Cover Shoot and Reveal for NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL

The second instalment in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries releases November 26th as an e-book. We wrote this novella to bridge the gap in publishing between DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT and A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. Matt and Leigh’s second case together occurs very soon after their first in the timeline. As an added bonus, the first several chapters of A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH will follow the novella itself as a taste of what’s next in the series.

Since Ann and I are self-pubbing this series entry, we also decided to tackle doing the cover ourselves. No easy task when we’re fitting into the framework of excellent existing series covers:

Luckily, my eldest daughter is currently in the second year of her Bachelor of Applied Arts in Photography program and she offered her skills and artistic eye—as well as the school’s professional studio—to produce the cover.

We did the cover shoot last week. My youngest daughter was kind enough to be our model, so it was a real family affair. Here are a few behind the scenes shots from the cover shoot in progress.

Model positioning and lighting set up:

The moment that turned into the final shot:

After the shoot came post production. I knew the shot I wanted as soon as I saw it, but we needed to play around with the possibilities of full colour versus black and white:

While we wanted to convey the starkness of the victim’s plight, we decided that black and white was too monochromatic. In the end, we decided that a desaturated version of the full colour photo best conveyed our theme.

Then came cropping, image correction, and adding authors’ names and the Abbott and Lowell series banner. We decided on a title font that had a touch of Sanskrit flow to it, and we were done.

We’re proud to present our final result:

Only the joint forces of science and law enforcement can help when a young woman is found brutally murdered with her identity erased.

Massachusetts State Police Trooper Leigh Abbott and forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell come together to solve their second case when the remains of a young woman are found, thrown away like garbage at a local landfill. But what seems straightforward becomes something much more sinister when the victim’s bone damage reveals a shocking history of abuse. It will take reliving the horrors of Matt’s military background, all the team’s forensic skills, and Leigh’s intuition combined for them to catch the killer and give the victim the justice she deserves.

So what do you think of our new cover?

We’re in the finishing stages of putting together a mini street team for this release. So if you read and loved DEAD, would like to get early, free access to our material and would be willing to write reviews on the book for Amazon and Goodreads to help create buzz, please let me know and I’d be happy to add you to our list!

Photo credit: Jessica Newton Photography

Gone Fishing...

This glorious picture by the über talented hpaich pretty much sums up the life of leisure I'd like to be experiencing this week. But, in reality, Ann and I are in the final week of finishing up Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #4 - TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER - so we're taking a week off from blogging to slave away on our manuscript.

But stay tuned on Wednesday of next week for a very special guest post as writing bud and fellow Seymour Agency author Marianne Harden launches her debut humorous mystery - MALICIOUS MISCHIEF.

Photo credit: hpaich

Crafting the Perfect Villain

Snidely Whiplash

I’m back this week with more craft tips from Bouchercon 2013. This week, I'm covering the panel on crafting the perfect villain with authors Barbara Fister, Michael Dymmoch, Steve Hamilton, Joe Lansdale, Jon McFetridge, and Helen Smith. Michael Dymmock started off by reminding the audience that the villain is the hero of his own story, always a good point for any writer to keep in mind when you’re trying to create a real and believable character. Of course, in some cases, the villain or antagonist isn’t even a person—instead it could be the forces of nature or a deadly pathogen—but for the sake of simplicity in this blog post, I'm only talking about a human antagonist.

How can we craft effective villains that don’t cross the line into unbelievable caricature? The panel offered some tips and aspects to consider:

• Some villains are simply pure evil, but another angle on a good villain is to create one that readers actually like and then are sorry to see caught.

• It’s important to understand the other side. We need to understand evil to be able to write it convincingly. Most of us can—just because we understand what might drive a person to horrific acts, doesn’t mean we’d ever actually act on those impulses ourselves. But being able to empathize to a certain extent allows us to write a compelling character. Try writing from the villain’s perspective to help create that empathy and make your villain multidimensional.

• Bad guys don’t always know they’re bad. It’s all a matter of point-of-view: what seems evil to one person, might seem like a minor offence or a totally justifiable action to another. Sometimes it’s about the spectrum of shades of gray. Real villains are also well-rounded. You may have a villain who is hell bent on destroying your hero, but who supports local charities. Full bodied characters are multidimensional.

• Good can be a sliding scale and sometimes the good guy is only slightly less bad than the bad guy. Multidimensional characters and complex storytelling is interesting, and only rarely can you convincingly write a single-mindedly bad guy like Snidley Whiplash opposing a purely good guy like Dudley Do-Right. Heroes like Dexter are questionably ‘heroic’ and are often only a few notches above the antagonist on that sliding scale.

• Craft your villain to suit the scope of your story. A big city villain may have a larger than life personality, but you may want to create a more subtle character in an intimate small town (unless, of course, you want your villain to stand out like a sore thumb right from the very first page).

• Make it all about internal emotions, not external characteristics. In other words, an eye patch doesn’t make a villain. It’s how that character feels about the eye patch and why he has to wear it that might push him over the edge to villainy.

• If you’re having trouble creating a believable villain, pick someone you know and exaggerate their characteristics. This grounds the character firmly in reality but pushes them towards extreme behavior.

Thanks to the authors on this panel for a fascinating discussion and some very solid advice!

Pacing as a Writing Tool

My recent trip to Bouchercon in Albany was enjoyable not only from the aspect of an author meeting her readers, but also as a writer who is always looking to improve her craft. Just because you’re a published author doesn’t mean that there is nothing left to learn. So I made it a point to attend several panels on writing craft.

One of the panels I attended was on pacing. Authors Toni Kelner, A. X. Ahmad, Daniel Friedman, Michael Kardos, Dale T. Phillips, and Julie Pomeroy discussed the finer points of pacing stories, specifically in crime fiction. It was an excellent panel, so I wanted to cover some of their ideas here.

Unlike literary fiction, crime fiction authors needs to get into their story immediately and escalate quickly from there. The panel authors shared many of their tips and tricks to crafting a well-paced and exciting storyline:

• The sliding scale of pacing depends on specific subgenres. Cozy mysteries are expected to have a slower pace than thrillers, and police procedurals tend to have a slow, stately buildup as the case progresses. Write according to the basic rules of your subgenre.

• Even when the pace of the story is rapid, both the story and the readers need time to breathe. A story that goes at breakneck pace for the entire novel may actually leave readers feeling exhausted rather than breathless with anticipation. Good stories give the protagonist moments to reflect on what is happening to him, rather than doing nothing more than constantly reacting.

• Pacing can be the by-product of a good plot. An exhilarating and intriguing story will naturally keep the pace moving without needing superfluous Michael Bay-like explosions to artificially ramp up the tension.

• If you’re going to blow up something, don’t do it on page one before the reader has a chance to connect with your characters because they simply won’t care. Once they know and love your characters, putting them in jeopardy as a natural part of the plot will pick up the pace and keep the reader turning the page.

• A pacing tip: Start your story in motion. Have your character on the move, hurrying from place to place, or in the car. This gives a sense of urgency right from the opening line.

• Add a clock. Nothing ramps up the tension like a life or death deadline or a ticking clock à la 24.

• Alternate scenes to pick up the pace. This is a film trick directors often employ. Change up POV and scene locations in short cuts to increase urgency.

• Use high stakes to propel your story and give it energy.

• Pacing doesn’t always equal action. Use dialogue instead as it can be loaded with emotional stakes for your characters

• Short chapters can give the impression of speeding up your storytelling and will keep the reader flipping right to the next chapter.

• As the recently deceased Elmore Leonard is famous for saying—leave out the parts people skip.

Hopefully, you’ll find these tips as helpful as I did. In the next writing post, I’m going to cover the excellent panel on creating the perfect villain.

Photo credit: -cavin­-