mysteries, suspense, and thrillers

So I'm much more at home in the world of mystery, suspense, and thrillers. Life-long passion, here. Aside from the Bible (I was raised in a very conservative, religious family during my early years), which was required daily reading once I learned how to read, and once I got past Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain Bears .... I think I was six when I started reading mysteries. Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, the Dana Girls....you name it, if someone ghost/contract wrote a series about it, I probably read it—including a lot of obscure series that I don't think made it out of the 30s alive! And of course, I gave myself nightmares (there was this one Hardy Boys book that had a ghost in a graveyard or something like that). My mom, bless her book-loving heart, set off for the library the day after said nightmare and found a mystery series whose heroes—the Happy Hollisters—were all under the age of about 10. Perfect.


Fast forward a whole bunch of years. I don't read a lot of cozy mysteries, although there are some with certain twists that I like. I love suspense and thrillers, though, whether they include romance or not. Karen Rose, Kate Brady, Lisa Gardner...I love them with paranormal twists, too, so throw in Jayne Ann Krentz and Heather Graham. James Rollins. There's a list. And that's not really the point. The point is, sometimes writers get asked what's the difference?

Well, there's actually a kind of short answer to that. All of these styles are likely to involve one or more dead bodies, so let's use that as an analogy: in a mystery, there is a dead body—usually one (maybe two or three)—and the story is about figuring out who is responsible for that dead body. In a suspense, there's at least one dead body and there are likely to be more, and the last one will be the hero or heroine (and the previous dead bodies generally are important to the hero or heroine) if they don't figure out who's got this personal vendetta against the hero/heroine.

In a thriller, the stakes are higher and broader, and the intended outcome from the bad guy is probably lots of dead bodies, or some other world-changing outcome, and the hero/heroine Must Be Stopped, but really, it could be anyone. The bad guy has nothing against the hero/heroine per se, it's just they're in the way of world domination or something.



Clear as mud.

the appeal of historical: the Regency

I read....a lot. Dream job? Winning the lottery so I can buy books and write them...without worrying about sales! I'd have a little tea shop in a cottage on the coast and sell a cup and a book now and then, but mostly sit on my deck in the sun and....books.


I read in a lot of different genres and sub-genres, too, including a couple I couldn't possibly write in. One of those is Regency. I used to have dreams of writing Regency, but I'd get all of three pages in and try to kill someone. Genteel is apparently not my style!

When I was younger, Regencies were "safe," which probably had something to do with my reading choice at that point (my mother approved). I read Barbara Cartland until I realized she told the same story over and over and over and....exhausting, all those wicked uncles and timid heroines being rescued by brutish—yet genteel—lords whom they were desperately afraid of at first because, well....okay, I'm probably doing those books a disservice, but the truth is I found them terribly vapid (isn't that a great word?). Then I discovered Georgette Heyer.

That was what Regency became to me. Rapier wit, clever heroines to tease and outsmart and outride and out-everything. I devoured them, along with other 70s and 80s and even into the 90s Regency writers. I wasn't one of those pick-em-apart readers, although I did once (later, when it was possible) email a publisher to point out that no matter how great the story was, a Regency ballroom was not going to be having strains of Bach flowing out of it. I appreciated every word of one author's paragraphs-long recitation of every imaginable slang term for being drunk.

I can't write it. Besides the lack of blood and gore in a proper Regency, the wicked dialogue goes flat on my keyboard. I bemoan my heroine's insipid demeanor when I want her to be a modern woman in pages full of know-your-place social mores. And those dresses....beautiful, but you can't run in them.

If you're a writer, does this apply to you? Do you read—and truly enjoy—genres or sub-genres you couldn't possibly write? If you're a reader, do you enjoy books set in places/times/styles you'd be hopelessly out of place in?

Writing longhand--by choice!

So I'm having computer issues. Severe ones. Along with the too-slow-to-function well computer itself, I somehow managed to injure my Word program. On both the desktop and the netbook. But....there are a lot of priorities currently preempting the purchase of a new computer of either sort, so I'm kind of making do.

And my RWA chapter has recently had a group of people decide that we should be do some write-ins. Now, you have to understand that I am a big fan of this idea. I love getting out of my house to write, never mind the funny looks I get when I'm sitting there NOT writing. Loads of incentive here, in other words. But if I don't have a traveling computer--as is the case at the moment--what to do?

Write longhand.

Some between the lines editing, too, but don't discount the value of occasionally writing a scene by pen. My first story--Fortuneteller--was written almost entirely by longhand, as I was on vacation, camping, in the middle of Mississippi. No computers. I especially like writing sex scenes this way (graphic or otherwise) because it forces my brain to slow down. So instead of dashing through the scene, typing as fast as I can, I have to make my brain pace match my writing pace. It works, especially when I'm working emotion into the scene. It's great for writing black moment scenes, too.

It does not--for me, at least--work as well for action scenes.

Yesterday I needed to add some meditation exercises to my non-fiction book; longhand was great, because mentally doing the exercises was just the right speed to write out. Then I set in to unstick a scene in a novel. Again, just the right speed because I needed to play with some images to see what was going to take the scene in the direction I really needed it to go.

It's very old school, but then, perhaps, so is my imagination.

A Valentine's Day retro

Valentine's Day, beloved of romance authors everywhere....hah! For several years running, I had a radio gig on a local station (the show is now defunct, so no links being provided). I'd talk about what was coming up next, answer questions about love and sex and writing, and take calls if there were any. One of those shows, a caller started with "I've never read your work" (not surprising) and then went on to mention whose books she did read. Not completely the opposite end of the spectrum, but pretty close. Worse, for me, was that this author's books had been made into movies (made for TV, but still), and the caller wanted to know if that was in the works for any of my books.


Gulp.

She was a very nice lady, so I couldn't actually say something like "maybe, but you'll have to check the back of the video store" (let's face it, in my mini-novellas if you took out the sex you'd have a great story, but it would be really short)

Instead, I explained that my works were too short to turn into movies and left it at that.

We all love a good confession

The much anticipated, long anticipated mea culpas. Okay, so they really aren't all that exciting, probably not what you'd expect from a blog called Hearts and Handcuffs, but here goes: I lost track of what I was supposed to write. Yes, for the better part of a year and a half (actually closer to two years) I've been struggling with the damned genre. I'm a slow writer to begin with, in part because I've been splitting my time between three jobs, two of which are haphazardly available (one is freelance, the other is me working with people individually), plus the writing gig....and that, my friends, is split between erotic romance, paranormal romantic suspense, and non-fiction. You'd think I was a Gemini. At any rate, rethinking the genre eventually turned into time management. By the time I've juggled the jobs, juggling the genres becomes problematic in another way (I'm taking a break from erotic romance to concentrate on novels, finally.)

In part, the genre question came up for me because frankly, most erotic writing bores me (not my own, of course, or that of some good friends). The problem for me is that a lot of it is not done very well. It's too much about the sex and not enough about the story. And so I find that a lot of times, I just toss the book down in disgust.

This, my friends, does not bode well for an up-and-coming erotic romance writer. And it probably means that I'm not really a very good one--if I was, I could put all my personal likes/dislikes aside and just write, right? I happen to like very good stories, and where there's a romance involved, very hot sex. So that's what I write. I don't, however, particularly like stories that are written around the sex and how far we can push that envelope.

It's not that I disapprove--this is all about personal taste. I mean, come on, I also like dead bodies in my stories, not in my world, so I do see the difference between life and fiction. But...there are certain things (like BDSM) that I just don't see the appeal of, and so it's challenging. I'm in the middle of writing two different menage stories (m/f/m) and my heroines keep objecting. One man, it seems, is enough to deal with. Possibly because I know one is all she's going to end up with. Messes with the story in my head.

I'm very pleased with what I've written, don't get me wrong. But the market seems to want something different. So I'm figuring out a "plot body" that gives me a quirk on plain-old-contemporary and lets me write sex the way I want to. (My five existing stories all rely heavily on fate, but I'm not sure that's enough.) Meanwhile, I've got some novels in progress that have been languishing, so I'm going to play with those for a while.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yeah, it's me. It's only been a year and a half. I have a reason...promise! I also have some new posts, one with an explanation, which I was going to post today, but then my friend Lori posted this on Facebook and it's just too funny not to share.

Mea culpas tomorrow.

What I really mean to say...

Yes, let's talk about word choice for a moment. It's actually kind of a broad topic (word confusion, passive verbs, unfortunated imagery), so we'll see how far we get.

First, let's talk about word confusion. There are many excellent resources for not mixing up your words, and very poor reasons for continuing to do so. I think there are a couple of basic ways in which word confusion comes about: one, the words are homonyms, and you just can't keep them straight. Some have closely related meanings. Homonyms can often be corrected by simply pronouncing the word aloud and stressing the confusing syllable. "The sun effected my tan." Really? Well, I suppose so, since one of the meanings of "effect" is "cause" or "create." But in this case, you probably mean "affected," and if you'll just read the two sentences aloud, you'll figure that out. Imminent and eminent are two others, although they don't get confused nearly as often as they ought to, because they aren't USED as often as they ought (to be). Digression: see the "to be" in parentheses? We usually leave that sort of thing off the end of our sentences. If you'd add things like that (logical conclusions, that is) to your sentences, you'd probably stop confusing words like "me" and "I."

Other frequently confused words: to and too (fortunately, "two" doesn't come into play much!). "Too" means also, as well ... you don't go too a restaurant, and you don't go to the restaurant, to. They're, there, and their. Oh, God, and while I'm thinking about it, let's .... no, let's don't. There's a whole post on the proper use of the apostrophe. Back to word confusion. "They're" is clearly an abbreviation of the phrase "they are." Therefore, when you mean "they are," you can use "they're," but not "there." "Their" is a possessive. That's enough for anyone. It doesn't need to have any other aspects. "Their plans went awry when they saw the man standing there, looking at them, thinking 'they're tourists.'"

Secondly, word confusion comes into play when you are trying to make your writing sound smarter. Yeah. Skip it. Or look it up. If you have a character who is exceptionally erudite, and you need the more unusual words to firm up the characterization, have an English teacher or well-read friend check your vocabulary use. (Note: if you are that friend, you obviously don't need my suggestions, so you can go ahead and skip this post in favor of something more interesting than vocabulary lessons.) If you have to look up the meaning of "erudite," you should probably do that as well. I frequently read stories that tempt me to quote the guy from the Princess Bride: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

In the same way, word confusion happens when you're trying--desperately!--to find a synonym, any synonym, because someone (a critique partner, an editor, a judge) has told you you've used the word "remarkable" six times in the same paragraph. So you look for a word that gets your point across, and it doesn't, not really (see quote above).

One last note: not so much on word confusion as on POV/description. Often I read entries--and sometimes published novels--where the description includes something that the POV character cannot possibly have noticed, but the author chooses to describe it within the POV character's experience. "He looked across the room into her beautiful blue eyes and instantly fell in love." First, "he" isn't going to fall in love at first sight. Lust, sure. But it ain't going to be her eyes he's looking at. But I digress (yes, again). Even if he's an "eye" man, I want you to try an experiment yourself. Look at someone you don't know across a room, and tell me what color his/her eyes are. Especially when it's dark. Especially when there's so much else going on, the fact that you noticed this person's eyes at all is a small miracle.

Go ahead, I'll wait.