Writing During the Holidays - 2

I try to write everyday and have been pretty good about it during most of the holidays. Over the Thanksgiving week when we were in Los Angeles, I only wrote two days. Too many activities with family scheduled. I have a set of priorities I follow: top priority is family emergencies, then work (writing) emergencies, then normal family activities, then normal work (writing) activities. I set my schedule when I’m at home and can stay with it pretty well, but on the road I’m either at a conference and spending time with other people or with family and spending time with them. Still, I got in a lot of writing time over the last month. I completed the rough draft for a thriller and am now in editing mode.

Writing During the Holidays

This time of year isn’t the easiest to find time to write with everything going on. Still, I’ve been able to carve out some time in the mornings to work on the thriller I’m writing. Our daughter is visiting and she and my wife like to stay up late and sleep in. Being a morning person, I’m up and ready to go in the morning so that’s my writing time before everyone else wakes up. I’ve also been researching Nikola Tesla. He’s a fascinating character—an incredible inventor of alternating current engines, the first remote control device, wireless before Marconi as well as weapon systems. He also had a wealth of personal quirks including not wanting to be touched, doing things such as swimming laps in multiples of three and being afraid of germs even though he fed pigeons in his hotel room in New York before his death in 1943. Tesla provides a great background for a story I’m wiorking on.

Speaking at Retirement Communitis

When speaking at retirement communities I always meet such interesting people. I gave a talk this afternoon and the audience stayed engaged, laughed at my jokes and asked great questions. People also share their stories. On the sad side, one woman described being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in her fifties, took medication for seven years and then another doctor determined she did not have Alzheimer’s. In the meantime the medication took a toll on her and she had to quit her job. She had been through a lot of suffering and had a very unhappy expression on her face. She told me she hoped to be able to smile again. On the positive side, a man spoke up about how much he enjoyed living in the retirement home. He was a widower and was delighted at all the attentions he was receiving from the ladies.

State of the Book Business

A lot of changes lately in the book business. In addition to the consolidation of companies and cut backs due to economic conditions, Kirkus Review is going out of business. This was one of the premier sources of reviews for new books, and I hate to see them disappear (especially since they are known as tough reviewers and gave my second Paul Jacobson Geezer-lit Mystery, Living With Your Kids Is Murder, a good review). Also, the recent announcement of Harlequin starting a vanity press subsidiary has Romance Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America up in arms. Harlequin has been disinvited from RWA’s annual conference and Harlequin has been placed on the list of non-recognized publisher by MWA. For me as a writer, I’m plugging away, half way through the first draft of a thriller. I had one signing snowed out last Sunday and participated in another signing yesterday at a Barnes and Noble in Denver. The best part of that was spending time with fellow authors Carol Berg and Deb Stover. I have several presentations scheduled at retirement communities later this month and then I’ll be ready for the new year.

Back to Writing

After a wonderful Thanksgiving week visiting two of our kids and our granddaughter, I’m back to writing again. I didn’t write much during the trip with attending Men of Mystery, taking our granddaughter to school, picking her up, driving her through the Los Angeles freeway congestion to after school rehearsals, Thanksgiving dinner, a visit to Disney’s California Adventure, several trips to Knott’s Berry Farm, attending a Disney preview of Prep and Landing, tree decorating and such. Several mornings I had a few minutes to check email and work on the thriller I’m currently writing but now I’m back to my regular schedule of writing in the morning, exercising at lunch time and then tackling administrivia and email in the afternoon. Upcoming events include the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Holiday party and a signing at Who Else Books in Denver at 3 PM on Sunday, December 6.

Men of Mystery

A week ago Saturday I had the opportunity to participate in the Men of Mystery Conference in Irvine, California which brought together approximately 50 male mystery authors and some 500 fans for a day of fun, discussions on mysteries and schmoozing. Each of the authors gave a one minute pitch and over lunch we each had a chance to speak with people at our tables. Key note speakers included Tim Dorsey and Michael Connelly. Tim, the master of off-the-wall humor and psychotic characters, described how at a presentation he gave one time, everyone in the room was laughing at his jokes except for a small group of people who never even smiled. Afterwards he approached one of them and asked about this. The response: “We’re psychologists. We came to observe you.” Michael Connolly’s advice to writers: “Write every day even if only fifteen minutes.” I met a lot of great people and reacquainted myself with a classmate from graduate school at UCLA from forty years ago. Dick Holt is a thriller writer and neither of us knew the other was now writing. He has a woman protagonist in her eighties and we joked about getting his character, Jan Richter, together with my octogenarian protagonist, Paul Jacobson. Joan Hansen ran a great conference, and coming to Southern California gave me and my wife an excuse to visit with two of our kids and our granddaughter.

Hostage Negotiations

Last week I had an opportunity to participate as a role-player in a negotiation training program conducted by the FBI at our local police department. Police officers had spent several days in class learning how to deal with hostage and other treat situations. In my scenario I was a marine who had returned from two tours of duty in Iraq, discovered my girlfriend having an affair with my best friend, shot and killed my best friend, was holding my girlfriend hostage and threatening to kill her and myself. A police team arrives on the scene and starts negotiating with me from outside a room where I’m holding the hostage. Their goal is to keep me engaged for an hour and not killing anyone while the tactical SWAT team deploys. In their training they were taught to use effective pauses, paraphrase, use “I” statements, provide minimal encouragers through emotional labeling, open-ended questions, summarizing, and reflecting/mirroring what I said. During the day the other role-player and I ran through the scenario for four different groups, each time varying the situation slightly. The first time I demanded a helicopter. Thereafter I asked for a four-wheel drive vehicle so I could go off my myself to Montana. Twice I set a time limit, saying I would kill my hostage if they didn't get the car within forty-five minutes. I mixed ranting, swearing and shouting with going silent. One time I got mad at the negotiator and demanded to speak to someone else. I also demanded a pizza. The negotiation team consisted of a lead negotiator, a coach who fed ideas to the lead and a supporting team who wrote down what was happening and contributed ideas on what to say. In our room where I held the hostage we also had an observer who gave us ideas on how to make the role-playing as realistic as possible for the negotiation team. The biggest problem in this situation is keeping the suspect engaged without him going nonlinear. The negotiator had to constantly respond to my demands by saying that they were working on it, because they could not give in to my wanting a vehicle to escape. One of the instructors had been involved in a real situation where a man with a bomb strapped to his chest entered a local hospital and threatened to blow up himself and the hospital. She negotiated with him for six hours before he ultimately tried to move farther into the hospital and was taken out by a SWAT sniper. She had been the officer first called to the scene and worked to keep the bomber calm, engaged and not going over the edge. Fortunately, she had received negotiator training and kept the deranged man under control until the SWAT team deployed. By the end of the day playing the role of someone with post traumatic stress syndrome who had been betrayed, I was exhausted, had lost my voice and felt emotionally drained. It also gave me a keen appreciation of what our police officers go through to protect the public.