But I was acutely aware of how much I had to learn, so in order to respectfully include a culture that was not my own, I had to make sure I got the Paiute thread right.
Like, really, really right.
I did everything I could research-wise to accomplish this. And when I was pretty confident that I’d done a good job, we reached out to some members of the Southern Paiute Nation for feedback on the manuscript, and after getting notes, I went back to my story and made adjustments.
You can’t wing it. You can’t pull characters from other cultures or occupations out of “central casting.” Devote whatever time it takes. It can put the actual writing on hold for days or weeks or longer. However long it takes, get it right.
Once you begin researching a subject, you may discover you have trouble stopping. The world is full of such interesting things! Like, did you know there really are six-horned goats that climb trees? Dave Sanchez discovers them in The Gecko & Sticky, and you would think they’re made up, but they’re not. How could you not spend half the day reading about them?
Which is the reason I wind up with research binders that are sometimes thicker than the final manuscript. The world is full of such interesting things! But just as too little research can ruin a story, so can too much. Once you’ve spent time immersed in discovery, it’s really tempting to insert what you’ve learned—to wedge it in somewhere so it doesn’t go to waste—but don’t do that, either! A novel is not a how-to manual or a dumping ground for information. It’s a story. If your research contributes to the believability of the story or adds to its texture, use it. Once your reader senses that they’re being “educated,” you’ve gone too far.
Finding the balance takes finessing, but you owe it to your story, you owe it to the people and situations you’re representing, and you owe it to your readers to get it right.
The first time a kid told me “I don’t like mysteries,” I was like Wait. Whoa. No. You can’t mean that. How can you not like mysteries?
But the truth is, one bad mystery can spoil the whole bunch, girl.
All books, but mysteries especially, are like apples. If you bite into a good one—it’s crisp and juicy and sweet, with just a little tartness—you’ll go back for another. But if it’s mushy or mealy or leaves a sour taste in your mouth, you’ll probably start choosing different kinds of fruit.
Likewise with mysteries. Bite into a bad one and there goes the whole genre. But start with one that’s crisply plotted, with juicy twists and turns, and the reader will be in search of delicious seconds. And thirds. And soon they’ll become a mystery buff.
By mystery, I’m referring to the classic whodunit, where the culprit is unknown and the reader, alongside the detective, tries to puzzle out who has committed the crime.
So what makes a good mystery?
I think it’s easier to define what makes a bad one. In my analysis, there are three types that make people turn away from the genre.
First, there’s the sort where on page, say, six, your mystery-solving radar goes up and you think, Hmm, I bet So-and-So’s the culprit. Two or three hundred pages later, it turns out that, yeah, So-and-So was the culprit. When that happens, the reader feels robbed. Why’d they waste all that time reading to find out whodunit when they had it figured out on page six?
What makes a book like this less irritating is when the characters are worth spending those extra couple hundred pages with. Maybe they’re funny. Or their sarcastic wit works for you. Maybe you just enjoyed hanging out with that particular gumshoe.
But some mystery writers care more about clever twists and turns than about character. And often, most notably in kids’ books, the mystery protagonist can come across as being overly clever, annoyingly and unrealistically smart, and not at all someone you’d enjoy spending time with in real life.
Read one of those and, yeah, you’ll be convinced that mysteries are not for you.
The second type of mystery that results in an unsatisfying experience is when the author “discovers whodunit along with the protagonist.”
I’ve heard more than a few authors describe their process this way.
Well, hello? That is totally unfair to the reader. You’re selling them mushy apples! If you as the author don’t know who the bad guy is, how can you plant clues? How can you structure a twisted yet directional plot? How can you guide us through the story when you don’t know where you’re going?
Don’t get me started on mushy mysteries.
Ptooey.
The final kind of whodunit that turns people off is when the author cheats. They kill off people, lead you to red herrings galore, twist you and turn you and keep you flipping the pages while you feverishly shuffle a short list of suspects in your mind, and then, voilà, they reveal the culprit along with some hocus-pocus of information or the sudden reappearance of a character they’d killed off earlier (without giving even a hint that they might still be alive).
That’s not clever. That’s not exciting. That’s not—whoosh—a Big Reveal.
That’s cheating.
If you’re interested in writing whodunits, commit to fair play. And adopt the philosophy that mystery writing is not a showcase for how clever you are, but is, instead, an opportunity to show how clever you can make your reader feel.
This is accomplished by planting subtle clues and red herrings throughout the book and in such a way that the reader solves the mystery at about the same time—ideally slightly before—the gumshoe does.
This “slightly before” advice may run contrary to a desire to elicit gasps with your Big Reveal, but if your reader comes away feeling clever and satisfied and flush with enthusiasm for the book, you win. They will seek out another book by you because they enjoyed themselves. They felt smart. If they come away feeling cheated or robbed, ptooey, you lose.
While I’m on the subject, let me point out something for the adult-mystery-writing world. Youth mystery writers do not “just write for kids.” We build your audience. We build mystery lovers who will pursue that love as adults by seeking out adult mysteries.
Love developed in youth can last a lifetime.
So if you’re a mystery lover, discover good ones you can hand to kids.
And if you want to be a mystery writer at any level, remember: No mushy apples.
No rotten cores.
Let your reader take a nice, juicy bite out of crime by plotting carefully and playing fairly.
I was in the throes of teaching an algebra class how to factor trinomials when the wall phone in my classroom started ringing. Being in the middle of a lesson, I let the call roll over to voice mail.
A short while later, the office secretary buzzed my room. “Wendelin?”
“Yes?”
“You need to pick up the phone.”
Panic engulfed me. This felt like when I’d learned about my brother’s death the year before.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Something about New York? They say it’s important. Pick up the phone.”
Mostly I was relieved that it couldn’t be anything to do with another family tragedy. None of us were in New York.
So I picked up the phone.
And I learned that my editor—who had recently moved to a different publishing house—was offering to buy all four of the Sammys at once, with an option for more.
I tried to be cool and collected on the phone, but how long had I waited for this moment? How many years?
So the minute I hung up, I did what any sensible teacher would do—I jumped up on my desk and yelled, “Yabba dabba doo!”
And all the students in my class did what any sensible kids would do—they looked at me with squinty eyes and said, “What is wrong with you?”
With that phone call, a series was born. And I didn’t really think about it at the time, but there was no guarante
e that the series would be successful, or that Sammy’s adventures would continue past the fourth installment, let alone all the way to eighteen.
I’ve become increasingly aware of how fortunate I am to have been able to reach the end of the Sammy Keyes story arc, to have gotten to the last book as envisioned, to have had the heart-wrenching honor of typing the last line—something that still chokes me up to think about.
Not all series writers get that.
Out in the general population there’s an assumption that an author can continue writing books in a series for as long as they’d like. It doesn’t work that way. Factored into the continuation of the series are sales figures. If the books don’t earn their keep, the publisher will cut off future additions to the series, sometimes without warning.
So eighteen novels published across sixteen years is an anomaly, especially in present-day publishing.
Several factors contributed to my successfully reaching the end of Sammy’s story, not the least of which was having the same editor for all eighteen books. Editors tend to change publishing houses, and once yours is gone, so is the primary champion of your series. Despite assurances or intentions, things can quickly take a dead-end turn if your editor leaves.
So through sixteen years of changes in-house, through paradigm shifts in publishing and strong winds blowing hard from differing directions, my editor steadied Sammy’s ship, kept sounding her horn, and managed to get us safely to port.
If she had jumped ship, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have made it.
But back to the beginning, when we’d just set sail.
Winning the Edgar for Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief helped get Sammy noticed. And it was beneficial for the series’ launch because the first three Sammys (Hotel Thief, Skeleton Man, and Sisters of Mercy) were all available when the award was announced. My editor buying the first four Sammys at once was part of the publisher’s plan to release the books at about six-month intervals to “quickly establish it as a series.” So if someone read and loved the new “best children’s mystery of the year,” they could jump on the next title, and the next.
And so we were off, propelled by a little luck, some good planning, and the reward of optimism persistently applied that allowed for multiple books to be waiting in the wings.
Still, all this did not guarantee it would be smooth sailing ahead. Future books were signed up two at a time, with no guarantee that there’d be an offer on the next two.
So how do you keep wind in a series’ sails? How do you keep readers interested and hungry for the next installment, wishing for more, rather than thinking you’ve lost your touch and should have quit writing the series a long time ago?
As you now know, I became a series writer kind of by accident. So it wasn’t until I’d begun the fifth book that I really looked out at the horizon and took in the vast expanse between where I was and where I wanted to go. If each book took place about a month later in Sammy’s life, and if my mission was to get Sammy through middle school safely, then I had my work cut out for me.
It was all too new and exciting to recognize then, but losing steam or burning out was a real possibility for me.
Fortunately, I stumbled onto a way to avoid it by employing another old adage: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Obviously, I adore Sammy Keyes. But what kept me excited to continue writing about her was, in part, spending time away from her.
I didn’t accomplish this by “taking a break” and not writing. You know my brain by now—I would have run right back to her!
Instead, I accomplished this by writing stand-alone novels between Sammy Keyes installments.
After the sixth Sammy Keyes title, I wrote Flipped, then went back to Sammy. After the eighth, I wrote Swear to Howdy, then went back to Sammy. With my sons becoming readers, I was inspired to write the Shredderman books for younger kids, then went back to Sammy. And every time I returned to Sammy World, it was like coming home. It was a reunion with my favorite girl and the expanding cast of quirky characters. We got to reminisce a little about the past, but more important, we got to discover the future.
Because Sammy was growing and her situation was evolving, writing the next installment never felt stale or even routine. And because I had enough time to start to miss her while I spent time with characters in other books, I never felt stagnation or boredom set in. It was always exciting to come back, and when an author feels that for a project, the reader can feel it in the story. So if you’re thinking about writing a series, here’s the hit list of what I’d recommend:
Create a character you love. And make sure he or she is one you can love over the long haul. Give them flaws and room to grow. If your characters have no room to grow, they will stagnate, and so will your writing.
Have a story arc to your series. Without change, you will get bored-bored-bored and your once-joyful creative outlet will become a deadline-driven job. (And don’t think readers can’t tell when that happens.)
Do not become chained to your series. Go away and come back refreshed.
Have a goal for your characters. This applies to each book, and also to the whole series. With every installment, have something new to say, and with the series, have an end goal in mind. Sammy Keyes books are about more than the mystery. Each title explores a different theme or moral dilemma. So while the mystery is intriguing and suspenseful and fun to write, the theme is what gave me new ideas to explore.
Bottom line: When writing a genre series (mystery, sci-fi, romance, etc.), don’t expect the genre to do the heavy lifting for you. Always have some bigger idea to convey. That way, each book feels fresh, rather than like something you’ve retooled from an earlier installment.
And while I’m on the subject, let me just add that retooling is the death knell of series writing. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve started reading a series and love-love-love it, then as you move along through the titles, the stories begin to lose their zing. Characters are described using phrases you’ve read in earlier installments or can repeat by heart. The stories seem formulaic and the author seems uninspired. If they don’t love it anymore, why should you? Oh, you’ll go along for a few books, hoping the author will snap out of it and recapture the magic they displayed earlier in the series, but finally you give up. You break up. You’re done.
Being a reader who’d had this experience on more than a few occasions, I didn’t want to be a writer who repeated it. Instead, I found myself trying to raise the bar with each new Sammy Keyes title. I never wanted to hear people say, Eh. Been there, done that. So when I read reviews that said things like How can these books keep getting better and better? not just the writer in me, but the reader in me was elated.
Adopting the attitude of continued improvement was definitely a factor in my making it to the end of the series. I respected my readers’ investment in the world I’d created, and they, in turn, stuck with me to the end.
So if you’re thinking about writing a series, commit to conscious and conscientious quality and development. Do not take your readers for granted. If you find yourself feeling burdened or bored as the writer, take a break. If that doesn’t work, wrap it up and get out.
You—and everyone else—will be glad you did.
I’ve shared with you the unexpected benefit of not having the first Sammys picked up for publication until there were four of them. Looking back, it was really a gift to be able to reexamine the beginning and restructure, reinforce, and revamp.
However, during that process I failed to notice one big mistake.
So did my husband.
And my editor.
And the copy editor and proofreaders.
And yet, well after publication, I realized there was a crucial error that any middle schooler would recognize, one I couldn’t simply correct in future printings. It permeated everything.
S
ammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief takes place during the first week of Sammy’s seventh-grade year, in September.
Sammy is thirteen and makes a big deal about that fact in that book.
Also in Hotel Thief, Sammy confirms to Madame Nashira (the fortune-teller living at the Heavenly Hotel) that she is an Aries, which puts Sammy’s birthday somewhere between March twenty-first and April nineteenth.
Which means that Sammy would be turning fourteen in seventh grade.
Which means she got held back, she started school late, or…I goofed.
And yes, I goofed.
This actually didn’t occur to me until I started getting fan mail from people wanting to know what Sammy’s birth date was. Like, what exact day.
When I was writing that scene with Madame Nashira, I chose a zodiac sign that matched Sammy’s personality. It was the first—and I thought only—book. I didn’t think it mattered.
But to Sammy fans—now known as Sammiacs—it did.
Like, a lot.
Those letters started after the sixth book (Hollywood Mummy), which, in Sammy World, takes place in February and has a focus on Sammy’s mother’s age (and how Lana’s fudged it so much in order to land a starring role that she would be too young to be Sammy’s mother).
The mistake sat devilishly on my shoulder as I wrote the seventh book (Search for Snake Eyes), which takes place in March. What kept blocking a solution was that Sammy was smart and observant and did okay in school. And she’d been in the same town since before she’d started kindergarten and had never been homeschooled. It didn’t make sense that she’d been held back. And yet her age said plainly that she had, and I was running out of time. Her birthday was looming, just one book away.
What was I going to do?
I considered ignoring her birthday altogether. Each title takes place over the span of about a week in Sammy’s life. That span didn’t have to include her birthday, right? I could just not mention it. But…then what? Never mention her age again?
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