I'm beta-free.

Allyson, send please.

Just home from two parties for which I had to both cook and drive, or I would have answered sooner.

Allyson, received, read, misted up, and backsent with narrative commentary on two points, and a noticed spelling error.

Allyson, if I'm not too late in offering, I'd love to try and help.

Allyson, back to you with comments.

Allyson, if you still want more feedback, I'm available.

Anyone up for a beta? Some slight revisions to existing, and a whole new section, on "The Gravekeeper".

I wanted to post this. It's this month's "Murder at the Flatiron" column, written by my editor at St. Martins Press, Ruth Cavin, and it's very sage advice:

Walking with the Characters

We have said, (so much that you’re probably tired hearing it) that the characters are, to us, the most important part of a story. If readers have no interest in the people they meet in the pages of the book, if they can’t believe them, how can they care about what happens to them? We’ve quoted the author who said he gets his story by walking along with the characters and seeing what they do, we’ve noted that a news story about a happening to someone on the street takes on real meaning if that person is someone the reader knows, (or a celebrity that the reader feels he or she knows.)

Under our other hat, we’ve had an interesting thing happen along those lines:

The book is a thriller, written by an author whom we’ve published previously but a bit different than his previous stories. His agent sent it to us and we dived in, reading along with much pleasure and hating to have to stop to figure out what to make for dinner. But when we came to the end, we were abruptly uncomfortable. We didn’t like the killer. That killer had no reason to be the killer, only a kind of pasted-on motive that would be a much better fit on another of the characters.

In fact, a second character in the story was just the sort of person to have that motive all along, and to act on it, keeping it a deep secret between the author and the character, but in no way behaving in a way that such a person would not. Until the detective him- or herself could find the answer, the reader couldn’t know. When, finally, this character who is so much more fit to be the bad person, is unveiled, the reader can go back in memory and think, “Oh, that’s why he (or she) staged that argument in the restaurant...” or whatever action now becomes clear. It’s a real case of the character “getting away from the author,” as it were.

And to top it off, that fine fellow of an author not only didn’t protest at all, but agreed with us (after all, he’s the one who put the real killer in the story, it just took another eye to recognize the right person) but he said his wife had the same feeling when she read the manuscript. It can’t be better than that!

Lesson: It’s wrong for authors to think they have complete control over their characters. If they’ve done a good job on them, they’ve created individuals who don’t always want to do what the author tells them to.

She's a very wise woman.

individuals who don’t always want to do what the author tells them to.

The rotten little bastards. No matter how much I tell them, "But--the entire next hundred pages depends on you doing this!", they cross their arms and say "Nuh uh."

No matter how much I tell them, "But--the entire next hundred pages depends on you doing this!", they cross their arms and say "Nuh uh."

I know. I'm all, "We had a deal!" and they're all, "Fuck you, Charlie."