Alec Peche's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
Bouchercon 2014 Author Focus Session
I am one of many authors honored to be given twenty minutes on the agenda at the Bouchercon conference in Long Beach. I’ll be in Harbor B on Saturday November 15, 2014. The instructions say that the twenty minutes is ours to do what we want - we can discuss writing, demonstrate a craft, or do a Q & A. As I am a more a sports playing newbie author than one with crafting talents, the vision of demonstrating a craft I barely have skill at is a scary proposition. So I gave more thought as to what I can bring to the table for fans or fellow authors. I have decided to talk about the joy of being a pantser since it seems very counter-culture to most of the writing world.
When I began the journey of writing rather later in life, I approached it from the traditional angle. I downloaded an app to my iPad. I dutifully tried to fill out all the questions - what was the point of the story, who were the characters, what was the plot, what would happen in each chapter, etc. I must have spent a week trying to fill it in, but mostly I drew a blank. I knew I wanted a political corruption story, set in California, and the title of the book would be Vials. Literally, where do you start for that first word you place on paper with the intent of having a murder mystery at the end of it? In the end I thought, let me figure out the first paragraph and I did. Then I had enough of a story in my head for a second and a third paragraph then a full page, and then a 1,000 words. I went back to the outline even after 1,000 words and I still couldn’t complete the book outline. I wouldn’t even admit to being an author, as I felt in my head that without the story board, or story outline on some writer’s software package that I must not be a real author. I would see other blog posts from writers with a picture taken of the author standing to the side with sticky notes all over it proudly showing this as the foundation of their latest story.
I was about three quarters of the way finished with writing my first book’s draft, when I had the infinite pleasure of listening to an audiobook written and read by Stephen King - On Writing. He managed to describe and give me a fabulous picture of his approach to writing which had for the most part mirrored my own approach. Hallelujah!
While I have collected a total of four college degrees, not one of them was awarded for anything remotely connected to English, Writing, or Literature. I have never taught English or grammar and consider myself a novice at both unlike Mr. King who is an expert and has taught English. I don’t remember any of the classics, although I do have favorites in the more recent novels of Pride and Prejudice and Lord of the Flies. As a mystery writer, it is likely that the heavy (I don’t know what else to call it) writing of centuries past would put the reader to sleep before they solved the crime.
Still, having diagnosed myself as a pantser (def: a writer who flies by the seat of their pants), I have still tried to reform my style. For book three - A Breck Death ,I downloaded a sample of the most popular writer’s software that you can use for any thirty days for free. I have managed to use it one of my thirty days so far. Again I threw in the towel and reverted to my pantser ways. In book four, I’m not even trying to eliminate the pantser side of my personality.
So what are the downsides to be a pantser? With each story, I have a range of characters in my head each acting and behaving according to their personalities. I have on occasion let the character behave in an inconsistent manner. My female protagonist is a very strong willed character and occasionally I have written something more suited to a general commanding an army than to her showing her love for her main man in the story. Fortunately, my beta readers pick up on those inconsistences and I have the opportunity to fix them.
I understand from doing more research into the pantser style that about 25% of writers are pantsers, and 75% are outliners. I haven’t yet attended a writer’s workshop, so I don’t know if there is a “test” that a new writer could take to figure out their style. I see if I can find the answer to that question before November’s meeting. It sure would have been a confidence builder for me if I had known early in my writing journey that I was a pantser.
I like complexity in my stories and I need to write about 15,000 words before that complexity begins to appear in my head. My imagination builds on itself, so while I can’t envision the twists and turns that the plot is going to take at the very start of the story, I know that in time those twists will reveal themselves. With my current WIP, I have just over 16,000 words written, and I have laid the groundwork for two of the characters that wanted my victim dead and their motives, but I know as the story goes along that I will dream up additional plots. I rarely experience writer’s block. If I do, I stay away from writing for a few days, come back to the story, re-read a part of it, and then get a new idea for the direction of the story.
Along the way in all of my novels, I perform internet searches on topics in my books. In Chocolate Diamonds I studied the diamond industry extensively and wrote that into my story. Often, doing a little more research on a particular piece of the story gives me a direction to go next with my writing that I can’t imagine at the start.
At Bouchercon, I plan to share my journey as a writer with the hope of giving back to that attendee that has tried to start their writing journey but is not getting anywhere. Maybe their style is in conflict with their present approach. Perhaps that person is a pantser and hasn’t figured it out yet and I can offer a little help.
Cheers and see you in Long Beach,
Alec Peche
When I began the journey of writing rather later in life, I approached it from the traditional angle. I downloaded an app to my iPad. I dutifully tried to fill out all the questions - what was the point of the story, who were the characters, what was the plot, what would happen in each chapter, etc. I must have spent a week trying to fill it in, but mostly I drew a blank. I knew I wanted a political corruption story, set in California, and the title of the book would be Vials. Literally, where do you start for that first word you place on paper with the intent of having a murder mystery at the end of it? In the end I thought, let me figure out the first paragraph and I did. Then I had enough of a story in my head for a second and a third paragraph then a full page, and then a 1,000 words. I went back to the outline even after 1,000 words and I still couldn’t complete the book outline. I wouldn’t even admit to being an author, as I felt in my head that without the story board, or story outline on some writer’s software package that I must not be a real author. I would see other blog posts from writers with a picture taken of the author standing to the side with sticky notes all over it proudly showing this as the foundation of their latest story.
I was about three quarters of the way finished with writing my first book’s draft, when I had the infinite pleasure of listening to an audiobook written and read by Stephen King - On Writing. He managed to describe and give me a fabulous picture of his approach to writing which had for the most part mirrored my own approach. Hallelujah!
While I have collected a total of four college degrees, not one of them was awarded for anything remotely connected to English, Writing, or Literature. I have never taught English or grammar and consider myself a novice at both unlike Mr. King who is an expert and has taught English. I don’t remember any of the classics, although I do have favorites in the more recent novels of Pride and Prejudice and Lord of the Flies. As a mystery writer, it is likely that the heavy (I don’t know what else to call it) writing of centuries past would put the reader to sleep before they solved the crime.
Still, having diagnosed myself as a pantser (def: a writer who flies by the seat of their pants), I have still tried to reform my style. For book three - A Breck Death ,I downloaded a sample of the most popular writer’s software that you can use for any thirty days for free. I have managed to use it one of my thirty days so far. Again I threw in the towel and reverted to my pantser ways. In book four, I’m not even trying to eliminate the pantser side of my personality.
So what are the downsides to be a pantser? With each story, I have a range of characters in my head each acting and behaving according to their personalities. I have on occasion let the character behave in an inconsistent manner. My female protagonist is a very strong willed character and occasionally I have written something more suited to a general commanding an army than to her showing her love for her main man in the story. Fortunately, my beta readers pick up on those inconsistences and I have the opportunity to fix them.
I understand from doing more research into the pantser style that about 25% of writers are pantsers, and 75% are outliners. I haven’t yet attended a writer’s workshop, so I don’t know if there is a “test” that a new writer could take to figure out their style. I see if I can find the answer to that question before November’s meeting. It sure would have been a confidence builder for me if I had known early in my writing journey that I was a pantser.
I like complexity in my stories and I need to write about 15,000 words before that complexity begins to appear in my head. My imagination builds on itself, so while I can’t envision the twists and turns that the plot is going to take at the very start of the story, I know that in time those twists will reveal themselves. With my current WIP, I have just over 16,000 words written, and I have laid the groundwork for two of the characters that wanted my victim dead and their motives, but I know as the story goes along that I will dream up additional plots. I rarely experience writer’s block. If I do, I stay away from writing for a few days, come back to the story, re-read a part of it, and then get a new idea for the direction of the story.
Along the way in all of my novels, I perform internet searches on topics in my books. In Chocolate Diamonds I studied the diamond industry extensively and wrote that into my story. Often, doing a little more research on a particular piece of the story gives me a direction to go next with my writing that I can’t imagine at the start.
At Bouchercon, I plan to share my journey as a writer with the hope of giving back to that attendee that has tried to start their writing journey but is not getting anywhere. Maybe their style is in conflict with their present approach. Perhaps that person is a pantser and hasn’t figured it out yet and I can offer a little help.
Cheers and see you in Long Beach,
Alec Peche
When life gets in the way of writing…
Most authors speak to a need to write - they see something in the world that inspires them to want to capture that something with words. I am new to the writing world, and haven't felt pressure to write all my life. I began writing a little less than three years ago and have been goal driven to get books written, edited, and published. The first book - Vials, took a year to publish. My second book - Chocolate Diamonds took nine months and books 3 to 5 have needed four months to be completed. As I was closing in on the end of book 5 - A Taxing Death, I decided to take a break from writing to go back and edit a few of the books and spend some time gaining a deeper understanding of marketing options. Then life interfered with those plans.
Like many people across the world, I have a senior parent that needs my help. My mother wants to stay in her own home and live independently. She has been a lifelong introvert and the social activities of senior housing options completely turn her off. She has increasingly become fragile as one would expect at 85. I've taken over various aspects of her life as she has lost abilities - she stopped driving 8 years ago, needed help with her weekly pill boxes about 5 years ago, then I began helping with banking, investments, taxes and meals about three years ago. Then she needed reminders three times a day to take her medicine in the last year and a walker on occasion for balance. Up to three weeks ago, she was able to live alone with frequent visits from me or my brother during the day. Then like many seniors, she took that one bad fall and fractured her 12th thoracic vertebrae. As there are all kinds of nerves in this area of the body, this injury is very painful. Unlike broken bones elsewhere, you can't put the back in a cast. The person has to go on moving with pain. The injury will heal in 6-12 weeks, but you can't put someone on bedrest for that period of time. There are subtle hints that the bone is healing - burping, sneezing, and coughing have become more tolerable.
During this injury period for mom, I have spent hours at mom's bedside first in a local hospital and then in a rehab center before bring her home with live-in help now. Hospitals are terrible environments for seniors - they are confusing places with dumb rules. Mom was admitted with high blood pressure due to the pain, once the pain calmed a bit, her blood pressure returned to normal, but she was left with a low salt diet. I feel that if salt hasn't killed you by 85, then it is not going to. Regardless she is continuing to make very slow progress each day, most of all she is happy to be back on her schedule rather than anyone else's.
During this time period I had a few deadlines on books that I handled while she was asleep. I didn't explore marketing opportunities as planned and I wrote the first 500 words of book 6. Unlike books 1 through 5, I don't have a title yet for this book. It's very strange to save the file as book 6 rather than Death by Convention, or A Dallas Death, or some other title that I have been mulling over in my mind. I've even lost the sticky note I had written on potential book titles. As I have flown by the seat of my pants these past 3 weeks, book 6 is lining up to be my best pantser effort yet as I have no title, no cover, and no outline even as I work on Chapter One.
When life gets in the way of writing, I know how to do the bare minimum to keep my author enterprise afloat while saving my time and energy to handle the lemons thrown in my mother's or my way.
Cheers,
Alec PecheAlec Peche
Like many people across the world, I have a senior parent that needs my help. My mother wants to stay in her own home and live independently. She has been a lifelong introvert and the social activities of senior housing options completely turn her off. She has increasingly become fragile as one would expect at 85. I've taken over various aspects of her life as she has lost abilities - she stopped driving 8 years ago, needed help with her weekly pill boxes about 5 years ago, then I began helping with banking, investments, taxes and meals about three years ago. Then she needed reminders three times a day to take her medicine in the last year and a walker on occasion for balance. Up to three weeks ago, she was able to live alone with frequent visits from me or my brother during the day. Then like many seniors, she took that one bad fall and fractured her 12th thoracic vertebrae. As there are all kinds of nerves in this area of the body, this injury is very painful. Unlike broken bones elsewhere, you can't put the back in a cast. The person has to go on moving with pain. The injury will heal in 6-12 weeks, but you can't put someone on bedrest for that period of time. There are subtle hints that the bone is healing - burping, sneezing, and coughing have become more tolerable.
During this injury period for mom, I have spent hours at mom's bedside first in a local hospital and then in a rehab center before bring her home with live-in help now. Hospitals are terrible environments for seniors - they are confusing places with dumb rules. Mom was admitted with high blood pressure due to the pain, once the pain calmed a bit, her blood pressure returned to normal, but she was left with a low salt diet. I feel that if salt hasn't killed you by 85, then it is not going to. Regardless she is continuing to make very slow progress each day, most of all she is happy to be back on her schedule rather than anyone else's.
During this time period I had a few deadlines on books that I handled while she was asleep. I didn't explore marketing opportunities as planned and I wrote the first 500 words of book 6. Unlike books 1 through 5, I don't have a title yet for this book. It's very strange to save the file as book 6 rather than Death by Convention, or A Dallas Death, or some other title that I have been mulling over in my mind. I've even lost the sticky note I had written on potential book titles. As I have flown by the seat of my pants these past 3 weeks, book 6 is lining up to be my best pantser effort yet as I have no title, no cover, and no outline even as I work on Chapter One.
When life gets in the way of writing, I know how to do the bare minimum to keep my author enterprise afloat while saving my time and energy to handle the lemons thrown in my mother's or my way.
Cheers,
Alec PecheAlec Peche
New series = new beginning!
As I announced last week on my Facebook page, I’ve put aside book 7 of the Jill Quint, MD, mystery series and begun an entirely new murder series. The title of the first book will be RED ROCK ISLAND, set in San Francisco, California on an actual island in the bay. The series will be led by male protagonist Damien Green, and his female sidekick Natalie Severino, a retired detective from the San Jose Police Department.
I had about 20% of Jill Quint book 7, Castle Killing, written and I was struggling to put in four hundred words a day to the story line. After six books it’s hard to think of new reasons for the four main characters of that series to be together and to solve a crime in under a week or two. I do believe I’ll go back and finish that book in the future but in the meanwhile I’m enjoying shaping my new characters and their back story.
When I started to think about a new series, I knew I wanted a complete change of characters. In the Jill Quint series, Jill traveled the United States and Europe solving cases. In the Damien Green series, he’s a loner that rarely leaves his rock of an island. He has good reason to feel that way as seven years before the story begins, his wife and two daughters were murdered by an escaped convict. The first book fills in his story and his reasons for clinging to the island. At the same time, he has been and continues to be, a brilliant inventor and engineer; two skills that make living on the island possible and make him an asset to retired detective Severino when she occasionally calls upon him for help. She was the detective that informed him of his family’s murder, found the perpetrator, and shot him dead. In his isolated life, she’s the closest human to Damien. Natalie in retirement, works as both a private investigator and sporadically as a consultant to her old department.
As the island is small and rocky, his pets through this new series will be two cats. While I’d love to have a dog in the story, the island’s shores are too rocky and steep for a dog to be safe. My muse for the setting of this new mystery series actually exists in San Francisco Bay, I’ve just taken the liberty of fantasizing what it would be like to build and live in such a location. Red Rock Island will introduce you to the new series as Damien and Natalie solve a cold case.
I expect the book to be published this summer. It’s such fun embarking on the adventure of creating a new series! I’m also looking forward to creating a new book cover that brands this series different from the Jill Quint series.
Cheers,
A. Peche
I had about 20% of Jill Quint book 7, Castle Killing, written and I was struggling to put in four hundred words a day to the story line. After six books it’s hard to think of new reasons for the four main characters of that series to be together and to solve a crime in under a week or two. I do believe I’ll go back and finish that book in the future but in the meanwhile I’m enjoying shaping my new characters and their back story.
When I started to think about a new series, I knew I wanted a complete change of characters. In the Jill Quint series, Jill traveled the United States and Europe solving cases. In the Damien Green series, he’s a loner that rarely leaves his rock of an island. He has good reason to feel that way as seven years before the story begins, his wife and two daughters were murdered by an escaped convict. The first book fills in his story and his reasons for clinging to the island. At the same time, he has been and continues to be, a brilliant inventor and engineer; two skills that make living on the island possible and make him an asset to retired detective Severino when she occasionally calls upon him for help. She was the detective that informed him of his family’s murder, found the perpetrator, and shot him dead. In his isolated life, she’s the closest human to Damien. Natalie in retirement, works as both a private investigator and sporadically as a consultant to her old department.
As the island is small and rocky, his pets through this new series will be two cats. While I’d love to have a dog in the story, the island’s shores are too rocky and steep for a dog to be safe. My muse for the setting of this new mystery series actually exists in San Francisco Bay, I’ve just taken the liberty of fantasizing what it would be like to build and live in such a location. Red Rock Island will introduce you to the new series as Damien and Natalie solve a cold case.
I expect the book to be published this summer. It’s such fun embarking on the adventure of creating a new series! I’m also looking forward to creating a new book cover that brands this series different from the Jill Quint series.
Cheers,
A. Peche
Never Sit Next To Me In A Bar
I'm 8,000 words into Crescent City Murder, book 8 in the Jill Quint series. I'm loving the story and enjoying my writing and learning more about New Orleans as story quirks arise. But a word of caution, never, ever, sit next to me in a bar.
When I visited there last fall, I tried to talk to as many people as possible about life in New Orleans. It's my way of soaking up the culture with the thought of material for a future book. I spoke with my servers in restaurants, my bartender at Juan's Flying Burrito, a woman on a trolley who had just come from a funeral, a forensic pathologist at the city coroner's office, Uber drivers, and many more. A man that spoke with me at a bar will end up dead in book 8.
It was a Sunday night and the Green Bay Packers were playing the New York Giants and I was sitting at the bar at Archie Manning's Place to watch the game. A young man sat next to me at the bar and we chatted off and on over the next couple of hours. He lives in the Ninth Ward, that region of New Orleans that suffered the most from Hurricane Katrina. He has a son that he shares with the child's mother and he worked in Baton Rouge. He explained why he commuted to that city and what it was like to live through Katrina.
I don't know why I ended up killing him as opposed to anyone else I met in NOLA. I guess his story visually impacted my brain as I could see the struggles of this nice man both now and in the past. His words were still on my mind when I visited the Hurricane Katrina museum the next day. Again his struggles of that time played on my brain so that I was imagining him during the video segments of the hurricane that played inside the museum. He felt that the government had not protected the Ninth Ward and they had purposely flooded it by blowing up the canal dykes to save the French Quarter, the large source of tourism dollars. Based on what other residents said and the explanation for the depth of the damage at the museum, I came away with disagreeing with his opinion.
Or maybe it's his fault for sitting next to me at the bar distracting me from a Packers' game…Never sit next to me at a bar…during a Packer game, unless you're going to be quiet and cheer for the Pack!
When I visited there last fall, I tried to talk to as many people as possible about life in New Orleans. It's my way of soaking up the culture with the thought of material for a future book. I spoke with my servers in restaurants, my bartender at Juan's Flying Burrito, a woman on a trolley who had just come from a funeral, a forensic pathologist at the city coroner's office, Uber drivers, and many more. A man that spoke with me at a bar will end up dead in book 8.
It was a Sunday night and the Green Bay Packers were playing the New York Giants and I was sitting at the bar at Archie Manning's Place to watch the game. A young man sat next to me at the bar and we chatted off and on over the next couple of hours. He lives in the Ninth Ward, that region of New Orleans that suffered the most from Hurricane Katrina. He has a son that he shares with the child's mother and he worked in Baton Rouge. He explained why he commuted to that city and what it was like to live through Katrina.
I don't know why I ended up killing him as opposed to anyone else I met in NOLA. I guess his story visually impacted my brain as I could see the struggles of this nice man both now and in the past. His words were still on my mind when I visited the Hurricane Katrina museum the next day. Again his struggles of that time played on my brain so that I was imagining him during the video segments of the hurricane that played inside the museum. He felt that the government had not protected the Ninth Ward and they had purposely flooded it by blowing up the canal dykes to save the French Quarter, the large source of tourism dollars. Based on what other residents said and the explanation for the depth of the damage at the museum, I came away with disagreeing with his opinion.
Or maybe it's his fault for sitting next to me at the bar distracting me from a Packers' game…Never sit next to me at a bar…during a Packer game, unless you're going to be quiet and cheer for the Pack!
Staring down into the abyss of the next story
Last week I finished my 11th book overall, THE GIRL FROM DIANA PARK, book 3 in the Damian Green series. Damian assists his friend Natalie Severino with an abducted child cold case, and will this be the book where Hermione is finally reunited with her parents? It's available for pre-order now:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H9BMWTM and will be released November 5, 2018. When I finished the book, I celebrated with 2 glasses and wine and 2 bags of Bit of Honey candy from my local Dollar store and a mani/pedi. I'm sure every author has their way of celebrating the end of the book. As I cruised toward the grand finale of my story, I worried in the back of my mind of where the story should end. You don't want to overshoot your mark, so the story ends in boring the reader, but you need to pull together all the loose threads in the grand finale, and I'm anxious about hitting the exact right note for the ending and yet I'm relieved to be coming to the end.
I allowed myself a few hours of brain rest than I go back at writing. When I was struggling to write this book, I began my 12th book back in April. I stopped writing it after 874 words, as I realized it was an excuse for not working on my assignment of the moment – THE GIRL FROM DIANA PARK. Now I've gone back to my 12th book and begun work as I do with every new book. I start by naming the new story. When I wrote those words several months ago, I saved the text under the name ITALY STORY, an uninspiring name for a novel. I know many authors wait until a book is done to title it, or the publisher chooses the name, or they publish the book under different names in the United States and the United Kingdom, and I'll admit I don't get that. JK Rowling had different names for her books, and frankly, I would have bought them if the title was Harry Potter book 5.
So the name for book 9 in the Jill Quint, MD series, is SICILIAN MURDER. I'm working on the cover which is easy for the books in this series as all of my covers reflect where the person is going to die, and my guy is going to die on Mount Edna in Sicily. I also Googled the title and checked it on Amazon to make sure there wasn't already a book by that name and surprisingly, SICILIAN MURDER wasn't taken. It's not that I'm prohibited from taking the name, but I hate to add to reader confusion. There are a few titles that are similar, and they're related to the mafia, but this story will have no connection to organized crime. At least I'm not planning on a connection, but I never know where a story will take me until I write the words!
In a few weeks, I'll do another blog post including the cover reveal for this next work in progress.
Cheers,
Alec
I allowed myself a few hours of brain rest than I go back at writing. When I was struggling to write this book, I began my 12th book back in April. I stopped writing it after 874 words, as I realized it was an excuse for not working on my assignment of the moment – THE GIRL FROM DIANA PARK. Now I've gone back to my 12th book and begun work as I do with every new book. I start by naming the new story. When I wrote those words several months ago, I saved the text under the name ITALY STORY, an uninspiring name for a novel. I know many authors wait until a book is done to title it, or the publisher chooses the name, or they publish the book under different names in the United States and the United Kingdom, and I'll admit I don't get that. JK Rowling had different names for her books, and frankly, I would have bought them if the title was Harry Potter book 5.
So the name for book 9 in the Jill Quint, MD series, is SICILIAN MURDER. I'm working on the cover which is easy for the books in this series as all of my covers reflect where the person is going to die, and my guy is going to die on Mount Edna in Sicily. I also Googled the title and checked it on Amazon to make sure there wasn't already a book by that name and surprisingly, SICILIAN MURDER wasn't taken. It's not that I'm prohibited from taking the name, but I hate to add to reader confusion. There are a few titles that are similar, and they're related to the mafia, but this story will have no connection to organized crime. At least I'm not planning on a connection, but I never know where a story will take me until I write the words!
In a few weeks, I'll do another blog post including the cover reveal for this next work in progress.
Cheers,
Alec
