murder.booklocker.com

A member wrote the Chicago Writers Association asking help on how to bump up the word count of a work in progress. There were abundant replies urging her not to focus on the number of words — I can feel her pain. But in the middle of all the hoohah, came the question, “Can you think of any way to ‘up the ante’ for the characters, make it harder for them to get what they want?”

I have to tell you that I sat up straight when I read that. Back in the good old days (last year) when I working on my master’s degree, the professors hammered a lot (okay, maybe I mean yammered!) about conflict and desire. What does the main character want needs to be coupled with how can I keep him/her from getting it. When you write like that, voila! You have conflict. Which is dramatic. Which drives the story forward.

Hmm. Since then I’ve been rethinking a story that I’m working on. A fairly simple tale which touches on the paranormal, I find the concept intriguing all by itself. Two people that I let in on the secret seemed to think so as well. Then what do I do with that question, “Can you up the ante?”

As I see it my character has no burning desire; the dilemma just crosses her path and she copes as best she can. [Trust me, it has a clever ending] But viewed another way, the story becomes more compelling. If she has a specific desire (other than fulfilling the requirements for her degree) and that desire is thwarted by the introduction of the paranormal, then twin branches open up. One, she has to deal with the intrusion. Two, she still has to accomplish her original goal.

So see, I did learn a thing or two in school and I’m still learning.

I mentioned recently that I had joined a blogging group known as Blogher. I had posted a comment there about the first review of my book, PARK RIDGE: A Senior Center Murder. Someone stopped by and left a comment about the murder by banana (I also wrote about this a couple of months ago here at murder.booklocker.com).

Life is chock full of surprises. On Saturday when Luanne returned from the bank, she handed me a slip of paper with two names on it. I immediately recognized them as being old classmates.

I trotted myself off to the bank to make contact with Kendra yesterday, taking her a copy of the Journal-Topics newspaper article to send to Melody. It was good to toss names and memories at each other. Somewhere along the way, she mentioned Bill Madden, who had also graduated with us from Maine West. She said that he’d written lots of books. Sure enough, Amazon has quite a list for him!

Since writers are always looking for publishers, I checked one of Bill’s books. It was Indianapolis: In Vintage Postcards (Postcard History Series) from Arcadia Publishing. Evidently they specialize in history, even small towns. Which set me to thinking. At the Joliet Library Authors Fair we saw a book about Joliet that had just been published. I did a search for it on Arcadia’s site and found it! It’s by Marianne Wolf.

What were the odds that Kendra would still live in Des Plaines? Or that she would be in contact with Bill? Or that Bill would be published by a company who also published a woman who was at the Joliet Authors Fair that we attended?

P.S.

I’m adding this a day later because I wrote to W.C. Madden saying that I hadn’t seen him on the Maine West Alumni Authors page. Since he has written extensively about baseball (Amazon says “he chairs the regional chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research”), I thought he would be curious to know that someone else from high school had written about baseball. Joel Hawkins ‘82 wrote The House of David Baseball Team.

Bill wrote back:

“I met him a few years ago in South Bend and purchased his book then. Nice guy. I didn’t know he was from Maine West. Small world sometimes. Interesting book. We write for the same publisher then.”

See? I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a small world.

We’ve been getting all sorts of catalogs in the mail — everybody wants to sell us something to give as gifts for Christmas, I guess. I’ve been keeping track of the sayings inscribed on t-shirts and ballcaps that might turn into an article of interest to senior citizens. [Interesting thing that word(s) ball cap. Because I used it as two words in my book, someone wrote to ask me if I was Canadian. However, if I type it as one word, the spelling checker from Word highlights it and gives me the option of changing it to "Balkan" or "black." Maybe Word is Canadian.] The most recent slogan (and forgive me for misquoting — we’ve already pitched the catalog) was that perennial favorite which reminds you that Excrement Occureth.

Well, a boatload of it occured this morning. I opened my browser which is set to my home page. Instead of seeing the familiar grey background with its artfully arranged blocks of color, with links to my Emily Dickinson research, links to my books and classes, a link to the artist, Barbara Weber Wright, a page of photos and writings by Donna Jackson, and to Luanne’s recipes and flowers — lo and behold (sounds Christmas-y, doesn’t it?) there were only two words.

I instantly fired off WS_FTP which I use to post pages to my site. My files were still there; however, there were lots of files which did not belong to me. When I queried my hosting service I was told:

“The sites are now down.  What we believe happened is that our co-lo site got hacked (presumably by the XXXX), although they have not yet confirmed this.

“We have taken the sites down and are cleaning them or restoring from backup as necessary, and are putting everything onto new hardware with new settings, IP and DNS, etc. etc.”

Which in non-geek-speak means excrement in the machinery, deposited by someone using the server as a porta-potty.

I can only hope the site is back up soon.

A friend in Desert Hot Springs, California, bought my book. Yea! Then a few weeks later, Larry wrote to ask if he sent the book to me, would I return it with an autograph. I agreed, then immediately changed my mind. “How about you donate your copy to the local library?” I asked. “I’ll just sign another copy and send it to you.” And that, folks, is how I got my book on a shelf of the Desert Hot Springs Library!

Larry and I had lost touch — long before graduation from high school, which, if my math is right, was forty-one years ago. Then a few years back he and his wife, Barbara Weber, came to visit Larry’s mother. He gave me a phone call and we had a couple of meals together. Since then we’ve kept in touch by email. You can check out his website and that of his wife.

I’m just beginning to understand how important participation on-line is when it comes to marketing my work. In looking at what other writers have tried, I found a website called BlogHer, which touts itself as being “where the women bloggers are.” I haven’t had much time to read very many of the posts but I like the idea that it’s broken down into categories. Who knows? Maybe that’s where I’ll find an agent or publisher?

Last night I was fooling around with my Author Profile page on Amazon. I have yet to discover how to arrive there without using Google! Anyway, while searching I discovered that Kaye Trout had posted a review of PARK RIDGE: A Senior Center Murder. She called my book, “traditional mystery genre with a touch of romance.” She also noted that “This was a good read, primarily because Cheryl Hagedorn is a good writer.” She ended with the recommendation that, “If you’re a mystery buff, you’ll most likely enjoy this well-written tale.”

Kaye specializes in “reviewing Print-On-Demand (POD) published books for [her] website, Midwest Book Review, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookreview.com.”