Priscilla Paton on Nailing Inspiration

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Priscilla Paton, author of When the House Burns which releases on February 14, 2023

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

My mysteries are inspired by a real circumstances and crimes: instances of data theft and crimes against children for my first mystery, Where Privacy Dies, and drug dealing and sex trafficking for Should Grace Fail. Also, I serve on local nonprofits who support marginalized people and see data about abuse, homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues. That all sounds like a sensible beginning, but to tell the truth, “origins” remain mysterious. When I was beginning the Twin Cities series, the name for the male detective, “Erik Jansson” came immediately, though I had to work out his age, family situation, and experience. Then Deb Metzger burst out in full form, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Deb is like that.

When I started researching the newest book, When the House Burns, I had a different topic in mind—not the housing crisis and arson that are featured. What turned my interest around was the murder of a real estate agent in the region, though my fiction does not use the specifics of that crime. I was juggling my first concept (which may be used later) and the death of a realtor when it became evident during the Covid Pandemic shutdown that the basement of my residence had become toxic. I had to move. Suddenly having to pack unsettles the mind greatly, and new ideas came out of that experience. By the way, I put toxic basements to sinister use in When the House Burns. 

In addition, research tosses up fascinating stuff. In researching arson, I came across a Harvard Business Review article (to sum it up would be a spoiler) that sent my plot in a fresh direction. 

Yes, the subconscious or subliminal does make contributions. I decided to call a woman character, “Karma,” and the concept of karma ends up reverberating with other characters. My detectives, Erik Jansson and Deb Metzger, are a volatile match. Erik, who can seem like a boy scout, is devious with a sly humor. Deb, who’s lesbian, is outspoken and impulsive. I let them loose through free writing to see where their banter goes. 

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it? 

With pain and agony. I have a few central points in mind, like the original crime scene and key scenes of conflict and action. Again, real life offers examples: I read about conflicts over real housing proposals, from absurd to serious, and also learned about a former ammunition plant site being prepped for development, a situation that had its own convoluted plotline.

I start as a pantser and after I have a chunk of crude draft start outlining.  (Only my outlines are cut and paste jobs, rewritten several times.) Then I set up a large white-board calendar to clarify which characters are involved on which days—this also prevents me from having three Mondays in a row. It’s a two steps forward and one step-in-a-hole process for me to construct an evidence trail and developments among the characters that work together to advance plot and therefore story.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

I don’t think of my plot as firmly in place until I reach the line-revision stage. I’ve had characters significantly change in early drafts, which influences their motives and actions. For example, in When the House Burns, I first had a passive uncertain man, Edward. Edward morphed into Rafe Edward, and Rafe is driven and clever and dreams of vengeance and love. His boss, though, calls him ‘Edward’ to put Rafe in his place, which only incites Rafe to—well, you’ll have to read the book. 

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I used to be a literary scholar reflecting carefully on what others wrote. It’s still a challenge for me to move into a quicker procreative mode, and I have to release my irreverent alter ego to have at it. Going out in the world helps, too. As other writers have noted, you don’t need to start with a big idea. A detail about a person you see, or a situation like a toxic basement, can spin out into more. It’s like catching fluff from the air and then making yourself stay at the computer until you’ve nailed that fluff to a premise. It’s hard nailing fluff.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

As noted above, this happened to me with When the House Burns. I found that one topic kept me writing longer than the other, so it’s organic, or I’m like a dog. I go with the one that feeds me first.

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I’m pet-less at the moment, but two of my writing spots overlook bird feeders. One’s near the Mississippi River, a major flyway and home to eagles. It releases the imagination to see an eagle cruise by.

When I’m desk weary, I stretch and take music breaks. I leave periodically to eavesdrop on people in coffeeshops where there happen to be yummy treats. Writing requires profundity and treats.

Priscilla Paton writes mysteries set in the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Priscilla grew up on a dairy farm in Maine. She received a B.A. from Bowdoin College, a Ph.D. in English Literature from Boston College, was a college professor and taught in Kansas, Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Minnesota. She has previously published a children’s book, Howard and the Sitter Surprise, and a book on Robert Frost and Andrew Wyeth, Abandoned New England. She married into the Midwest and lives with her husband in Northfield, Minnesota. When not writing, she participates in community advocacy and literacy programs, takes photos of birds, and contemplates (fictional) murder.

The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

WOMAN IN THE PAINTING is an upmarket, dual-era romantic fiction with elements of magical realism, perfect for book clubs. Melding the sexy, playful humor of Christina Lauren’s THE SOULMATE EQUATION into the grand worldbuilding of THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE, the happily-ever-after will appeal to anyone who wonders whether soulmate is more than a metaphor.

My first reaction has always been that your hook should come first - not comp titles or genre. Every querying author out there has comp titles and a genre. Start with what only you have - your hook, for your book.

Like me, Jude Christensen is half-Filipino, an art lover, and an unabashed Anglophile. Don't bring yourself into the body of the query. You can allude to your identity with the MC in your bio, but here is the place to focus on the fiction, the book itself. Also, you need a bigger hook than just describing your main character. Since acquiring an unsigned 19th-century portrait, the Seattle curator dreams he’s a Regency-era gallant in love with the bewitching Philomena, the woman in the painting. You might want to clarify "dreams" here. Is he actually asleep and dreaming, or is this a daydream / obsession? Obsessed with unmasking the secret artist to determine its value and perhaps make sense of his increasingly complex dreams, Jude is drawn to Philomena’s descendant, Dr. Marielle Heathcote, who has her same haunting eyes. It's a little more clear now that we are talking about actual dreams, but I think you might want to clarify sooner, to avoid any confusion. Also be careful with the use of the word "obsessed." By nature it has negative qualities attached to it, so it throws a certain shadow on the narrative - unless that's what you want. It's question of whether this interest is healthy or unhealhty.

Marielle is reluctant to sell her family’s treasures, but heirlooms are all she has to stave off bankruptcy. From Seattle to England, she and Jude embark on a romantic affair fueled by a shared zeal for art, literature, and solving the mystery of the painting. What is the mystery of the painting? And what does her financial situation have to do with it? Why are they on a road trip? How are all these things connected? Marielle’s chilling night terrors and regression therapy reveal an impossible Georgian-era love triangle. Forgotten journals from Heathcote Hall expose the painter to be Philomena’s husband—but he’s not the same man Jude sees with Philomena whenever he closes his eyes. Yet, Jude refuses to believe in past lives. So is this what they are doing with a road trip? I'm confused about the triangle. Philomena and her husband, but then also a third man that Jude can see... but it's not Jude? I thought he dreamt he was a gallant trying to romance Philomena?

To understand the gut-wrenching connection between Philomena, the disgraced father of her child, and his charming, steadfast friend who secretly loves him, Marielle and Jude must open their hearts to the possibility that this is not the first time they’ve fallen in love. I'm confused about who is who in this narrative, and how it relates to the modern characters. Told through the eyes of four characters in two parts: Part 1, His Other Half (the male gaze) and Part 2, Her Other Half (the female gaze) have alternating timelines and point-of-views. My debut novel is 122000 words and is the first of a planned “Soul Group” series. I would definitely state it's alternating POV's but you don't have to get that into the weeds with how it will be structured in a query. Your word count is way too high for a debut - you need to get it below 100k, and I would also do you best to get it in a place where you can pitch it as a stand alone with series potential.

In September, WOMAN IN THE PAINTING won third at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference and is now a finalist in Romance Writers of America’s Romance Through the Ages contest. Since 2013, I’ve edited more than fifty novels and curated five anthologies. A member of the Jane Austen Society and Pacific Northwest Writers Association, I live in Washington State. My own whirlwind English fantasy came true thanks to actor Henry Cavill when we sipped champagne together atop the London Eye. True story. You can Google it

lol, I like the bio. I'd get the allusion to your own identity into that para, as well.

Right now I'd say your biggest problem is that I'm not really sure what the goal is. Figure out who painted the painting? What it's worth? Which one of them is someone else from the past, and if they've been in love before? Right now, it's got a nice romantic, historial and mystery vibe, but I don't really see what the obstacle is. Is there a threat from the past that can damage their current love? What is the goal and what is the obstacle?

As you can see from my above comments, I'm also a little in the weeds about the tangled identities. I think you might need to present it in a more simplistic way.

THE 9:09 PROJECT—The Story Behind the Story

by Mark Parsons

Having synesthesia is probably a little like being left-handed or maybe color-blind (most types of which aren’t literally “color-blind,” but that’s another story), in that the difference isn’t only non-obvious to most observers but may go mostly unnoticed by the individuals themselves until they learn the rest of the world sees things differently.

As far as I can tell I’ve had synesthesia since birth (primarily the color-grapheme variant—the most common type), but for a long time I didn’t know I perceived things differently than the vast majority of the population. Sure, my sister and I (she’s a synesthete also) used to play “So what color is Tuesday for you?” when we were little kids, but it wasn’t until my teenage years that I realized perceiving numbers, letters, days of the week, and months of the year as having specific colors definitely wasn’t the norm . . .

. . . for everyone else. But it absolutely was the day-to-day norm for me. Which is one of the reasons I had Jamison (the protagonist in The 9:09 Project) have the same condition—not as a “plot point” or “issue” or other structural contrivance, but because having that hovering in the background of my own high school experience made writing this story take on an extra degree of reality for me that hopefully got me a little closer to the emotions many of us are feeling at that time in our lives—uncertainty, insecurity, and a general vibe of not fitting in.

I’d read a few novels featuring synesthesia where the author clearly didn’t do any research but simply made up shit that sounded interesting and ran with it as a cool plot device. (I’m talking characters having superpower-level abilities due to synesthesia. I wish, right?) So I wanted to portray it as it actually presents for me and others I know—neither a superpower nor a disability, but simply a slightly interesting difference in the way some people perceive everyday objects and concepts.

It’s important to note this isn’t a book about synesthesia. It’s about a young dude who happens to have synesthesia, and I like to think the story would hold together even if he didn’t have it. It just gives an additional connection between him and his mother and serves as a recurring metaphor for seeing the world a certain way. In fact, Jamison doesn’t discuss it much with his friends or family in the book.

I’m drawn to that sort of understatement, where conditions that exist in the story don’t need to be the story, but just provide a more nuanced background. One of the things I love about the anime/rotoscoped/live-action TV series Undone is that the main character wears a cochlear implant but it’s almost incidental to the overall story. It’s just there as part of her daily life—she wears it in order to hear, but the story’s not about deafness at all. To me, this is a great example of true diversity in storytelling: having characters with differences, but not making their differences the story.

The 9:09 Project is actually about things far more universal than synesthesia: recovering from loss, harnessing the healing power of art, putting your grief to work, opening up to possibilities, and making connections.

In other words, it’s a love story.

Exploring synesthesia in this book was my way into the story, something to help bind me emotionally to the character (and, by association, to the rest of the characters, who are completely real to my writer brain and about whom I care deeply). This is art—not science—so your experience may vary, but for me, the writer having an emotional connection with their characters is the foundation for the reader having an emotional connection with the characters.

And after all, that’s what we all want, right?

Mark Parsons has written primarily non-fiction for several years, penning over two hundred articles for national publications as well as a pair of non-fiction books before turning to book-length fiction. His first YA novel Road Rash (Knopf/Random House) was named to the ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list, as well as Bank Street College’s Best Children’s Books of the Year list. His latest YA novel, The 9:09 Project, is coming from Delacorte/Random House this November. He also has a writing blog on his website where he deep-dives into several aspects of the writing life.