Downton Abbey’s second season. C’mon, let it be January. I need my Maggie Smith fix. With World War I beginning, I worry that the Edwardian costumes I adored – oh, to be a pencil in 1910 – will give way to mufti, but so be it. Will Mary and her cousin fall in love with each other on the same day, or are they doomed to careen off each other in fits of pique for yet another season? And what will the bad servants do this time around?

A robot that irons. My habit for decades has been to wait until the floor beside the to-be-ironed hamper is piled with the overflow of waiting, crumpled stuff before I drag out the squeaky ironing board. I was lucky for 18 years: Tim tackled it while watching “Law & Order,” and I’d come out from the study to find neatly folded pillowcases and my shirts on hangers, and all he wanted was a kiss and vast amounts of praise, which I was happy, happy to give. I’d rather have him than a robot any day, but what can you do?

A film option for MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT. Okay, that’s big time dreaming. but more to the point than a pony, right? I mean, why not? We could pitch it as “The Thomas Crown Affair” meets “Law & Order.” You have a better idea, I’m listening.

The happiness of my grandchildren. Whatever makes them smile makes me smile too. Fortunately, they all love books. (I think it’s genetic.) The youngest is only 2 and the oldest is still shy of adolescence, praise be, so they don’t yet see me as a peculiar old lady…their Christmas gift to me!

Peaceful change in the world. Here at home, let the spirit of Occupy bloom in peace. In the rest of the world, I hope that the hunger for money and power submits to a greater hunger for the common good. But I’ll settle for no more suicide bombers in civilian neighborhoods.

Nice news today: World Wide Mystery, a mass market paperback book club publisher, has picked up MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT. Timely, too, because the original hard cover edition by Avalon is virtually sold out. There’s a hard cover, large print edition out there too.

None of this means the author is becoming either rich or famous. It does mean Dani O’Rourke may find more fans, and that’s good news for the series. I’m writing number three now, and it gets more fun all the time.

In a series, the writer comes to know the central characters well, has history to draw on, hears a defined voice (if it’s first person), and can pull in ancillary characters from previous stories. In my series, Dani’s ex-husband keeps popping up as only he can, perpetually hopeful that she will forgive his past indiscretion. The green-eyed cop she met in ABSTRACT shows up in the second and has just waltzed into the third for one of their typical dates in which he’s interrupted by the cell phone telling him yet another poor soul in San Francisco has been murdered. Suzy, who was in a terrible accident in ABSTRACT is her old self – warmhearted, gossipy, and supportive. Teeni Watson is about to put on the art exhibition that will cap her Ph.D. studies at Cal, and Fever the cat is… well, Fever never changes and why should he?

I have my fingers crossed that THE KING’S JAR will be out soon and that Dani’s next adventures will follow. She has so much to do and so many places to visit, and I’m itching to go along for the ride!

I’m re-posting a guest piece I did in early July at Fresh Fiction, with thanks for their invitation to share some thoughts about a familiar but appealing character in fiction: the perennial bad boy.

He can be swathed in a Victorian cloak like Heathcliff, a Regency jacket like Darcy, or a short sleeved shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled into the sleeve like James Dean, but we all know him for who he is – the quintessential bad boy. He’s the one we want to hate, or at least to shun. He woos us, then drops us, hurts our feelings, then asks for forgiveness with those appealing little boy eyes.

What is it about bad boys, anyway? Are they born knowing they can get away with a lot because they have long eyelashes? Do they figure it out in kindergarten? Sixth grade? Because they sure know it by high school.

It’s a fascinating character type, and one I had no intention of exploring in my debut mystery, MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT, which came out in late June. But I invented a back story for my protagonist, Dani O’Rourke, so she would fit into the high society world, but as a bit of an outsider: She was once married to the scion of a wealthy family, a young man with two Porsches, several hundred million dollars, and a roving eye.

Okay, that got her into the museum where she worked as a fundraiser, raising money from the social set she had traveled with during her marriage, before her ex became entranced with a synthetically endowed underwear model. But, wait! Before I knew it, her ex had wormed his way into a scene. I could have put up with that except that he charmed his way into another scene and, before I knew it, he was right in the heart of the story, threatening to weaken Dani’s resolve as she concentrated on figuring out why someone pushed an artist to his death from her office window and tried to frame her for the murder.

There were times when Dani had more resolve than I did. I mean, $450 million is nothing to sneeze at and Dickie – Richard Argetter III – was trying so hard to be helpful. I found myself liking him and making excuses for his brattiness. How could this be? I made him up. He had no right to think he could smile and push that errant bit of hair out of his eyes in my presence. Who was in charge here?

This is what characters do. They leap off the page, take their fates in their own hands, and start driving the story. Certainly, Dani’s and Dickie’s relationship at the end of the book is not what I thought it would be when I began the novel. At its best, that’s one of the great mysteries of writing fiction and also a great joy. We authors find ourselves readers of prose that’s appearing on the computer as we read. (There is revision, of course, which is a lot less fun.)

I’ve just spent a full week meeting readers at Bay Area bookstores, luncheons, and special events. Everywhere I spoke, I encountered people who care about books, who delight in meeting authors, who wistfully say they always wanted to write a book themselves.

And, these lovely people buy books! They bought mine. They bought the new books of the other authors I was occasionally paired with, and they were obviously comfortable hanging out at bookstores.

They asked good questions:

“How important is it to use real places rather than invented ones?”

“Would you ever kill off your protagonist, and why?”

“How did you manage to find time to write a whole book?”

“Why do you write mysteries rather than mainstream fiction?”

I learned from these audiences that books still matter, that authors better write the best damn books they can in order to live up to the faith readers have in them, and that there is a bond between authors and readers that is as strong as it is broad and inclusive. I read with thriller writers and cozy writers, and there was always someone in the audience who knew that sub-genre well. One woman told me she had read every book by a particularly prolific cozy writer, “even some that weren’t so good, because everyone has an off-day, don’t they?” Talk about loyal!

I sold a lot of books – that part still amazes me as a debut author – but the benefits of the book tour were so much greater. I stored up the support and encouragement of individuals who want me to succeed because they want good books to read this year, next year, and beyond. When the editing gets tough or the plot ideas get bogged down in my tangled imagination, I feel they’ll be out there, urging me to keep at it. It’s a nice feeling.

So, thank you, Dear Reader! See you next time.

I’m taking a one-week break from a fresh posting here. It’s launch week for my book and I am delightfully busy. I’ve also been guest blogging, so you can check out my ramblings at several sites right now:

Pens Fatales: http://www.pensfatales.com/2010/06/susan-sheas-rules.html?showComment=1277504418773_AIe9_BEm9yI9LZHuxPRcyAS-MvLMmrqRsEFkEQoQHD6nDh_IcFySKTzqE9KfvfrrCSqJU0nxJ-iPzjIhuYTLeO8W2G3T6DrRgKAw07IroQn5sX4iJGzyYJhIQevk61GRJoeQL36JeziJ07lVbMBXRvem2GitjXK8fHIp74rlp6mtlwME4FB-TYUSfUn6JLAJupgjtHcKvB2a-IukG3kfe9iAQNlGmq7X1WqM5DeduQRZFxOgp72dZT4#c403375297249898785

Crazy-for-Books: http://www.crazy-for-books.com/

Lesa’s Book Critiques: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/2010/06/murder-in-abstract-by-susan-c-shea.html

also blog regularly at The LadyKillers: http://www.theladykillers.typepad.com/

Thanks for visiting.

Launch events begin June 23rd.

I’ll be posting a new, short blog about writing fiction on my site on Fridays from now on because I’ve also been invited to blog with the impressive mystery writers at The Ladykillers, and my turn there is every other Tuesday.

http://www.theladykillers.typepad.com/

Blogging is part of being a writer these days, it seems, and I enjoy these small riffs on the process and art of creating stories. But blogging is a lot more fun if you know someone is reading, so if you have a comment on anything I write – even if you disagree with me 100 percent, please don’t hesitate to leave it on either blog site. I promise to read all comments and to answer questions as best I can.

Otherwise, it’s like that tree falling in the forest!

WELCOME!

Welcome to my new blog and thanks for stopping in. If you landed here more or less randomly, I hope you’ll stick around for a few minutes, and consider dropping in again from time to time. I should warn you that, like a lot of other writers, my thoughts tend to map a course more like butterflies than English teachers: Oh, here’s an idea…wait, there’s another over there…oooh, I like the cool one beyond the fence….

I’ll try to settle on one at a time and hope I get better at it as I go along. Right now, I’m feeling a bit strange. I’m a fiction writer. I’ve chosen not to write about me – no memoir cries to be released from my personal history, no confessional literature threatens to leak into my protagonist’s back story. But in the blog, I will, necessarily, be speaking from my perspective about things that matter to me. It’ll be my voice, not Dani O’Rourke’s, and I think she may be a lot more interesting (and less revealing of me).

So the first hurdle is to stop cringing at the “I” word, use it as little as possible, and try to bring forward ideas that have some value to blog readers. Having crossed the fence from devoted reader to published mystery writer only recently, I hope I can shine a little spotlight on each part of that community, and maybe even help a few other butterflies sail over the fence.

So, if you’re inclined, please bookmark www.susancshea.com and come back for a visit soon. Thanks!