Let me offer one last "how to write popular fiction" tip. Dean Koontz has adopted it in his latest opus (which, by the way, nails most of the earlier points I mentioned) so you're in good company if you choose to do the same. Write short chapters. Embarrassingly short chapters. You've tapped out five pages that exist as a single moment in time? Now they're a chapter! You've just completed a single page that connects to nothing else in the story line? Another chapter!
  
James Patterson is famous for using buckets of chapters in his books -- some of those chapters are no longer than a paragraph -- and he's done okay in the book biz. When Dean adopted the shorter-is-better philosophy for The Silent Corner, he was simply following in the master's footsteps. I've heard a couple of theories as to why the bite-sized chapter is so popular. One of my friends, Sue, believes multiple chapters creates an artificial sense of urgency to a story. Look how quickly those chapters are flying by! -- and the reader doesn't have time to be bored before another chapter has come along. The Good Witch says she thinks it's because today's readers are so easily distracted, they lose their train of thought if they have to stop mid-chapter...so make every chapter so short, they NEVER have to stop mid-chapter. And, yes, the readers might lose their train of thought, anyway, but they won't puzzle over it for long because they have a new chapter to read! 
 
I'm not a fan of the nugget-length chapter, but I'm in the minority here. All I know is, my next manuscript is going to have thirty chapters because that's the deal I made months ago. So how am I doing on that manuscript? I managed absolutely zip-a-dee-doo-dah work on my writing this week. Instead I went to San Antonio. The picture above? A not very good shot of San Antonio.

It was a last minute thing, this trip, but it provided an opportunity for us to see, hug, and kiss some family members that we haven't seen, hugged, or kissed for much too long. We rented a car, drove for two days, and did the Airbnb thing when we got into Texas. Neither of us had ever been to Texas or San Antonio before, so we hugged/kissed, did the River Walk, ate gloriously-delicious Mexican food, and touristed our way over to the Alamo.
 
When one of our family members asked if we wanted to see the Alamo, I told him, "I think I've heard of that. What is the Alamo, exactly?" "You don't remember the Alamo?!" he replied, shocked, and I told him I was only kidding. I don't think he believed me. This is my cell phone shot of the Alamo, which is much smaller than I imagined from the movies. It was fun to see but, overall, my feeling is I won't need to see it again for a decade or so.

We made some lovely new friends (but they refused to move to Arizona, so we'll probably see them as often as we see the Alamo) and had such a good time, we decided we didn't even mind the long drive, the damage to our bank account, or the mosquitoes that fed upon us as if we were the insect-version of gloriously-delicious Mexican food.
 
But then there was the heat....
 
How hot was it? This is the gooey image of the vitamins I left in the car one morning, and only remembered by the afternoon. It was sweltering in Texas, sweltering in New Mexico, and sweltering in Arizona when we returned. When we stopped for lunch in Phoenix, it was 119 degrees. But it was, according to Glynn, "A dry heat. A terrible, strength-sapping, life-devouring dry heat" so we had that going for us.
 
Now that I'm home, it's time to focus on that slow-growing manuscript. If this is the last blog you see for a few weeks, please know I'm hard at work, trying to finish...well, some piece of the story. It's time, don't you think?

Last week, I offered my eight tips on writing popular fiction because I was aggravated that John Grisham promised to do the same but only managed to provide some standard writing advice. I may not have provided much that was fresh or new but I gave it a real try. It's not too late, J.G. You can still step up and give it the ol' college try.
 
Today, let me offer two quickies in regards to writing popular fiction before I go sit in a corner with my notepad and try not to melt. In my usually happy hometown, we're in the middle of a miserable heat wave. In our town, the weather doesn't usually come this hot, this soon, so -- fingers crossed -- let's hope this is the worst of the summer in Arizona. Somehow, I don't think so.
 
As an addendum to last week's post on writing popular novels, let me add that it never hurts to add an adorable animal into the story. I'm told that pet lovers are just a touch more ready to buy if their favorite creature is part of the mix. As you probably know from a generation of best-seller lists, cats have a large fan base. So do dogs, and some authors (I'm looking at you, D. Koontz) are eager to feature them heavily. I have a pair of friends that can't understand why horses aren't more visible in current fiction and I've met a few people who feel that ferrets are the best pets of all.
 
Since I've never shared my life with one of those long-tailed beauties, I'm not ready to embrace ferret fiction. I think it's good to write from a position of passion, and I've loved all of my cats and dogs. If you find a Chihuahua in one of our books, you'll know why.
 
My second and last tip for today? Write more quickly than I do. For years, publishers believed that authors should write only one manuscript a year. If they dared to exceed that count, said the Great Publishing Brain Trust, their readers would tire of them and go away. It turns out, the publishers were incorrect. There are many, many readers who are ready to buy as many novels as their favorite author can create. If you want to be one of those authors, you're best served by putting out at least two novels a year. More would be better. If you can somehow knock out a novel a month, you'll only build your readership.
 
If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to the next chapter on my novel. As the Good Witch was kind enough to remind me on Monday, it's taking me f-o-r-e-v-e-r. *sigh*

Last week, I mentioned that John Grisham was offering his Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Popular Fiction to the outside world. For free. I provided a link (here:) so that we could all learn from the master’s feet. J.G. is fantastically successful and his advice is worthy of notice. After all, he produces best-sellers like I produce terrific home-cooked meals – once, sometimes twice, a year.

The informational piece was short, under 400 words, and John only had eight suggestions to offer in regards to writing popular fiction. Going over it twice, I found it a ten minute read, tops. Not a bad deal, as far as I was concerned. The New York Times got an exclusive, John squeezed out a little extra newspaper space, and Grisham fans got some free Grisham. Me, I had an excuse to write an extra-short blog, allowing me to get back to my current manuscript. It was a win-win-win from all angles.
 
This weekend, though, I read the column a third time and decided that Mr. Grisham was playing a shell game. He was offering his advice on writing popular fiction, but his “little pearls” of wisdom were rather bland. To his credit, his opening disclaimer admitted he was providing absolutely zip in the way of originality. These simple and oft-repeated tips had everything to do with producing some kind of novel (in a short two years), and nothing to do with producing a popular novel. That seemed like an important distinction to me, and I had to wonder why he wrote what he did.
 
I’m still wondering, but there’s a chance the answer was to be found in a different section of the NYT. In his interview there, J.G. shared that his novel sales have slumped – “The biggest change for me has been that I’m selling about half the books I sold before the Great Recession” – so he may have hesitated to share any real wisdom with the outside world. No one wants new competition, and John may have been less than eager to have a thousand would-be Grishams going step-by-step to replicate his success. The secrets he’s learned, he’s keeping. Only a dummy would spill the good stuff.
 
Which is why it’s so clever of you to come by this website. I absolutely got to where I am as a writer by doing foolish things, and I’m going to do another one here. Since J.G. wasn’t willing to really provide the goods, I will. Better yet, you don’t need a newspaper subscription to read them.
 
Anne Glynn’s Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Popular Fiction
 
Grisham started his article with a few disclaimers so I’m going to throw some in mine. The first thing is, there are always exceptions to the rule. The second is: Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules. A lot of successful books don’t touch any of these marks, I know it, you know it, and so what? If you’re a decent writer who actually plants her butt in a chair and gets words written, I believe you’ll find a larger audience if you follow these suggestions.
 
Also, I’m not a big best-selling author, so you’re right to wonder if you should pay any attention to what I say here. Fair enough.
 
 
1.      HIGH CONCEPT IS A GOOD THING
 
John’s first novel, A Time to Kill, had a strong concept: What if a girl’s father killed her assailants? On release, it sold less than five thousand copies. His second novel was high concept: What if a young lawyer found his dream job, only to learn he was working for the Mob – and the Mob killed all of the lawyers who tried to leave the firm? It was the stronger “what if” of the second novel that intrigued the movie studios, insured a bidding war, and launched his career.
 
The high concept novel I had to buy, the second I heard the story line? Michael Crichton’s JURASSIC PARK.
 
2.      YOU WANT TO BUILD AN AUDIENCE? BUILD A SERIES
 
Buckets of best-sellers are one-and-done, but others have built an audience more slowly. Robert B. Parker inched his hero, Spenser, onto the best-seller list, one novel at a time. He ended up writing almost forty Spenser novels – and still more were produced after his death, because, as you know, money. Parker went on to create another series character (Sunny Randall) and another (Jesse Stone) and another (Cole and Hitch)…because series sell.
​ 
Dean Koontz, a writer who follows publishing trends with an eagle eye, has developed a couple of series characters, too, over the course of his career. According to USA Today, it paid off: “In recent years, his series featuring Odd Thomas – a young fry cook with paranormal powers, including the ability to see the spirits of the ‘lingering dead’ – has been particularly popular.” If he did it, you should think about doing it, too.
 
3.      J.G.  DID OFFER THIS LITTLE NUGGET: NO PROLOGUES
 
The fourth of Grisham’s eight NYT “little pearls” was for writers to avoid offering prologues to their stories. He doesn’t say why, so let me share: Some readers skip them automatically. If the prologue is important to the storyline and the reader didn’t bother with it, confusion will soon follow. On the other hand, if the prologue isn’t important to the storyline, why was it written in the first place?
 
Agents and small publishers have both told me they don’t want to see prologues, either. You can probably offer a best-selling exception to this rule (for example, William Goldman’s MARATHON MAN), but you should know that the world doesn’t get more excited when a story opens with one. Sometimes that’s all it takes for a would-be reader to put your novel down.
 
If you think no one will notice if you sneak by using a “foreword” instead of a “prologue”, ding dong, still wrong.
 
4.      YOUR HERO SHOULD BE AMAZING. ALSO, AMUSINGLY IMPERFECT
 
The Spenser character that Robert B. Parker created? He’s a skilled fighter, a terrific amateur chef, a gifted lover, and catnip to almost all of the women he meets (Glynn doesn’t remember a single Spenser novel where one woman or another doesn’t lust for the detective upon meeting him), yet he’s cursed with an inability to stop offering funny quips at the wrong time. Odd Thomas, Dean Koontz’s guy, can see spirits, but he also knows everything about every gun ever produced, as well as being an incredible shot…but he’s also a quirky optimist, undeterred by the misery of his visions.
 
That’s what Glynn has told me on those two characters. Me, I favor Sherlock Holmes (supernaturally brilliant, not so good with people, enjoys cocaine maybe a bit much) and Hercule Poirot (genius detective, humorously fussy, and there’s the egg-shaped head thing), but they fit into this category, too. One of the bold, underlined points here is, your hero has to be close to perfect but with a flaw or two. These shouldn’t be an unpleasant flaws.
 
What do I mean by an unpleasant flaw? In real life, the Good Witch knew a very handsome fellow (so far, so good), who was also a gifted sculptor (even better), but he unfortunately had a habit of picking his nose in public. She said he indulged in this so frequently, it almost seemed like his hobby. If you want to write popular fiction, keep the handsome, keep the sculptor, lose the nose hockey.
 
5.      YOUR HEROINE? AMAZING, BUT ALSO JAW-DROPPINGLY BEAUTIFUL.  SOMEHOW, SHE DOESN’T REALIZE THIS
 
That Dean Koontz best-selling writer guy? He’ll happily create a hero who is fairly ordinary in looks (yet nearly a superhero in other aspects of life), but darned if the hero’s significant other can be anything less than a supermodel in appearance. She somehow can’t know this, because vanity is an unappealing feature in people, but everyone else is quite aware of her beauty. It makes me laugh each time I see this in one of his novels, but I keep reading.
 
Glynn can be a little less agreeable about such things, though. He’d only started Jeffery Deaver’s THE STEEL KISS when he threw the paperback into the donate pile. One of the main characters, Amelia Sachs, is an ace detective and championship marksman (therefore, amazing) who used to be a high fashion model. She’s a cop, but remains a breath-taking redhead (jaw-dropping beauty) even while hunting the bad guys.
 
“Baloney, baloney, baloney,” Glynn told me, not using the word ‘baloney’, “never happen!” I’m telling you, if you want to collect Jeffery Deaver-like royalties, your heroine needs to be a knock-out.
 
6.      AVOID A FRAGMENTED NARRATIVE
 
If you’re hoping to reach the largest possible number of readers, you want to provide a clean storyline that goes from beginning to middle to end. Throw in a few flashbacks (or, God help you, a flash forward or two), and there’s a certain part of the audience that will abandon you. They want their stories to go from A to B to C, without a sharp, surprising return to B a little later on, or a sudden swing forward to Q. They don’t want to struggle to understand the narrative.
 
Think of it this way: When you were little, and your father carried a book into your room at bedtime, you couldn’t wait to hear the story he was about to tell. When Dad sat at your bedside, reading “The Three Little Pigs”, you felt the tension building as the Wolf prepared to blow the first pig’s house down. You wished he’d turn the pages faster, so that you could hear what happened next. But if Dad interrupted the narrative flow to say, “As he prepared to huff and puff, Wolf couldn’t help but remember when he was 15 and on the junior varsity track team. As a young athlete, he hadn’t built his lung capacity as he should have, causing him to embarrass himself during the big track meet. Let us go now to his days at Franklin High,” you’d lose interest. The next time he carried in a book, you’d hope it would be “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.
 
Don’t give your readers the opportunity to lose interest.
 
7.      TELL THE STORY FROM A SINGLE POINT OF VIEW
 
This is almost 6-B, and the bit of advice you’re most likely to discard. Feel free to do so, but know that you’ll lose some of your audience along the way. When you flip the P.O.V., there are a tiny percentage of people who will get confused. A tiny percentage of that tiny percentage will leave the story then (or offer a review that includes, “It gets confusing at times, but…” which is deadly for new sales).
 
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
 
8.      A HAPPY ENDING IS A GOOD THING
 
Glynn hates it when people flip to the back of one of our books to see how the story ends. Stephen King hates this kind of thing, too, so my guy is in good company. It turns out, there are a lot of writers who feel the same way. They’re all in the wrong, mind you, because they’ve forgotten the most important thing. Once a manuscript is in print, it’s the reader who is king (sorry, Steve).
 
When I pick up a novel, I read the pitch on the dustjacket or from the back of the paperback. If the storyline intrigues me, I flip through the first few pages to see if I like the writing. If that keeps me interested, I turn to the last chapter. If the story appears to end unhappily – love is lost, life is lost, the heroine loses – I put down the book and walk away.
 
There are a lot of people who feel the same way. In real life, justice doesn’t always prevail, the good guys sometimes lose, and we’ve all shed too many tears. That’s real life. When it comes to fiction, most of us welcome a victory. No one has ever turned to the back of a book, read the ending, and said, “I’m worried this will leave me feeling good. I’d better not get it.”
 
See you next week.

​​John Grisham is hitting the book circuit to promote his new novel. As part of this effort, the best-selling author allowed The New York Times to print his “Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Popular Fiction”. He opened that piece by admitting his suggestions aren’t strikingly original. I’d hoped he’d offer some super-cool secret tips (such as, “I became a best-selling author only after I pledged my undying loyalty to the Great Old Ones. Hail Cthulhu!”) or provide anything that might possibly spark a lively conversation (like, perhaps, “Eliminate the competition. I’ve invited James Patterson to my island fortress, where I’ll hunt him for sport”).
 
So what advice did he offer? The biggie was that a writer needs to produce a new page of words every day. To quote Grisham, “That’s about 200 words, or 1,000 words a week. Do that for two years and you’ll have a novel that’s long enough.”
 
This led me to realize a couple of things. First, John Grisham believes a novel needs to total roughly 104,000 words to be worthy of publication. Secondly, what a relaxed life he lives if he limits himself to his recommended page count. Today’s blog, for example? It’s 200 words.

​Over the weekend, my guy and I went out for a walk. When we’re writing together, we often walk around the neighborhood, talking about plotting or characterization issues. Since the current writing project has a single author, I was the only one with an issue to share during this stroll. My issue on Sunday was the difficulty in changing my hero from a happily pleasant civil engineer to a dark and brooding…well, civil engineer. There’s no reason a civil engineer can’t be dark and brooding.
 
Or am I wrong? I’m still feeling my way around this kind of character. I’m not a dark-and-brooding kind of woman on most days, which has resulted in the majority of our heroes being pretty optimistic kinds of men. In an effort to mix things up a little, I’m going against my natural tendencies to create a hero that’s comfortable in the shadows.
 
It wouldn’t be that big of an issue for me, I imagine, if I was starting from scratch. Instead, I’m on Chapter 22 of a 30-chapter romance. It feels like quite the challenge, indeed.
 
When I spoke of my troubles in making my adjustments, Glynn made agreeing-noises and sympathetic sounds. Except for football season, he’s as far from dark and brooding as any man can be so he doesn’t truly understand my plight at all. During a break in conversation, he said, “You should make the hero someone like me,” and he said it in all seriousness. Since I didn’t know how to reply at that moment – he’s my joy, but not so much a Harlequin hero – I pretend I don’t hear him.
 
He lets it pass, and we go on.
 
As we walk, I can hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. Living in California and Illinois, I’d often heard thunder, but it never sounded like this did, growling as it rolled across the Arizona mountains. I could smell the presence of rain all around us; another trick of these mountains is how rain can pour in sheets directly across the street, and never spill a drop on your own house. It’s Nature’s own CGI. Fairly magical.
 
I stop walking to enjoy the sight of the dark storm clouds in the not-so-distance. Glynn steps in behind me and puts his arms around my waist. The smell of fresh rain grows all the stronger, and I inhale deeply.
 
“I love this smell,” I tell him.
 
“What smell?”
 
“This smell. The smell of rain in the air.”
 
“Oh, that’s just me,” he says softly at my ear. “It’s my new cologne.”
 
For the second time on this walk, I don’t know what to say.
 
He continues, “It’s called Rainglow. My cologne, I mean.”
 
Honestly, he said these nonsensical things because…that’s all I’ve got. Just because. He said them with a straight face, as if lightning had struck my head and I might be so confused, I’d believe him.
 
Turning around to face him, I said, “Your cologne.”
 
“Picked it up when I made a Target run. Last Thursday.”
 
“Did you? Interesting. Products have commercials. I don’t think I’ve seen any commercials for ‘Rainglow’.”
 
“Probably missed ‘em. We DVR everything, so you probably just zipped right past it. Maybe more than once.”
 
“That’s a shame.” I wasn’t going to give up so easily. “Products also have slogans and tag lines. Hai Karate had, ‘Be careful how you use it’.” (I don’t know why I remembered that.) “Old Spice used, ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’. What’s the slogan for Rainglow?”
 
Without missing a beat, he said, “Rainglow: Be Your Woman’s Rainbow.”  
 
“That is the saddest, least sexy slogan ever!” I said. He smiled. Then we agreed that maybe we should get inside before lightning struck either of our heads.
 
And that whole silly exchange is why my partner will never find himself as a romance novel hero in a book I write. But if I were to start a comic strip….