ERIC'S BIT or RETURNING SOME OF THE MAGIC
Since the last newsletter Mary and I sent Three For A Letter
to Poisoned Pen Press. We wished to make the third John the
eunuch mystery a bit different from the first two and I
suppose I'm still too close to the task to tell how well we
succeeded.
One thing I am sure of is that the writing was arduous, more
so for me, than the writing of One For Sorrow or Two For
Joy. It seems every time I learn a bit about an aspect of
writing I learn there's something else I should've been
thinking about as well but never bothered with before.
Transitions? Don't they just kind of...happen?
The increasing difficulty of the job surprises me because I
always imagined writing would naturally get easier -- just
another of many misconceptions I nurtured, along with my
dream of being an author, practically since I could hold a
crayon. That's plenty of time to grow a fine crop of
misconceptions.
In particular I underestimated how much plain hard work is
involved once you begin to write professionally. An aspiring
author might take half a lifetime to produce a publishable
novel but then, in most cases, he or she (or they) have to
do it all over again -- in the space of a year. Then they
repeat the process the next year, and the next...if they are
fortunate enough to have the opportunity.
Writing is, I think, more like a job than matching the
winning numbers on a lottery ticket. Sure, we read in the
newspaper about Joe Shmoe who wrote that gripping page-
turner "Flaming Pizza of Desire" while scrubbing pans at the
Greasy Spoon Diner and then, practically before he had
bundled his handwritten manuscript off to a Major New York
Literary Agency, was drying his fingers on a contract for
more then the gross national product of Paraguay. But we
also read on the same page about John Shmoe of Cat's Elbow
Corners who just won $25,000,000 on the Lotto.
First-time authors have been known to get mega-bucks deals
and, hey, someone's got to win the lottery. But while few
would argue that buying lottery tickets is a viable career
path, one occasionally sees aspiring authors whose thought is
that nothing will do but they will write an instant
bestseller. Is a thriller about a lawyer embroiled with
middle eastern terrorists while on an expedition to Mount
Everest climbing the Bestseller Lists? Then it's time to
bone up on crampons and falafel and get writing!
Fortunately, Mary and I never entertained the notion that
writing is a lottery. We went about it like any other job,
starting small -- or I should say short -- by writing
stories for anthologies and magazines. After we had
a better idea of what we were doing, we wrote a "practice"
mystery novel, to prove we could write at that length, made
an effort to sell it in line with our expectations of a sale
(small), did not succeed and moved right on to writing One
For Sorrow. When it was completed we queried here and there
but quickly decided we'd have a better chance of being
noticed by an independent publisher.
After Poisoned Pen Press bought the manuscript we reworked
it as needed under the guidance of our editor Barbara Peters
and in the process learned a lot that an editor at a Big
Publisher could never have taken time to try to teach a pair
of novice novelists. Then we applied the lessons to Two For
Joy, which sold well, had even better reviews than One For
Sorrow and has actually won an award!
And now we've just finished Three For A Letter.
Will we ever have a bestseller? With a Byzantine eunuch as a
protagonist, only if the general population has the
discerning taste of those of you reading this newsletter.
Will we continue to work at our craft and gain a larger
audience? We certainly hope so.
Writing isn't really about hitting the jackpot. Rather it is
about knowing that readers are enjoying your work. Mary
occasionally visits library web pages so we know our books
are on library shelves all over the country -- in
Schenectady, NY; Stillwater, OK; LaGrange, IL; Osh Kosh,
WI. There's a library in Alaska that has Two For Joy and
it's currently checked out!
It amazes me, the idea of our book, sitting on the shelf of
some distant library in a place I've never seen. When I was
a kid, it was visiting the library that hooked me on books,
on the magic of the bound pages that would transport me to
other worlds and allow me to lead other lives.
It is still magical but now we give back, just a little, to
the magic.
AND FINALLY
As this newsletter grows longer and time gets shorter,
may we then conclude by mentioning in passing that this link
http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/html/threeforaletter.html
will take you to Poisoned Pen's Threefer page, and yes, John' s
adventure really does feature a herd of fortune-telling
goats as well as a whale. Well, we said it would be somewhat
different from the first two books!
Speaking of two, we'll see you again in a couple of months
as the next Orphan Scrivener will trundle in from the aether.
and hang about in your email in-box on August l5th.
Best wishes
Mary and Eric
whose home page lurks about at
http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/
Therein you'll find the usual suspects plus more personal
essays, an interactive game and an on-line jigsaw puzzle (at
least for those who have java-enabled browsers) featuring
One For Sorrow's striking cover. We've also just added a
page listing mystery-related newsletters of various kinds,
while for those new to the subscription list there's the
Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned!
