Putting Sex Back in the Series

On August 15, 2012   /   Amazon, marketing, police proceduals, promotion, The Sex Club   /   4 Comments
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After all the trouble of taking Sex out of the Jackson series, I’m about to put it back. Some of you may be thinking, It’s about time. But those of you who know the series, know that I was talking about The Sex Club, the first book to feature Detective Wade Jackson.

Late last year, I pulled it as the lead Jackson story and moved it into my standalone thriller category, mostly for political reasons (see blog). The book features a Planned Parenthood nurse and crazy anti-abortionist (protagonist and antagonist, respectively), and I made the change so the first book in the series would be more palatable to all readers.

I worried that some readers would simply be turned off by the title. Many other readers bought the book for the title. Either way, at this point Amazon Publishing/Thomas & Mercer owns the rights, and they plan to market it as part of the series. By the time their version comes out in January with all the other Jackson books—including the new one, Rules of Crime—I’ll have modified my website, bio, and book listings to match up with Amazon’s marketing.

Once again, The Sex Club will be the first title many readers see when they visit my website or see a list of my books. I have mixed feelings about this. I love the story, and I’m proud to be its author. But it’s the only title I have that doesn’t really reflect the crime-fiction genre that I write in. Hopefully readers will look beyond that book and see that I’m really about crime, violence, and death. 🙂

When my kids were growing up, I used to say I’d rather they watched sex scenes in movies than violence, but that’s another subject.

For the record, I could have objected to the strategy to market The Sex Club as a Jackson story. Amazon is very concerned with my input and involves me in all decisions. But I trust them to know what they’re doing. And I’ve felt guilty about moving the book since I made the change.

The Sex Club is different from the others. I wrote it as a standalone with two main characters, one a nurse and the other a homicide detective. So it’s little different from my other police procedurals. But I knew I might bring Jackson back. And for readers who like to start at the beginning of a character’s development, it’s only fair they know about the first book. (Which I’ve tried to do anyway by including phrases like “featuring Detective Jackson” in my marketing text.)

So Sex is back. And it’s a good thing. 🙂

 

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Police Procedural Vs. Thriller

On February 24, 2011   /   police proceduals, the writing life, thrillers, writing thrillers   /   15 Comments
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I’m trying to decide what to write next—another Detective Jackson story or a futuristic thriller I’ve outline and started. My creative side really wants to write the thriller, but my inner accountant wants me to write another Jackson story first.

Money considerations aside, police procedurals and thrillers are different, and each has its own challenges. A procedural tends to be more structured Read more →

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A Beautiful Place to Die

On April 16, 2010   /   detectives, police proceduals   /   4 Comments
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detectives_around_world_smIn my last post for Detectives Around the World, I present Sergeant Detective Emmanuel Cooper of South Africa. I met him in the novel A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn, set in the 1950s right after the apartheid laws were enacted. I read this book for a discussion group called 4 Mystery Addicts, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Read more →

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Character Naming Contest

On May 31, 2009   /   contest, K sound, police proceduals, winners, writing life  
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In the course of writing a novel, you have to come up with at least 15 names, possibly as many as 40, depending on the genre. Police procedurals (my current genre), with lots of suspects and neighbors to interview require an endless stream of names. For minor characters, I often go with whatever pops into my mind. Sometimes, it works out and sometimes not so much. Read more →

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Cop Characters Credibility

On March 23, 2009   /   cop characters, emotional connections, John Sanford, Lou Boldt, Lucas Davenport, Neil Placky, police proceduals, protagonists, Ridley Pearson   /   16 Comments

Neil Placky’s excellent guest blog on The Kill Zone recently got me thinking about the nature of mystery series, police procedurals in particular. The series seem to fall into three camps: protagonists who are always linked to the criminal case being solved, cops who are sometimes linked to the case at hand, and detectives who rarely have an emotional connection to the case they’re working on. I’m not as widely read as I’d like to be, so my examples here are broad.

In the first category, the TV show Murder She Wrote comes to mind (as well as most cozies). In the third category, there’s John Sanford’s long-running series about Detective Lucas Davenport and Ridley Pearson’s series about Detective Lou Boldt. Neither detective hardly ever has a personal stake in their cases’ outcomes, yet they are favorites of mine—and millions of other readers.

My own series (and many others) falls into the middle. But even when Detective Jackson has a link to the case he’s solving, it’s not an intimate first-person connection.

I know many readers like emotional connections, but the question this raises for me is credibility. If your protagonist (whether a cop, an FBI agent, reporter, or private detective) is surrounded by people who can’t stay out of trouble, does he or she start to seem suspect? If every crime he/she solves is somehow personal, does your series start to lose credibility?

I’m thinking about this now because I’m plotting my fourth Jackson story and wondering how important the personal connection is to readers.

Writers: Do you connect your protagonist personally to his/her cases? Is it working for you?

Readers: How important is the personal connection? Can a series lose your respect if the protagonist has too many personal connections to criminal cases?

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