25 Years Between Thrillers

Twenty-five years is a helluva long time between thrillers. When you’re writing them, that is. Lee Child and I got our start around the same time. His first Jack Reacher thriller was published about 25 years ago. My first thriller, Scandal, was also published 25 years ago.

Lee continued to write, producing approximately a thriller a year. I had a second thriller, Delusion, published the following year — and then, I stopped. Until recently.

Fool Her Once which is due out next Spring 2022 from CamCatBooks is only my third thriller to be published. So, it’ll be 25 years between novels.

Not Even Donna Tartt Takes 25 Years

Which sort of makes me an expert on just how much things have changed for writers/authors in that time. When you’re writing year after year, changes tend to creep up on you. When there’s a gap of 25 years (the date in the photo above is February 10th, 1997) between one published novel and the next, the changes pretty much hit you in the face.

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about the shock of discovering what authors have to do these days in building brands and platforms. And, just the other day, a question in my Twitter Feed got me thinking about all the other changes I’ve seen.

The question asked writers and authors if they would persevere with writing a book if they had to write in longhand, that is with a pen/pencil on a legal pad?

MS-DOS Anyone?

This immediately reminded me that I started pounding out my first novel, Scandal on a portable, but heavy word processor that used MS-DOS as an operating system for Microsoft Word. True, a step up from my trusty Corona. Let me say, I could never have completed even half a novel on a typewriter. Not when each edit or revision necessitates retyping the entire page!

But OMG ! That MS-DOS system was a killer! You may think Scrivener is a difficult writing software to learn. But it’s a dream come true for authors –even if you only grasp the basics. Which brings me to:

Compiling & Printing

Cast aside the memory that words like “daisy wheel” and “dot matrix” conjure up. Or memories of having to actually use printers like that to print 360 pages. Then, having all those pages copied at an Office Depot or Staples; or copied onto a floppy disk. Then, snail-mailing 360 pages to your agent or editor. Though back in those days, I seem to recall that mailing “printed matter” through the U.S. Post Office cost less than other mail.

Thank heaven authors these days don’t have to rely on the Post Office to get their works to agents and editors. Internet email has rendered printing and mailing pages obsolete. Using the afore-mentioned Scrivener, for example, a couple of simple key strokes organize your chapters into a Word document — which you attach to an email that allows your masterpiece to hurtle through cyberspace to said agent or editor.

Then, There’s Research

Just one word, here, really: Google. In general, you don’t have to leave your armchair to research locations (Google Earth) or even subjects which you don’t know too much about. Personally, this is not a change I embrace a hundred percent. I love going out on location research trips and searching out experts to interview, say, on police procedure or how the U.S. Coastguard operates in sailing accidents (see photo)

25 Years Later: Armies of Experts

All of these changes which have simplified the process — if not the craft– of writing novels have led to an explosion in the numbers of wannabe authors. This, in turn, has given rise to armies of experts and writing coaches. These, in turn, produce tsunamis of words on websites and in blogs with advice and tips on how to get published.

Back in 1996, I relied on a short stack of self-help books — mostly published by Writers Digest. I attended one writing seminar somewhere in the vicinity of Deerfield Beach, Florida. So, it may have been one of the very first Sleuthfest conferences.

I attended one Bouchercon in Philadelphia in 1998 (where Lee Child got awarded Best First Novel!) and I attended meetings of the NY Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. I was subsequently appointed to the Board of the NY Chapter after being introduced by fellow writer and friend Leslie Glass ( bestselling author of a series of NYPD procedurals.)

Workshops, Seminars & Online Classes

This time around, I really went all out to indulge my ambition to write a thriller which would “shine” among the millions of manuscripts that are being submitted yearly. Since starting my WIP, I’ve attended dozens of the available hundreds of workshops, seminars and online classes.

Story guru Robert McKee’s three-day seminar in Manhattan started it all for me. Subsequently, I attended a 3-day workshop in St. Augustine. And, I enrolled in dozens of online workshops and subscribed (and still subscribe) to the fabulous MasterClass online video tutorials of several bestselling authors including James Patterson and Dan Brown.

25 Years Later: A Major Personal Change

When I started working on my third novel in 2015, much had changed in my life since writing my first thriller Scandal. When I started on that first novel, I was between newspaper/magazine reporting positions — and the mother of a very boisterous, mischievous only child, aged 5.

It was the year my son started nursery school, and so I knew I only had a couple of hours in the morning when I could focus on my writing. When you know you have to get your writing done within a specific timeframe, you usually don’t mess around. And, so I didn’t.

This time around, 25 years later, I was retired (from the best-ever job as a law clerk to an appellate judge.) My husband, Joe, wasn’t making any great demands on my time, so my writing hours stretched ahead of me in abundance each day.