Tomorrow's Guest: Jeffrey Marks

Tomorrow, author Jeffrey Marks will be a guest on my blog. He is a long-time mystery fan and freelancer. After numerous mystery author profiles, he chose to chronicle the short but full life of mystery writer Craig Rice.

That biography (Who Was That Lady?) encouraged him to write mystery fiction. His works include Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s/1950s, and a biography of mystery author and critic Anthony Boucher entitled Anthony Boucher. It was nominated for an Agatha and fittingly, won an Anthony.

He is the long-time moderator of MurderMustAdvertise, an on-line discussion group dedicated to book marketing and public relations, to which I belong and contribute to. Also, he is the author of Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel, the only how-to book for promoting genre fiction, and one which I use all the time.

His work has won a number of awards including the Barnes and Noble Prize and he was nominated for a Maxwell award (DWAA), an Edgar (MWA), three Agathas (Malice Domestic), two Macavity awards, and three Anthony awards (Bouchercon). Today, he writes from his home in Cincinnati, which he shares with his partner and two dogs.

In his post tomorrow, Jeffrey will share his expertise in where to find the latest in mystery titles and releases. I'm sure both mystery readers and authors will want to tune in and read that article! Also, he will be available to answer questions about his own books, the mystery genre in general, and marketing mystery novels, so feel free to ask him a question in a comment.

Reviewing Films

Recently my husband and I volunteered to review films for the Breckenridge Film Festival, to help the committee decide what films to show at the June festival. As a fiction author myself, I'm familiar with the structure of story-telling, and as a former Universal Studios guide and techie friend of Pixar programmers, my husband is interested in the technology of special effects. So, we felt like we had something to offer as reviewers.

Last week, we watched and evaluated about a half dozen films, from shorts to feature length, dramas to documentaries. We both rated each one on a 5 point scale, with 1 being "a horrible film" and 5 being "yes, definitely include it in the festival." We also both provided a paragraph of text explaining our rating. I've used all but one of the 5 categories so far. We'll be reviewing films for two more weeks.

It's been an interesting experience to be on the evaluation side of the review equation, rather than having my own books evaluated by reviewers and readers. I often find that looking at other people's stories with a critical eye helps me hone my skills in ferreting out negative aspects of my own writing that need fixing. My experience in judging writing contests and participating in critique groups has proven this to be true. And, I expect the same from my film reviewing experience.

It's also exposed me to some very interesting projects. My horizons have been expanded, and I expect that attending the festival itself will expand them even more. I admire the risks that these filmmakers are taking, even when those risks don't pan out. If you have the opportunity to attend and/or volunteer for a film festival near you, I suggest you do it! You'll get a lot out of it.

(Photo by: http://www.anna-OM-line.com)

A Day Off

I took yesterday off from editing to ski at Copper Mountain. Here's a photo of me with three friends there (I'm in the red suit). Back to editing today ...

Author At Work ...

I'm taking off from blogging this week to focus on final edits for my CATARACT CANYON manuscript. Please wish me luck, and please tune back in next week, when a very special guest will visit. In the meantime, for your enjoyment, here are some funny cartoons that illustrate 101 Excuses Not to Write.

Watching a River Come Back to Life

American Rivers is my favorite river conservation nonprofit, and I contribute to it regularly. I was moved by this article at their website about how dam removal has helped a river come back to life as steelhead, other fish and wildlife, and the health of the entire stream has dramatically improved. Take a look!

Horse Creek Dam: Six Years After It Was Blown to Bits

And just for fun, here's a link to an article giving 5 Reasons Whitewater Rafting Is Better Than A Theme Park!

Multitasking as a Series Author

Today I am over at Inkspot, the blog for Midnight Ink authors, talking about multitasking as a series author, which I equate to juggling. Please visit the blog and let me know how you keep those balls in the air in your life!

The Next Phase: Full Manuscript Review

Like many writers I know, I belong to a writing critique group, where we periodically review and comment on each other's work. My group meets twice a month, and we can submit up to 20 pages or 5000 words for critique each time. That means it takes quite a few months to review a whole book-length manuscript. Like the pencil pusher above, I've been pushing chapters of my latest manuscript through my critique group for a long time and have been editing the chapters based on their feedback. They still have a few chapters to go, but it's time to move on to the next phase of soliciting feedback on my manuscript.

That phase is a full manuscript review, where I ask others to read the full book manuscript at once and give me overall comments on the whole thing. One of the main things that this can accomplish that is hard to do one chapter at a time is to discover pacing problems, where the story slows down too much and the reader loses interest. Another type of problem that a full manuscript review can often find is continuity or logic problems that span multiple chapters--or skip multiple chapters.

Yesterday, I sent off the full manuscript of my latest book project (Cataract Canyon, the third book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series) to two trusted reviewers. The first is my literary agent. She reviews all of my manuscripts before I deliver them to my publisher. She has a good feel for the mystery market, for quality writing, and for what readers prefer and can tolerate, so I respect her judgement. The second reviewer is a fellow mystery author whose work I admire and who has traded critiques with me in the past. He doesn't have a full manuscript for me to review right now, but I am willing and ready to return the huge favor whenever he finishes his next book-length manuscript.

While I wait for their feedback, I'll continue to edit the manuscript myself, using critique group feedback and my own editing criteria and guidelines that I've developed for myself over the years. And, I'll hope that my two full manuscript reviewers don't find anything drastically wrong!