A Review of Nancy Pickard’s The Virgin of Small Plains

By Kim

About The Virgin of Small Plains (from the book jacket):

Small Plains, Kansas, January 23, 1987: In the midst of a deadly blizzard, eighteen-year-old Rex Shellenberger scours his father’s pasture, looking for helpless newborn calves. Then he makes a shocking discovery: the naked, frozen body of a teenage girl, her skin as white as the snow around her. Even dead, she is the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. It is a moment that will forever change his life and the lives of everyone around him. The mysterious dead girl—the “Virgin of Small Plains”—inspires local reverence: In the two decades following her death, strange miracles visit those who faithfully tend to her grave; some even believe that her spirit can cure deadly illnesses. Slowly, word of the legend spreads.

But what really happened in that snow-covered field? Why did young Mitch Newquist disappear the day after the Virgin’s body was found, leaving behind his distraught girlfriend, Abby Reynolds? Why do the town’s three most powerful men—Dr. Quentin Reynolds, former sheriff Nathan Shellenberger, and Judge Tom Newquist—all seem to be hiding the details of that night.

Seventeen years later, when Mitch suddenly returns to Small Plains, simmering tensions come to a head, ghosts that had long slumbered whisper anew, and the secrets that some wish would stay buried rise again from the grave of the Virgin. Abby—never having resolved her feelings for Mitch—is now determined to uncover exactly what happened so many years ago to tear their lives apart.

Three families and three friends, their worlds inexorably altered in the course of one night, must confront the ever-unfolding consequences in award-winning author Nancy Pickard’s remarkable novel of suspense. Wonderfully written and utterly absorbing, The Virgin of Small Plains is about the loss of faith, trust, and innocence…and the possibility of redemption.

About Nancy Pickard (from the book jacket)

Nancy Pickard is the creator of the acclaimed Jenny Cain mystery series. She has won the Anthony Award, two Macavity Awards, and two Agatha Awards for her novels. She is a three-time Edgar Award nominee, most recently for her first Marie Lightfoot mystery, The Whole Truth, which was a national bestseller. With Lynn Lott, Pickard co-authored Seven Steps on the Writer’s Path. She has been a national board member of the Mystery Writers of America, as well as the president of Sisters in Crime. She lives in Prairie Village, Kansas.

My Review:

I don’t remember the last time I read a mystery/suspense novel, but The Virgin of Small Plains was one I felt compelled to pick up after Donald Maass spoke about it at length during his 21^st Century Fiction workshop. (He’s not her agent.)

The praise was well deserved. The opening sequence of events, though not a surprise after the workshop, still kept me glued to the page. I read this book until two in the morning one night and picked it back up at seven. I read it while I made breakfast, while I ate lunch, in the car waiting for my daughter to get out of dance class, and every spare moment in between. Pickard is a master at letting out just enough information to keep a reader going, yet withholding the rest until the most devastating moment. I did figure out one key element long before it was revealed, but the “how” and “why” questions were equally compelling and not answered until the end.

Writers could learn a lot about pacing and point of view from dissecting this novel. It is also a prime example of a genre novel with literary elements. 

Highly recommended.

Put Ninety Introverts in a Room and Watch Magic Happen

By Kim

Imagine a room filled with ninety writers, all but a handful of whom consider themselves introverts. A few have met in person before, but the rest are connected only through social media or, perhaps, through the comments on the Writer Unboxed blog. Some are successfully published, some have faced nothing but rejection, and some are so blocked and discouraged that it’s impossible to finish their manuscript, let alone submit it.

Now imagine these writers haunting Salem’s Hawthorne Hotel for five days; sharing meals, walking in tightly knit clumps down the narrow, historic streets between the hotel and the House of the Seven Gables, attending lectures on voice, micro-tension, and how good manuscripts go wrong.  Classes on how to snag an agent or whether to self-publish are conspicuously absent from the schedule. There are no pitch sessions or parties where writers jockey for position to pigeonhole agents at the hotel bar. No one makes smug declarations about the “right” path to publication.

A rock-star New York literary agent lives among these writers for several days, but they’d rather attempt to beat him at poker than beg him to read their pages.

Photo by Kim Bullock

The Writer Unboxed Un-Conference lived up to its name. It was an experiment, a risk, and it could have been an utter disaster. That it was the opposite is largely because Therese Walsh, who was insane enough to organize this event more or less on her own, has an uncanny ability to attract the type of people who check their egos at the door and open their arms (figuratively and literally) to everyone.

Magic occurred in Salem, Massachusetts last week, but it was not of the witchy variety.

I originally intended this post to be a simple recap of the conference, but there are several such posts out in the blogosphere by now and, as the wise Lisa Cron pointed out in her Wired for Story classes, there is no story in generalities.

I choose to tell you what this conference meant to me personally, and damned if I won’t have to go to an awfully deep place to do it.

I would never have said half these things a week ago.

The UnCon shined a light into all my dark corners so I could sweep out the cobwebs and reveal that the biggest thing holding me back is me. More specifically that I fear success as much as failure. I hadn't realized the crippling truth of that until I saw it written in my own handwriting during one of Donald Maass’ workshops. I hope publicly owning that fear will help me to overcome it. Perhaps a few of my new (or old) friends will remind me of this the next time I spend a week agonizing over the placement of a comma.

Let me talk a moment about fear, because it has ruled my life far longer than I like to admit. Here’s a little glimpse of what nonsense went on in my mind when I arrived in Salem:

How will my children survive without me for a whole week during Nutcracker insanity season?

I've only met two other conference attendees in real life, and both of them have other friends here. I’d rather starve than eat dinner alone.

Mingling at a cocktail party is my worst nightmare. I don’t know how to make small talk. I’ll be remembered as that person who smiles awkwardly, nods in random directions, and says nothing all night.

How will I handle being back in New England, so close to the place where I spent the majority of my childhood alienated and alone, feeling that I’d never have a friend who “got me?”

What if I need to escape, but can’t because I have three roommates?

Photo by Therese Walsh and Kim Bullock - (it's complicated)

What if people tell me that I’m “different” in person than I am on-line? Worse, what if this is said with a tone that implies they prefer my Facebook persona?

What if I bungle my introduction of Porter Anderson or (GULP) Donald Maass?

What if, what if, what if…this broken record of anxiety has sent me scurrying away from most social situations for years.

I suspect that anyone who met me at the UnConference would say this is not the Kim they remember, and they are absolutely right. I sent her packing.

They never met that raging ball of insecurity, that fragile soul who has never fully recovered from the sometimes vicious slights in her past, that quiet woman who puts up a shield to protect herself from subconsciously experiencing every mood of every person around her. It’s exhausting enough dealing with my own hormonal mood swings. The last thing I need is to get agitated simply because the bartender sets a glass down too hard or to blink back tears because the woman sitting at the corner table dabs at her eyes. I can’t help perceiving that every negative emotion around me is somehow my fault. I did something wrong, felt something wrong or, maybe, simply wore the wrong expression.

The moment I stepped inside the hotel, even flanked by my “tribe” of fellow WU Mod Squaders, people with whom I've connected daily for the past three years, uncertainty prickled my scalp.

Therese and me at The Witches Brew - photo by Valerie Chandler

Our group headed downstairs to the library for registration. Therese, whom I’d known online for even longer than the rest of the Mod Squad, stood behind the table handing out name tags. I swear the woman is lit from within and has a grin that goes on for miles. Photographs do her no justice.

Now, some people give hugs and some people give hugs. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of one of “Mama T’s” will attest she gives the latter. She’s called that for a good reason.

In the moments after she moved on to greet the line of people behind me, and I found myself gathered into the embrace of so many old friends I’d just met, I realized that the shield I’d hidden myself behind for years had vanished. Perhaps it was the warmth of Therese’s greeting or the niggling sense that I had just found a kindred spirit. Perhaps it was the enchanted ambiance of Salem itself. More likely it was the rush of being slammed from all sides by the joy and love emanating from all those stranger-friends, many of whom declared that they had wanted to meet me for ages.

That’s a mighty powerful drug and I became an instant addict.

The only time I spent alone during the conference was when I walked to the waterfront and symbolically threw that shield into the Atlantic. I didn't want or need it anymore, and I decided a new coping strategy was in order, one that would allow me to live as my authentic self. What better place to start than at the UnConference, where reassurance was only a hug away, and you couldn't walk ten feet without receiving one of those?

Valerie and Heather - photo by Kim Bullock

Standing there, the sea air filling my lungs, the scenery and buildings so reminiscent of the home I’d tried for decades to disown, I admitted to myself that I was homesick for the landscape of my childhood. That perhaps my perceptions of scorn had been tainted by my empathic nature. That despising a region so deeply rooted in my blood had caused me to despise a piece of myself.

Ironically, that very same night I met an old friend from Maine (currently living in Boston) for coffee.

Two memories from the conference will remain among my most cherished. The first was when Therese’s husband, Sean, made us all laugh until we cried while we raised a glass to “WriterBob” Stewart, a much-admired elderly gentleman who wanted to attend the conference more than anything and tragically passed away there – on Sean’s birthday of all days. This birthday celebration turned memorial cemented an already tight-knit group into a family, and I’m sure that WriterBob would be delighted by this.

The second memory was a magical afternoon when Valerie Chandler, Heather Reid, Therese and I played hooky from class and wandered through two of Salem’s cemeteries. Therese, as promised, introduced me to her favorite tree and when we compared photos later we discovered we had some eerily similar shots of the same limbs at different angles. Valerie took photographs of me sitting in another tree and read her favorite epitaphs aloud. Heather looked happy and at peace despite the recent loss of her mother.

It was 1:00 AM - don't judge

The trip to Salem would have been worth it even if all I got were those couple of stolen hours with three women I dearly love.

Yes, that’s right, I said love. If I learned anything from WriterBob’s passing, it is that no one knows how long we have or what we may miss by holding back. Why not tell people those things that we feel but neglect to say? If the impulse strikes, why not walk down the street with your arm wrapped around a friend? Take it from someone who kept her arm wrenched down to her side for forty-one years, you’ll both feel better for it.   

The UnCon was not just a writer’s conference. Even now, days after we have all returned to our respective lives, the group Facebook page is flooded with pictures, videos, conversation, and lamentations that no one from home can grasp the magnitude of what we have all just experienced. It’s clear that I’m only one of many people who have all broken free of their own cages and connected with others in a way they never have before. All the heart emoticons would be laughable if they weren't so purely felt.

No one wants to say good-bye, and so we don’t. 


* Note: On the cemetery photo credited to both Therese and I, here's the scoop: Therese took the photo (of me) on my camera. I doctored it. Adding to the confusion, I then sent it to my mother, Deborah Downes, to clone out an annoying red sign in the background.

Writing tips and links

by Joan

Breaking into the writing world can be scary and overwhelming. Though we're all at different stages in our careers, we’ve been at this for a while and take for granted all we’ve learned over the past ten years (or so). When recent blog guest Chris Raia expressed an interest in writing tips and links, it occurred to me that others might appreciate a go-to list as well.

Workshops and conferences are a great way to learn your craft and meet writers in all stages of their careers. Where would I be without the wonderful friends and acquaintances I’ve met outside of my little writing space? I've learned from incredible instructors and classmates at the Bethesda Writers' Center, the Writers' League of Texas and will soon attend a weeklong fiction workshop at the Napa Valley Writer's Conference.

A crucial part of improving your work is to show your words to one or more trusted readers. Over the years, I’ve worked with both good and bad, so choose your critique partners wisely. Here are a few thoughts on finding the right group and making the most of it when you do. 

Writers’ Digest also has a critique forum. 

Once you’ve revised and edited your work, whether it’s a short story, children’s book or novel-length manuscript, you might consider entering a contest or submitting to a literary journal. 

Another great resource for advice and camaraderie are writers’ blogs. Here are a few of our favorites:

Writer Unboxed

Beyond the Margins

Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents

Brian Klems' The Writer's Dig

And of course, our own... What Women Write

Looking for deep, self-instruction? Here are some books on writing:

The Fire in Fiction, Donald Maass

Writing the Breakout Novel, Donald Maass

The Art of Fiction, David Lodge

The First Five Pages, Noah Lukeman
On Writing, Stephen King
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont

Susan is the master of revision and recently shared some great advice. But perhaps you're looking for professional help in the form of an editor? Here are a few options:

Heather Webb, author of the upcoming Becoming Josephine
Stephanie Cowell, author of Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet
Grub Street, offering workshops, consulting and conferences

Even though there are many online resources, I'm still a fan of magazines. I get Poet's and Writers and Writer's Digest; Pamela subscribes to The Writer.

Perhaps you want to pursue an MFA. (This one’s still on my goal list!) Here’s a list of MFA programs you might want to consider.

When you’re sure your work is in the best possible shape, and you want to get it published, you’re ready to hire an agent or see if one represents your genre. If you want to learn if the agent you’ve chosen is respected and successful, Preditors and Editors is a great site to research. Or if you just want the scoop on what writers have experienced, Absolute Write forums cover almost any writing related subject. 

If you're an experienced writer or author and have more to share, please do!

The Grown Up Party

by  Joan

When I was a kid, my parents threw their version of New Year’s Eve parties. They’d serve 1960s crudités, meatballs and champagne, and clink glasses with a few close couples. The women dressed in gold-threaded dresses, the men in ties, and both wore party hats—for at least the countdown. For extra good luck in the upcoming year, my father ate pickled herring at midnight. 

Sisters on the famous avocado stairs

My younger sister and I sat at the top of the avocado green stairs, the same ones we raced down during the day, and waited eagerly to be invited to join the grownups for a taste of herring, a blow on the party horn and, yes, a sip of champagne. Some day, I thought, I would host my own party.

Sometimes I still feel like that little girl, the one waiting at the top of the stairs. Will I ever be allowed to join the party? Will I ever publish a novel?

Recently I read this lovely piece by Marcia DeSanctis (thank you Dani Shapiro, for sharing the link). Ms. DeSanctis found herself at a table with several powerhouse authors and wondered if she'd earned a place in their company. I, too, have piles of rejections. I, too, have been buoyed by praise from workshop leaders and trusted authors, encouraged by query success. Yes, I’d love to be published. But I write because I love to write, not because I think it will make me rich or famous or accepted at the powerhouse author table. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to be there as well.

I'm not great with New Year’s resolutions, mostly because by the end of February, I’ve forgotten what I’d resolved to do. Even so, I finish what I start, am diligent about deadlines and I work hard to accomplish a goal, even if I’m unsure of the steps to get there. Eventually the elusive answer appears, eventually the sentence reads true. But I know to keep a resolution, it must be something in my control.

I just read Donald Maass’ article Failure to Launch in Writer’s Digest. “Why do so many published novels fail to sell—and what can you do to keep your book from becoming one of them?” Authors who languish on the shelves with mediocre sales should not blame the publishing industry or a bad cover or unfortunate spot in the bookstore, Maass writes. Rather they should focus on what they can control: writing strong voices and complex characters facing their deepest fears. “Runaway success comes from great fiction, period,” he says. I know his words apply to unpublished manuscripts, too.

There are times I doubt there’s a spot for me at the grown-up party. I can’t control the publishing industry or force an agent and editor to love my book. But I can resolve to keep working diligently, read amazing novels by both friends and idols, dig deep to create unforgettable characters and write until my sentences speak truth and beauty. I can position myself with a noisemaker, champagne glass and delicious meatballs. And wait to be asked to join the party.

Happy New Year!

A Fabulous (and Free) Resource for Writers

By Kim

Ask most people what they imagine an author looks like, and they’ll probably describe a solitary figure hunched over a computer keyboard. There’s some truth to that, of course, but the business end of publishing now requires writers to be more extroverted than many of us are comfortable with. To be successful we’re expected to network, write guest blog posts or blurbs, give interviews, Skype into book clubs, and even do some public speaking.

If local writers’ groups are hard to come by in your area, there are many places on the internet for authors to mingle. Not all of us shell out the subscription fees for paid forums, and it's not absolutely necessary.

I’ve found most of my writer friends on Facebook. I joined several groups on there to begin with, but most boards struck me as a long line of commercials. Read my blog! Buy my book! Follow me! Buy my book! Like me! Buy my book! Actual conversation rarely happened.

This changed in January of 2011, when Therese Walsh and Kathleen Bolton started a Writer Unboxed (Facebook) group in celebration of the fifth anniversary of their blog of the same name. (If you haven’t yet visited Writer Unboxed, it’s well worth checking out. Writer’s Digest has listed it as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers from 2007-2012 and in 2011 it was a winner in the Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest.)

The purpose of the WU Facebook group is to give writers a place to come together and discuss the craft and business of fiction without the pressure of building platform. I was one of the first members and in October of last year Therese Walsh invited me to join the moderator team.

As of today, Writer Unboxed (FB) has over 1,400 members ranging from respected published authors to newbies to top agents like Donald Maass. This is a community where you can ask an obscure research question and have a dozen answers in an hour. (My question, in case you’re curious, was how one might attach a prosthetic leg onto a rooster in the 1930’s. One of the answers from WU is now in The Oak Lovers.)

If you haven’t already done so, I invite you to come on over and check out the WU Facebook group here. Once an administrator has let you into the group, take a look in the menu marked ‘files.’ In there you can read the rules of the group and add your FB profile, twitter handle, blog, or website to the appropriate places. If you want a critique partner, we have a file for that, too. Any questions? Ask me or any other members of the Mod Squad – Vaughn Roycroft, Heather Reid, or Valerie Chandler - and we’ll help you out.

Hooking ... not as easy as you'd think

By Pamela

Before I could tie my own shoes, I could bait a hook. Before I learned to drive a car, I learned to row a boat. Long before I became adept in the kitchen, I filleted fish on a pier. Such was the life of a kid who spent summers at the lake.

Me with my brother and sister:
learning the art of hooking at an early age.

But hooking fish and hooking readers are two different skills. Fish are pretty easy. A fat juicy worm, a shiny lure. Readers? They tend to be a little more particular.

At our recent retreat, my goal was to improve my hook. But before I could fully embrace the challenge, I had to know more about what the heck I was doing.

Author Nathan Bransford says a book's hook is "the quest and the central conflict, described as succinctly as possible, designed to make someone want to read more." Every novel, he says, is a quest--a journey that takes the reader from the beginning of the story to the end. The conflict is what your character must overcome to get from points A to B. Put them both together and you have it. A hook!

In Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages, he devoted an entire chapter to hooks. (Chapter 14, if you're reading along.) Literary agent Donald Maass talks about hook in Writing the Breakout Novel. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find any credible book on writing that didn't address The Hook.

But the term 'hook' is thrown about pretty generously. Hooks open chapters, end chapters, begin paragraphs and generally appear throughout a novel. They're what keep us reading when we're really too tired to do so. We just can't put the book down, darn hooks!

What concerned me about my manuscript was not the hooks that appear throughout my story. It was THE HOOK. That one element that makes my book The One someone will want to read. It's what pulls readers in even before they decide to purchase the book. It's the bait that gets them committed to spending hours of their precious time immersed in the story.

A hook is sometimes apparent in a title. For example, Nathan says Snakes on a Plane reveals the movie's hook. Quest? Get the snakes off the plane. Conflict? Ahem, snakes + plane. Conflict, natch. In Moneyball, the hook is: Baseball manager on a budget takes an unprecedented approach to building a winning team. Showtime's Dexter has a unique hook: A Miami police forensics expert moonlights as a vigilante serial killer. Dexter's quest? Catch and kill criminals. Conflict: keeping those close to him from finding out what he does after hours.

For me, my hook was present in the story; it just didn't become known until chapter four. Maybe even five. So making my story's hook stronger simply meant moving chapters around (and tweaking the details) so that the hook now appears in chapter two--the beginning of chapter two. And who knows? Before I'm done, it might become chapter one.

For now the challenge continues: keeping the reader involved in the story so that he or she stays with it. The only way to do that is to raise the conflict, keeping the line taut. And as a result, land my fish once he's caught--all the way to the end.

Multiple Mania!

By Julie

I'm taking a crash course in my latest manuscript. I'm writing not only from different points of view, but in different settings and times in history. I've written from at least two points of view in each long manuscript I've written or dabbled in, but the multiple setting and time periods thing is new and certainly a challenge.

For research, I've been checking out relevant online articles and studying the books I'm reading carefully to see how the authors handled similar challenges. I thought I'd share a few of my favorite resources so far with our What Women Write readers.

As Joan mentioned in her personal blog the other day, Donald Maass posted a series recently on Writer Unboxed. Like Joan, the series couldn't have come at a better time for me, especially Part III, posted just last week.* In this installment, Maass discusses how using multiple points of view can enhance your story. He says, ". . . readers respond powerfully to a sense of vastness, a depth and sweep, being transported, journeying far and yet feeling at home. It may be easier to evoke all that with multiple points of view."

That was enough to reassure me my current process is worth the effort. But Maass went on to say that just having multiple points of view is not enough, that "To create a true sense of scale, every characters' storyline must be equally absorbing."

And he could have just left it at that, but he doesn't. He provides a series of questions I've copied and pasted at the bottom of my current manuscript. Each time I contemplate them, I make notes and dig a little deeper into the multiple points of view I'm attempting to write. In Maass's words, I'm building scale into the story. I hope.

Then, last week, I happened upon a link posted by my friend Lisa on her Facebook page. On the surface, this article, Strategies for Writing About Loss (by Robin Black, author of IF I LOVED YOU, I WOULD TELL YOU THIS, guest posting on Beyond the Margins), sounded like a good resource almost any way you look at it. Most of us choose to write about loss in some form or fashion. Black's focus in the article is on how to write about loss in such a way that makes it unique and different. But the deeper I dug into the article, the more I realized how much it spoke to me about my multiple POV/setting/time period challenge. She suggests:

"There are also strategies for defamiliarizing stories that might sound, in summary, like a million others stories that have come before. . . . One possibility to consider is an intertwining, secondary plot line that both contrasts and resonates with the central one."

Aha! and Oh, yeaaaaah! I thought as I read those sentences. That's why I began writing my modern day point-of-view character to begin with in ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE, my current manuscript! I just needed a little reminding when things started to feel a little confused and overwhelming. And that whole article is packed full of some good stuff.

Finally, I recently polled my Facebook friends, asking what books they'd read that used multiple points of view in different time periods and preferably different settings. Joan was spot on again with her recommendation of THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN, by Kate Morton. I gobbled up this hefty novel last week and came away from it thinking, well, if she can do it and make it work, so can I. She juggled even more POVs and time periods than I'm attempting, all to good effect. She talks about the process here on her fascinating website.

With a little help from my friends, some excellent articles, and the best research for writing fiction ever – READING – I feel like I'm well on my way to wrapping my head around this challenge.

What about you? Any additional words of wisdom or resources or just feel like commiserating because you're attempting something similar? We'd love to hear from you.

* Any writer at any stage could benefit from reading all three installments of Maass's excellent series, The Elements of Awe -- Part I here; Part II here; Part III here.
Photo credit: Daniela Vladimirova's Flickr photostream by Creative Commons License