Phyllis A. Whitney RIP

I just discovered that writer Phyllis A. Whitney died in February of this year.  If you haven’t heard of her, she wrote Gothic mysteries for adults and young adults for many years.  Most are out of print now. but some will still be at your local library. 

She received a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Check out her Web site for a complete listing of all her books and the story about her life.

An Editor’s Pet Peeves

A mystery genre editor talks about some of his pet peeves in The Cardinal Sins.  Though it is mystery, and I’m doing urban fantasy, I can still get a lot of useful information.  Pet peeve #2 covers description:

For me, paragraphs of descriptive detail are (or should be) the realm of literary fiction.  Perhaps I don’t have much imagination for this sort of thing, but lengthy descriptions always slow things down for me, often to a crawl.  I enjoy a manuscript where people, landscapes, settings, furnishings, etc., are described with broad and effective brushstrokes, with the detail coming in only when necessary.  Actually, I think it’s quite important that a mystery novelist know when a high level of description is helpful/necessary, and when it isn’t.  It’s usually necessary when writing about elements that are key to the mystery: the intricate details of that painting that’s been stolen from the museum, the details of that Moroccan carving knife found in the victim’s back, the layout of the room where the killing took place.  It isn’t necessary, usually, to go into lavish detail about every square inch of the characters’ physical appearance, or the color of the curtains, or the breathtaking view across the lake.  (Something about lake views sends writers into paroxysms of description.  I love a lake, but really–if you’ve seen one lake, haven’t you seen them all?)

I’ve been down to the National Art Galley in DC.  They have the old masters there, like Renoir’s Little Girl with a Watering Can, plus many, many wonderful portraits, still lifes, and scenes.  None of them look like “Where’s Waldo?”  Most of them are relatively simple, with what’s important the focal point and carefully chosen details that further the image.

Too much detail clutters description; just the right amount presents the perfect picture.

Why Urban Fantasy?

I’m currently working on an urban fantasy, with two other urban fantasies and a paranormal in the works.  But why did I choose urban fantasy?

I actually have had a hard time in the past figuring out exactly where my writing fit.   I spent years on a first novel, not really understanding what it was.  From research, it appeared to be a mystery, but it wasn’t a “whodunit.”  I’d look at the books in the mystery section of the bookstore and then look at the writing books and think, “But this isn’t like my book.”

It was a thriller, a genre which has only recently gotten more attention because of the efforts of International Thriller Writers.  I liked thriller because I liked action novels, particularly adventures and treasure hunts.   Not PG-13 action with violence, but just fun action.

I joined with a co-writer on my last project, and we wrote an action-adventure thriller.  But the market changed.  The books coming out were mainly crime novels, often very violent.  Every other book I read had someone’s eye being gouged out.  And in the books where that didn’t happen, a character’s finger got chopped off.

I didn’t want to go in that direction.

So when co-writer and I broke up, I had to rethink what I wanted to write.  The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing by agent Evan Marshall had a chapter on my situtation.

I started with the genres/categories I often read and made a list of the pros and cons of each one.  From that list, I started thinking about urban fantasy.  One of the big pros was that I could have some fun with magic, but I didn’t necessarily have to build an entire world around it.  I could use modern things like limousines, paparrazzi, celebrities, movies, and technology.

But when urban fantasy had come up before, I’d stayed away from it.  The majority of the books are about vampires and werewolves, and while I like reading good stories, I’m not drawn to writing about vampires and werewolves.

Then I thought: Why do I need to write about vampires or werewolves?  And I realized I’d had the idea for the story for some time.  So I’m taking what I was doing in thriller–treasure hunts and action-adventure–and putting it into an urban fantasy.