Haunted Halloween Bits from the SSA Authors

We're sharing our personal haunts this week. Feel free to share your own when you're finished reading -- if you dare.

Scariest book I ever read.....

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith, and its sequel Passenger. -- Elle Cosimano



Salem's Lot by Stephen King - "I read it while visiting my aunt over Christmas in sixth grade. She had this old radiator that hissed when it came on and it was right under the window. I didn't sleep the entire time -- but I didn't stop reading the book either!" -- Laura Ellen



 It by Stephen King -- Deron Hicks 


The Hot Zone by Richard Preston -- Elisa Ludwig



The Sandman by Neil Gaiman - "I know it's not really straight-up horror, but some story arcs in that series are profoundly chilling and disturbing." -- Mary McCoy


A House in The Sky by Amanda Lindhout - "Nonfiction, but reads like a novel. Captivity narratives in general freak me out, but this one packs a punch." -- Diana Renn

 

 

 

 Spookiest place I ever visited...

St. Mary's

"I spent four nights in the St. Mary's Art Center in Virginia City, Nevada during the NV SCBWI Mentor Retreat. http://www.hauntedhouses.com/states/nv/saint_mary_louise_hospital.htm" -- Elle Cosimano

Holy Trinity Church

"In college I used to cut through a cemetery to get to work. I t freaked me out every time. I'd get jumpy and hear things -- I took to timing myself to see how quick I could get through." -- Laura Ellen

"Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. We were there on a cold, overcast day. The grounds surrounding the church are packed with ancient graves. If ghosts are real, that's the place you would find them." -- Deron Hicks

"The cemetery behind my college campus, when a few of us decided to visit at midnight with a Ouija board. " -- Elisa Ludwig

The Capuchin Crypt from debbzie.com

ParaPedia

"The Capuchin Crypt in Rome - each room is decorated wall-to-wall with the bones of friars. In one room, there's a plaque that reads 'What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.' In another room, a woman's heart is entombed in the wall." -- Mary McCoy

"Zelve National Park in Turkey. Lunar landscape, centuries of buried civilizations, caves, isolated hikes, creepy guys following my husband and I around." -- Diana Renn

The one thing that creeps me out the most. . . 

 

"I really, REALLY dislike spiders and scary clowns." -- Elle Cosimano

"I am with Elle on the clowns -- and dolls with porcelain faces. Just too creepy." -- Laura Ellen

"Snakes. Ugh." -- Deron Hicks

"Rats. And serial killers." -- Elisa Ludwig

"Anything having to do with demon possession I just cannot handle." -- Mary McCoy

"Spiders! I grew up in a house by a lake, and we always got supersize spiders on all our windows. They would spawn more spiders, and eat their dinners right in front of us, and fight -- I am truly traumatized by this." -- Diana Renn

 

The freakiest thing that ever happened to me . . 

"I used to sell real estate. One day, I was showing an historic property (an old farm house built in the 1800s on the edge of a Civil War battlefield) to a lovely couple who were considering a purchase. The house itself had some very strange features. The upstairs bedrooms on both sides of a long, crooked hallway had padlocks that locked from the outside, and the entire house had a very creepy, cold feeling about it. In the dining room, there was a hidden stair behind a door in the wall (an old servant staircase). While we were discussing the property, the door unlatched and swung all the way open, very, very slowly and all three of us felt we weren't alone. Needless to say, we left post haste!" -- Elle Cosimano

"I was staying with my sister in her rental house in Eugene, OR. Alone in the house and taking a shower, l I heard someone yell something outside the bathroom door. When I came out, no one was there, but the microwave was on and I heard a shuffling sound in the living room closet. To get out of the house, I would have had to pass the closet so instead I stood watch  in the hall with a kitchen knife, scared out of my mind, until mys sister and brother-in-law got back a few minutes later. When we checked the closet, no one was in it."  -- Laura Ellen

"My grandmother had a large old photograph of some distant, stern looking relative that she hung in the extra bedroom in her home. The house was old and constantly creaked and groaned. When I was young, I had to sleep in that room. It always seemed that the moonlight would illuminate that photograph. My creepy relative would stare down at me in bed from his spot on the wall as the house creaked and groaned around me." -- Deron Hicks

"I was pretty sure at the time that I saw a UFO during a high school Astronomy Club visit to a field at night. Not sure I'd be as convinced now." -- Elisa Ludwig

"My dorm room sophomore year may have been a little bit haunted. More than once, I saw a shadowy figure standing by the window that disappeared the moment I reached out to touch it. I did some research and found out that somebody had died in my room a few decades before. I might add that I relate this story as a person who doesn't believe in ghosts AT ALL." -- Mary McCoy

"I can't think of one single freaky thing, but I've often felt that I have a vague psychic connection. I will think of someone, or dream something, and soon after find my thoughts or dreams are true, something really happened to that person (nothing horrific), or I will run into that person somewhere. Unfortunately I have not been able to channel this vague, intermittent psychic vibe into anything useful like predicting lottery numbers." -- Diana Renn

I Pulled off a COIN HEIST...

... in print at least. My third YA novel, COIN HEIST dropped on Tuesday. Here's the synopsis.

The last place you’d expect to find a team of criminals is at a prestigious Philadelphia prep school. But on a class trip to the U.S. Mint—which prints a million new coins every 30 minutes—an overlooked security flaw becomes far too tempting for a small group of students to ignore.   

United by dire circumstances, these unlikely allies – the slacker, the nerd, the athlete, and the "perfect" student – band together to attempt the impossible: rob the U.S. Mint. The diverse crew is forced to confront their true beliefs about each other and themselves as they do the wrong thing for the right reasons. 

Elisa Ludwig's Coin Heist is a fun, suspenseful, and compelling thriller, told from the revolving perspectives of four teens, each with their own motive for committing a crime that could change all of their lives for the better—if they can pull it off.

In honor of this book, which was crazy-fun to write, I'm sharing a crazy-fun ’80s video for a song that is incredibly apt, with both a counterfeiting theme and prom-esque attire. (Don't trust anyone who only listens to "Love Shack" era B-52s, okay?)

Interrogation Room #39: Elisa Ludwig, author of PRETTY SLY

Today marks the release of our very own Elisa Ludwig's PRETTY SLY, the sequel to her heart-pounding debut, PRETTY CROOKED, about teenage thief Willa Fox.

PRETTY SLY, called a "crackling-good adventure" by Kirkus, asks the question, "What would you do if your mom disappeared and forbade you to come after her?"

In between celebrations for her launch, Elisa bravely agreed to an interrogation about her writing process.

1) Something I'm dying to know: How did you research the terrific scene where Tre teaches Willa how to pick-pocket in PRETTY CROOKED?

Heh heh. I used a combination of my own real life experience as a pickpocket victim, some shady websites and some very cool YouTube videos—there's a great BBC series called The Real Hustle, which gave me some interesting ideas for mixing up the thieving scenes. The reality is there's a lot of criminal how-to out there for the reading, but that could be a good thing, if people use it to avoid being victimized.

2) Can readers expect to see some familiar faces in PRETTY SLY (besides Willa and Aidan)? Did you pluck any smaller roles from the first book and give them a larger presence in the second book?

Yes, the principle characters are all there, though the Glitterati only have a bit part, which turns the catty quotient in this sequel way down from the first book! I don't know that anyone has a larger presence but even the main characters in the first book are pretty mysterious and secretive, so the second book deepens our understanding of them—but also raises many new questions ...

3) How much downtime did you have between books? Was it easy or difficult to return to characters from the first book? 

I think I finished PRETTY CROOKED in February and started PRETTY SLY in May or June. Not too much time had elapsed, and I was working on copyedits and things while drafting the sequel so that helped keep everything fresh. I loved coming back to the same characters. It was so much easier to start a book in a place where I already understood my characters and their motivations. Sometimes that process alone will take a few drafts. It allowed me to focus on the increasingly more complicated plot!

4) Was your high school experience anything like the experiences of your characters? Was there a clear-cut line between the haves and have-nots?

My high school experience was only similar in that I went to a private school and, as a middle class student, was very aware of class distinctions and how students communicated their status through clothing, cars, etc. While the mean girl behavior in my high school was much more subtle, there was certainly a sense that some (but not all) of the most privileged kids "ruled the school" socially. But I was definitely more of a fringe-y character than Willa. Like the Say Anything dudes say, "by choice, man." Or so I told myself!

5) What challenges did you face in writing SLY that were different from writing CROOKED? Was anything easier the second time around?

I think the challenge with SLY was to make Willa's experience more difficult and keep turning those screws. This book has much higher stakes: she's in greater danger and she's also facing some really difficult emotional truths. The tone here shifts as a result, and keeping that in balance with Willa's bubbly personality and the lighter feel of the first book was at times tricky. On the other hand, I felt really lucky that SLY sends things in such a different direction that it truly felt like a whole new adventure to write. As I said, the characters were much easier the second time around, and I think I had a much better handle on the structure of the story from the very beginning. Also, it certainly didn't hurt that I was working with the same brilliant editors, so I always had their voice in my head when I was drafting, keeping me on course.

6) When you wrote PRETTY CROOKED, did you always know it would have a sequel, or did you envision it as a stand-alone? If you did map out the sequel early on, how much did the finished product of PRETTY SLY compare to your original plan?

I always knew it would be a trilogy. Parts of PRETTY SLY were imagined originally as part of PRETTY CROOKED (through the first leg of their road trip, basically), but as time went on it became clear that Willa's time at Valley Prep really deserved its own book. That being said, all of the key clues except maybe a couple we added in copy edits were already in the first book when it came time to write the second. The third book was much more vaguely conceived going into it, and it probably changed the most dramatically in revisions—down to the actual answer to the mystery!

7) Besides Willa's vicariously satisfying Robin Hood-esque scheme of "spreading the wealth around" at her school, there is a second, overarching mystery about Willa's mother. When you have two (or three!) separate mysteries going on, how do you keep track of each person's head space at different points of their respective time lines? 

Oh, man. That's only the tip of the iceberg with this series! It can be tough, that's for sure. I wish I was one of those people who used Post-Its or a big magic marker or something, but truthfully, I just used a lot of Kanye West all-caps-esque notes to myself in the text as I wrote. Stuff like "REMEMBER: SHE ONLY KNOWS X,Y and Z, HERE!!!" and "HOW THE HECK IS SHE GOING TO COME TO THIS CONCLUSION?!!"

9) PRETTY CROOKED resolves certain plot elements perfectly, while still serving as a cliffhanger. Did you get any angry letters about the ending? Was it difficult to write a conclusion that leads directly into a new adventure?

Yes! Maybe not super-angry, but a lot of teasing and frustrating ones. My editors and I went back and forth about where to leave things, and ultimately decided on the cliffhanger, which has its old-fashioned charms. I wouldn't say it was difficult to write that ending but I maybe felt a bit guilty to do that to readers. I hope PRETTY SLY will satisfy them!

10) I love Aidan and Willa's banter, as well as Willa's friendship-chemistry with Cherise and Tre. Do you have particular techniques you draw on to keep your dialogue so sharp? 

Thank you so much! I like to read dialogue out loud (if no one else is in the house!) to get a feel for how someone might really say something. And it's definitely something I fine-tune in revision, stripping it back more and more, because most people speak much more efficiently than I actually write.

11) When is book #3 coming out?

March 2015!

Check out the trailer for PRETTY SLY, below, and then enter to win a free copy of BOTH BOOKS!




a Rafflecopter giveaway

12 Days of Mysteries: Day 9

The countdown continues! For Day 9 of our 12 Days of Mysteries, we're thinking ahead to the new year. Pre-orders of books make fun gifts. The book will arrive seemingly out of the blue, after all the holiday buzz has died down! Play up the mystery angle: send the mystery lover in your life a holiday card (real or electronic), telling them something special is coming their way after the new year.

The following mysteries/thrillers are coming out this winter, and we think they'd make great pre-order gifts!

We're recommending . . .

GOING ROGUE, by Robin Benway (coming January 14, 2014, Walker Children)
The much-anticipated follow-up to ALSO KNOWN AS!

Being permanently based in a local New York City high school as an undercover operative has its moments, good and bad, for 16-year-old safecracker Maggie Silver. Pros: More quality time with her former mark-turned-boyfriend Jesse Oliver and insanely cool best friend, Roux. Getting to spend quality time with her semi-retired and international spy honorary uncle, Angelo. Cons: High school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations. But when Maggie's parents are falsely accused of stealing priceless gold coins, Maggie uses her safecracking skills to try and clear their names. Too bad it only serves to put her and everyone she loves in danger. Maggie and her "new team" flee to Paris where they must come up with a plan to defeat their former allies.

FAKE I.D., by Lamar Giles (one of our bloggers here at SSA!)
(Coming January 21, 2014, HarperCollins)

Nick Pearson is hiding in plain sight…

My name isn’t really Nick Pearson.

I shouldn’t tell you where I’m from or why my family moved to Stepton, Virginia.

I shouldn’t tell you who I really am, or my hair, eye, and skin color.

And I definitely shouldn’t tell you about my friend Eli Cruz and the major conspiracy he was about to uncover when he died—right after I moved to town. About how I had to choose between solving his murder with his hot sister, Reya, and “staying low-key” like the Program has taught me. About how moving to Stepon changed my life forever.

But I’m going to.

VENGEANCE, by Megan Miranda (coming 2/4/14, Bloomsbury Childrens)
 

Falcon Lake wants vengeance. And so, it seems, does someone else . . . An intense, heart-rending psychological thriller to accompany the chilling and seductive Fracture

When Decker drags his best friend Delaney’s lifeless body out of the frozen lake, he makes a deal: Anyone but her. Everyone but her. The lake releases her. It takes another . . .

All their friends blame Delaney for Carson’s death. But Decker knows the truth: Delaney is drawn to those who are dying, and she would have tried to help Carson.

Or so Decker believes until a body lies in front of him in a pool of water on his kitchen floor. Until he sees in Delaney’s eyes that she knew this would happen too – and she said nothing. Until he realises it isn’t the lake that is looking for revenge – Delaney is part of someone else’s plan.

This powerful and emotionally charged psychological thriller follows Megan Miranda’s stunning debut FRACTURE.

PRETTY SLY, by Elisa Ludwig (coming March 18, 2014, Katherine Tegan/Harper Collins)
Yes, a shameless plug for another one of our own here! This is the second book in her PRETTY CROOKED trilogy! 

Willa Fox was told to stay out of trouble. In fact, it was an order from a very serious juvenile court judge.

However, that was before Willa found her house ransacked and a mysterious email from her mother telling Willa she had to leave Paradise Valley for a while and not to come looking for her. Willa knows her mom’s in danger and that no one at school will miss her after her recent sticky-fingered stunts with the Glitterati. So with the help of her pal Tre and with her degenerate crush Aidan as her wingman, Willa violates her probation and hits the California highway in search of her mom.

But when Willa and Aidan’s journey turns dangerously criminal and they wind up being the focus of a national manhunt, they realize it’s sometimes easier to escape the law than the truth—and that everything Willa thought she knew about her mom, and her life, was wrong.

Pretty Sly is Elisa Ludwig’s fast-paced sequel to Pretty Crooked, the second book in a trilogy that’s pitch-perfect for fans of Ally Carter. With a daring heroine who has one-of-a-kind spunk, a roller-coaster Bonnie and Clyde romance, a thrilling mystery, and a shocking twist ending, this book will have readers rooting for Willa as she makes the wrong choices to do the right thing. Fans will be eagerly awaiting the series conclusion.



 

12 Days of Mysteries: Day 5

It's Day 5 of our 12 Days of Mysteries, demystifying holiday gift-giving for book lovers! Today we're mixing it up and NOT giving our usual book suggestions. If you're looking for a book-related idea that's a little different, check out these programs and charities!

Laura Ellen recommends the Letters in the Mail program as a great kid gift. Authors send subscribers a letter in the mail each month for only $5 a month.

Elisa Ludwig suggests Girls Write Now, which works with high school girls in NYC's public schools to help develop their writing and provide other opportunities for intellectual/emotional growth and career development. Elisa says, "Last year my agent made a holiday donation to the organization in my honor, and this year I want to continue the tradition!


Do you know a budding writer working on a young adult, middle grade, or new adult manuscript? Why not give them a manuscript critique! No, you don't have to do that yourself; you can outsource it! Diana Renn recommends a great freelance editing service run by four kidlit authors called -- clearly enough -- Manuscript Critique Services. (Clarity -- trust us, you want that in an editor!) And . . . do you have a writer in your life who is going the indie publishing route? Or who needs help with graphic design? Send them to Renee Combs Design for all their design needs and even help with promotion!

Miss any of our Days of Mysteries? Looking for kidlit mystery/thriller books that would make great gifts? Scroll back in time here:
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four

The Queen of Teen Screams

I was inspired by Ashley's post the other day, What Would Sidney Sheldon Do? and realized I had never really written about one of my favorite authors growing up, and that's Lois Duncan.

As a kid I was obsessed with anything creepy and unexplained—ghosts, astral projection, reincarnation—and Scooby Doo just didn't cut it. I wanted seriously scary mysteries and Duncan's books were the best around. By the time I read Down a Dark Hall, Killing Mr. Griffin, Stranger with My Face and I Know What You Did Last Summer, these books were already a decade (or nearly so) old, yet they felt incredibly fresh and timeless. The plots were original without seeming farfetched and they always kept me turning the pages.

A few years ago, Little, Brown reissued ten of Duncan's paperbacks. I reread Down a Dark Hall, just to see, and it totally held up. (It didn't hurt that Duncan updated the technology and fashions involved.) It struck me that one of the reasons her stories endure—and it seems like Hollywood is still making movies out of them—is because Duncan does such a great job setting up not only a compelling mystery or suspense story but also in building incredibly relatable, sympathetic characters that demand emotional investment. Most are dealing with family drama like icky stepparents, abuse and alienation (you know, on top of the murderous classmates, secret twins and discoveries that they're unwitting subjects for educational experiments). This is a great reminder for those of us trying to write thrillers, mysteries or even horror books for teens or tweens. At the end of the day, what readers are going to respond to is how well we can capture the experience of adolescence, which, it hardly needs restating, is harrowing enough in its own right.

***********************************************************************************************************************
Elisa Ludwig's debut young adult novel PRETTY CROOKED (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins), was released in March 2012. It's the story of Willa Fox, a teen girl who goes Robin Hood on her rich classmates, and it's the first of a trilogy. The sequel, PRETTY SLY, will be released in March 2014. Elisa lives in Philadelphia with her husband Jesse.

The Writer Who Knew Too Much

I'm working on the final installment of Willa Fox's adventures right now and hitting the typical Third Book Problems. By the time you write up to the end of a trilogy, the plot should thicken, the emotional stakes should be raised even higher and it all needs to resolve in a satisfying way that does the previous two books justice. Yeah, no biggie.

One of the trickiest things I find about maintaining the mystery at this stage is knowing too much. Obviously, as the author, you know exactly what's going on and how things will end up, and all the intricate backstory that explains everything. But sometimes that knowledge can be a burden. I find that in the early drafts I tend to lead the reader right to the X that marks the no doi. It's only in the revision process that I can start to detach, complicate the situation, create some red herrings or some incorrect assumptions.

Struggling with knowing too much? Here are a few tricks I have learned and some questions to ask yourself:

1) How could a reader misinterpret the existing clues? Can your MC get tripped up by a detail or two?

2) Is there dialogue that can be more elliptical? People don't always speak in a literal manner and your characters shouldn't, either. Can you play up a misunderstanding?

3) Are there mini mysteries within your overarching mystery that can be teased out to distract your reader and your MC from the truth?

4) What qualities, characteristics or motivations can you add that might complicate the reader's opinion of the possible suspects?

Author? Who Me?

Writing means having authority, which isn't always the same thing as being an authority. One of the challenges of writing anything—fiction, nonfiction—is learning to trust your inherent ability to figure out what you don't know, because sooner or later the not-knowing is going to smack you in the face.

Writing mysteries and thrillers is newer for me, and taking on the Pretty Crooked series and my most recent WIP felt like a huge leap of faith. Sure, I had faith in my command of the language, but I had serious, keep-me-up-at-night-sized doubts about my ability to craft a story in a new genre, especially one that was as complex as mysteries and thrillers. (This is not to say I have completely mastered it. I haven't. I'm learning new stuff every day, and it's a process. Even writing entries like this one sometimes feels hard because I'm still like, really? I'm supposed to be giving advice here?)

What I've come to realize is that authority is kind of a fake-it-til'-you-make-it situation. And truthfully? I don't think there's anyone, published or not, who doesn't have the sneaking suspicion that they're about to be unmasked as some kind of fraud.

I remember last summer when a bookseller referred to me for the very first time as the author of Pretty Crooked. I immediately felt so intimidated by the label I wanted to run away. Never mind that it was completely accurate—I'd written the darn thing. She was holding the ARC for crying out loud.

A year later, it finally feels more comfortable. I'm an author. I'm even a mystery/thriller/contemporary author. And hey, if you call me that, I might even nod and smile.

Staring Into the Abyss (But It's Not That Deep)

Over the past couple of weeks I finished a late draft of one book and am closing in on the end of the first draft of the third Pretty Crooked book. Yay, me. I should be feeling awesome and productive, right? I should be popping Cristal and eating duck confit and making impulse purchases on Anthropologie.

But instead, I've felt this shadowy doubt stalking me in the night and it's whispering in a creepy Poltergeist organ player voice: Girl, you better start thinking about your next project. Time's a tickin'. And then there's a counter-voice, which is a lot less scary but more rapid-fire and annoying a la Abed Nadir from Community: What, no great ideas? No brilliant flashes of inspiration? Maybe your brain is all withered and dried up. I saw that once, on this guy and... (he babbles on until I tune him out.)

In short, I guess you could say I've been grappling with a mystery all writers of all genres face: how to find inspiration. Because writing is a complex and ever-changing craft, and you change with it. What worked last time won't necessarily work now. You need to be able to approach a new project and all of its challenges with a fresh perspective. And energy. And enthusiasm.

Sure, I have some ideas for a new book, but I've come to the conclusion that Abed-voice could be right about the dried-up part. I've been really pushing hard for the last six months, working on two projects at once plus the day job and I think I need a little break. So I've decided to focus exclusively on my current project and not to jump into anything new for a little while. I'll use that time to read more, take in more films, art, music, ideas and regenerate. Gather up some creative momentum. There will always be pressure to write more, to move on to the next thing, and I am going to exercise my writerly right to ignore it.

In the meantime, a few weeks ago, I read this piece in the NY Times about where sentences come from, and I think it gets at the fear most people encounter when they try to put their thoughts into typographical order. In his editorial, Verlyn Klinkenborg says there's no magic. We just need to start with sentences and build from there—eventually we can trust our own thought process. When I'm ready to begin a new book, I plan to reread this first.

What about you? What have you learned about your own creative process? What has helped you make the leap to a new project?

Mysteries Among Us #14

Welcome back to "Mysteries Among Us." In this feature, we share mysteries that intrigue us. They could be mysteries in the national news, in our own communities, even in our own families. Or they could be mysteries from the past that continue to haunt us. Mysteries are everywhere! Maybe some of what we've found will spark ideas for fictional mysteries. We'd love to know what mysteries fascinate you too!    

Kristen Kittscher: I'd heard of crop circles. But fairy circles? Millions of strange circular barren patches speckle the grassland in Namibia and its closest neighbors, yet no one can figure out why. The patches are very evenly distributed, but disappear and reappear over time. Even though scientists have recently gathered some more convincing hypotheses to explain the phenomenon, it sounds to me like fairies are as good an explanation as any!

http://cougtravelguide.blogspot.com/2010/03/seattle-underground-tour.html

Diana Renn: I've always loved how my hometown, Seattle, stands on layers of mystery. After a fire destroyed the city in 1899, Seattle was rebuilt one story higher than it had been. Ground-floor businesses continued to operate, and people climbed ladders to reach the street level, until the "underground" city was condemned in 1907 and eventually paved over. For awhile, though, the "city below the streets" consisted mainly of illegitimate businesses -- flophouses, opium dens, gambling houses, speakeasies. Taking the Underground Tour today, tunneling through downtown, you can glimpse some of the old building facades and streets -- still somewhat intact -- while rats scuttle in the shadows. It's a mystery-lovers delight.

Elisa Ludwig: Lately I am really intrigued by medical mysteries, and one that caught my attention is the unexplained illness that has attacked tourists in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Several people have died since January, all of whom stayed at or near the Downtown Inn. Recently, another couple was hit with the same symptoms as the previous victims: chest pain, vomiting, eyes rolling back in the head and blue lips but they managed to survive. Four of the deaths have been linked to myocarditis or inflammation of heart muscle, while others have been linked to Coxsackie and Echo viruses, but the authorities have yet to explain why there, and why now. 

Facts Are Your Friends

Facts tend to get in the way, don't they? You're on a roll with your story, the scenes are flowing, the dialogue is pithily bouncing from one character to another, the logic of the action seems to be seamless. And then, here comes good ole' reality, ready to send all your beautiful fictional work into digital oblivion.

This happened to me just the other day. I was working on a scene for the third installment in Willa's adventures and I had my two characters traveling from Point A to Point B the day before Thanksgiving. That's when I realized that if they were going to where they were supposed to be going (no spoilers!) they would end up there ON Thanksgiving, in which case everything would be closed. Well, I had already written detailed scenes of them shopping, eating at restaurants and generally participating in the commerce of their chosen city, and I wasn't about to have them sitting around twiddling their thumbs, national holiday or no national holiday. Time to go back and consult the travel schedules, the maps, the  logistical whathaveyous again. Time to massage the timeline to make it all work.

These were small but important facts, which probably only affected the first chapter or two of the manuscript. No, they wouldn't make or break the story, but they were a reminder that, as caught up as I was in the fantasy, I still had to play along by the rules of reality or risk losing my credibility as a storyteller.

How about you? Where have the "facts" gotten you into trouble?

**********************************************************************************************

Elisa Ludwig's debut young adult novel PRETTY CROOKED (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins), was released in March. It's the story of Willa Fox, a teen girl who goes Robin Hood on her rich classmates, and it's the first of a trilogy. Even though she had to extensively research pickpocketing techniques to write it, she remains a law-abiding citizen. Elisa lives in Philadelphia with her husband Jesse.

Mystery Monday #33

It's the return of Mystery Monday! Welcome back  to our somewhat regular, lately erratic, Monday feature! On Mystery Monday you'll (generally) find different kinds of writing prompts and exercises to help build your mystery-writing muscles.

Shh..... Lately we've been thinking about SECRETS. Secrets are the driving force behind a mystery. Your characters' secrets can explain their motives for committing or solving a crime. Secrets are something the writer has to figure out fast, if not before starting the story then pretty early in the drafting process. 

Secrets might be deep-seated fears. They might be bad decisions in the past, or involve people they have wronged. They might be colossal screw-ups. Or even past crimes that involve some kind of cover-up.


Here are some questions to think about whether you're planning a mystery or stuck somewhere in one. We recommend having your characters answer these questions in their own words, writing freehand in a journal or in a separate Word doc on your computer:


1. What are (or were) the victim's secrets? How long has he/she been keeping a secret? From whom? Why? What would happen if the secret got out?


2. What are the villain's secrets? How long has he/she been keeping a secret? From whom? Why? What would happen if the secret got out?

3. What are the sleuth's secrets? How long has he/she been keeping a secret? From whom? Why? What would happen if the secret got out? How has this secret affected his/her ability to get involved in this mystery?


What are some great secrets you've come across in mysteries you've read? We'd love to see some examples in the comments section! 

We'll leave you today with a picture of two of our sleuths on location . . . here are Elisa Ludwig and Diana Renn at a book signing in Chatham, MA this weekend. They were spotted at a bookstore called Where the Sidewalk Ends. (By the way, where DOES the sidewalk end? Or is that a secret?)

Laura Ellen: Why I write 'crime'

Welcome to "Case Files From Our Detectives." Every Tuesday, in rotation, we blog on a topic relevant to the craft of mystery writing. If you're a new follower or just discovering us now, you can check out past Case Files in the archives; they're all listed in the upper right sidebar.

Today we're continuing with our topic of CRIME in MG and YA fiction. with a bit about why Laura Ellen writes about crime. 

In her Crime Case File post, Elisa Ludwig talked about a mother who, when she discovered that the MC in Pretty Crooked is a thief, put it down, noting that she doesn't condone crime. Although I understood this mother's point -- as a mom I worry about what my kids are exposed to also -- this story kind of bothered me. It took me a little while, but I finally figured out why. Once I did, though, I felt it was important to share.

Let me explain.

The first novel I ever finished was a MG about a girl whose mom and step-father are killed in a car accident and she must go live with her real dad while her half-brother goes to live with her aunt and cousins. Now this novel will never see the light of day. It was my first attempt at a novel and is riddled with newbie-mistakes and dripping with melodrama. But, my point in writing it, besides seeing if I could finish a novel, was not to get published -- it was to work out a fear I had. At that time, my husband and I had just sat down to make out our will. I realized that if something were to happen to us, there was a good chance our kids would be seperated from one another -- my daughter going to live with her father and my son, most likely to an aunt or grandparent. The thought of them growing up without each other terrified me. So, I explored the situation the only way I knew how -- by writing about it.

Throughout my whole life this has been how I've dealt with things that scared me. From attending a new school to walking down a dark alley alone at night, anytime something made me frightened or anxious, I would play it out in my head, coming up with extreme scenarios and how I might respond, so that I'd be prepared for anything.

I think books do this for people too. Reading is a way to explore things that fascinate or scare or bother us. It is a way to look into those 'dark' things without having to actually live through them. It is a safe way to experiment and observe.

So, coming back to the mother at Elisa's book event. While I get her response -- like I said, I am a mom and yes, I watch what my kids read/watch/play -- I don't agree. No matter how well we raise our kids and no matter how sheltered we think we keep them from the monstrosities of life -- kids are people, and people live. They see, hear, observe, deduce, think, talk, and interact. In the course of doing these very human things, they will be faced with a situation or decision that their parents didn't expect or plan for them.

Whether it's that unbelievably charming bad boy in art class, or that expensive new phone everyone else has, or that downstairs window that accidentally broke -- everybody has that moment where a choice must be made. Sometimes that choice leads down the wrong road -- and once on that road ANYTHING can happen. The people that fare the best and find their way back are the ones who have thought it through, played out the vatious outcomes, seen the big picture. What better place to get that pre-exposure than in the safety of a book?

That's why I write about dark, edgy topics like crime. I like to think of the worst thing that could happen and then find a way to get my characters out of it. I do this not only because in real life bad stuff happens, but also because I want to be prepared, and  I want my readers to be preapared. I want them to know that if something similar happens, they'll not only be ready. They'll live through it.

Maybe that seems idealistic.
But no more idealistic than thinking if you don't bring that book home, your child won't be exposed to whatever is inside that book. For me, reading about life's dark side is a better solution than pretending it doesn't exist.

As a parent, my solution is to bring home that book that may have questionable content in it and read it myself -- instead of avoiding it. That way, I know what to expect and can discuss it if necessary with my kids. I can also make an informed decision on whether or not the material is too mature and should be shelved for a bit. And for those wondering about Pretty Crooked, since it is the book that began this discussion. It is a great book and definitely worth the read. :)

.

What's Your Writing Setting?

So....settings in mysteries. Wow, my fellow detectives have covered it all! It's always a little intimidating going last on these themes. First of all, I already feel a little like a fraud blogging about how to write mysteries because it's kind of mystery to me, but second, all the great topics have been taken! Like...Setting as Character, Being There Even If You Aren't, Settings in Middle-Grade Mysteries, Finding Your Way Through an Alien Landscape, and How Sashimi Led to My Novel's Setting.

Yeah, I was going to write all those. :-)

So what's left? Well, I started thinking about my own setting. You know, where I do my writing. You always read about how writers have rituals and routines to get in the mood for writing. A lot of these center around where they write. So I asked my fellow detectives to share a little about their own writing settings. And here's what they had to say:

Diana Renn: Here's the writing corner in my office.

I don't usually have the crime scene tape up -- it's something I was measuring for a promotional thing I'm doing with my publisher -- but sadly, it doesn't look so out of place in that disaster. I'd probably welcome a hard hat too. I write surrounded by cascading piles of paper and books. What you see here are projects (marketing, researching, drafting) all converging on each other. This space is actually clean compared to when I was into heavy revisions on Tokyo Heist last year -- then, for months,I had graphs, charts, and an enormous white board calendar all over the walls. Once a year I do a huge paperwork purge, and I can see I'm getting to that point. Because of the inherent dangers here, I've taken to fleeing the scene, writing in my local library or otherwise on the run.

Talia Vance: My favorite spot to write is the corner of my couch, complete with a cozy blanket and the Saint Bernard of Doom, Huckleberry.  There is even  a Saint Bernard in Spies and Prejudice that was inspired by him.

And here's Elisa Ludwig's writing setting: 

As for mine, well, behold:

I have an awesome office. I can say that because I had absolutely nothing to do with creating it. My husband did it all. Last summer, we were remodeling our bedroom and the wallpaper--oh, the wallpaper!--was taking FOR-EV-ER to remove. Finally, I took our sons to visit my brother and his family so that my husband could finish up the project in peace. Well, three days later, I came home to not only a redone bedroom, but a completely new office! New paint, new hardwood floor, new ceiling fan. And the best part of the story? When I asked him how he knew what colors I wanted, he said that he was standing in the hardware store with a handful of paint chips, trying to decide, when he realized that one was called "Storyteller."

Awww.

Unfortunately, it only looked like the photo for about a day. My office usually more closely resembles Diana's, with piles of papers and books. And more often than not, an extra kid or two, as well. Here's a more typical setting for my writing.

Still my office, but, yeah. That's my novel revision on my laptop--and that's a kid practicing percussion six inches from my elbow. PERCUSSION. Luckily, I work in an elementary school and have nerves of steel. And headphones.

So what about you? Where do your mysteries unfold? Do you have a special spot to write? Tell us about it in the comments.

---

W.H. Beck is an elementary school librarian by day and a middle grade author by night (or sometimes, really early mornings). Her first novel, MALCOLM AT MIDNIGHT, stars classroom pets at midnight and is available in September from Houghton Mifflin.

Mysteries Among Us #10

Welcome back to "Mysteries Among Us." In this feature, we share mysteries that intrigue us. They could be mysteries in the national news, in our own communities, even in our own families. Or they could be mysteries from the past that continue to haunt us. Mysteries are everywhere! Maybe some of what we've found will spark ideas for fictional mysteries. We'd love to know what mysteries fascinate you too!   

L.R. Giles: I have an affinity for gangster movies, and there's a certain piece of underworld lore that has resurfaced in my mind as of late. What happened to Jimmy Hoffa? In case you don't know the name, Hoffa was a labor leader from the 1930s into the 1970s. He was also a notorious criminal. He disappeared in 1975 and was never seen again. Popular theories about his possible location include a junk yard full of old oil drums and somewhere underneath the New York Giants stadium. I'm sticking with my own personal theory...that he was abducted by aliens. I'm sure Jimmy would appreciate my optimism.

Elisa Ludwig: I'm fascinated by the story of Morgellon's disease, a skin disease which many thought was a parasite infection that makes the skin literally crawl. Other symptoms include chronic fatigue, brain fog, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, joint swelling and hair loss. Sounds pretty awful, right? Even though people in Florida, Texas and California—including singer Joni Mitchell—have reported having this cluster of symptoms, a recent CDC study found that there were no disease organisms present, and that the sensations they experienced were the product of "delusional infestation." The 2012 study should put a lot of people's minds to rest, but I for one, will still be interested to see where this discussion goes in the future.

Diana Renn: Ever since a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, I've been fascinated by The Loretto Chapel staircase. It's an elegant wooden spiral structure leading up to a choir loft, built with two 360 degree turns and no visible structural support. Oh, and no nails. When the chapel was finished in 1878, carpenters were brought in to consult on how to access the choir loft concluded a staircase would not be possible, due to the size and constraints of the building. The Sisters of the Chapel made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, and soon after, a humble carpenter showed up and built one. He then disappeared without pay or thanks. Some believe it was Saint Joseph himself. I just love the triple mystery involved here: who was the carpenter? Why or how did he use wood that was not from the region? And how was this helix-structured staircase built so cleverly? The Snopes website actually dispels some mystery about the last question; experts say it's not quite the engineering marvel it seems to be, yet the tourist industry relies on the legend. Still, enough mystery remains to intrigue me. I love mysteries about mysterious appearances and disappearances!