Surprise, Reverse, Reveal!

The title of this post is novelist Joseph Finder's chief words of advice to writers.  Surprise, Reverse, Reveal. Finder was guest of honor at the eleventh annual New England Crimebake.  WTF, you ask is that?  It's a New England crime writing conference held every year in the Boston area over Veteran's Day weekend.  The fun starts Friday with six master classes taught by veteran New England crime writers.  Then there's some drinking (after all, we're writers!) and a pizza party followed by a couple of seminars and a movie, in this case, a film based on Finder's High Crimes.  More drinking.

Saturday a.m. comes breakfast, caloric energy for the panels on writing and forensics.  We cover a broad range of topics, such as female stereotypes in fiction, true crime,  traditional mysteries, the "dark side," agents and editors (on site and available for 5 minute pitches). We have parties sponsored by Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.  BTW, when I booked tour of the Norfolk County Jail for Sisters in Crime, you should have seen the eyebrows shoot up and the quizzical faces. Sisters in Crime?  Ho. ho. ho.

Saturday afternoon wrapped up with panels about setting, esp. New England, and how to write short stories.  Then comes the cocktail party (more boozing) and the Banquet and Costume Party, Femmes Fatales and Lady Killers.

On Sunday, the revelers drag themselves to a big fortifying breakfast, and two forensics presentations and a final panels on plotting, whereby the panelists come up with a serviceable plot in a short time amid much laughter.

Oh yes, books!  Did I mention books? We have a bookseller and the panelists will sign them.  The books, not the bookseller!  I've barely touched on the good writing info and the fun.  And the drinking.  It's amazing how people who sit in front of a screen or a yellow pad and write all day can get out on the dance floor and boogie.

I'll post photos when Significant Other has a chance to remove the omnipresent "red eyes" and email them to me.  Yours truly made a pretty good pitch and got dynamite suggestions for improvements to her manuscript which she is busily making this week.  Manuscript critiques are available from established writers. We have it all.

At home, this morning,  there's a huge ugly mess of programs, papers, books and even bookmarks to sort through as well as two days of mail and nine newspapers.   As there was no food in the house, we had popped over to the Longhorn after watching the Pats win.  Nice leftovers of prime rib and barbecued ribs for lunch.  My own chicken parm for dinner.  O.K., the diet starts tomorrow.  After walking the length of the hotel about 50 times, this may not be as necessarily as one would imagine. The conference hotel, the Dedham Hilton has been the scene of the "Crimebake" for several years and they know the drill and do an excellent job.

I sold a couple copies of World of Mirrors out of the trunk of my car, metaphorically speaking, and reconnected with writers from past Bakes.

So people, no matter WHAT you are writing, remember:  surprise, reverse, reveal!

Grapeshot 

Donald Westlake

Otto Penzler has a great remembrance of Donale E. Westlake in today's weekend section (Leisure & Arts) of the Wall Street Journal. I came to the MWA Edgar Awards too late to see or meet Westlake, but he must have been a delightful raconteur as well as a great mystery writer. I didn't know he had written the screen play for The Grifters, an exellent movie that I may put onto my Netflix queue and view again.

Speaking of Netflix, we saw The Visitor this week, another great movie. I find these small indy films much more entertaining and even gratifying than the big blockbuster films. Give me a cinematic experience with no blood, no explosions and no cars driving through plate glass. Yes!

Except for novels by Joseph Finder, Stephen Frey and Brad Meltzer, so-called business or financial thrillers are a rare breed. This puzzles me, because so many of us work or worked in offices, for businesses, and caught glimpses of the power struggles, the weird corporate cultures, the sleaze, the grasping and greediness, shoot, all the stuff that makes books work. At least television has tuned into this with The Office and 30 Rock.

Maybe these books aren't escapist enough. We want romance and dust blowing across the Khyber Pass. Finances require attention to detail, due diligence, and all those things requiring mental effort. Guess that's why Madoff got away with his schemes for so long. Nobody (well, hardly anyone) bothered with due diligence.

I can't read enough about the Madoff thing, and expect that writers are churning out international and financial intrigue fiction by the ream these days. The Journal today wrote that only BLACK PENS were permitted at Madoff HQ. No blue, no green, and red ink must have really been anathema. All good stuff. The secrecy, the conflicts. Just screams to be written about.

And how about the woman in Vienna who had that bank and had sold Madoff's stuff to the Russian Mafiosi and is now in hiding? There's a plot for you. Yes!

Hie ye to your keyboards and write. Good story lines, great conflict, all on a world stage with the most revolting people and sleaze and Palm Beach and big houses and the Hamptons! Jeeminy Criminy maybe I should write it myself.

Naw. But my drug dealer will have been burned in a similar Ponzi scheme. Hoo boy is he mad. I love Lotto.

Grapeshot, besotted with her own sleazy characters