One of the first tenets pounded into my head in every writing class I ever took was this: Write what you know.  We’ve all heard it.  But when most authors in my genre sit down to write a book, they’re faced with the realization that they know little or nothing about much of the information the story will demand.  Like myself, most of my colleagues in this business began with ignorance concerning police procedure, forensic investigation, firearms, ballistics, or psychopathology.  (Some of the lucky authors—Michael Black and Robin Burcell and Michael McGarrity—were honest-to-god cops before they turned to writing, but they’re the exception.)  So what do we do?  We do research.

Okay, it’s confession time.  I almost always begin my research these day by turning to the Internet.  It’s a wealth of information (and misinformation).  The Internet gives me an idea of the scope of what I’m trying to understand, and more often than not points me in the right direction.  From there, I usually move to reading: periodicals, books, newspapers, all the more reliable sources.  And finally, I make contact with someone in the field who has firsthand experience with whatever it is I need to know.  Over the years, I’ve talked with beat cops, homicide investigators, coroners, M.E.s, rural sheriffs, agents of the FBI, the Secret Service, and Minnesota’s own Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.  I’ve talked with guides in the great Northwoods of Minnesota, divers in Lake Superior, morticians (got a really great tour of a prep room!), judges, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, emergency room doctors and nurses.  And, of course, I talk a lot with the Ojibwe.

Despite the fact that I’ve been at this for a very long time now, I’m still reluctant to approach a source I don’t know.  I’m always a little afraid I’ll be intruding somehow.  But the truth has always been that people love to talk about what they do.  Most people are incredible generous with their time and their knowledge.  And I always learn something of amazing value.

Here’s an example:  In my stand alone thriller, The Devil’s Bed, I needed to have a mental patient incarcerated in a high-security facility make an escape.  I made arrangements to tour the Regional Treatment Center in St. Peter, Minnesota, where the most dangerous of the state’s criminally ill are confined for observation and treatment.  It turned out that the facilities manager, a guy named Tom Kramer, was a fan of my work, and he gave me a stellar tour.  What I found was an imposing complex surrounded by high fences with razor wire and with multiple perimeter alarms.  At the end, I turned to Tom and said, “I don’t know how anyone could escape from this place.”  Tom smiled and said, “Oh, but I do.”  He proceeded to describe for me the most recent escape from the facility, and it became the foundation for the method of escape I used in The Devil’s Bed.

This kind of thing happens all the time.  Meeting these generous folks, hearing their fascinating stories, filling in the vast areas of ignorance in my own knowledge, these are all perks of my job.  God, I love what I do!

I just recently returned from a research visit to a fascinating and little known area of Minnesota called the Northwest Angle, where the book I’m currently writing for the series is set.  In my next blog, I’ll tell you about that incredible visit.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the semi-annual retreat held by my writer’s group.  It took all of Saturday and most of Sunday.  There were eight of us.  We each read aloud from a piece we’re working on and the others read along silently and then critiqued the work.  By Sunday afternoon, we were all tired and at the same time energized as hell.

I’ve been a part of this writer’s group for eighteen years.  We have a name.  We call ourselves Crème de la Crime.  We’re all mystery writers.  Some of us are published, some are very close to publishing, and some probably never will publish.  Whenever I’m asked what I consider the most important element in my development as a writer, I always begin with Crème de la Crime.

In 1992, when I sat down to begin work on the manuscript that eventually became my first published novel, Iron Lake, and decided it was going to be a mystery (because I was desperate to be published and I stupidly thought any moron ought to be able to write and publish a mystery) I found myself stymied.  I wasn’t a great reader of mysteries at that time.  My father was a high school English teacher, and he raised his children on literature with a capital L.  Growing up, I didn’t even read The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.  So I didn’t know the first thing about how write in the genre.  What did I do?  I took a course at The Loft (a well-known center in the Twin Cities, devoted to the written word) called, I believe, How To Write A Mystery.  The class was taught by Mary Logue, a marvelous writer in many genres, including mystery.  It was a great experience, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.  When the class ended, ten of us who’d been students decided to form a continuing support group, and Crème de la Crime was born.

For eighteen years, we’ve met every Thursday evening to critique one another’s work.  I recall vaguely that in the beginning some adjustment was necessary for all of us.  Hearing your work criticized is never easy, and learning how to critique effectively is a learned skill.  Some of the original group didn’t survive the adjustment period.  Those of us who did have greatly strengthened our editorial ability over the nearly two decades of our association.

Every writer needs a good editorial eye.  And writers need to hear constantly that whether they’re published or not, the path they’re on is worthwhile.  (Our culture views success in so narrow a focus that publication and huge sales seem to be the most gauge of writer’s ability; what a travesty!)  A writer’s group can provide both these very necessary forms of support.

That said, not all writer’s groups are beneficial.  Like any human association, a writer’s group can be dysfunctional, and if you find yourself in one of these, get out as quickly as you can.  In my own mind, there are a few elements that can ensure the success of a group.  First, all members should be focused on the same genre.  Poets or essayists, for example, or even many literary fiction writers don’t have the frame of reference to critique a mystery effectively.  A group should meet regularly, and members should be willing to make that time commitment to the group.  And finally, writers should learn how to critique; there are a number of resources out there with good suggestions in this regard, but the bottom line is be respectful, be encouraging, and be honest.

I wish good luck to those of you searching for a group, and I hope sincerely that your experience is as profoundly beneficial as mine has been.

Every good author does research to make sure the facts are right.  But sometimes mistakes occur.  More often than not they’re just stupid errors, things we think we know, so why look them up?  Or continuity errors—we start with a particular make of automobile in a scene and somewhere along the line change our minds and don’t catch the shift from a Camaro to a Mustang.  Until astute readers call our attention to the faux pas.

Examples from my own work:

In my second novel, Boundary Waters, the opening scene has a man deep in the wilderness of northern Minnesota holding a burning stick from a beech tree.  Why a beech tree?  I wanted the stick to be a particularly hard wood, so I chose beech.  I’ve seen beech trees in Minnesota, so I figured I was on solid ground.  The book comes out, and immediately I get an email that praises the story but very clearly points out that there are NO BEECH TREES IN NORTHERN MINNESOTA!  Not true, I think, and consult my Minnesota tree handbook.  Where it states emphatically that there ARE beech trees in Minnesota, but none north of a line running approximately through the middle of the state.  Crap.

In Red Knife, I committed two egregious errors, caught by many readers.  The first involves a statement by a character in which he quotes a famous Southern commander in the Civil War.  The statement is one we’ve all heard.  To win a battle the bottom line is that you have to get there “the firstest with the mostest.”  I’ve known that line since the 6^th grade and I know it’s attributed to Nathan Bedford Forrest.  In Red Knife, however, off the top of my head, I gave credit to Jeb Stuart.  Man, do I get a lot of email about that one.  But that’s not all.  There’s a significant continuity error in a scene that’s only recently been pointed out to me.  In a climactic confrontation between the Ojibwe and some very bad drug runners, an important gun magically morphs from a Beretta to a Glock in the course of a couple of pages.

One of the funniest errors deals with chronology.  In one of the books, Stevie, Cork’s son, begins the story in the third grade.  Near the end, he’s in the second grade.  Stevie’s a bright kid, so the fault isn’t his.  Just a stumble from the guy who created him.

All authors make mistakes.  We’re working on such a large and complex scale in our thinking that sometimes we err in the small stuff.  Or we hope that it’s only in the small stuff.  But even these errors are embarrassing and unfortunate, because any error, no matter how small, can pull a reader out of the story.  And no writer wants that.

If you find an mistake in my work, I don’t mind that you write me and point it out.  Just don’t gloat, okay?

I’ve taken a long break from blogging, for two reasons.  First, I’m not sure anyone reads blogs, mine or most others.  And second, honestly, I’d rather be writing fiction.

The first book I ever tried to write was horribly—embarrassingly—autobiographic.  Isn’t every author’s first attempt?  Since that time, I’ve written only what I imagine might happen in lives that I’ve imagined as well.  Tapping into my own real life, my own real thoughts seems eerily as if I’m opening a very private window and I don’t have any idea who might be peeking in.  Do you understand?

That said, the advice from all quarters is that one should blog.  So I’ll give it another shot.  I won’t promise a lot.  This is sort of a “we’ll see how it goes” proposition.

Okay, so what I’ll talk about this week is, ta-da!, audio books.

I love audio books.  I travel a lot and audio books are my preferred form of entertainment on the road.  Miles disappear when I’m deep in a good story being told to me well.  I choose books from all over the spectrum of literature.  I remember a terrific road trip to Wyoming to research Heaven’s Keep. Dickens’ Great Expectations kept me enthralled across a couple thousand miles of desolate high plains.  I’ve listened to John Grisham and Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy and Anne Tyler and Michael Connelly and Deborah Crombie and on and on.

Part of what makes an audiobook great is the reader, of course.  I love the way Will Patton reads James Lee Burke’s work.  And back in the day when I still enjoyed Janet Evanovich—this was a long time ago—Lori Petty’s voice was for me the true voice of Stephanie Plum.  But a reader can also ruin a good book.  I’ve punched the “Eject” button on a number of occasions when some bozo was absolutely butchering a story.

I’m often asked if my own works are available as audiobooks.  The answer is a resounding yes!  Every book has been produced on audio, but they may not all be easy to track down at this point.  The first three in the series—Iron Lake, Boundary Waters, and Purgatory Ridge—were put out by a company called Books In Motion.  Their customer base is over-the-road truckers (ergo, Books In Motion).  So those audiotapes are available primarily in remote truck stops in places like Grand Island, Nebraska or Liberty, Kansas.  The middle books in the series—Blood Hollow, Mercy Falls, and Copper River were done as audio CDs by Recorded Books, and a fine job those folks did.  (Recorded Books has picked up the rights to the first three in the series and is in the process of creating audio CDs, which should all be available very soon.)  From Thunder Bay on, Brilliance Audio has put out the audio CDs of my work.  And, oh, do I love the job they do.

Buck Shirner is the guy who reads my work for Brilliance.  He’s absolutely terrific.  His first reading was Thunder Bay, and that audiobook was nominated for an Audie, the audiobook industry’s version of the Academy Awards.  His most recent reading—Heaven’s Keep—earned him an Earphones Award, given by AudioFile Magazine for ”truly exceptional presentations that excel in narrative voice and style, vocal characterizations, appropriateness for the audio format, and enhancement of the text.”  If you haven’t tried me on audio, my suggestion is that you begin with a reading by Buck Shirner.

If you’re interested in the whole oeuvre on audio, here are the links for all three companies that have produced my work.  You can find everything of mine that you might be looking for:

Books In Motion:  www.booksinmotion.com

Recorded Books: www.recordedbooks.com

Brilliance Audio:  www.brillianceaudio.com

That’s all for now.  Talk to you later.

For anyone who’s attempted to follow my blogs, you’re aware that I’ve been away from blogging for a while.  It’s the book tour.  Eats up all my time.  That and trying to meet deadline on the next Cork O’Connor novel.  But in the meantime, I did compose a blog entry that I think may be of interest, particularly to anyone who’s stuck in their writing at the moment.

I managed during the early part of my tour to spend a week in Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast.  And something amazing happened there.

For those of you who aren’t aware of it, I lived most of my high school years in Oregon.  I still have some family in Portland, so I come back periodically.  But not just for family.  Oregon is a beautiful place, and no more so than along its remarkable coastline.

Lincoln City is a resort town.  It has all the downsides of that kind of community.  Too many shops selling crap, too many cars crowding the single main street (the famous 101, the Pacific Coast Highway), too many signs screaming at you:  “Come in here!”  “Buy here!”  “See the amazing whatever in here!”  It proved, however to be a wonderful place to stay.

We rented a house perched high on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  The view, as you might imagine, was stunning.  We watched whales cavort not three hundred yards from shore.  We saw seals in the surf.  The sunsets were glorious.  At night, you could walk on the silver road the full moon paved across the dark sea.

That was all fabulous, of course.  But this was also a working vacation for me.  I have a deadline to meet—the next Cork O’Connor book—and things weren’t going well.  I’d been stymied over the ending.  The book is called Vermilion Drift.  It’s the story of a serial killer’s spree in the early 60s that comes back to haunt Cork in the current day.  There are dark, grisly secrets that Cork uncovers about his family’s past.  It’s a pretty good tale, but I simply couldn’t bring it to a close in a way that satisfied me.  I’d been stuck for weeks on that ending.

The house had a hot tub.  Every morning after I’d put in my time writing, I shucked my clothes, threw on my suit, and hit the hot tub.  Like the house, it sat at the lip of a sheer cliff.  And like the view from the house, what I could see from the hot tub was nothing short of remarkable.  I sat with all that relaxing, bubbling hot water swirling around my body, and with that incredible sky and ocean and coastline to rest my eyes on.  And my mind, oh my mind just opened up.  The day before I left Lincoln City, sitting in the hot tub in the morning, the closing for Vermilion Drift descended on me, drifting down like a feather from an angel’s wing.  And it was good.  It was very good.

I’ve been doing a lot of book events lately to promote my most recent novel, Heaven’s Keep. I’ve been flying or driving long distances, eating badly, getting too little sleep, exhausting myself.  And all the time, the next book deadline has been sitting on my shoulders.  What I found on this cliff house in Oregon is that there is great value in a vacation.  Beyond the obvious—the loosening of knots in both mind and body—currents of creative energy, blocked by the pressures of busy days, begin to flow again and breakthroughs become possible.  Weights are lifted.  Smiles return.  And the future becomes a beautiful thing to contemplate.  My wife assures me I could achieve the same sense of peace and purpose with yoga.  I don’t do yoga.  But vacations I’m pretty good at.