I am a Working Writer

I am a working writer. I didn't used to be. When I started out--well, before that; when I was still trying to be published--I wasn't able to write to market. Chris Fox, who coined the term, meant by it analyzing the market, and using that information to write books that readers want to read. For example, if I wanted to write a paranormal romance, I would go to Amazon, buy the top three books in that particular category, then take that information and use it to write a paranormal romance that would as it were tick all the boxes in that genre, thus making the book more likely to sell.

Effective? Apparently so. Cynical? Yes. But--if you want to sell your work, what better way than to figure out how what is selling sells, then come as close as you can to the tropes.

I can't personally speak to the efficaciousness of this method, but I do know that when I got interested in cozy mysteries a few months ago, I purchased a book recommended to me by one of my ghostwriting clients, Writing the Cozy Mystery by Nancy J. Cohen. It's a relatively short paperback of 124 pages, full of information Cohen gives about how to research cozies and write them. I've read it a couple of times and I mean to read it at least another couple of times.

I had ghostwritten works of science fiction and fantasy, but had done no mysteries of any type. Nevertheless, my track record and my references are pretty damn good, so when I saw someone on UpWork.com advertising for ghostwriters to write cozy mysteries, I applied. I got the gig, and then at the same time I scored another gig for the same thing. As a result, I wrote two cozies at the same time.

This was something I would not have been able to do when I began publishing. Back then, in the 1970s, I was basically able to write only my own stuff. I did not know how to outline, and I disdained the idea of doing"work for hire" or of using someone else's characters. When I sold my first stories I was unmarried, living in New Haven, CT, and working in a bookstore. I had yet to write a novel.

There were other writers living in New Haven, published and unpublished. Through workshops with these folks I slowly began learning how to write more effectively--smarter, if you will. I began to sell more things. I wrote my first three of novels, one of which, Detonator, was later published by Clocktower Books.* Before that happened, I sold my first book of any kind, a children's picture book, to William Morrow, in 1992.**

Gradually I shed my rather self-defeating attitude about work-for-hire, and began expanding my range out of science fiction into mainstream fiction, fantasy, horror, historical fiction, and mysteries.

Much of what I have learned about writing has come through my association with other talented writers I first met in New Haven: Mark. J. McGarry, John T. Cullen, the late Deborah Atherton, the late Kevin O'Donnell, Jr., and others. Working and collaborating with these folks taught me a great deal. In fact, I think my first real effort at "writing to market" came through my friendship with Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. He was a prolific and successful writer within the science fiction genre, having made sales to Analog and other magazines, as well as a number of novels.

Kevin was a cheerful and very intelligent man. We became good friends, and later we collaborated on several stories. For one of them, Oft in Offwana, we decided before we wrote it to analyze the type of people who liked and read science fiction and the places they lived. We determined that most were city dwellers, male, and more likely to read short, fast-loving stories. The optimum salable length, that is, the length that was most likely to sell and brought the most return, was about 7000 words. Oft in Offwana, then, was set in a city, was fast-paced story with a male lead, and clocked in at about 7000 words.

Bingo, it sold.

I'm under no illusions that it wasn't because my name was on it; clearly Kevin, a well-known writer active in the genre, had some selling power attached to his name. But that was fine by me. We sold two or three so-authored works. Later, Mark J. McGarry and I duplicated the feat, selling a handful of stories to Amazing. 

But those collaborations also helped me get published solo.

At the same time, in the early to mid 70s, I was also improving as a musician and as an artist, and was finding success in those fields. I was drumming for bands at Yale (I was not a student there, but I knew many), and was getting an occasional gig doing posters and magazine illustrations. It was a period of expansion, learning, and somewhat sybaritic if not decadent behavior.

I was having a great time!

It was about to get even more interesting.

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This is an example of the sort of artwork I was doing at the time. I saw one of these Assyrian tomb guardians at the Yale Art Museum and later drew it from sketches I made onsite, but this is a different one.

* An updated edition of Detonator will be published sometime later this year from Clocktower.

** The book, Dinosaur Dress Up, is currently OP, but I have got the rights back from Morrow and intend to publish a new edition at some point in the future.