Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

REVISED ANNOUNCEMENT: St. Martin’s Press has a scathingly brilliant idea. Before we try to sell the book to readers, we have to sell it to booksellers because if we don’t get the booksellers to buy it, they can’t sell it to you. So in order to convince booksellers that Maybe This Time, a book about ghosts that pays homage to a nineteenth century Henry James novella, will be a laff riot or at least popular with people-who-read-Crusie, they’d like some reader quotes. That’s right, they want some people to read Maybe This Time and then IF THEY LIKE IT, say nice things that St. Martin’s Press can then send to booksellers and say, “See, Crusie’s readers liked it. Really. Swear to God.”

So they have thirty-five ARCsbound manuscripts* of Maybe This Time to send out to readers. Two things to remember: read more >>

Krissie’s character in our next collaboration is Cinderella, aka Cinda, who married the Prince who turned out to be a drag, but his Grand Vizier is a different story. Well, Fairy Tale Lies is a different story. Here are the pages Krissie has done so far:

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I’ve been out of the loop because KRISSIE’S HERE! We’ve been having a marvelous time including marathon shopping yesterday (Lani had to stay home and teach her class which is a good thing because one or two stores and she quits) and then last night we collaged. We had stacks of paper and a pile of glue sticks, and Krissie and I had gone to the scrapbook store so we had marvelous things, and we glued until we were too tired to glue again. read more >>

There’s been some question about how people who write by the seat of their pants (aka pantsers) can structure a mystery. I talked about this briefly, but I figure it could use a little more in depth explanation, keeping in mind that there are many roads to Oz and this is just one. A suggestion, not a prescription. A guideline, not a rule. Don’t freak if this wouldn’t work for you. It just doesn’t matter. (The last one was for Meatballs fans.)

All my outlines are based on turning points theory which is this: read more >>

I finally got back to the Liz books after I turned in Maybe This Time, and once I did, I realized that my wonky Oooh-this-would-be-interesting side has gotten my yes-but-now-I-have-to-write-them side into a nightmare of a plotting tangle. Oh, you don’t remember the Liz books?

Previously on Argh Ink . . .

I want to do a limited series of short books that will act as TV episodes; that is, each book will be a stand-alone novel/episode complete in itself, each a classic mystery that Our Girl Liz Danger has to solve, but the four books taken together will be a complete women’s fiction novel of about 200K to 300K (so those of you who have been asking for longer Crusies, your ship just came in). Doesn’t that sound great? Now, try to plot it. read more >>