Wickenburg is an Island

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Some more thoughts on living at the edge of nowhere.

Last night, we went out to dinner at House Berlin with our friends, the Wurths.

House Berlin is one of my favorite places to eat in Wickenburg. The food is always good and lately the service is good again, too.

The Wurths are a semi-retired couple who moved into Wickenburg not long after we did seven or eight years ago. Jim had been an airline pilot for Eastern Airlines and took early retirement before Eastern went bust. Judith had been a flight attendant back in the days when they were still called stewardesses and had done a few other things I didn’t know much about. Now they live in Wickenburg where they manufacture and sell battery-based aircraft starting devices called StartPacs.

Jim flies a helicopter now and that’s how I know him. He has a 1969 Hughes 500c, exquisitely refurbished and painted. As he likes to say, it’s the Porsche of helicopters. He gave me a ride up the Hassayampa River once that was quite memorable, primarily because of the positive and negative Gs he pulled. In a helicopter. My little Robinson R22, which I owned at the time, couldn’t fly like that. But then again, it didn’t cost $500/hour to fly, either.

Anyway, we went out to dinner and had a nice meal. Jim and Judith had just gotten back from a trade show in Reno, NV, where they’d sold a lot of StartPacs to agricultural operators — companies that do crop dusting, etc. They had lots of stories to tell about the aircraft they’d seen and the stories they’d heard. Judith had caught a cold from Jim and was quieter than usual, looking more tired than I did. (I’d spent the day with Mike and some other friends cleaning up my rental house.)

I’d driven my Honda S2000 to the restaurant and parked out front with the top down. It had been an extremely warm day, with temperatures reaching the 80s in the late afternoon, so it had been nice to get out in the convertible. I rarely drive the car; I’ve had it since August 2003 and it has just over 7000 miles on it now. The car is an eye-catcher in Wickenburg, which probably has more pickup trucks per capita (among year-round residents, of course) than any other town in Arizona. At least that’s how it seems. When I go out with the car, I like to park it in an obvious place, top down, to draw attention to the business I’m visiting. It’s my way of saying, “Hey, this is a cool place. Come on in and check it out.”

[A side story here. Earlier this year, members of the helicopter owners group I belong to descended (literally) on the Wayside Inn, just southeast of Alamo Lake. Five helicopters and a Citabria airplane landed at the restaurant and went in for lunch. (The Citabria landed on the dirt road that runs past the place.) The Wayside Inn is in the middle of nowhere (not even close to the edge) and doesn’t get much business. (Location, location, location.) But with five helicopters and an airplane outside, it seemed that everyone who drove by stopped and came in to eat. Every single table was full. Frankly, I think they should feed us for free when we come in, just to drum up business.]

I left the top down on the car for the drive home. It was only 7 PM, but it was dark and very cool. The desert is like that in the winter. Imagine that the sun is a big heat lamp shining down on the desert. The angle of the sun in the winter is low, so it never really gets very hot. But when the sun goes down and that heat lamp is gone, the air cools very quickly. It’s not unusual to lose 20°F in an hour. But I had the windows rolled up and the heater on in the car, so we were quite cosy.

The moonless sky was full of stars. It was a beautiful night, despite the cold, and although I was tired, I didn’t feel like going home. I felt like going for a drive.

I thought back to the days I lived in New Jersey, not far from Manhattan. Sometimes, on the spur of the moment, we’d drive into the city for a few hours, riding down the streets, dodging the yellow taxis, listening to the sound of the car horns bounce off the tall buildings on the side of the road. We’d drive down Broadway through Times Square, past Herald Square and Washington Square. We’d see the punkers and cross-dressers and plain old college kids in Greenwich Village and sometimes, if we got a parking spot, would hop out and take a walk around. Other times, we’d head down to Chinatown or Little Italy for Chinese food or some Italian pastries at Ferrarra’s. (I remember a few years ago taking a $14 round trip cab ride from midtown to Little Italy, just to pick up a box of pastries — they’re that good.) We’d drive down past the Municipal Building, where I worked for several years, and City Hall. Then we’d drive up the east side on the FDR drive, past the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges. The lights of the city’s skyscrapers would be to our left as we headed north while the darkness of the East River was to our right. Past the Queensboro Bridge (immortalized by it’s other name in the Simon and Garfunkel song) and the tramway to Roosevelt Island. Onto the Harlem River Drive, past Yankee Stadium, and up the ramp to the Cross Bronx Expressway. Then a short drive over the George Washington Bridge and into the darkness of the Palisades Parkway to the north. A while later, we’d be home again, full of memories, Chinese food, or pastries — more likely a combination of these. Although we lived on a quiet, tree-lined street in a town so small that few people knew of its existence — Harrington Park — we were only 26 miles from midtown Manhattan. Two hours was often enough time to have a brief evening out in the big city.

Last night, in Wickenburg, reminded me of an early or late summer night in New Jersey. The weather was about the same. But that’s where the similarities end.

Wickenburg, you see, is an island surrounded by desert. When you drive away from Wickenburg at night, you drive into darkness. Eventually, that darkness is replaced with another town or more. Go southeast and you’ll pass through Morristown, Circle City, and Wittman, none of which are very impressive day or night before you finally get to Surprise, which is growing rapidly, spreading northward at an alarming rate. That’s where you’ll find the bright lights of the strip malls and big box stores and parking lots. Go west and you’ll eventually pass through Aquila, Wenden, Salome, Hope, and Brenda before finally hitting I-10. These tiny communities make Wickenburg seem like a thriving metropolis. Go north and you’ll pass through Congress, Yarnell, and Peeples Valley on your way to distance Prescott, which is a thriving metropolis.

And Phoenix, to the southeast, is not only distant, but it’s a poor substitute for New York.

So I guess it’s safe to say that Wickenburg just isn’t a good starting point to take an evening drive. It’s an island that is surrounded by distance rather than water.

All this passed through my mind in the distance between Double D and Safeway on West Wickenburg Way. So we just went home.

If anyone knows of a place to get good Italian pastries — and I mean real Italian pastries — in the Phoenix area, please let me know. It might be worth a drive just to check it out.

Real Estate Wheelings and Dealings

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I listen to an offer from a real estate investor and learn a lot about buying and selling real estate.

Back when I first started making real money as a writer, I invested in real estate. The first year, I bought a two bedroom condo in town as a rental. The second year, I bought a property that included a 2 bedroom/2 bath house and a small apartment building with four furnished studio apartment units. The third year, I realized that there was far more fun things to do with my money so I bought a helicopter.

I still own all that real estate, although I don’t really want to. I hate being a landlord. I hate dealing with tenants and cleaning up after them. I hate showing the apartments. I hate evicting tenants who can’t seem to pay on time. I just hate the whole thing.

I moved my office into the condo about three years ago. It’s more space than I need, but at least I don’t have to deal with tenants there anymore.

A few years ago, I half-heartedly put the five-plex on the market. I gave the Realtor I listed with strict instructions: only show the place to qualified buyers. Give the tenants at least 24 hours notice and get their permission before showing their units. Unfortunately, a local Realtor who was too lazy to show the property properly gave the address to a potential buyer. The buyer didn’t do just a drive by. He drove in. And he started knocking on doors. When one of my tenants told me about this, I wigged out and took the property off the market.

This year, I needed to upgrade my helicopter from a 2-place Robinson R22 to a 4-place Robinson R44. To do this, I needed to either take out a huge aircraft loan or pull equity out of some real estate. So I put the five-plex back on the market.

It’s been shown a few times and I’ve gotten some low offers. One of the potential buyers was extremely obnoxious about it. He didn’t want the house. He just wanted the four-plex. So he offered an insultingly low amount. I didn’t even bother to counter.

I arranged helicopter financing another way, so I’m not desperate to make the sale. But I do want to sell. And I’d like to sell sometime before next summer.

The other day, my Realtor (a different one from last time) called to ask if I’d be interested in carrying 20% on the property. I thought about it a while and said yes. And yesterday, I met with someone who made me an official offer, one that shows exactly how much wheeling and dealing someone can do in the world of real estate.

This buyer wanted me to finance the 25% the lender would normally require him to come up with as a down payment. He wanted to pay me only 5% on the amount I’d carry (when his lender was getting 6.5%) and amortize that over 30 years, with a balloon payment in 3 years. He wanted me to pay all closing costs. He was, in essence, trying to buy a property listed for $324,000 for only $290,000 without any out-of-pocket costs. I’d basically be financing part of his investment, with a high-risk loan that had little collateral.

The deal got weirder as the meeting progressed. He said he worked very closely with his lender and appraiser and could get the property appraised for just about anything he needed it to. So to make the numbers work, he could pay up to $350,000 for the property. I’d still have to carry 25% — which was now over $80,000 — and I’d also have to give him a “seller rebate” of $20,000 so he could make some improvements on the property. So not only am I financing the investment for him, but I’m making the improvements, too. And hanging a lot of money out there for possible loss.

I came to the meeting prepared with a spreadsheet. I punched the numbers in and saw that it was possible for it to work. On paper (or pixels). But was I willing to risk $80,000+ on someone who wasn’t willing to put up any of his own money? No way!

This morning, I came up with a counteroffer that I know he’ll turn down. I e-mailed it to my Realtor. Hopefully, this buyer will just go away. My head is still spinning from his scheme.

But I did learn one thing: I can separate the two properties and refinance them with two loans. I can pull my equity out and be in a good position to sell either property on its own. That’s something I hadn’t thought about going into this and it’s a damn good idea.

SpongeBob SquarePants and Other Highlights of the Week

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A review of a somewhat trying week.

It’s Friday at about 5 AM. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop and cup of coffee. Alex, my parrot, is having his breakfast atop his cage. He’s quiet right now, except for the sound of his beak hitting the ceramic bowl each time he picks out a piece of scrambled egg and his tiny footsteps as he moves into his favorite eating position at the edge of the cage top where he can watch me. The refrigerator is humming and the heat is on. Other than that, and the sound of the laptops keys as I hit them, the house is completely quiet.

The last of our house guests are gone. They left on Wednesday morning. I feel an incredible amount of freedom. “Free at last” was the way Mike put it when he got home on Wednesday afternoon. I don’t think we’ll have back-to-back house guest groups again.

The refrigerator has just clicked off.

Last Friday at this time, I was preparing for the first day’s breakfast for the second group of house guests, Mike’s mom and her friend Mildred. I wake up very early and need coffee quite soon after getting out of bed. Once I’m awake and in the kitchen, Alex is awake. And once Alex is awake, he’s talking and whistling just like any self-respecting parrot. At least he doesn’t scream. But some of those whistles can be pretty bad. If I can put his breakfast in front of him quickly, I can minimize the noise, since he’s generally very quiet while eating. But sometimes he just doesn’t want to come out of his cage and other times he eats quickly to get on with the noisier part of his morning routine. As a result, any house guest who is not deaf is likely to wake up not long after we do. Then he or she wanders into the kitchen and comments about how early it is. This week, I prepared the coffee pot for my guests when I made my own coffee. They drink decaf, I don’t. I have a Black and Decker Cup at a Time coffee maker which brews one cup of coffee at a time, right into the serving cup. This is my third one; I’ve had one for about fifteen years now. Mike doesn’t usually drink coffee in the morning and I won’t drink coffee unless it’s very fresh. I mean, it has to be brewed just before I drink it. (That’s the reason I’m willing to pay $3 for a latte; at least it’s made fresh for me.) I also have a 12-cup Braun coffee maker. That’s what I fixed up for Julia and Mildred every morning. As soon as one of them appeared — normally Julia; Mildred is hard of hearing so she doesn’t hear Alex in the morning — I turned on the pot and let it do its thing. Whether they finished the eight cups I brewed them every morning was up to them. (Of course, 8 coffee pot cups only equals 4 real cups.)

Julia & Mildred at the Grand CanyonI went to work on Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so I didn’t spend much time with this group of house guests. That was probably a pretty good idea, since I was already suffering from house guest burnout. Mike took them to the Grand Canyon on Sunday, since Mildred had never seen it before. Mildred, like Julia, is in her 80s and was born and raised in New York. They live in the same apartment building in Queens, with lovely views of the Throgs Neck Bridge. They’re New Yorkers, through and through. (Who else would arrive with two dozen real bagels, lox, cream cheese, and white fish?) This trip to the west was a real eye-opener for Mildred.

She told me that she wanted to see the Grand Canyon because of something her grandson had said. He told her that he’d had all kinds of religious training, but he’d always had small doubts about the existence of God. But when he went to the Grand Canyon, he said he knew there had to be a God because there was no other way something that beautiful could exist.

Mike had reservations for two rooms on the rim for Sunday night, so that’s when they had to go. But on Sunday morning, when they left, snow showers were forecasted for that day with snow predicted for Monday. Temperatures were in the low thirties during the day. Julia didn’t want to go, but left it up to Mildred.

“We’ll give you some time to think about it,” Mike said to her on Sunday morning.

“How much time?” Mildred wanted to know.

“How much do you need?”

“Twelve minutes.”

“Okay, let us know in twelve minutes.”

“I want to go,” she immediately replied.

So they went. We advised them to bring warm clothing, but when it didn’t seem as if what they’d packed was warm enough, Mike packed a few extra coats, hats, and pairs of socks. I watched them drive away, knowing I had just over 24 hours to myself.

Unfortunately, I really needed that time off. Earlier in the week, I’d stepped foot into my rental house to learn that the previous tenant and her son had trashed the place. The carpet, which was soiled throughout with dog poop and urine, right down to the padding, had to be replaced. The walls had to be repainted. Celia, my cleaning person, had spent about six hours trying to clean the kitchen and needed another day to finish the house. I’d spent about two hours with her that Thursday, just dumping trash left in the kitchen and throughout the house. The painter’s prep guy had been there on Friday, taking down the window coverings and prepping walls and window sills. I’d stopped by that day with two friends of mine to remove the 1,100 AOL CD ROM discs the tenant’s brat had thumb-tacked to the ceiling.

I spent Sunday just lazing around the house. I read, I even watched a few movies on TV. The weather was rainy and not very pleasant. I didn’t really want to be outside anyway. And I certainly didn’t want to go into the house on Jackson Street.

On Monday morning, I went to work. I’m between books right now. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a book lined up yet, though. I actually have two of them. One is a revision of my Mac OS X book for the next version, called Tiger. The other is a revision of my QuickBooks for Mac book. I’m under contract for one book and will soon be under contract for the second. Both books are for Peachpit Press. But I’m also working with an eBook publisher to do a pair of PDF format books for a new eBook imprint called SpiderWorks. And I usually spend the time between books writing articles for Informit.com and FileMaker Advisor.

That’s not all that’s on my plate. I’m also doing work for Flying M Air, my helicopter tour company. I’m waiting for the delivery of my Robinson Raven II helicopter. I got the bad news on Monday: the helicopter’s delivery date had been pushed back three weeks and would not be until the first week in January. That meant I’d have to cancel the gig I’d tentatively scheduled for December 31 at Stanton. One of the things I needed to do for Flying M Air was line up other flying gigs. There’s the potential to make a lot of money at these gigs and I’m trying to schedule at least two a month to cover the cost of the helicopter. Lining up gigs meant finding events that helicopter rides would work at, contacting the organizers, and getting permission to fly. I had about a 50% acceptance rate among those people who responded, but not everyone could be contacted by e-mail. I also needed to finish up the paperwork for my Single Pilot Part 135 certificate. This would enable me to offer air taxi services, which is not possible under my current Part 91 status. (This is all FAA stuff.) Finally, I needed to get permission from the BLM and state land offices to land my helicopter at the remote locations I wanted to fly passengers to.

So I had a lot to do on Monday and for the rest of the week. But I was in full procrastination mode. I get like that sometimes. I keep busy doing things that need to be done, but I somehow avoid doing the high priority things. For example, I really needed to get together an outline for my Mac OS X book. I had the beta software installed and had spent some time looking at it. But it wasn’t until Wednesday that I finally submitted an outline. Apparently, my editor is also in procrastination mode, because although he promised to get back to me the next day with comments, I never heard from him.

The whole week went like that at work, keeping busy from the time I arrived — normally around 7 AM — to the time I left — about 2 to 3 PM. In between, I made lots of trips to Jackson Street, to check on the painters, let in the carpet guys, and measure the place. Measuring was for a special project. I’d gotten a phone call from someone at ADOT (Arizona Department of Transportation). She was looking for unfurnished rentals for some of the people who’d be working on the bypass project in Wickenburg over the coming years. Holy cow! Is it possible that I could get the place rented that quickly? When she asked for square feet, I made a special trip to measure the place for her. I now know it’s 1,400 square feet. I also measured the condo my office is in. Heck, if they’re willing to rent that, too, I’ll move out into one of the studio apartments I own (something I’ve been considering for a while) and let them have it. It would be nice to get some regular income from that place again.

I also had to begin the process that would take my former tenant to small claims court in an attempt to get back some of the $4,300 I spent to restore the house to rentable condition. The limit for small claims court is $2,500 and I’m going for all of it. It cost me $2,200 to replace the carpet she destroyed and the back bedroom definitely required professional repainting. I took a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, the painters tore out the carpet (because of the smell) before they painted, so I didn’t get as many photos of the carpet while still on the floor as I would have liked. No matter. My friends John and Lorna helped me photograph carpet sections, including the underside, outside on the driveway. I printed the photos yesterday and they do a fine job of documenting the damage. I also took a few carpet sections that I could display in court. I wonder if the judge will want to sniff them.

The rental house is coming along nicely. The carpet guys, who were supposed to come next Tuesday, had a cancellation and were able to do the job yesterday. They very kindly used some vinyl tile leftover from another job to retile the front bathroom, charging me just $30 for labor. I can’t blame the damage there on the tenant — it was already pretty worn — but it’s nice to get the place fixed up a bit more. At this point, I’ve already replaced all of the floor covering in the house and I’ve only owned it for four years. I replaced the back bedroom’s floor covering twice. Today’s the day when I write the big checks to pay for all of this work.

Meanwhile, that entire property is up for sale. It includes the house and four studio apartments in a separate building. The studios are fully furnished and quite nice. The house will be wonderful when it’s done. There’s a potential buyer lined up, and he’ll be presenting a formal offer today. But I already know that his price is low and he wants me to finance part of the purchase. I’m probably going to have to say no. When I’m finished typing this, I’ll crunch some numbers to see what I need in case I need to present a counter-offer.

Plan B is already in the works. I’m getting a separate water and gas meter for the house. If the rental with ADOT falls through, I’ll officially split the house property from the apartment property — they’re already on two separate tax parcels. I’ll sell the house and use the money from that transaction to pay off the mortgage on the whole property. Then I’ll move my office into Apartment #4, which is bright and airy and has excellent views of the mountains. I’ll fix up the condo and sell that. That won’t get me as much money as the sale of the house and apartments, but I will own the apartments free and clear. Income on the three remaining apartments is $1200/month. Expenses are less than $400/month. So that’s a nice little income each month. And if I need cash, I can always refinance the apartments and take out a loan on it.

So that gives you an idea of what’s going through my mind. A lot. Too much, maybe.

Last night, we went out to dinner at the Mecca with John and Lorna. I’m getting to be a regular at the Mecca. They make excellent margaritas. Afterwards, we talked John and Lorna into coming to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, which was playing at Wickenburg’s oneplex next door. I’d heard good reviews about the movie on NPR. But those reviewers must either have kids or undeveloped brains. The movie did have a few jokes that only an adult could pick up, but there weren’t enough of them to sustain me. Seeing a movie like that makes me glad I don’t have kids. Thank heavens the movie was short. Fortunately, National Treasure starts today and I think that’ll be a bit more enjoyable for the over-six crowd.

So it’s Friday morning, at about 6 AM. Alex is in full talking mode. “Hey now!” That’s his favorite new thing to say. And “Are you a duck?” Mike will be down shortly and Jack the Dog will be with him. Mike will have tea and Jack will eat up all the egg Alex dropped on the floor. I’ll put this away and clean up around Alex’s cage. In an hour, I’ll go to the office and try not to procrastinate any more than I already have this week. And, with luck, the meeting with the possible buyer will go well and I’ll sell my rental property once and for all.

But at least the house guests are gone.

It’s a Mystery to Me

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A little bit about the mystery novel I’ve been working on (or not working on) for the past year.

About a year ago, I started writing a mystery novel. It’s the same novel I mentioned in the entry titled “Writer’s Block Sucks” earlier in this blog. I haven’t added a word to it since then.

The book’s characters are very strong, based roughly on people I knew not too long ago. They were odd people with odd relationships, the kind of people who would be memorable in a novel. I haven’t seen these people in over two years now, but my memories of them are very clear — especially the memories about their unorthodox attitudes and behaviors. In recreating them for fiction, I changed them enough to avoid a lawsuit if the work ever got published. The similarities remain, but there’s not enough of them for any of the people to say, “Hey, she’s writing about me!” Even I’m in the book, changed enough to be barely recognizable. My character is both secondary protagonist (or sidekick) and suspect.

The protagonist or detective is completely fictional. From New York, he’s well-off and lives a comfortable Manhattan life. Yet his wealth is relatively new and he’s down-to-earth. He can mix well with all kinds of people. And the southwest town environment he’s in for this novel is a true test of his ability to adapt. His name is John and he’s a first-person narrator. In writing about the small town of Coyote Springs as seen through his eyes, I explain small, southwest towns like Wickenburg as seen by New Yorkers. It’s a view I had when I first came here, but is quickly fading as my memories of New York fade away. Part of what I’m trying to achieve in this work is to capture the wonder and disbelief I felt about the southwest years ago and document it for all time.

When I started this work, I wrote quickly with only a handful of notes to guide me. I knew who the characters were, I knew who was going to die, I knew who killed him, and I knew why the murder was committed. I also knew motives for a few other characters (red herrings). The words came quickly as I developed scene after scene. Some scenes did what they were required to do: provide background information and move the plot forward. Other scenes developed character relationships and shared information about the fictional setting with readers.

About 100 pages into the work, I stalled. And I remain stalled, to this day, right there.

A little writer’s block is normally nothing to be worried about. I’d had it before and I’ll have it again. I usually snap out of it within a few weeks, depending on what I have to write. If I’m writing a computer book, I snap out of it in a day or so — I have to if I expect to continue earning a living. But a work of fiction, with no buyer lined up for the finished product, is different. There’s no one prodding me for more pages, no one asking when the next chapter will come. There’s no milestone advance check dangling in front of me, like a carrot on a stick. There’s no real reason to finish.

But I wanted to finish this work. I wanted to try to get it published. I’d read a lot of mystery novels and I felt strongly that I could craft a story with characters, puzzle, and plot that was just as good as most of them — and better than quite a few. Still, I remained stalled.

I thought about what had gotten me started in the first place. It was a combination of things. One was the idea of killing someone I couldn’t really kill. No, I couldn’t murder someone I didn’t like, but I could, in writing, tell the story of how a fictional representation of that person was killed. And, along the way, I could entertain and educate readers. And write something other than computer how-to books and articles.

The other thing that motivated me to begin was a Stephen King book. No, it wasn’t one of his horror books. Although I was a big fan of Stephen King years and years ago — when his first novel, Carrie, came out, in fact — I hadn’t read any of his work in years. But while browsing the bookstore shelves, I came across a nonfiction book he’d written: On Writing. I bought it and devoured it (with my eyes, not my teeth) in just two days. It was an excellent motivator for me. It told the story of how he’d gotten started and the way he works. It then provided guidance for writers that didn’t talk about grammar or usage or any of the nonsense many writer’s guides go into. (If you can’t structure a sentence, you shouldn’t be a writer.) The other thing conspicuously missing from the book: exercises. Stephen King wasn’t leading a “how to write a novel” course. He was telling the reader about his experiences and what he thought worked. And, given his record, that’s something worth reading.

When I finished On Writing, I felt charged up and ready to go. And I did. I wrote about 100 pages in less than two weeks. But that was it.

I tried to analyze the problem. I knew I had scenes to write, but I was worried that the plot wasn’t progressing at a fast enough pace to keep the reader interested. I felt that the problem I was posing was too easy to solve, that the murderer would be too obvious. I made notes about other character relationships, building stronger motives for other characters. And when all that thought and note-taking didn’t help, I hopped onto Amazon.com, shopped around, and bought a few more books about writing. I hoped that some of them would motivate me.

Among the books I bought were books specifically about writing mysteries. I read a few of them right away. One of them said something that chilled me to the bone. It said that if you wrote without being fully prepared, you’d get about 95 to 100 pages into your story and stall. At the time, I didn’t know how far I’d gotten, but I whipped out my laptop and checked. 98 pages. Sheesh. How did he know?

All the books made one important assumption: that the murder had been committed before the novel opens. In fact, they all seemed to assume that the story opens at the scene of the crime, with the body still in place.

My mystery doesn’t start like that. In fact, 100 pages into the novel, the victim is still alive. I’ve been giving that a lot of thought. Why isn’t he dead yet? Why haven’t I killed him? My conclusion: I’m developing his character along with the others. I want the reader to feel like I do: that he deserves to die. But in reading these how-to books, I realize that may be a mistake. To make a reader care about solving the murder, you have to make him care either about the victim or about clearing the name of a suspect he likes. Although I’m establishing one character as a likable suspect, one that the reader doesn’t want to see as guilty, I shouldn’t waste pages making the victim so unlikable.

In looking at my notes, I realize that at least another 50 pages will go by before my victim dies. That’s something I need to fix.

Years ago, I had a friend who was passionate about becoming a fiction writer. She wrote short stories, novels, and other works of fiction after work. She frequented writer’s message boards on BBSes (before Internet mailing lists), and spoke up about what she believed. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a very good attitude about the business of writing. In her mind, editors were evil and their sole purpose in life was to destroy the work and moral of writers through extensive editing and rejection. When she quit her job to write full-time, I knew what the outcome would be. I was right: a year later, she was deep in debt and still hadn’t sold a single piece of work. I don’t know where she is now or what she’s doing, but I’m pretty sure she’s not making a living as a writer. Yet there was one thing I remember her saying, one piece of advice that I can’t argue with: “If you can’t go forward, go backwards.”

I don’t know if I understand that statement the way she meant it, but it does make sense to me. If you can’t continue a story, there must be something wrong with what went before it. Go back to previous pages and examine them. Where did the plot take the wrong turn? Tear out the bad pages and write new ones.

The idea of discarding something you’ve written is sometimes referred to as “killing your darlings.” It’s a fact of life: when you write something, you often fall in love with it. It’s difficult to discard it, never to use it again. But a real writer — a professional who cares about the final product — shouldn’t be so in love with her work that she doesn’t edit out what doesn’t work. So I need to do some editing.

I have a plan of attack on my novel that isn’t fully fleshed out yet. Basically, I plan to ruthlessly cut away scenes that aren’t moving the plot forward. Some of them can be salvaged. For example, there’s a scene where John is taken on a tour of the ranch. Later, he takes a horseback ride that covers some of the same territory. Some of the places he sees on both trips are important later in the novel. But do I need to talk about them twice? No. I can cut out his first tour and keep the later one (not written yet). I can use some of the descriptions I’ve already written when I write the new material.

Another goal: kill the victim by page 50. Now I know I just told you that all the how-to books say the book should open at the murder scene with the victim already dead. But I’m not writing a murder mystery that’s just a puzzle for the readers. My story is also in entertain and inform. To do the job properly, I need to develop relationships between characters. And I can’t do that if one of the main characters is dead. Besides, I believe that by bringing the narrator into the story before the murder, I’m giving readers a clearer vision of what the events leading up to the murder are. They see what’s going on because the narrator sees what’s going on. The facts aren’t brought forward solely by the detective having question and answer sessions with witnesses and suspects. Instead, the reader is in on the plot.

Besides, I’ve read plenty of mysteries that started out with a live victim, so there’s obviously more than one way to get the job done.

But although I write for a living, I don’t write mystery novels for a living. That means I need to take care of my day job — writing computer how-to books and articles and building a helicopter tour business — first. To further complicate my life, a tenant recently trashed a rental property I’m trying to sell, and I’ve been spending a lot of time there, cleaning up her mess and dealing with contractors. So I don’t think I’ll be writing much more about Coyote Springs over the next week or two.

But I’ll be thinking about it, and that’s the most important part of writing any complex plot.

Freebies

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On why a professional writer should consider writing for free.

It was a hotly debated topic back when I started writing professionally and frequented BBS message bases (the precursors to Internet mailing lists). Some people argued that a professional writer should never write for free. In fact, one person even bragged about how much free work he turned down regularly. (Of course, he never bragged about the paid work he got, either.) Other people — including me — argued that to break into a writing career, you have to write for free, at least in the beginning. How else would you get the clips you need to establish yourself as a writer?

Clips are the beginning writer’s Holy Grail. A clip is an article or a story you have written for a magazine or other published document that has been “clipped” out to show other publishers or editors you want to write for. It’s proof that you have been published. The more clips you have, the more experience you can prove. You can then use those clips to impress the people who can get you better assignments.

Of course, the quality of a clip is just as important as the overall quantity of clips. A clip from, for example, Vogue, is worth about 50 clips from small press beauty newsletters that no one has ever heard of. So the argument that you should be paid for all of your writing does have some merit, since Vogue is far more likely to pay for your work than the sporadically published Betty’s Beauty News (if such a thing exists).

Back when I started, I was breaking into a new career that I had absolutely no formal training for. Heck, I was a financial analyst and former auditor with a degree in accounting! What did I know about journalism? I knew enough, it seems.

I knew back then that I needed clips to get started. I knew that no one would pay an unknown to write for them. So I knew I had to write a few freebies. And I did.

My first published article was for The Audit Advisor, a 12-page monthly newsletter for auditors, back in 1987. It was an article about auditing construction project budgets. I received two copies for my efforts. No money. But I had my first clip.

I wrote a few other articles for publications I can’t remember. Junky little publications. One was a writers’ newsletter. When I received my sample copy, I was appalled that my work had appeared in such a rag. It had obviously been “printed” on a photocopier. One that needed maintenance.

I got my next big break in 1989, when the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) offered me $10K to write a 4-1/2 day course about using computers for auditing. I had taught a few times for them — also for free, with permission and salary from the company I worked for at the time — and knew what they were looking for. I was also quite informed about personal computers, which were very new at the time, and how they could be used to simplify work while performing a financial audit. I asked for leave of absence from work, but they wouldn’t give it to me. So I resigned my $45K/year job (a huge amount of money in those days) and took the biggest gamble in my life: to start a new career as a writer.

I finished the course in the alloted amount of time and even taught it a few times for the IIA. They paid me to write spinoff products for it. I can’t remember what they were, but I have copies in my office somewhere. But I was not really a writer yet. I hadn’t paid enough dues, I didn’t have enough clips for what I wanted to write about: computers.

So I got to work and found some more small publications to start writing for. For free. One of them was one I cooked up: Macintosh Tips & Tricks. It was a monthly newsletter that lasted a few years in a number of formats. People paid to get it mailed to them, so I guess you can say I was being paid for my writing. But not enough.

So I supplemented my income with a job as a per diem computer trainer. I worked for two different companies. One paid pretty well; the other paid very well. It kept the mortgage paid and food on the table.

Oddly enough, my next big break was as a ghostwriter for a John Dvorak book. Dvorak was very big in the computer world back in the early nineties and his name sold books. So the publisher, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, had hired him and Bernard J. David to write a book called Dvorak’s Inside Track to the Mac. Of course, they didn’t actually write the books. They hired ghostwriters to do it. They split the chapters and farmed them out to a handful of people who were probably a lot like me: struggling to get started as writers. I got the Fonts chapter and finished it quickly. Bernard liked it so much, he gave me three more chapters. I made a whopping $500 per chapter. My name doesn’t appear on the cover, but it is in the second paragraph of the acknowledgments. A very big deal in those days.

I neglected to mention how I managed to make this connection. This is an odd story, too. I’d written a book proposal about using Macs for Telecommunications. I was rejected by the four or five publishers I sent it to. (Ted Nace at Peachpit Press wrote a kind letter saying that there wasn’t a big enough market for the book. The truth is, I was ahead of the time back in those days. A year later, telecommunications really took off.) But one of those publishers sent my proposal to an agent. The agent wanted to represent me, but I was unproven. (Not enough clips.) So he referred me to Bernard who wasn’t terribly pleased (at first) about having to give me a chapter of the book. The really odd part about it is that the agent never contacted me again. To this day, I’ve never been represented by an agent.

After that book, Bernard wanted to work with me again. We wrote The Mac Shareware Emporium for Brady Books. It didn’t do very well, primarily because another book on the same topic was published two months sooner (for reasons I won’t get into here) and it was heavily promoted on AOL. (AOL was just starting to gain momentum at the time and shareware was hot.) But I did have the ultimate clip: my name on the cover of a book.

Fast forward to today. Since leaving my full-time job, I’ve written or co-authored about 60 books. (Many of those are revisions to existing, long-lived titles.) I’ve also written hundreds of articles for magazines, newsletters, and Web sites. My published books collection (including translations) fills three shelves on a bookshelf and my clips, which I don’t even bother collecting anymore, fill a file storage box. You can see a list of everything I’ve bothered to list on my Web site’s Books and Articles pages.

So you might assume that I no longer write for free. Not so. I’m obviously writing this for free. (No one is going to pay to read the things that go on in my head and in my life.) And until recently, I wrote how-to pieces for publication on the Web.

Why? Well, the way I see it, there are two goals to writing. One goal is to make money. That’s why I expect to be paid for writing books and most articles. I have to earn a living. But the other goal is to establish yourself as an authority and spread your name around so people will look for the other things you’ve written.

For example, suppose I write an article about Faxing with Mac OS X Panther. The article gets read by a bunch of people. Some of them may have read other articles I’ve written. They like my writing style, they feel I know what I’m talking about, they think they could benefit from reading some of my other work. Like my books. So they go to the bookstore or log into Amazon.com and buy a book. And I just earned a little bit more money on book royalties. While it doesn’t really pay to have one person do this, it would be nice to have a thousand people do this. And with Web publishing, this is possible.

If you were reading carefully, you may have noticed that I used the phrase “until recently” when mentioning that I wrote how-to pieces for publication on the Web. I still do write these how-to pieces, but I’ve found Web sites that are willing to pay for them. So instead of writing them for free, hoping that readers will buy books to compensate me for this work, I can now be paid for the article. And one of these Web publishers is kind enough to put links for buying my books where the article appears. So a reader can succumb to impulse buying and order the book right then and there.

Will I still write how-to pieces for free? Yes. But only when I can’t write the same pieces for paying markets. After all, I do have to make a living. And the clips box is full.