Dialogue Lessons: The Big Picture, Part 7

Today concludes my three-week series of posts on "The Art of Writing Dialogue." I'll list the last two of the ten "rules of thumb" I include under The Big Picture section and give you a set of resources to use. I'd love to get some feedback from my blog readers, too, on whether or not you found this series of lessons to be useful and interesting or not, and if you have any suggestions for me. If you liked the series, I may present more lessons in the future from other writing workshops I've given. On to the Big Picture!

9. Function and Pacing: Dialogue has many functions other than the basic ones of conveying information to the reader and moving the plot forward. It can create tension and suspense, and it controls pace by speeding up or slowing down scenes. It should be very quick in action scenes.

     Bad:
     “He’s got a gun! Shoot him! Shoot him!” Tina shouted.
     “Get behind me. I’ll get him before he gets us.” Sweating profusely, Dave shoved her behind him. He yanked his gun out of his leg holster. He dropped it. “Shit, I dropped it.”
     “Pick it up, you clumsy idiot, or he’ll shoot first and we’ll both die.”

     Good:
     “He’s got a gun!” Tina shouted.
     Sweating profusely, Dave shoved her behind him. He yanked his gun out of leg holster. He dropped it. “Shit.”
     “We’re gonna die.”

Dialogue develops characters and exposes motives, reveals setting (when they talk about the weather and the environs around them), establishes the scene’s mood, sprinkles in backstory and background information just where it’s needed rather than in big dumps at the beginning of the novel, and most importantly, intensifies conflict. Every piece of dialogue in your novel should accomplish as many of these goals as possible. Make every conversation work for you, and work hard, to earn the right to be included in the final manuscript.

10. Editing Prompts: Some helpful questions to ask while editing a section of dialogue:

Did my characters say exactly what they meant and exactly what I needed them to say?
Is each character’s dialogue in their unique voice?
Is each line of dialogue essential to the scene?
Does the dialogue move the plot forward?
Does the dialogue start a conflict or complicate an existing conflict?
Does the dialogue establish or increase the reader’s intimacy with the characters, and the characters’ with each other?
Does the dialogue convey emotion and is the emotion appropriate to the scene?
Is the body language of the characters attuned to what’s being said?
Most importantly, when I read it, am I bored or interested?

References:

Beginnings, Middles and Ends (Elements of Fiction Writing), Nancy Kress
Writing Dialogue, Tom Chiarella
Write Great Fiction – Dialogue, Gloria Kempton
Speaking of Dialogue, Sammie L. Justesen
William Shunn’s “Proper Manuscript Formatting” website: http://www.shunn.net/format/

Dialogue Lessons: The Big Picture, Part 6

During September I'll be sharing some notes here on my blog from my "The Art of Writing Dialogue" workshop that I've presented to many writing groups. I presented the first three lessons on Mechanics, the nitty gritty little details of writing dialogue, week before last. Last week and this week I'm discussing The Big Picture, using character traits, conflict, and emotion to infuse a real-life feel into dialogue, to make it pop off the page. The goal is to drag readers by the throat right into the book. Here are the sixth, seventh and eighth of ten "rules of thumb" for The Big Picture. Come back next week for the last two and some recommended resources!

6. Business: Make the facial expressions, actions and gestures of the characters during a dialogue work for you. Set a goal to minimize the need for simple dialogue tags by replacing them with business that illuminates character traits, reveals conflict and describes emotion. An interesting way to flavor a dialogue is to make the unspoken thoughts and emotions the opposite of what’s being said.

Always give your characters something interesting to do or think about while they’re having a conversation. And that ‘something interesting’ should have emotion and conflict tied to it. For instance, instead of just eating a meal together, have one character serve the other a dish she hates. She knows that her friend knows she hates that food, so she wonders through the whole meal why he served to her and just pretends to eat it.

7. Conflict: Every piece of dialogue in your story should contain conflict of some sort. The conflict can be external and obvious in the speech and actions of the characters (they disagree about something, they’re working together to solve a problem or escape a danger, etc.). Or it can be internal, embedded in the emotional subtext (he's lying to her, she doesn't like him). But it has to be there. Dialogue illuminates character, but only if you give your characters something interesting to talk about, and that means conflict.

8. Emotion: Every piece of dialogue needs to be infused with emotion. Show that emotion by using facial expressions and gestures as well as speech to expose what the characters are feeling versus just tagging the speech verbs with adverbs. Get to know your characters well enough that you can visualize what they look like and what they’re doing while engaged in conversations.

Here’s an example from the first book in my RM Outdoor Adventures series, Deadly Currents, with the business revealing character, conflict and emotion removed. Just the dialogue and basic description of actions are left. See how flat it reads.

     The two of them watched the coroner, her assistant, and two Sheriff’s deputies carry the body up to the roadbed.
     Gonzo swept aside a chunk of hair the wind had blown into his face. “Bummer.”
     Mandy nodded.
     “Hey, it’s not your fault. If anything, it’s my fault.”
     “No, Gonzo. He was alive when he left your care. He died under mine.”
     A shadow fell over her. She looked up and saw Steve Hadley.
     He knelt. “Mandy, a death is hard for any of us. It was an accident, pure and simple. You could do no more than follow your training. If that wasn’t enough, then it was meant to be.”
     Mandy nodded again.
     “Hey man,” Gonzo said to Steve. “Thanks for handling the wife. After Dougie walked his passengers downstream to the road, and the wife saw the EMTs working on her husband and screamed, Dougie looked at me like, hey buddy, you’re in charge of this trip, so this is your scene. But I had no frigging idea what to do.”
     “Who does?” Steve said. “You just deal with it the best you can.”
     “I’d rather have a Boy Scout blowing chunks right on my Tevas than have to comfort some lady who’s gone all hysterical. At least I knew his son, Jeff, some. Though I couldn’t do much more than say I was really sorry, dude.”
     “Yeah, thanks, Steve.” Mandy said. “I probably should have said something to her. I know that’s the worst part of the job, when someone...”

Here’s the whole passage, with the business revealing character, conflict and emotion put back in (see the italics). Can you better see both the internal conflict (Mandy’s guilt that a man she tried to save ended up dying) and external conflict (she and Gonzo argue about whose fault it is). Do you feel more of what Mandy’s feeling? And what the non-POV characters, Gonzo and Steve, are feeling?

     The two of them silently watched the coroner, her assistant, and two Sheriff’s deputies carry the body up to the roadbed.
     Gonzo swept aside a chunk of bushy dark blond Rastafarian dreadlocks the wind had blown into his somber, sunburned face. “Bummer.”
     Mandy nodded. Bummer indeed.
     He shot a worried gaze her way. “Hey, it’s not your fault.”
     He picked up a pebble and half-heartedly tossed it aside. “If anything, it’s my fault.”
     “No, Gonzo. He was alive when he left your care. He died under mine.”
     A shadow fell over her. She looked up and saw Steve Hadley, his well-muscled frame backlit by the sun.
     He must have seen the devastation she felt in her face, because his expression softened. He knelt and put his hand on her knee. “Mandy, a death is hard for any of us. It was an accident, pure and simple. You could do no more than follow your training. If that wasn’t enough, then it was meant to be.”
     Mandy worried her lip. Did she? Did she follow her training? Should she have done something different? Something better? Her throat constricted. Rather than expose her emotion by croaking out a response, she just nodded again.
     “Hey man,” Gonzo said to Steve. “Thanks for handling the wife. After Dougie walked his passengers downstream to the road, and the wife saw the EMTs working on her husband and screamed, Dougie looked at me like, hey buddy, you’re in charge of this trip, so this is your scene. But I had no frigging idea what to do.”
     “Who does?” Steve said. “You just deal with it the best you can.”
     “I’d rather have a Boy Scout blowing chunks right on my Tevas than have to comfort some lady who’s gone all hysterical. At least I knew his son, Jeff, some. Though I couldn’t do much more than say I was really sorry, dude.”
     Mandy gulped down the knot in her throat. “Yeah, thanks, Steve. I probably should have said something to her. I know that’s the worst part of the job, when someone...” She couldn’t say dies, not yet. And the thought of trying to console that poor woman while Mandy struggled with her own resurrected grief had frightened her to the core.

Notice how the word "silently" conveys a hint of reverence? Also notice how I inserted some description of Gonzo's hair and skin and Steve’s muscles. Gonzo’s worried glance and the pause while he tosses the pebble show he cares about Mandy but expressing that is awkward for him. Steve’s softened expression and his hand on her knee show his concern. Mandy’s thoughts, the knot in her throat, and the question left in the reader’s mind at the end about her resurrected grief reveal more of her character.

Some other things to note that tie back to previous lessons are: Gonzo’s unique speech patterns (bummer, this is your scene, no frigging idea, blowing chunks), Steve more formal language that shows he's the boss  (follow your training), the whitewater rafting-specific terms (downstream, Tevas). And lastly, did you notice how many dialogue tags are in that long passage of dialogue? Because of the business that worked hard for me, I only used "said" twice.

Dialogue Lessons: The Big Picture, Part 5

During September I'll be sharing some notes here on my blog from my "The Art of Writing Dialogue" workshop that I've presented to many writing groups. I presented the first three lessons on Mechanics, the nitty gritty little details of writing dialogue, last week. This week and next, I'm discussing The Big Picture, using character traits, conflict, and emotion to infuse a real-life feel into dialogue, to make it pop off the page. The goal is to drag readers by the throat right into the book. Here are the fourth and fifth of ten "rules of thumb" for The Big Picture:

4. Avoid long passages of foreign language, and for short passages, use context to explain them. If a dialogue is supposed to take place in a foreign language, you can preface it with something like, “Roger conversed with Hilda in perfect Swedish,” then write the dialogue in English. If a foreign phrase is important, such as it being a clue in an ancient cipher, have one character translate it to another who doesn’t understand the language, just like the reader.

     Bad:
     Jorge looked around. “¿Dónde está el baño?”
     “Vuelta de la esquina,” Nancy answered.

    Good:
     Jorge asked in Spanish where the bathroom was, and Nancy answered in Spanish, “Around the corner.”
     Or:
     Jorge looked around. “¿Dónde está el baño?”
     “The bathroom is around the corner,” Nancy answered in Spanish.

Then continue the conversation in English, allowing the reader to assume the characters continued to speak in Spanish.

5. Dialogue in fiction should sound like real conversations but have a much higher level of content than normal conversations. It should also be precise, with the meaning as clear as possible. It should always move the story forward in some way. Summarize the salt and pepper dialogue in narrative so you can get directly to the good stuff—emotion and conflict.

     Bad:
     “Hello, Sally, how are you?”
     “Okay, I guess, and you?”
     “I’m fine,” Mary replied. “But why’d you just say you were okay. Is something wrong?”
     Sally wrung her hands. “My cat is missing.”
     “Oh dear, for how long?”

     Good:
     After greeting Mary, Sally wrung her hands and said that her cat was missing.
     “Oh dear, for how long?”

Dialogue Lessons: The Big Picture, Part 4

During September I'll be sharing some notes here on my blog from my "The Art of Writing Dialogue" workshop that I've presented to many writing groups. I presented the first three lessons on Mechanics, the nitty gritty little details of writing dialogue, last week. This week and next, I'll go into The Big Picture, using character traits, conflict, and emotion to infuse a real-life feel into dialogue, to make it pop off the page. The goal is to drag readers by the throat right into the book. Here are the first three of ten "rules of thumb" for The Big Picture:

1. Show Character Traits in Speech: Use dialogue to show your characters’ sex, age, ethnicity, and culture. But avoid phonetic spelling that makes the dialogue hard to read. Rely on rhythm and word choice instead to show your character’s background, and maybe a description of their voice. If your character would use contractions in their speech, use them, but if they wouldn’t (if English is their second language, for example), don’t. Women usually are more verbal than men, so make men’s dialogue lines shorter.

     Bad:
     “Ah reckon ah don' haff ta go dowan tuh th' rivuh tuhday, 'cawse we gots awl th' feeush we gwine need,” Buford said.

     Good:
     “I reckon I don't have to go down to the river today,” Buford said in a slow Southern drawl, “‘cause we gots all the fish we gonna need.”

2. Show Vocation in Speech: People who engage in different vocations or avocations have their own sub-language and terms that they sprinkle in their conversations. When you interview experts in the job, hobby, sport, or craft that you’re using in your fiction, write down expressions and terms they use as well as the information they give you. Then weave that specific sub-language into your dialogue.

3. Give each of your main characters a distinctive dialogue pattern or quirk, so readers can use that to distinguish speakers. Then you don’t need tags as often.

Naming Characters After Real People

I'm blogging at Inkspot, the blog for Midnight Ink authors, today about the only times I name characters after real people. It's when they make the winning bid on a character name in an upcoming novel of mine in a silent or live auction for a literacy-related charity that most mystery fan conferences conduct.

Please read my post to learn about the fun I had with the latest two character names. Also, if you've ever had a character named after you in a mystery novel, please tell all! What did you think of the experience?

Dialogue Lessons: Mechanics, Part 3

As promised last Friday, during the rest of September I'll be sharing some notes here from my "The Art of Writing Dialogue" workshop that I've presented to many writing groups. I presented the first two lessons on Mechanics, the nitty gritty little details of writing dialogue, earlier this week. The last of three lessons on Mechanics will be today, with the final five "rules of thumb." Over the next two weeks, I'll go into the Big Picture, using character traits, conflict, and emotion to infuse a real-life feel into dialogue, to make it pop off the page. On to more Mechanics:

12. Italicize foreign language words in dialogue and use the proper diacritical marks.

13. Avoid informational dialogue by bringing in an ignorant character who has to be told everything, by putting the information in a thought or narrative, or by some other means.

14. Avoid direct address except when it is needed for emphasis, such as when a mother screams a child’s full name when he’s in trouble. Usually, direct address seems unnatural or stilted.

     Bad:     “Please hand me that poker, Mary,” John said as he knelt by the hearth.
                 “Okay, John. Here.” Mary peered at the fire. “Aren’t you a little close, John?”
     Good:   John knelt by the hearth. “Please hand me that poker.”
                 “Here.” Mary peered at the fire. “Aren’t you a little close?”

15. Have your characters ask and answer questions one at a time, so the reader doesn’t get confused.

     Bad:
     “Where are Tom and Sally? Weren’t they supposed to be here? And is Jane supposed to be here?”
     “Tom and Sally are at the mall, and no, I didn’t invite them. Of course she’s supposed to be here. Why’d you ask?”

     Good:    (This would be even better with some business and tags added.)
     “Where are Tom and Sally?”
     “They’re at the mall.”
     “Weren’t they supposed to be here?”
     “No, I didn’t invite them.”
     “And is Jane supposed to be here?”
     “Of course she’s supposed to be here. Why’d you ask?”

16. Try not to switch more than once or twice between dialogue and narrative in the same paragraph, because then the dialogue gets lost. Make sure there’s more dialogue than narrative in a paragraph that combines the two, for the same reason. If you need to, pull the narrative out of the dialogue paragraph.

     Bad:
     “Looks like he’s unconscious,” Mandy shouted to the woman. “I’m going to need your help pulling him in.” The woman shot her a wild-eyed "What, are you kidding?" look, but Mandy chose to ignore it. The ominous roar of Number Five downstream was way more important. Powering her oar strokes with her back, Mandy yelled out explanations. “I’ll come up alongside him then pull him onto the other pontoon. I need you to grab whatever you can on him and help pull him up.”

     Good:
     “Looks like he’s unconscious,” Mandy shouted to the woman. “I’m going to need your help pulling him in.”
     The woman shot her a wild-eyed "What, are you kidding?" look, but Mandy chose to ignore it. The ominous roar of Number Five downstream was way more important.
     Powering her oar strokes with her back, Mandy yelled out explanations. “I’ll come up alongside him then pull him onto the other pontoon. I need you to grab whatever you can on him and help pull him up.”

(This final example was taken from my Deadly Currents mystery. I doctored the Good version in the book to come up with the Bad version.)

Dialogue Lessons: Mechanics, Part 2

As promised last Friday, during the rest of September I'll be sharing some notes here from my "The Art of Writing Dialogue" workshop that I've presented to many writing groups. I presented the first lesson on Mechanics, the nitty gritty little details of writing dialogue, on Monday. The second of three lessons on Mechanics will be today, with the next six "rules of thumb."

6. Don’t let your characters give speeches to each other. The dialogue should flow back and forth in a natural give and take. If a dialogue paragraph is more than three lines long, it’s probably too long. Insert a question or reaction remark from the other character in the middle to break it up. You may find that one of the middle sentences of the speech can be reworded into a question from the other character.

7. Remember that people breathe while speaking, so insert natural breaks (pauses, commas, periods, actions) where your characters would take a breath. If a phrase is too long for you to say out loud without taking a breath, break it up.

8. Don’t have a string of more than five dialogue paragraphs in a row without a tag. At that point, the reader gets confused about who is saying what, even if just two characters are talking. If more than two characters are conversing, you’ll likely need to tag almost every line of dialogue.

9. Be careful with pronouns. If two women are speaking, ‘she’ is not a helpful tag. If two women and two men are speaking, neither ‘he’ nor ‘she’ is helpful, so you will have to use names or other identifiers, such as "the tall woman" and "the chubby old man."

10. Try to avoid awkward tags after question marks or exclamation marks.

     Bad:     “What is that dog doing?” John asked.
     Good:   John pointed. “What is that dog doing?”
     Bad:     “Watch out!” Jill yelled.
     Good:   Jill tensed. “Watch out!” or “Watch out,” Jill yelled.

11. Leave out the qualifiers, stammers, and pause words that people use in everyday speech, but that don’t move the story forward.

     Bad:     “Well, um, I don’t know if I should. Like, would you?”
     Good:   “I don’t know if I should. Would you?”

Dialogue Lessons: Mechanics, Part 1

As promised last Friday, during the rest of September I'll be sharing some notes here from my "The Art of Writing Dialogue" workshop that I've presented to many writing groups. After establishing some common ground with definitions Friday, here's the first lesson on Mechanics, the nitty gritty little details of writing dialogue. I'll present sixteen "rules of thumb" in this Mechanics section, the first five of which I'll cover today.

1. Put each character’s dialogue and/or actions in separate paragraphs (such as the four separate paragraphs below).

     “Watch what you’re doing,” Jake shouted.
     Becky cringed. “Sorry about that.”
     “That’s okay,” Jake said. “Just do better next time.”
     Becky carefully put the vase back on the shelf.

2. Separate the dialogue from character tags with commas, unless a new sentence begins after a tag (see above).

     Bad:     “Hang onto the raft”, yelled Mandy to the woman.
                 “Okay.” The woman said. “but I don’t know how long I can”.
     Good:  “Hang onto the raft,” Mandy yelled at the woman.
                 “Okay,” the woman said, “but I don’t know how long I can.”

3. Stick mostly with three basic speaking verbs (said, asked, replied/answered) and sparingly use some that indicate volume (whispered, murmured, shouted, yelled). Use ‘said’ most of the time, because readers’ eyes are trained to skip it. Only use ‘hissed’ if what’s being said contains S’s.

     Bad:     “You fool,” Gregorio hissed.
     Good:   “You stupid ass,” Gregorio hissed.

4. Avoid animal sounds (growled, chirped, tittered, croaked) and other weird speech tags (opined, blustered, mused, cried, orated). And don’t substitute a non-speech word for ‘said’ in a tag.

     Bad:     “You’re looking mighty fine tonight,” he leered.
     Good:   He leered at her. “You’re looking mighty fine tonight.”

5. Put the tag as close to the beginning of the dialogue line as you can, where the first comma or period would appear, so the reader knows who is speaking as soon as possible. Also, if emotion is expressed in the tag, that will "flavor" the speech that follows.

     Bad:     “You are a moron, an absolute moron. I’m surprised you know which foot to put your shoe on in the morning,” Robert said with a sneer.
     Better:  “You are a moron,” Robert said with a sneer, “an absolute moron. I’m surprised you know which foot to put your shoe on in the morning.”
     Best:    Robert sneered. “You are a moron, an absolute moron. I’m surprised you know which foot to put your shoe on in the morning.”

Dialogue Lessons

I will be doing a fair amount of traveling in September, so I made the decision not to have guests on my blog for the rest of the month because promoting and managing their posts will be difficult. Don't worry, though. I have a full slate of guests lined up for October! In the meantime, I thought I'd share some notes from my "The Art of Writing Dialogue" workshop that I've presented to many writing groups. I hope my blog readers who are writers find these posts to be useful, and I hope my blog readers who are readers will gain an appreciation for how difficult dialogue can be to write.

I'll start with definitions today, so we're all on the same page:

Dialogue – A conversation between characters in a narrative. It can and should include thoughts, emotions, actions, gestures, facial expressions and more in addition to speech.

Dialogue tag - A noun or pronoun identifying the person speaking and a speech action verb (said, asked, replied, shouted, etc.). Also called an attribution or identifier. It should always be written with the noun first and verb second.

Talking Heads – When a passage of dialogue contains just speech ping-ponging back and forth between characters and not much else.

Informational Dialogue – When two characters who already know something still tell each other about it, as a clumsy device to give the reader the information.
     “As you know, Betsy, our mother is sixty-four.”
     “Yes, and our brother Bill was born three years after I was.”

Direct Address – When one character calls another one by name within the dialogue.

Salt and Pepper – The boring bits of dialogue that we use in everyday life, such as “Hello, how are you?” or “Please pass the salt and pepper.” that should be left out of fiction dialogue.

Business – The narrative, thoughts, gestures, actions, facial expressions, and so on that flavor dialogue, giving it emotional context and revealing the characters’ motives and conflicts in more depth than words alone can convey.

That's it for today! Tune in next week for some how-tos on Mechanics, the nitty gritty little details of writing dialogue.

Today's Mystery Author Guest: Jennifer Harlow

As promised yesterday, fellow Midnight Ink mystery author Jennifer Harlow is visiting my blog today. To read her bio and see her photo, please page down to yesterday's post.

The photo above is the cover for her new release this week, To Catch a Vampire, the second book in her F.R.E.A.K.S. Squad Investigation series. In the book, Beatrice Alexander, telekinetic special agent, is still adjusting to life among the F.R.E.A.K.S. while wiping out zombies and other supernatural threats. When Bea learns about her "special assignment" investigating a series of human disappearances with Oliver Montrose, her gorgeous but annoying vampire co-worker, she reluctantly agrees to go undercover. Disguised as a married couple, they infiltrate the gothic vamp scene in Dallas. While sniffing out clues, Oliver's convincing public—and not so public—displays of affection have Bea swooning in her bustier and fishnets. Between contending with her fake husband's ex-lover Marianna and feeling guilty for hiding the mission from her werewolf crush Will, Bea discovers she's not the only F.R.E.A.K. keeping secrets. Clubbing with the undead turns bloody when Oliver's old enemy, the Lord of Dallas, decides to seek his revenge. Caught in the crossfire, Bea is up to her neck in blood-sucking trouble.

This sounds like a really fun read! Below is Jennifer's guest article about her love for libraries. Please feel free to tell us about your favorite library or to ask Jennifer a question in the comments.

For the Love of Libraries

Jennifer Harlow

Reading is in my blood. Both my parents are huge readers. In a week they go through a book a day. I can't remember a single week in my whole life where they haven't had a book in their hands. Every night before I went to bed as a child one or the other read at least two stories to me. (Did I mention that my parents are awesome? Well, they are.) I got this "reading" gene big time. The story goes that when I was four Mom was reading to me, and she noticed I was mouthing the words before she said them. She handed me the book and I started reading to her. I haven't stopped since. On rare days when I have nothing to do I have been known to read three books in that one day. They're usually James Patterson's, but I still count them. So libraries were a big part of my childhood and still are today. I Heart Libraries.

The first time I realized this I was eight. We were living in Sterling, Virginia at the time and they just built this new library. I was going through my classic movie monsters phase, as we all do, and they had all these kid books about them! Here was this magical building that gave me what I wanted. For free! I could get as many as I could carry. I loved this place so much I even volunteered for special programs like animal shows and reading to little kids, well littler than me. (I was eight so I mostly handed out programs to people walking in, but still.) It only lasted a short time because, you know, elementary school got in the way. But Mom would still take me at least once a week to get my fix.

As the years progressed, and we moved around even more (I'm at an even dozen now), I had to find some sort of lifeline. Something that could stay consistent in a crazy world. Libraries provided that. The location might change but their services and the books stayed the same. When I went to college the third thing I did after moving into my dorm and finding the dining hall was to hot-tail it to the library, sit down at a table, and read. The strum and drang inside my head faded away surrounded by all those books. It was as close to home as I could get.

I wrote my books in libraries too. If you're so inclined to stalk me check out the Acknowledgments section of the first book in my F.R.E.A.K.S. Squad Investigation series, Mind Over Monsters. Those are my usual haunts. I just sit down at a table or study carrel, put on my headphones, and write. It gives me a place to focus on the task at hand. (And on occasion shoot flirty looks at cute guys.) Libraries are a safe place to do research, be quiet, and find my next mental adventure. So imagine my glee when I came in to work on my next novel and found my own book on the shelves. Even better when an hour later I went to see it and the book was gone and one of the librarians I know winked at me as I passed. So yes, I love libraries and the people who work in them. Always have, always will. They make what I do possible (and give me a free fix of my drug of choice).

So support your local library. Volunteer. Donate books. If you see programs getting cut due to budget problems, speak out. Viva la biblioteca revolucion!

Tomorrow's Guest: Jennifer Harlow

Tomorrow, fellow Midnight Ink mystery author Jennifer Harlow will be a guest on my blog.
Jennifer spent her restless childhood fighting with her three brothers and scaring the heck out of herself with horror movies and books. She grew up to earn a degree at the University of Virginia which she put to use as a radio DJ, crisis hotline volunteer, bookseller, lab assistant, wedding coordinator, and government investigator. Currently she calls Northern Virginia home but that restless itch is ever present. In her free time she continues to scare the beejepers out of herself watching scary movies and opening her credit card bills.

In her guest post tomorrow, Jennifer Harlow talks about why she loves libraries, and I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what she has to say. Then, feel free to ask her some questions in the comments.