From 221B to the Squad Room: Writing Detective Partners That Work

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The most famous partnership in detective fiction started as a rent split.

In  A Study in Scarlet (1887), Dr. John Watson comes home from Afghanistan with a wound, a thin army pension, and no family in England. An old acquaintance mentions a strange fellow at the hospital lab who has found some nice rooms but can’t afford them alone. The strange fellow looks up from his chemistry and says, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”And there it is.

Not destiny. Not a calling. A lease.

Every detective partnership needs something holding the two of them together. Something that keeps them in the same car, the same office, the same stakeout van at three in the morning when one of them won’t stop crunching sunflower seeds.

Over at The Pitch Master, I just wrapped a five-part series on best friend love in storytelling. One idea from that series turned out to unlock detective partners completely: A badge is glue to keep partners together.

Police partners and private detective partners get their glue from opposite places. Figure out which one you’re writing, and half your craft decisions make themselves.

Assigned: The Badge Is Free Glue

Police partners don’t choose each other. The lieutenant does.

That is a gift to writers. You never have to explain why these two are stuck together. The department did it for you, with paperwork. And because nobody asked either of them, conflict comes standard.

Lethal Weapon (1987) opens on Roger Murtaugh’s fiftieth birthday. His present from the LAPD is Martin Riggs, a grieving, suicidal loose cannon who the brass suspect is faking it for a psych pension. Murtaugh didn’t ask for him. Nobody would.

The X-Files went further. The FBI assigns Dana Scully to Fox Mulder’s basement office specifically to debunk him. Her original job is to file reports on why her partner is wrong. Every week, the believer and the skeptic stare at the same evidence and read it in opposite directions.

Tony Hillerman wrote Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police in separate books for years. When he finally put them on the same case in Skinwalkers (1986), he got a pairing built on a fault line: the older, logical lieutenant who has no patience for witchcraft talk, and the younger officer who is studying to become a traditional Navajo healer. Same reservation. Same murders. Completely different ways of seeing them.

Here’s the story question for assigned partners: Will they learn to trust each other?

The badge holds them together whether they like it or not. That means the friendship isn’t automatic. It has to be earned. And the moment readers wait for is the moment one of them chooses the other when the job no longer requires it.

Writing assigned partners

  • Let them resent the assignment. Neither one picked this. Use it.
  • Make trust the arc. Who backs up whom, and when does it cost something?
  • Threaten the glue from outside. The department that put them together can split them up. A transfer request is a breakup scene with a form attached.

Chosen: The License Needs a Reason

A private detective doesn’t have a lieutenant. Nobody assigns a PI a partner.

That means if either one could walk away at any moment with no cost, your reader is going to wonder why they don’t. Chosen partners need a reason to stay in the car, and you have to put it on the page.

Let’s look at where some great private eye partnerships get their glue:

  • The rent. Holmes and Watson, 221B Baker Street.
  • The paycheck. Archie Goodwin works for Nero Wolfe. He lives in the brownstone, draws a salary, does the legwork Wolfe rarely leaves the house for, and needles his genius employer into taking cases so the bills get paid.
  • The past. Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro grew up together in Dorchester before Dennis Lehane made them partners. Shawn and Gus on Psych have been best friends since they were kids.
  • A debt. Spenser and Hawk go back to their boxing days, and Robert B. Parker built their bond on old history and a trade of favors.
  • A job that turned into something else. On Elementary, Joan Watson starts out as Sherlock’s sober companion, hired by his father. The paycheck brings her in. The partnership is what keeps her.
  • Being a target. In The Nice Guys (2016), enforcer Jackson Healy is paid to scare private eye Holland March off a case. Then they both end up targets of the same people, and have to work together.

The story question for chosen partners is different: Why do they stay?

Every book has to renew that choice. If the reader stops believing it, the partnership reads hollow, like two characters sharing an office because the author needs them to.

Here’s the difference in two lines:

If they’re assigned, the story is about choosing each other anyway.

If they chose each other, the story is about what it costs to keep choosing.

A Tour of Detective Partnerships

Assigned or chosen tells you where the glue comes from. The kind of partnership tells you what the two of them do for each other. Here are five shapes that show up again and again, on the page and on screen.

1. The Genius and the Chronicler

Holmes and Watson. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings.

One partner is brilliant. The other tells the story. This is the oldest structure in the genre, and it does a sneaky job. The narrator can watch the genius work without ever being inside his head. You get to show every clue and hide the conclusion until the big reveal, and it all plays fair.

The danger is the chronicler who’s just furniture. Agatha Christie got tired of Hastings. In The Murder on the Links (1923), she married him off and shipped him to Argentina, and Poirot carried on mostly without him.

Compare Archie Goodwin. He’s funny, he’s capable, he’s a better detective than he lets on, and he has an opinion about his boss on every page. Readers come back as much for Archie’s voice as for Wolfe’s genius.

The takeaway: give your chronicler competence and an attitude. If your narrator only exists to say “Amazing!” he’s a mirror, not a partner.

2. The Veteran and the Rookie

Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard. Eve Dallas and Delia Peabody. Young Morse and Fred Thursday on Endeavour.

This is a mentorship, and the arc is built in: the rookie grows. In J.D. Robb’s In Death series, Peabody starts out as Eve’s uniformed aide, becomes her partner, earns her detective’s shield, and catches her first case as primary.

Michael Connelly paired Bosch, a retired LAPD detective with no patience for rules, with Ballard, a young detective exiled to the night shift with no patience for being sidelined. Two generations. One shared stubborn streak.

The takeaway: the payoff scene is the day the rookie is right and the veteran is wrong. Build toward it.

3. Equal and Opposite

Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe. Cagney and Lacey. Mulder and Scully.

This is the odd couple engine. Reginald Hill paired a big, crude Yorkshire superintendent with a university-educated young detective and got decades of novels out of the friction. Cagney & Lacey put an ambitious single woman and a married working mother in the same squad car.

Every time these two solve a problem, they want to solve it differently. You never have to import conflict. It’s already sitting in the passenger seat, complaining about the radio.

The takeaway: their differences have to show up in how they work the case, not just how they talk. Who wants to lean on the witness? Who wants to wait for the lab?

4. The Partner Who Does What You Won’t

Spenser and Hawk. Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Easy Rawlins and Mouse.
This one is a private eye specialty. The detective has a code. The partner has fewer scruples and a lot more firepower.

Parker introduced Hawk in Promised Land on the other side of the case, as an enforcer for a loan shark. Robert Crais gave Elvis Cole a wisecracking voice and gave Joe Pike sunglasses and silence. Walter Mosley gave Easy Rawlins an old friend from Houston who will kill without blinking and grin while he does it.

The partner lets the hero keep his hands mostly clean. That’s the convenience. The interesting part is the price. Is the hero really clean if he keeps calling the guy who isn’t?

The takeaway: make your hero pay a moral price for the partner. That tension is what turns a bodyguard into a relationship.

5. The Badge and the Civilian

Castle and Beckett. Shawn Spencer and Detective Lassiter on Psych. Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw.

One partner has the authority. The other has a skill the system doesn’t. M.W. Craven pairs Poe, a bruising detective sergeant with the National Crime Agency, with Tilly, a sheltered civilian analyst who is brilliant with data and hopeless with people. He’s the access. She’s the insight. Neither one solves the case alone.

The takeaway: the civilian has to be useful, not lucky seeing what the cop can’t.

Which One Are You Writing?

Look at your detective and whoever is riding shotgun.

Who put them together, the department or the two of them? And what kind of partnership is it? Chronicler, mentor, mirror, muscle, or civilian?

Once you know where the glue comes from, you know your story question. Once you know the shape, you know what each one brings to the case.

Next time, we’ll look at what happens when the case closes and the partnership doesn’t, how detective partners carry a series, and ten ways to write a partnership readers will follow for sixty books.

TKZers, who’s your favorite detective duo? Are they assigned or chosen? And which of the five types would you put them in?

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Reader Friday-On Talking Lions and Beavers

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I ran across this some time ago and loved it–and thought it was worth sharing. I’ve taken pains to reproduce it here, word for word, as I found it.

***

(Letter From CS Lewis) To A SCHOOLGIRL IN AMERICA, who had written (at her teacher’s suggestion) to request advice on writing.

14 December 1959

It is very hard to give any general advice about writing. Here’s my attempt.

  • Turn off the radio.
  • Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.
  • Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You shd hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.
  • Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about…)
  • Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he wants to know—the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his.
  • When you give up a bit of work don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
  • Don’t use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.
  • Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.

***

TKZers, what do you think? Does this advice from a master (who convinced several generations that lions and beavers could talk…) still apply today? And which is your favorite?

 

Does Writing Have An Age Limit?

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If there is an age limit, I’m glad no one told Herman Wouk, who wrote his last book at age 100. That said, I attended a conference this weekend where the median age looked to be well past 60. Many participants wondered if they were too old to get published. I don’t know the answer, other than I was past sixty when I got serious about getting a book published.

I worked on the same book for five years before I submitted it to an agent, who took me on. By the last of October, when I was sixty-seven, I had signed a contract with a major publisher in the Christian market, and five days past my 69th birthday, my first book was released. The last time I checked, it had 8,600 4+ starred reviews (out of 5 stars), and I’m working on the edits of book #20. I’m the first to say, “Go for it!”

However…understand that if you want a successful career, there will be sacrifices. Some years I wrote 2 books a year, which is a lot for a slow writer–I can’t turn a 100,000-word book out in six weeks. Some writers can, so I don’t knock it, I’m just not one of them. For me that meant writing 6-8 hours a day, five days a week, sometimes 7 days a week. I’m no spring chicken, so it was hard work.

All writing is hard work. Own it. Know what you’re getting in when you sign that contract, or decide to publish Indy, which is a whole different ballgame from traditional publishing. If you publish Indy, you will be responsible for your deadlines, covers, marketing, and everything in between. It is not for the faint of heart. In reality, writing is not for the faint of heart, either. Like I said, it is hard; otherwise, everyone would be completing a book–a lot of people start writing but never finish.

I can’t tell you if you have what it takes to start a book and finish it–only you know that, but if that’s what you want to do, my advice is to go for it. You won’t know until you try, just make sure you count the cost. The hours sitting in front of a computer, pounding out the scenes in your head, the rejections that are sure to come if you’re submitting to agents or editors, the missed lunches with friends….but the joy of seeing the movie playing in your head appear on the page is amazing.

So, my advice, and this is what I told the attendees of the conference — if you want to write that book, there is nothing stopping you but yourself. TKZers, any additional advice?

 

 

 

Blurbs and Pets Revisited

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Book Blurbs and Pets Revisited

Terry Odell

head shot of black, white, and gray cat lying on its side

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

The cruise portion of our vacation ends today. I’ll be homeward bound soon, but we’re spending a few days in Barcelona first. I mean, we’re here, and not likely to come back.

Since I couldn’t know what kind of access to cyberspace I’d have on the trip, (not to mention my decision that this trip is a vacation), I opted to revisit another post for today. This one from August of 2021.

My previous editor asked if I would read one of her debut author’s upcoming releases and provide a one-or-two-sentence “blurb.” She said it was a romantic suspense, which is a genre I’m familiar with.

Now, I don’t put much stock in author recommendations. I had to grovel for them for that first Blackthorne book, and dreaded doing it. I was an unknown with a couple of books out from a digital-first publisher. (No Amazon yet.) One author acquaintance said, “Sure. Send me three quotes and I’ll cobble something together.” Never even asked to read the book. Another said she read just enough to see that I knew what I was doing.

Nevertheless, I agreed to give the book a try.

I was reading along, my internal editor refusing to shut up, but overall, the writing was clean and easy to read. It was a little slow-moving for my taste, as the suspense element wasn’t brought in until later than I would have expected, but then … about ¾ of the way through the book …

The protagonist, who by now had received threatening emails and phone calls, came home to find a box on her doorstep. Upon opening it, she discovered the mutilated body of a cat. Not just any cat, but a stray she’d semi-adopted.

Mind you, this was not a serial killer, dark mystery/thriller type book. This was, overall, a romance with some suspense elements. And a mutilated cat.

Very early in my writing career (2004 according to my files), I attended my first writer’s conference. At a workshop given by the late Barbara Parker, she said she’d made the unforgivable mistake of having a mutilated cat show up in a box on the doorstep at the protagonist’s house. And, even worse, the protagonist had a young daughter. Parker said readers sent hate mail, and warned that killing a pet was an absolute no-no. Her book was a legal mystery, so her audience wasn’t romance-oriented, yet they still screamed.

I told her my manuscript included a character with 2 cats, and I had poisoned them (you’ll never know the delight you can light up in someone’s eyes until you holler between your office and the Hubster’s and say, “I need a way to kill a cat,” which is an entirely different story that I won’t go into here.)

My plan was to have one survive. The incident would 1) force my character to deal with emotions he’d denied; and 2) provide a critical clue for solving the overall mystery.

She gave me an emphatic “NO.” So, in the final version, both cats survived.

I passed this information on to my editor, who said she was warned against harming children or dogs, but nobody’d ever mentioned cats, and that she would bring it up with the author.

At this point, I asked a couple of my best-selling authors of romance and romantic suspense friends what they thought. I’d been slow in my read, and I knew my editor wanted my quote to appear in the soon-to-be-published book, but I was very uncomfortable putting my name on a book that would likely anger readers.

One said she refuses to blurb books anymore, saying there’s nothing to gain. (She also suggested I have my assistant be the one to tell my editor, but my dog can’t type.) The other author said “never recommend a book that you don’t love madly.” Until the cat incident, the book was good, but I wasn’t madly in love with it.

Ultimately, I told my editor I wasn’t comfortable putting my name on the book, and she said she understood, and another author she’d asked to read it said something similar. In the end, the author deleted that thread.

All right, TKZers. Floor is open for discussion, either on the harming pets topic or book blurbs in general. I know of numerous authors, who when asked, “What do you read?” will say, “About all I get to read these days are books my publisher sends for blurbs.” Are their recommendations enough to sway you to buy books? Or do you think they’re writing what their publishers want to hear? If you were asked to blurb a book, where would you draw the line?

Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Available Now

Beyond the Frame
Beyond the Frame by Terry OdellWhen the camera lies, who do you trust?

When deepfake photos threaten their careers, dog-park friends Evvie and Colton become each other’s only allies. Evvie, who vanished behind her camera years ago to escape a painful past, uncovers humiliating fake images of herself.

Colton, an insurance adjuster with ranch roots, trusts her eye on a suspicious claim. A family emergency pulls them to Wyoming—where Evvie’s own dangerous secret waits.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

Colorful Author Johnny Worthen

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by Debbie Burke

 

Johnny Worthen author photo

Multi-genre author Johnny Worthen is a colorful character, both literally and figuratively. For his talk at the October Colorado Gold conference, he appeared barefoot, wearing a bright tie-dyed t-shirt reminiscent of the psychedelic ’60s. The tie-dye theme repeats on his business card and website, complete with photos and video of him goofing around.

It’s not a stretch to imagine Johnny in school as the class smartass. I’m guessing he drove his teachers crazy yet also earned their grudging respect because of his obvious intelligence and insatiable hunger to learn.

He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah and recalls: “Armed with two humanities degrees, I naturally gravitated to the food service industry.”

Similar ironic humor comes through his entire presentation along with his social media posts.

His website logline states: “I write what I like to read. That guarantees me at least one fan.”

At a later-in-life crossroads, he chucked his previous careers and experience to take up writing professionally. His work spans multiple genres: sci-fi, YA, humor, horror, mystery, and upmarket fiction. His appetite for continuous learning also led him back to his alma mater where he now teaches creative writing, sparking similar desires in his students.

Johnny’s opinions are as vivid as his tie-dyed wardrobe yet also down to earth and well-grounded in classical literature.

To open his talk, he immediately punctured glamorous illusions about writing: “Writing is not a profession. It’s a trade.” A trade, he says, that one learns by doing, not studying.

The topic of his presentation was subtext, exploring the meaning that lies beneath the surface of what’s being said on the page.

He cites surprising statistics: only seven percent of communication is verbal; 38% is tone of voice; 55% is body language, adding up to 93%. The overwhelming weight of communication is non-verbal.

His teaching style demonstrates those statistics. He asks a question. Next, he darts to and fro around the room, scanning for people who raise their hands. Then he stops in front of a person, pins them with an intense gaze, and gestures for them to answer. When they respond, he rewards them with a fist-bump or other non-verbal encouragement.

He likens subtext to Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” about dialogue. It’s the “theory of omission,” where implied elements and negative space convey the meaning of a story more effectively than words on the page.

The example he cited was the short story, “Hills Like White Elephants,” where a couple talks about a number of subjects while avoiding the most critical topic: the abortion they’re considering. The words pregnancy and abortion are never spoken out loud, but they permeate every sentence.

Johnny believes reading has never been a passive endeavor. A book requires interaction: writers create scenes that readers in turn visualize. Those scenes come to life in the reader’s own imagination.

He contrasts that experience with videos that require no interaction. A movie or TV show can play in the background whether or not anyone is watching.

Subtext can be direct or indirect, shown with irony and contrast. He refers to The Godfather as a classic example. During the baptism ceremony, while Michael Corleone vows to renounce Satan and all his works, at the same moment, jump cuts show Michael’s henchmen carrying out his orders to exterminate his gang rivals.

In the mystery genre, subtext contains clues and pieces that will ultimately solve the crime. Part of the reader’s enjoyment of mysteries is trying to fit the disparate pieces of the puzzle together. When they figure out the puzzle, they feel smart. When they don’t figure out the solution, they admire the author’s skill at misdirecting them. Either way, they’re satisfied.

Johnny laments that today’s readers often want to be spoon-fed. He’s annoyed that they don’t want to do any work to understand the meaning of a story. They want to be TOLD what’s going on, rather than figure it out for themselves based on what the author SHOWS.

He attributes much of that lack of attention to “second screen viewing.” People are often watching a film or TV show at the same time they’re scrolling on their phones. Because they’re distracted by the second screen, they need to be constantly reminded what’s going on in the film.

Johnny believes humans are “meaning-making machines.” Asking the question why is uniquely human. Animals simply accept circumstances and find ways to survive them. In contrast, humans are driven to ask why circumstances happened. Why did someone behave that way? What is the meaning behind actions and events? Why does one exist in this universe? What is the meaning and purpose of one’s life?

Early in his life, Johnny recognized words not only led him to answers but also more questions in a never-ending chain reaction. Curiosity leads to learning that leads to answers that lead to new questions.

Today, he asks those questions of others, guiding them to find their own answers in their own words.

At the bottom of Johnny’s website, he poses one last burning question:

“Why Tie-Dye? I was told at my first Grateful Dead show that you wear tie-dye not for yourself but for your friends. You’re welcome.”

Thanks, Johnny, for asking questions that caused me to ask more questions!

***

Learn more about Johnny Worthen, his books, appearances, teaching, and his tie-dyed wardrobe at his website.

***

TKZers, do you include subtext in your stories? How do you handle the deeper meaning behind the written word?

***

Learn how to master subtext for villains and antagonists in Debbie Burke’s award-winning book:

The Villain’s Journey-How to Create Villain’s Readers Love to Hate.

 

Can Giving Books Away Pay Off?

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“No one has ever become poor by giving.” —Anne Frank

* * *

I occasionally give books to friends or acquaintances or as a prize for some contest or other, but I had always said I wouldn’t set my books to free on any of the retail sites. After all, I work hard to create a compelling story. I thought setting a book’s price to zero would lower its esteem in the eyes of readers.

But I hadn’t done any promotions for a while, and sales of my books had been slow, so I began rethinking the strategy of selling a book for nothing.

Understanding the Strategy

I found a post by Jane Friedman entitled “The Strategic Use of Book Giveaways and How They Can Increase Earnings Potential.” Even though the article was originally posted in 2015, it had been updated in 2025, so I took a look.

Jane references the A-I-D-A classic sales strategy when considering a give-away:

“First, get people’s attention—whether through an ad, a freebie, traditional media coverage, whatever. That creates interest. And if all goes well, you have desire and action to make a purchase later.”

She goes on to look at how you get that attention.

“The giveaway is one of the more powerful tools in the new author’s arsenal because it’s a way to get attention when you may not have anything else going for you.”

And even established authors may want to consider a freebie:

“But should established authors do giveaways? The “permafree” strategy is well-documented as an effective marketing tool—which means you make the first book in a series permanently available for free, as a gateway drug to the rest of your work.”

Making the Decision

I’m not yet convinced about setting one of my books to permafree, but the idea of attracting more readers by setting the price of the first book in my Watch Mystery series to zero was getting more appealing.

To add to my decision-making, I discovered that BookBub recently began a new type of promotion called “Free Reads,” and those promos are priced lower than their “Featured Deals” promos. That got me thinking maybe it was time to give it a try, so I submitted The Watch on the Fencepost, the first book in my Watch Mystery series, for a Free Reads deal, and BookBub selected it.

Preparing for the Promo

My books are available “wide”, on a range of retailers including Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play as well as Amazon. The first step was to set the price to zero on all platforms, but that presented a problem. Amazon’s KDP doesn’t allow you to list a book for 0.00, so how was I supposed to change it to be free? The solution is to set the price on all the other sites to 0.00, then contact KDP and request a price match for the Kindle book on Amazon. Amazon will comply, but it may take several days.

The Results

The Free Reads promo for The Watch on the Fencepost went out on October 12, and it resulted in close to 5,000 downloads on that day on Amazon alone. And I sold a few of my other titles at full price.

As the week went on, I glanced at the Amazon book detail page and found The Watch on the Fencepost ranked #1 in Christian Suspense, #2 in Cozy Mysteries, and #10 in all free books on Amazon. And the other book sales were mounting up.

I had intended to end the freebie after a week, but I was still getting a lot of downloads, so I decided to let it go for a while longer. Although I don’t have all the data from the other sites, it appears as of today a total of more than 10,000 downloads of the book will have been completed over all five book retailers. Since I’m still getting a lot of downloads and selling other books in the process, I’m going to wait a while longer before changing the price back.

* * *

Was it worth it?

Yes. For my goals and the price I paid for the promotion, it was well worth it. Several things stand out to me:

  • Discoverability: A lot more readers know my work and my name.
  • Ratings and reviews: The Watch on the Fencepost has received more than one hundred additional ratings and reviews on Amazon since the Free Deals ad. Clearly, people are not just downloading, but many are reading and rating the book. Positive ratings and reviews plus sales volume impact Amazon’s recommendation and search algorithms
  • The sale of the other books in the series implies folks like the first one. Although I haven’t added up all the royalties yet, it appears that the income from book sales may pay for the promo.

Is this strategy for everyone?

With all the positives I mentioned above, here’s a word of caution from Jane Friedman:

“Where I think indie authors run into trouble is when they only have 1 or 2 books to sell, and they have nothing else to offer readers …  So there is no funnel or path for readers to follow. It is a dead-end road. The potential fan finishes the book, and then … you lose them. Maybe they’ll find your next book, if and when it comes, maybe not.”

Like everything else in life, making this decision depends on multiple criteria. Each of us has to weigh our writing goals against the cost and anticipated rewards from offering a freebie.

* * *

So TKZers: Have you ever offered one of your books for free? What was your experience? Do you have plans for doing a freebie in the future?

* * *

 

Why would someone leave an expensive watch on a fencepost? Grab your FREE copy of The Watch on the Fencepost and find out. Click the image to go to the Amazon book detail page.

Enjoy!

Act First, Explain Later

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by James Scott Bell

Greetings, thrill seekers. We have another first page for critique. Give it a read and join me on the other side.

Title: PROTECTED PERSONS. Genre: Thriller.

PART ONE — NATURAL CAUSES

Prologue

Davos, Switzerland. 11:40. Pulse 61.

The Prime Minister of Canada has nine minutes to live, and he is going to spend one of them on a joke.

His name is Marc Delorme. I watch him on a television with the sound off, in a cheap hotel room across town from the World Economic Forum. It is late January. The clock in the corner of the screen says twenty to twelve.

I know when he will die because I chose the minute: eleven forty-nine, in the main hall, four minutes before the end of his speech.

The voice in my head does not choose the names, or the minute. I do. It came to me in a hospital, in a white room, after a bomb, when I could not move my hands or remember my own name. It still comes with a hum behind my left ear, low and steady, like a fridge in an empty flat. It never tells me who. Mostly it says the same few sentences it has always said, in the even voice of someone reading out a rule.

Those who stand in the way must be removed.

It must look like nature.

What they meant to say must not be heard.

The rest is my work. The newspapers tell me who stands in the way, and they are very helpful about it. They print it every week, with photographs: a face at a lectern, announcing that his country will build a network of its own and need nobody else’s. In the way of what, the voice has never said. I was a soldier for a long time, and a soldier with clear orders sleeps well.

***

JSB: We have here a promising opening salvo for an international thriller. It has a Day of the Jackal type feel. The First Person Present POV, if it holds for the entire book (I’m guessing it does not) presents some challenges (which are beyond the scope of this post). For one thing, it prevents cross-cutting to other POVs for suspense purposes. Well, not always. You can certainly mix POVs, using First Person for one character, and Third Person for others. James Patterson has done this, and he’s sold a few books.

But today we’re looking at this first page and our question is: would I want to read on?

With some tweaks, my answer is yes. So let’s tweak.

We’ve talked about prologues several times here at TKZ. See here, here, and here.

Critique group chatter often holds that editors and agents don’t like prologues, so never use them. Tush. A prologue can make a great hook if it is a scene that works well on its own.

In the past I’ve counseled writers not to use the label Prologue. Just give us the scene with no heading, then do Chapter 1 next (as in Harlan Coben’s Tell No One). I read a thriller that started with 0 (a prologue scene), then came 1, 2, 3 etc.

Your book has Parts, so that’s necessary to label. My advice is to ditch the word Prologue.

That leaves you with the place/time stamp. That’s fine. I was thrown by Pulse 61 at first, then figured it’s the narrator describing his own. This seems needlessly confusing. If the guy is tracking his own pulse, let him tell us in the narrative. Maybe this is to be a recurring stamp. If so, I’d get tired of it.

The Prime Minister of Canada has nine minutes to live, and he is going to spend one of them on a joke.

I’d cut the last part. The Prime Minister of Canada has nine minutes to live. Boom. Let it stand alone. The part about the joke dilutes the impact.

His name is Marc Delorme. I watch him on a television with the sound off, in a cheap hotel room across town from the World Economic Forum. It is late January. The clock in the corner of the screen says twenty to twelve.

Good. You’ve given us the essential setting for the narrator, and main event, the World Economic Forum.

I know when he will die because I chose the minute: eleven forty-nine, in the main hall, four minutes before the end of his speech.

I’m interested. How has the narrator chosen the time, and how will he pull it off?

The voice in my head does not choose the names, or the minute. I do. It came to me in a hospital, in a white room, after a bomb, when I could not move my hands or remember my own name.

Good, marbled-in backstory. Some teachers say “No backstory in the opening!” I don’t subscribe to that. But I do counsel using it sparingly in the first few pages so it does not slow down the action. Here we have a guy who survived a bomb and gets a voice in his head. Voice? What’s that about? At this point it is a mystery, and that’s how I’d leave it for the moment. Unanswered questions are a great way to make a reader turn the page. You can reveal more about the voice later.

Give us some action now. You can save the rest of this page for later. But let’s have a look anyway:

It still comes with a hum behind my left ear, low and steady, like a fridge in an empty flat. It never tells me who. Mostly it says the same few sentences it has always said, in the even voice of someone reading out a rule.

Those who stand in the way must be removed.

It must look like nature.

What they meant to say must not be heard.

I like a fridge in an empty flat. That’s a great way to describe this mysterious voice.

For the three lines of the voice, I’d go ahead and use italics. Italics can be helpful, IMO, unless they come in big blocks. Yours do not. Italics would help readers “hear” the voice.

The rest is my work. The newspapers tell me who stands in the way, and they are very helpful about it. They print it every week, with photographs: a face at a lectern, announcing that his country will build a network of its own and need nobody else’s. In the way of what, the voice has never said. I was a soldier for a long time, and a soldier with clear orders sleeps well.

This paragraph is all exposition, and we don’t need it yet. My axiom is: Act first, explain later. What this first page needs is a character in motion, not in explanation.

All that said, I am intrigued. We have an impending assassination on a world stage, and a guy who hears a voice, and who is somehow going to make this happen. I would turn this page.

How about you, TKZers?

That Time I Worked At A Haunted Library

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Happy Halloween! Tonight is the culmination of the “Spooky Season,” when the eerie, the suspenseful, and the down right horrific hold court in many imaginations. There’s a chill in the air here now, does it portend something more? Halloween and ghosts go together, which reminds me of the time I once worked at a supposedly haunted library.

Back in the early 2000s I worked at the North Portland branch library, while my “home” branch was getting a brand-new building. North Portland was a lovely old Carnegie endowment building built in 1913, in the Jacobethan style with a peaked roof, lots of dark walnut, especially the arched and planked wooden ceiling.

I arrived at the beginning of December 2001, to help staff the reference desk, and also teach computer classes and give “pop-up” story times for kids in the main room. It was lively library, with a high school next door, and a diverse community that needed and loved their branch. “Never a dull moment” described North Portland library to a tee.

I had no idea that the branch was supposedly haunted.

The upstairs level, where the manager and youth librarian offices and the meeting room were, seemed to be the places mostly likely to have spectral apparitions, especially at night when the lights were out in the offices and after the computer lab in the meeting room had closed. Usually the apparitions were “just” noises, but sometimes people claimed they felt the touch of something invisible, or had a sensation of someone close by, only to discover there was no one else there.

The weirdest part was where the ghostly epicenter of the haunting was located: in of all places, the upstairs restroom. A wall-mounted hot air hand dryer would suddenly turn on when no one was in the restroom. The sound of the dryer’s blower echoing down the dark walnut staircase and into the main room of the library sent a chill up my spine the first time or two I heard it, but the veteran staff were used to it and just shrugged at the noise.

The unit was serviced numerous times, but it still activated when no one was in the rest room. A couple of times it was dismounted and sent to the repair shop. Each time it was tested and then returned and remounted.

It continued to turn on at odd times, often at night. Chances are it was just hard-to-fix faulty wiring, or a perhaps the dryer’s push button simply received too much wear and tear too fast and triggered on its own. Perhaps it was simply air pressure from the door being closed after someone had left the room.

Or was it the Little Chapel of the Chimes funeral home just across the street from the branch? Some people claimed it was a restless spirit or two coming over for some spectral shenanigans.

The funeral home has since closed and is now a pub. Last I’d heard, it wasn’t haunted. I haven’t heard anything recently about apparitions at the library either.

Perhaps a festive public house, with good cheer did the trick. Or perhaps there never were ghosts or a haunting. Either way, it’s a fun story and a fun place to have worked at.

Have you ever encountered a location said to be haunted? If so, please tell us in comments.

(A slightly different version of this story appeared previously in my author newsletter.)

Dumb Criminals On Halloween

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Since Saturday is Halloween, I thought I’d post a few crimes involving dumb criminals celebrating the holiday, whether it’s Halloween or not. Here’s the first one:

One clown shy of a full load.

AI generated

On July 20, 2019, motorists in Westminster, California, a black BMW drove north along the fast lane of the 405 freeway at a mere 2 to 3 miles per hour. On the roof of the car was a clown. More specifically, a man in a clown mask and a green wig, sat on top of the car. Police soon came to pull the luxury clown car over, but that’s when the clown decided to speed up. He fled up 405 at around 70 miles per hour, pursued by California Highway Patrol officers. The clown drove onto the 90 freeway before deciding to make for Venice Beach. At one point during this part of the chase, he climbed back onto the roof of the BMW and “began gesturing” at the police officers chasing him. Finally, the car stopped on the Ocean Front Walk, and the clown fled the vehicle, heading onto the beach. There, he interacted with unaware beachgoers, even stopping to help bury someone in the sand. After that, he took off his shirt and headed into the water. It was at this point that the police caught up with the clown and arrested him.  A woman who was also in the BMW was questioned but ultimately released, and the chainsaw turned out to be a toy. The man’s motive for the bizarre incident was unclear. His bail was set at $75,000 while he awaited a court date.

What is it with clowns dressing like it was Halloween?

On the evening of February 6, 2016, a Jefferson County, Alabama, deputy was flagged down by a passing motorist. The concerned citizen had just witnessed a red Ford SUV lurching and weaving all over the road. The deputy soon caught up with the loopy Ford and pulled it over. At the wheel, he found a tipsy clown.

The driver was clearly quite drunk. He claimed that he’d only had a few drinks at a nearby restaurant. It remains uncertain what his definition of “a few” was. The drunk driver provided no explanation for why he was dressed as a clown.

He was arrested, and it turned out that he also had an outstanding felony warrant for theft. Despite his troubles, when he was photographed for his mugshot, he smiled for the camera. The chief deputy just shook his head and said, “I thought I had everything, but obviously I haven’t seen it all.

No clown here, just a unicorn

created with AI

March 16, 2019, a young man set out to rob a convenience store in Baldwin, Maryland, a small community not far from Baltimore. He presumably knew surveillance cameras would capture the incident, so he needed a disguise. He chose a pink and white unicorn costume.

At 5:00 AM, he walked into High’s Dairy Store, dressed in costume and brandishing a crowbar. He used the crowbar to smash a register before leaving with cash and cigarettes. After obtaining the loot, Rogge ditched the unicorn costume and got into a silver Hyundai Elantra driven by his accomplice. The car fled the area.

This daring escape was not to last, however. The two men hadn’t gone far before the driver crossed into oncoming traffic at an intersection. As a result, the car managed to make contact with mailboxes, a Baltimore Gas and Electric pole, shrubs, and a boulder before finally hitting a tree.

The two men were taken to nearby hospitals and upon release, both men were charged with theft, robbery, and armed robbery, destruction of property and first- and second-degree assault. Baltimore County police were able to recover the unicorn suit.

So there you have it, TKZer…dumb criminals, dumb crimes, and they don’t wait until Halloween to show out. Readers, what’s a dumb crime you’ve read about? Or, dare I ask — what was the craziest thing you did on Halloween?