Category Archives: Research

Valley of the Shadow of Death
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A range of fascinating things my search on the term “valley of the shadow of death” turned up:

There were a lot more. A story about a cuckoo clock. A whole lot of Sept. 11 reminiscences (always encouraging to find that I spelled “reminiscences” correctly).

But nothing that went “click”. Nothing that said, “I’m the shadow you’re searching for.” Might be time to open up Inspiration and dig through some of my old shadows.

No. New document in Word, and ten minutes of free writing with the sentence “I am the shadow you’re looking for” as the first line.

Try it too, if you’re feeling daring.

Anybody know a nice FBI agent?
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I have the horrible feeling that I am about to commit massive stupitude in this novel; part of it hinges on FBI procedure, and after several hours of bookstore perusal yesterday (good for forensics, nothing on the FBI) and several days of searching on the Internet and turning up an enormous amount of garbage and nothing useful on actual FBI procedure, I am at wits end. I want to either exchange e-mails or talk on the phone to an FBI field agent, and ask questions about things like “What is the FBI’s jurisdiction when someone does A or B?” (“A” and “B” in this case being spoilers for Midnight Rain), and “Would you have fingerprints on file for a criminal in this bizarre circumstance?” — (another spoiler). The answers I get will no doubt spawn more questions. I don’t want to call up the local FBI office and say, “Hi, I’m your friendly neighborhood novelist and I want to take time away from your important work to ask you a bunch of idiotic questions so that I won’t look like a fool when this book is published.”

So …. anybody? Anybody?

Tricky bits
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Falling back into the writing yesterday was tough — and I’d actually gone to bed with little done. Thanks to ending up sick, however, I got a lot more done than I thought I would; I got back up and manages to do six pages of an insert demonstrating the effects of magic on Earth as it rebounds up from a war six worlds downworld, by tracking it through the other worlds before it hits.

I spent a great deal of time researching for small cut-scenes — the problem was that I quickly ran out of natural disasters and needed some new ones, but of very specific sorts. The internet is great for research of this sort.

I like the new material, and along with it managed to get a nice chunk of revising done. Sometimes it pays to feel too bad to sleep.

Measure twice, cut once — and the Internet issue
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My first inclination, having roughed out a lot more of the story, was to start writing again yesterday, to push for some pages. I’m getting antsy, watching days go by without my 2000-word fix. But the more I thought, the more I realized I needed to think more — I needed a clearer view of my characters, a stronger understanding of all the obstacles standing between the hero and the heroine, and a sharper feel for the shape of the mid-story, which was still pretty hazy.

I clustered, outlined, character-developed, and researched — all of Crazy for You, by Jennifer Crusie, plus about half of Head Over Heels, by Susan Andersen.

Measure twice, cut once. Old carpentry adage, good for writing too. Sometimes you can just nail two boards together, and something nice will come out. But when you’re genuinely pressed for time and have to get the thing as close to right as humanly possible the first time through, that is the best time to slow down and start measuring. I don’t need another Book That Will Not Die. The three versions of The Wreck of Heaven were enough of that sort of fun for a while.

And then there’s the Internet. I had just logged on, downloaded my mail, and posted my first blog entry yesterday when I noticed our “community” computer behaving peculiarly. I was sitting there looking at a page, but the modem was busy, busy, passing data back and forth. Did a virus scan. Had picked up one trojan horse, two backdoors, and one keystroke logger. Nice.

Windows sucks.

So I got a very big boost in my resolution to stay off the site for a while. My personal computer (which I can’t use during the daytime because of its incovenient location) is clean — I have now checked it and can breathe easy, so I’ll at least be able to check and send e-mails in the evening from it. But during the day, for the next few days, at least, I’m off the Internet completely except to plug in for five seconds to post a “what I accomplished yesterday” blog entry. Feh.

And, since it’s going to be a while until I can get to my e-mail, would someone please pass on the following for me if you see Sheila before tonight?:

Sheila — got the edits, and they’re brilliant. Thank you. Also got the book, and I want the heroine to fire the hero, and I’m enjoying it immensely. More thank you. And more later — but I have to get this e-mail-and-file-security issue nailed down.

Today, I’m going to get some writing done. First, smacking the outline into something approaching final shape, then getting some pages. And then saving the rest of the stuff off of this computer that mattered (already got the photos, that was big), and then reformatting the hard drive. I want a completely clean system. Gonna be a long day.

Another “recommend” from my research list
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Linda Howard’s Now You See Her — very well done; this one much more a traditional romance, and thus less likely to appeal to men, but it did a great job of blending psychic and suspense elements, and the ending was … er … killer.

What this means, by the way, is that Sheila Viehl has really good taste in the books she recommends, since she’s the one who shipped them over. Every one so far has been great. I now have two Iris Johansens — not sure which of the two will be my next read. But I haven’t had this much fun tearing through a pile of books in ages.

Another book to recommend
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Research done for the night. Add Jennifer Crusie and Welcome to Temptation to the list of books read. Technically, this one is more of a comedy with hot sex and murder thrown in, not really a suspense. It has a murder. It doesn’t have much in the way of fear and tension. The corpse, for example, has clearly been attacked by five different people while still alive, and run over by two different cars once dead, and it has moments of deep silliness. The hero’s name is Phineas. You know you’re not in standard romance territory when the hero’s name is Phineas, even if he does go by Phin.

Anyway, it’s funny as hell and a tempting direction to look into, and I can recommend it comfortably. And now, since I still have some night and some energy left, I think I’m going to do some more writing.

Finished late last night, early at work this morning
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I finished the outline and the proposal yesterday, but decided to skip writing on the novel in order to read some more. It was worth skipping. I got most of the way through the Kay House, an excellent paranormal suspense titled Touching Evil. Structurally, it’s a mainstream novel — multiple points of view; heavy emphasis on the suspense; light touch with the romance; a subplot with scenes that include neither the hero nor the heroine (nor the villain); and written in a mainstream style.

Dissecting it told me something I’ve been suspecting as I’ve been researching these, and am delighted to have proven. There is nothing resembling formula at the high end of romantic contemporary suspense and romantic paranormal suspense — no ‘category formula’. Writers are different, styles are different, tones are different. For me, this is terrific news. I’m a structure-heavy writer, but I prefer to be able to define my own structure. It’s nice to find that I have a huge field to move around in before I even start pushing the envelope.

Soon as I finish this, I’ll start writing. Reading works better for later, when the house is noisy and everyone starts wanting things. On to work, then. The clock is ticking.

Hot damn!
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Research package from Sheila arrived. Now I don’t have to read the Bad Book tonight — I have a Linda Howard, a Kay Hooper, and two Iris Johansens to pick from. Saved from what I suspect might have been a fate worse than death for me and the Bad Book’s hero. Or heroine. What the hell, maybe they deserved each other — I didn’t like either one of them when I started the thing.

Deconstructing the business end of contemporary romantic suspense novels … and today
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Yesterday evening, I went through one of my contemporary suspense research examples (Mr. Perfect, by Linda Howard, which I liked) and my examples of sonnets and villainelles suddenly seem much more appropriate. I read and marked it up and found a very definite structure — 3700-word chapters of suspense story (which sets up the heroine and her friends with the villain) alternating with relationship chapters that introduce the heroine to the hero and move them through the stages of their romance, and interspersing a small handful of villain-POV scenes. The hero/heroine romance is connected to the suspense part of the novel exactly at the midpoint, where the first murder occurs.

I’ll note that this is not the formula for the contemporary suspense novel — that it is just the structure of this particular novel. It’s interesting to run through, though, and note how smoothly this structure moves the story forward when handled well. Interestingly, while there’s plenty of sexual tension from the first hero/heroine scene, they don’t actually consummate the relationship until 2/3rds of the way through the book.

Of the three contemporary suspense novels I’ve read in the last three days, this one (which sold the best, by far) has the most clearcut structure if you deconstruct it. It and one other have introduced murder late in the story. There’s a fourth sitting on my work table that apparently sold like gangbusters in spite of the fact that I haven’t been able to drag myself ten pages into it. I’m eyeing it today with loathing, reminding myself that I bought the damned thing to read for structure and pacing, and that, whether I think this author ought to have her computer taken away from her and dropped in a river or not, she still sold the book (and a multitude of companion volumes) to publishers and readers. Something about it must have worked. My mission, which I really don’t want to accept, is to Find …. What … Worked. ::gritting teeth:: ::reminding myself that writers learn as much from bad books as from good books, if they’re open to the lessons offered::

But this morning, thank God, I don’t have to read the Bad Book. I’m doing revisions on the proposal, then writing the last three or four scenes of the outline. This afternoon, I’ll work on writing chapter three of my paranormal suspense, and seeing if I can get a few thousand really good words. This evening, … well, this evening, unfortunately, the Bad Book awaits.