killer you could hope to meet. And that was why it had to be him: he was ‘too good to be true’. The legacy of multiple murderer Dr Harold Shipman obviously lives on in some people's minds.

Readers can develop feelings for your characters too

I love reading and getting caught up in a story, so this shouldn’t surprise me. But I never expected anyone else to feel so strongly about the people I created. A book-group lady was particularly upset at what a bully one of Zoe’s fellow doctors was, given all the other awful things happening to her at the same time. Another reader said that when she got to the part where Zoe’s car goes out of control she found herself saying, ‘No, no, no’ out loud. And as for what everyone wants from the book’s sequel: I’ve been told to bring Neil back, make sure Mather and Kate end up together, and tell what happens to Zoe in the light of her mysterious visitor on the very last page.  

How readers choose their next book is a mystery

Remember the book group said they chose to read No Stranger to Death because ‘it looked good’? I asked them what factors contributed to this, but they couldn't point to a single aspect, such as cover design or blurb. Others, however, do have specific criteria by which they select a book. During the second event, I met a lady who enjoys crime fiction but will only buy a book if she doesn’t think it will be ‘scary’. I was happy to reassure her that although I deal with dark themes, she won’t find extreme violence or graphic descriptions of blood-soaked crime scenes in anything I write.

It was amazing and gratifying to hear how characters, places and situations I have created are now in other people’s heads. If I learnt one lesson from meeting readers it is that No Stranger to Death was a different experience for each of them and they all had unique responses to it. These responses are impossible to predict, proving that one of the best piece of advice for writers is ‘Write for yourself’. Write something you would enjoy reading and there’s a good chance others will enjoy it too.

Photos courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

By any other name . . .

Shakespeare: A godsend for authors in search of a title

For a long time my first novel was going to be called The Shilling Rope. This had absolutely nothing to do with the plot, but popped into my head when I visited the archives at Berwick-upon-Tweed and was shown an 18^th‑century hangman's bill. Among his charges was a shilling for the rope, which apparently did not change however much rope was required. 

The sequel, when I decided to write one, was to be called The Bastardy Bond. This was a term I came across when researching genealogy, the business of one of my main characters. But as I learnt more about publishing, I realised (duh!) that neither of these titles works for modern-day crime fiction. That said, I still think they're good titles and in the unlikely event that I ever turn my hand to historical fiction, I may use them.

A book's title has the same job as its cover design: it should entice the reader and suggest a little of what they can expect to find inside. Once I had taken this on board, I set about finding a proper title for Book One. The received wisdom (don't ask me where I heard this) is that crime novels sell particularly well if they have the word ‘death’ in their titles. Recognising that as a first-time, self-publishing author I need all the help I can get, I decided to come up with a title which included the word ‘death’.

First of all I turned to my dictionary of idioms. Among the many sayings using ‘death’ are:

• In at the death
• Catch one's death
• Death trap
• Kiss of death

They all sound horribly familiar, clichéd even, don't they? 

So my next step was to bring out my dictionary of quotations and look up ‘death’ in the index. Shakespeare, Tennyson and the Bible used this word a great deal! 

However, when I started reading the quotations in detail, I got a surprise. It became apparent that some of the best known and most effective crime fiction titles, although based on literary works and quotations about death, do not necessarily feature the word itself.

Agatha Christie did use ‘death’ and ‘murder’ in many of her titles: for example, Murder at the Vicarage, Death in the Clouds. The inspiration for titles like One Two Buckle My Shoe and A Pocket Full of Rye is obvious: nursery rhymes. (As an aside, my friend Bea Davenport’s next crime novel, out in October, is called This Little Piggy, demonstrating this can still be an inspired source.) But Christie also found her titles in more serious literature.

• Pale Horse has its origins in the Bible. In Revelations you’ll find this: ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was Death.’
• By the Pricking of My Thumbs is from a speech by the second witch in the play Macbeth. The full quotation is ‘By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes’
• The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side is from Tennyson’s ‘The Lady from Shalott’. The full quotation is ‘The mirror crack’d from side to side / “The curse is come upon me” cried / The Lady of Shalott’

The work of playwright John Webster, a contemporary of Shakespeare best known for his tragedy The Duchess of Malfi, has also provided several book titles, not all crime fiction:

·         Conference with the Dead (Terry Lansley)

·         Blood Flies Upwards (Elizabeth Ferrars)

·         Cover Her Face (PD James)

·         I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou, who doesn’t directly quote Webster but references the line ‘We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry’.)

PD James takes this literary referencing even further. The title of her novel The Skull beneath the Skin is a quotation from TS Eliot about Webster in ‘Whispers of Immortality’: ‘Webster was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin’. And in researching this post I found a book, now out of print, called By Death Possessed by the late Roger Ormorod.

So, did the title No Stranger to Death originate come from my wandering through The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations? Not directly, no. In fact, I had slammed the book shut in disappointment and gone to make a cup of tea. And then it came to me. Writing – in common with many other undertakings – can be like that. It’s only when you stop trying so hard that a solution to a problem shows itself. Which is perhaps why the title for Book Two came so easily: Too Soon a Death.

If you're a writer, how do you come up with titles? If you're a reader, do titles actually matter much when you're choosing what to read next? Do get in touch and let me know. I can be reached by leaving a comment below or clicking one of those buttons at the top of this page.

Shakespeare collection photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Agatha Christie had it easy

Jonathan Creek recently returned to British TV screens and, being fans, we watched the first episode. It contained one of the worst motives for a character’s actions that I have ever encountered in a work of fiction (if you’ve not watched it but plan to do so, look away now). A terminally ill wife planted fake evidence she had been having an affair, so that when she died her much-loved husband would be less sad at losing her. It was preposterous, not a motive but a mechanism designed with the sole purpose of explaining away a mystery.

Had the rest of the programme been excellent – which it wasn’t – I would still have groaned in disappointment. Readers and audiences allow themselves to go along with fiction, suspending their disbelief at the depiction of all kinds of unlikely events. For example, I’m currently catching up with – and loving – Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic and am captivated by a girl who can withstand fire and is raising several dragons. But this only works if writers give their characters credible motives for the way they behave.

Modern society is (thankfully!) far more forgiving than when Agatha Christie started writing. Back then, things like illegitimacy, divorce and bankruptcy were considered unacceptable and shameful. Homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967. Fictional characters could credibly be depicted going to desperate measures, including murder, to avoid the scandal of their private lives being made public.

Bad day at the office, dear?

These days, however, we are not so bound by convention. If a couple no longer get along, there’s little need for one of them to kill the other. Although still painful, divorce is now rightly regarded as no one’s business bar that of the people involved. And, according to the press, by 2016 the number of children born ‘out of wedlock’ (how quaint that sounds) will be greater than those born in it.

A more tolerant society is a good thing. Except for crime writers like me, who face the challenge of providing their miscreants with plausible motives. This is probably one of the reasons for the rise in popularity of psychopathic serial killers in crime fiction. They are motivated by their own internal logic, which readers still find compelling despite not sharing it.

Luckily, for all writers, while society may change, human nature never does. We’re always going to want what we can’t have and act in ways it would be wiser not to. Universal motives like love, hate, greed and jealousy will endure. A writer's skill lies in persuading an audience to buy into a character and their story so that their actions – and the motivation behind them – are believable. Whereas anyone can create a puzzle then manufacture a witless motive to explain it.

Images courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

My writing process

My Writing Process is a series of blog posts in which authors ‘tag’ each other to answer some questions about their work. Thanks to my good friend Bea Davenport, who writes both adult crime/suspense and children's fiction, for inviting me to take part.

What am I working on?

I’m in the very early stages of writing the sequel to my first novel, No Stranger to Death. It’s six months on and my main character, Doctor Zoe Moreland, is still living with the repercussions from events triggered by her discovery of a body in a Guy Fawkes bonfire. The second book opens with Zoe being called out by the police to identify a young Asian man who has apparently been thrown into the River Tweed from the historic chain bridge linking Scotland and England.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Although my books are crime fiction, at their core they’re about relationships, though not simply romantic ones. Friendships are important in real life, especially to women, and I try to reflect that. I loathe the expression ‘amateur sleuth’ but after working in a GP surgery I decided to make my main character a doctor rather than a police officer. GPs deal with people in extremis and hear their innermost secrets. They are also well-placed to interact with the police and other authorities. Perhaps most interestingly, they are bound by confidentiality, which can lead to moral dilemmas and conflict.

Why do I write what I do?

Wearing my other hat, as a professional copywriter I’ve written on subjects I started off knowing nothing about, like care homes for the elderly and school federations. However, when it comes to fiction I can’t imagine writing in genres I don’t read, such as romance. Judging one’s own work is hard enough; I wouldn’t know if it was any good if I had no idea what readers’ expectations are. And having readers enjoy what I write is my primary aim.

How does my writing process work?

I’m a slow and reluctant pantser who starts off with a corpse and wings it from there. I dread being asked that perennial question, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ because I simply don’t know. I’ve even coined a term to describe the process: imagication.

Thanks for reading about My Writing Process. I’m now passing the baton on to Vivienne Tuffnell, who will blog about her own process next week. Our writing could not be more different, but we’ve got to know each other on Twitter, where her bio describes her as writer, poet, explorer and mystic. Vivienne has written stories her whole life, even before she could actually read, as she explains.

“My father mistakenly allowed me to use his typewriter from an early age and I was hooked. I'm not sure the typewriter survived very long having me bash out strings of letters in the belief that what I had in my head would magically transform into words others can read. I've got better at that.”

Vivienne writes novels, short stories and poetry, and her wonderfully named blog is Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking.

Photo courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

Things they don’t tell you about being an author ...

... Number 1: Writing a sequel isn’t easy

The River Tweed on a summer's day

When I started to write No Stranger to Death, I had no intention of it being anything other than a standalone novel. Bad things would happen in the Scottish Borders village of Westerlea, my heroine Zoe Moreland would save the day, and that would be that. But when I got to the end of the first draft, Zoe’s story was far from over. Of course, I had the power to change this, but I didn’t want to. So, instead of editing out situations which couldn’t be resolved or creating over-neat outcomes, I decided to write a sequel.

What bliss, I thought, to be able to pick up where I left off. I could use the same settings, and those characters I already know well would be waiting for me to prod them back into action. Also, what better way to build a following than have readers put down No Stranger to Death so desperate to find out what happens next that they rush to buy its follow-up?

Silly me! I’m now faced with decisions to make and challenges to meet that might not be necessary if I was creating a fictional world from scratch. And I’m not just talking about remembering the colour of a character’s eyes.

Does Book 2 work on its own?

This is the big one: a sequel must not rely on the first book to be enjoyable. In that respect, all books are standalones, especially as readers don’t necessarily consume them in the order in which they’re published. Knowledge of what went before can increase the reader’s pleasure, but a story which relies on this to entertain is a cop-out. To that end, Book 2 will involve Zoe getting caught up in entirely new and very different crimes to those in No Stranger to Death.

How much back-story to tell?

Back-story is a tricky thing to get right at the best of times. Too much can slow up the action and risks spoiling the enjoyment of readers who then move on to the first novel. But too little could raise questions which distract from the narrative, even in a crime novel aiming to intrigue the reader. I’ve found this testing from the very first page, when Zoe is visited by the police asking for help in identifying the body of a young man found dead on the banks of the River Tweed. She reveals something about herself that anyone who has read No Stranger to Death will find significant but which readers who are encountering Zoe for the first time will simply take at face value. Should I fill in the gaps about what has happened during the intervening six months and give away some of the secrets of the first book?

Shhh ... it's a secret

  

Which characters will make it into Book 2?

Any character who features in Book 2 is patently neither killer nor victim in the first book. Sadly, this means I can’t re-use some perfectly good characters, as their presence would spoil things for readers who come to Book 2 first. In this respect, police procedurals have an advantage over books like No Stranger to Death because readers expect police officers to stay roughly the same in subsequent books but to investigate different members of the public. Look at Midsommer Murders on TV: most episodes focus on different villages for exactly this reason.

How to be different while staying the same?

I look upon writing in a specific genre as a promise to the reader that you’ll give them a book which broadly (and it can be very broadly) meets their expectations. Put simplistically, readers expect a crime novel to start with a crime, proceed with some sort of investigation, and end with a solution. Writing a sequel makes another promise: ‘If you enjoyed the first one, you’ll enjoy this one too although it’s different enough to be worth reading’. Keeping these promises while at the same time coming up with a novel which isn’t a rerun of what has gone before is going to be a challenge. I’ve already scrapped my plan for what happens immediately after Zoe is taken to see the body because I realised it followed too closely the chain of events in the first part of No Stranger to Death.

Poor Martin

Does all this matter? Am I worrying unnecessarily? The makers of The Bridge II, the latest Scandi-crime shown on BBC4, were faced with similar challenges. They chose to ignore the possibility that viewers would watch the series out of order, and fully incorporated the revelations and outcomes of the first series into the action of the second. Although I enjoyed Series II as much as Series I, and it was a far richer story by examining Martin’s response to his family’s tragedy, I can’t help thinking that decision will deter viewers who came in at Series II from watching what went before. Or will it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter, especially as readers. I would also be interested to hear how other writers tackle the challenges of writing sequels and series novels. Do leave a comment below or email me via the contact form on this blog, tweet me (I’m @JanetOkane) or post on my Facebook author page.

('Shhh' pic courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

Catching up

Three months ago, I released my first crime novel, No Stranger to Death, as an ebook. Shortly afterwards, I brought it out as a paperback too. Not only does this mean more people can buy it, but my book will soon be available in libraries throughout the Scottish Borders. It has received some great reviews on Amazon and GoodReads and continues to feature regularly in the Kindle Top 100 Scottish Crime Fiction chart.

Other writers and bloggers have helped me spread the word about my book, offering me guest spots on their own blogs and websites. I will always be immensely grateful to them for this support and encouragement. Soon, writing these guest blogs will be finished and I can concentrate on regularly posting on this site. In the meantime, here is a further list of where you can read about me and my book.

• The brilliantly named Scottish crime-fiction blog, ‘There’s Been a Murder’ asked me some very challenging questions.
• The inspirational ‘Fab after Fifty’ website included a piece in their Fabwomen blog on the ‘bucket list’ I wrote when I hit 50. Naturally this included publishing a novel but you may be interested in some of the other tasks I set myself.
• A fellow crime-writer, Jane Isaac, invited me onto her blog 'Caffeine's not a Crime' to reveal how Scottish Borders settings influence my writing.
• Mel Sherratt is a chart-topping crime-writer on both sides of the Atlantic who kick-started her career by self-publishing. I leapt at the chance to appear in her ‘Murder They Wrote’ slot when she invited me.

Mel and I at Harrogate 2013

Finally, for those of you who have read and enjoyed No Stranger to Death, I’m happy to say that I've started in earnest on its sequel. It will be out in the summer of 2015.

Exciting times!

Hard to believe it's only been a little over a month since I published my first crime novel, No Stranger to Death, which is now available as both a paperback and an e-book from Amazon. Already so much has happened, and I've encountered (not for the first time) such incredible generosity from lots of people - many of whom I have yet to meet in real life. On publication day, 20th November, I sat at my computer unable to get up and make myself another cup of tea because the congratulations were coming in so fast from friends on Twitter and Facebook, and via email. 

And a couple of days later, this happened. 

Yes, the e-book of No Stranger to Death made number 17 in the Kindle Scottish crime fiction chart, snuggling next to a couple of Ian Rankin titles! 

Because I like to use social media with the emphasis on the 'social', I've promised myself I'll never become one of those authors who forever tweet and post annoying 'Buy my book' messages. However, one of the challenges facing authors who don't have a presence in physical bookshops is making sure potential readers can find their work online. And here again other people have helped me out. Since the publication of No Stranger to Death I've been on a blog tour, guesting on other people's websites and blogs. Here are links to some of them. You'll find out lots about me and my book from these, from why I chose to self-publish to what was my stand-out moment during 2013. And of course, if you have any burning questions to ask me yourself, please email me via the handy Contact Form on this blog.

• On Isabel Costello's Literary Sofa I explain why I decided to self-publish and how I went about it.
• Jayne Ferst, one of my first ever Twitter pals, asked me about why I chose to write a crime novel and what readers can expect from it.
• I accepted an invitation from Victoria Watson to review my 2013. It's been an exciting year for all sorts of reasons!
• A fellow crime-writer, Rebecca Bradley, asked me some searching questions about how I go about writing for her My First Draft feature.
• I even made it into my local paper, the Berwickshire News, although admittedly it was my chickens which got top billing and No Stranger to Death was only mentioned in the final paragraph.

I don't tend to make New Year resolutions but there is one thing I absolutely, definitely must do during 2014 - write the sequel to No Stranger to Death. Because now I have readers asking for it. Which is the best feeling in the world.

Happy New Year!