I’m back after taking time off from writing (and my website) for the Christmas/New Year’s holidays. I found myself scrolling through YouTube during that down time and encountered posts by book editors offering their opinions and insight on good writing. I already follow posts by a handful of literary agents who keep tabs on shifts in publishing as well as market trends in reading. But these book editors had my rabid attention.
 
Editors posting on YouTube are, of course, hoping to boost their client base. No problem with that. Everyone on YouTube hopes for new followers. However, they are also offering free advice from professionals who have worked successfully in the literary field for years. Their knowledge was incisive and overwhelming. I ended up creating a spreadsheet with their suggestions broken down into categories like quick fixes, building powerful sentences, characters/backstory, plot pacing, dialog beats, and chapter reviews. Spreadsheet in hand (well, actually on my laptop screen), I ran through The Stars Prevail polishing that still-a-bit-rough stone into a glittering diamond. The difference was impressive.
 
My loud applause and profound appreciation goes out to book editors who are giving us all a leg up as we attempt to craft intriguing stories populated with interesting characters. Thank you for adding so much zest to our novels!

I’ve long admired writers who are “plotters.” These brilliant minds outline every major aspect of their manuscript before writing the first paragraph. They flesh out characters in advance, know where to plant the twists and the turns, predetermine where their protagonist will fly and where she will fail, and even establish pacing based upon the number of pages in their yet-to-be-written manuscript. Impressive.
 
And then we have the “pantsers” who scurry forward, roughly jotting down scenes, clues, and characters based upon a vague idea without any clear notion of where it will all end. It just sort of happens.
 
I’m a pantser. I allow my imagination to take me down endless paths, whipping up characters and scenes as I move along, chasing after villains that I have yet to clearly define, and dropping clues all over the place, only to go back and retrieve those that really don’t matter. I love the freedom of writing as a pantser, but it invariably leads me to dead ends with no obvious way out. I admit that painting myself into a corner can be damned frustrating.
 
I carry a HUGE eraser, a bucketful of self-forgiveness, and incredible tenacity. When I find myself unable to move the plot forward, I take some time off, ruminate, and allow fresh solutions to blossom. Then I dive back in with more useful supportive cast members, fewer clues, a unique twist, and tighter pacing. I often surprise myself when the ending is far beyond what I imagined it might be and a much, much better read.
 
It takes a good deal of self-reflection and an awful lot of rewriting for me to finally pen an intriguing mystery, but I enjoy the learning process. I’m adapting, stretching my imagination, developing storytelling skills, adding intriguing layers to characters, and ultimately discovering better solutions. There is a profound sense of self-fulfillment found in the process of honing my craft, in developing my own creativity, and ultimately becoming a better writer.
 
I have to admit that for me, it’s all about the journey.
 

While I’m working with a graphic designer on book covers, I’ve also been researching the marketing end of self-publishing. The more I know, the greater my ability to get my books into the hands of readers (or onto their Kindles).
 
Fortunately, the online community is loaded with suggestions on how to boost readership/sales, and very kind YouTubers offer their entertaining insights based upon their self-publishing experiences. With each book reseller (Amazon, Goodreads, etc.) operating under their own unique rules and differing formulas for royalties, I clearly need to be versed in marketing before putting my novels online or they will suffer a rapid demise.
 
For me, marketing is daunting but what new skill isn’t overwhelming in the beginning?  I have stumbled upon a rather ironic fact in my marketing research. Authors are required to take their 70,000-word novel and boil it down to a 750-word synopsis. Then, we must whittle those 750 words down to an intriguing 225-word jacket copy. From there, we must further pare it down to a one paragraph pitch for online resellers and – finally – a one sentence tagline for the book cover. I’ve always been a fan of being concise, but this is a crazy challenge I'm taking on four times (once for each novel). It brings to mind Hemingway’s amazing story written with only six words: For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. That man was the king of concise.

​“Keep in mind that hundreds attended our seminary a century before we arrived there. They became missionaries, traveling the world, enlightening the masses, and no doubt having a jolly good time abroad. They brought back curious objects—gifts from tribesmen, items used in odd religious rituals, and unique cultural trappings they picked up along the way. These oddities were amassed in the seminary’s basement, serving as a museum. This all happened well before television exposed us to the indigenous people of other continents. As young seminarians, we toured the collected relics to glimpse heathen cultures and gawk at their ritualistic tokens. Such dated collections were common teaching tools in seminaries across Europe and the U.S. The display broadened our knowledge and challenged us to follow in the footsteps of our alumni.”
 
Rosemont recalled the many good men who traversed the seminary halls over time. “Inspector, it was all well and good until 1970 when the United Nations developed an agreement against the trade of cultural properties. You see, people were losing their history to tourists and invading military forces. They strongly opposed the taking of their homeland antiquities.”
 
“I studied that act in college,” Remy said. “The multi-national agreement prevented looting during military coups and slowed the international trade of stolen relics. It won staunch support. Many countries passed even stricter laws to protect their unique heritage.”
 
Rosemont leaned forward; his voice cut with excitement. “Exactly. But back then, it meant priests and seminarians sat on top of illicit property. A vast collection of relics taken from multiple countries during colonial imperialism; historical tokens of unique religions and indigenous cultures. Of course, the missionaries had not intentionally stolen anything. Up until the early 1900s, everyone returned from abroad with such relics as souvenirs. But imagine how it appeared in the culturally awakened 1970s. That populace perceived it quite differently: Thou shalt not steal. And you know how that goes—people’s perceptions become their realities. Bear in mind that in the 1970s, people began questioning priests’ activities. What the Church couldn’t explain, it buried. Rather than risk embarrassment or arrest for hording cultural treasures, holy men nipped down to their collections and emptied the museums into skips in the dead of night.”
 Excerpt from The Sacred Stones
 
You are no doubt thinking: What a fantastical story. Well, it’s true. My husband was one of those dumpster-diving seminarians back in the 1970s. He and several classmates rescued a broad range of cultural antiquities, sparing them from a landfill rubble. The oddities are still guests in my home. Pre-Columbian pieces of architecture, a cup with a gruesome face, Roman coins, a scrimshaw tusk, cuneiforms, a figurine head of a bird, chainmail purse, and a tiny, sculpted bust of a Nubian woman are all on display. These cultural antiquities resonate with history. Each object’s uniqueness draws your attention and then forces you into quiet contemplation of all that has transpired before you. The oddities are portals to the past that breathe life into marginalized or extinct cultures and somehow still add magic and meaning to our lives. We are honored to be the temporary custodians of these touchstones; torn between our desire to protect and preserve the antiquities or repatriate them. It’s not an easy decision.

​Eww! Disgusting imagery that creates an emotional lasso cinching you to our victim. You can’t help but feel inconsolable grief for a person who has been nibbled upon by sea beasties.
 
Having a character killed at sea required me to immerse myself in research on water forensics. It is an unnerving and repulsive read, to say the least. I am not a CSI fan but the need to be accurate when describing my poor victim pushed me forward. I learned the biology of drowning, decomposition in freshwater v. seawater, the effects of cold ocean vs. tropical seas upon a corpse, and the nasty business of putrefaction and scavenging creatures.
 
I read enough on these topics to write the above passage and later observations made by the coroner before embracing this unbendable lesson: Never be buried at sea.

Living smack-dab in the middle of a massive country, I was oblivious to the profound presence of water in an island nation. Driving across the UK, I found myself waterlogged by estuaries, trout-filled streams, calm canals, squidgy beaches, and the surrounding restless seas. Wherever there is water, there is the danger of drowning. My research took me to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a volunteer network of forty thousand courageous souls who jump in lifeboats at a moment's notice, saving countless lives and educating generations about water safety. The RNLI rescues twenty-two people every day. As they say, "ordinary people doing extraordinary things." The cost of their brave service has been the loss of more than six hundred volunteer lives since the institution's inception in 1824. Its long-standing commitment to water safety is stunning and worthy of our applause. Grab your tissues and read some of the witty, wry, and wise personal accounts of Royal Nationals from their online magazine.

The theft of antiquarian books from libraries for black-market sale is a crime which prompted murder in my first two novels. The idea was launched by a few articles I had read about Marino Massimo De Caro, the former director of the Girolamini Library (Italy) who was accused of stealing thousands of rare books, including 15th and 16th century tomes penned by the founders of astronomy. Turns out that theft from libraries—a cultural heritage crime—is all too common.

​A library’s rare books, illustrations, and maps are most often snatched for profit, feeding the growing black market for cultural relics. The greatest problem is that while most curated items are one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable historical gems, there are limited protections in place. Few libraries have funds for high-end security systems, relying instead upon manual checkouts, turnstiles, and—most recently—electronic tag detectors. How do you guard a collection that can be browsed by anybody? Once upon a time, books were chained to the wall. With the production of more books, chains became unmanageable. In the Middle Ages, the weapon of choice against potential book thieves was a curse. Such harm-filled magical spells included the threat of being struck by palsy, suffering eternal damnation, or—my favorite—having all your members blasted. Ouch!

Who are the most common library book thieves? Employees. Insider theft happens regularly because it takes little planning beyond the common sense of not taking what is highly popular. Unpopular items are rarely missed or reported. Janitors might tuck a book into their mop buckets, but only a librarian can remove the card catalog record, a trail documenting an item's existence. The whistle might still be blown, of course, if the item has been used by a researcher, creating another trail when used in citations. Honest book buyers and vested librarians often spot and report stolen items appearing at auction or in online sales. This is how De Caro was finally tripped up in Italy.

Punishment for the theft and sale of such cultural antiquities is a whole other issue. In 2013, Massimo De Caro was convicted and given a seven-year sentence for embezzlement. He was in prison for only six months and then allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence at his own home. Although his assets were seized and visitation heavily restricted, I’ve read that he dwells in “confined splendor,” awaiting subsequent trials and appeals for looting, conspiracy, and forgery while enjoying the view from his villa. It's no wonder cultural heritage crimes flourish in the modern era.