How to Remove Your Characters from Their Cardboard Packages

    Since my to-read pile was larded with fluffy, cozy mysteries, I was rather upset after I put a bunch of them on the trade pile without finishing them. I vowed I was going to force myself to read the next one the surfaced to the bitter end -- in hopes of finding out why I had turned on one of my favorite forms of escapism. Only the book was Some Like It Witchy by Heather Blake. I discovered I looked forward to my nightly reading sessions to see how the plot developed -- and how the characters' lives changed.

   Murders seem to make the enchanted Salem village go round, and Darcy Meriweather, witch, wishcrafter, and sleuth, is right there in the middle of events to solve them in this series, helped by her romantic relationship with the village's top cop. This time, a real estate agent is murdered in the midst of showing a house connected to a famous diamond robbery. Of course, the diamonds have magical as well as monetary importance, and who wants them most isn't instantaneously obvious.

   So, what kept me reading when other best selling cozy mysteries got dumped on the trade pile?

   The summary sounds just like a hundred other cozies. The hook ended up being Blake's warmly human characters. The secondary characters had me reading "just one more chapter" until after midnight turned my eyes bleary...just to see how they'd react to the coming twist.

   Some Like It Witchy even created an innovative character type I haven't seen before in my reading. Imagine a person whose visiage turns from fair and inviting in the light to evil and menacing in the dark/shade. Definitely, not someone you want to meet in an alley ... even though all this character's actions depicted in the story line were rather blase plus a nice twist I won't mention for fear of delivering a "spoiler".

   But that one character isn't the only three-dimensional one in the book. Blake's Salem village is filled with individuals -- well-rounded characters who sneakily drop clues to solving the murder in the middle of innocuous conversations. More important, many of the characters have problems of their own that get expanded and/or solved during the course of the book. The people add complexities to the plot line which seem organic to people's lives rather than manufactured by the writer to create thrills.

   Too many of the mysteries I read get set on a one-lane highway to solve a murder, with most of the suspects just red herrings to hide perp. In Salem village, all the characters seem to have secrets which are or are not solved in the current episode in the series. Blake does a good job of wrapping up the loose ends, except for the on-going town secrets -- especially the identity of the mysterious town elder who acts as the "ruler" for the various witches/crafters in the village.

    I recommend Some Like it Witchy because the warm community Blake creates makes an enjoyable read. I could do without the puns in the title, but many more people must like them because so many publishers do it.

See excerpts and more reviews at Amazon and B&N Nook.

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An Interesting Link

What are the rules you think make a successful book? 

   Anyway The Writing Chimp [aka Georgina Cromarty] recently blogged about 9 Writing Rules Science Fiction & Fantasy Authors Should Break. You might take a look and see if your reading supports her claims -- when you're reading the work of a master writer, that is.

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My Writing Rut

    On the Run  continues to develop...or should I say, Pillar continues to develop right under my eyes, even though the story is probably 75% drafted. A critiquer suggested that Pillar needed to talk more; she didn't act like a normal teen. He thought Pillar needed to act more like a natural teen. --  I'm thinking about it.

   Yeah. That was a good critique suggestion if you look at it from how taciturn Pillar is. Maybe too much "action" does happen in her head.

   The insight gave me one of those ta-dah incidents. I spend a lot of time on Pillar's inhibitions on working magic/manipulating energies, but I hadn't thought of other attributes connected to her mixed heritage. Result, is I have a lot more blue notes at the head of chapters to incorporate into the story line.

   Got my demon transition chapter out of the way. This coming week I return to the meeting with Nate, who now will be a sort of love interest. This is where I originally started the novella last spring. Don't think I'll finish by Christmas, but it might be a possibility ... even though it looks like both Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be at my house this year. -- Good thing only family's coming. I don't have to clean up the books ... or, is that straighten?

   My desk, if not my house, is getting cleaned up though. All the yellow sticky notes I've used to save ideas as they occur are getting attached to the chapters that raised them or clipped to clothes pins for the stories I'm not currently working on. I can see the black finish of the desk top rather than a blanket of yellow, green and orange squares.

   Really need to get a new snippet up on my website. Incidently, you can find extended samples of my short stories there if you want to click. They are available on iTunes so I think you can download them on a smartphone to kill time in waiting rooms and sports events.

Chasing Fictional Witchy Versions of Salem -- Can Your Cozy Survive the Sacchrine Test?

   Think my brain got a little soft while doing the Christmas shopping--what little I did of it. I bought a several light cozy mysteries. It Takes a Witch by Heather Blake was one of them. Turned out it was fortuitous. When I was sick, I had something to keep me amused.

[My critical powers were intact because a couple of the books landed on the to-trade pile without a finish because of their saccharinity and general surfeit of cliches.]

  It Takes a Witch survived--in spite of its opening scene having the main character, a wish-granting witch, prancing around as a tulle- and-glitter-wearing tooth fairy. The appearance of a dead body, that of a mortal witch wanna-be, soon cured the cuteness. My reward was a delightful couple hours in The Enchanted Village where Darcy and her sister have moved to help their aunt with her business granting wishes to the people of Salem--mortal and crafters alike.

  So what's to like? First, is a take on witchcraft that limits practitioners to one skill or, maybe, two with one of them being dominant like handedness. When you add a bunch of other writing craft skills--well drawn secondary characters, a reasonable romance [yes, there are such in my opinion], a quick pace even though the scenes are well defined, and if that isn't enough, there's the chuckle-producing narrative. Yeah, this is an above ordinary paranormal with well defined rules for how magic works.

  Recommended if you like cozy mysteries. I may have to go looking for other books in the series even though I thought I satisfied my curiosity on how many takes writers can devise for Salem, MA"s witchy reputation.

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  Some interesting views on book marketing appeared in some of the blogs I've scanned lately. Perhaps the most interesting is Jane Friedman's blog on How E-Books Have Changed the Print Marketplace. There's more info here that writers need to know than just publishing statistics.

  The article left me with a couple thoughts. No wonder The New York Times Book Review has eliminated their rankings of mass paperbacks. [Oh, yeah. This dinosaur still prefers to read them. They don't hurt my thumbs or my eyes.] The other thought is more disturbing. I'm writing in two of the genres that are decreasing the most.

  The Passive Guy has also added his two-cents to the Amazon debate with a blog on Is Amazon's Game Totalitarian? I really liked his balanced comments on Amazon's place in the publishing world. No, I don't think Amazon's the champion of the indie writer. But I do appreciate them for giving me the opportunity to self-publish. If they hadn't broken the market open, Smashwords and other outlets wouldn't exist, I don't think.

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  Am struggling with scheduling writing time ... Oh, I write plenty, but adding worthwhile words to new stories or the revisions I need to do so isn't happening.

  One bright note, finally got a cover for The Ignoble Nobel Prize Winner I really like ... including a title change.  Now the story's Doom Comes for a Sold Soul. I also made a couple minor revisions and will soon raise the price to 99c [to cover all the expense of having covers redesigned]. It'll probably take a couple weeks for me to get all the changes in line.

  A heads up if you haven't downloaded it. It's still free. The story is much the same except for implying Highgrim wet his pants. But the price is going up to 99c so as the new formatting is done and uploaded.  You can go to my author website for the links to Amazon, B&N, etc.

 More editorial changes on my writing. Have a new cover for Night for the Gargoyles too.