Romance Books '4' Us: Karen McCullough

Blog: http://www.kmccullough.com/kblog

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

It Takes a Bit of Luck Too By Karen McCullough #RB4U #Romance #Mystery #Suspense

I spent a fair amount of time during the month of August watching the Olympics and found a lot of lessons in those competitions that could be applied to writing.

The athletes who compete at the Olympic Games are the best in the business, but they didn’t get there by accident. Those men and women worked their tails off to get there. They trained, practiced, watched their diets, kept in peak physical shape, every day for many years to get to the top rank of competitors in their sports.

Authors need to write, write, write as well. You don’t get better at it by sitting around reading books about writing but never doing it yourself. Yes, the books are like coaches who can make you better if you listen to their advice and put it into practice. But without that practice you don’t improve.

You have to compete and test yourself against others to discover how good you are and what you need to work on. As authors we are always competing for the attention of agents, editors, and readers. It can be useful to run your manuscripts by friends, critique partners, and beta readers first to get an idea of what you need to work on. Entering contents can help you assess where your skills stand in relation to other authors.

But one thing the Olympics made clear and you also learn as you spend more time in the publishing industry: there’s a lot of luck involved in making it to the top.

It helps to be born with the right genes. I was never destined to be an Olympic athlete. I did gymnastics in high school and college, even competed in a few regional meets. I never won, though I placed once or twice. I was more than willing to put in the practice time but I wasn’t born with enough natural talent to go any farther than that. It took me months (and a lot of bruises) to learn to do a twist on a handspring and it was clear my body was at its effective limits with that.

As a writer there are a lot of things you can learn – punctuation, proper grammar, story structure are all basic skills every writer needs. But the talent needs to be there too and that means deep insight into character, a feel for the right details to convey the story, and an understanding of the nuances or word usage and meanings. Those are things that can’t really be taught.

Which brings me to the luck part. Just as every Olympian has to master all the little nuances that go into a winning performance, every author has to master their craft on the basic level. You have to hone what talent you have and strive to get better all the time. But once you’ve reached a high level, there’s still the luck factor.

Gymnast Ali Raisman did some magnificent gymnastic routines in her events. She scored higher on several routines than every gymnast from every other country competing. Many years that would have been good enough to win everything in sight. But she happened to have a teammate who is a phenomenon unlike anything the gymnastics world has seen. Simone Biles isn’t just fabulous, she’s one of the all-time greats and, with the exception of one flawed balance beam routine, she won everything. Raisman kept coming in second to her. Ali has been nothing but graceful about it, but you know it must eat at her.

Writers experience the same thing. After a certain, level getting an agent or getting a publishing contract is a case of hitting the right person with the right thing at the right time. A lot of others are trying to do the same thing, so the odds aren’t good. You can improve them by writing the most fantastic story possible, and sending out as many proposal as you can, but that won’t insulate you against rejection.

In fact, I have hundreds of rejections in my files, from the standard form ones to many nice ones. One proposal I sent out got two rejections on the same day and both said the same thing. “Good story but no marketing hook.”

I once sent a proposal to an editor I’d worked with before. She liked the story idea. A lot. But she couldn’t buy it because they’d just acquired something very similar the month before. I self-published my most recent mystery novel, Wired for Murder, because the publisher who’d brought out the first book in the series, Five Star/Cengage, decided to cut their mystery line. I’ve had one other publisher fold entirely. It’s a tough business. If you want to be in it, work as hard as you can at the craft and then hope you’re the one who gets that lucky break. And keep in mind that you can improve your odds by keeping lots of proposals and books in circulation.

Karen McCullough is the author of a dozen published novels and novellas in the mystery, romantic suspense, and fantasy genres as well. She has won numerous awards, including an Eppie Award for fantasy, and has also been a four-time Eppie finalist, and a finalist in the Daphne, Prism, Dream Realm, Rising Star, Lories, Scarlett Letter, and Vixen Awards contests. Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and numerous small press publications in the mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and romance genres. She has three children, six grandchildren (plus one on the way) and lives in Greensboro, NC, with her husband of many years.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenMcCulloughAuthor

Blurb for Wired for Murder: Most of the time, Heather McNeil loves her job as assistant to the director of the Washington DC Market Show Center. Because she’s a good listener and even better at solving problems, her boss assigns her to handle a lot of the day to day issues that arise during the shows, exhibits, and conferences being held there. When Heather becomes an unwilling audience to murder during the Business Technology Expo and later finds the body, she’s willing to let the police take care of it. But she soon learns more than she wanted to know about the victim and all the people who really didn’t like him very much.

Buy:

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F81SNDQ

· Amazon print: https://www.amazon.com/Wired-Murder-Market-Center-Mysteries/dp/153502027X/

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/649290

· Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wired-for-murder-karen-mccullough/1124077937?ean=9781535020275

· iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/wired-for-murder/id1133875090?mt=11

· Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/wired-for-murder-1

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Finding My Weakness by Karen McCullough #RB4U #Romance @kgmccullough

This whole growing and getting better thing? Apparently it never stops. Always something new to learn. Or sometimes to unlearn. It’s true for everything I do. I had it brought home to me this week in my professional life as a website designer/developer that there are technologies I need to be more on top of. And it’s true in my writing life as well.

I was reminded of it again last week when I got the edits for my July 1 release of the second in my Market Center Mysteries series, Wired for Murder.

I’ve been writing for something like thirty years now and I’ve been published for at least twenty-five of those. My first book was published in 1990 so you can do the math.

Time and again in my writing/publishing career I’ve had to unlearn bad habits. And it seems that even as I unlearn one, two more pop up. It’s a professional game of “Whack-a-Mole.” Or “Whack-a-Crutch-Word.”

A few years ago an editor pointed out to me I was overusing the word “that” in my prose. Every fourth of fifth sentence had a “that” in it. So I went through the manuscript and eliminated as many of them as I could. And I’ve been hyper-aware of every “that” ever since.

Later a different editor told me I used far too many dialogue tags that weren’t just a plain, simple “said.” I would still argue that there is a place for tags like “agreed,” “argued,” “begged,” etc. I realize now they need to be used sparingly.

But it appears that once again I’ve developed a few “crutch” words and phrases. This time it was in an attempt to reduce the number of dialogue tags overall. But In the edits for Wired for Murder, the editor pointed out that my characters either nodded or shrugged something like every third sentence. Way too often.

So now I have a few more words to add to the list of things I search for in the editing process. Just when I start to think I’m getting good at this whole writing thing I’m reminded that there’s always more to learn. And unlearn.

And I’ll always need an editor to save me from myself.

Wired for Murder: Most of the time, Heather McNeil loves her job as assistant to the director of the Washington DC Market Show Center. Because she’s a good listener and even better at solving problems, her boss assigns her to handle a lot of the day to day issues that arise during the shows, exhibits, and conferences being held there.
The Business Technology Exposition at the Market Center is set to open with a major new product announcement from one of the biggest companies in the computer electronics business. Before that event, though, the president of industry-leader MegaComp has a very public argument with a man who accuses the company of stealing the concept for a technical process from him.
Heather witnesses the argument, along with security officer Scott Brandon, an ex-cop and her romantic interest. Because it appears the disagreement will end peacefully, they don’t intervene, and in fact, the accuser does walk away with nothing more than harsh words exchanged. The new product announcement goes off without a hitch. But when the accuser returns a phone call from Heather, she becomes an unwilling audience to his murder and later finds his body in a private section of an exhibitor’s booth.

Heather is more than happy to leave the investigation to the police, but she’s the person everyone talks to and she soon learns more than she wanted to know about the victim and all the people who really didn’t like him very much.

Pre-order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F81SNDQ

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenMcCulloughAuthor

Thursday, April 7, 2016

What Makes a Series Appealing to Readers by Karen McCullough #RB4U @kgmccullough

Seven years ago, I sold the first novel in a mystery series to Five Star/Cengage, a book that was supposed to be the first in what I envisioned as a series for 4-5 novels. A Gift for Murder is a mystery with romantic elements. The book is a self-contained story, settled at the end, but it also has some unresolved plot elements in the background that relate to the hero. Due to some family issues, it took a couple of years to get the next book written, edited, and ready to go out. It was accepted by my editor at Five Star and I waited for the contract. And waited. Then waited longer. Finally I got an answer, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

Five Star was ending its mystery line. Rights to any uncontracted books were returned to the authors. After some thought and discussions with others, I’ve decided to self-publish the rest of the series. Book two is done. Book three is in progress. Book four is in the development process.

The second book is currently with an editor and I’m thinking about covers. A Gift for Murder already has three different covers (hardcover, mass market paperback, and ebook) but I think it needs a fourth one, since I want to create a branded look for the series.

I’m also doing a lot of thinking about what makes a series successful. I’ve read plenty of them, in various genres, some traditionally published, some indie-pubbed. I know that I don’t want to do an open-ended series, common in many mystery series, where each story is completely self-contained without any background plot. But it’s a hard trick to pull off having books that are satisfying to readers while leaving enough unresolved to bring people back for the next one.

Having read all those series, though, I’m convinced that while clever, well-executed plots are important for engaging readers, it’s really the characters that keep readers coming back for more. Here’s my analysis of what keeps readers buying the next books in a series and how I’ve tried to pull it off.

· There has to be something unusual about the main character, something that will intrigue readers and bring them back book after book. They may just be particularly smart or gifted in some way, but they may also be limited in some specific way. Think of Nero Wolfe’s size and his refusal to leave the house. In a different way, Jack Reacher’s size and inability to settle. The character doesn’t have to be good or likeable in the standard way, though I think most readers at least want protagonists who at least have some sense of honor they adhere to. There are characters who are irritating or in some cases even unlikeable, but they have to be utterly fascinating. Lizbeth Salander, from Steig Larsen’s novels, comes to my mind. I didn’t like her very much but I was riveted by her anyway.

I’ve tried with my Market Center Mysteries to make my protagonist more likeable but still interesting. She’s young, smart, and personable, with a slightly off-beat sense of humor, a thing for interesting pens and a coffee addiction. She’s also a superb listener, and the kind of person that everyone dumps their problems on. She’s likeable but she’s no fool and she can be snarky at times.

· Many series include a background mystery or question, something intriguing enough to bring readers back again and again because they want to know more about it. This isn’t the same as an open ended story or cliffhanger ending. I HATE those. I want a book with a satisfying ending, so the background question can’t be the main plot. It has to be something else, something possibly just hinted at. A mystery about a character’s background, what they’re doing on the side, their real motives, etc. All those and plenty of other possibilities can provide a continuing thread of plot that simmers in the background of a series until the author is ready to reveal the truth. Sometimes it’s a romantic through-plot: will two protagonists find a way to get together? Janet Evanovich uses a more complicated romantic tangle in her Stephanie Plum series where there are two romantic interests. It helps if the author drops a few clues or reveals bits of information through each book, just enough to whet the readers’ appetite for more.

With my Market Center Mysteries I’ve set up my heroine’s love interest as an ex-cop with a mysterious past that he doesn’t discuss. Through the next few books I plan to reveal what happened to make him so reticent and I have a way to resolve the heroine’s doubts about him and his motives.

· Plot is still absolutely essential. No matter how fascinating the characters, they won’t draw the reader through a plot that’s too thin, boring, obvious, incoherent, or incomprehensible. The author has to provide an enjoyable reading experience or there will be no interest in another book.

Hard to talk about this with my own stories. Of course I try to create an interesting, exciting experience for my readers.

· If there’s no background question to be resolved, an unusual setting or milieu that gives readers a peek into a world that is normally unseen. Historical settings rich in period detail work admirably for this purpose. Series where the characters have unusual jobs or inhabit a world not open to public view also work, which explains the enduring popularity of police procedurals and medical thrillers.

I feel this is one of the strong points of my series. The setting at a market/convention center provides a chance for a behind-the-scenes peek into events that a lot of people attend in one way or another, but rarely glimpse all the under-currents and human drama that goes on without the public’s knowledge.

· This one’s going to be controversial, but I believe the author has to promise that the background questions will be resolved and in a way that will satisfy the readers. I’ve dropped more than one series I was enjoying when I lost confidence that the author actually knew where the story was going or that the background plot would ever be resolved.

I want it to be clear that readers of my Market Center Mystery novels will eventually learn the truth about Scott Brandon’s background and his falling-out with the D.C. Metro Police Department.

I’m sure I’m missing a few things and I’d love to hear from authors and readers. Please tell me what things pull you onto a series and induce you to buy additional books.

Karen McCullough is the author of a dozen published novels and novellas in the mystery, romantic suspense, and fantasy genres as well. She has won numerous awards, including an Eppie Award for fantasy, and has also been a four-time Eppie finalist, and a finalist in the Daphne, Prism, Dream Realm, Rising Star, Lories, Scarlett Letter, and Vixen Awards contests. Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and numerous small press publications in the mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and romance genres. She has three children, four grandchildren and lives in Greensboro, NC, with her husband of many years.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenMcCulloughAuthor

A Gift for Murder (Note: the cover here will soon be changed since I’m want to give the series a unified look. The price is likely to change as well so you might want to grab a copy right now if you’re interested.)

The Gifts and Home Decoration trade show provides Heather McNeill with the longest week of her hectic life. As assistant to the director of Washington, D.C.'s, Market and Commerce center, she's point person for complaining exhibitors, missing shipments and miscellaneous disasters. It's a job she takes in stride—until murder crashes the event.

Read an excerpt and get order links here: http://www.kmccullough.com/Murder.php
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGKYNT6

Monday, November 16, 2015

Guest Blog: The Key to it All in One Question by Karen McCullough #RB4U #Mystery @kgmccullough

The Key to it All in One Question

By Karen McCullough

As an author, plotting has always been my biggest problem. I’m a pantser who tends to start a project with some idea who the characters are, a pretty clear picture of how the story gets underway, and some vague notion of how it should all come out. That’s about it. Beyond that I tend to wing it.

And inevitably at some point I get bogged down and have to take a break to figure out what to do next. And that’s where things start getting hairy. I make lists, consider options, and try to figure out what my hero and/or heroine would do in the situations they’re on.

Obviously they’ve got problems. It wouldn’t be much of a story if they didn’t. And just as obviously, they have to try to figure out how to handle the issues they’re facing. Usually I’ve got several options and I’m trying to puzzle out which of those would be the best way to go with my story.

Then someone told me the secret. She gave one great piece of advice that has helped me make sense of plotting and character development issues.

She said to figure out the one thing your character would never do and then create a situation where they’re forced to do just that. You build your plot backwards from that one piece of information. Somewhere early in the story you have to let the readers know what that one thing is. Every decision you, the author, make along the path of the book leads to that moment when the character has to decide to do the thing they least want to do.

It forces you to build in both serious conflict and significant character development, because obviously it’s going to take something serious and desperate to make your heroine do something she’s always said (to herself at least) she would never do.

Good examples from movies include Indiana Jones and the snakes, Luke Skywalker turning off his lightsaber during the climactic battle with Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi, Dorothy confronting the witch in The Wizard of Oz, etc. I’m sure you can think of many more examples if you try since it’s such a fundamental piece of storytelling.

Remember how near the beginning of Casablanca, Ricks says, “I stick my neck out for nobody.”? And then of course, in the end, he does just that, giving up everything, including the woman he loves dearly, for a higher cause, by allowing her to escape with her husband.

The higher the stakes, the greater the potential loss, the more difficult the decision is for the character, the more powerful and gut-wrenching the story becomes.

I tried to do this in my mystery novel with romantic elements, A Gift for Murder. The heroine, Heather, has a job she loves as assistant to the director of the market center. Her main role is being the troubleshooter during shows and exhibits, and she’s good at it. But when a murder occurs and Heather begins to sniff out the motives for it, she’s forced to risk more and more to get to the bottom of it and see justice done. Initially it’s just the irritation of the people she works with, including her boss, threatening her, but as the show moves on and time gets short, she’s warned that she’ll lose her job if she doesn’t stop asking probing questions. She’s forced to ask herself if finding the answer is worth losing her job and the decision isn’t an easy one. And in the end she has to risk even more…

A Gift for Murder

For fifty-one weeks of the year, Heather McNeil loves her job as assistant to the director of the Washington DC Market Show Center. But the Gift and Home trade show, the biggest show of the year at the center, is a week-long nightmare. This year’s version is worse than usual. Misplaced shipments, feuding exhibitors, and malfunctioning popcorn machines are all in a day’s work. Finding the body of a murdered executive dumped in a trash bin during the show isn’t. The discovery tips Heather’s life into havoc.

The police have reason to suspect the victim’s wife killed him, but Heather doesn’t believe it. She’s gotten glimmers of an entirely different scenario and possible motive, but questioning exhibitors about the crime doesn’t make her popular with them or with her employers. Still, other lives might be at risk, and if she doesn’t identify the murderer before the show ends, the culprit could well remain free to kill again.

Her only help comes from a company executive with ulterior motives and the Market Center’s attractive new security officer, Scott Brandon. Despite opposition from some of the exhibitors, her employers, and the police, Heather seeks to expose the killer before the show ends. To solve the mystery she will have to risk what’s most important to her and be prepared to fight for answers, her job, and possibly her life.

Karen McCullough

Karen McCullough is the author of more than a dozen published novels in the mystery, romantic suspense, and fantasy genres and has won numerous awards, including an Eppie Award for fantasy. She’s also been a four-time Eppie finalist, and a finalist in the Prism, Dream Realm, Rising Star, Lories, Scarlett Letter, and Vixen Awards contests. Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and numerous small press publications in the fantasy, science fiction, and romance genres. She has three children, three grandchildren and lives in Greensboro, NC, with her husband of many years.

Author’s links:

Blog: http://www.kmccullough.com/kblog

http://www.amazon.com/Detectives-Dilemma-Karen-McCullough-ebook/dp/B00OA9WFQY/

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Guest Blog: Karen McCullough talks writing today on #RB4U

All those unfinished books

No, I'm not talking about the ones I started to read but couldn't get into, though there are plenty of those, too.

I'm talking about all the unfinished stories sitting on my hard drive or backed up on CDs. Those ideas that seemed so compelling when they first occurred to me, but somehow never got completed.

I probably have two dozen stories I started writing but have never finished. A couple I know I'll go back to and finish. Others will remain forever half-baked ideas that never made it to the oven.

I've finished enough stories to know I can do it so it's not that I worry about never completing another one. I just wonder what happened to so many ideas I once thought would make great novels or novellas. Where did they go off the rails? Or did they?

A few got derailed by circumstances. A couple of times I had to stop writing one story to do edits on another or finish something for a deadline. Occasionally when my train of thought for a story gets derailed by circumstances, I find it hard to get it back on the right track.

Sometimes I’ve realized that I didn’t have as good a story idea as I thought and sometimes I discovered the characters weren’t right for the plot or the plot wasn’t going anywhere particularly interesting. A few crashed when I hit the wall and found I had no idea where the plot was going and couldn’t figure out how to bring it around. Others just seemed to come to a screeching halt for no apparent reason.

It’s that last group that I sometimes worry about.

Every now and then I go back through those unfinished works and look at them again. And even more rarely a flash of inspiration will hit and I’ll know where that story’s going. I may have to rewrite pieces of it, but I can feel the excitement that got me started on it in the first place. And I’ll go on to finish the first draft of the work.

My most recent release, Daphne-finalist romantic suspense, The Detective’s Dilemma, wasn’t one of those. It was a story that I wrote from start to finish over a few months, working at a pretty steady pace.

Blurb for The Detective’s Dilemma:

Although Sarah Anne Martin admits to pulling the trigger, she swears someone forced her to kill her lover. Homicide detective Jay Christianson is skeptical, but enough ambiguous evidence exists to make her story plausible. If he gives her enough freedom, she’ll either incriminate herself or draw out the real killers. But, having been burned before, Jay doesn’t trust his own protective instincts…and his growing attraction to Sarah only complicates matters.

With desire burning between them, their relationship could ultimately be doomed since Sarah will be arrested for murder if they can’t find the real killer.

Bio:

Karen McCullough’s wide-ranging imagination makes her incapable of sticking to one genre for her storytelling. As a result, she’s the author of more than a dozen published novels and novellas, which span the mystery, fantasy, paranormal, and romantic suspense genres. A former computer programmer who made a career change into being an editor with an international trade publishing company for many years, she now runs her own web design business to support her writing habit. Awards she’s won include an Eppie Award for fantasy; three other Eppie finals; Daphne, Prism, Dream Realm, Rising Star, Lories, Scarlett Letter, and Vixen Awards, and an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest. Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and numerous small press publications in the fantasy, science fiction, and romance genres. She lives in Greensboro, NC, with her husband of many years.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenMcCulloughAuthor

http://www.amazon.com/Detectives-Dilemma-Karen-McCullough-ebook/dp/B00OA9WFQY/

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

What Draws Me Into a Story by @kgmccullough #RB4U #Contemporary

I recently read a couple of anthologies that groups of authors have been putting together to showcase their talents. Between the two collections there were probably about two dozen stories, most by authors I’d never heard of before. And from that batch I found only two stories that intrigued me enough to make me look up more of that author’s work.

That led me to reflect on why so few of those stories really worked for me. In most cases, I knew within the first few pages that the story wasn’t grabbing me, but except for a couple that were so badly written I couldn’t bear to continue, I did read most of them all the way through. And in every case, my initial impression of the story was confirmed.

So what was the apparently rare factor that made me want to continue reading a couple of authors’ works that most of the other stories lacked?

My initial thought was that it was the characters, because those generally make or break a piece for me, but after looking at them a little more closely, I decided it was something more than that. Certainly characters are part of the answer because one of the major differences was that I liked or sympathized with the protagonists in the stories I liked. But I sometimes felt some of the same for characters in stories I didn’t care for.

It was more than just that sympathy factor, though. The characters of the stories I liked were interesting. They had depth and dimension, not just quirks, which some of the authors seemed to use instead of showing a real character. The characters that worked for me felt things, thought about things, and acted from those thoughts and feelings, but they weren’t just simple things like generalized anger or fear. Their emotions and reason had complexity and depth.

It wasn’t just the characters, though. The settings, action, description, all had that little bit more depth that made the writing vivid and sucked me into the author’s world. I realized that many of the stories that didn’t work for me felt thin, as though the author hadn’t dived deep enough into the story, didn’t know her world and characters well enough to be able to make them come alive.

I finally decided it was a combination of doing many things well, but the two that seemed most prominent were showing everything rather than telling, which put me right into the story, and picking the right detail to make me see exactly what was going on. Both of those are things that writing instructors, books on writing, and blog posts on writing all harp on. Yet, as these stories showed me, it’s not as easy to do as it sounds.

As an author myself, it felt important for me to figure this out because I hope I’m writing the kind of story that will draw readers in deeply and refuse to let them go. I’ve tried to do that in The Detective’s Dilemma, my Daphne-award nominated romantic suspense story from Kensington/Lyrical Press.

It was especially important to me to get the reader deeply into my heroine in that story because in the very first chapter she is forced to do something horribly, mind-blowingly awful. I want readers to feel her shock, her horror, her helplessness, and her fear. I want the reader to experience that scene right along with her and then stay with her and cheer for her as she tries to rebuild a shattered life, find the villains, and beat them at their game.

The Detective’s Dilemma

With desire burning between them, their relationship could ultimately be doomed since Sarah will be arrested for murder if they can’t find the real killer.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenMcCulloughAuthor