Bell, Book, and Scandal (7 page)

"At the break at three this afternoon. This little girl who tossed me out had the nerve to give me her business card and said I could contact her if I rewrote the book."

"No! That sure takes a lot of gall. She obviously isn't the agent you'd want, no matter what. The other agent is a baby agent, too, isn't she?"

"Yes, and she's named Tiffany. She's probably fifteen years old," Jane said.

"Buck up, Jane. Breakfast will give you the en-ergy. The first session starts in an hour and we need to coordinate who goes to which seminar. You go to your first choice, of course. And tell me your second choice and I'll go to it and take notes like mad."

Shelley's brisk orders helped Jane over her disappointment. But only a little bit.

The restaurant was crowded. Fortunately, most of the guests were finishing up breakfast and Shelley and Jane were served in a relatively short time. In the brief spell between the ordering and the arrival of the food, they'd worked out the schedule for the morning seminars.

Jane would attend "Time and Again," about historical mysteries, and Shelley would take notes on "Brightening Up Your Submission."

They wolfed down their food and headed to separate meeting rooms. Unfortunately, Gretta Green was one of the speakers and cited Jane's book proposal, though not by specific name, as a perfect example of what her agency didn't want to handle. She was the first speaker and Jane wanted to bolt to the suite and have a good cry. But she stuck it out.

The second speaker was a grown-up editor. At

least thirty-five years old. And as politely as she

could, she told the group that Gretta was wrong.

"Readers of both sexes like a strong sense of

different times and circumstances. It's a wider

audience than most agents realize." She listed by

name several of her publishing house's bestsellers that were as much history as mystery.

Gretta just smiled condescendingly through this part of the introduction as if she knew better than the seasoned editor. Jane was glad she'd stayed.

The third speaker was an historical writer of some renown for yet another publisher, and she backed up what the editor before her had said.

"I've received more fan mail for the first two books in my historical series than I earned from all ten of my first books, which had a contemporary setting," she said.

She also went on to explain that she'd cut her publishing teeth on category romances, as many other writers had, and she and they had come to mysteries or thrillers with a lot of experience in writing and found it a wonderful change from the restrictions of short romances. Many of these former romance writers, including herself, had done historical romances and knew their way around research.

Although Jane wasn't among this group, she found the information very interesting and enlightening. Maybe Gretta, the baby agent, had spoken a shred of truth. Jane told herself that when she went home in a couple of days she'd look over her manuscript one more time.

The author went on to give some even better advice. "Lots of research into the period is vital, of course. You have to like doing this. More im-

BELL, BOOK, AND SCANDAL 75

portant, though, don't put in everything you know. It makes it a history text, not a novel. My own rule of thumb is when I find some fact that makes me slap my head and say 'I never knew
that,'
it's what should go into the book. If I didn't know it before, probably many readers don't know it either and will be pleased to learn it."

Jane wrote this down in her notebook and underlined it. She remembered making a house plan and leaving out bathrooms. She had had to do a lot of research to find out what sort of "facilities" her imaginary house would have had in the time period and may have gone a bit overboard describing them in her manuscript.

The introductory remarks having been made, the speakers then called for questions from the audience. Jane was surprised to learn that many of the aspiring writers in attendance were quite ignorant about the world of publishing. Some of them asked downright silly questions, like would submitting their work on pretty colored paper make them noticed.

The panel overwhelmingly agreed this wasn't to be done.

Another asked if she should copyright the work herself before submitting so nobody could steal her work. This struck Jane as absurdly arrogant.

This also met with a negative reply from all three of the speakers. "If the work is good enough, it will be purchased, not stolen. And the

publisher will see to having it copyrighted," the grown-up editor said.

Most of the rest of the questions were either trivial or about technical things, like whether to use single or multiple viewpoint.

Jane came out of the session revived and cheerful. For one thing, she'd realized she still had a lot to learn. More important, she already knew more than most of the other aspiring writers.

Shelley's session had ended slightly earlier than Jane's, and she was waiting outside the door of the meeting room with a big batch of notes to hand on. "It's a good thing I'm a fast note taker."

Jane glanced at the notes and said, "You sure are. But some of this you're going to have to translate for me. What does 'D and A' mean?"

"Delivery and Acceptance of the finished manuscript, of course. Was your session good? You look like yourself again instead of half dead."

"It was wonderful. I can't wait to tell you about it." Jane pulled out the brochure to double-check. "I've changed my mind. I'm going to the viewpoint meeting. I think I still have a lot to learn about that. You can still go to the one about 'The Grammar Demon,' whatever that means."

Shelley gave Jane a quick hug. "I'm so glad you came and let me come along. This is so good for you, and even I'm enjoying it a lot. See you at the luncheon."

Jane
discovered that the seminar
called
"Everything
about Viewpoint" was more interesting than she'd expected and was glad she'd picked it out to attend.

There were only two speakers, both successful writers.

The first speaker was a very pleasant woman in her mid-forties, who, like one of the speakers in the previous seminar, had started in romance before turning to mystery. Orla Witherspoon said, "I was used to third person, single viewpoint. If you're not familiar with this term, it means the whole story is told from one person's point of view. But in the third person, as in 'Susan looked around in awe at the scenery and found it beautiful.' "

People in the group either nodded or scribbled in their notebooks.

Jane smiled. The reactions told a lot about who were the "girls" and who were the "women." Ms. Witherspoon went on, "When I started the

first book of my first mystery series, I continued this just because I was in the habit of doing so. But it became onerous. I was ending up with all sorts of convoluted statements like 'Susan looked at Joe and suspected that he wasn't telling the truth.' "

"Or," she went on, " 'Andrianna was apparently a very shy woman.' Having a whole book full of `suspecteds' and 'apparentlys' and 'possiblys' and 'almost-certainlys' and 'it-seemed-asifs' is tedious and boring to both the writer and the reader. And it puts too much emphasis, in my opinion, on one character. The richness of fiction, to my mind, is learning how characters feel in their own minds.

"I was fortunate to discover this," she continued, "before I turned in the manuscript. It's always best to start as you mean to go on. I decided I, and the reader, would both like the book better if I did multiple viewpoints. I had to do a monster of a rewrite, but it was a much better book.

"However, I only go into two, or occasionally three, viewpoints in any given scene. If you have a crowd of people interacting, you don't want to know what every single one of them is thinking."

She went on, "Now, I warn you, this is only my opinion, strong as it is. Our other esteemed author, Daisy Ellis, does third-person single viewpoint and I love her books. She's much better at it than I was," she added with a big smile as she introduced the other speaker and sat down.

Daisy Ellis, probably a good ten years older than Orla, stood at the microphone and was just as gracious. "Orla and I have been good friends and fans of each other's work for about ten years, and we've learned to agree to disagree."

"I'll say!" Ms. Witherspoon agreed heartily.

Ms. Ellis spoke just as confidently as Ms. Witherspoon had. "My purpose is to make the reader identify with the sleuth. Really be in his or her mind. Know what she or he knows, suspects, or concludes. I think it makes for a stronger story line as the sleuth investigates, finds dead ends, identifies and broods over what may or may not be genuine clues to the mystery."

She went on, "A lot of this depends on what the writer is comfortable doing. Be sure to realize that neither approach is right or wrong. Orla's books are, frankly, deeper than mine. But mine, I believe and hope, are enjoyed by just as many contented readers. And it's what I'm comfortable writing. And I know from experimenting with one book, I don't do multiple viewpoint half as well as she does. Now let's hear what all of you think about this, or want to ask about."

The group had lots of good questions for both speakers. Slightly more of them were directed at Ms. Witherspoon, about the technicalities of being in a number of characters' minds. Who should dominate the story? How could you go into the mind of the perpetrator without giving away the solution? Or didn't you ever go into the

perp's viewpoint? If so, wasn't that a sure sign that he or she was the murderer? Ms. Witherspoon fielded these questions with explanations.

When Ms. Ellis was questioned about the main character speculating on the other characters' traits without the problems Ms. Witherspoon had listed, she said, "I let the characters speak and act for themselves. The reader usually draws the same conclusion as the sleuth does. I have no problem with writing, for example, 'Porky replied shyly,' or 'Violet became angry'

"That's what my first-person sleuth thinks," she went on. "Sometimes the sleuth later finds out it was the wrong impression. And so does the reader."

Everyone had so many questions that when the allotted time ran out, they straggled out of the room still asking the speakers and each other questions.

Jane thought it had been a very enjoyable and well-prepared argument between friends and philosophies. She was glad she'd attended. And worried that Shelley's seminar must have been boring compared to her choice.

Jane was right. Shelley said dramatically, "You have no idea how deadly that was. I'm so glad I was at the back of the room and could slip out."

"You didn't learn anything interesting?"

"No, not really. Just what you said. The rules of punctuation change with the times, and various publishing houses have their own rule books theyfollow. Some are out of date, some don't care as long as the writer is consistent to his or her own rules, some don't care at all. They handed out lists of style sheets and recommended asking your publisher in advance which grammar and punctuation book you should follow. Imagine someone who's never published yet, asking a question like that."

"I'm so sorry I stuck you with that," Jane said. "The one I went to was wonderful. By the way, I haven't seen anything of the cowgirl Wonder Woman all morning, have you?"

"I heard that Vernetta crashed one of the other seminars in the middle of the second speech and made a fool of herself," Shelley said. "So she's still kicking. Didn't Felicity say Sophie Smith never appeared at conferences very much unless she was the single speaker?"

"Yes, I think she did. What did Vernetta do, specifically?"

Shelley said, "I didn't care to hang around the people who were ranting against her long enough to find out. But she and her hubby were in new costumes."

"Oh, what now?"

"Hawaiian," Shelley said. "I saw them when they left the room where it was held."

"Grass skirt?" Jane asked.

"In silver tinsel instead of grass. With paper flowers around her neck. Gaylord in the ugliest floral shirt I've ever seen, shorts, and sandals, and

beat-up straw hats on both. Gaylord's legs are white and skinny. They looked like raw chicken legs. Vernetta's legs are dimpled lard."

"You're making this up, right?"

"I am
not."

"Are we going to the luncheon?" Jane asked. "I've heard rumors that the guest speaker is boring."

"We've paid for it in our fee. We might as well try it out. If it's good, we can eat it. If not, we can find our own lunch. I wonder if Felicity is free?"

"She's probably required to show up and mingle with fans," Shelley said. "It's in her best interest even if she doesn't have to attend. We can sit near the door and slip out before the speech. Pretending we're taking a potty break, if anyone at our table asks."

The luncheon, as it turned out, was extremely tasty and came to the table hot. "We should have guessed it would be good," Jane said, "considering how terrific those desserts were last night. We are sticking around for dessert this time, too, aren't we?"

"Of course we are. We can bolt it down and run away."

"And go shopping," Jane said.
Ten

Shelley found the pin she'd
seen. It
was
no longer in the shop window, but Shelley insisted they must have at least one more somewhere. When she offered, quite firmly, to help the assistant manager find it in storage at the back of the shop, suddenly the young woman remembered where it was kept.