Achieving authenticity

All writers need to do research. We're often told to 'only write what you know', but clearly there will be times when this is impossible. For instance, did Hilary Mantel ever actually meet Thomas Cromwell? Did Thomas Harris ever commit cannibalism? Did Tolkein live in Middle Earth and commune with elves, wizards and hobbits? I think not!

And therefore the committed and conscientious writer must undertake a great deal of research, a lot of which will never reach the pages of the novel, but will ensure that we don't make ridiculously inaccurate statements. Because, funnily enough, it's not being right that matters. It's not being wrong!

So I asked crime writer, probation officer and all round knowledgeable guy, Michael Craven, to give us the low-down on some aspects of research that may well help you not to seem an idiot. It's already given me some food for thought for my work-in-progress Washed in the Blood, which deals with this very thing.

Bodies Found In Water

by Mike Craven

This short article is designed to give crime writers a few facts about bodies found in water. Of course, some of these may not fit in with your plot or theme and that’s fine. Some writers want every fact to be correct but most of us simply want to get it right when there is nothing to be gained by getting wrong.

So here are a few facts that are useful to know about a corpse being found in water when it comes to plotting your novel or short story. In no particular order they are:

•                Bodies found floating in water will ALWAYS be lying face down with the head hanging. There are often post-mortem injuries to the head because of this as the body is buffeted against things in the water. Normally, pathologists can easily distinguish between ante and post-mortem injuries due to the presence or lack of blood. However, as the head hangs down in the water, blood congests there and post-mortem injuries will also bleed.

•                Typical signs found when a body has been immersed in water include anserina cutis (goose bumps), where skin has swelled and wrinkled, and adipocere which is the transformation of the fatty layer in the skin to a soap-like substance. Depending on the water temperature this last process can take months.

•                A body in water will normally sink as the specific gravity (SG) of the body is similar to water. Having sunk to the bottom, putrefaction commences and this will eventually lower the SG, causing the body to rise. Attached weight (heavy clothing, weights etc) may delay the body rising but will not normally be enough to stop it altogether. In cold water, putrefaction is delayed so the body will not rise as quickly as it would in warmer water. In water that remains very cold all year round the body may never rise.

•                Medically, a pathologist will not be able to prove the cause of death was drowning. There are some pathological changes that are characteristic of drowning but they also occur in other deaths (heart failure, drug overdoses, and for crime writers, head injuries). A diagnosis of drowning is largely done by excluding other deaths.

•                There are suggestive indicators which can help with diagnosing whether the body was alive or dead when it entered the water.

1.   Large quantities of water in the stomach indicate the body was alive when it entered the water. If water is not present or present but in small quantities it suggests that death occurred before the body entered the water.

2.   Hands gripping foreign materials. Struggling victims may clutch at anything they can. Evidence may be found during examination (fingernails etc). Occasionally something happens called cadaveric spasm, essentially the body goes into rigor mortis instantly. Anything the hand was holding at the time could well still be held there. This would suggest that the victim was alive when they entered the water.

•                For writers wanting some technical details that may emerge from a post-mortem when the cause of death was drowning, the following would be typical:

3.   A fine white foam may be seen coming out of the airways (mouth and nostrils). If it is wiped off, pressure from the lungs will force it to reappear. This indicates that the body was alive when it entered the water. Unfortunately, this foam also occurs in cardiac victims, drug overdoses and head trauma.

4.   Damage to the middle ear, typically a blue/purple discolouration of the bone of the mastoid air cells. However, this also occurs in electrocution, head injuries and some forms of suffocation.

5.   Shoulder girdle bruises. People struggling against drowning often rupture muscles in the shoulder girdle, chest and neck. This may only occur in 10% of drownings and is not conclusive.

•                For crime writers, it is very rare for a murderer to kill his victim by drowning. This would normally require the murderer to be substantially stronger than the victim or for the victim to be incapacitated somehow (i.e. drunk or unconscious). Far more common is a body being disposed of in water and a drowning to be staged.

To summarise, pathologists and the police have certain reliable pointers that suggest whether the victim was alive or dead when they entered the water. It is difficult to stage the pathological changes that occur during drowning and it is unlikely anyone could successfully kill someone and then fake their drowning. However, the difficulty for fiction writers is that drowning cannot be definitively proved during post-mortem. There are indicators but they also occur in other deaths, making it very difficult to differentiate whether someone drowned or died from other causes, a heart attack for example. 

The author of this guest post is Michael Craven. Michael was short-listed for 2013 Debut Dagger. You can follow his very useful blog at www.criminaljusticewriters.com.

Getting in the Press!

This article was in the Colchester Gazette. Do I really look like this? Oh well, it's good publicity!

Promoting your work

Promoting your printed book.

If you're going to self-publish, then you're going to have to think about your own marketing and distribution. If you've self published a hard copy, perhaps as print on demand, then you're going to have to consider issues such as storage (even on print on demand you still need to be able to provide inspection copies), who you're going to get to stock it, and how you're going to reach them. If you have an obliging local independent bookseller you may be given a launch, and this will enable you to get your name out there and make some sales. But quite how you reach further than that is simply down to how much time and effort you're prepared to put into travelling and approaching other booksellers. Don't expect Waterstones or WH Smith's to bite your hand off and pile them up in their doorway. Publishers pay booksellers a lot of money to push their books under the noses of potential buyers, and you're not going to be in that game.

Using Social Media

If you've published an e-book, then you'll probably have heard or read about the power of social marketing, such as Twitter and Facebook. Well, as far as I know, I've sold one book through Twitter. And if you're a Twitter user, you'll probably already be aware of the amount of publicity that some writers try and generate to publicise their books, banging out tweet after tweet, bombarding you with endless tales of how wonderful and exciting their book is. Well, it might be. But have you read it? No. So what makes you think anyone is going to read yours? The same goes for Facebook. This is because blatant advertising is just annoying.


So just how do you make social media work for you? Well, the first answer is, with difficulty. The second is, with a lot of effort. And the time to start making that effort is actually before you publish your book.


Now, to be honest, I'm not really very good at this myself. However, I thought I'd share with you some things that have worked for me, and some things that could work if I put more into it.


The first thing you need to do is start chatting. Join a number of forums (or fora, I should probably say). These can be forums of writers (though to be honest, these are less likely to get you readers, because everyone there is on the same mission). Do you have any other interests? Photography? Knitting? Car maintenance? The forum that got me the most readers initially is one I've been chatting on for years, so I have a relationship of sorts with the other people on it. That gave me a couple of hundred potential readers. Not enough, but a good start. And that forum is nothing at all to do with writing, though I did discover that there are a couple of other writers on there. But the thing is, you have to give before you get. And on that site I've both given and received advice on all sorts of things, from what sort of towels to put in a holiday let, to how to optimise your website visibility. Even the copy I sold through Twitter happened because I began a conversation with someone because I noticed he lived in a very attractive place. I wasn't initially looking to sell him my book.


And that's the next thing, get a blog, a website, an author page on Facebook, on Google+. It doesn't matter if you haven't got all of them, but you need a web presence of some sort. When I was developing my website to advertise my holiday property I got myself on to all sorts of lists. And you can do the same for your book. At the end of this post I'll list some of the sites you can look at that will give you some coverage. One of the things I've done is write articles for an e-magazine called e-zine articles. At the end of the articles you can add your 'signature', which will include reference to your published work. Two of my articles have then been syndicated across a wide range of e-magazines. I don't know how much good it's done me – unfortunately there's no way of measuring – but it keeps putting my name in front of people.


Get your book reviewed. This is probably one of the most useful things you can do. There are a number of review sites (I haven't actually done this yet) who will review your book. The downside is, of course, that they may give you a bad review. The other downside is that they get an enormous number of requests for reviews so it can be months before they get round to you. Some sites will do it more quickly for payment. Others will do it for an exchange review. Either way it's worth pursuing some of these sites.


Something else you can do is get on other people's blogs. Begin by writing comments. Then offer to do a blog post. But it has to be something useful that you're offering. For instance, you could offer to do a review, either of the blog owner's book or of a book that's recently been published. Or offer to write on a subject related to the main theme of the blog. If you have a blog or a website, invite others to do a guest spot. Even if they don't host you in return they'll tell their readers about their guest spot on your blog, and some of them will then find out about you.


Join Goodreads. This works in a rather complex way, and I'm still feeling my way round it. It's really a site for readers, not writers, but by definition a writer needs readers! You need to do a lot of reviewing of published work before your own book starts to get noticed, but a lot of people have done very well from it. If nothing else you'll read some good recommendations for your own reading pleasure. At the bottom I give a couple of links to information that should help you understand how to use it as a writer.


Give stuff away. Don't expect the rewards to be always immediate or direct. For instance, I gave away a short story for an anthology of crime stories relating to the publishing industry. As a result, not only will my name be before readers of that anthology, with links to my novel on Amazon, but an unexpected return was that I was then interviewed for a blog with a very wide readership. See the link here: http://maggiethom.wordpress.com/the-write-to-read/


Enter competitions. Even if you don't win, some competitions publish all entries, and they'll allow you to provide a link to either your blog, your Facebook page, or even directly to the means of purchasing your book.


The main message I'm giving here is that your marketing has to be subtle, but unrelenting and you need to use a range of techniques. Simply telling people that you've written this fantastic book won't get you very far. You also need to give something away first, and take the time to develop a relationship with your potential readers. Unless you have thousands of friends who're all just champing at the bit to read your work. Or you're already famous for something else. If your name's Jamie Oliver or Kirstie Allsopp, you have a blueprint to sell loads of copies, but otherwise……


Something I haven't got round to trying yet, but I intend to, is to read some extracts of your book to You Tube. You could even serialise it that way if you wanted. Or just read some short stories. Don't forget to include a link to any published work.


Printed or other conventional forms of marketing.

Don't forget more traditional forms of promoting your work. A review in the local paper can sometimes be the start of something bigger. If your local paper has a book review section, send a hard copy (if you have one) to the editor of that page. If you don't have a hard copy, will one of your friends write a review for you? Editors are busy people, and sometimes they're grateful for a press release to fill up an empty slot. Sometimes they don't want it themselves but will pass it on. As a result of one press release that didn't get published I was recently interviewed by the features editor of another paper with a much wider circulation, because the first recipient passed it on.


What about local radio? My local radio runs a series on local women of interest, and I was not only interviewed for that section, but invited to read extracts from the novel as well.



Whatever you decide, you will need to find the time and effort to really work at it. I wish you the very best of luck.


List of useful promotional sites:

www.goodreads.com
And two sites to introduce you to using Goodreads:
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/09/03/goodreads-for-authors-patrick-brown/ http://www.amazon.com/Goodreads-Authors-Promote-Your-Books-ebook/dp/B00BKE039I/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid= (I've just bought this)

If you're interested in writing articles:
http://ezinearticles.com/ (and here are links to a couple of my articles on there to give you an idea how it works. http://ezinearticles.com/?Editing-Your-Novel-Part-2---Character&id=7826799 and http://ezinearticles.com/?Editing-Your-Novel-Part-3:-How-to-Show,-Rather-Than-Tell&id=7929107)

A site where writers help promote other writers: http://worldliterarycafe.com/content/readers-get-connected

And a list of free sites to promote your work: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/free-ebook-promotion_b52130

Going round in circles

Are you a writer? Is there any particular way in which you like to kick-start your novels (or short stories)? I'm not sure if I always start the same way. Sometimes it's with an incident that then grows into a longer story. Sometimes it's with the victim, and sometimes I start by thinking of the perpetrator first. Certainly that's what I'm doing in my second novel, Washed in the Blood.

But I asked established crime writer, Margot Kinberg, to talk to us about her methods. Here's what she said.

Will it Go Round in Circles?*

Thanks so much for inviting me to guest-post – I’m honoured. One of the challenges writers face is taking all of those creative ideas that always seem to pop up at either 2 am, or in the middle of a traffic jam, and putting them into some kind of coherent story.  Every writer handles this differently, so I can only share the way I go about it. But here’s how the process works for me.

I write crime fiction, so in my stories, there’s invariably at least one murder, and at least one murder victim. And that’s where I always start. Who’s the victim? What is that person like?  I’ve gotten inspiration from many places for the kind of person who would make a good victim. There really is no set pattern there, at least for me. But once I decide on who the victim is, then I get to work on setting up the story.

One way to look at the way I do things is a set of circles. First, of course, there’s the smallest circle around the victim. What is her or his personality? What is that person’s background?  What about that person might drive someone to murder?  Once I know the victim a little, it’s time for the next circle: the victim’s close friends, family and so on.

In that second circle is where you often find the suspects in a murder mystery, so that’s where I start adding in people who may have something to gain by killing the victim. In one of my stories, for instance, my victim has something valuable that one suspect wants. Another suspect feels threatened by something the victim knows. Another is obsessed with the victim. Well, you get the idea. This is also the place where one can add in another circle for the people the victim comes into occasional contact with – sort of an ‘outer circle’ of people. Those are people who can give an interesting perspective on the victim and certainly could be suspects.

Then I add another circle, separate from the victim’s – the sleuth’s circle. After all, it’s hard to do a crime novel if nobody tries to solve the crime. My sleuth is Joel Williams, a former cop, now a university professor of criminal justice. He has his own circle, including his wife, his contacts at the police department, his university colleagues, his students, and so on. Those circles are important (at least to me) because my sleuth is not a cop or PI. So he doesn’t have any official reason to be investigating anything. And nobody is required to tell him anything. That means that one of his circles has to overlap with one of the victim’s circles.

Let me give an example. In one of my stories, my sleuth is working on a research project with two colleagues. In the process of that research they uncover a ‘cold case’ that leads to a not-so-cold murder. In this case, that research circle overlaps with one of the first victim’s circles. That step, as I say, is perhaps less of a critical issue for police procedurals or PI novels, where the sleuth is supposed to investigate. That’s what cops and PIs are paid to do.

Once I have my circles set up, I outline the action in the story. I add in things such as where things happen, how exactly Joel Williams gets involved, and who has critical information for the case. With that rough structure in place, it’s time for the details.

One thing I like about this approach is that it allows for flexibility. It lets the writer put in as many or as few characters as needed. The story can take place at any time, in any place, and feature just about any kind of victim. So there’s a lot of ‘wiggle room.’

I also like the way the circles encourage me to add character development and sub-plots. As I look at each circle I see opportunities to sketch in things such as people’s home lives, minor characters and the other details that make a story (hopefully!) more interesting.

Circles don’t work for everyone of course. More than anything else I believe that each writer has to find her or his own way to frame ideas and get those ideas written. But as for me? Yeah, I go around in circles. ;-)

Many thanks again for hosting me!! Please feel free to get in contact with me (margotkinberg(at)gmail(dot)com) if you want to connect.

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a Billy Preston song, co-written with Bruce Fisher.

Margot Kinberg is the author of the Joel Williams mystery series. She blogs at http://margotkinberg.wordpress.com

Writing for different genres- how do you do it?

If you're a writer - or, for that matter, a reader - you'll have noticed that different genres have noticeably different conventions with regard to such things as writing styles, degree of pace, suspension and so on. Even use of language can differ, for instance you wouldn't expect Ian Rankin or Michael Connolly to write in the same way as Philippa Gregory or Hilary Mantel. Mind you, people like PD James and John le Carre do manage to write literary works while at the same time sitting in the crime and/or spy sections of bookshops and libraries, but they're both a bit special.


So I thought I'd ask a writer who regularly swaps between crime novels and thrillers. Do they use the same conventions? See what the experienced writer, Adrian Magson, has to say about it.

WRITING CRIME NOVELS OR THRILLERS - what's the difference?

by Adrian Magson.

As far as headings go, probably not much. They should both thrill, but to differing degrees.

Readers like to know what they’re getting. As do agents and publishers. Call a book a crime or mystery and they know exactly where to place it, mentally and physically. Romance, sci-fi, fantasy… all those are obvious. Labels help them target books to the appropriate audience (although oddly enough, in one chain bookstore, many thrillers are found in General Fiction).

But as a writer, I have to approach them with a plan in mind. And for me that plan involves pace.

Take my Inspector Lucas Rocco (crime series). Set in rural Picardie, France, in the 1960s. It’s been called a police procedural, but I have to admit it’s light on the procedure. And that’s deliberate. The French police structure is more complex than ours, but going too deep into that would have taken up too much of the story. And Lucas Rocco is not really a rules and regulations animal; as a former gang-buster from Paris, he’ll abide by them where he has to, but solving crimes is what he’s good at and lies at the heart of each story.

Rocco, often accompanied by Claude Lamotte, the local garde champetre (rural cop), or Desmoulins, a fellow detective, is not always chasing crims in dark corners. He’s more likely to be out looking for clues, or straying off-territory to hunt down contacts and sources of information (often in Paris, his former base), or mixing with unsavoury types trying to unpick the relationship between suspects or others, all the time trying to stay below the radar of the all-embracing Ministry of the Interior.

The Ministry is vast and controls all aspects of police life. To Rocco, the men in grey suits merely get in the way, especially when so many of his cases seem to involve an arm of the government. Then there’s his immediate boss, Commissaire Massin, with whom he has history both of them would like to forget. These twin aspects of Rocco’s professional life – and his problems adjusting to life in a small village, and the quirky locals - allow me to inject conflict alongside the troubles and dangers he faces each day, whether that’s from violent criminals, would-be presidential assassins or bombs left by former Resistance members.

Rural it might be in Picardie; quiet it isn’t.

The pace here lies in the unravelling of the story as he chases down the villains, and this invariably picks up and becomes more tangible as we get into the investigation.


And then there's my protagonist Harry Tate (spy thriller series). This has pace in its DNA. I know from the start of each book that I have to keep the story moving. This means more action, more threat – and a faster movement of characters and events.

As a former soldier and MI5 officer, who was nearly terminated by a rogue boss (‘Red Station’), Harry works as a contractor for the intelligence services and others. He’s ‘carded’ (licenced to carry a weapon), and his world is one of spies, traitors, rogue military types and foreign intelligence hit teams. He has a colleague, Rik Ferris, who provides the technical aspect of surveillance, digging out secrets and occasionally hacking into areas he shouldn’t.

Harry isn’t a super-agent type, but more a solid, effective counter-intelligence worker who gets things done. He’s ready to travel anywhere, and frequently does, so his field is international (which is also fun to research and write).

I was asked last year by the Harry Tate publishers to write another series character, and have just turned in ‘The Watchman’ (due out in February), which is still in the contemporary thriller world, but darker in tone. It was something I wanted to try, to see if I could deliver. (The publishers and my agent – and my wife, Ann, who is my beta reader – love it, so the signs so far are good). Portman, the main character, is a sort of unseen bodyguard for spies, and therefore has to be ruthless in his outlook to protect his charges. The setting is on the Somali/Kenyan border and involves terrorists and pirates.

I enjoy switching between the two genres types, and consciously wear a different mental hat for each one. Once that hat is on, I’m in the zone and ready to go.

The main thing is, I enjoy what I do, whatever the genre, and hope that comes out in the writing.

********

Adrian Magson - magsona@btinternet.com

Website: http:www.adrianmagson.com

Blog: http://adrianmagson.blogspot.co.uk

Inspector Lucas Rocco series published by Allison & Busby

Harry Tate series published by Severn House 

Bio: Adrian Magson is the author of 15 crime/thriller novels and many short stories and articles. His latest novels are ‘Execution’ (Severn House – May 2013), 5th in the Harry Tate spy series, and ‘Death at the Clos du Lac’ (Allison &Busby), 4th in the Inspector Lucas Rocco series. A regular reviewer for Shots Magazine, he writes the ‘Beginners’ and ‘New Author’ pages for Writing Magazine, and is the author of ‘Write On! - The Writer’s Help Book’ (Accent Press).

Marketing and Publicity by Philippa

You will not sell or share your book without somehow telling people it exists. Word on the block says you must have an e-profile but if you’ve never been out there on the net it can be hard. You have to realise that with an e-profile you cannot totally control who reads your details and it’ll be open to all. I joined Linkedin which felt quite safe, and was already on Facebook as an individual, but had always used it with caution.

I continued with the personal approach and e-mailed everyone on my private e-mail contact list asking them to send details of the book on to their friends too. Everyone I met or bumped into had to listen to my pitch about the book, and these contacts as well as a fabulous book launch evening at Wivenhoe Bookshop have resulted in over 300 sales. Relative strangers now come up to me in the street to say how much they’ve enjoyed the story, so it had obviously moved beyond simply family and close friends reading it, which is exciting.

I was able to put the paperback on Amazon but I don’t believe that has resulted in any sales so far, so the next decision is whether to e-publish. The big question now is whether my IT skills are up to it and I suspect the answer is ‘no’ so I’ve asked for help from Wivenbooks and that is going to be the next stage of the journey. We want to try to get it on to multiple e-readers in order to support independent bookshops which often stock e-readers other than Kindle. Once ‘There’s No Sea in Salford’ is digitally available I aim to give it it’s very own Facebook page.

I’m also hoping this blog from Wivenhoe Writers, a small group of local writers who meet up once a month to share their work and discuss writing, will continue to raise the profile of my writing. It feels safer than trying a blog of my own and I hope will be stimulating in it’s own right – we’ll see. So it’s blogging and short story writing now till the autumn, then head down for the second novel as the nights draw in.