Authors Electric

No, not that Caruso! In my crime WIP I thought of the other Caruso, the world's most famous male redhead not that long ago (to my way of thinking): the star of NYPD Blue for a single season in 1993 and CSI Miami from 2002-2012. David Caruso left Blue too soon for a film career that never took off. Some critics and fans never forgave him for abandoning the role they'd loved. But finally, nine years later, he came back and stayed on top for a decade. In my WIP I thought of Caruso while creating my redheaded villain, who's older but characterized by the same blend of gravitas and fire. Above all, I tried to help readers hear his spellbinding baritone voice. A form of shorthand, I admit, but not lazy writing. I allowed myself one reference to Caruso, then let his dialogue do the heavy work along with his actions and outbursts. That said, here we are at the heart of this post. My Aussie editor suggested deleting the reference because it's dated and may be unfamiliar to most ...

Good titles often whisper sweet nothings in our ears to keep us on track as we work on our books while letting readers know what to expect. A color can remind us of the mood or tone that we hope to sustain. John D. MacDonald knew all about that: The Turquoise Lament, Darker Than Amber , etc. The title of Lawrence Sanders's breakthrough book The Anderson Tapes alerted readers to the ingenious structure of the book and the author to his mission to stay on track with that POV tack. His two best-selling series, the Deadly Sins and the Commandments divided the offering into gritty police procedurals and shorter, lighter mysteries while his McNally mysteries offered comic froth. Ira Levin on the other hand had a title in Rosemary's Baby that helped him fix his focus on realistic details of Rosemary's pregnancy and the birthing to help ground the far-out horror in his mind and ours. These are all Type 1--or what I would call Onesie titles.               ...

The less readers know about writers, in general, the better. They don't want to know that some common Joe or Jill transformed their unremarkable life into remarkable fiction. A myth is as good as a mile to most minds. Drop your guard and down you go; for suddenly, alackaday, the bloom is off the Muse. The writers of the books we read should be part showmen, part shamans, part riddles wrapped in rich enigmas. The more unknowable they seem, the more we feel we know them. Don't let them let us know, we pray, that they're financial cretins, boozy woozies, crybabies, lousy lays or addled diaper-changers with baby poop on their pinkies. Let them give us commanding personas we're never quite able to 'get'. Old friends and family members love us and forgive our faults. But they're hard put to see our work as they would a total unknown's. How can anything great come from someone they've seen in moments they'd rather forget? Or how can strangers ...