More about The Worried Man (Q.C. Davis 1):

Listen to a sample now.

The post Release Day: Audiobook Edition of The Worried Man appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

As in my first novel didn’t exactly have one, probably why it got nothing but form letter rejections. I’d taken writing classes, but those classes almost exclusively focused on whether a scene worked or not. The advice on plot was basically to string the scenes together.

That might work for some writers, but it didn’t for me.

It’s also not the kind of book I like to read. I prefer genre fiction–mainly suspense, thriller, horror, and mystery. Those types of books rise and fall on how much the reader is invested in the characters and on whether the plot keeps the reader turning pages and reaches a satisfying resolution.

Learning To Plot From Stephen King

I learned to plot by hanging out with a screenwriter and reading all the writing books he read, by writing two more novels that didn’t work, and by dissecting novels I loved.

Those novels included Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, my favorite of all his books. Interestingly, I heard him say later that it was the only book of his that he outlined in advance. So there you go–as a reader, I love a well-structured plot.

Between Plotting And Pantsing

The plotting method I’ve found works best threads the line between a detailed outline (known as being a “plotter” in the current writing world) and winging it (being a “pantser”).

Before I write anything, I figure out my main characters, their main conflict, and five major plot turns. That gives me a framework for my novel. It helps me write quickly without locking me into a minute-by-minute outline.

Last year I wrote about that method in Super Simple Story Structure: A Quick Guide To Plotting And Writing Your Novel. I made it available in both ebook and workbook editions.

Now for the first time you can buy it (or use an Audible credit to download it) in audiobook format.

If you’ve never listened to an audiobook before, you can download Super Simple Story Structure free as part of a trial membership.

This method is simple, and it can help you get started on a novel or figure out what’s working and not and how to fix it at the rewrite stage.

Let me know how it goes!

The post Plot Or Not: Super Simple Story Structure (new Audiobook edition) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Here are the highlights:

Novels:

• The first two Shaye Archer novels by Jana DeLeon. I love these books! Shaye is a young female private eye who just started her business and who has a very difficult past. Already planning to read the rest. I’m spacing them out so as not to finish too fast.

• John Sandford’s Twisted Prey. This book is the latest Lucas Davenport novel, and it’s my favorite of the last 5 or 6. Lucas is mostly in D.C. and the emphasis is on detecting more than shooting (though there is some of that too). I love all Lucas books, and I flew through this one no matter how slowly I tried to read.

• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Non-fiction, very inspiring and practical. I’ve been listening on Audible, which is wonderful. Getting around now requires crutches or a scooter, and both mean it takes me 2-3 times longer to do everything. (Laundry, that’s a real challenge.)

• I’ll Keep You Safe by Peter May. I’m in the midst of this one now. A grief-stricken Niamh returns to her isolated home on a Scottish island after her husband/business partner is killed in what appears to be a terrorist attack. But she soon suspects his murderer had personal motives and that she, too, may be in danger. Excellent atmosphere and quietly-building suspense.

• Pride and Prejudice, also on Audible. Yes, again!

• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. A literary Dracula novel. Beautifully written and fascinating. Also a relisten for me, mostly when I’m worn out. That way if I fall asleep I don’t have any trouble picking up the thread again.

For shows, I’ve started watching the reboot of Lost In Space. Pretty interesting now that the Robinsons have met some other not-so-reputable humans.

Also I’m rewatching Slings and Arrows, a well-written, funny, and compelling comedy/drama about a Canadian Shakespeare theater.

And, of course, Elementary because Lucy Liu is fantastic as Watson.

(I’m doing some writing, too, working on bonus materials for my Awakening series and on revising the first draft of The Charming Man, Q.C. Davis No. 2.)

Any other suggestions?

The post Books And Shows – What Do You Suggest? appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

I can also be my own worst enemy when it comes to living in my head.

What ifs and worst case scenarios are great for fiction writing. And for foreseeing possible problems when you’re representing a client in a lawsuit. Not so good for mental health.

So here’s what I’ve learned. Or at least am trying to learn.

Worry

In No Girls Here: Naming The Worried Man, I wrote about why I used Girl and not Man when titling my latest novel.

But I didn’t think seriously about why Worry made its way into a title, something that was probably inevitable for one book or another.

My mom was kind of a champion worrier. When my dad unexpectedly needed heart surgery (a problem that fortunately was caught before he had a heart attack) she told me she’d always worried about his back, not his heart, and that was why this had happened.

I thought that was a fluky sort of thinking unique to my mom.

But later I learned it’s pretty common. One self-help book I read on anxiety said something like “Remember, worry has no magic power to stave off bad luck.”

But knowing that your brain is pursuing a path that’s not healthy doesn’t mean it’s easy to stop going down it.

What Ifs

When I first got my cast, it was very tight. It’s supposed to be. As the foot swelling goes down, the cast becomes looser. If it doesn’t start very snug, it’ll get loose too soon and won’t do much good.

All that was explained to me. I still spent the first two nights obsessing over whether I’d wake up with my toes numb. Or my whole leg. And then it would fall off, and I’d probably die, and then….

It’s like a vinyl record album where the needle gets stuck in a groove. (Now that vinyl has made a comeback, I feel safe using that analogy.)

I’d always thought the thing to do was reason myself out of the worry. Yet somehow I always came back to the same scary thought. What I needed to do instead was bounce the needle out of the groove.

I did this at night for the first 2 weeks by relistening to my favorite audiobook edition of my favorite book, Pride and Prejudice read by Shiromi Arserio.

Listening occupied my mind and distracted me from my fears. And I know the story so well that it didn’t keep me from falling asleep when I grew tired.

I hope when I’m recovered and healed, I’ll keep practicing good habits to distract and calm myself.

The Impatient Patient

The doctor warned me this would be a long 6-8 weeks.

Because I broke the bone on which you put most of your weight, I didn’t zip right to a boot and start walking around. I’ve got 2 weeks in this cast (after 5 days in a splint), at least 2 weeks in another cast (which I’ll get Thursday), and then maybe a boot for an unknown amount of time. Then physical therapy.

All the same, I thought I could write as much as I always do, take care of any law projects, and update my bookkeeping while healing.

Uh…no.

I forgot to leave room for being tired. Also for the fact that everyday tasks take two or three times as long on crutches. The same is true with the scooter (shown above).

For the first week, during the 15 minutes every hour that I iced my leg, rather than writing I discovered I needed to rest.

To relax and entertain myself, I finally watched The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The YouTube series adapts Pride and Prejudice to present day. It’s great fun.

Watching that plus listening to the book reminded me what a fantastic storyteller Jane Austen was. Now I’m thinking that among the next 3 writing books I write will be one about what writers can learn about plot, character development, and narrative techniques from P&P.

Perspective

As someone who loves loves loves Chicago but finds the cold, mostly gray months of January through March (and often April) a real challenge, I’m hoping this recovery process will give me perspective next winter.

Here’s what I want to remember:

• Outside air is great for mental health.

As soon as it grew warm enough for me to open the windows, my cast became 5 times more comfortable and my mood 10 times better.

A reminder that if it’s 45 or above next winter, I ought to open at least one window for a while.

• Being able to move and walk freely is a wonderful thing.

My walk to the law school where I teach once a week is a mile.

In the winter and early spring, that often means a walk through icy rain. Or with wind smacking my hair into my face. Or along streets that seem permanently streaked whitish gray with salt.

But walks like that now look like luxuries because walking on crutches with a cast is far more challenging.

Next winter I hope I’ll have good use of my arms and legs. And I hope I’ll appreciate how wonderful that is.

• Many people deal with physical challenges every day.

Assuming I’m fortunate enough to recover as expected and I avoid further injury, dealing with a cast and crutches is temporary. But people with longer term or permanent injuries need to navigate a world filled with barriers all the time.

I hope when I’m recovered I’ll appreciate how much easier it is to get around everyday obstacles. Within a block of my home, those include gravel-strewn roads, broken curbs, and blocked sidewalks.

And I’ll do my best to be more aware when someone else might appreciate some help. Friends and strangers alike have been kind. They’ve opened doors, offered rides, and spotted me in difficult situations. I want to be sure to pay that forward.

Happily, I’m finally a little more on track with my writing.

Between yesterday and today, I wrote most of the last quarter of a very rough draft of The Charming Man. (That’s Book 2 in my new Q.C. Davis mystery series.)

Crossing my fingers the rest of the week goes just as well.

The post Pride, Prejudice, and Patience a/k/a Really, I Still Have This Cast? appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Yet I love the Kindle, too. The ideal vacation for me is a pool, a view of the ocean, and a giant stack of books. (Plus, as you might guess from my photo, a lot of SPF 50 sunscreen.) The Kindle allowed me to not only bring that stack on one small device but to order more with a click. The first time I finished a series and ordered the next, I felt just like a mouse must presented with the lever to get more cheese. Click, click, click.

Enter audiobooks. I bought a Kindle when I decided to publish my thriller The Awakening on it. I felt I ought to know what that reading experience was like. Similarly, a while back, I began hearing more about authors and publishers releasing audiobooks. I was skeptical. My experience was with tapes (yes, I’m old enough for that) and CDs that I bought, aspired to listen to, and never did. I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever buy more than one or two audiobooks. Or listen to podcasts for that matter.

Now I listen to one or the other frequently on my iPhone during the day using the Audible app. (My favorite podcast is Dusted by Storywonk, which analyzes Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes.) When I read, I do so to shut off everything else. But with an audiobook, I listen to accompany other tasks, and compelling books motivate me to continue whatever I’m doing so I can hear more. If I’m listening to a book a I love, my condo is very, very clean, my bills are paid well in advance, and my checkbook is balanced. And I’m in great shape, as treadmills are wonderful for listening.

For both listening and reading, I enjoy thrillers because they pull me right in and keep me engaged. I also like non-fiction on audio, but if the concepts are too complex, that doesn’t work. On paper, I can slow down or reread a paragraph and ponder it. While Audible  allows skipping back 30 seconds at a time, that doesn’t match seeing words on the page or easily flipping through an earlier section.

Given the differences I experienced in reading versus listening, I became curious about how narrating an audiobook differs from other types of performances. So I asked producer/narrator Shiromi Arserio.

Shiromi and I have similar tastes. I wanted to work with her on The Unbelievers, Book 2 in my series, because one of the first audiobooks I ever listened to, a sci fi thriller with a female main character, was one she narrated. I also was very excited that Shiromi has appeared in a few Lost episodes. (Which has nothing to do with producing audiobooks, I just thought it was cool.) And we both love Michael Biehn, the actor who played Kyle Reese in the first Terminator movie. Cyril Woods, the antagonist/almost love interest in The Awakening is modeled a tiny bit after Biehn’s portrayal of Reese, so I knew Shiromi would understand how I saw and heard Cyril.

Her answers to my questions are below. (Notice how I didn’t ask her what things about working with authors drive her crazy or make her want to throw things.)

Are the skills you need for narrating different from those you use when acting?

When you’re acting, even if it’s for a video game, you’re playing one character at a time. In an audiobook you are doing an entire play by yourself. Jumping from male to female characters, changing accents. It’s a lot to keep track of. Also, as a narrator, you have to remember that it’s not about the actor’s performance. You want someone to remember how good the story is, not how memorable the actor was.

When you read a book you’re preparing to narrate, do you hear each character’s voice in your mind? Do you need to think about it for a while?

Some characters pop in my head fully formed. I have a clear idea who the character is and how they should sound. Sometimes I’ll have to go away and think about it. Maybe get the author’s input, if I can. The more well-developed the character is on the page, the easier it is to “hear” the voice. 

How do you handle a character’s interior thoughts? Is it hard to differentiate that from dialogue?

Interior thoughts can be really challenging. For one of my early books I used a slight reverb effect to change the sound of the thoughts, but it’s time consuming and generally ACX (the production platform) doesn’t approve of effects in audiobooks. And most people are listening through tiny headphones while on the way to work or going for a run, and can’t even hear the reverb. So now I just get a little closer to the mic and drop my voice as though I’m talking to myself.

What is your favorite type of book to read? To listen to? Is there a difference between the two when it comes to favorites?

I’m a geek, so I love to read or listen to scifi, horror, fantasy. However, with audiobooks I tend to go for ones that are more involved. There are certain books that I just process easier listening to rather than reading. The A Song of Ice and Fire series is like that for me. I read Game of Thrones, but it was a bit of a slog. The first time I read it, I kept losing my place and not realising I’d jumped ahead. Listening to Roy Dotrice’s narration became a much more enjoyable way to experience Westeros.

Do you have a type of listener or a particular person in mind when you narrate, a sort of ideal audience, the way some authors do when they write? Who is that person?

I don’t necessarily have an ideal listener. To be honest, usually I find myself getting lost in the story. But when I am thinking about the listener and how I’m telling the story, I try to imagine that he or she is sitting right here with me. I’ll glance over to a spot in my booth, like I’m making eye contact, just as I would if I were telling a story in person. 

I enjoyed working with Shiromi throughout the production of The Unbelievers, which was released a few days ago. (You can listen to a sample of Shiromi’s narration of the book here). She currently has a handful of audiobooks in various stages of production, and she also does a lot of video game work. In a game called Infinifactory, where you build “factories that assemble products for your alien overlords, and try not to die in the process,” she plays four different characters.

What about you? What do you do while listening to audiobooks, and what types do you like best? If you’re an author or narrator, what experiences have you had?
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