In the Blackie and Care series, best-selling author Clea Simon treads a darker path than she has followed before. In  Cross My Path ,  the third book in the series, readers find the young seeker, Care, going from one dangerous situation to another, her conscience, bravery, and youthful fervor pushing her forward—often at considerable risk to herself—to help those who cannot or will not help themselves. The books are narrated by Blackie, an aging black cat whom Care rescued from drowning. We find out along the way that Blackie was once a man who may have had some connection to Care in his human form. This bit of information intrigued me and made me want to read the first two books in the series,  The Ninth Life  and  As Dark as My Fur ,  to make sure I had a complete picture of the world Blackie and Care inhabit. Here we get bits and pieces, enough to know Care lives in a dangerous city and that her work puts her at particular risk from the nasty men wh...

Background image by airpix, via Flickr . Credit: stubblepatrol.com Clichés.  Books are full of them, both in the plots and writers’ descriptions. Yes, I know, there are only seven major plot themes, and all stories evolve from one or a combination of them. So they say. I found a great explanation with examples in this post by Len Wilson Overcoming the monster Rags to riches The quest Voyage and return Comedy Tragedy Rebirth I never thought about the seven plots when I wrote my books. I didn’t even know about them until I kept hearing how there are only seven basic plots. I found the idea rather defeatist and didn’t want to look further for fear I might quit writing altogether since I was sure everything I’d written had been written before. When I finally read them, I found the definitions to be broad and generic, with enough latitude to erase my anxiety. It’s a writer’s job to find nuances in plots that make them as original as possible. Some genres adhere to formula. Cozy m...

Peter de Vries, novelist and satirist, said, "Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle, and an end." The muddle is the conflict. It’s what drives the plot and turns a recitation of facts into a story. Conflict arises when forces or desires are in opposition. It can be man against man, man against nature, man against himself, or man against God, with all kinds of variations. The purpose of fiction is to arouse the reader’s emotions. This requires conflict. The reader must care. Put a character the reader likes or cares about in a bad situation and it will create interest. The great writers know this. Elmore Leonard said, “Aim for the heart.” William Faulkner (Nobel prize acceptance speech) said, “The only thing worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat, is the heart in conflict with itself.” Conflict may also be called the problem, thwarted desire, opposition, or similar names. Without it, the story will be boring. Without conflict, there is no story. C...

Summer is the perfect time for reading! Well, actually, so is winter (while staying all snuggly and cozy inside). And spring. And fall. Okay, any season is the perfect time for reading. Right now, I'm thrashing through materials on historical San Francisco, trying to firm up an idea for my next book (oh, I am sooooo slow!). All the fascinating stuff I’ve bumped into so far is 15, 20 years previous to my time frame, which kind of depresses me. But I know that nugget is out there, the one that will jumpstart my plot. I just have to keep looking! What the photo below shows are just some (! just some !) of the books I plan to deal with this summer. These to-be-read (TBR) piles are towering next to my desk at home, under a looming 1881 map of San Francisco. (Everything is looming and towering, reminding me that time is ticking and I darn well better start writing a synopsis.) More piles hunch on the table(s) and chair(s) and lurk on the floor. My stacks are a chaotic ...

Hello my dearies. I'm greeting you on behalf of my cousin, The Style Maven. And in case you're wondering, I'm not her, pretending to be someone else. Rather, I'm her snarky cousin in charge of policing errant body parts - eyes and other parts that are sometimes asked to do things that...well, seem to be a bit of a challenge, to put it politely. Not so politely, I'd say to the writers, "What the hell were you thinking?" So, before I totter off to lunch with my bingo friends, let me set forth a few of the most irritating things I stumble over whilst trying to enjoy a good story. Let's start with eyes. How many times do you see them rolling when they shouldn't roll? I cringe when I see them struggling to do the bidding of an author. You could say I'm super sensitive to this and should take an allergy pill before opening the next book I hope to enjoy, but why should the onus be on me, the reader? Really, my darlings, consider from whence...

Everybody has a cure, right? A way to pull yourself out of the doldrums and get back to being a writer who writes. We try them all from setting timers and typing gibberish to practicing with writing prompts until an idea kicks in. Maybe we try three morning pages every day, pretending we’re journaling when we’re really writing a story. Or maybe we just set aside an hour a day to sit down at the computer, place our fingers on the keyboard, and then stare at the monitor. Last year I needed something more drastic. A new approach to motivating myself. I pondered. I thought. And then I made a decision. I warned my critique group that I would be submitting work that would not follow any rules of writing. All they needed to look at was transitions from one scene to another or from one character to another. They were instructed not to pick on things like head hopping or point of view changes midstream unless they got lost and didn’t know which character I was talking about. Long passag...

"DO" Box DON'T Box Once upon a time, a young woman sat down to write a book. Her delight overflowed when her best friend, a well-known and loved author, offered to help her start her story. On arriving, he gave her a beautifully wrapped gift. He said all the tools she needed resided within the large package. Smiling, he then kissed her on the cheek, wished her success, and left. When she opened unexpected present, she found two boxes inside. One was labeled "DO" box, and the other was labeled "DON'T" box. Curious as to their content, she pondered which one to open first. Reasoning that she needed to know upfront the taboos of authorship, she gingerly opened the one marked "DON'T." Expecting to find a "Pandora's Box" of all the evils to be avoided in writing her book, she frowned at the contents. 1. Don't write fragments. 2. Don't create run-on sentences. 3. Don't use singular verbs with plural...

Recent negative press about social media and the internet aside (with some foundation for concern), there has never been a better time or place for writers to meet, to share, and to help other writers. There are many wonderful resources you can utilize to bring your story setting to life, from thesauruses, to blogs, to classes. Here is a short list. 1. The Story Building Blocks Build A World Workbook approaches the many layers of worldbuilding through a series of questions, with places to take notes and add images. Available in print and e-book. 2. Writers Helping Writers has a series of thesauruses  (settings, emotions, traits) among the prolific number of helpful books, articles, and free advice. 3. The Writing World website has many resources on all aspects of writing, including their article on  Four Ways to Bring Settings to Life. 4. SciFiIdeas.com has a  25 Different Sci-Fi Settings  list. 5. 101 Writers’ Scene Settings : Unique Location ...

GIF via Tenor We’ve spent the month discussing the many ways that animals, both domesticated and wild, can add wonderful color and layers of emotionally satisfying richness to a short story or novel. We’ve talked about how animal companions may become even more popular than the human protagonist who was supposed to be the star of any given series. But we have not explored how animals—that readers expect to always be warm and fuzzy—may in fact, be killer companions instead. Two instances jump immediately to mind. Sir Arthur Conon Doyle used animals as killers in two of his Sherlock Holmes titles. His third novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles , featured a large, spectral dog, the hound of the title, that was so eerie and terrifying in aspect that its mere appearance was enough to frighten victims to death. In Conon Doyle’s short story, The Adventure of the Speckled Band , the villain used a venomous snake trained to respond to his whistles. The snake slithered down a bell pull i...

Kermit the Frog We've discussed cats, dogs, and other creatures in keeping with our fauna theme this month. One area we may have shortchanged, however, is their presence children's books. Many of our little ones have grown up on  Goldilocks and the Three Bears,  Cat in the Hat,  Charlotte's Web , the animals in Dr. Dolittle books. A lot of us read Black Beauty when we were young, as well as Where the Red Fern Grows —one of my son's favorites. Young children love animals and will often sit still for extended periods while we read to them from books about personified critters who can think and speak like humans. Henny Penny in  Chicken Little is convinced the sky is falling. Then we have the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood , who are being pursued by the big, bad wolf. Winnie the Pooh is a teddy bear, and Peter Rabbit , one of my father's favorites in the early 1900s, has survived for more than a century This short list of animal charac...

In Fear on Four Paws , the seventh entry in author Clea Simon’s Pet Noir Mystery Series, Pru Marlowe proves to be a complicated protagonist. She has a leg up when it comes to solving crimes because she can communicate telepathically with animals. The emotions and images they share with her often send her haring off in the right direction, at least when it comes to solving crimes. In other aspects of her life, Pru herself lets readers know things don’t run quite as smoothly. She has more than a passing fascination with drinking to ease her uncertainty and self-doubt. It’s not always easy to follow her line of thinking or to feel entirely comfortable with how harshly she sometimes treats people presented as her friends and clients. She sizes up men as potential bedmates in the same way that some people examine horses prior to making a purchase decision, doing everything but asking to examine their teeth. So, what does all this make her? A refreshingly different and modern amateur s...

~ We are delighted to welcome Pat Smith as the newest contributor to The Blood-Red Pencil ~ When I think of cats and mystery novels, my mind always swings to fond memories of reading Lilian Jackson Braun's delightful 29-book series, "The Cat Who...," launched in 1966 by E. P. Dutton with the publication of "The Cat Who Could Read Backwards." Starring the intrepid feline sleuths, Koko and Yum Yum, the series clearly favors the cats as they use their abilities to solve murders with only a bit of help from their human, a newspaper reporter named Jim Qwilleran. Koko, in particular, seems to have an almost psychic ability to point out overlooked clues and evidence so Qwill can solve the crimes and see justice done. But Qwill always gives credit to his beloved cats for their assistance and shows his gratitude by spoiling them shamelessly. While Braun was not the first and certainly will not be the last to feature a feline in her mystery novels, as both a cat lover...

If you cannot gasp When you see an eagle soar Work on your wonder ~ Drawing and haiku by Kim Pearson ~ Writing Prompt: Interrupt your protagonist's day with a chance encounter with an eagle that will leave her/him changed in some way. What happened? What did s/he have to do? How did s/he feel? What did s/he learn (about eagles, her/himself, or another person/group)? What might s/he do differently following this encounter?

When I was researching for my latest Silver Rush book, A DYING NOTE, I used an 1886 “business directory map” to work out what businesses were in the neighborhood of my fictional D & S Music Store in San Francisco. That is where I bumped up against “A. C. Robison, Importer and Dealer in Birds and cages, etc.” My mind began churning. Birds, eh? What kinds of birds did people keep as pets in the late 19 th century? Birds were popular pets in the late 19th century. By Miami U. Libraries - Digital Collections [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Well, I couldn’t let a question like that go unanswered. I turned to the internet, and down the rabbit hole I went…. According to the article “ Our American Birds ,” by Michael K. Boyer, which appeared in Godey’s Magazine , September 1889, songbirds were popular. There is the canary, of course, but also a variety of finches: the goldfinch, the indigo finch, and the Nonpareil are mentioned. Other birds inclu...

When considering whether to put an animal in a story, it is probably wise to decide what role the animal is going to play. Is it just to be there because you happen to like dogs, or cats, or rabbits, or birds? Or because you are trying to attract all the dog and cat lovers to buy your book? The books in the popular K9 series mentioned on May 8 by Patricia Stolty are good examples of animals being an integral part of the plot and characters in their own right. Not just a ploy to increase sales. Being a firm believer that all elements of a story need to be organic to the story, not just plopped in there, that is what I thought of when my co-author, Margaret Sutton, wanted to put a cat in Doubletake . I asked her why. "Because we both love cats," she said, as three cats wandered across her desk and bookcases in her office. My instinct was that that was not reason enough, but had a hard time articulating that to her at the time. It was later, after reading enough books ...