Today has been Mary Russell’s birthday, though it got away from me in a rush of tasks. My apologies, Miss Russell, and I hope your 120th went well!
Your admirer, and literary agent,
Laurie King
Christmas in the Dark
I love Christmas stories.
Well, I love Christmas in general, but stories set in country houses with decorated trees, and snow outside, and the smells of baking and the sounds of carols…all of that goes so beautifully with knives and poisons, doesn’t it?
Christmas in its nature is a solstice celebration, an assertion of light in the darkness. And in the hemisphere of mystery tales, Christmas stories are a touch of darkness against the light. Family, gifts, happy children, rich food….and death.
Or at least crime, of some kind. And in the case of a very young Mary Russell, Christmas is an ideal time to pick up criminal tips and a piece of equipment that will become iconic of her in her later memoirs: her throwing knife.
“Mary’s Christmas” is that tale of young Mary and her rascally Uncle Jake, which is in the collection Mary Russell’s War.
Last year, Team LRK did an illustrated version of the story, and this year my publishers are giving it away. It’s structured as a sweepstakes, but the story will drop into your in-box on the 20th. Just in time to give you a touch of light in your darkness. The giveaway is here. Enjoy!
(And for the other Russell Christmas tale, “Stately Holmes,” go here.)
The Rewrite
Laurie King is not, as regular followers of this blog will know, a writer who outlines her books before she begins them. Some people call this being a pantser (as in, by the seat of her…) but I refer to it as Organic, as opposed to the Organized outliner.
(In our writing manual Crime and Thriller Writing, my more Organized co-author and I came up with these terms after starting with more, shall we say, judgmental labels. I had to admit that there’s no point in alienating the outliners by calling them “anal”.)
At any rate, my brain doesn’t work by planning out a story before it starts. I’ll sometimes list a sequence of events, to keep an upcoming section in order, but when it gets more than a chapter or two into the future, I feel the fog descend, the blindfold tighten.
That means, the rewrite is where the novel is actually written. A first draft is a short, meandering, half-developed heap of paper that no one but an experienced editor can make any sense out of. Its main job, for writers like me, is to lay out the machinery of the plot, to set its unadorned and largely meaningless pieces in order and make sure that the events and people mesh. The rewrite is when that….okay, call it an outline, even though it’s a 300-page one—is turned from a list of events involving half-developed characters into a full-blooded narrative with people we care about.
Again, some writers produce a first draft by throwing in everything including the kitchen sink, the cleaning supplies beneath it, and the dirty dishes waiting to go into the dishwasher. I write a sparse first draft. The oft-given rule of “Cut every third word” would leave me with short stories. Instead, my second draft puts on maybe thirty percent of its original length, for a final version of 400-450 pages.
But I do cut. And often, it hurts to put stuff into the Cuts folder. Clever asides, interesting speculations, material that develops a back-story… chop.
I do always go back through that Cuts folder, to make sure there’s nothing there that’s really too good, too illuminating, too intriguing to leave out. And I almost never find anything worth fighting to find a place for.
Every so often, I have a battle with my editor over cutting material. Sometimes I hold out, and make only the briefest of compromises. Other times I let them take the argument, because really, was Stephen King’s The Stand a better book once he succeeded in getting its massive cuts put back in? I sure didn’t think so. Sometimes editors are right.
But it also means I occasionally have material that can go into the supplemental pages. I don’t know that I’ll have much from my Riviera Gold Cuts folder—certainly nothing like the vastly whittled-down Testimony that got pulled out of The Language of Bees (which, if you haven’t seen, is the second link here)—but it’s possible.
But if I end up with a scene where Russell dances the Charleston and I have to cut it, I promise to put it on the book’s page. Just for you guys.
(Other blog posts about the craft of writing are here.)
Hitting SEND
One of the most satisfying sounds of my earlier years was the rustle and thump of an envelope holding 300+ pages of manuscript as it dropped into the FedEx box. Of course, now that contracts no longer specify paper copies, the physical thump has been replaced by a tap on an icon.
But it’s still satisfying. Deeply, joyously satisfying, this story that began with a throwaway line towards the end of one book (The Murder of Mary Russell)–
–and was then more or less ignored all through the next–
–but which then started to come to life at my last stop in a tour of Europe, when I arrived at my hotel to find this subtle indication that I was not in Romania any more:
And later looked out my window at this:
Then the next day, when I wandered down to gawk at the Casino–
–Mrs Hudson’s appreciation for Monte Carlo began to take shape, in what would become Riviera Gold.
That’s the rewrite I’ve just hit SEND on. So although it’s far from finished, since editor and copy editor have yet to push things around, it’s currently off my desk and onto theirs. Which is a beautiful feeling, not least because I’ve been working 8-9 hour days on the thing for more weeks than I can remember, and I have laundry to do and heaps of things that need sorting.
And maybe I’ll even have a chance to see my family, other than through the bleary eyes of a writer on deadline.
Happy December to you, too!
(If you’d like to demonstrate your excitement about the book, it’s always great when my publisher can see pre-orders, from Bookshop Santa Cruz or Poisoned Pen books or your local Indie or B&N or Amazon. Just in case you want to show them how much you’re looking forward to June 9…)
Beginnings event at the Poisoned Pen
Tomorrow will be my one and only event for Beginnings, which we self-published last month. Where else to hold it but my beloved Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ? Please come and see me and/or order books here to be signed at the event. Looking forward to seeing you and revisiting Kate Martinelli together!
The many faces of Beekeeper
When you have a book that’s been around for 25 years, especially if it’s the first in a gratifyingly long series, the publishers tend to dress it in a lot of different ways. Funnily enough, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice didn’t strike the imagination of the in-house reader, who decided to pass on the paperback rights. They put both Beekeeper and A Grave Talent up for bid, and Bantam Books bought the rights. Those were given covers that were very different from their St Martins Press hardbacks, first in a bright mass market edition, and later in more subdued trade paperback.
England gave Beekeeper its own faces—in hardback, then trade,
and now the Allison & Busby paperback.
And although there’s the occasional reversion to the earlier YA sensibilities–
they also manage designs that are simply classic.
So as we celebrate Beekeeper‘s 25th anniversary this year, this gorgeous one is the cover that’ll be around the halls of Bouchercon.
Getting to Beekeeper
The other day I posted (over here) an image of the original cover proposal for The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, thanking the publishing gods that it went away in favor of the one St Martins Press ended up with. But a couple of you were curious about how that happened—so here’s that story.
I first saw that cover in early September, 1993. I was a really, really new author, with one book—A Grave Talent—that sold a few thousand copies and would go on to be nominated, then win, the Edgar award. But that wasn’t for months, and I was less than nothing in the world of publishing.
I went to New York City for the first time on Labor Day weekend. I know, stupid, right? Half of New Jersey was in the shuttle line.
But I got to Manhattan, and I made my way to the Flatiron Building to meet my editor, and she was charming up until the moment she handed me…that cover art.
“Isn’t it great?” Um. “We’re so pleased with it.” Well. “I think it’ll do great.” Uh…
I took that cover back to my hotel and looked at it and wanted to cry. Big he-man Holmes, little shadow of a Russell literally looking up to him. Had no one read the book? And that flocked wallpaper.
Remember: I am nothing in the publishing world. I am ridiculously grateful that they have offered me contracts, and I don’t want to be difficult, but…
That cover.
So the next day I summon my nerve and phone my editor. I take a deep breath, pulse racing, knowing I am about to send my career down the drain, and I say, “So. Thanks for lunch. It was lovely to meet you. And about that cover. You know, I don’t think it… says what you want the book to say.”
I waited for indignation, for a polite sneer, for irritation at my temerity in thinking I knew better…
Instead, what I heard was this: “Hmm. You may be right.” And we ended up here:
With a shadowy Holmes & pipe and Russell the primary figure.
[And that editor? My beloved Ruth Cavin, who will be honored at the 2020 Malice Domestic.]
The Early Beekeeper
This month, we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. I wrote about the early editorial letters in my newsletter (There’s also a giveaway of the audio–here) and will be celebrating it in various ways at Bouchercon, the end of the month.
But this early cover proposal from St Martins Press has always cracked me up. I mean, “always” in the sense of “once I got over the shock of it.” Because that little girly figure with the Big Manly Holmes against the flocked wallpaper…?
It’s never really been how I envisioned Mary Russell…
So I have to ask: If Beekeeper had worn that face when you first saw it, would you have bought it? Would you have even picked it up??
Remember the Mystery Bookshop?
Once upon a time, when Laurie King had some brown in her hair and people used telephones to talk into, the world was filled with specialty mystery bookshops. Most big cities had one—some, like San Francisco, had two—and they were an amazing place to fossick about and discover someone new.
There are still a few, my beloved Poisoned Pen Books in Scottsdale for one (where I’ll be doing an event in November!) but most of the mystery-reading community has gone online.
I miss it. I miss walking into a shop and seeing those familiar spines—always a few of the grey Dorothy L. Sayers paperbacks.
And there was generally a chance to fill in the missing Ellis Peters on my shelf.
Mysterious Bookshop, Murder by the Book, Mysterious Galaxy—what writer did you discover in a Mystery Books store, and who’s your favorite?
Tender is the Prose
As part of my general research on the next Russell & Holmes novel, I re-read the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel Tender is the Night.
And frankly, I found it very hard going. Meandering plot, puzzling metaphors, characters distorted to fit into the roles he needs for them.
Start with his take on women. The book is supposed to be about them—the girl who falls in love, the woman who goes insane—but even for a 1930s writer, he has a completely tin ear when it comes to how women actually work. For example, here about the young (17 when we meet her) actress who falls in love with a married man:
Rosemary was from the middle of the middle class, catapulted by her mother onto the uncharted heights of Hollywood. Their point of resemblance to each other and their difference from so many American women, lay in the fact that they were all happy to exist in a man’s world—they preserved their individuality through men and not by opposition to them. They would all three have made alternatively good courtesans or good wives not by the accident of birth but through the greater accident of finding their man or not finding him.
Where does one start with such a statement? Were American women in fact unhappy about existing in a man’s world, or did they just shrug and get on with things? Is a good wife like a good courtesan? How does a person preserve her individuality through another person?
And later:
They came out of the neat restored trench, and faced a memorial to the Newfoundland dead. Reading the inscription Rosemary burst into sudden tears. Like most women she liked to be told how she should feel, and she liked Dick’s telling her which things were ludicrous and which things were sad.
Really? So, girls—do we like to be told how to feel? Or do most men like to believe we’re so childlike, we need to be led into such realization?
Then there are the sentences—dozens and dozens of them—that sound clever, and feel as if the author is proud of them, but are actually baffling. Such as this, about Rosemary’s mother / stage manager:
One of her husbands had been a cavalry officer and one an army doctor, and they both left something to her that she tried to present intact to Rosemary. By not sparing Rosemary she had made her hard—by not sparing her own labor and devotion she had cultivated an idealism in Rosemary, which at present was directed toward herself and saw the world through her eyes.
Huh? Or when the man Rosemary wants to seduce first kisses her in a taxi, then turns her down:
Her face drooped with dismay and disappointment and Dick said automatically, “We’ll have to simply—” He stopped himself, followed her to the bed, sat down beside her while she wept. He was suddenly confused, not about the ethics of the matter, for the impossibility of it was sheerly indicated from all angles but simply confused, and for a moment his usual grace, the tensile strength of his balance, was absent.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she sobbed. “It was just a forlorn hope.”
Should I know what the tensile strength of his balance means? Would any young woman actually say forlorn hope? Did he think it clever to insert, after a long interruption, the blithe phrase “To resume Rosemary’s point of view…” Is there some reason why Rosemary is sitting on the beach trying to avoid talking to one group of people while admiring another, and then suddenly she’s out in the water with one of the swimmers? “Nicole” goes from the most stable person on the page to a complete raving lunatic. Some characters we find sympathetic, then they turn loathsome—and vice versa with others.
I do realize that literary fiction tends to have different rules from genre storytelling, but please.
Anyone else out there have problems with some of the classics?