Mystery Author Rebecca Cantrell: Why I read and write what I do

Welcome award winning mystery author Rebecca Cantrell today.

Rebecca Cantrell

A few years ago she quit her job, sold her house, and moved to Hawaii to write a novel because, at seven, she decided that she would be a writer. Now she writes the Hannah Vogel mystery series set in Berlin in the 1930s, including A Trace of Smoke, A Game of Lies, and A Night of Long Knives. A Trace of Smoke was considered by major cable networks as a television series.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review claims Rebecca’s debut novel A Trace of Smoke to be an “unforgettable novel, which can be as painful to read as the history it foreshadows, builds to an appropriately bittersweet ending.”

Catch up with Rebecca where she blogs weekly at 7criminalminds or visit her website.

Why do I read and write crime/mystery/thrillers?
by Rebecca Cantrell

The first part of the answer is: because I read everything. I read crime, mystery, thriller, literary, historical, some sci-fi, the occasional romance, film scripts, and nonfiction. If it’s printed, I read it. Probably some kind of weird compulsion I ought to see someone about.

Reading takes me to different worlds and different lives. I doubt I’ll ever climb Mount Everest, fall in love with a Scottish Highlander, or solve a tricky murder. But because of books I can experience all that while sitting in a hammock sipping lemonade and listening to the surf. I know, it’s a rough life in Hawaii, but I will point out that the hammock broke because the salt air ate through the nylon so you know that it’s not all bliss out here. Yes, we have real problems.

My mother would say that I read mysteries because I have an overblown sense of justice and I expect the world to be fair. As usual: she’d be right. I do. And in mysteries everything happens for a reason, the evil are exposed and, usually, they even get punished for what they did. Who could not want to read that?

Obviously there’s a leap from reading them to writing them.

I could make up a deep psychological reason, but really I write them because they are fun. I get to do all kinds of research and ask questions that normally cause trouble.

I just recently watched someone blow a giant pile of lava into gravel, begged an autopsy report off someone, found an expert on chemical weapons, and am going to spend this morning watching “The Olympiad” by Leni Riefenstahl. As a friend said: “It’s not a grown up job.”

I like that.

Aloha,
Rebecca Cantrell
www.rebeccacantrell.com

Mystery author Jenny Hilborne talks about book signings

I am lucky to have the lovely Jenny Hilborne on my blog today. She is a mystery gal with a love for suspense and the author of MADNESS AND MURDER and NO ALIBI.

Jenny Hilborne

Jenny has worked in the retail music industry, residential real estate, commercial real estate and finance. She is the second of four daughters, born and raised in Wiltshire, South West England, and relocated to Southern California in 1997. Jenny began writing novels in 2007. She is a member of Wolfwriters, a group of professional writers who meet bi-monthly in Northern San Diego. She is also a member of Sisters in Crime. Madness and Murder, her first novel, was released in July 2010. She is working on her third suspense novel, also set in San Francisco, featuring the return of homicide inspector, John Doucette. Jenny talks with us about the challenges of book signings today in a e-book world and if they are even necessary.

Book signings
by Jenny Hilborne

With the e-market explosion, I want to examine book signings. They are often difficult to come by, and are they a wise investment of our time?

Take last month. I drove over 166 miles to a popular bookstore to sign copies of No Alibi, my 2^nd novel. This bookstore is a place where celebs are known to stick their heads in the door and seek out a good read. Better still, I was invited to sign at the store. So, I was thrilled and excited to be there, not just to sign, but also for the fact a celeb might pick up my book. How cool would I look, then? Ha.

Unfortunately, competing nearby events stole a large part of my potential audience and the bookstore was almost deserted that day. Or maybe I’m just not a big enough name to draw a large crowd. YET! I sold one book, then trekked the 166 miles home.

This isn’t an isolated incident. I attend many book festivals and events, sometimes signing and other times browsing, and I see the same thing. Lots of readers I meet say they now read online (cool, most books are available for download) and tell me prefer to shop online, even for paperbacks. Some readers come to meet authors, or are drawn to a festival if they live close, but don’t buy. Some bring me a book to sign they already purchased (I love when this happens).

So, are physical book signings still worth the time and money invested? For most unknown and new authors, I’d have to say you often won’t recoup your cost, especially if the weather is crap or there’s another event going on nearby. Even if you sell well, you usually have to fork over a decent consignment fee to the bookstore, leaving you with very little if you sell books you’ve already purchased from your publisher.

Lots of people try to sell you their services at books events; editing, proofreading, publicity, and the like, all taking up the precious time you could be spending talking to potential readers. Lots of browsers don’t come to buy, they come to ask authors about the road to publication and try to pick up tips on how they can do it for themselves.

I’ve been asking myself why I still do them, why I get up early, give up my precious weekends, and drive myself hundreds of miles to stand up all day in the heat/rain/whatever and try to sell books, when I could stay home and market them on all the social media sites. The reason is I still believe face-face contact is one of the most important ways to connect.

Even if browsers don’t buy your book that day, you get something out of it. You make friends, connect with other authors at shared events, increase your social network, and raise your confidence level if you get the chance to speak on a panel. I’ve chatted with people and later discovered they are agents or publishers. Bookstore owners browse events – this is how I got invited to the signing I mentioned earlier (although I didn’t sell well that day, the owner has a new store opening and I was invited to sign there).

After some events, when I get back online, I notice an uptick in e-sales. This could happen days or weeks later, but those are sales I might never have made. I believe readers are more likely to give a review for an author they’ve met in person, and I believe they are more likely to hunt down your future works.

Catch up with Jenny Hilborne here:
http://JFHilborne.com
http://jfhilborne.wordpress.com

Best selling author L.J. Sellers on when a character won’t let go

I am thrilled to have best selling author on today L.J. Sellers.

Author L.J. Sellers

She is an award-winning journalist and the author of the bestselling Detective Jackson mystery/suspense series: The Sex Club, Secrets to Die For, Thrilled to Death, Passions of the Dead, and Dying for Justice. Her novels have been highly praised by Mystery Scene, Crimespree, and Spinetingler magazines, and the series has been on Amazon Kindle’s bestselling police procedural list.

L.J. also has three standalone thrillers: The Baby Thief, The Suicide Effect, and The Arranger. When not plotting murders, she enjoys performing standup comedy, cycling, social networking, and attending mystery conferences. She’s also been known to jump out of airplanes.

Today L.J. tells us what happens when she just can’t get a character out of her mind.

Lara Leaps Into the Future
by L.J. Sellers

What do you do when a minor character is so much fun you can’t let her go? You plot a novel just for her. That story became The Arranger, a futuristic thriller involving two wildly different concepts: a software technician who devolves into a killer and a national endurance competition called the Gauntlet.

This unusual story developed from several concepts that came together for me: a character I couldn’t get out of my mind, a vivid opening scene I had to use, and a growing concern about the effect of long-term unemployment on our country.

The protagonist is Lara Evans, one of the task force investigators from my Detective Jackson series. In the fifth book, Dying for Justice, Evans had a major role, and I had such a good time developing her character and writing from her perspective that I knew she needed her own novel. After five Jackson titles, I was ready to take a break and stretch my creative side.

One day as I watched paramedics carry someone out of a house, I thought: What if they had witnessed a crime? What if the paramedic became a target? Instantly, I had a premise and an opening scene. Of course, I thought of Lara Evans, who had been a paramedic before she became a cop.

Around the same time, my concern for the economy led me to wonder: Would jobs become commodities that were ripe for exploitation and crime? From there, my antagonist was born, and I knew I had to write a futuristic thriller. But I didn’t want it to be dystopian or supernatural. Like my police procedurals, I wanted it to be gritty and realistic.

Now I had 1.) a protagonist, an ex-detective working as a freelance paramedic; 2.) a setting, a distressed economy 13 years in the future; 3.) a premise and opening scene; and 4.) an antagonist to exploit the situation. All I had to do was find a way to bring it all together.

Lara Evans’ energy and physical fitness led me to create the Gauntlet, an intense contest that also includes an intellectual component and provides jobs as the prize for the winner’s state. So I plotted a story set in a bleak near-future, in which a paramedic witnesses a crime and becomes a target for a killer, then competes in a national contest. Believe me, it was the most challenging outline I’ve ever developed.

Yet writing The Arranger is the most fun I’ve ever had as a novelist, especially the breathless competition scenes. I also became quite attached to my antagonist, and his role in the story developed into a character study. Readers have already asked if this is the first book in a new series, but I don’t know yet. My own future is a little harder to predict.

Catch up with L.J. Sellers here:
http://ljsellers.com
http://ljsellers.com/wordpress
https://www.facebook.com/ljsellers
http://twitter.com/#!/LJSellers

Buy The Arranger on Amazon and Barnes and Noble