Terry Shames – Thonie Hevron Author

By Terry Shames

Well, that was fun! I just threw my writing rituals out the window. It was unintentional, but thorough in every way.

How did this happen? First let me describe my writing “habits” (not sure they rise to the status of ritual). I write almost every day. It doesn’t have to be brilliant prose, but it has to be at least 500 words, and when I’m working on a first draft I aim for 2,000. When you write 2,000 words most days, 500 seems like a snap. So when I went on vacation for two weeks, I magnanimously told myself I only had to write 500 a day. Suddenly, five days into the trip, I realized I hadn’t written so much as a word. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about writing anything. Not only that, but I found myself unable to read. I had brought a few books I thought would be compelling, but every single one left me flat. Instead, I did Sudoku, played on-line games, chatted with people, or stared into space.

Usually when I don’t write, I feel uneasy. I wander around either physically or mentally, feeling as if a pet duck is nibbling at my heels. Annoying, but sort of sweet. I think of the duck as my intention to write. Eventually the duck herds me to my desk, hops up next to the computer and paces until I open it. Then it blinks at me while I read my emails and spend a couple of minutes on social media. Suddenly it starts to quack: “Get busy!”

If I intend to write, even if I am having trouble getting into it my ritual is to open my computer and assume the position—back straight, hands on keys, document open to previous work, cup of tea at hand. And I call on the one thing that never fails me—determination. I will write words. Even awful words. Even blah blah blah. I may start off reluctantly, but a few good sentences will come to me, and I move along.

This vacation was different. My intention was gone. Without intention, all the writing rituals in the world won’t help me. The writing rituals come after the intention. Clearly I had forgotten to pack the duck inn my suitcase. But then it occurred to me that maybe the duck was smarter than I thought. Maybe we both needed a vacation. I had been working hard—driving myself to meet some deadlines, and I was drained.

I decided to let the duck guide me, as usual. I spent a little time thinking about the characters in my work in progress and musing over another idea I have. I thought about marketing. I jotted down some ideas for a book my sister and I have been mulling over. But I wrote not one word in my current book. It felt great!

After two glorious weeks, I got back, and sure enough that crazy duck was at my desk, tapping its little webbed foot and making quacky noises. I haven’t asked what it did while I was gone, and I don’t intend to. It’s entitled to a vacation, too!

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An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock:

When the Jarrett Creek Fire Department is called to douse a blaze on the outskirts of town, they discover a grisly scene: five black young people have been murdered. Newly elected Chief of Police Samuel Craddock, just back from a stint in the Air Force, finds himself an outsider in the investigation headed by the Texas Highway Patrol. He takes an immediate dislike to John Sutherland, a racist trooper

Craddock’s fears are realized when Sutherland arrests Truly Bennett, a young black man whom Craddock knows and respects. Sutherland cites dubious evidence that points to Bennett, and Craddock uncovers facts leading in another direction. When Sutherland refuses to relent, Craddock is faced with a choice that will define him as a lawman—either let the highway patrol have its way, or take on a separate investigation himself.

Although his choice to investigate puts both Craddock and his family in danger, he prevails in getting Bennett freed. In the process he learns that his job ends at the city limits.

Terry Shames writes the best-selling Samuel Craddock series, published by Seventh Street Books. Her books have been nominated for multiple awards. A Killing at Cotton Hill won the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery. In May 2017 RT Reviews awarded the Necessary Death of Nonie Blake the Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Contemporary Mystery of 2016. MysteryPeople named Shames one of the top five Texas mystery writers of 2015. An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock, January, 2017, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Terry is president of Northern California Sisters in Crime. She lives in Berkeley with her husband and two rowdy terriers. http://www.Terryshames.com.

Terry Shames

An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock

“Superior….a timely story with resonance in the era of Black Lives Matter.” -Publishers Weekly, êSTARRED REVIEW

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When is it THE END?: Terry Shames

Not So Fast, Honey by Terry Shames

Done! Finished! The End!

I wrote several novels before I got published. When I sent them off, publishers said, “Close, but no cigar.” I always thought that if I wrote just one more book, the new book would leap the hurdle. I thought secretly, as I know many pre-published authors do, that it was “them,” not me. It took an important workshop to force me to reconsider. In the workshop, author Sophie Littlefield cautioned that if we were writing one book after another and not getting published, we ought to consider that it was not “them” (publishers) at all—it was the book. She said she knew from personal experience because she had written many books before she finally hit her groove. She urged aspiring authors to reach deep inside to write the best book we could write.

Immediately after the workshop, I came up with the idea of the Samuel Craddock series. It seemed as if it had always been there, waiting for me. I gave the first book to my writer’s group to read, and they loved it. They said I had finally found my voice. The only problem was that the end came too fast. It wasn’t the first time this criticism had been rendered in the books I wrote, but it was the first time I took it seriously.

This time I really pondered what I had to do to satisfy readers. What did not work in the end? I realized it wasn’t what I had written that was at fault, but what was left unwritten. In general, the book had depth, so what was missing? If I had gone back to my old habit of simply dismissing the critique as irrelevant, I would most likely have missed what now seems to me to have been the obvious “real” ending.

Last year, when I wrote the sixth book in the series, An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock, I hoped I had finally mastered getting to the end. I was satisfied when I sent it off to my agent. Not so fast, honey! My agent said it wasn’t really finished. After grumbling to myself that it couldn’t possibly be true, I knuckled under yet again. I asked myself these questions:

1) Have I resolved every aspect of the crime? In one of the books, I had hinted at the resolution, but had not put it in an actual scene. I realized that it’s important that the reader have the catharsis of being present for the resolution. In “Unsettling,” the answer was no, I had not resolved every aspect, but I had accounted for why it couldn’t be so—it was in my original intention.

2) Had I met my original intention? Sometimes in the writing, a book strays from the original goal. This is okay, but the end needs to address what actually happens in the book.

3) Have all the characters been accounted for? In the first book in the series, I added the last chapter after my critique group said it felt unfinished. I didn’t know enough to actually ask myself these questions, but by luck I came up with a “finishing” chapter that accounted for a character who had slipped away. And this turned out to be the answer to how to finish An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock. One of the characters I loved had simply dropped off the page. It took staring into space and really considering how to bring her back in before the answer came to me clearly. I actually cried when I got to the real end.

Had I depended only on myself to get these books right, the ending to all of them in the series would have been stunted. Why can I not see this for myself? I think it’s because I’m so glad to get to the end, that I stop writing the best book I can write, and just write a “good enough” book—the kind that got rejected again and again before I got published. That’s where a good critique group or a good agent who reads critically comes in. I keep hoping that one day I will be able to ask those three important questions on my own, but until then I depend not on the kindness of strangers, but of people I trust to help me get it right, all the way to the end.

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Terry Shames writes the award-winning Samuel Craddock series, published by Seventh Street Books. It’s her understanding that fans of the novels fall into two categories: women want to marry Samuel Craddock, and men want to be him! Find more about Terry on her website, www.terryshames.com. You can also find her on her author Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/TShames/.

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Read Thonie Hevron’s books:

By Force or Fear, Intent to Hold, and Malice Aforethought are available through Amazon.

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