Clay Stafford talks with Joyce Carol Oates “On Being Her Own Person”

Joyce Carol Oates interviewed by Clay Stafford

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I first met Joyce Carol Oates when she was the John Seigenthaler Legends Award winner at the Killer Nashville International Writer’s Conference. She is a prolific writer, a modern-day legend, and a professor at NYU and Princeton, where her fortunate students learn from one of the best living writers today. When her new collection of short stories came out, Flint Kill Creek, I reached out to her to see if we could chat about the new book, writing in general, and how to prepare oneself for a career as a writer. My goal, because she is both a prolific writer and a teacher, was to see if there was some Holy Grail that writers could discover to create a successful career. Fortunately, we may have stumbled upon it. “Joyce, someone such as you who's written over a hundred books, how do you consistently generate these fresh ideas and maintain this creative energy you've got going?”

“Well, it would not interest me to write the same book again, so I wouldn't be interested in that at all.”

“I wonder if some of it also has to do with all the reading you do. It's generating new ideas coming in all the time.”

“I suppose so. That's just the way our minds are different. I guess there are some writers who tend to write the same book. Some people have fixations about things. I don't know how to assess my own self, but I'm mostly interested in how to present the story in terms of structure. Like Flint Kill Creek, the story is really based very much on the physical reality of a creek: how, in a time of heavy rainfall, it rises and becomes this rushing stream. Other times, it's sort of peaceful and beautiful, and you walk along it, yet it's possible to underestimate the power of some natural phenomenon like a creek. It's an analog with human passion. You think that things are placid and in control, but something triggers it, and suddenly there is this violent upheaval of emotion. The story is really about a young man who is so frightened of falling in love or losing control, he has to have a kind of adversarial relationship with young women. He's really afraid to fall in love because it's like losing control. So, through a series of incidents, something happens so that he doesn't have to fall in love, that the person he might love disappears from the story. But to me, the story had to be written by that creek. I like to walk myself along the towpath here in the Princeton area, the Delaware and Raritan Canal. When I was a little girl, I played a lot in Tonawanda Creek, I mean literally played along with my friends. We would go down into the creek area and wade in the water, and then it was a little faster out in the middle, so it was kind of playful, but actually a little dangerous. Then, after rainfall, the creek would get very high and sometimes really high. So it's rushing along, and it's almost unrecognizable. I like to write about the real world, and describe it, and then put people into that world.”

“You've been writing for some time. How do you keep your writing so relevant and engaging to people at all times?”

“I don't know how I would answer that. I guess I'm just living in my own time. My most recent novel is called Butcher, and I wrote it a couple of years ago, and yet now it's so timely because women's reproductive rights have been really under attack and have been pushed back in many states, and it seems that women don't have the rights that we had only a decade ago, and things are kind of going backwards. So, my novel Butcher is set in the 19th century, and a lot of the ideas about women and women's bodies almost seem to be making like a nightmare comeback today. I was just in Milan. I was interviewed a lot about Butcher, and earlier in the year I was in Paris, and I was interviewed about Butcher, because the translations are coming out, and the interviewers were making that connection. They said, ‘Well, your novel is very timely. Was this deliberate?’ And I'm not sure if it was exactly deliberate, because I couldn't foretell the future, but it has this kind of painful timeliness now.”

“How do you balance your writing with all this marketing? Public appearances? Zoom meetings with me? How do you get all of it done? How does Joyce Carol Oates get all of it done?”

“Oh, I have a lot of quiet time. It's nice to talk to you, but as I said, I was reading like at 7 o'clock in the morning, I was completely immersed in a novel, then I was working on my own things, and then talking with you from three to four, that's a pleasure. It's like a little interlude. I don't travel that much. I just mentioned Milan and Paris because I was there. But most of the time I'm really home. I don't any longer have a husband. My husband passed away, so the house is very quiet. I have two kitties, and my life is kind of easy. Really, it's a lonely life, but in some ways it's easy.”

“Do you ever think at all—at the level you're at—about any kind of expanded readership or anything? Or do you just write and throw it out there?”

“I wouldn't really be thinking about that. That's a little late in my career. I mean, I try to write a bestseller.”

“And you have.”

“My next novel, which is coming out in June, is a whodunnit.”

“What's the title?”

“Fox, a person is named Fox. That's the first novel I've ever written that has that kind of plot. A body's found, there’s an investigation, we have back flash and backstory, people are interviewed. You follow about six or seven people, and one of them is actually the murderer, and you find out at the end who the murderer is. The last chapter reveals it. It's sort of like a classic structure of a whodunnit, and I've never done that before. I didn't do it for any particular reason. I think it was because I hadn't done it before, so I could experiment, and it was so much fun.”

“That's one of the things readers love about your work, is you experiment a lot.”

“That was a lot of fun, because I do read mysteries, and yet I never wrote an actual mystery before.”

“Authors sometimes get the advice—which you're totally the exception to—of pick one thing, stay with it, don’t veer from that because you can't build a brand if you don't stick with that one thing. Yet you write plays, nonfiction, poetry, short stories, novels, and you write in all sorts of genres. What advice or response do you give to that? Because I get that ‘stick with one thing’ all the time from media experts at Killer Nashville. You're the exception. You don't do that.”

“No, but I'm just my own person. I think if you want to have a serious career, like as a mystery detective writer, you probably should establish one character and develop that character. One detective, let's say, set in a certain region of America so that there's a good deal of local color. I think that's a good pattern to choose one person as a detective, investigator, or coroner and sort of stay with that person. I think most people, as it turns out, just don't have that much energy. They're not going to write in fifteen different modes. They're going to write in one. So that's sort of tried and true. I mean, you know Ellery Queen and Earl Stanley Gardner and Michael Connolly. Michael Connolly, with Hieronymus Bosch novels, is very successful, and they're excellent novels. He's a very good writer. He's made a wonderful career out of staying pretty close to home.”

“Is there any parting advice you would give to writers who are reading here?”

“I think the most practical advice, maybe, is to take a writing course with somebody whom you respect. That way you get some instant feedback on your writing, and I see it all the time. The students are so grateful for ideas. I have a young woman at Rutgers, she got criticism from the class, and she came back with a revision that was stunning to me. I just read it yesterday. Her revision is so good, I think my jaw dropped. She got ideas from five or six different people, including me. I gave her a lot of ideas. She just completely revised something and added pages and pages, and I was really amazed. I mean, what can I say? That wouldn't have happened without that workshop. She knows that. You have to be able to revise. You have to be able to sit there and listen to what people are saying, and take some notes, and then go home and actually work. She is a journalism major as well as something else. So I think she's got a real career sense. She’s gonna work. Other people may be waiting for inspiration or something special, but she's got the work ethic. And that's important.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference and the online streaming creative learning platform The Balanced Writer. Subscribe to his weekly writing tips at https://claystafford.com/

Joyce Carol Oates has published nearly 100 books, including 58 novels, many plays, novellas, volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water, What I Lived For, and Blonde were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize; she won the National Book Award for her novel them. https://celestialtimepiece.com/

Clay Stafford talks with Callan Wink “On Succeeding as a Part-Time Writer”

Callan Wink interviewed by Clay Stafford

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In spring, summer, and fall, Callan Wink can be found guiding flyfish anglers in Montana. In the winter, he surfs in Costa Rica. Callan’s new book, Beartooth, is out, and I wanted to talk to him about his success as a part-time writer. I caught up with Callan in Costa Rica (he’s already made the migration) after a morning of surfing and before a walk on the beach. “Callan, let’s talk about the writing and editing process, specifically about Beartooth. I heard it’s had a circuitous route. Can you tell us about your process and the trajectory of this particular book?”

“I've probably had the premise in my head for a long time, over ten years, and I wrote it as a short story when I was writing more short stories. It was an okay short story, but it was thin. I felt like there was more, so I never tried publishing it. Then I wrote this long, 400-page, boring novel. It had a great first fifty-sixty pages, I thought. It was one of my first attempts at writing a novel. It didn't go well, so I put it away for a long time and wrote my other two books in the meantime—another novel and that collection of short stories. Then, I came back to it a couple of years ago. I wanted to write a collection of novellas. I still thought the first fifty-sixty pages were really good, so I just went back to this one and brutally cut out everything boring, which was a lot of it.”

“Which is a good move.”

“It was pretty good. It was eighty-ninety pages, and I had a couple of other novellas. My agent and I tried to sell that as a collection of three novellas, and we had interest, but the publishers, in the end, said a collection of novellas is a hard sell, but they were all like, ‘We like this one, Beartooth. Can you make it longer?’ I'm like, shit. It was longer at one point. But anyway, then I went back. I also rewrote and developed other things. I do think it made it better. It's still a short novel, but I feel like the stage it's at now is the best of all those iterations. If I learned anything from this one, it was if you have a good premise, don't give up on it, which I'm prone to do. I like to keep moving on to other things, and if something doesn't work out quickly and easily, I'm like, it's not meant to be. But good premises are a little harder to come by, I'm realizing as I get older. If you have a good one, it behooves you to keep working on it.”

“I find your writing life fascinating. For those struggling with family and work, how do you balance writing with your other responsibilities as a part-time writer?”

“I have a lot of respect for people who are producing when they have families and full-time jobs and things like that. I’m a single person. My summer, spring, and fall job is very physically and emotionally taxing at times. It's long days, and I'm tired and don't write. But I do feel like when you have constraints on time, it does make you a little more likely to buckle down when you do have time. I don't work at it all year, but when I do, I try to be disciplined and get my 1,000 words in every day in the winter and at least feel like I'm generating some stuff. I don't know if it's the best way, quite honestly. I feel like working on it all year is probably better for writing novels. But I do feel like it's probably going to mean that I'm going to be producing shorter novels because it's a little easier to get one in the bag in a few months or a rough, rough draft, as opposed to some epic, sprawling thing where you’ve got to be in it for years every day.”

“What strategies do you use to stay motivated and maintain that momentum during writing on your schedule?”

“That's a good question. I don't love the process of writing that much, quite honestly. Sometimes it's fun. You feel like you're getting somewhere, and things are flowing. I still really enjoy that feeling, but those times are overshadowed by vast periods of What am I doing? None of this is going well. But it's just always what I've done. It's like a compulsion. It's not something I will probably stop doing anytime soon. I was doing it without thinking that this was what I would do for my job. It was always like, I'm a fishing guide and write stuff. I used to write poetry. It wasn't very good, but I did that at a young age, and I guess I've always been writing, so I feel weird not to be at least thinking about it. Even if I'm not writing every day, I usually think about it most days. So yeah, for whatever reason, it's this compulsion I have. I don't necessarily feel like I need to be motivated too much other than to start feeling guilty if I haven't been working on something. It’s ingrained at this point. I don't see it changing anytime soon. Setting a small goal in terms of productivity is a good thing. I've always tried to do one thousand words daily, and I don't hit it every day, but I can most days. Sometimes it takes me a couple of hours, and sometimes it's like most of the day. But if I can get that, I can go about the rest of my day. I can go to the bar, surfing, or whatever.”

“Do you outline? Or do you sit down and start writing?”

“I do feel like maybe the outline for novels is a good way to do it. When I've tried to do it in the past, it feels like when you're doing the outline, you're like, Okay, this is great. I'm setting up this framework, and this is all gonna go a lot easier. But then it always seems to lack some organic characteristics that when I write happens. I don't outline much, but honestly, it might be easier if I did. It hasn't worked for me at this point. I usually try to write and have a point I want to get to in the next maybe ten pages. And I get to that point. And then, I think about what I want to do in the next ten pages. So, there is not a lot of outlining going on.”

“When you were writing Beartooth, were there any unusual challenges or anything you found challenging in developing the characters? And how did you overcome those?”

“I guess the challenge is the relationship between the two brothers, which evolved over time in the rewriting. It was all challenging, to tell you the truth. Several early readers said we want this mother character to be more developed. From the beginning, I had a pretty good idea about the two brothers and how I wanted them to be and act in the story. I knew she would be this absent figure, but when she returned, trying to create her more as a fully fleshed-out character was one of the more challenging things in the book for me. I can write a thirty-something-year-old man pretty well. Writing a sixty-year-old woman is a little bit more of a stretch. It's something I had to lean into a little bit more.”

“What part of the novel writing process is the most enjoyable?”

“There are fun moments, and finishing that first draft is sort of fun. You feel like you've done something. This is only my second novel, but weirdly, it’s like every one gets more challenging because you know how much work you have ahead. My first one, I had no idea. I thought I was pretty much there when I finished that first draft. No, not even close. There's so much work. Knowing how much work is coming up and going into it can be a little oppressive. Now, I think a lot of my challenge is to not think about that and try to recapture the going forward with it that I did in my first novel, where I didn't have any expectations. Weirdly, trying to write more like I did when I was first starting is something I have to try to do more now.”

“Do you think education sometimes messes with your mind? You know, you love writing, and then you go to school, and sometimes there are rules and things that start coming in your head.”

“For sure. The writing education I've had was significant in that I had rooms full of readers who had to read my stuff and give me feedback, so getting feedback as a writer is, I think, super crucial and challenging to do, often when you're outside of a writing program, for a lot of writers, unless you have this group of readers that you feel like are invested in your work and things like that. That can be a rare thing. When you have that, you feel like you are getting the feedback you need. But when you're on your own, you're just kind of on your own. I've taught writing a couple of times, and I enjoyed it for the most part. But I noticed that when I was trying to write, sometimes things I said in class to my students would come into my head. It was weird. I didn't like it, quite honestly, because there were things I was telling my students, and I was trying to apply them to my writing, which was weirdly counterproductive.”

“Putting yourself in a box.”

“A little bit. I was judging what I was writing based on something I was trying to tell my students in class that day, which wasn't helpful. I'm always impressed by people who are good writing teachers and also produce a lot of stuff. I don't have that ability.”

“Sometimes two different hats.”

“A little bit. I’ve got a lot of respect for writing teachers who are also good writers and working a lot because it's taxing.”

“For a novel with no deadline, no due date, how do you know when you're in that phase where it's like, ‘Okay, the draft is great. I need to start editing to get it ready to submit.’ At what point do you know you're at that point? Other than ‘I'm sick of it, and I'm ready.’”

“Yeah, well, there's that.”

“No, don't! Don't go to that one.”

“Generally, if I'm at the point where I'm just dinking around with commas and stuff, I'm like, ‘All right, it's time to get some other eyes on it.’ Once I'm either at the very sentence-level stuff or where I can't seem to access it anymore in a way that makes any substantial changes, then I at least need to put it away for a long time or send it to somebody.”

“If you're sending it to somebody, how do you handle the feedback from your beta readers or critique partners?”

“At least for me, I'm lucky, and I don't have a large pool of people I send stuff to. My agent, luckily, is great at reading stuff. I don't just send him whatever first draft junk I wrote. I try to respect his time because he's a busy guy. But, if I've been working on something and I think there's some merit, he'll give me good notes–just like a letter, and usually, it's pretty insightful. And then I try to go back into it with that. I think one thing that I've realized in doing this now is that there's a lot of benefit for me in putting something away for a significant amount of time because then you go back to it with fresh eyes. There are things that you can't see when you're so immersed in it. Putting something away is big for me.”

“But that disheartening feeling, too, when you come back two years later and go, ‘This was so good. I can't wait to read it,’ and then you're like, ‘This is so bad. I can’t believe I wrote it.’”

“I'm like eroded. I have probably three fully different novel drafts that I will never publish. They may have been things I needed to write to get out of my system for other things to come in, but if I were to look at the number of pages I've written on a scale compared to the ones I've published, that would be sad. I don't like to think about that.”

“How do you determine which parts of your novel need the most significant revision? You were talking about how the mom needed to be expanded. What clues do you have about that without third-party influence?”

“One thing I've noticed in my stuff is sometimes I get caught up in how to get from point A to Point B. I know I want to get to Point B at some point, and then there are all these steps. I get hung up in there. It gets boring while I'm just trying to get the characters from here to there, and that's something that can be hard to see if you haven't put it away for a while. But for whatever reason, coming back after a significant amount of time away from it, I'm more able to see the gaps or areas where you can cut and get to the more interesting stuff. Knowing when to end a scene and move on to something interesting is something that comes in editing. I've become more aware of it now; it is just moving along.”

“So, how do you solve that? Is it pretty much good, boring, and good stuff, and then we just put some transition or something in there and remove the boring? How does that work?”

“I think what I've noticed in my first drafts is maybe I don't give the reader enough credit or something because I'm still trying to figure it out in my own head where I need it to be very clear and sort of step by step to from point A to point B. Going back in, I'm like, ‘Oh, a reader is going to infer. We don't need all of that. We can get right into the next thing.’ I realized it early in short story writing, which is very scene-dependent. The gaps in between add to the effect of the story. Knowing when to transition is a big part of writing a short story, at least how I've done it, which translates into a novel. I try not to look at the sort of blank spots as much as a negative thing. I mean, you still need to have continuity and for readers to be able to follow along, but having blank spots in various areas when you're advancing is not the end of the world, and often is better, quite honestly.”

“You referenced inference. That's sometimes good because it invites the reader to think and contemplate where you're going, what just happened, or what did happen.”

“Definitely. A reader's imagination can do much better writing than I can. So, allowing the reader to use their imagination is crucial.”

“What advice would you give aspiring novelists about building a sustainable career while working at it part-time?”

“That's a good one, you know.”

“You're doing what you want to do, right?”

“Totally. I love it.”

“Your summertime gig, and you do not want to give that up?”

“I'm very fortunate. I'm not making a ton of money, but my lifestyle is a ten on a scale of one to ten. I have a good program, and I guess everyone's different. I think some people like going the academic route. For me, just having another job that is not writing is crucial. Many writers I've admired have taught as their job, but many also had other careers. Many writers have had just some job that was completely different than writing. And for me, that's important, and I would recommend that. And maybe not even go to school to write, to tell you the truth. Read a lot, and then study biology or something. It's kind of what I probably should have done.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://claystafford.com/

Callan Wink has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories and essays have been published in the New Yorker, Granta, Playboy, Men’s Journal, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the author of a novel, August, and a collection of short stories, Dog Run Moon. He lives in Livingston, Montana, where he is a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River. https://www.spiegelandgrau.com/beartooth

Clay Stafford talks with Heather Graham on “The Business of Writing”

Heather Graham interviewed by Clay Stafford

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Author Heather Graham is incredible in many ways: her prolific and stellar writing style and habits, her support and encouragement of other authors, and her inspiration and support of many beyond the writing field. I know of few authors who view writing and attention to their readers, as does Heather Graham. It was a pleasure catching up with Heather when she was in New York City during one of her busy tour schedules. Since she is so prolific, I thought I’d ask her about business, a subject that many writers view through a fog. “So, Heather, let’s jump right in and ask, what’s the biggest financial mistake you see new writers making early in their careers, and how can they avoid that?”

“I am horrible with finances, so I don't know if I'm the one to ask.”

I laugh aloud. “Okay, with that build-up, you crack me up. Can you speak from experience, then?”

“People come at writing from so many different venues. Some are keeping day jobs and writing on the side. They have their day job, so they don't have to worry about finances too much. And, of course, publishing is ever-changing. But always ensure you have your next project ready to go, and then don't be as bad with money as I am. I don't know what to say because you never know. Do you want to go traditional? Are you going to get a multi-book contract? Are they buying a one-off project? Are you collaborating with Amazon? It depends so much on what you're doing. One of the main things you must learn—that I'm still working on—is that when you're on contract, you'll get so much and then so much later on publication. And then the problem is, of course, it's never guaranteed income. You have to learn to watch the future more than anything else.”

“There are writers I speak with who have things they want to write, but frankly, we know that some of those are not commercial. How do you balance your creative freedom with what the market wants?”

“That's one thing I tell people to be careful about. If you are putting up on Amazon, you can be fast. You can catch the trend. But if you're writing for one of the traditional publishers or a small press, it's usually going to be a year before your work comes out. You want to be careful about writing to trends because that trend could be gone by the time something comes out. My thought is, if it's something you love, do it. Otherwise, be careful. You always have to write what you love. What makes you happy, too, because your excitement comes out on the page.”

“What are some of the common pitfalls that you might see that writers don't think about and should have been aware of, even with representation—things that could lead to mistakes?”

“First of all, you need to do your homework. Doing your research for beginning writers is one of the most important things you can do. Find out what agents enjoy what you're doing. Find out what houses are buying what you're doing. I think that's one of the best things. Somebody just spoke at World Fantasy who is an editor, but her husband is an agent. He has out there that he does not handle young adult, and he'll get a million young adult things anyway. The most important thing, I think, is to be savvy about what's going on. I didn't know any agents or editors when I started, but I can't recommend groups and conventions enough because you meet others. You're always going to hear more stories. You're going to hear what's happened. You're going to be introduced to editors and agents, and you're going to hear from friends, ‘Oh, my gosh, yes, that's exactly what they're looking for.’ Because I have covered my bases, I belong to HWA, MWA, International Thrillers, and RWA, and I have never met such a nice group of people. It's like nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine out of a thousand are great, and everybody shares. The good majority are supportive.”

“Because time is finite and money is finite, for a beginning author, where should authors focus their promotional and marketing strategies? And where should they not because they should be writing instead of doing that?”

“I'll tell you something I'm not very good at, but I have learned that TikTok and BookTok are some of the biggest ways you can do things now. Social media is free. When you're on a budget, using social media is great. I have been traditionally published for a long time, and they have publicity departments and marketing departments. More so today, even in the traditional houses, they want you to do a lot of your own promotions. I think for many of us, it is hard because the concentration is more on what I'm writing. It's a good thing to try to get out there and learn. And I am still working on this: learning how to be good on social media.”

“And technology changes.”

“Yes. Constantly.”

“New opportunities open up.”

“Yeah, that's just it. You have to be ready for change.”

“What are some red flags to look out for when you're getting an agent or signing a contract with a publisher?”

“Again, I've been lucky. I didn't start out with an agent and really had no idea what I was doing, but I sold a short horror story to Twilight Zone, and then Dell opened a category line, and I sold to Dell. But they were contemporary, and I had always wanted to write historical novels, and I had a couple in a drawer. I always remember when I sold because I stopped working with my third child and had my first contract with my fourth child. There’s just that year and a half, or whatever was in there, but when I had the historicals, and nobody wanted to see them, there was a woman in the romance community who had a magazine called Romantic Times, and she came to Florida with one of her early magazines. It had an ad that said Liza Dawson at Pinnacle Books was looking for historical novels, and I'm like, ‘Let me try. Let me try, please.’ They did buy the historical, but at the time, everybody was very proprietary about names, so Shannon Drake came into it. I was doing historicals under Shannon Drake, but the vampire series wound up coming under that name, too. It just depends on what you're doing. There are two lines of thought. One is that you need to brand yourself. You need to be mystery, paranormal mystery, sci-fi. You need to brand yourself as something. That’s one idea that can be very good, but I also loved reading everything. There are many, many different things that I have always wanted to write. I have been lucky; I have done it. Whether it was a smart thing or not, I don't know. I can very gratefully say that I have kept a career, and I have been able to do a lot of the things I've wanted to do.”

“When the boilerplate comes, it says they want all rights for everything. What rights should a writer retain?”

“When this whole thing happened where I was selling to a second company, that's when I got an agent. And again, we're looking at the same thing. Study what the agents are handling, what they're doing, and who they have. When we’ve done negotiations, I've usually been asked to leave because I am not a good negotiator. You need to listen to your agent and the agent's advice. Now the agent, a lot of the time is going to know, ‘No, no, no, we have to keep the film rights. They never do anything with them,’ or ‘No, let them have them because they just might use it.’ An agent is going to know these things better because they do it on a daily basis. And then the other thing is, your agent gets you paid. Instead of you having to use your editorial time talking to somebody saying like, ‘Could you please send that check?’ the agent will do that for you.”

“Let's go back a minute. You talked about social media. What kind of mistakes do you see writers making on social media? I can think of a few, but what are your thoughts?”

“I'll tell you what gets me, and this is purely as a reader, and I will be a reader till the day I die. I love books. I want people to read, too. As a reader, though, when I'm on social media, don't, don't, don't put out there, ‘Oh, you've got to read…’ or ‘This is the best book ever,’ because to me that means no. It's going to be my decision as a reader whether it's the best book ever. Just say, ‘I hope you'll enjoy this,’ or ‘This is about…’ or ‘I'm very excited about…’ or whatever. You don't want to say, ‘Gee! This may be pure crap, but buy it anyway.’ You can tell people what something is about, why you're excited about it, and you hope they'll enjoy it. But this is more my opinion as a reader than as a writer. Don't tell me, ‘It's the best thing ever. You're going to love it.’ Let me make that decision.”

“You talked about conferences and networking. What are some common mistakes that writers make when it comes to their professional development? Where are they lacking? What do you see value in?”

“Again, I think conferences and conventions are some of the most important things you can do. It helps if you want to volunteer and help get people going. That way, you meet more people, and you can interact more with those running the conferences, who have probably been around for a while and have some good advice. One of the worst things you can do is spend a lot of time whining or complaining about things that can't be helped. Things do happen sometimes. Books don't arrive, or the seller didn't come through. Don't make life miserable for other people. I'm not saying you shouldn't fix something if you can, but sometimes things can't be fixed, and then you have to let it go. And there are different types of conventions. You have Thriller Writers, Bouchercon, Killer Nashville. You have the Bram Stoker Awards, which are relatively big. We have something down in Florida called Sleuthfest. I love Sleuthfest, and it's very easy. It's good to get involved. It's an investment in your future. I know I was looking for money to pay the Chinese restaurant when I first started out, so sometimes you just don't have it when you're beginning your career. And that's why you try to do the things that are closest to you. Just become involved with a group that maybe meets at a library. Anything like that. There are online groups these days. The very best perk we get out of it is our communities.”

“What advice would you give people? Maybe, ‘I wish I had known this when I started out…’”

“I wish I had known what an amazing community the writing community was and to get involved, and therefore, I would have learned so many things I didn't know. I have two lines of advice. One, sit down and do it. Be dedicated to yourself. Be dedicated to your craft. And then, get involved. Find like-minded people because they will be wonderfully helpful and encouraging.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. https://claystafford.com/

Heather Graham is the NYT and USA Today bestselling author of over two hundred novels, including suspense, paranormal, historical, and mainstream Christmas fare. She is also the CEO of Slush Pile Productions, a recording company and production house for various charity events. Look her up at https://www.theoriginalheathergraham.com/.

Clay Stafford talks with Abbott Kahler “Advice for Writing True Crime”

Abbott Kahler interviewed by Clay Stafford

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I love nonfiction and fiction, and I had an opportunity to read Abbott Kahler’s new upcoming book, Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia, at the Dawn of World War II. Great title, of course; pulls everyone in. The amount of research Abbott put into this nonfiction book intrigued me, so I had to speak with her from her home in New York about how she put it all together. “So, Abbott, you've got all this research coming in. How do you make it useful and organize it rather than just putting it in a big Word document full of notes? I love research, probably too much, and my notes become a glorious mess that I must always go back and untangle. What's your organizational process? Anything you can share with me to make my process go smoother and more time-efficient?”

“I'm a big believer in outlining. I think it's essential. I use a tool called Scrivener that helps outline.”

“I’ve got it. I use it. But I’m not sure I use it well.”

“It allows you to move sections around, and it's searchable to find sources there. If there's a quote you want to remember, you can make sure it's in there, and you can find it just by searching. I think the outline for this book was 130,000 words…”

“The outline was 130,000 words?”

“Much longer than the finished book. The finished book is about 85,000 words, so I over-outline. I think it helps get a sense of narrative. I do a chronological outline, and I can see where I might want to move information and where I might want to describe someone differently. I think outlining extensively lets you see the story, making it much less daunting. Here you are with all this information, but if you have it formatted and organized, it will be much easier to tackle it piece by piece. You know, bird by bird, as Anne Lamott says. I highly recommend outlining for anybody who will tackle a big nonfiction project.”

“Well, even in fiction, there can also be a great amount of research depending upon the topic, setting, or even the personalities or careers of characters. Compare and contrast the writing of a nonfiction book versus that of a novel because you’ve done both.”

“Writing fiction was a surprise to me. I thought it was going to be easy. I thought, ‘Look at all this freedom I have. I can make my characters say and do whatever they want. If I want somebody to murder someone, goddammit, I am going to let them murder someone.’ You can't do that in nonfiction. That freedom was a lot of fun, and it was exhilarating, but it was also terrifying. I was always second-guessing my plot points. Does this twist work? Should there be another twist here? Is it too obvious? Do I have too many red herrings? Do I not have enough red herrings? And in nonfiction, you don't have those issues. What issue you have in nonfiction is that I am dumping information.”

“Of course, writers do that maybe too much sometimes in fiction, too.”

“One of the things I talk about with fellow nonfiction writers is how you can integrate backstory and history. You always have to give context. How do you integrate that context and still keep the momentum going forward, still keep the narrative moving, and still keep people invested in your story when you have to explain who Darwin was and what he did, you have to explain who William Beebe was and what he did, you have to explain what the Galapagos are, and what the history of the Galapagos is before you get into what happened there with these crazy characters. It’s different approaches and different skill sets.”

“I can see parallels, though, in both fiction and nonfiction here. Which do you like best?”

“It’s fun to go back and forth, and I think writing fiction teaches me a lot about nonfiction. You know, what you can get away with in nonfiction while still sticking to nonfiction. It allows you to be a little bit more inventive with your process in a way that's a lot of fun.”

“Interesting. Returning to Scrivener, do you start in Scrivener right from the beginning and start putting your notes in there?”

“I'll open Scrivener, and I'll start organizing by source. Say, I have Friedrich Ritter, a character in the book, and here's everything I know about Friedrich Ritter. I'll have a Friedrich Ritter file. Then I'll have a Baroness file and a Dore Strauch file, just getting into the characters in these separate ways. Their files are always accessible, and I can refer to them easily when I want to. ‘Oh, wait a minute. What did Dore say at that time? Oh, here it's in my Scrivener file on Dore.’ I draft in Word. I'm just an old-school person who uses Word to draft. I don't like Google Docs. I don't like drafting in Scrivener. I like Word because it lets you see the page count and feel like you're gaining momentum because the file is growing. It's a satisfaction that I think I—and probably many other people—need to see as they go through a big project like that.”

“I started with a typewriter, so for me, it seems to make sense.”

“I get you. I started with the word processor, which I don't even know if they make anymore. But you know, word processors were the rage back in college.”

“The narrative of a nonfiction book, then, is pretty much the same as that of a fiction book, in that you've got a traditional beginning, middle, and an end with all the conflicts, arcs, etc., that you find in fiction manuscript, correct?”

“For nonfiction writers, one of the greatest compliments we receive is that ‘it reads like fiction.’ That's something a lot of nonfiction writers strive for. They want to write something so immersive that you forget you're reading facts. It probably goes back to the fact that history is boring if you had a bad history teacher. A lot of people grow up thinking history is boring. It's irrelevant and boring. I'm here to try to tell you that history is fascinating. History is full of blood and guts and death and murder and striving and ambition and pathos and all kinds of interesting interactions between people. You must tell the story so people can relate to it. That's the challenge with nonfiction and what many of us go for.”

“My wife asked, ‘How is this book?’ And I'm like, ‘Well, if I wrote it in a story, no one would believe it.’ But these are real people.”

“It’s so funny you say that. I call it stranger than fiction. And I once proposed to one of my old editors who turned down this book, ‘Well, why don't I write this book as fiction if the publishers are not going to let me do it as nonfiction?’ And they're like, ‘Nobody would believe it.’”

“With nonfiction, you can't put words in their mouth. You can't change the characters’ life trajectory. How many creative liberties can you take in a book of true nonfiction? Are there liberties?”

“I wouldn't say liberties. I would say techniques. You can use foreshadowing, and I was fortunate in the sense that Dore Strauch, one of my main characters, not only wrote an incredible memoir in which she was very free about her feelings and her thoughts—so I was able to include feelings and thoughts authentically because they were documented in her memoir—but she always had a sense of foreboding. You know, she said things like, ‘I had a great ominous feeling that murder was just around the corner.’ She said these things constantly because that island was creepy and bad things were happening, and I don't blame her. There was a sense of foreboding.”

“Pirate ghosts everywhere.”

“She was the pirate ghost, and so it was great because sometimes it can feel heavy-handed if a nonfiction author tries to make too much sense of foreboding and foreshadowing, and all this ominous, you know, ‘Wait till you see what comes next.’ It could feel a little forced and strained, but I had a character doing it for me here. And it was so much that my editor said, ‘I think you can cut about fifty percent of the foreshadowing,’ which I didn't even take insult to because it wasn't me doing it. It was the character doing it.”

“The real person.”

“Yes. So, you can do foreshadowing. You can do cliffhangers. You cut off a chapter when a lot of suspense is going on, and then you cut it off when you might find out what happens, and you go to another point of view and pick up that point of suspense in a later chapter. You can use techniques, but you really can't make up anything. You can't make up even gestures. You can't make up the way somebody looks. You can't make up feelings. All those things must come from sources.”

“Very interesting. From the acknowledgments at the back of the book, there seem to be several people who've helped edit, verify, and vet. You're the person with all the information there in Scrivener. How involved can they be in transforming and vetting what you write?”

“They don't have any say one way or the other, but in the interests of accuracy, I wanted to reach out to people who knew this story or the character, who knew Galapagos in particular, especially in the chapter about Galapagos history. I contacted Galapagos specialists, people who live there, work there, and conservation efforts. People have been there helping me with this book the whole time. Old sources aren't always accurate. There are probably ten different accounts of how many islands are in the Galapagos Archipelago. For things like that, you must double-check. Also, a lot of those people were translators. I got French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, and a lot of Spanish documents. My rusty Spanish wasn't good enough to do it independently, so I had many translators helping me out. A lot of those people are from that. Whenever I could have gotten something wrong, I had to check with somebody else.”

“I saw one thing you did; you'd say they wrote this in one person's diary. In another person's diary, they wrote that. And they were conflicting in their points of view.”

“That was a challenge because I didn't want to give credence to one diary. I had suspicions about who was lying and when, but I also think that what people choose to lie about and omit is just as important sometimes as the truth, and I thought it was interesting. When you're dealing with a murder mystery, people will be lying.”

“Even a nonfiction murder mystery.”

“It's part of the genre. It's part of the game. And I wanted people to have their debate about it. Who do they think is lying? I had to include all those conflicting accounts to do that.”

“Do you have thoughts, recommendations, or advice for those thinking about writing their first nonfiction book?”

“Find something you're passionate about and willing to sit with for years. Look for primary source materials. Do they exist in a way that will allow you to tell the book the way you want to tell it? You need details if you want to write nonfiction that reads like fiction. I think that's the most important thing. And then I would say, sit your butt in the chair. The most important thing about writing anything is sitting your butt in a chair, making your fingers move, and getting the words down on the page. Everybody writes bad first drafts. Everybody writes bad third, fourth, fifth drafts. You keep honing and rewriting. Rewriting is probably the most important thing you can do. And make sure you have people around you who believe in what you're doing. Find a writing group where you think the people there are better than you. Always surround yourself with people you can aspire to.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. https://claystafford.com/

Abbott Kahler, formerly writing as Karen Abbott, is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City; American Rose; Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy; and The Ghosts of Eden Park. She is also the host of Remus: The Mad Bootleg King, a podcast about legendary Jazz Age bootlegger George Remus. A native of Philadelphia, she lives in New York City and Greenport, New York. https://www.abbottkahler.com/eden-undone

Clay Stafford talks with Andrews & Wilson “On Collaborating”

Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson interviewed by Clay Stafford

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I was excited to sit down and talk with Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, the acclaimed co-authors of the #1 international bestselling author team of Andrews & Wilson, who are unparalleled in action thrillers. I wasn’t disappointed. Their mastery of the genre, evident in their numerous bestsellers, makes them the perfect tour guides for those of us who aspire to craft compelling action scenes, but also their collaboration style is something to be envied. Moreover, their approachability and wealth of knowledge make them a team you can comfortably learn from without feeling intimidated.

Clay: “Brian and Jeffrey, you’re a writing team, but before you became that, can you tell us a little about your solo careers before your very successful collaboration?”

Brian: “I have a psychology degree from Vanderbilt.”

Clay: “Very helpful for a writer.”

Brian: “Very. I was always interested in the mind and how people think. I think that helps inform my interest in character and human dynamics. Then, I made a hard pivot when I went into the military, became a nuclear engineer, and was a submarine officer. That informed me of my interest in mechanical things and engineering and how things work. Living on a submarine is obviously like the ultimate Skinner Box. It's a human experiment. You shove a hundred people into this machine that has a nuclear reactor and can carry nuclear weapons, and you put it underwater where you're driving around, and you can't see where you're going; everybody's trapped inside, breathing recycled air, and eating three-month-old food. That's the perfect platform for me to think about microcosms. And every story is a microcosm. I lived in the microcosm of a submarine.”

Clay: “And that makes me think you're living the dream, the way you described that one.”

Brian: “Living the dream. Now they let me out, which is great. And make sure you put in the interview somewhere that there's a great irony that a submarine officer who was reading Hunt for Red October on a submarine chasing Russians around has an opportunity, twenty-plus years later, to write on the 40th anniversary of Hunt for Red October, a submarine novel about a submarine chasing Russians around. So that's a cool full-circle element. When you're out there serving, you're away from your family, you're away from your friends, you're bonding with the other servicemen and women in your community. One way you bond is to share stories, tell stories, and talk about what matters to you and what you're afraid of. It's how we digest and connect with people through storytelling and listening to stories. I think that military service helped weave this into my DNA. That storytelling is an important part of our community, and getting stories out there about the men and women they're serving, what they're going through, and what it feels like is important for the rest of the nation. The people who are not serving and maybe aren't familiar with military service or the sacrifices men and women make to keep the nation safe. What inspired me to want to be a storyteller is how story time was part of the community I lived in.”

Clay: “How about you, Jeff? Your solo career before you got into this partnership?”

Jeffrey: “Mine is the complete one-eighty-degree opposite of Brian's. Brian came into storytelling after all his experiences. And I had all these experiences because I'm still that nine-year-old with a rifle or the fire hat or whatever. My bio reads like someone who never grew up, which might be partly true.”

Clay: “We'll ask your wife.”

Jeffrey: “Right. No, I know better than that. Writing is the one great constant in my life. When I've done all these other things, being a pilot, being in the teams, being a doctor, and a firefighter, and all the things I've done, I always wrote. I started writing when I was probably my daughter's age, which is eight. I would write fan fiction for my favorite shows and published my first short story when I was 13 or 14. I've literally always had storytelling as part of my life. At times in my life, it was my catharsis; at times in my life, it was my creative outlet, and at times in my life, it was a passion that I wanted to turn into a career, which I've been blessed to do now. It's kind of the opposite of Brian. The writing was always there, and then I lived all these other lives that slowly informed that craft and helped me develop it differently. When Brian and I met, I believe he had two novels out. I had two out and a third about to come out. We were both writing individually, and this partnership grew out of friendship rather than necessity. We were writing, and we connected at ThrillerFest in New York. Because of my social paralysis, I'm uncomfortable in big groups of people, and my wife laughs about it because I do well. I think I look okay socially, but I don't like it. I was sitting in the hotel room looking through all the pictures of the people I might meet at this opening meeting during our debut author year when Brian and I were both debut authors. I was finding all the military people. I was like, ‘Okay, I can talk to those guys. We'll have something in common.’ Brian happened to be one of them, and I was burning the pictures into my head so I would recognize them at the cocktail party. And sure enough, I saw Brian there and said, ‘Hi.’ He was alone because he was a submariner, so he was crying in his beer, and I felt sorry for him. The partnership part of it came much, much later. But the history was there for both of us. I think that made it work.”

Clay: “How did the collaboration start?”

Jeffrey: “He stalked me like a little girl. It was weird.”

Brian: “Now remember he just explained how he stalked me.”

Jeffrey: “I think I said I felt sorry for you.”

Brian: “I think you stalked me. I believe what you just described is the definition of stalking. No, I think he charmed me.”

Clay: “This sounds like me telling how my wife and I met and got together, and mine is all lies.”

Jeffrey: “It's very uncomfortable, isn't it?

Clay: “But between all the stalking and the give-and-take and the ‘I don't want to see you anymore,’ how did it eventually work out?”

Brian: “All kidding aside, we met at ThrillerFest at the cocktail party and became fast friends. Our family values are similar. We have the same sort of world outlook, and we're both driven and intellectually curious people. We joke about Jeff’s bio all the time. Also, I have a variety of experiences, and we're both intellectually curious people who are interested in this world that we live in and in storytelling. If you put all those things together, it does make sense that we would become friends. Every year, we look forward to catching up at ThrillerFest, and I think during our third year there, I was thinking about my next project, and the idea just popped into my head. I said, ‘You know, we should do a SEALS and Subs book because combining those two communities in the story would be cool.’ And he's like, ‘That does sound interesting. I don't know how that would work, you know. I don't understand. You know, writing is a very individual thing. How could we possibly make this work?’ and I didn't have a perfect answer. I said, ‘Well, we could just try dividing the chapters and see what would happen.’ I think Jeff was like, you know, in his mind, he's thinking, ‘I don't see this happening.’ So, he was like, ‘I'll help. It sounds like a cool idea. I'll be your subject matter expert. I'll help you with whatever you need from naval special warfare, that sort of thing.’ The same advice he was giving earlier. He said, ‘I'll offer to be that resource for you. And I said, ‘Okay,’ and then I said, ‘Well, why don't you look at this chapter? And maybe you could help write it.’ Then he started getting into it because he's a storyteller and couldn't help himself.”

Jeffrey: “He manipulated me with his psychology degree. The story's true ending is that I did go into it thinking I have no idea how I've been writing my whole life. I don't know how two people write together. You do the nouns; I do the verbs? What are you even talking about? And I did want to help him because he was a good friend. The story became increasingly developed because we were brainstorming, which turned into a really good story. He asked me two more times after the first time, ‘Why don't we take a crack at writing it together?’ I said, ‘No, no. Again, I don't know how we would do it.’ This was a great book, and I was jealous. He said, ‘Look, let's do this. Let's write five chapters. We'll divide them up. You write some. I'll write some. We'll talk about it. We'll try it out, and if it's working, we'll keep going. If it's not working, you can have the story because I don't think I can write it without you.’ And I was like, ‘Sweet. I gotta have this story to be my story.’ And so, we sat down, started writing the chapters, and as I recall, we just kept going. We never even brought it up again. It worked so well that it didn't even occur to us to have the conversation again. I think Tier One, the first book we wrote together, was done in four and a half months. We crushed it. Outside of interviews, we've never talked about it again. It's a given that this is how we do it. It's efficient. It's so much more fun. I'm sure if your writing partnership isn't what ours is, it would be horrible if you weren't getting along. We never argue about anything. It's enjoyable. I get to do the job I love with my best friend. There's no downside to it, and we're incredibly efficient. As you know, we release three or four books a year. So, we turn a book in about every fourteen or fifteen weeks. We couldn't do it alone. But it's just so enjoyable. And there's no writer's block. You get on the phone like, ‘I'm not sure what to do.’ You get on the phone, and five minutes later, the idea is better than anything you would have come up with individually. It's been a real joy. At first, I didn't see how it could work, and now I can't even imagine doing it any other way.”

Clay: “You guys live in different cities, too.”

Jeffrey: “Thank God, because we are good friends. We’d get nothing done.”

Brian: “We'd watch Jim Gaffigan and drink Bourbon every day, and we'd have no books.”

Clay: “So that's a good thing. How do you plan your stories? Because you've got two brains here trying to work independently but together. How do you plan the stories out?”

Brian: “Do we have two brains, Jeff?”

Jeffrey: “I think we used to. He's making a joke, Clay, because, for the last couple of years, we've realized that we've hybridized into a single organism to the extent where I'll have a brilliant idea like, ‘Oh, my gosh! I know how to solve that problem we were talking about this morning,’ and I'll get on the phone with him. I'll say, ‘Hey, I want to tell you something,’ and he’ll go, ‘Hold on!’ and he'll tell me exactly what I'm about to say. It's bizarre.”

Clay: “Twin telepathy, right?”

Brian: “Yes.”

Jeffrey: “It’s weird, man. It's a real thing. But anyway, Brian, what were you going to say?”

There’s a pause.

Clay: “Jeff, with twin telepathy, you should know.” I laugh.

Brian: “That’s what I was going to say.” I laugh again. “It's a funny joke, but I feel like there is some of that now that we've written so many books together, where it's like two dozen novels we've penned together that we start to anticipate. And you know, we have a method, but I think, as far as an individual, we're not plotters, and we don't outline the entire novel as some people do. We're in the pantser category. But we do have structure to our approach. We write in the three-act structure. Our books are written from multiple points of view in third person. So, we sort of approach this as, like any good group project, which is at the beginning of every novel, we sit down and talk about the story's themes and objectives. In broad strokes, where do we think we want to end up? And then we start division of labor. Because we write multiple point-of-view novels, we can each take different characters and write a single point-of-view per chapter. We divide the chapters between us, and it's just the first couple because we're not sure exactly where we will go. So maybe Jeff will take chapters one, three, four, six. I'll take two, five, and eight, and we start writing and write in parallel. We write simultaneously, and the key to our success, and I would say, our superpower, is that throughout this process, we're always talking and giving each other free reign to edit each other's work. Would you agree with that?”

Jeffrey: “I think that is the key—every few chapters, we swap. If I finish a chapter, I send it to Brian. When he finishes his, he sends it to me. So, it doesn't go into “The Manuscript,” our master file, until I've written it and he's edited it, and vice versa. So even though we're writing in tandem and writing different chapters, both of us have touched every chapter before it goes into the master file, which is a little weird but is our superpower because it gives us that unified voice. Sometimes, you can tell when something's co-authored because you can say, ‘Okay, that clearly is a different voice.’ We don't have that problem. But the other thing is, we're editing as we're going. We're also stimulating each other as we're going. I'll send him a chapter. He'll send me one. I'll read his and be like, ‘Oh, my God! I know what we can do with this!’ Now I'm off to the races writing something else because we have that sort of logarithmic increase in creativity. After all, we're both seeing it. So yeah, I do think that's the superpower. We did that from the very first book. We've never not done it that way. I don't think it would work any other way.”

Brian: “Clay, you said something early on that guided our partnership. Jeff was like, look, we need to approach this as a business. This is a business, and the book is our product. It's not about who wrote what chapter or who thought of what idea on what page. In an interview, you’ll never see us saying, ‘Well, I wrote this, and then Jeff wrote that.’ That's not how it works. This book is like a kid to us, you know. It's like anybody who's a parent understands that you can't take credit. These books are like our kids, and we both try to put the best guidance and put our all into making the book as exciting, informative, and suspenseful as possible. And it's between the two of us and our little additions all through this process to the point where you can't name who did what, on what day, and what page. It's just an Andrews & Wilson book, and once it's out there, that's the thing we're proud of. We're not proud of, ‘Oh, well, I thought of this great thing on page thirty-seven.’ That's not how we work.”

Jeffrey: “Literally, it's not how we work like there are times when my wife will read a book, and she'll be like, ‘Oh, chapter 17, that was you,” and she thinks I'm making it up when I swear I don't know if I wrote that first or second. I remember that chapter. I had something to do with it, but by the time it gets into a book you're reading, one of us wrote it, the other rewrote it, then it all got edited, then it went to DE, then it got edited again. That lack of ego is the key, and that's from the military background because it's part of your DNA. If you spend significant time in the service, the team and the mission are before you. It's more than a bumper sticker. It becomes who you are. It's all about the team. It's all about the mission. It's not about credit. It's not about who did what. You can't drive an eight-billion-dollar submarine by yourself, and one dude doesn't fast rope in and get Bin Laden, right? It's all team before self with our backgrounds. That's what made it so easy, and it is, I guess, the best way to say it. It made it easy because it's who we are.”

Clay Stafford: “Did you guys draw up a contract? If somebody's going to start collaborating with somebody else, how involved should the legalities get?”

Jeffrey: There should be something. I think how detailed it needs to be depends on your business relationship. Don't ever sacrifice a personal relationship. How many friendships have been ruined over a business deal, right? There should be a discussion about what you want to do, even outside the contract. That was the key to our success. From day one, we talked about what we were trying to achieve. What was our goal? We were on the same page, not just on the creative side but the business side. I don't think I’ve thought about it in years until you just brought it up. I'm sure it's invalid now, but we had a document when we started, but it was super simple. Whatever comes out of anything we ever write as Andrews & Wilson is fifty percent yours and fifty percent mine. Every bit of responsibility, every bit of liability, every bit of financial success, is split down the middle fifty-fifty. Ours was a one-page document we wrote and then gave to our agent. I think there should be something. It would be a mistake not to have something to point to if there were ever conflicts. But even more important than the legal document is that conversation of: what do you want to get out of this? What do I want to get out of this? Are we on the same page? Are we on the same page creatively? Are we on the same page business-wise? That's very, very important.”

Brian: “The exercise of addressing these questions and drafting something forces you to have a conversation that might be uncomfortable or feel awkward otherwise, and you might just sort of kick that can down the road. You may not be on the same road if you kick it down too far. I think that, more than anything, the business discussion is super important. As we discussed, we try to give back to the community because the community has given so much to us. One of the things that I always ask aspiring authors when they ask for help is, ‘Well, what do you want to get out of your writing career? Do you want to have a book out there that everybody can read? Is it that simple? Is it that you want to say I'm a New York Times bestselling author? Do you want to be rich and famous? Do you want to have your book adapted into a movie?’ It can be all those things, or it can be one of those things. But if your writing partner has different aspirations than you, then that's important to establish upfront because you will be rowing in this same boat and must be rowing in the same direction at the same pace. It’s difficult to make a living in this business. It's competitive. And for most people—and there's no shame in saying this—writing is a side gig, and it takes a long time until you make enough money to call it a career and write full-time. And if you're two, you're splitting all that money. It might be a situation where one person's financial needs differ from the others, and they say, ‘You know what, we’re not making enough money for me to continue this. I have to work on the side. I have to have my day job.’ Okay, is it a situation where one person works eight hours a day and the other works two? Are you guys okay with that? How does that look? These logistical questions are important, so everybody's expectations are on the same page at the beginning of the partnership.”

Clay: “We talked about all the good things and the symbiotic relationship you guys have. What are the challenges of team writing?”

Brian: “The challenge is we're producing so much content right now. How do we keep it fresh? How do we stay motivated? How do we ensure the other guy gets time with his family? We spend a lot of time ensuring that our family needs are met, our financial needs are both met, and we're still having fun. And so, there are conversations about, ‘I'm going to be going on vacation now,’ or ‘This book is gonna be due then,’ and ‘Okay, I got a family thing.’ And so we do a lot of planning and communication constantly to make sure the other guy’s emotionally, professionally, and financially okay. And that's been something that we've done from the very beginning. As Jeff said, we're best friends and business partners, so we must ensure that both elements are taken care of.”

Clay: “It’s that team spirit you discussed earlier.”

Jeffrey: “Yeah, one hundred percent. We've been writing together creeping up on a decade in a couple of years, and I'm not saying we always agree. But we've never argued. I don't think there's ever been a conflict. We're both faith, family, country. Those are all more important than what we're doing as long as our financial needs are met. And so, Brian calls and says, ‘Hey, I'm not going to be able to do this thing that we just got asked to do because Larkin's got something going on,’ no problem. I'll take care of it, and vice versa. We've always been team before self. On the creative side, it's the same thing again. It's not that we're always one hundred percent on the same page, but we have that team dynamic. Let's say there's something, and Brian calls up and says, ‘Well, you know, I don't know about this. I think maybe we go in this other direction.’ That has only happened a few times, but our sort of unspoken rule—it's been spoken about in interviews, but I don't think we ever planned it out—has always been we talk about the pros and cons of your idea versus my idea, and we tend to defer to whoever has the most passion for it. I might think his ideas aren't as good as mine, but he feels very strongly about it. Let's try it because it's writing; you can always change it, right? When we've trusted the other guy's passion, it's never been like, ‘I told you, I knew that wasn't going to work.’ It's always worked. And so there hasn't been any real conflict because we're proactive and team before self in our approach.”

Clay: “And all that would sound great to somebody reading this. Any advice for those thinking about collaborating with another author?”

Jeffrey: “I mean just the advice we've given, I think, which is, vet the relationship, and I don't mean vet it in a cold, clinical way. I mean, make sure that it will work not just for you but for the other person, and have those big upfront conversations. If you have a real conversation about expectations, goals, craft, business, all those things, you'll know if it will work. There’s not a huge number of collaborators, but the people who have conflict have conflict because of unspoken expectations and unmet needs. And so, if you can be upfront about those things and decide at the beginning that you're on the same page, you shouldn't have insurmountable conflict. Maybe I'm naive, but it seems like it would be true.”

Brian: “And I think you have to be honest with yourself about the needs of your ego. Why are you doing this? Is it because you want to say you wrote this book? For us, it's about the books and the brand. And so, if you think about it like a rock band, a lot of rock bands, just the lead singer is considered the band, and everybody else is sort of baggage along for the ride. For other bands, it's not that way. Everybody's sharing equally in this. So, in your partnership, is it about you, or is it about the team? Liv Constantine and her sister do a great job with this. It's about the two of them. But they're sisters, right? They're another enduring co-author team; if you talk to them, you can tell it's not about their egos. It's about them together.”

Jeffrey: And I will say, though, as a caveat to that, that doesn't mean that's the only model that works. It's what works for us. Catherine Coulter wrote with J.T. Ellison for a time. That relationship wasn't our relationship. Kathy was ginormous, and J.T. was breaking out. Theirs was more a mentor/mentee co-authoring relationship, which worked great. The books were good. Those relationships are all different. We're not saying it must be team admission before self, 50/50, or it can't work. We're saying, make sure you know what it is and what it looks like. There's nothing wrong with saying, ‘My goal is to write with somebody who has a following and get my name out there and have that association,’ as long as you both understand that's what you're doing and are both okay with it. That can still be a great model, but not talking about it and making sure you're on the same page is the death of the relationship.”

Clay: “So there’s many ways to structure it. Excellent advice for those thinking about a collaborative relationship.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. https://claystafford.com/

Brian Andrews is a US Navy veteran, Park Leadership Fellow, and former submarine officer with a psychology degree from Vanderbilt and a business master's from Cornell University. Brian is also a principal contributor at Career Authors, a site dedicated to advancing the careers of aspiring and published writers. https://www.andrews-wilson.com/

Jeffrey Wilson has worked as an actor, firefighter, paramedic, jet pilot, diving instructor, and vascular and trauma surgeon. He served in the US Navy for fourteen years and made multiple deployments as a combat surgeon with an East Coast-based SEAL Team. He lives in Southwest Florida. https://www.andrews-wilson.com/

Paying it Forward

An Interview with Writer, Editor and Publisher Judy Penz Sheluk By Charlie Kondek

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If the name Judy Penz Sheluk keeps popping up in your reading, that shouldn’t be a surprise. She’s published two series of mystery novels, the Glass Dolphin and the Marketville books, in addition to numerous short stories and articles. Her books on publishing—Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide and Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie— are valuable resources for the emerging or experienced writer navigating the ups and downs, about which Penz Sheluk knows a great deal. Based on those experiences, she runs her own label, Superior Shores Press, which has released its fourth anthology of crime and mystery stories, Larceny & Last Chances. The anthology features 22 stories from some of today’s most engaging writers (including me, the author of this interview, who is bursting with gratitude at being in their company). 

Penz Sheluk is a member of Sisters in Crime International, Sisters in Crime – Guppies, Sisters in Crime – Toronto, International Thriller Writers, Inc., the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors, most recently as Chair (whew!). While putting the finishing touches on Larceny & Last Chances and working to promote it, she took some time to let me pepper her with questions about the new book and her wide range of experiences across her various roles. As always, the advice she can give a writer was ample, as is the excitement over the work. Here’s what she had to say.   

CK: You had a long career in journalism before you started publishing fiction. What got you started on fiction? What keeps you writing it?

JPS: I’ve been writing stories “in my head” since I started walking to and from school as a young kid. Sometimes those stories would be short and take up one leg of the journey (about 20 minutes). Other times I’d keep them going for a few days. I honestly thought everyone did that until I mentioned it to my husband one day after a frustrating traffic-jammed commute. Something like, “Thank heavens I had that story going in my head.” I can still remember the stunned look on his face when he said, “You write stories in your head?” To his credit, he registered me in a 10-week creative writing course as a birthday present. My first publication (in THEMA Literary Journal) was a result of that course. I’ve never looked back. 

CK: You’re a novelist as well as a story writer. Which came first? What’s it like for you, working in both formats? 

JPS: I started with short fiction, but if I have a preference, it’s writing novels. I’m a complete pantser and, while that works well when you have 70,000 words to play with, it becomes problematic when you’re trying to tell a tale in 5,000 words or less. ‘The Last Chance Coalition,’ my story in Larceny & Last Chances (2,500 words) took me about two weeks to write! That’s the equivalent of two or three chapters, and when I’m working on a novel, my goal is a chapter a day. I have tremendous respect for short story writers.

CK: Then there are the anthologies. I don’t need to tell you how excited I am about Larceny & Last Chances. All the stories are so good. What got you into assembling anthologies, and how do you generate the theme for each? 

JPS: I got my start in short stories. I mentioned THEMA earlier, a theme-based literary journal, and that inspired the theme-based anthology idea. But it wasn’t until I had two published mystery stories in 2014 that I really thought, “Hey, I can do this.” When I decided to start Superior Shores Press in 2018 (following the closure of both small presses I’d been published with), I knew I had to give the press some legitimacy. It seemed like a win-win. Pay forward my own success, and establish SSP as the real deal.

As for themes, the first was called The Best Laid Plans (because it really was a risk and I had no idea what I was doing). After that I got into alliteration! Heartbreaks & Half-truths, Moonlight & Misadventure, and now, Larceny & Last Chances. I try not to make the theme too restrictive—e.g. no mention of murder—so that writers can explore their inner muse. 

CK: What are the top two things you look for in an anthology submission? 

JPS: 1) It must meet the theme, but not in an obvious way. Surprise me and you’ll surprise the reader. 2) A great ending. When I’m reading a story, sometimes I’ll be on the fence, and then the end will just blow me away. And so, I’ll reread the story, thinking, “How can I make this better, so I’m not on the fence?” And if the ideas pop at me, rapid fire, I know it’s a yes. Usually it’s stuff like too much backstory, or too many characters. Both are easily corrected if the author is amenable. In my experience, most authors only want to improve their work, and so they are largely receptive to any suggested edits. 

CK: What are reasons you might reject a submission? 

JPS: 1) Sloppy writing, and by that I mean not just missing commas or spelling/grammatical errors, but a lack of attention to detail. 2) For Larceny, I received a few submissions that had clearly been rejected for a recent location-themed anthology. I understand that good stories get rejected for any number of reasons, but as an author, you should make the effort to improve (and change the locale, if need be) before submitting to the next market. 3) The premise is unimaginative. I want you to be on theme, but it can’t be obvious and the ending should surprise or satisfy (and hopefully, both). 4) Werewolves. I really do not get werewolves.

CK:  I’m sure a lot of people ask you about publishing, based on your experiences, your articles, and your books on the topic. What are the most important pieces of advice you find yourself giving people?

JPS: Publishing is a business like any other. Rejection isn’t personal. And while there are exceptions, it’s the big names that will get the big bucks. I remember a writing instructor telling me: “If you want a six-figure publishing deal, become a celebrity. If you want to learn to write well, start with this class.”

CK: Thanks so much for taking the time for this, Judy!

JPS: My pleasure, Charlie. I’ve registered for Killer Nashville (my first time!) and can’t wait to meet Clay Stafford and the many writers and readers who will be attending this year’s conference. 

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Larceny & Last Chances: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense

Edited by Judy Penz Sheluk

Publication Date: June 18, 2024

Sometimes it’s about doing the right thing. Sometimes it’s about getting even. Sometimes it’s about taking what you think you deserve. And sometimes, it’s your last, best, hope. Edited by Judy Penz Sheluk and featuring stories by Christina Boufis, John Bukowski, Brenda Chapman, Susan Daly, Wil A. Emerson, Tracy Falenwolfe, Kate Fellowes, Molly Wills Fraser, Gina X. Grant, Karen Grose, Wendy Harrison, Julie Hastrup, Larry M. Keeton, Charlie Kondek, Edward Lodi, Bethany Maines, Gregory Meece, Cate Moyle, Judy Penz Sheluk, KM Rockwood, Kevin R. Tipple, and Robert Weibezahl.

Buy Link: www.books2read.com/larceny