Guest Post: Judy Penz Sheluk on "Fine Tuning Your Manuscript"

It has been awhile since Judy was here with a guest post. She is back today discussing how, no matter how much you try to make the read perfect, an error can slip through the system.

Judy Penz Sheluk: Fine Tuning Your Manuscript

In my day job, I’m the Senior Editor of New England Antiques Journal a position I’ve held for close to a decade. I’ve done plenty of other editing work as well. I like to think I’m good at it.

But that’s other people’s work. Even editors need to find another set (or more) of eyes to review their manuscripts. With my short stories, I go to my husband, Mike, as the first (and usually last) line of attack—and I do mean attack. There isn’t a plot hole, no matter how minute, that Mike won’t find.

With my first novel, The Hanged Man’s Noose, I hired a developmental editor, and a copy editor. It was an expense (though I did shop around and get references) but I treated it as an educational experience, like a semester in college if you will. I don’t believe Noose would have ever seen publication without the expertise of those editors. And yes, I learned a lot.

With my second novel, Skeletons in the Attic, I relied on two beta readers as a first step. One is a professional proofreader, the other is a voracious reader of mysteries. As expected, the proofreader found a lot of the niggly stuff (missing commas, too many commas), while the voracious reader was quick to point out flaws in my characters’ actions. Once those revisions were incorporated, I had the manuscript printed and cerlox-bound for Mike. He likes to read in paper format and write notes in the margins. Let’s just say there were a lot of notes.

So you’d think every single mistake would have been found, right? Wrong. When my publisher for Skeletons assigned an editor, Todd Barselow, he managed to find a few more mistakes (although he did say the manuscript was very clean, which made me feel a little bit better). Here’s one example:

Callie Barnstable to Royce Ashford, contractor/next-door neighbor/possible love interest: “I really like the way you knocked down that wall in your house.”

Editor: When was she in his house? [Answer: in a previous draft, but certainly not in this one]

Once Todd and I completed three rounds of editing, the manuscript went to a proofreader before going into print and e-book formats. Let’s do the math: two beta readers, one very critical husband, one professional editor, three rounds of edits, one professional proofreader, one author involved every step of the way.

And yet…in Chapter 39, you’ll find this priceless treasure: Casual attire only. Shorts and t-shits or jeans and sweatshirts, depending on the temperature. That’s right. T-shits. It’s a new fashion trend, don’t you know?

ABOUT SKELETONS IN THE ATTIC

What goes on behind closed doors doesn’t always stay there…

Calamity (Callie) Barnstable isn’t surprised to learn she’s the sole beneficiary of her late father’s estate, though she is shocked to discover she has inherited a house in the town of Marketville—a house she didn’t know existed. However, there are conditions attached to Callie’s inheritance: she must move to Marketville, live in the house, and solve her mother’s murder.

Callie’s not keen on dredging up a thirty-year-old mystery, but if she doesn’t do it, there’s a scheming psychic named Misty Rivers who is more than happy to expose the Barnstable family secrets. Determined to thwart Misty and fulfill her father’s wishes, Callie accepts the challenge. But is she ready to face the skeletons hidden in the attic?

Judy Penz Sheluk ©2017

Judy Penz Sheluk’s debut mystery novel, The Hanged Man’s Noose, was published in July 2015. Skeletons in the Attic, the first book in her Marketville Mystery Series, was published in August 2016. Judy’s short crime fiction appears several anthologies.

Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Canada, International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Find Judy on her website/blog at www.judypenzsheluk.com where she interviews other authors and blogs about the writing life.

The Kindle version of SKELETONS IN THE ATTIC is on sale for $1.99 (reg. $4.99) through March 15^th.  http://getbook.at/SkeletonsintheAttic

Look for SKELETONS IN THE ATTIC in audiobook format, coming soon!

Guest Post: Judy Penz Sheluk on "How to Make a Treasontini"

Kicking off this final week of December is Judy Penz Sheluk with a drink recipe. It ties into her mystery, The Hanged Man’s Noose. Depending on how the holiday weekend was at your place you may really need this today….

How to Make a Treasontini

It’s holiday time, and so I thought it would be fun to share my Treasontini recipe.

You can find the Treasontini on the cover of The Hanged Man's Noose, which also happens to be the name of a pub in Lount’s Landing, the small town where the book is set. The Treasontini, a blueberry martini, is the Noose’s signature drink; the town is named after Samuel Lount, a real-life nineteenth century traitor who was hanged for treason.

Treasontini

Ingredients:

2 oz. Blueberry Vodka

2 oz. Triple Sec

2 oz. Blueberry Juice

1 dash Club Soda

Fresh or Frozen Blueberries

Ice Cubes

Preparation: Combine blueberry vodka, triple sec and blueberry juice in a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass. Top with club soda, garnish with blueberries, and serve.

The Hanged Man’s Noose is on sale for $3.99 ebook from Dec. 26th to Jan. 15^th on Amazon/iTunes/Kobo/Nook. It’s also on at 33% off print at the publisher! Here’s a bit about it:

Journalist Emily Garland lands a plum assignment as the editor of a niche magazine based in Lount’s Landing, a small town named after a colorful Canadian traitor. As she interviews the local business owners for the magazine, Emily quickly learns that many people are unhappy with real estate mogul Garrett Stonehaven’s plans to convert an old schoolhouse into a mega-box store. At the top of that list is Arabella Carpenter, the outspoken owner of an antiques shop, who will do just about anything to preserve the integrity of the town’s historic Main Street.

But Arabella is not alone in her opposition. Before long, a vocal dissenter at a town hall meeting about the proposed project dies. A few days later, another body is discovered, and although both deaths are ruled accidental, Emily’s journalistic suspicions are aroused.

Putting her reporting skills to the ultimate test, Emily teams up with Arabella to discover the truth behind Stonehaven’s latest scheme before the murderer strikes again. 

Barking Rain Press, the publisher of The Hanged Man’s Noose, is offering 33% off all e-books, whether purchased on their website or directly through our distributors. That amounts to $3.99. In addition, they are offering 33% off all print books purchased through their website only. Here's a link to the promo page:

http://barkingrainpress.org/after-christmas-ebook-sale/

Judy Penz Sheluk ©2016

Find Judy on her website/blog, www.judypenzsheluk.com, where she writes about her writing journey and interviews other authors.

Guest Post: Judy Penz Sheluk: Becoming a Professional Writer

Please welcome back Judy Penz Sheluk today….

Judy Penz Sheluk: Becoming a Professional Writer

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.” Agatha Christie.

I spent the better part of my teen years and early twenties devouring Agatha Christie books, until I’d read every one, though my preference leaned heavily to stories featuring Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. I even went so far as to read Christie’s six romance novels, penned as Mary Westmacott.

My fascination with Christie fueled my desire to write murder mysteries. But like Christie, for many years I was an amateur. Actually, amateur is overstating it. I was more of a “want-to be” writer. You know the type: the person who says they’re going to write a book “one day.”

For me, “one day” took about three decades from the time I put down Curtain, Hercule Poirot’s final mystery. In between, I worked as a Credit & Collections Manager, a Sales and Marketing Coordinator, and over the past thirteen years, a freelance writer and editor. It wasn’t my fault, you see. I was waiting for the muse to show up. I knew once the muse made an appearance I’d be ready to write that book.

Except the muse never came for a visit. Not even after I bought some shiny new writing software for my computer. [Here’s a head’s up for those of you who don’t know: you still have to WRITE the story!]

Sometime in the early 2000s, I decided to take a creative writing class taught by Barry Dempster, an award-winning Canadian author and poet. It was Barry who told me, “The muse will never come unless you let her know you’re going to be there. Make time to write every day, even if it’s only for thirty minutes, even if all you’re doing is sitting there, staring at a blank page. One day, the words will come.”

They did. Faced with ten days off of all my freelance gigs, I started writing my first book, The Hanged Man’s Noose, on Christmas Eve 2011. I wrote every day, including Christmas and New Year’s Day. By the end of that ten-day period, I had a few chapters written. It never got easy…but it did get easier, and by February 2013, I’d finished writing and revising the book. Then I tried to find an agent, and when that didn’t work out, I went to work looking for a publisher.

I knew how elusive that muse could be, and I knew I should start another book, but I couldn’t bear to write the sequel to a book I hadn’t sold. I started Skeletons in the Attic, determined to make it as different from Noose as I could: Noose is written in third person, with multiple (primarily two) POVs. Skeletons, on the other hand, is written in first person, and entirely from the POV of the protagonist, Calamity (Callie) Barnstable. But this time, the Christie quote actually applied to me. Somewhere along the line, I’d stopped waiting for the muse to show up and graduated from want-to be writer to amateur writer to professional.

Some days, the muse is slow to appear, but that doesn’t stop me any more. To quote Agatha Christie once again, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

Judy’s latest release is Skeletons in the Attic, the first book in the Marketville Mysteries. Here’s a brief synopsis:

What goes on behind closed doors doesn’t always stay there…

Calamity (Callie) Barnstable isn’t surprised to learn she’s the sole beneficiary of her late father’s estate, though she is shocked to discover she has inherited a house in the town of Marketville—a house she didn’t know existed. However, there are conditions attached to Callie’s inheritance: she must move to Marketville, live in the house, and solve her mother’s murder.

Callie’s not keen on dredging up a thirty-year-old mystery, but if she doesn’t do it, there’s a scheming psychic named Misty Rivers who is more than happy to expose the Barnstable family secrets. Determined to thwart Misty and fulfill her father’s wishes, Callie accepts the challenge. But is she ready to face the skeletons hidden in the attic?

Find Skeletons in the Attic: http://www.imajinbooks.com/skeletons-in-the-attic

SKELETONS IN THE ATTIC is now available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle for the special introductory price of .99 (reg. $4.99). Find it here :http://getbook.at/SkeletonsintheAttic

Judy Penz Sheluk ©2016

Judy Penz Sheluk’s debut mystery novel, The Hanged Man’s Noose, was published in July 2015. Skeletons in the Attic, the first book in her Marketville Mystery Series, was published August 2016.

Judy’s short crime fiction appears in World Enough and Crime, The Whole She-Bang 2, Flash and Bang and Live Free or Tri.

Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Canada, International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Find Judy on her website/blog at www.judypenzsheluk.com where she interviews other authors and blogs about her writing journey.

Guest Post: Judy Penz Sheluk-- When Less Needs More: The Story Behind THE HANGED MAN’S NOOSE

Please welcome author Judy Penz Sheluk as she explains the background to her new mystery ….

When Less Needs More: The Story Behind THE HANGED MAN’S NOOSE

As writers, we are often asked where we get our ideas. In the case of my debut mystery novel, The Hanged Man’s Noose, the story began in a Creative Writing Workshop. The short story itself wasn’t particularly brilliant (or even particularly good), but it did set the stage for what would eventually become The Hanged Man’s Noose, the first novel in the Glass Dolphin Mystery Series. Consider the opening:

“Arabella Carpenter’s day started off just like any other, with a three mile walk from her one bedroom apartment in midtown, to The Glass Dolphin Antiques on Main. The unit, as she referred to it, was on the tenth floor of a sterile glass and steel tower. The apartment had been somewhat optimistically billed as “overlooking” Lount’s Landing, although to do so required leaning over a small balcony and precariously craning one’s neck to the left.

Not that there was much to see. Lount’s Landing was a once small village that had, over the course of several decades, accepted growth with some reluctance, and urbanization in bits and bytes. The end result was a rather schizophrenic mix of high-rise condos and sprawling McMansions, amid an assortment of post-war bungalows, freehold townhomes, and dreary neighborhood parkettes.

The Glass Dolphin, on the other hand, was housed within a meandering warehouse conversion in what the locals liked to call the old part of town. In keeping with the building’s “industrial authenticity,” the architects had preserved some of its quirkier details, including exposed glass block and brick, wide pine plank floorboards, and tall open ceilings with the original ductwork on view. A cynic might suggest that conserving such details also saved the developer money, but no matter, such ambience was the perfect backdrop for a modern day antiques shop. At least that’s what Arabella had told herself last month when she signed a three-year lease.

She decided to name the shop after her first antique find, a sapphire blue Boston & Sandwich pressed glass candlestick, circa 1840. Arabella loved the way the dolphin’s head rested on a slab glass base, its mermaid-like tail curling seductively upward.

Still, there were some, among them Arabella’s ex-husband, who might say that this wasn’t the time to invest heart and soul (not to mention one’s hard fought life’s savings) into brick and mortar, especially when so much of today’s antiques trade was negotiated online. But while Arabella respectfully acknowledged that an Internet presence may be necessary, replacing lemon oil and old leather for search engines and live bidding was as foreign to her as relinquishing the tactile feel of page and paper for a Kindle.”

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: the opening is far too longwinded for a short story. After all, we’re at 370 words and there’s still no hint of a mystery. But part of me had already fallen in love with Arabella Carpenter, an irascible thirty-something throwback in time who loves antiques and hates social media. I knew I couldn’t let her languish in the pages of an unpublished short story. I knew I had to create a world for Arabella to live in.

I wish I could tell you that I immediately began outlining The Hanged Man’s Noose, or that the ideas and the words flowed onto the page, tumbling upon one another in their rush to get out. The harsh reality is that it would be another year before I even started on the novel.

Now, I can blame any number of things for my procrastination, and probably did at one time or another, but undoubtedly my most ironic excuse was this: I was already too busy writing. You see, in my day jobs I’m a freelance writer, and the Senior Editor of New England Antiques Journal and the Editor of Home BUILDER Magazine. Those who aren’t familiar with the role of magazine editor might think all an editor does is assign features and tweak punctuation and grammar, but the truth of the matter is we do all that, plus write a good deal of the copy (much of it without a byline).

So the “too busy writing” excuse become my official mantra. “Other folks write to get from their day jobs,” I’d lament to any poor sod who was willing to listen. “If I was a plumber, and I plumbed all day, writing would be my escape.”

Thankfully, Arabella Carpenter wasn’t listening. Instead, she continued to live on in my head, prodding me with new ideas and stickier situations. “What if a big shot, big city real estate developer came to the sleepy little town of Lount’s Landing?”

Hmmm …

“What if he had plans to convert the deaccessioned elementary school at the foot of historic Main Street into a mega-box store?”

Double hmmm … I’d seen firsthand how animated small town folks can be when it comes to development—not that I’d ever heard of anyone getting murdered over it. But the idea stuck with me, until finally, on the morning of Christmas Eve, 2011, with nearly two weeks of time off looming ahead of me (and no real vacation plans), I decided to take the plunge. After all, what was I going to do for the next twelve days if I didn’t write? It wasn’t like I could take up plumbing.

I’m not saying it was easy, and I’m not saying I didn’t make my fair share of rookie mistakes. I may make my living as a writer and editor, but I discovered early on that writing a 70,000-word amateur sleuth mystery was a far cry from writing a 1,000-word fact-based feature article. In fact, truth be told, the first draft was nothing short of abysmal. What that first draft did, however, was prove to me that I could write as an escape from my day job, and escaping to Lount’s Landing, to Arabella and company, became as vital to my daily routine as exercise, eating and sleeping.

I’ve been asked if Arabella is like me, and the short answer is no, although I do admire her unrepentant expectation for authenticity in objects and people alike, and I’ll admit I can be every bit as irascible.

I also share her passion for cookies.

Stay tuned for Judy’s next post: When More Needs Less—The Story Behind “Beautiful Killer,” a flash fiction story in the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s FLASH AND BANG anthology.

Judy Penz Sheluk ©2015

Bio

Judy Penz Sheluk’s debut mystery, The Hanged Man’s Noose, was published July 2015. Her short crime fiction is included in The Whole She-Bang 2, World Enough and Crime, and most recently, Flash and Bang, the first anthology by members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Canada, International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Find Judy at www.judypenzsheluk.com, where she blogs about the writing life and interviews other authors.

Buy Links

The Hanged Man’s Noose is available in print and eBook at http://www.barkingrainpress.org/dd-product/hanged-mans-noose/  and all the usual suspects including Amazon http://authl.it/3jg

Flash and Bang is available in print and eBook from Untreed Reads http://store.untreedreads.com , as well as all the usual suspects, including Amazon http://authl.it/3wb    

Social Media Links

Website: http://www.judypenzsheluk.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JudyPenzSheluk

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8602696.Judy_Penz_Sheluk

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JudyPenzSheluk  @JudyPenzSheluk

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/judypenzsheluk

Triberr: http://triberr.com/JudyPenzSheluk

Amazon: amazon.com/author/judypenzsheluk