Doggie Lit for Dog Days with Guest Lois Winston

Dog Days continue today with author & agent Lois Winston, who has some observations on the rise of genre "doggie lit." Welcome back, Lois!  ~ Sheila

Doggie Lit?

by Lois Winston

Over the last few years there have been many sub-genres of lit-fic cropping up. It started back in the late nineties with an onslaught of chick lit. These were stories not about furry yellow-beaked farm critters but about twenty-somethings with jobs they hated, serial bad dates, a tendency to indulge in too many margaritas, and an obsession with designer shoes and handbags. Chick lit led to lady lit, lad lit, mom lit, hen lit, boomer lit, and geezer lit.

And now we have doggie lit. I’ve noticed over the last few years that no matter the genre, whether romance or mystery or straight fiction, a huge percentage of books have dogs in them. It’s not just that the protagonist has a pet pooch. These dogs are becoming major secondary characters in many books. Sometimes they even have a point of view in the story.

I’m not sure how I feel about giving a point of view to a pet, but I do like the trend of making dogs in books more than just window dressing or a convenient way to get a character from Point A to Point B.  (Dogs do have to be walked several times a day.) If done well, dogs can add quite a bit of texture and color to the story because they have distinct personalities.

In my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, Anastasia’s mother-in-law Lucille, a die-hard nineteen-fifties style commie, owns a French Bulldog she calls Manifesto (after the communist treatise.) Everyone else calls him Mephisto or Devil Dog. He’s got that kind of personality. Since the best stories always have characters who are polar opposites, thus creating conflict, I’ve given Manifesto his own nemesis, a corpulent white Persian by the name of Catherine the Great.

Catherine the Great belongs to Anastasia’s mother Flora, a former social secretary of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Lucille, Manifesto, Flora, and Catherine the Great all live with Anastasia, her two teenage sons, and their pet parrot in a small suburban rancher where Lucille and Flora (and therefore Manifesto and Catherine the Great) are forced to share a bedroom. Not only do Flora and Lucille fight like cats and dogs, but so do their cat and dog. Conflict, conflict, conflict—the basis for all good stories, right?

Another component of a good stories is character growth. So I wondered, why should that growth be limited to the two-legged characters in a story? Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, the third book in my series, presented the perfect opportunity to delve into this subject. Because Lucille is in a rehab center convalescing from surgery, the rest of the family must care for Manifesto. The results are quite surprising, but I won’t spoil the fun for you. You’ll just have to read the book to find out for yourself.

Revenge of the Crafty Corpse

Anastasia Pollack’s dead louse of a spouse has left her with more bills than you can shake a crochet hook at, and teaching craft classes at her mother-in-law’s assisted living center seems like a harmless way to supplement her meager income. But when Lyndella Wegner—a 98-year-old know-it-all with a penchant for ruffles and lace—turns up dead, Anastasia’s cantankerous mother-in-law becomes the prime suspect in her murder. Upon discovering that Lyndella’s scandalous craft projects—and her scandalous behavior—made her plenty of enemies, Anastasia sets out to find the real killer before her mother-in-law ends up behind bars.  

  

Buy links:

paperback 

ebook 

Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews dubbed it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” Other books in the series includes Death By Killer Mop Doll, Revenge of the Crafty Corpse and the ebook only mini-mysteries Crewel Intentions and Mosaic Mayhem.

Lois is also published in women’s fiction, romance, romantic suspense, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. In addition, she’s a literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer. She often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry.

Visit Lois at www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma at www.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. Follow everyone on Twitter @anasleuth.

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The dogs & cats in my Animals in Focus series are certainly not window dressing. And the books are Lab (and Golden!) approved, too! ~ Sheila
Drop Dead on Recall - Animals in Focus Mystery #1
The Money Bird - Animals in Focus Mystery #2

by Sheila Webster Boneham

Golden Retriever Sunny (left) & Labrador Retriever Lily
checking out my advance copies of The Money Bird.
Available from your favorite bookseller, or to get your
personally autographed copy, click here

~~~

Are you a fan of canine mysteries? Come back Thursday ~
Laurien Bereson will be my guest !
Woof! 

Taboo Words with Guest Author Lois Winston

Welcome back, author and agent Lois Winston! If you follow my blog, you know that Lois has been here before. (If you missed her previous entries, check them out here and here). Today Lois addresses a grammatical issue - but hold on! It's interesting, and important. ~ Sheila

Taboo Words

By Lois Winston

No, this guest blog isn’t about what Paula Dean said, nor does it have anything to do with George Carlin’s seven words you can’t say on TV. I’m talking about the words writers can’t use—all forms of the verb “to be.”

Say what? Since when?

Well, not really. But it is a myth that is pervasive among many writing communities. When I first began writing, I entered quite a few writing contests sponsored by local chapters of a national genre organization. Very often the judges (both published and unpublished writers) would circle every “was” in the entry and write in large capital letters -- PASSIVE VOICE.  Somewhere at some time in this organization, someone had told many of its members that “was” is a no-no.  Editors like action verbs.  “Was,” along with its brothers and sisters (is, am, are, been, were) is passive voice and a surefire way to a rejection letter.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

 

Passive voice is when an action is acted upon the subject, rather than the subject acting.  The car was driven by Anna is a passive sentence.  Anna drove the car is an active sentence.  However, Anna was happy to drive the car is not a passive sentence.  Anna is expressing emotion.  She is acting, rather than being acted upon.  Likewise, for I am happy, they are happy, he is happy, Anna and Patrick were happy, and she was happy. These are all active, not passive sentences. Of course, there are more interesting ways to write these sentence, but that’s a separate discussion.

One of the easiest ways to tell whether your sentence is active or passive is to analyze the position of the subject, verb, and direct object.  In active voice, the subject (the one performing the action) will come before the verb (the action), and the verb will come before the direct object (that which is being acted upon.)

There are instances, though, when passive voice is necessary to the unfolding of a story or better suited to the realism of the dialogue.  When we speak, we don’t first think whether our sentences are active or passive before uttering them.  We just speak them.  Manipulate a sentence to avoid passive voice in conversation, and you often transform snappy dialogue into stilted dialogue.

 

For example:  Billy ran into the house and cried, “Mom!  Come quick.  Snoopy was hit by a car!”  This passage accurately illustrates the way a child might respond to a car hitting his dog.  Snoopy was hit by a car is a passive sentence because Snoopy is being acted upon by the car, but the child mentions Snoopy first because the dog’s welfare is uppermost in his mind.  Also, by placing the last sentence in passive voice, the author is actually ratcheting up the tension.  We don’t know until the very end exactly what hit Snoopy.  A stray baseball?  A nasty neighbor?  A falling tree limb?  Although A car hit Snoopy, is active voice, using it actually lessens the impact of the sentence.

 

Still squeamish about the use of “was” or its siblings?  After you’ve finished your manuscript, do a search of the words.  Check each sentence to see if you can rewrite it to avoid using a form of the “to be” verb.  If you can, and it doesn’t detract from the pace, dialogue, or meaning of the passage, do so.  If not, leave it.  Some “was” were meant to be.

More writing and publishing advice can be found in my ebook Top Ten Reasons Your Novel Is Rejected. Buy links can be found at: http://www.loiswinston.com/bookstop10.html

BIO: Lois Winston is both an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency and the author of the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Other books in the series include Death By Killer Mop Doll, Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, and the ebook novelette Crewel Intentions. Lois is also published in romance, romantic suspense, women’s fiction, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog: http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. You can also follow Lois on Twitter @anasleuth.

A Cat by Any Other Name with Guest Author Lois Winston

My guest today is author Lois Winston, aka Emma Carlyle, who continues my Adopt a Cat Month focus with tales/tails of cats in Lois's life and in her books.Welcome back, Lois! ~ Sheila

A Cat by Any Other Name

by Lois Winston 

Shortly after my husband and I became a couple, a stray cat wandered onto our friends’ property and gave birth to a litter of kittens. When Mama Cat subsequently lost her life to a speeding car, we became the proud adoptive parents of two kittens from that litter. We named one Bulldog McNurkle and the other Grayface. For the life of me, I can’t remember the reason behind the names. Stranger still, Grayface somehow morphed into Frog. 

Bulldog, Lois, & Frog

Like all babies, no matter the species, kittens are not born with fully developed motor skills. This fact was made clear to me one day while I was taking a bath. Frog nosed open the bathroom door, jumped up onto the tub ledge, and proceeded to loose his footing, falling into the water. Before I could scoop him up, he used my back as a ladder to climb his way out. I think I still have scars from his claws. 

While still kittens, one of Bulldog’s and Frog’s favorite pastimes was to race across the living room, take a flying leap, and claw up our drapes. One day my husband and I came home from work to find the drapes in shreds. The cats had grown too heavy for the fabric to support their weight. 

Another time we arrived home to find defrosted pork chops sitting on the living room floor. Because we had a galley kitchen open to the living room, I used to put frozen food in the spare bedroom to defrost. On that particular day, I apparently hadn’t made sure the door was securely latched. You’d think I would have learned my lesson after the bathtub incident. 

Unfortunately, after several years of progressively worsening allergies that eventually caused me to develop bronchial asthma, we found it necessary to find new parents for our boys. Cats haven’t been part of our family for many years, yet they often play a role – usually a comical one – in my fiction. 

In my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, my protagonist’s much-married mother claims to descend from Russian royalty. Her extremely corpulent white Persian cat is named Catherine the Great. And believe me, she’s every inch the reincarnation of her namesake – proud, regal, demanding, and not one to suffer fools – or dogs – lightly. This causes all sorts of mayhem in the Pollack household where Mama is forced to share a bedroom with Anastasia’s communist mother-in-law and her dog, aptly named Manifesto. Catherine the Great and Manifesto get along as well as their two owners. In other words, they fight like...well, like cats and dogs. Or Russian royalty and Bolsheviks. 

You’ll find Catherine the Great strutting her stuff in all three of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries – Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, Death by Killer Mop Doll, and Revenge of the Crafty Corpse. 

In Hooking Mr. Right, a romantic comedy I wrote under my Emma Carlyle pen name, you’ll find Cu (short for Cupid,) a punk-rock looking alley cat.

After writing a doctoral thesis that exposed fraud in the pop-psychology genre, thirty-two year old professor Althea Chandler has to sacrifice her professional integrity to save her family from financial disaster. She secretly becomes best-selling romance guru Dr. Trulee Lovejoy, a self-proclaimed expert on how to catch a man, even though Thea’s a miserable failure when it comes to relationships – especially those with the opposite sex.

Burned by a failed marriage, Luke Bennett finds himself pursued by Dr. Lovejoy toting women after a gossip columnist dubs him New York’s most eligible bachelor. When he at first mistakes Thea for one of the women out to snare him, sparks fly, but the two soon find themselves battling sparks of a less hostile nature, thanks in part to the aforementioned alley cat. 

Luke believes he’s finally found an honest woman. Unfortunately, Thea is anything but honest. She’s got more secrets than the CIA and a desperate gossip columnist out to expose her. Cupid definitely has his work cut out for him, but like all cats, he’s got a mind of his own. And he’s not about to let human stubbornness stand in the way of a happy ending.

Bio: Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. She’s also published in women’s fiction, romance, romantic suspense, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Lois is also an award-winning crafts and needlework designer and an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Visit her at http://www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers character blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.