Writers and their characters

“A writer begins by breathing life into his characters. But if you are very lucky, they breathe life into you.” from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy.

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After finishing my 10th novel (The Koala of Death)and touring on my 9th (Desert Lost), I decided to take a break, to do nothing but read escapist literature and watch trashy TV for two weeks. My resolution lasted for the entirety of Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, I’d started work on my 11th novel.

This inability to “not write” sometimes scares me, but truth be told, when I’m not writing, I miss my fictional friends. I hope they miss me, too, because no matter where I go, I’m always looking around for stories to give them, unique characters to set them against. When I’m writing a Lena Jones mystery, I view the world through her eyes. “What would Lena think about this?” I think. Following automatically, comes another question: “What would Lena do?” I’ve even caught myself in the middle of a conversation with someone, saying, “Well, as Lena said the other day...” Then I catch myself. There is no Lena. She’s a fictional character who exists in six -- going on seven -- mystery novels.

But then I catch myself again. Yes, Virginia, there is a Lena. That wounded but brave woman who takes up one-third of my waking life has become as real to me as my friends and family, and in many ways, has even become my moral guidepost. If Lena sees something that offends her, it offends me, too. If she sees something that makes her laugh, I laugh. Situations that make Lena sad make me sad. I may have created Lena Jones, but at the same time, she is also creating me. As I travel with her through the badlands of Arizona battling killers, child abusers, cutters and polygamists, Lena’s outrage sensitizes me to the suffering of others. “You see?” she appears to be asking me. “You see what they’ve done?”

Lena’s not an easy gal to be around. No matter. None of us would be “easy” if we’d been found at the age of four, lying by a Phoenix street after being shot in the head, and afterwards enduring a childhood filled with foster homes and other horrors. But we writers can learn from our most troubled of friends, can't we?

Still, it’s always a relief when I get to spend time with my zoo series character, Theodora “Teddy” Iona Esmeralda Bentley, the zoo keeper who always seems to be stumbling over dead humans. Teddy is a much less complicated person than Lena, and my days spent with this houseboat-living zoo keeper are humorous and relaxing (until another dead body shows up). When I’m volunteering at the Phoenix Zoo, I’ll see a squirrel monkey doing something outrageous, and I think,“Oh, man, I’ve got to tell Teddy about this!”

Writers are crazy. We build castles in the air, then move into them. We create characters, and have conversations with them. But isn’t that the fun of being a writer -- to walk alone into a small room and within minutes, be surrounded by a crowd of fascinating people, some of whom you dearly love?

But that’s also the scary part of being a writer: sometimes our friends take their time showing up, and the hollow sound of an empty room can be terrifying. Now that I’ve started on Desert Wind, the 7th Lena Jones mystery, I wonder -- will Lena talk to me this morning? Or will she run away when I call her name? Writing is hard. Very hard. Some days we writers sit at the computer and nothing happens. But still we sit, with our fingers hovering over the keyboard, waiting for our “imaginary” friend to appear out of nowhere and start telling us a story.

That friendship and those stories are what we writers live for.

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Gail Godwin, on writing when depression strikes: “It goes just as well, but it takes twice as long. I made a deal with myself. I said, “I’ll just come up here every day.” The artist Phillip Guston told me this once when he was having a bad patch: “I go to my studio every day, because one day I may go and the angel will be there. What if I don’t go and the angel came?”

Writer Abandoned at Truck Stop

I almost decided to title this, “Why No Two Book Tours Are Alike,” but in journalism, they teach us to title like we write -- short and to the point.

On Sunday, December 6, it looked like the California leg of my DESERT LOST book tour would go well. As hubby and I pulled out of Scottsdale and headed for San Diego, the temperature was mild and the sun was shining. Everything was so perfect that I crawled into the back seat and dozed while Hubby drove.

Somewhere in the Arizona desert between Casa Grande and Yuma, Hubby decided to gas up and use the restroom at a Love’s truck stop. When he exited the car, he asked if I needed to use the facilities, but I was groggy and just said no. As soon as he disappeared into Love’s, however, I rethought the situation (all those empty, sand-blasted miles stretching ahead), so I hopped out of the car and made my way to the Lady’s Room.

When I exited, no Hubby. After searching the truck stop from gas pump to storage room, I asked a friendly-looking trucker to double-check the Men’s room, but Hubby wasn’t in there. At that point, I thought it might be a good idea to stop looking for Hubby and start looking for our car, a green Isuzu SUV. But that, too, had disappeared.

No Hubby, no car.

Being well-trained in crime detection, I was able to figure out the following: Hubby, thinking I was still asleep in the Isuzu’s back seat, had simply continued on to California without me. I fumed for a while, then decided to alert the authorities. I reached for my trusty cell phone and discovered -- no phone. Like a ninny, I’d left my handbag in the car. No phone, no money, no credit cards, no nuthin’. Fortunately (for me, anyway) a Highway Patrol car pulled into the truck stop to ticket some poor wretch caught speeding down I-8, so once Mr. Trooper had written out the citation, I told Mr. Trooper my tale of woe.

“Oh, don’t worry, Ma’am,” Mr. Trooper said, “We see this sort of thing all the time. Um, by the way, did you two have an argument?”

He asked for my car’s license number, but I couldn’t remember it (could you?). I did remember, however, that it was an Isuzu and was green, with a Boston Marathon sticker on the back (due to my son, not me). After Mr. Trooper put out a APB on careless Hubby, he advised me to stay where I was. “Don’t want to go wandering off into the desert, do we, Ma’am?”

No, we didn’t.

An hour and a half later, Hubby showed up. He’d managed to make it 70 miles down the road before he got lonesome and tried to have a conversation with me. Noticing that I seemed unusually quiet, he’d taken a quick look over his shoulder, and discovered that I wasn’t there. Hubby isn’t prone to panic, but he did admit to me later that he’d had a few bad moments before he caught sight of a Highway Patrol car on the side of the road, and a trooper writing the usual speeding ticket (Warning to those about to travel on I-8 between Yuma and Casa Grande. Don’t speed. You WILL get caught). When Hubby approached him, Mr. Trooper 2 said, “Oh, yes, we’ve been
looking for you for more than an hour. Better go back for your wife before she gets madder than she already is. And be prepared to duck.”

Not being an idiot, Hubby followed instructions.

That was Day One of my book tour. On Day Two, the Storm to End All Storms rolled into
Southern California, and considerably dampened the turnout at Mysterious Galaxy. The storm continued all the way to Anaheim, where I had my second signing at the Canyon Hills Library, a favorite of mine (they love the Lena Jones books there, and enjoy discussing polygamy). Day Three dawned nicely, so the signings at Mystery Bookstore, in Westwood, and Book ‘Em, in South Pasadena went well. Day Four started off just as well, and we had a nice visit at Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks...

Then Hubby got hungry.

We stopped at a small fish restaurant, which for legal reasons I won’t name, and Hubby ordered shrimp. Quite a bit of shrimp, in fact. Since I’d been stuffing myself on Oreos in the back seat for a while, I declined, and settled for some Diet Coke. With our early dinner finished, we headed back towards San Diego & the California/Arizona state line so that we’d arrive in Tucson in plenty of time to visit the zoo (Anteaters!), and then show up at Clues Unlimited for my Saturday
signing with Elizabeth Gunn (“Cool In Tucson” and others). However, just as we reached Encinitas, Hubby turned green. Kind of a chartreuse, actually, not a color I’ve ever cared for.

So we stopped at a seaside motel, where Hubby took up semi-permanent residence in the tiny bathroom and I gamboled on the beach. By next morning, he had lost considerable weight, while I had amassed a nice collection of sea shells and pretty rocks. As I started to pack up again, he informed me that, no, leaving the immediate vicinity of a bathroom wasn’t a good idea, and I’d better tell the people at the front desk that we were staying another night. So I did. I also called Chris at Clues
Unlimited and told her what was happening.

The next day I collected more seashells and more pretty rocks, and made friends with a golden retriever and a Heinz 57-something. While strolling along the main drag, I also discovered that Encinitas has lovely restaurants, several therapeutic massage parlors (no, not THAT kind, get your mind out of the gutter!), and a nice yoga studio that also sold incense and relaxation CDs. I bought a relaxation CD (bells, flutes, etc.), then drove off to Target for a portable CD to play it on. After a lovely Italian meal at the restaurant down the street, I stretched myself out on the motel bed and practiced relaxing while Hubby continued to savor the delights of the motel bathroom.

Now it's Sunday and we’re back in beautiful downtown Scottsdale. Hubby isn’t quite as green as yesterday, but he’s not exactly lively, either. Me, I’m feeling fine. And my new relaxation tape works beautifully.

One more thing. My new website is up. It’s at www.bettywebb-mystery.com

DESERT LOST debuts Dec. 5!

If you'd like to discuss any of the ideas below or to request my personal appearance at your group, email me at webbscottsdale@aol.com I promise to reply!
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GREAT NEWS! Library Journal has chosen DESERT LOST as one of the Top Five Mystery Novels of 2009!!! This is a major kudo, folks, and I'm as thrilled as I can be.

DESERT LOST will debut at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, December 5, at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Then I’ll be leaving on my whirlwind California tour, returning in six days to begin work on DESERT WIND, the 7th Lena Jones mystery. To find out if I'll be in a city near you, check my signings blog at http://bettywebbssignings.blogspot.com


Found at the age of four lying beside a Phoenix street with a bullet in her head, private investigator Lena Jones was raised in foster homes, where she was starved and raped. Yet somehow she survived and became a Scottsdale police officer. After being shot up in a drug raid, Lena opened Desert Investigations with her friend Jimmy Sisiwan, a full-blooded Pima Indian. Now she’s hunting down her biological parents at the same time she’s hunting down killers.

In DESERT LOST, Lena discovers that the polygamists she first faced down in DESERT WIVES have opened a small colony in Scottsdale. This time, Lena finds out that when one man can have 10 wives, 9 men will have none. And the prophet of Second Zion knows just how to get rid of the competition -- even when the "competition" is comprised of boys as young as 14. But why do their mothers not protect them? When Lena finds out the answer, she is even more shocked.

As in all the Lena Jones books, an Authors Note reveals the facts behind the fiction. One of them: polygamy is on the increase -- and popping up in cities, not just rural areas.

Expecting a rush on both my polygamy books, Poisoned Pen Press has re-released DESERT WIVES with a new cover and a new Authors Note.

The reviews of DESERT LOST have been wonderful -- even stronger than the reviews for DESERT WIVES! Here are just a few DESERT LOST reviews.

LIBRARY JOURNAL --Webb lays out the details of polygamy and cult life in this fast-paced sixth series entry that will appeal to readers who enjoy gritty Southwestern mysteries. No one writes quite like she does.em>

BOOKLIST -- STARRED REVIEW: This is a complex, exciting entry in a first-class series.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY -- Clear-cut characterizations help a complicated plot flow smoothly. As Webb points out in a note, polygamy still spawns many social ills, despite the recent, well-publicized conviction of Mormon fundamentalist prophet Warren Jeffs.

MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE -- In her brilliant sixth outing, Arizona PI Lena Jones is confronted by the horrors of polygamy and the toll it takes on its victims.

And to top it all off, my Lena Jones novels were discussed on the prestigious Huffington Post on November 4. Lena hit the big time!

So much of Lena's success is because of you -- Lena's readers -- and for that, Lena and I thank you, thank you, thank you!

To celebrate the release of DESERT LOST my web site is undergoing a major redesign. Check it out at http://www.bettywebb-mystery.com If it's not finished by the time you read this, keep checking back. Those web sites are killers to work with!


Judging from the cards & emails I've received, many of Lena's fans are aspiring writers. Sometimes they contact me at webbscottsdale@aol.com for writing advice (and I always respond), so here's some more advice, beginning with a quote:

“It’s easier not to write than to write. But write for a certain number of hours every single day, every day, no matter how you feel. Only by logging in those hours do you become the kind of writer you want to be – even if you have to spend those “writing” hours just staring at the blank computer screen. The logjam will eventually loosen, but only if you are there to nudge it along.” from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy.

Researching and writing material like DESERT LOST isn’t easy -- especially when your writing day begins at 4 a.m. and usually continues until noon (I retired from full-time journalism 4 years ago). Many of my readers are under the impression that these books just roll out easily, but that has never been the case. For me, writing is like opening a vein. As I was writing on DESERT LOST, I kept a journal about the difficulties of the writing life. Below are some excerpts from that journal.

I can’t, I can’t, I just can’t...

The writing has gone horribly for weeks. It seems like ever day I’ve sat there in front of the computer screen waiting for inspiration to come. But it never did. I wrote anyway.

At first, the words I wrote were bland and the sentences clunked along like lead boots. It seemed like my characters wouldn’t do anything I wanted them to do, the plot seemed predictable, and the theme -- if there was one -- was so well hidden even I couldn’t find it.

I wrote anyway. Every day. From 4 a.m. to noon. All the time, I felt depressed and no longer believed in myself or my work. I decided to accept the fact that I was nothing more than a typing robot, a writer with no talent -- just a writing habit.
It was my writing habit that kept writing, not me. I’d been doing this for so long, that I couldn’t stop myself. The morning that I came down with that horrible stomach thing? I wrote between trips to the bathroom. The day I had the argument with my friend, I wrote to make myself stop crying.

But I wrote anyway, thank God. Because eventually, I wrote my way through the crap, and fought my way through to the good stuff.

People talk a lot about writers block. As a journalist, I've never believed in it. After all, if a reporter tells her editor she’s blocked and can’t write a story that is due at 3 p.m., that reporter gets fired. Above my desk is a plaque given to me by Arizona PressWomen. It says: THE ULTIMATE INSPIRATION IS THE DEADLINE.

I’ve found that to be true. Writing is NEVER easy. People who are experiencing what they interpret to be “writers block” often believe that if writing starts getting painfully difficult, there’s a problem. So they turn their backs on their computer and run away. Bad move. The truth is that writing is almost aways painful. Sure, every now and then you get a thrill when everything is working great and the words just flow. But I’ve found that feeling of ease and exhilaration to be very, very rare. Mostly you just slit open a vein, then sit in front of the computer and wait for the blood -- and words -- to flow. Still, what do you do when the words won’t come?

A long time ago I read an inspirational piece that said 95% of the secret to success is to just "show up.”

I truly believe that. When the words don't flow for me, I still sit there at the computer every bit as long as I do when the words DO flow. This means that I go to my computer at 4 a.m. every morning and sit there until noon -- regardless of whether the words are flowing or not. And guess what? Those words begin flowing after I’ve sat there for a hour or so. One caveat: by “sitting there” I don’t mean checking my emails or surfing the net. No, I mean sitting there, hands hovering over the keyboard, staring at the story that is giving me heartache. When I continue to do that, no matter how silly or heartbreaking it all seems, my "block" eventually disappears. Why? I have no idea -- it just does.

The lesson I've taught myself? Don't run from the pain; embrace it. In other words, just show up. Eventually, something magical will happen -- if you just show up.

The fact that DESERT LOST is now on its way to the stores is testament to the fact that “showing up” works. Lena Jones knows that life can be hard, and I -- her creator -- know that writing is just as hard. In the long run, though, both life and writing are worth every painful, bloody hour.

To close, I’d like to quote from the wonderful columnist Erma Bombeck, now deceased: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’ ”

Erma showed up.

Writing Weirdness

"A writer begins by breathing life into his characters. But if you are very lucky, they breathe life into you." from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy

"We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." Henry James

"The creative power, which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book, quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape, keep one at it more than anything." Virginia Woolf
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Last week I noticed that the scene I was working on was running too long and seemed to have no point. Yet I couldn’t stop writing it. Teddy Bentley, my zookeeper/sleuth from the humorous "The Anteater of Death," was trying to tell Zorah, the Gunn Zoo director, that she’d just discovered something important about the koala keeper who’d just been murdered, only to have Zorah refuse to let her talk. The more Teddy tried to impart her information, the more quickly Zorah interrupted her, even stopping at one point to take a telephone call.

Now, since I begin my writing day at 4 a.m., I’m used to writing nonsense. It usually takes me about an hour before I wake up and begin to make sense, but I’d been writing this mess for two full hours and the scene just kept getting longer and longer without making any sense at all! But, taking my own advice, I persevered. By 8 a.m. I was writing fanatically, giving Teddy more pleas to be heard, more interruptions by Zorah. Then suddenly -- Eureka!

I realized that I’d finally, and unconsciously, typed a sentence that made the entire scene make sense. Not only that, but the sentence was so funny that I darned near fell out of my chair laughing. That seemingly "pointless" scene had tied together two separate plotlines into one neat package, while delivering a punch line worthy a stand-up comedian.

Sometimes our unconscious mind knows what it’s doing long before our conscious mind does. In that, the unconscious mind is like a wild beast. We have to have the courage to let the Wild Beast do its beastly thing. Later, our conscious mind -- our editor mind -- can go back and tidy up the rough spots. But without the Wild Beast’s snarlings and flailings, there would be nothing to tidy up -- just a blank page.
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"One day you will read what you have written and see that it is absolute dog shit. So just write some more dog shit." Anonymous

"By perseverance the snail finished the race." Anonymous

"That Anonymous guy really gets around." Betty Webb

Writing After Vacations (or Other Distractions)

From a Writer’s Digest cartoon:
First writer at cocktail party. "I’m working on my new novel."
Second writer: "Neither am I."
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One of the hardest things a writer has to do is resume writing after a break, due to vacation, illness, or even something as seemingly connected to the creative process as hold a workshop at a writing conference. This year all three things happened to me at separate times, and, oh, the woe, before I could get into gear again.

What happens, I think, is that when we’re off doing something else, the usual "thought tracks" in the creative part of our minds change course. Or erode. Or something like that. Instead of thinking about what our characters are going to do next, we’re thinking about whether we’ll make our flight on time, if the nurse will arrive with the pain medication before we start hurting again, or perfecting the talk/workshop we’re giving next morning at the conference. So much real stuff is going down that our fictional "lives" fade into the background.

Then the day comes when we arrive home to face an empty computer screen. I don’t know about you, but for me, starting writing again after a few days’ or weeks’ intermission is even harder than starting from page one. My usual writing schedule (4 a.m. to noon, seven days a week) is off track, and I feel twitchy, not creative. Instead of pouncing gleefully on the keyboard every morning, I have to drag myself there.

But we drag ourselves there anyway, don’t we? That’s because writers write. Fortunately, after a few miserable days, the old schedule and the old joy finally kick in. We find ourselves recovered from our malaise, and not even the very real charms of the Sonoran Desert in full bloom or the purple heather of the Scottish Highlands can lure us away from the fictional exploits of our own heroes and villains.

That’s probably because every writer -- deep down -- is as nutty as a fruitcake. We not only build castles in the air, we move in to the damn things!
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"Perseverance is not a long race; it’s many short races, one after another." from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy

"They can’t yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him." Ernest Hemingway

"The most effective way to do it is to just do it." Anonymous

The problem with creativity

Today I sat at my computer for a full eight hours, attempting to write on The Koala of Death before anything really happened. Eight hours of zilch! But when things finally did begin to happen, the ideas were pure gold. The eight hours before that, however, were ghastly. Clumsy sentences that went nowhere. Hackneyed ideas that had been used time and time again by other writers. Cardboard characters that refused to come to life. Nothing but junk, junk, junk.

Poor Koala!

Non-writers often believe that creativity is easy, that it's something we were "born with", that we just sit down and ideas automatically come to us as easy as switching on a light. But we writers don't have built-in light switches. We're just human beings -- complex people who have lives outside of our writing. We have relatives who are in trouble, friends who are ailing, spouses with whom we are quarreling. Heck, we may even be going quietly nuts all by ourselves!

The mistake so many beginning writers make is that they think they need to work out their problems and "get clarity" before starting to write.

Experienced writers know that when we approach the stories we're working on, we approach them with a load of personal baggage that would break an elephant's back. Yet still we write. Three-quarters of what we turn out during those difficult times may turn out to be crap, but it's that one-quarter of gold that keeps us writing.

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"You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

JACK LONDON

"This stretch of the river is named Hell’s Half-Mile."

JOHN WESLEY POWELL

"The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it’s a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work."

From Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers,

by Susan Shaughnessy

Inspiration for Writers

Writing is hard. The more we write, the more we realize that.

In recognition of the special challenges we writers must face every day -- fear of rejection, fear of not being understood, and most of all, fear that the words and ideas simply won’t come -- I’ve decided to weekly post words of encouragement both from me and from others. Enjoy, and take heart.


"Writing is a path as full of darkness as it is of light, and so the way ahead is hard to see. There are so many ominous shadows, unpredictable gusts of wind, unexpected blinding shafts of sunlight. It’s easy to get lost, to trip over our own hidden roots, or plunge unaware into unexplored caverns in our psyche. As writers, we hardly ever know exactly where we’re going. The only thing that most of us know how to do is deep putting one foot after the other in the darkness and trust that eventually we’ll get there." From Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy

"When the well’s dry, we know the worth of the writer." Benjamin Franklin

"How do I work? I grope." Albert Einstein


Three years ago, exhausted from the horrific research that went into my 2008 Lena Jones novel, Desert Cut, I decided to take a time out and write something considerably lighter. Thus emerged The Anteater of Death, a humorous mystery set in a zoo that featured Lucy, a giant anteater from Belize, and her keeper, poor-little-rich-girl, Theodora "Teddy" Iona Esmeralda Bentley. I didn’t really expect much from the book other than the fun of writing it, but Anteater has taken on a life of its own.

Anteater was released in November 2008, and since then, I’ve toured the Southwest and given talks on both the writing life and -- yes -- giant anteaters and other zoo animals. The reading public seems to have taken Lucy to heart, so much so that this past weekend The Anteater of Death was awarded Best Mystery Novel of 2008 by the Arizona Book Publishing Association.

At first I was shocked. Anteater wasn't about anything important, other than "Be kind to animals," and "Support your local zoo; feeding all those animals doesn't come cheap." But then, after I thought about it for a while, I found the answer.

In these financially scary times, people want a little relaxation. When we don’t know if our paycheck will arrive with a pink slip, we need something that lets us escape from our anxieties. And while I’m not decrying the heavy subjects my Lena Jones books explore (polygamy, mental illness, child abuse, the destruction of the Southwestern desert, etc.), I understand that books often dismissed as mere "cozies" serve an important place in this world.

Maybe more now than ever before.

For information on Anteater,check www.bettywebb-zoomystery.com

For information on the Lena Jones mysteries, check www.bettywebb-mystery.com