Suspicious Circumstances

It's a Killer Week, with the first Killer Year entries appearing. We start with SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES by Sandra Ruttan, and tomorrow two more will enter the fray: BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD by Sean Chercover and THE BLADE ITSELF by Marcus Sakey.

But let's start with SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES. This is what I had to say about in blurb form...

SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES grabs you by the throat on a storm-swept cliff's edge, and never lets go. Sandra Ruttan writes with a machine gun rhythm that pulls you through every unexpected twist and dark turn in her complex and richly drawn debut. Don't have plans when you sit down to read this tasty, dazzling thriller. Every page of SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES leave you gasping--and begging for more.

And I mean every word of it!

Hop on over to Sandra's blog and say congratulations! And go looking for your own copy. You can pick it up from online bookstores, or better yet, visit your favorite brick-and-mortar haunt and ask for your copy!

Man Twisted by Paradox

Thanks to Sandra, I now know I can't make up my mind.

You Are: 50% Dog, 50% Cat

You are a nice blend of cat and dog. You're playful but not too needy. And you're friendly but careful. And while you have your moody moments, you're too happy to stay upset for long.

Are You More Cat or Dog?

This and That, Plus Bill Gets All Weepy

Today I will be sending you on your way. (Mindy, don't hurt me.) I have nothing new to say, but I did want to mention that over at the Killer Year blog, all week we've been sharing our recommendations for books that really did it for us this year.

Meanwhile, Bethany Warner has interviewed Killer Yearbie Brett Battles, so be sure to check that out.

Sandra has had a busy holiday week, which just blows my mind. I barely am able to think this week, but here she is posting about all kinds of interesting, if sometimes gloomy, stuff. Stop that!

John Rickards has a brand-new web site. I think it looks pretty damn good. I just updated my own website too, as it happens. Have a look and let me know what you think. I'm still tinkering.

I have also created the first pass a trailer for lost dog.



Lost Dog Trailer on Vimeo

I will continue to tinker with it, I think.

Today is Angie's fifteenth wedding anniversary! Congratulations, Angie!

And finally, but to me the most amazing, Anne has posted her thoughts on lost dog, and as happened when she first sent them to me, I got teary-eyed.

I hope everyone's having an awesome holiday week!

I'm Very Shallow and Empty and I Have No Ideas*

Over at Sandra's yesterday, Mindy said something that strikes me as a fairly common feeling among writers (though please let me know if you feel differently):

"Writers have dozens of stories to tell. The problem is deciding which one, not coming up with another one."

I don't know how common, but it seems like a sentiment often shared by writers. I know I've read and heard some variation on it many times.

But I have a confession to make.

Not me.

I don't have ideas. Okay, that's not strictly true. What I don't have is Ideas. I don't have dozens of stories to tell. I don't even have a handful of stories to tell. Right now I have my Work-in-Progress, plus a kinda rough notion of one or two things that might happen in a future novel, and then a vague image or two which might form the basis of a story set in Victoria, B.C. And, um, that's it. Fresh out at that point.

I couldn't tell you what might happen in, say, the novel after my next novel to save my life, and I probably couldn't tell you much about novel three. There are a couple of things I think I want to try, and see what might happen, but that's it.

I don't have ideas, I have images. I have sense impressions. I never think, I am going to write a story about... because I never know what any story is going to be about when I start writing it.

Lost Dog started with with a scene. In fact, it wasn't even going to be a scene in an actual story. It was an assignment for a class, an exercise. Later, I wrote another scene, completely unrelated to the first, with no clear sense of where it might go. I was interested in a room and how it reflected the person who lived there. I wanted to play with images and character and see what I got.

Later I asked myself what would happen if I had the character from the first scene and the character from the second scene collide. They were different kinds of people with different ways of seeing the world, but what if I created an intersection between the two?

I suppose that's an idea, but I don't think of it as an idea in the same sense as a High Concept Idea. I write through a series of what if questions, but they are always built off of these images of place or person. I grow stories on the level of character and theme. The what if questions drive me in directions that interest me or challenge me.

And then, well, shit happens. Stories develop a shape and an arc through the layering of these sense impressions and the answers to what if questions.

A side effect of this is when I get to the "end" of a story, open questions remain. That's not to say that I avoid resolution, but for me, any story I write is going to be a sliver of a larger story. My intent is always to present a coherent section, but a lot of the time when I get to the end of a story, I'm still asking myself questions about what came next, or what might come before. Maybe I'll write more, and maybe I won't. But the story in my mind is almost always bigger than what makes it onto the page.

Having said all this, I have to admit there are times when I actually write from ideas anyway. "A Tall House" was based on an idea. My current WIP started with an idea, a dream my wife had, though I have to admit I have all but abandoned the original concept she gave me as I've chased imagery and sense impressions. There was a point where I inserted an Idea in lost dog, probably around the second draft, though it kinda fizzled and I ended up minimizing to the point that I'm not sure anyone would recognize it.

Now, one of the questions I often ask myself is what I'm doing writing crime fiction, so often built around the Big Idea, when I never have ideas myself? Part of the answer is the kind of crime fiction that most attracts me. Character-driven, theme-based crime fiction is among my most favorite. John Straley, James Lee Burke, the Scudder novels of Lawrence Block. Yes, those books have ideas, as well as Ideas, but it's the stuff around the ideas that makes them particularly effective for me. Who and Why and not just What.

Some may say this is a semantic quibble. What I call imagery and sense impressions may be ideas by another name. I won't argue the point, though inside me they feel different from what I think people mean when they talk about ideas.

And please don't get me wrong. I read and enjoy -- often adore -- novels built around ideas, as well as Ideas. I just don't think that way. My creativity doesn't grow out of ideas. I don't write because I have stories to tell, but because I am exploring questions that interest me.

- - - - -

*Whoever can tell me where the title of this post is from first gets a free ARC of lost dog as soon as I get them, which may be soon since I have heard rumors on the internets that they have arrived in the mailboxes of at least a few readers and reviewers! :D

My head is lopsided

Sandra popped up with this thing this morning, so of course I had to play too.

You Are 25% Left Brained, 75% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?

The result doesn't surprise me, I guess. I float in a haze much of the time, reaching out and grabbing something and then figuring out if I need to do anything with it. Work, writing, house and home. I move at random, but eventually things get done. I don't plan well, don't organize well, though every now and then I go berserk and tidy up my world in a frenzy of sweeping and stacking. I vow I will be more organized from here on in. Then a day or so passes and chaos returns. And it's mostly just fine.

This probably helps explain why my fiction is not oriented around The Big Idea so much as the influence of events on character and character on events. "What's your novel about?" is always a difficult question for me to answer, because it's about a million different things. In the run up to the publication of lost dog, the toughest thing for me to do was come up with the so-called elevator pitch, the fifteen-second hook that will make folks want to read the novel.

This is it, by the way:

"Early on a sodden Portland, Oregon morning, Peter McKrall, unemployed smart-ass and kleptomaniac, goes to the park to find his niece's lost toy dog. He doesn't realize his search is being watched by the paranoid killer of the dead hooker he finds instead."

Sometimes I say it differently, of course, but that's basically it. It's not what the novel is about, of course, it's just the beginning boiled down to two sentences. What it's about is all the stuff that happens afterward, about the impact of finding a body on a man ill-equipped to cope with such a discovery. And even that is just the beginning.

And I didn't plan it out. I started at a point and asked and answered questions until I got to another point, the ending. In a way, the end was an arbitrary spot, the place where the arc of the story would change enough going forward that I could reasonbly put it in another novel -- should I decide I want to continue the arc. There are questions answered by the end of lost dog, of course, but there are open questions as well.

I'm sure I would write a different novel if I was more analytical, though how different I don't know. It's interesting to ruminate on, though, while I'm doing other things.

Last second saves

Sometimes I don't blog because I started to blog but came to my senses. I have a number of "Save as Draft" entries that haven't seen the light of day, and for good reason. You're gonna thank me for this.

For example, I had a post half-written about Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," a song I find so brilliant and weird I sometimes listen to it on my iPod 50 times in a row. The video is even more brilliant and weird, featuring as it does certain literal interpretations of the lyrics and rampant, unselfconscious melodrama. What's not to love? Still, I never finished the blog entry. Oh well. But the glowing eyes thing? It rocks.



I also started a long, smoldering entry about spam. Everyone talks about spam, and no one ever says anything nice about it, unless they're talking about Spam®, the Hormel potted meat product. Which gets lotsa luvin' on the internets. No, my spam entry was about the utterly hated email spam, which Sandra talked about recently, and which everyone who blogs seems to get around to eventually. You know a few years ago, Bill Gates said we'd have this whole spam thing licked by the end of 2006. Well, Bill, you got two weeks yet, but right now, depending on the news report either 91% or 97% of all email traffic is spam. I'm not hopeful.

Then there's the blog entry that died on the vine about people with those bluetooth hands-free ear jack thingies for their cellphones. It wasn't an objection to the objects themselves, but to the fact that people just wear them all the time, as if they were a hat or something, except for ears. But, you know. Who cares? I mean, what a dumb thing to almost blog about. Except, what's with people with those bluetooth hands-free ear phones just jacked into their ears twenty-four/seven? That's what I want to know.

Also started then forgotten was the post about the disturbing Stadium Pal, and its even more frightening sibling, the Stadium Gal. For people just too busy to get up and go find a toilet when they have to pee, or, as the slogan says, "For when you gotta go, but you want to stay." The slogan neglects to add that you get to stay with a sack of urine taped to your calf. (Mmmm, sex-ay!) Needless to say, this is a ready topic for blogistry, but somehow I came to my senses at the last minute.

Since I keep starting and not finishing blogs, I feel that in the end, I have but one choice, and that is to leave it to Mindy to pick up my blog slack. Thanks, dear!

Sandra Ruttan Interviewed by Chris Well

I just wanted to take a moment to alert you to part one of an interview with Sandra Ruttan by writer Chris Well. Part two will appear on Friday.

Chris will be interviewing each member of the Killer Year over the next few months, so be sure to stop by his blog for that, as well as fascinating talk about crime fiction, movies, television series, and writing.