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Gearing Up
It’s coming! Will I survive? The hardcover version of Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie
New – April 20, 2016
Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery already is available for pre-order, but on April 20, 2016 the print and e-book versions will launch. I’m excited and scared. I thought the hard work was over – after all, I wrote the book, but now I need to publicize it.
b) Promoting is Gauche – and that’s why nobody bought your books after your family and friends helped the first day along (enough said)
c) Calm, Kind, and All Over the Place – Where does Hank get all that energy from? Surely eating five crackers at a sitting isn’t the source. (Can’t be duplicated except the kindness)
d) Volunteer Persona – leaves no time for writing or personal work (can well understand that one)
e) Networker – relationship builder (good if combined with c and d but problematic with style a)
f) Nurturer – helps others (good when combined with elements of c, d, and e)
g) Stumbler – what will be will be, but I’ll try (a natural fit)
Guest Blogger Sally Carpenter: Five Days to Make a Sitcom and Solve a Murder
Sally Carpenter
Five Days to Make a Sitcom and Solve a Murder by Sally Carpenter
A mystery writer starting a novel has the perplexing task of structure—what events will happen and in what order. Plotters will painstakingly map out each plot point, sometimes on index cards or sticky notes that are endlessly shuffled. Pansters will dive in, hoping that they don’t get stuck halfway in.
One pleasure of writing my new book, The Sinister Sitcom Caper, was that the subject matter provided me with a built-in structure. My protagonist is Sandy Fairfax, a 38-year-old former teen idol making a comeback. He’s the guest star on Off-Kelter, the lowest rated TV show of the 1993 fall season. When a healthy young actor drops dead at his feet, Sandy unwittingly investigates.
I fit Sandy’s sleuthing around a standard sitcom rehearsal schedule of that era. Whereas most modern sitcoms are shot on location and given a laugh track, in the 1900s sitcoms were filmed in studio soundstages in front of live audiences, as with Off-Kelter.
A sitcom took five days to rehearse and shoot (the script and the set designs were finished before then). The rehearsal time ran from Monday through Friday or Wednesday through Tuesday, which allowed the camera crews to work on two shows per week and avoided a logjam of too many audiences on the lot at once.
The first day—Monday, in my book—began with a table read where the actors, director and writers sat around a table and read the script aloud. The actors gave their opinions on lines that didn’t work and the writers began revisions. Usually a lunch break followed with rehearsals in the afternoon and running through Wednesday.
My story begins with the table read, an easy way to introduce the characters as they arrive for rehearsal. To add more conflict, I made the director, Royce Jobbe, an obnoxious person that Sandy had worked/clashed with on a prior show.
The mysterious death occurs Monday afternoon. This allows Sandy only four-and-a-half days to solve the case (a nice “ticking clock”), since after the show is taped he will no longer have access to the studio lot. People are generally not allowed onto studio lots unless they are working on a show in progress or have a guest pass from an executive.
To break up the monotony of rehearsals, I gave Sandy a preshoot on Wednesday. Some scenes in a sitcom may be filmed in advance and then screened for the live audience. Preshoots are used for action filmed on location or in the backlot; a hazardous scene involving, fire, smoke or explosions; special effects; or scenes with children who may be tired during the live shoot. Sandy performs a dance routine in the backlot (actually the scene was just an excuse to have Sandy boogie. He’s a terrific dancer). The shoot turns deadly when he’s nearly drowned by the rain machine.
Thursday is camera blocking. The four cameras and crew are brought in so the camera setups for each scene can be fixed. Camera placements are marked with bits of colored tape on the floor. Since this work is long and tedious, stand-ins are used for the actors. This gives Sandy a big chunk of spare time to do some on-lot sleuthing, which ends up with him tied up by the villain inside an unused soundstage.
Friday is show time! The actual filming the show with the audience makes a natural climax for the book. The day begins with dress rehearsal. At 4 p.m. the cast and crew break for an early dinner. After eating, the actors get into makeup and costume while the audience is brought in and seated. Shooting starts at 7 p.m. A twenty-minute sitcom takes three to five hours to film, allowing time for retakes and costume changes.
Since Sandy only appears in a few scenes, he has time during the shooting to do some investigating. He escapes a death trap, catches the murderer, and puts in a great performance all in one evening!
To gently ease the reader back down after the exciting conclusion, the final chapter takes place on Saturday when Sandy, finished with his work, can relax and tend to family matters.
Not all stories will have such a rigid structure, but this book was fun to write and proved that solving a murder while working on a sitcom is no laughing matter!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Sally Carpenter is a native Hoosier, with a master’s degree in theater from Indiana State University, who now lives in Moorpark, California. While in school, her plays “Star Collector” and “Common Ground” were finalists in the American College Theater Festival One-Act Playwrighting Competition. “Common Ground” also earned a college creative writing award and “Star Collector” was produced in New York City.
Carpenter also has a master’s degree in theology and a black belt in tae kwon do. She’s worked as an actress, freelance writer, college writing instructor, theater critic, jail chaplain, and tour guide/page for a major movie studio. She’s now employed at a community newspaper.
Her initial book in the Sandy Fairfax Teen Idol series, The Baffled Beatlemaniac Caper, was a 2012 Eureka! Award finalist for best first mystery novel. The second book, The Sinister Sitcom Caper, is due out this month.
Her short story, Dark Nights at the Deluxe Drive-in, appears in the anthology Last Exit to Murder. Faster Than a Speeding Bullet was published in the Plan B: Vol. 2, an e-book anthology. The Pie-eyed Spy, a Thanksgiving-themed short story, will appear in the Nov. 23 Kings River Life e-zine.
Sally blogs at http://sandyfairfaxauthor.com. She is a member of Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles chapter. Contact her at Facebook or scwriter@earthlink.net.
Guest Blog: Author Judy Hogan’s Conversation with Sammie Hargrave – Her Favorite Character
Author Judy Hogan’s Conversation with Sammie Hargrave – Her Favorite Character
Judy Hogan: Sammie, a new writer friend of mine, Debra Goldstein, wants a blog from me to post on her blog in early September, to celebrate the publication of Killer Frost, and she suggested I interview one of my characters. I picked you, who are my favorite.
Sammie Hargrave: Suits me. What do you want to know? Seems like you should know me pretty well, after writing eight books in which I play Penny Weaver’s sidekick.
Judy: That’s the thing, Sammie. You always surprise me. You’re my most unpredictable character.
Sammie: Otherwise, your novels would be dull. Penny’s okay. I’m fond of her. But without me to liven things up, she might be a little boring. She’s so earnest. I mean, she tries hard to obey the rules. It only works for her about half the time, but she hasn’t caught on yet.
Judy: We can’t say the same about you, Sammie. You’re a consummate rule-bender and dodger.
Sammie: I have more fun, plus Penny never minds when we’re solving a case, and I get into Derek’s briefcase to see the autopsy results, or we conduct our own interviews when he’s told us to say out of police “bidness.” He’s worse than Penny is for rules. It’s women who generally figure things out. We see the big picture and pick up the atmosphere around people–the aura, stuff like that. I can read body language a hell of a lot faster than Penny can, girl, or Derek, for that matter, but at least Penny’s learning to trust her gut instincts and know she needs me. Can’t you see that?
Judy: I’m beginning to. I myself was raised in a minister’s family, raised to be a good girl. But by twenty-one I was in full rebellion, and I was drawn to people who had a touch of wickedness. Maybe especially it was flamboyance I liked, and straight talkers. I was sick of being nice to everyone. I suffered for it. Some of the rebels I hooked myself up with hurt me, betrayed me, you name it. Finally, I added a little bit of wickedness to my own character–balanced it.
Sammie: Ha, girl. You don’t know from Adam about no wickedness. You and Penny, who’s your alter ego–right?–are still 99% good girls. But you did get tougher, saw other people better, developed your bullshit detector, but the way we start out, stays. You never noticed?
Judy: Tell us how you started out, Sammie.
Sammie: I was raised right here in Shagbark County, central North Carolina, and my people, too, as far back as I know. Folks had plantations here, going back into the 1700s. Ships came up the Cape Fear River, which our Haw flows into. There were land grants from the King long before the Revolutionary War. I haven’t traced back past my grandmother’s people, who were slaves. She died when I was little, but Mama told me how it was.
I identify with my African beginnings, my slave ancestors, my grandmother, who grew up before World War II and did the white folks’ laundry, carrying it all from the big house to her shotgun tenant shack, and then washing it all by hand, ironing it with an iron heated on the woodstove, and then carrying it all back. Then my mother worked as a maid for rich white folks and my father did logging work until he died. She got me into an integrated school as soon as they had one in Shagbark–1972–when I started kindergarten. She saved pennies for my books and clothes, and later, for my college. I owe her so much. Yes, that much of my history I know. I have a love-hate relationship to it. So much cruelty and injustice, but I’m so proud of the strength and courage my ancestors had.
It’s why I teach at St. Francis, shitty as it sometimes gets. I want us black folks to hold onto our culture, our churches, our literature, our music, and our language, and, of course, our history. Without our language, our culture dies. So I keep it current in my mind, and I encourage my students to do that but to distinguish between when to use standard English and when to talk black folks talk.
Judy: Your friendship with Penny is so important to her, Sammie. I like to think the two of you work on healing the rift that stays between the black and white races in this country.
Sammie: Right, important to me, too. Penny is good people, even if I have to educate her half the time. Things have changed a lot, but you know how that racism sticks. I sometimes think we’ll never be free of it until people can’t tell the difference between us and everybody else–especially by skin color.
Judy: Tell me more about what’s important to you, Sammie.
Sammie: Like you, I want to be my own self, and I got this thing about clothes and hair. Hats, too. I like to look good, and I know people judge a lot by how you look. That’s where Penny and I differ. She dresses about the same way every day and rarely wears a dress.
Judy: Penny has two dresses. I own three. But we save them for special occasions–weddings, fancy banquets.
Sammie: So Penny wears jeans and slacks, blouses and shirts; shorts in the summer. See her in a dress? Must mean somethin’ big is comin’ down. But I like to dress up. Always did. Mama let me play in her old clothes and Grandma’s wigs. I’m a Thrift Store addict, and I have friends and cousins I trade off with. I like it when people notice me. I like it even better when they don’t recognize me because I look different from the last time they saw me.
But a lot of white people? They don’t see us nohow. Like we’re invisible. Run into them in a store, someone you’ve met at some political meeting? They don’t see you. So I take it one more step. They notice but they don’t realize they’ve seen me before. I can’t say why I do it. The devil in me, I guess.
Judy: I know I enjoy you, Sammie. You add zest to my writing. A lot of my characters started from people I know. Like Marcel Proust did, I often blend two or three together. But you came to me out of the blue except for one detail. I had an African American friend who also liked to look different each time you saw her. That’s all I had to start with, and now you live and breathe, and I love to see what you’ll do or say next. It’s one of the rewards of writing fiction.
Sammie: I’m glad I’m your favorite. It’s not hard to surprise you, Judy. You’re so predictable.
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Judy Hogan’s first mystery novel, Killer Frost, was published September 1, 2012, 
by Mainly Murder Press of Connecticut. Judy founded Carolina Wren Press (1976-91), and was co-editor of Hyperion Poetry Journal (1970-81). She has published five volumes of poetry and two prose works with small presses. She has taught all forms of creative writing since 1974. She joined Sisters in Crime and the Guppies in 2007 and has focused since then on writing and publishing traditional mystery novels. In 2011 she was a finalist in the St. Martin’s Malice Domestic Mystery contest. The twists and turns of her life’s path over the years have given her plenty to write about. She is also a small farmer and lives in Moncure, N.C.
www.DebraHGoldstein.com
Debra H. Goldstein - DHG's Blog 