San Francisco....for fiction's sake

I'm particularly happy to have a new e-book, The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About San Francisco available at
author Holly Lisle's site
in her "Holly Shop, where the Writing Geeks Shop" (gotta love the slogan). Holly believes in paying it forward with her lessons for writers and I'm proud to have two e-books now as part of her "Worst Mistakes Writers Make..." series.

I wanted to write about San Francisco because I've lived here since 1968. I've used the backdrop myself and had reviewers comment that the city seemed like a character in the book. Like many local residents and visitors, I enjoy reading books set in the city, except when writers fail to check the basic details, that drives us crazy--well, crazier. In The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About San Francisco I provide some essential details to help keep writers from making outsider mistakes.

For example, you'll want to know how the physical layout of streets and hills shape life in the city and even influence the weather and the social climate. I hope this book can help writers both to avoid mistakes and also to pick up some of the "only in San Francisco" flavor of the place. There are lots of useful links to changeable things such as bridges and traffic. Anyone who's lived in this crazy city for awhile will understand why I couldn't resist throwing in some other fun stuff, such as who calls it "Frisco", who never will, and how that one little word can get you arrested.

You can also still get my first "Worst Mistakes" e-book, The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Courtroom Law.
In that e-book, I tried to cram 35 years of experience working in law offices, transcribing police interrogations, watching the legal system in action, while taking note in my spare moments of twists in the law that I could use to lend reality to plotting mystery novels.

For writers, from a writer...ignorance of the law is no excuse

Where to get a copy

This is pretty exciting for me, so I have to share it. Holly Lisle invited writers to come up with the 33 things that we know about from real life and get exasperated to see other writers getting wrong. I picked courtroom law, because I worked for lawyers for three decades, and it's amazing how many people get their knowledge of the law from novels, TV, and movies.

I have transcribed A LOT of police interrogations and you would be surprised to find out how detectives really use the Miranda warning about incriminating oneself. Almost as important is when they don't use it and the surprising ways that suspects respond when they hear, "You have the right to remain silent..."

Some other areas I have found where writers get into "legal" trouble:

● What is the one basic rule of questioning that all trial lawyers learn?
● Can lawyers who are married to each other represent opposing sides in a lawsuit?
● A wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband--except in these circumstances....

What about a defense lawyer who wants to switch sides? What would happen if a lawyer found such horrifying information that he decided to quit in the middle of a trial--what can he do and what would he never do?

As a writer I believe that getting the small details can give a story an air of truth, while getting them wrong can irritate the reader and throw a monkey wrench into the finely tuned workings of the most beautifully constructed plot.

Fiction writers don't live by crime alone. Even in stories with no murder or criminal element, the law can loom large. Characters filing lawsuits to haul each other into court can spark major plot conflict, but in order to make a situation believable to readers it's important to know the differences between civil and criminal law.

Okay, so much for my obsession with getting back into print. I've got into e-print...tomorrow, well...

"Tomorrow is another day." Thank you Scarlett, I knew that 12-step group for "Southern Belles with Commitment Issues" would help.

I think to jump from writers' mistakes about the law directly to my obsession with the PBS Jane Austen dramatizations is a subject change that might cause a bad case of whiplash, so I'll leave that subject for next time.

The mysteries of writing... know some, glad to learn more

Sometime, not tonight, I want to talk about ebooks and how differently people treat them from paper books--when they treat them at all. Okay, reporting back, I read Holly Lisle’s 21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing, which had some practical strategies that were well worth the $9.95 price of admission for an ebook. I was even happier to get the bonus ebook she threw in Mugging the Muse, Writing Fiction for Love and Money, which contained over 200 pages of extremely useful information about the highly dysfunctional publishing industry. There are things there I haven’t seen elsewhere. These are also available as POD (Publish on Demand) editions for those who are interested, but who need the paperback book in hand.

January 13 to 26, 1978 I read:

Shadow Box, George Plimpton
Note: The man sure can write, what a pleasure

All My Sins Remembered, Haldeman
Note: there is no way to keep the characters straight in this book

Blue Skies, No Candy, Gael Greene
My note on this contained four four-letter words — I’m not going to quote it beyond the mildest part. The gist of my conclusion was that in this book, the character did not grow and the work was not profound, my mildest pronouncement was: "cock-deep ain’t too deep.”

Homer’s Daughter, Robert Graves
Note: Wow. I thought Graves was an MCP a la D.H. Lawrence, but this book shows him to be much wiser than I could have imagined. Entertaining too.


Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, 4th Series, George Plimpton, Ed.
I adored the way they showed a reproduction of an actual edited page by each author interviewed. I'm still a bit of a sucker for "how do they do it?"

Growing (Up) at 37, Jerry Rubin
Note: Honest, but sappy

Wife to Mrs. Milton, Robert Graves

I went on a Robert Graves and George Plimpton kick in January ‘78. On the facing page I listed 10 historical and one contemporary Robert Graves book (from Hercules, My Shipmate to Watch the North Wind Rise) and the contents of George Plimpton’s Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews e.g. 1st Series, Ed with intro by Malcolm Cowley, E.M. Foster, etc. to 4th Series, Ed. By George Plimpton, Intro by Wilfred Sheed, Isak Dineson, etc.

I’m not going to inflict copying this list on my hands or this blog.

January 13 to 26, 2008 I read:

21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing When Your Life Just Exploded, Holly Lisle
Mugging the Muse, Writing Fiction for Love and Money, Holly Lisle

Singer from the Sea, Sheri S. Tepper
Locus Interview

Researching Holly Lisle books on writing...more to come

Holly Lisle's fiction spoke to me so much that I was interested to see her books on writing and I am now checking them out.



Picking up my fluttering manuscript pages from the slow-motion train wreck of my last year...more to come -- oops! Clicking on the cover takes you to a more expensive option, the singular ebook I'm looking at can be reached through this link
21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing

I’m liking this year better already!

This past week I read Holly Lisle’s Tayln, which took me just where I needed to go—away, but with fascinating characters in a believable “other” world. It was good enough that I was up till 1:00 a.m. to read the end. I also discovered Holly Lisle's web page with some great stuff for readers and writers!

Then there's heaven on earth starting today for lovers of the works of Jane Austen. PBS is presenting dramatizations of all the Jane Austen novels, beginning tonight, January 13th, with the last, though certainly not the least heartfelt, Persuasion.

The URL above also offers is a great interview with the legendary Andrew Davies, whose 1996 dramatization of Pride and Prejudice is still the gold standard for Austen (and which PBS will air Feb 10, 17 and 24th).

I had to laugh at PBS's Online Dating Profiles for the men of Jane Austen’s books!

January 6 to 12, 1978 I read:

Working, I do It for the Money, Bill Owens, author of Suburbia.
Note from 1978: Actually a photo collection, (Suburbia was also an interesting book—I read it in a bookstore in SF)
Note 2008—what? It’s a photo book I looked at all the pictures, standing up in a bookstore. It’s not like I could have afforded to buy the book, good as it was.

The Far Side of Madness, Perry
Note from 1978: Didn’t finish

Close to Colette, Maurice Goudeket

The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank, Erma Bombeck

Healing Benefits of Acupressure, Acupuncture without Needles, F. M. Houston
1978 note: Quite useful, Keats Publishing, Inc., must get several copies

January 6 to January 12, 2008 I read:

Tayln, Holly Lisle