What's in a Book? by Susan Oleksiw

I have been slow to switch to an eReader for a very specific reason. When I’m asked why I don’t have a Kindle or other device I give various answers—hard on my eyes, hard to learn to use the devices, or something similar. But the real answer is that I discover books by handling them.

In a bookstore I pick up a book and study the title, feel the cover paper, and read the back. Is it filled with blurbs by other writers, excerpts from established or unknown review magazines, or a photo of the writer? Does the cover match what the story seems to promise? Sometimes the clues on the cover of a mystery novel never show up in the story. If there's a leopard on the cover, there should be a leopard in the story. How does the cover feel? Is it embossed, matte, glossy? What kind of paper is used for the text? And what else is there, beyond (or before) the text?

In the dark ages, when I was young and a graduate student, a nonfiction book arrived with a discussion of ideas to change the world and enough supplemental matter to buffer the onslaught of the opposition. A scholarly or any other serious nonfiction work contained a half-title page, title page, copyright notice, dedication, preface, foreword, introduction, introduction to the revised edition, table of contents, text, endnotes (if no footnotes), index, and bibliography. There was no separate biography of the author, since his or her qualifications were most likely indicated in the preface or introduction as part of an explanation of the origins of the book.

When I was considering buying a nonfiction book I could flip through the supplemental material and evaluate the scholarship partly on what was present, or absent. I learned something of the topic in the process and knew more about what I was getting into if I decided to buy—and spend time with—this book. I can’t do that easily online.

Also back in the dark ages, a crime novel might contain a half-title page, title page, copyright notice, dedication, brief note if the story was based on a true crime, list of chapters, and novel. Some novels included a map and list of characters. Many novels closed with lists of the publisher’s other books available for sale. The front matter was a way of easing my way as a reader into another world, an unknown one, warning me that with the turn of another page, things would be different.

The copyright page tells me something about the publisher. The standard the statement declaring this story a work of fiction is the least of what I expect to find. I look for information on the printing, such as font, or the quality of paper. I can usually tell by touch, but sometimes the publisher has gone so far as to state this is permanent paper, or printing is in accord with certain library standards. And then there's the Library of Congress cataloging-in-data. Sometimes the choices announced here are enlightening, a way of seeing the book through another's eyes.

I’ve described a lot of supplemental material. Is anything missing? Yes, if the novels I’m reading today are any guide. The novel I just finished reading ended with a five-page list of acknowledgments. Five pages! And this is not unusual. Many of today’s novels contain almost a summary of the entire research and writing process. I do find this interesting, but I’m not sure it belongs in the novel. In my third Mellingham mystery, Family Album, I included an Acknowledgments page with one paragraph of five lines, and a bookseller told me it was “excessive.” I wonder what she thinks about the current practice.

In my 1926 copy of Agatha Christie’s Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the book includes a half-title page, title page, copyright notice, dedication, table of contents, and text. There is no biography of the author anywhere, and no acknowledgments of assistance or guidance. Not even the book jacket has a bio on either flap. Most of today’s books have “best-selling author” slathered across the cover, but this edition of Ackroyd has only a few words across the top: “A Baffling Detective Story.”

As if to make up for the lack of hype and biographical information, the bottom of the front flap contains this charming notice: “The issuance of this new edition at a reduced price is made possible by (a) use of the same plates made for the original edition: (b) acceptance by the author of a reduced royalty.”

If I switch to an eReader, I will miss these details and the process of discovery that comes with picking up a book in a bookstore and flipping through its pages, discovering how it’s organized and how the writer thinks about the topic. Publishers may not announce their royalty practices on a book flap anymore, but there are other discoveries to be found there.

  

Keeping Up with Your Characters

The hardest part of writing crime fiction has turned out to be something I didn’t expect, and something I’ve only now, after nine novels, started to think about. Working out some of the clues in the third Anita Ray novel, For the Love of Parvati, taught me some important lessons about keeping up with my characters. 

In graduate school I read through all of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple novels without ever being troubled by the woman’s age, or her failure to age along with the world around her. The elderly woman of the 1930s accepting invitations to weekend parties in the country was the elderly woman of the 1950s exploring the new housing developments on the edge of the village. In contrast I also read Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series, and enjoyed the subplot of the inspector’s personal life, including the challenges of dealing with his growing children.

When I started writing the Mellingham series with Chief of Police Joe Silva, I hadn’t considered how his life would change. He was a man in his fifties when he walked onto the page, and I thought I would find enough murderous business while he was in that decade to not worry about anything else. I was wrong. He fell in love at the end of the third book in the series, Family Album, and his beloved came with a ready-made family.

Things have evolved differently for Anita Ray. I hadn’t given much thought to her getting married and starting a family, but I assumed that would happen, and was waiting for the right setting to develop. But again, I was wrong. Instead of the traditional passage, Anita becomes more deeply involved in photography. She appeared as a photographer in the first line of the first story, and in every adventure she’s using her camera to solve crimes.

Anita uses a Pentax because I use one. I have my eye on another camera but that will have to wait. Meanwhile I find myself trying to keep up with Anita. She’s curious, so she has opened her camera to see if there’s anything wrong inside. Professional guidebooks always warn against this, but Anita doesn’t take advice. And apart from the advice for beginners, professional photographers like to know their equipment intimately. This was a challenge for me, but I rose to it and opened my camera and took a look inside.

Anita looks at everyone and everything as though she were looking through a lens. This gives her distance and a sense of the narrative of what she’s looking at. To her everything is an image, and everyone is telling a story.

For a while Anita has had a gentleman friend, someone her aunt doesn’t approve of. This has provided me with numerous opportunities to play with Auntie Meena’s prejudices and frustrated dreams as a mother and marriage broker. But the man in question is leaving Anita in Book 4, and will not return as her beloved.

Anita runs a photography gallery, which brings her a modest income and gets her out of her aunt’s Hotel Delite, with its attendant duties and mini crises. I have mounted two photography exhibits for a local library gallery, so I know how much work it takes. I’ve also submitted to juried shows (and been accepted for a few).

I’m keeping up with Anita, but just barely. For each story I have to learn about and do more with my camera. Usually when writers talk about characters getting away from them, they mean the characters say unexpected things. With Anita, she veers off in directions as a photographer that make me scramble to keep up. She forces me to learn, and perhaps in the end I’ll be as good a photographer as I think she is.

For more about Susan and the Anita Ray series, including links to her books, go to http://www.susanoleksiw.com