The Black Pill L.J. Sellers File Size: 890 KB Print Length: 262 pages Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited Publisher: Spellbinder Press (February 11, 2020) Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC Language: English ASIN: B0842YWM9W BOOK BLURB -  Agent Dallas goes undercover to bring down a pack of online sexual predators, but the secrets she uncovers are more horrific than anyone imagined. A body wrapped in plastic turns up in the middle of the road—with no ID and no viable explanation. The pressure builds when Detective Jackson must also locate a missing woman that few people seem to know. Fearing for the kidnapped woman’s life, Jackson follows her ex-boyfriend, but the effort backfires in a deadly way. Across the country, FBI Agent Jamie Dallas takes on a dangerous undercover assignment—tracking a sexual predator who brags about his assaults in a perverse dark-web forum. Dallas travels to Jackson’s hometown and discovers that her target’s crimes are just the opening salvo...

This post first ran on 1/31/2009 and we still don't like being "scared" this way! ~ Dani Quote marks are probably the most overused form of punctuation. Quote is short for quotation, so essentially, quote marks should be used only to set off a quotation—the verbatim text of something that was said or published. If you’re writing a novel and using quote marks for anything but dialogue—take them out! Writers everywhere like to use quote marks around words they consider special for some reason or around words that are not being used in a traditional way. Old school editors call these scare quotes, a way of alerting the reader that the word may not mean what you think it does. Ninety percent of the time, the marks are completely unnecessary. If you’re writing logical sentences—even using euphemisms—readers know what you mean. Here’s  Here are a few examples of unneeded quote marks. “Quote” is short for “quotation.” (Did anyone misread the sentence when I wrote it...

This post first ran here on January 1, 2009. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For the last two days, I’ve been filling in the details of my outline, working out the timeline, and crafting a sizzling ending that brings it all together. I’m already 50 pages into writing Thrilled to Death , and it felt like to time to solidify some plot points. I know many writers don’t do this; they prefer to wing it and see where the story takes them. ( Stephen King , for example) I rather envy that style. But I write complex mystery/suspense novels, and the outline/timeline has become more critical with each novel. In a police procedural, so much happens in the first few days of a murder investigation that a timeline is essential. For complex, parallel plots with multiple points of view, mapping the story in detail is the best way to avoid writing yourself into a dead end or writing 48 hours worth of activity into a 10-hour time frame. I speak from experience. Then yesterday for the first time, I put in writing...

Like most writers I really love my characters. I think we really have to love them to stay with them for a whole book, and especially a series. L.J. Sellers has kept her Detective Jackson series going because she still likes visiting every day with that detective and the cast of characters who continue from one book to another. It is the same with other series writers like Sue Grafton, Louise Penny , John Sandford , William Kent Krueger, and more. They/we all love our characters. In thinking about this to start writing a blog post about it, I wondered why these characters are so loved and so memorable, and I think I figured out at least one reason why. It's because we know so much more about them than the color of their hair or what kind of shoes they wear. We know how our continuing characters think and feel, so we know how they are going to react to a situation or event. We also know their back story - what happened in their lives before they started appearing on the pages o...

My suspense novel, One Small Victory , has recently been released in Turkey - my first foreign sale.  Dani, our fearless leader here on The Blood Red Pencil, asked how the sale came about, and since that involved some teamwork,  the story of how it happened fits our June theme of teamwork. The book was originally published in 2008 hardback by Five Star Cengage/Gale and had moderate success there. Then I published it as an e-book myself via Smashwords in 2010, where it is available for a number of electronic devices. Later I published it directly to Kindle, and in February of this year a small publisher, Books We Love Publishing Partners, brought out a paperback version via CreateSpace .  Once the book was available in all those formats and venues, the challenge was how to let readers find it in the midst of all the millions of books available for the e-readers.  I joined several online groups that focus primarily on e-books and how to market them. Member...

Here's one of my favorite posts from last year: I was re-working the outline and first few chapters of my fourth Detective Jackson novel and a few things were bothering me. So I went back to the basics and decided to share my eight-point checklist. Story arc. Does the protagonist grow and evolve? Is the narrative smooth or does it have gaps in logic? Plot. Is your plot logical? Do you have important scenes that would make a reader say “No one would ever do that”? Is your plot both linear and complex? Point of view. Is your POV consistent for large chunks of text? Do you tell each scene from the point of view of the character who has the most to lose? Dialogue. Does each character use distinctive word choices? Do you break up long conversations with body language and movement? Info dumps. Do you have big chunks of exposition that slow the story down? Can they be broken up or shared as dialogue? Characters. Are your characters both believable and unique? Is their ...

This popular post first published on February 18. We are sharing some of our past favorites this month so that all our contributors have time to enjoy the holiday season. I’m fine-tuning the novel I just finished writing, and these are some of the edits I’m consistently making. They can help you as you write or edit your own novel. 1. Get rid of unnecessary prepositional phrases. When you read back through your manuscript, watch for phrases like on the table, toward the door, near the wall . These phrases bog down your writing and often add little to a description. Readers can make a lot of assumptions. If two guys are standing in the driveway talking and one points at the tires, readers will assume you mean on the car . You don’t have to say it. This is especially true at the end of sentences. A good sentences ends on a strong beat. That sentence is a great of example of what I mean. If I had added usually at the end of that sentence, it would have weakened it. In my manus...

As a fiction editor, I encounter confusion from writers about how to treat numbers, the time of day, and references to printed materials. I base my edits/suggestions on a combination of Chicago Manual of Style and what I see and experience from traditional publishers. As a submitting novelist, you might as well get your manuscript into the best shape you can before sending it to anyone. Here are some general guidelines: Numbers one through one hundred are spelled out as words. Larger numbers, especially dollar amounts, can be written as numerals, but it’s not a mandate. Be consistent within a paragraph. Lucy had seen the movie twelve times and spent exactly $132.45 in the process. At age ninety-nine, Stella always let out her cats when she left the house. Still, she hoped to make it to a hundred and two, just to show up her sister. If you give an exact time of day, use numerals and lowercase for a.m. and p.m. Few publishers use small caps anymore. For general hour references (wh...

 Today is the final day for the 2010 Detectives Around the World event and I have the honor of interviewing a mystery fan – our very own Dani Greer. For those of you who don’t know, Dani is the force behind The Blood-Red Pencil blog, an accomplished editor, artist, mentor of writers, friend of the Earth, and voracious reader. Her favorite books to read and edit? You guessed it – mysteries! You’ve made no secret of your love of cozies. What attracts you to this form? To put it simply, no blood and guts. I have a really weak stomach. That goes for sex, too. In a cozy, I get a protagonist I can relate to - they're weak, too. I don't have to face all the violence and gore, and when there's a romance built-in, as there often is, I get the sweet old-fashioned hearts-and-flowers relationship, with not too much gore there either. It's the perfect world. Is editing mysteries different from editing other fiction? I actually chart the storylines to keep track of the clues,...

Have you heard of the Detectives Around the World blog event? If not, and you love mysteries, you’ve been missing out. The event, which began in March with readers around the world nominating their favorite fictional detectives, culminates this week with bloggers around the world blogging about their favorites. I was fortunate enough to draw my first choice – Detective Wade Jackson of Eugene, Oregon. My blogs this week include two here at The Blood-Red Pencil: today I review Secrets to Die For and on the 17th, I interview one of the Detective Jackson series beta readers, editor Dani Greer. (Dani jumps in to mention that she and L.J. are both founding members of the Blood-Red Pencil. We're engaging in a little blatant self-promotion!) Secrets to Die For By L.J. Sellers Echelon Press Publishing Copyright 2009 ISBN: 1-59080-654-9 Trade Paperback Mystery/Suspense Second in the Detective Wade Jackson mystery series 286 pages In your favorite mystery of all time, how many ...

Before starting to edit a novel, I remind myself that it’s not my story. I prepare for the author to have her own style, her own pace, and her own idea of how everything should turn out. I tell myself that my edits will likely be irrelevant to the book’s ultimate success or failure. In fact, even the author’s choices may turn out to be irrelevant. Connecting with the right agent or editor, at the right moment in his acquisition schedule, with exactly the right story is almost as much about luck as it is about talent, research, and editing. Every reading experience is subjective. If I read a scene in which an abused wife makes a choice to take a beating rather than fight back, I may think it’s about survival because I’ve been in her shoes. Another reader might see the character as weak and hard to bond with. Another reader might simply be sick of domestic violence stories. Every reader brings his or her own baggage to the narrative. Any suggestions I make to the author are subjective,...

Book-club discussions are important to many readers, including me. I participate in online books discussions regularly through a mystery listserv , and sometimes I even led the discussion. So I have some experience in coming up with thought-provoking questions, and I’m finally getting around to writing discussion questions for my own novels. Every novel has specific events and character actions that naturally seem ripe for discussion, so I included a few of those. (Do you believe the mayor’s version of what happened to Jessie? Why or why not?) Then there are the standard questions that work for almost any novel. (Did the setting enhance the plot or could the story have worked anywhere? What themes did the author weave into the story? Was the antagonist believable?) My favorite questions go beyond specific settings or events: Motivation. Any question that gets to the heart of a character’s motivation, especially to behave in a socially unacceptable way, will make for a lively discussio...

There’s been quite a discussion lately on a readers listserv about good and bad writing — sparked by a discussion about Dan Brown, the mega-selling author who no one has ever called a good writer and some have said a lot worse about. Everyone seems to agree that bad writing is easy to define: awkward phrasing repetitiveness wordiness blandness vagueness and confusion clichés flat, one-dimensional characters self-indulgent description and/or philosophizing hard-to-swallow events The debate is about what exactly constitutes good writing and the subset discussion: Can you actually define good writing or is it entirely a subjective judgment? Some say good writing has a list of known qualities, yet when pressed, they failed to offer a list of those qualities. Others say good writing is simply the absence of all the attributes that define bad writing. Still others insist it is more than that, yet they can’t agree on the qualities. (This reminds me of the Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart ...

I belong to the Story Circle Network , a writing organization for memoirists. We have an active Yahoo!Group for members, and every weekend chat about books we're currently reading. Recently, we discussed long-time serial authors like Nevada Barr and Sue Grafton, and most of us had strong feelings that their evolving series had become too plot-driven, perhaps even too sensationalized, with a disappointing lack of deep character development. I'm really ready for Kinsey Milhone to have a serious love relationship, aren't you? Anna Pigeon could have spent a little time with her new husband after she got married, but didn't. Call me disappointed and a little unwilling to read the newest book unless I know she'll be spending some time with Paul. One of the things I like most about L.j. Sellers' Detective Wade Jackson character, is that he does develop as a person from novel to novel. It's not just plot-driven writing although the current events issue in each book...

Recently an editor at a small publishing house wanted me to rewrite all internal dialogue in be first person, present tense. My novel is written in third person, past tense. She said first person is standard for internal dialogue, and she also urged me in several places to change the text to internal dialogue. I didn’t do it. As a reader, if I’m reading a third-person, past-tense story and suddenly the author switches to first person, present for internal dialogue, I find it jarring. So I don’t write internal thoughts that way. I try to keep the internal dialogue to a minimum, because the formatting requires italics, and so many readers hate italics. (“Distracting, annoying, and hard to read,” they say.) So my internal dialogue is often quite brief, a word or phrase. Even when it’s longer, it stays in third person. Examples: The first example is how I wrote it. The second example is how the editor wanted to change it. Conner hit the floor and did forty push-ups, muscles responding as t...

L.J. Sellers is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the author of the Detective Jackson mysteries, The Sex Club and Secrets to Die For. She also loves to edit fiction and works with authors to keep her rates affordable. Contact her at: L.J. Sellers Write First, Clean Later 1. When did you first notice you were hung-up on typos? After I became an editor! I was a journalist first, but most jobs in publishing require you to write and edit, as well as plan publications, read/screen submissions, layout pages, and more. So I learned editing on the job from senior editors. Once you train yourself to look for errors at work, you can’t turn it off. 2. What advice would you give someone interested in becoming an editor? Find a starting position as an editorial assistant and learn everything you can from seasoned editors around you. Buy and read Strunk and White Elements of Style, The Careful Writer, and APA Style Manual (Chicago lite). 3. What's the best advice you have ever rec...