Blog Archives - Laurie R. King

The Business of Writing: The Editor (2)

February 28, 2023 by Laurie King 2 Comments

Last day of February, the last of February’s posts celebrating

30 years of A Grave Talent.

About a year after Grave Talent came out in 1993, St. Martins Press published The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Two months later, in April, 1994, Grave Talent won the Edgar award for Best First Novel. Nonetheless, the sub-editor in charge of the SMP paperback division decided they didn’t want to keep the paperback rights for this new, mid-list author, so they put them up for sale. There was not so much of an auction as a “best-by” date, for any houses that might want to take a chance on them. Any interested houses had a tough time even finding the books.

Kate Miciak, at Bantam books, was interested. She was so interested that she got into her car and drove all over New Jersey and Connecticut in search of copies (this was 1994, long before Jeff Bezos took over the world.) She found them, she read them, she bid, and voilà, I was a Bantam AND St Martins author.

The original hardcover rights for A Grave Talent had sold for an advance of $3,000,

$3,000 meant our old farmhouse now had central heating!

and Beekeeper’s Apprentice for not much more. But because of the potential Kate saw in the two books—the potential she saw in me, one very new author—Bantam handed over $18,000 for the right to publish Grave Talent for ten years, and $29,500 for Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

This was actual money. This made it Not-Laurie’s-Hobby, but an income.

Bantam put Grave Talent front and center in an enormous Summer Reading promotion, built around an Edward Gorey illustration (and if you haven’t entered my drawing for the t-shirt, which closes midnight tonight, Feb 28, you can find the signup here).

A year later, they did the same for Beekeeper. (Yes, I have a t-shirt of that campaign, too, ready for next year’s 30^th anniversary.) And both did so well in building my numbers that one Friday afternoon a few months later, I had a call from my agent to say that St Martins had decided to retain the paperback rights going forward, wasn’t that good?

And it was, really. It always creates difficulties for an author when their backlist and their new hardbacks are from different publishers. I knew this. And yet…

Bantam really made an effort with the promo…

On Monday, I had my agent call my editor and tell her that I really, really would prefer to keep things as they were. To be clear here, my contract stated that the decision was ultimately theirs, not mine. And to be equally clear, turning down this offer would have repercussions. But my editor, as I’ve said, was a gem among women, and she did not want me to be unhappy. So she passed the word on to Kate—who, I later learned, had spent a very depressed weekend at the thought of explaining to her bosses why she’d dedicated so many of Bantam’s marketing dollars on promoting me—and after Kate had picked herself up off the floor, I stayed with my two divided houses.

St Martins Press hardback, Bantam Books paperback: first of many covers.

A few years after that, I moved over to Bantam for both hard and soft, and have been with them ever since. Kate retired a few years ago, and she’s always been notoriously shy about having her photograph taken or published, so I won’t show you what she looks like.

But I’ve been blessed in my editors, from Ruth to Kate to Hilary now. Three women with heart, and tenacity, and the sharp eye to what makes a writer better. When I was named Grand Master last year, only one of my editors was at the dinner, but the other two were definitely there at the table with us, hoisting their champagne.

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

The Case of the Upside-Down Hebrew

February 21, 2023 by Laurie King Leave a Comment

A Grave Talent, as my first book was dedicated to my husband, Noel–in Hebrew, which is only right between two scholars. Amos 3:4 means, more or less, Can two people walk together unless they be in agreement?

I know, scholars are really romantic, right?

Now, there are two mysteries here (beyond the mystery of married relationships, that is.) One, why was the Hebrew dedication to A Grave Talent flipped over in the first edition? Because if you don’t know Hebrew, the line linking the letters is supposed to be along the top.

And the second puzzle was, why was the Hebrew sometimes not topsy-turvy?

As to the first, I suppose it proves that St Martin’s Press at the time had no Jewish typesetters. The page I’d sent them with the Hebrew went in the wrong way. I noticed, let them know, and they fixed it for subsequent editions.

But as for the second question…

There are some copies of Grave Talent out there that have the numbers of a true first edition, and yet the Hebrew is the correct way around. And it’s possible that someone noticed halfway through the printing, fixed it, and finished the run. It’s possible.

The first edition, first printing is indicated by the countdown to 1. A number is dropped with each subsequent printing. (Different publishers do it different ways.)

On the other hand, there was a while in the Nineties and Aughties when modern first editions were a Big Thing. Recently published books—as in, within ten years or so of publication—could leap to ridiculous sums, if collectors thought the author was going to be a Big Thing. First editions of A Grave Talent went for as much as $1400.

And what happens when there’s quick money to be made? Right: forgery.

Of those, I am certain. The first one I saw was when someone handed me a copy to sign, and—as I generally did—I checked to see if it was a first draft, because personalizing a true first could reduce the value. This one said it was a first edition…except that the dedication was the right way around. And when I looked more closely, the dachshund logo on the title page looked somehow, well, photocopied.

Tom Dunne’s dog. Printed, not photocopied.

That’s right. Someone had taken apart some second editions, cut out the title page, photocopied the publishing history of a first edition on both sides of a replacement, and glued that one in. I actually had one that someone bought from a sidewalk display for $1, in which the glue was more obvious—clearly an early failed attempt.

The thing took on a life of its own. Mystery Scene wrote it up. That’s when the theory came along that the printers had themselves found the mistake and changed it. But honestly? A small printing, of an unimportant first-time author? Not only would no one have bothered, but they didn’t know before I told them.

Anyway, the bottom dropped out of the Modern First market after a while, and the books aren’t worth enough now to forge them. I just hope you’re not one of those who shelled out a thousand dollars for the book. And if you find yourself with a “first edition” that has the correct Hebrew, well, do enjoy the story. All the words are the same.

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

The Business of Writing: Your Friend, The Agent

February 11, 2023 by Laurie King 9 Comments

Part of the 30-year anniversary celebration of A Grave Talent.

Like most first novelists, I had no clue about how to run my life as a business.

My vanity projects, e-book version.

In 1993, the only people who did self-publishing were the desperate souls who just HAD to have a volume to put in the hands of family and friends. The publishers who would do this for them were called “vanity” presses, which shows the scorn with which “real” published writers held them.

At the time, there were (as memory provides) only two actual, New York publishing houses that accepted manuscripts from the writer herself, rather than through an agent. These unsolicited manuscripts were called “over the transom” submissions, meaning that you had to (figuratively, at least) climb up and thrust your manuscript into the little window over their firmly shut door, listening to it thump down on the floor with a whole load of similar thick envelopes.

A transom.

A junior editor described to me the way publishers dealt with them (those houses that didn’t automatically stamp them with RETURN TO SENDER.) Every few months, on a Friday night, the editorial assistants (all of whom wanted to grow up and become real editors with the budget to buy actual books) would send out for pizza and beer and sit around the storage closet with piles of thick manila envelopes, and start to read. Some manuscripts got a fair try, and got passed on to The Editor. Others would either have a typo that irritated the baby editor, or was not to their taste, or would have the bad luck to show up towards the end of the evening. Those rejects would be thrust back for RETURN TO SENDER with a printed “Thanks-but-no-thanks” slip. (Or just be tossed, to save the cost of postage, and “Oops sorry I guess we lost it.”)

Very occasionally, like the girl in the soda fountain who became a star, the stars would align, and the envelope would make its was to an Editor, who nine times out of ten would write a personalized “Good job, not for us” rejection note.

Those that I sent in myself got rejected. Or “lost”…

…and THEN rejected. An agent was clearly the way to go. Agents held the key to that locked door. But how did I get one of them?

As I said in an interview a few years ago (2015)—

How did you get your first literary agent?

I looked in the back of Writer’s Market, back in 1987, and found five agencies in San Francisco. (I didn’t believe in New York. Still not too sure about it…) I wrote to each of them, sending a couple of chapters of the two books I’d finished. Agency one said their client list was full up. The second said they liked the one but not the other. Number three said they liked the other, but not the one. Number four said they’d be happy to read the books if I’d send them $385 for each. And the fifth was Linda Allen, who liked the books, thought they needed work, and ended up representing me until her retirement last year.

Or, as I put it in my Really Long Autobiography, Linda was—

The first professional to look at my work and see it as—well, my work.

She’s also been a friend all these years, although we didn’t really bond until she came to England for the 1995 Bouchercon in Nottingham, and stayed with us, visiting nearby Blenheim Palace

And venturing into cold, wet, windy Dartmoor, helping my two kids and me research The Moor.

Agent and author, hard at work.

(I nearly lost her in the fog, but fortunately, she heard me calling….)

She was a fairly new agency then herself, and the partnership went through some really great years, with this simple, small beginning.

She’s retired now, but I talked with her the other day, and she remembers how thrilled she was at the sale to St Martins Press.

A contract. An actual contract!

And how much did I get from that first book? Well, more than the £25 Arthur Conan Doyle got for his first story, but in modern terms, maybe about the same. But hey, I was in business!

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

A Writer to Watch!

February 3, 2023 by Laurie King 2 Comments

Part of the month-long celebration of A Grave Talent, the Edgar-winning first novel about SFPD Inspector Kate Martinelli that started my writing career.

One of the surprises I found as a new author was that people not only read the book, but talked about it as if it mattered. Take reviews: who knew they were actually a thing that happened to…well, me? (You can click on these images to read them.)

Library Journal

A necessary purchase? A writer to watch–me?

Or from Booklist–comparing me to Ruth Rendell and P. D. James?

Booklist

Dame Phyllis also appears in a review from one of the reviewing gods in the ’90s crime field, Robin Winks–I kept him reading deep into the night! He found my story cause for rejoicing!–

Boston Globe

Of course, some were puzzling. Me, hard boiled?

San Francisco Chronicle

But I find this list truly fascinating, the other writers of my generation. Who knew I would first meet friends through a list in American Bookseller?

American Bookseller

Read about A Grave Talent (with excerpt, reading guide, and order links),

see the other Martinellis, or

order a signed copy.

Writing Kate

February 2, 2023 by Laurie King Leave a Comment

(Celebrating the 30th anniversary of A Grave Talent, here’s part of a 2017 post on Kate Martinelli.)

Grave Talent began with two ideas: What would Rembrandt look like if he were a woman? And, Can I write a novel in which the protagonist does nothing?

The question of women in what are generally assumed to be men’s roles was one I had been poking around for years, although for the most part in the world of theology rather than crime fiction—I wrote my Masters thesis on the feminine aspects of the God of the Old Testament, and as a graduate student had co-led a seminar in Women in the New Testament. First-century women rabbis, the influence Moses’ wife had on the future of Judaism, God as Mother: all topics I had explored. (To say nothing of the practical applications of The Feminine, since I also had small children at the time.)

So, the seed: Artists are possessed by their vision of the world and their need to give it expression. And the greater the artist, the more complete the possession—and, the more impossible they are as human beings: egomaniacal, manipulative, and willing to devour every scrap of energy in their vicinity…and mostly male.

Whether by nature or by upbringing, fewer women are so thoroughly possessed by this near-pathological self-importance. But if we did have a woman like this, and if she did possess the inborn talent that goes far to justifying the artist’s egomania, what would she look like, and how would it shape the world around her? Yes, the question is usually, Why have there been no great woman artists? In A Grave Talent we ask rather, If confronted by a truly great woman artist, how would the world react?

Vaun Adams is less a character in the book than she is a force of nature. Her raw and uncontrollable talent, her utter fixation on the canvas at hand and the resultant blindness to those around her, changes everything she comes near: Like a black hole, the intensity of her presence tugs everyone else out of their given orbits.

As such, Vaun is both the book’s central character and a character totally apart from the action. She—her talent—forms the central axis of the story, and all the other characters—neighbors, lovers, the police, the murderer—spin madly around the solidity of her presence. Yet she does act, at the very end: She abandons her aloofness, comes out of her extreme retreat, and plays a role.

And when she does, the shock of her motion throws those spinning around her to the four winds.

* * *

Excerpt, discussion guide, and order information are here.

Mom’s Christmas Cookies

December 23, 2022 by Laurie King 11 Comments

If Dad produced odd German spicy treats every year (as my recent post talked about), my mother could be depended on for the kinds of cookies you could give to the postman without imagining his puzzled look. Mostly sweet, best eaten fresh, and decorative.

Some were super-sweet, like her “Matrimonials.” She produced decorated butter cookies, of course (usually with margarine—butter was a rare visitor to my childhood table) that were rolled out, iced with background white buttercream frosting (margarine-cream?) and decorated with a frosting gun to emphasize the outlines of the boot, the Santa, or the star cookie cutters. And Spritz cookies, a recipe that probably came from Betty Crocker, that were pushed through a cookie press to make trees or wreaths, then sprinkled with colored sugar.

She liked to make “candy cane” cookies, using a basic sugar cookie dough, half of it dyed red (or rather, pink, since she’d never seen the proper, intense dye used by professional bakers) and shaped on the board into rolls the thickness of crayons, then twisted round a roll of the white dough and finished with the top curled over.

Later she discovered a lovely Finnish almond-cookie recipe whose name she relished pronouncing (or more likely, mispronouncing)—Suomalaiset Puikot—that became a great hit with postman and family alike.

And later yet, a bar cookie that combined the best qualities of pumpkin and pecan pies. One of the few Christmas cookies my grown kids still like, and even ask for. In fact, I’m making a batch of those tomorrow. Assuming I can still decipher her handwriting….

So, what do you give your postman this time of year?

Bees Abroad

December 3, 2022 by Laurie King Leave a Comment

I had a perfectly charming Zoom meet on Friday with members of Bees Abroad, an organization in the UK that trains & supports African women & those with disabilities to become Beekeepers for Life.

But these lovely people not only teach beekeeping skills, they also help people figure out how to sell honey and beeswax products, and along the way support local woodworkers (who build the hives) and tailors (who make the beekeepers’ outfits) and boost the entire community of artisans and entrepreneurs and families.

Improving livelihoods across Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Ghana, and Rwanda, through the medium of the humble honeybee.

Our chat, which brings together books and bees, is half me and half poet/novelist Siya Turabi, and available on their YouTube channel.

The event was a part of their December fundraising efforts—and since

your donation WILL BE DOUBLED until midday, Tuesday,

I’d greatly appreciate anything you can send their way: HERE. (And maybe also help spread the word…)

Thank you, from the world’s bee friends!

My Thanks

August 18, 2022 by Laurie King 2 Comments

…because in the publishing world, yes, these things do help.

Making Sense of It (the edit)

July 26, 2021 by Laurie King 6 Comments

As I’ve said any number of times, my first drafts are awful, more like expanded outlines than an actual novel. Mostly, they’re a way to confirm the machinery of the plot before I buckle down to craft a sensible narrative out of contradictory notes, half-baked characterizations, and half-seen sub-plots. (No modesty here: they really are that bad.) In other words, there’s a lot of editing that goes into making a book out of it.

And because it’s REALLY tough to edit at your own work, I depend on the skill and good will of my publishers, who are willing to:

Read the VERY rough first draft without instantly canceling my contract (editor)
Read a (hopefully) improved second draft (editor, art department)
Read a “final” draft (editor, marketing, publicity, copyeditor)
Read the copyedited pages (the poor souls inflicted with the task of transcribing the mess for typesetting)
Read the proof pages (in-house reads followed by more poor souls having to incorporate various peoples’ remarks, questions, typo notes, etc etc)

After which the book goes public, and various other people send in notes and objections and places where we all missed untrimmed plot snippets, repetitions, and eyes of the wrong color, some of which have to be jammed in at the very last instant before the presses start running.

Some writers of series novels have a “bible” reminding them of the things that they’ve said before. Mine is not that organized, but the publisher does have a Style Sheet that transfers from one book to the next, so that I only need to explain once that in the Russell books, it’s finger-nail and school-teacher but ash tray and bedsheet; that Mrs, Mr, and Dr have no full stop (period) after them; and that the possessive of Holmes is not Holmes’s but Holmes’.

Individual copyeditors also have styles. Sometimes I get a remarkably detailed plot-line, page after page of what exactly happens when. Other times it’s a sort of index with every proper name and its first appearance in the book.

But the key element of any story is the back-and-forth with my editor. And although now, houses tend to use e-edits—

—and I certainly know how to do them, I’m old-school enough to value the dialogue that comes with an actual on-the-dead-tree edit, whether with a copyeditor—

—or the editor herself. Because there’s nothing like seeing notes like this to let you know you’ve done the right thing:

Meeting the characters

March 9, 2021 by Laurie King 9 Comments

I’m working my way through the final proof pages of Castle Shade (out in three months—hooray!)

…which means reading every word aloud, watching for mistakes and, more important, listening for oddities. I can only manage 50 or 60 pages a day, but I am finding small errors on nearly half the pages, even though it’s been edited and copyedited by several people. And although you’d think it’s irritating, seeing how much has got past us all, in fact it’s deeply satisfying, like baking out the impurities.
I’m also seeing the characters again, in their final forms, and remembering when I first encountered—for example—Queen Marie of Romania, seen here in the castle where the book is set, and wearing the pearls that play a role in the story: