Category: Craft (Page 4 of 4)

A few months ago, a friend asked if I’d come to her book club and talk about Thieves in the Temple.

Of course, I said yes, and last night (October 4th), arrived with a bottle of Pinot Noir and a certain level of nervousness as the six members of the book club congregated with more copies of the book than I’ve ever seen in the same place.

I wasn’t sure what to expect but the first question put me at ease – how did the Judeans get to Babylon? After that I relaxed, and everything flowed until one lady asked: We know who took the fall, but who was really behind it?

What?

It’s a while since I really looked at Thieves in the Temple, but as we talked further, I realized she was right. The people in the climax were pawns, not the people really behind what happened. As I drove away later, the thought wouldn’t go away, and a glimmer of an idea came to me.

It was still there this morning.

I don’t think it’s a Jacob story, but it does fit in with some other ideas I’ve been fleshing out, and it actually brought some of them more into focus. I’ve tentatively slotted it in my head for after Death at a Wedding and Murder of a Dead Man, but who knows what bright shiny object might come up before then.

And a huge thank you to the Pine Nuts Book Club for inviting me.

During the past couple of weeks I’ve been studying some aspects of the writing craft, especially openings. How you hook readers at the beginning of a story and keep them there until the end.

There are several types of opening, and they don’t all work in every type of fiction. Summary openings, for example, don’t work well in short stories, but are excellent openings for the right type of novel. Several people recommend not just study, but also typing the opening, as the physical action helps reinforce the technique and structure into your sub-conscious.

I was thinking about this as I read through some recent course notes, and started to cast around for stories to use as research. To my mind, there’s minimal benefit in studying writers at the same stage as me because none of us really know at this stage where we’re making mistakes. The writers to study are those who’ve been professional writers for many years.

People like Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts, and Michael Connolly to name just three.

I have a lot of their novels. In this case, I was looking for short fiction, and prowling through the bookshelves, kindle, and Apple books (or whatever the current name happens to be), when I realized I have a treasure trove.

In the past year I obtained two extensive short story collections: When Worlds Collide and Crimes Collide. Each collection is a hundred short stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. Two hundred stories by two of the top writers currently working today.

If I don’t learn something from those stories, I should probably hang up my keyboard!

At some point in the mid 1970’s, I came across a book titled The Quiller Memorandum. As I look at the cover now, it must have been a re-release to coincide with the BBC series based on the books. A series that sadly had one season and disappeared.

I’d never heard of Adam Hall, but I was working through an espionage/spy thriller phase in my reading, waiting for the next Len Deighton, Robert Ludlum or John LeCarre to appear.

It’s a phase I’ve never really left, and Quiller looked interesting. I read the book in less than twenty-four hours, went in search of others, and Adam Hall joined the list of writers I stalked for new releases.

Somewhere in there I discovered Adam Hall was one of the pen names of Elleston Trevor, the writer of Flight of the Phoenix, about ninety other novels, plus children’s stories, stage plays, and radio plays. I read some of those, but never with the commitment and passion I’d developed for Quiller.

In 1995, I saw the reports of his passing, and had just finished Quiller Salamander, the eighteenth Quiller mission. Over the years, I’ve reread each one several times. I learn something as a writer every time, and always left wanting more, only there weren’t any.

Until in 2014, I found the book Quiller. A Profile. The book references Quiller Balalaika – the nineteenth Quiller novel, finished in the last few weeks of Elleston Trevor’s life, and published in 1996.

How did I miss that?

I searched Amazon and Abebooks, and my local stores with no success. In the years since, I occasionally run a search, with no luck.

Until this week.

There it was, available on Amazon, and I nearly broke a wrist hitting the keyboard. It’s due to arrive next week, and I’ll let you know how it turns out.