Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified

A Good Use of Paper

Surrounded as we are by environmental awareness, I find myself re-examining things I've long taken for granted.  For example, when I buy a box of rice, does it really need to have a package inside an empty box - wouldn't the package have been enough?  I'm not a huge fan of junk mail, either - most of it goes straight into the recycling bin, though my wife has been doing most of her Christmas, birthday, etc., shopping through catalogs and loves them.  The catalog companies are on to us, because I think we get every one under the sun.  

A lot of people talk about ebooks being better for the environment - no trees killed, no paper wasted. I can't disagree with that argument; I'm a supporter of ebooks for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I believe we need to deliver our content in whatever format our readers want it.  

But what of newspapers, magazines, and books?  A lot of paper each year goes into the printing of these each year--and on recycling days, I see mounds and mounds of paper being recycled, including phone directories (does anyone use these any more, now that we have the Internet?).  

As a society we have to decide where to put our resources, where our priorities lie.  Call me a traditionalist, but I think that books are an excellent use of trees and paper.  After all, for centuries they were one of the primary vehicles by which knowledge and research were transmitted - and they still are.  I won't get into a defense of the printed book per se, because that's all been done before. What I'm getting at is more my belief that printed books, magazines, and newspapers are NOT wasteful. All of these printed items transmit knowledge, culture, entertainment - staples of our society, and of humanity. 

Books, when unwanted, are eminently recyclable - don't clog up landfills - and don't leave behind toxic poisons that contaminate the soil for decades or centuries. And, fortunately, trees are a renewable resource.  If some (or many of them) need to chopped down so that we can keep printing books, then so be it - they have served an excellent purpose, and more trees will grow in their stead. (I say this as a proud and sustaining member of the Arbor Day Society.)  

We need books - therefore we need the paper they are printed on.  I'm not suggesting here that paper is not wasted (how many of us print out all the emails we get?), but rather that, in the final analysis, books are an excellent use of natural resources.  Then again, how could I do my job and feel otherwise?

What Are You Trying to Accomplish?

A question I often asking aspiring novelists, directly or indirectly,is "What are you trying to accomplish?" The response is often, "I want to get published."

Wrong answer!

I know we are dealing with genre fiction here, but many people probably remember their college writing classes and those boring dictates of the five-paragraph essay. Young writers are encouraged to consider their audience and their purpose. Without these considerations, the conventional wisdom goes, the piece of writing will lack focus and interest.

True or untrue?  Very, very true, I would say.

Audience is a topic for another post (at a later date, if I remember to write it) but for today I wanted to opine about the importance of knowing what your manuscript's purpose is. What, exactly, are you trying to do?  The answer can be simple or more complicated, but I believe that the books that get bought are usually the books whose authors can answer this question succinctly and provocatively.  Here's a range of responses, some real, some made up, all good:

• I want to take people away to another world, where they can escape the stresses of their lives with characters they care about.
• I want to explore women's roles in law enforcement and some of the contradictions of feminism.
• I want people to race through my book in one sitting.
• I want to explore the difference between the way children perceive one another versus the way adults perceive those same children.

Do you see what I'm getting at here?  At the heart of crime fiction we have, of course, a crime to be solved (in most cases), a set of characters, a setting, a protagonist. These make up the skeleton on which all writers build their novels. But for a novel to work (for me, at least) I have to have a sense of its deeper or underlying purpose--what the author was hoping to accomplish in the work. This need not be a "serious" purpose a la Vachss or Connelly, but I want to know (and I usually see very quickly) what authorial intent lurks behind these 70,000 words.

If you're writing a book or preparing to submit to agents, you might ask yourself this question, then answer it in your query letter.  A good sentence or two on this could open a lot of doors.

GOOD: My plot's over the top, even a little outlandish, but if the National Enquirer has taught us anything, it's that sensationalism sells.  My book is sensationalistic and gossipy, and while it's meant as a fast, juicy read, I like to think it will also make people think a bit about the excesses of celebrity culture and how we buy into it.

BAD: My 70,000 word mystery takes place in Wyoming on a sheep ranch.  Why is someone killing Farmer Brown's sheep?  Is there a crazed serial sheep killer out there?  

GOOD: My protagonist, Mary Smith, is a Brownie Den Mother who turns Sleuth when someone steals her troop's shipment of Thin Mints.  My audience will be primarily cozy lovers, but I'll also give some insight into the unseen, often-insane world of the contest to sell Girl Scout Cookies, and the lengths people will go to, to make sure their daughter wins that cheap plastic $5 prize.

BAD: John Franklin is a cop with an alcohol problem.  He's considering suicide when a phone call from a former girlfriend gets him enmeshed in a bad situation.  I have completed the manuscript and have it available to send at your request.