An Interview with Ellis Vidler, Suspense Novelist

By

Dora Machado

 

Hi Ellis and welcome to MB4. It’s a pleasure to have you here. You are the author of six suspense crime novels. How did you become a writer and why did you decide to write in the crime/suspense genre?

I co-wrote The Peeper with Jim Christopher, a retired law enforcement officer. He was great to work with and I learned a lot—a terrific experience. Then I wrote Tea in the Afternoon, which is three Southern short stories, not crime fiction. They grew out of people I knew and stories I heard growing up. I have more. J Nancy Drew probably influenced my interest. I read (past tense) and read (present tense) many genres, but crime fiction of all sorts is my favorite. It’s what comes to me, so I write it.

In your opinion, what are the cornerstones of a successful crime/suspense novel?

Pacing and heart. I like page-turners with characters who can make my heart pound. If I bite my nails for fear of what will happen to them, if it’s 2 a.m. and my eyes are crossing over the words, I’m a happy reader. Two of my favorite characters are Robert Crais’s Joe Pike and Boyd Crowder from the TV series Justified. Both kept me on the edge of my seat, waiting for the ax to fall—or not.

Many of your novels have a romance component. How do the romance and the crime/suspense genre fit together in your novels? What kind of opportunities does romance bring to the crime story? What kind of challenges?

To me, love adds a human dimension to a story that might otherwise be only a problem to resolve. It seems unrealistic for my characters to live in isolation. I want the human contact for them. Romance also heightens the tension if one of the partners is in danger—our hearts race with theirs.

Since I’m primarily a suspense writer, proportion is important. I don’t want the romance to overwhelm the suspense, but it needs to fit the characters and circumstances.

How has living in the South shaped and/or influenced your stories?

Relationships—the second cousin/great uncle sort—and family are very important in the South. The right connections will help in any situation. Even in college, we’d get grilled by classmates’ parents until they found a connection (“your grandmother lived next door to my mother’s father’s brother”—that sort of thing). My characters have families or close ties that influence them, for good or ill. The characters in my books are all connected, either by blood (the McGuires) or by experience such as the strong bonds formed in war (the Maleantes & More books: Cold Comfort and Prime Target).

Your McGuire women novels feature members of a family with a psychic streak. How do you incorporate the paranormal into your crime plot lines? How many novels are there in the series? Are there other novels to come?

I use the McGuires’ psychic abilities to involve the character in the crime and to give hints and direction, but I don’t want that ability to solve the crime. That’s a bit like waving a magic wand. They have to use their wits and skills to find the bad guys and bring them to justice.

So far there are two books in the series, Haunting Refrain and Time of Death. I started Shallow Grave and completed the cover (I often design the cover very early in the process for inspiration—and it’s fun), but I kept getting caught up in backstory, so I gave in and am working on an earlier McGuire novel, a sort of prequel, tentatively titled Red Mountain Blues, that takes place in 1981. It’s the setup for Shallow Grave, so I have to keep thinking ahead to where this is all going.

I’d like to write one about Isobel, the glamorous aunt in Time of Death, but I’m not there yet. As long as the ideas come and I’m able to type, I’ll keep writing.

Which of your novels is your favorite and why?

It’s always the one I’m working on because I fall in love with the characters. Maybe that’s one reason I’m so slow—it’s hard to let one bunch go (Charlie Dance, from Prime Target, lingers still) and transfer to the next ones. Right now, Aurelia McGuire and Finn from Red Mountain Blues have my attention. It’s often difficult to come back to reality and stop thinking about them.

What kind of reader do you think will enjoy reading your novels?

It’s easier to say who won’t. Genre purists won’t like them: my novels don’t quite fit into suspense because of the love stories, and they don’t fit today’s definition of romantic suspense. More women read them than men, but men enjoy them too, mostly, I think, because of the action. They aren’t hard-boiled, but they’re far from cozy.

What’s next for Ellis Vidler?

I really want to do Will Porter’s story. He’s the owner of Maleantes & More, a former Marine who works with his own “band of brothers.” His character has been with me ever since I saw a beautiful, angry boy, Hispanic-looking but with vivid green eyes, maybe 12 years old, with a school group touring the United Nations building in New York. All the boys wore uniforms with a blazer and tie, and all the others were about 10 and had a similar preppie look. This boy, a head taller and definitely a misfit, was fuming. He seemed embarrassed, as if he wanted to be anywhere but with the group. I imagined him grown and knew I wanted to write about him.

Thank you so much for visiting with us, Ellis. Come back and see us soon.

****

About Ellis Vidler

Ellis Vidler writes the stories she likes to read--action, adventure, and heart. She falls in love with the characters, flawed but striving to do the right thing, and hates leaving them when the book is finished.

From early childhood she's loved reading and telling stories. She imagined herself as everyone from d’Artagnan to Anne of Green Gables and shared their adventures through long hours of reading by flashlight beneath the covers. Her career began with illustrating, moved into editing, and then writing. She also taught fiction writing.

Ellis’s novels are suspense stories with varying degrees of romance. All contain adult language and situations.

Website: www.ellisvidler.com  

Twitter: twitter.com/EllisVidler

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ellis.vidler

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/ellisvidler/

 

amazon.com/dp/B00N34SOV2

 

 *****

About Dora Machado

Dora Machado is the award-winning author of the epic fantasy Stonewiser series and her newest novel, The Curse Giver, available from Twilight Times Books. She is one only a few Hispanic women writing fantasy in the United States today. She grew up in the Dominican Republic, where she developed a fascination for writing and a taste for Merengue. After a lifetime of straddling such compelling but different worlds, fantasy is a natural fit to her stories.

When she is not writing fiction, Dora also writes features for the award-winning blog Murder By Four and Savvy Authors, where writers help writers. She lives in Florida with her indulgent husband and two very opinionated cats.

To learn more about Dora Machado and her award winning novels, visit her at www.doramachado.com , email her at Dora@doramachado.com, find her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

 http://amzn.to/1szECCn

What makes a good suspense novel?

I know I am wrongly phrasing this, but to me, a mystery is eating dinner with someone you don't know. You have to spend time with them to learn about their tendency to steal small dishes from restaurants.

So a mystery has a lot of elements to it.

And to rephrase someone else's thought: a suspense is when you discover a bag under the table where you are eating and a  thriller is discovering that the bomb inside the bag is ticking.

So what makes a good suspense?

Characters that we care about mostly. We have to invest in the story people and the life they are struggling with before the suspenseful things that happen to them make us sit up and notice. A good example would be the character of Daniel Silva's stories, Gabriel Allon. He is a master art restorer, and an assassin. Good combo, huh?

 Secondly, I would have to say the events in the story. I love a good action suspense where everything is moving toward a deadly and urgent conclusion.

"The grip on my neck intensified, cutting off some of the blood flow to my brain. The vampire spoke.".... from Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

What do think, Murderers? Would you say suspense is the bag, or the bomb?

Clinchers, aka Crisis

This week I decided to write about those moments between turning points. I call them Clinchers, they are also known as a (or) the Crisis. They are those times that make the reader's heart beat faster and make them turn the pages. It is where the bad guys attack the good guys, it is where the girl finds out something about the boy (or vice versa)that makes them question their love, and it is where the evil wizard sends his minions after the hero and the hero has to fight.

Now, the hero of this story you are writing is given the opportunity to follow his heart, but choices are oftentimes hard and this is how you know when a Clincher is about to happen. Something comes along to make this hero act. Heart or not. These Clinchers make the hero do something. Anything, to move this story along. It might even be better if he or she makes the WRONG choice. Sometimes characters making mistakes are a good thing.

If you were making a pudding, this is the ingredient that makes it thick. These Clinchers are scenes where there is so much tension and suspense, the reader has to gulp. And when it is over, they go ahhh.

If you are a story structure person, novels often have two of these Clincher scenes, the first one being sometime before the midpoint of the story, and it sometimes is used to introduce the villain character, ah yes. What a great Clincher that is!

Can you think of three stories where the villain is introduced? What surrounded that scene? YES!!! that's a Clincher.

Come on back next week, and I will discuss the middle of a novel and how it should behave.

Suspense, it's in the future

This past weekend, I went to visit my local Books a Million and while perusing the magazines came across the 101 Best Sites for Writers list in the May/June Writers Digest. As some of you know, Mb4 made it into that list once again. We thank you, our fans and followers, for supporting this blog and voting for us in all the ways you do. We always want to give you what you want so if there are suggestions on something you are not getting here, please leave us a comment and let us know. Keeping a blog going as long as we have done on this one-to coin a phrase-takes a village. So, since we are listed under thrillers/suspense, I thought I would make a few comments about why suspense is different than mystery. Well, for one thing, suspense is in the future and mystery in the past. What do you mean, you ask? It's elementary dear Murderer, elementary. For a suspense/ thriller to work the main thrust of the plot is something that hasn't happened yet. It's something that the reader is anticipating with sweating palms and racing heartbeat. The characters are working round the clock to keep something from occurring. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes it happens and they are forced to fix the situation, which can be another sort of fun read, my particular fav, a mystery. When the murder or high stress event happens in the first chapter and the characters are sent off trying to find the perp, well that my dears, is a mystery. My husband is a thriller junkie. He would rather watch the latest James Bond movie, or Mission Impossible movie than anything. I wonder, is thriller fever a man thing? Because my girlfriends and I would rather catch the latest Nicolas Sparks movie than suffer through another two hour harangue of blown up cars and high-risk theatrics. If you think it is a man thing, let me know. Maybe I will do a survey. Happy Thursday, Murderers.

Vote for Murder By 4

With the year quickly coming to a close, we here at Murder By 4 are looking forward to the new year and the opportunities it will bring, the new writers and readers we'll meet along the way, and the continued friendship with those of you who have kept Murder By 4 hopping since 2008. 

Thanks to our over 43,000 (wow!) visitors and numerous guests bloggers, Murder By 4 has been recognized two years in a row by Writer's Digest among 101 Best Website for Writers. May we have your vote again?  The deadline to submit a nomination for 2011 is January 1, 2011.

Simply e-mail your vote to:  writersdig@fwpubs.com with “101 Best Websites” as the subject and Murder By 4 in the body of your e-mail. That's it!  

Best wishes for a safe, healthy, prosperous, and productive 2011!

Meet Todd Ritter, author of Death Notice

REWRITE, REJECT, REPEAT
By Todd Ritter

My agent probably won’t like learning this, but she wasn’t the first person I queried. Nor was she the second, third, fourth … well, you get the idea. Before my agent (whom I adore completely, by the way) said yes to DEATH NOTICE, my debut mystery, more than a hundred others had already told me no.

Nope, that’s not a typo, nor is it an exaggeration. I queried and was turned down by seemingly every agent in the business. I kept track of them on a spreadsheet that listed who asked for partials, who requested full manuscripts and who immediately sent out those thanks-but-no-thanks letters that all aspiring writers loathe. By the time I got my agent, the tally was something along the lines of twelve partials, five fulls and a gazillion rejections.

That spreadsheet is long gone. It was a tragic victim of the great computer crash of ’09. But sometimes I wish I could take a look and see all those rejections I received on the lengthy and intimidating road to publication. So how did I do it? How, after more than a hundred proverbial doors slammed in my face, did I get one agent to say yes, who then put my manuscript in the hands of an editor at St. Martin’s Minotaur who also said yes?

The answer is easy, but the task was hard.

I rewrote.

A lot.

I rewrote from start to finish so many times that I lost count. (I didn’t have a spreadsheet for rewrites. That’s the short slide to madness, my friends.) Many agents were kind enough to offer their input. One said DEATH NOTICE needed another 20,000 words. Another said it could be chopped by 15,000. I tried my best to heed their advice and follow their instructions. Subplots came and went. Characters were added. Others were cut. Some of them were killed, reborn, then killed again. It was enough to make a budding mystery writer want to give up.

And after two years of rewriting (Again, that’s not a typo) I truly was ready to call it quits. I had already formulated Plan B, which was to write something far different from DEATH NOTICE, and Plan C, which amounted to not writing anything ever again and being miserable. It didn’t matter that I was basically admitting defeat. I was tired of trying to fix something that I didn’t think was broken in the first place. It came down to two choices — throw up my hands and move on or forge ahead like a stubborn idiot who had nothing to lose.

In the end, stubbornness won out. I knew I had a great idea. I knew I could write well. Most important, I knew that if I gave up, I might regret it for the rest of my life. I was willing to risk more rejection, but not regrets.

So I rewrote DEATH NOTICE again.

It got rejected.

I rewrote it again.

It got rejected.

I rewrote it some more until, low and behold, I got an agent! Who, of course, made me rewrite it again. Twice. But this time I had guidance, a gentle but persistent voice that helped me see what was wrong and how I could fix it. In the end, the hard work paid off. I have a mystery that I’m incredibly proud of. I can officially call myself an author. I can hold my book in my hands, see my name on the cover, read sentences that I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again.

Of course, having that “Official Author” designation means others who want to join the club ask me for advice. I don’t have much to give. I’m just a newbie, after all, unleashing my first mystery onto the world and hoping people enjoy it. But whenever someone asks, “How do I get published?” I have the answer. Well, the answer that worked for me. It consists of four simple words.

Don’t give up. Ever.



Todd Ritter is an author and editor. His first mystery, DEATH NOTICE, is being released this month by St. Martin’s Minotaur. Visit him online at www.toddritteronline.com.

The Perfect Crime

© Marta Stephens 2008 all rights reserved

Ever wonder what it’d be like to hatch a deliciously evil plot? A devious plan so utterly out of character that you’d remain above suspicion? I bet you haven’t. Admit it, you’ve had those days when the little, insignificant annoyances build up. Two days ago you could shoo them away like a pesky fly. Today, they’re that speck of dust in your eye that grinds into your flesh from the other side – it jabs and nudges you over the edge. A vicious scheme starts to spin and weaves ugly thoughts through your head. Every vivid detail of the crime from beginning to end takes form. Suddenly a grin slips across your lips. The target, your victim, is well in sight still you wait. It could take weeks maybe months before the perfect moment arrives; that split second when your prey least expects your strike. At that instant, a swift, clean move eliminates the offender and you, the killer, leave the scene unnoticed.

Except, murders are rarely planned, they’re seldom clean, and the killer always leaves something behind. A strand of hair, a scab or careless fingerprint, a trace of saliva on a cigarette butt or on the edge of a drinking glass is all it takes. One slip and you’re done.

Regardless of how random the crime might seem, there is usually a motive. It could be as immediate as an impulsive response to an argument or as obscured as a childhood experience. Once I decide who committed the crime in SILENCED CRY, my challenge as an author was to understand the killer’s motive -- his madness. The hardest part, of course, was making the killer invisible until the last possible moment.

My writing has been influenced as much by film as it has been by literature. One of my favorite past times, in fact, is to watch a suspense or thriller and try to guess who perpetrated the crime. I’m usually good at fingering the right person, but I hate to be right. There’s nothing better than to not see it coming. Sitting on the edge of my seat with one expectation and getting blown away by the truth is half the fun. Two movies that immediately come to mind are, HIGH CRIMES, and PRESUMED INNOCENT. Both films successfully divert the viewer’s attention from the killer. In both cases, the charges against the defendant are dismissed, and just when I thought the cases were solved and nothing else could possibly happen -- it did.

In chapter one of my novel, a shot is fired and the first of several victims is killed. In chapter 10, Homicide is called to investigate a cold case. Workers find the skeletal remains of an infant entombed in a wall of an apartment building marked for demolition. Two murders, no connection, no motive and still no suspect. The killer’s only advantage is time. The Baby Doe murder was committed years before DNA was admissible in a court of law. It was an era when all a killer had to do was to lurk in the shadows, watch his back for a while, and if need be, pay someone off to keep quiet.

The investigation heats up when Homicide Detective Sam Harper discovers a connection between the suspects in the Baby Doe case and his late partner’s murder. Evidence thrusts him ahead to unveil a host of crimes and a multitude of suspects. This modern day detective and his team of forensic scientists know all they need is that single hair, a sample of semen, or a trace of saliva to pin-point the guilty.

With the criminals safely behind bars, the cases appear to be solved until Harper’s attention is drawn to an otherwise ordinary event in the killer’s life. It’s an unlikely slip but to the trained eye it is as damning as a bloody fingerprint. A key turns, the lock flips open, and the truth flashes across Harper’s mind with the force of rippling white lightning. He discovers the trigger, what began the throng of crimes, each intended to conceal another. Yes, the killer committed the perfect crime and for nearly two decades his house of cards stood erect until a seasoned eye and DNA fingerprinting revealed far more than the killer’s identity.

The SILENCED CRY book cover is eligible for the 2007 Cover of the Year award. Voting ends April 15. Every voter will be entered in a drawing for the winning title.

For excerpt and reviews go to http://www.martastephens-author.com/

Interview with author John DeDakis by Marta Stephens

“Sometimes, in order to find purpose for the future, you need to unravel the mystery of the past.”







Today it’s my pleasure to introduce John DeDakis, author of the mystery/suspense novel FAST TRACK published by ArcheBooks Publishing. John is the Senior Editor for CNN and writer for the Emmy-Award winning “The Situation Room,” anchored by Wolf Blitzer.

In addition to book signings and readings, John frequently speaks on the topic "From Journalist to Novelist: (Or How I Learned to Stop Telling the Truth and Start Making it Up)." He is a lecturer at American University, Washington, DC where he taught a journalism class of student interns during the summer of 2007.

John, a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Cynthia, a choral conductor. They have three grown children.

MS: John, thank you for allowing me to interview you for MURDER BY 4. I’m fascinated by your background. Your career in news broadcasting spans four decades starting when you were as a student reporter in 1969 for a campus radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You are a former White House Correspondent, and have been with CNN since 1988. When did the fiction writing bug strike?

JD: I always knew I wanted to write, even when I was a kid, but it started with nonfiction. I toyed around with some short stories in grade school, but the bug for writing fiction didn't really bite until about 1994 when I was deep into my journalism career. I'd already been a reporter and White House Correspondent, but then I became an editor which is, by comparison, tedious and not particularly creative. That's when I got serious about writing fiction.

MS: Your career as a journalist/reporter/editor placed you in the center of the events and people who have shaped our nation. Have you ever been moved by any one event or individual to consider writing a political or spy thriller? Why or why not?

JD: Yes. Stay tuned.

MS: Now I’m totally curious, but I’ll move on to my next question. How would you say your personal experiences have influenced the direction of your writing?

JD: They're inseparable. My sister's suicide and the car/train collision I witnessed when I was nine became the impetus for my mystery/suspense novel FAST TRACK. But imagination plays into the process in a big way, too.

MS: What would you say are your biggest challenges as an author and how do you deal with them?

JD: There are several challenges. The first and foremost is to balance writing with the responsibilities of family. That's less an issue now because our kids are grown, but there was a time early in the process when my wife referred to my book as my "mistress." Once the book was published, the challenge became one of balancing the time between writing and marketing. If you want your book to be a success, you MUST be willing to do all you can to let people know about it. But it's extremely time-consuming, yet rewarding. I'm not a born salesman, yet I've found, to my surprise, that I like that side of things.

MS: What would you regard as your most successful method(s) of marketing your book?

JD: By far, e-mail is most effective for me, followed close behind by bookmarks. Before my novel came out, I began amassing a rolodex of contacts which I’ve been adding to ever since. Whenever a person I meet buys my book, I ask for their email, then I follow up with a "glad-we-met" note. I must have about 2,000 email addresses now -- a built-in base to contact when book two comes out.

Bookmarks are effective, too. For example, if I’m in an elevator with someone I think might be interested, I hand them a bookmark and give them the following ten-second spiel: "This is your next book. It’s mystery/suspense about a young woman trying to figure out what to do with her life. The publisher’s web site is right there."

I point to the link at the bottom of the bookmark.

"My publisher has posted a free sample for you to read." Just enough to get a reader hooked. I also highly recommend the book "Guerrilla Marketing for Writers" by Levinson, Frishman & Larsen (Writers Digest Books).

MS: What does a typical day in the life of John DeDakis look like? When do you find time to write?

JD: I'm up early, usually around 6 a.m. I write in my journal, then I check e-mail and write responses. I read the paper, exercise, shower, and have a bowl of cereal. If I'm working on a writing project, I tackle it in the hour or two I have before I have to be at the CNN Washington bureau at 11 a.m. At work in "The Situation Room," the first part of the day is spent getting up to speed on what's happening in the world, so I'm reading a LOT. As we get closer to air time, the pace picks up as the writers file their scripts for Wolf Blitzer to read. We only have four writers for three hours of airtime (4 p.m. -7 p.m. ET Monday-Friday). I share the editing load with one other person. He edits the 4 p.m. hour; I do the 5 p.m. and we share the 6 p.m. The writing and editing go on through all three hours and the pace is frenetic. But then, at 7 p.m., it's all over. After work, I'll either go out to dinner with a friend, or head home to hang out with my wife and/or work on a writing project. The days are always full and never boring.

MS: Your debut novel, FAST TRACK, was first released by ArcheBooks Publishing in hardcover in August 2005; the paperback was released in 2007. First, I’d like to share the blurb with our readers:

FAST TRACK (ArcheBooks) is the story of how sometimes, in order to find purpose for the future, it's necessary to unravel the mystery of the past. Impulsive 25-year-old Lark Chadwick, frustrated because she can't decide what to do with her life, learns she's the sole survivor of a car/train collision that killed her parents when she was an infant. Why was she never told? The only person with the answer -- the aunt who raised her -- has just died, an apparent suicide. With the help of Lionel Stone, an irascible retired New York Times editor, Lark digs into her past. But, as most reporters learn very quickly, someone's lying. Who is it? And why is someone trying to kill her?

MS: I’m immediately drawn to know more about your character Lark Chadwick. What prompted you to write this intriguing novel?

JD: I was doing a writing exercise about a personal experience. As I wrote about the car/train collision I witnessed as a kid, I remembered a radio news story I'd heard about a similar crash in which an infant survived. Since I'd never heard the full story of what happened in the crash I'd witnessed, I began to wonder what it might be like if that infant grew up and began digging into the circumstances surrounding the accident she survived.


MS: Obviously, your protagonist is a woman. What challenges have you faced while writing a woman’s voice?

JD: Not as many as you might expect. I find that emotions are universal -- they're not unique to either gender. In addition, I find that women are more interesting to me than men, primarily because women express themselves in more nuanced and entertaining ways. It helps that I work in a newsroom filled with twenty-something women who tell me their stories. Several of them read early drafts of the manuscript and were able to give me valuable feedback that helped to make my female "voice" more authentic. I write about this in greater depth in an article I wrote on authorsden.com entitled "Confessions of a Cross-Gender Writer."

MS: How much of yourself do you think seeps into your character?

JD: Quite a bit. She's probably what I would be like if I were a woman.

MS: I noticed on your website that you are working on a screenplay adaptation of FAST TRACK. When did you begin that project and how far has it progressed?

JD: I wrote the screen play about 10 years ago. It's gone through two drafts, but they're both too "talky." It needs more work, but for now, the project is on the back burner -- unless Hollywood shows some interest in adapting the book to the big screen.


MS: What’s next on your plate?

JD: I'm putting the finishing touches on my second novel, BLUFF, a sequel to FAST TRACK. It's based on my recent hike along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru. After that, I'm hoping my CNN colleague Carol Costello and I can follow through on our plan to do the audio book version of FAST TRACK. We just need to find some time.

MS: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

JD: NEVER GIVE UP! It took 10 years, 14 major revisions, and 39 agent queries before FAST TRACK found a home. If you give up, it guarantees that your book won't be published -- unless you go the self-published route (which isn't for me).


MS: I absolutely agree with you about not giving up. John, please feel free to share any additional information about yourself, your writing and/or your journey with our readers.

JD: Your readers are to be congratulated for enduring my turgid answers. If they want to know more, I suggest going my web site: http://www.johndedakis.com/, my writing site at http://www.authorsden.com/ or my publisher's site: http://www.archebooks.com/. And, oh yes, for the latest news, check out www.cnn.com/situationroom.

John thank you again for allowing us to spend some time getting to know you. Best wishes on your continued success with FAST TRACK and your upcoming novel, BLUFF.



FAST TRACK is available in hardcover (2005) and in paperback (2007).