#008 Inside the Emotion of Fiction DEAD COPY BY Liz Frazier; published by Midnight Ink Publications on May 9, 2007.
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Name of fiction work? And were there other titles you considered that you would like to share with us? Dead Copy is the second book in my Cauley MacKinnon mystery series. I have a weird writing style, and start with the title, and for whatever reason, the first and last sentences always come to me first. Since my heroine, Cauley MacKinnon is an obituary writer whose life ambition is to get off the “Dead Beat” and become an investigative reporter, my titles are always newspaper-related, and organically wind up being about 400 pages, though, since so much of the books are banter and conversation, I’ve been told by readers they can finish them in about two days. It warms my heart when readers tell me they couldn’t put it down.
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? Dead Copy took almost a year to write. My first novel, Scoop, I hammered out in sixty-five days, because the story came to me fully formed one day while I was driving home from the doctor. Of course, as I was writing, the characters took control, and the twists surprised even me.
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I made the novel-sophomore mistake of thinking my second book (DEAD COPY) would be a breeze, but that book gave me problems and fits that often kept me ups all night.
I made the decision to go digital for the third (A MACKINNON CHRISTMAS) and any future novels after talking to other bestselling authors. Digital, when done right, has much better earning potential. With the digital proceeds from the first three novels, I was able to buy lakefront property.
I did a book tour for my first two books, which were successful, amazing and fun, but decided to forgo the traditional publishing route with my third book, A MacKinnon Christmas. That book took me about two-and-a-half months to write, thought it was emotional book because I’d just taken a break with my boyfriend. While the novel is as funny as the first two, I used those deep emotions to pour into that novel.
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Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I’d found my dream lakefront property before I wrote the second book was even done, a leap of faith and put the earnest money down to hold it. I’m glad I took I took the chance. I wrote the next three books on the private island that went with the property. The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks, the cool breeze coming in off the Central Texas lake, my dog and cat by my side, was the perfect writing spot. The birds and wildlife made the second book (DEAD COPY) so vividly clear in the lake scenes.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? When I’m working, I write every day. Because I was a full time journalist, finding the time to write every day at the same time each day took more discipline than I had, so I took a job as the opening shift at a nearby gym. I had to be there at 4 a.m., so I put a sign-in sheet on the counter and used that three hours to write on my laptop. I know that writing at 4 a.m. makes a lot of people cringe, it works for me. When I would get home I’d make dinner, eat, then head down to the island to write until I was exhausted.
What is the summary of this specific fiction work? Cauley MacKinnon novels are about a twenty-eight-year-old who’s paying for some mistakes in her life. After a devastating divorce, she finishes the journalism degree she left behind at her husband’s insistence.
She moves back to Austin, where she loses her first job as a reporter by, as she refers to it, “accidentally sleeping with her boss.” The only job available in her field is as an obituary writer, but she never gives up on her dream to become an investigative journalist. To that end, she leaps before looking, and winds up up-to-her-eyelashes in dead bodies, big trouble, and some really hot guys. Her main love interest is Special Agent FBI Agent Tom Logan, though residual self-doubt from her failed marriage makes progress with Logan more difficult.
Tom Logan is based on a real FBI agent I’d worked with during my days at the newspaper. When I asked him if it would be okay to base a character on him, he said, “I always wanted to be a thinly veiled character.”
Some plots begin with experiences that happed between us in real life. Of course, the stories veer off wildly from real life, and he gets a kick getting to see himself through my eyes.
Can you give the reader just enough information for them to understand what is going on in the excerpt? Dead Copy, and despite the fits this book gave me, it was a lot of fun because Logan’s real life character really did call me in the middle of the night to write a fake obituary for a covert informant he needed to appear dead until he could get him to trial. While nothing that happens after that happened in real life, it was a lot of fun.
Please include the excerpt and include page numbers as reference. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. Dead Copy, pages one through twenty-one.
Answering the phone is a crapshoot. It’s usually the electric company checking to see if I’m dead because they haven’t received a payment in two months or my mother calling to remind me that I’m on a swift approach to thirty and time’s a-wasting.
It’s never a good call, like my dream guy ringing from the driveway or Publishers Clearing House calling to tell me they’re circling the block with a big fake check for a million dollars. Although if it was one of the guys from Publishers Clearing House, he would definitely be at the top of my Dream Guy list.
The phone trilled again. From the foot of the bed, Marlowe growled low in his husky-mutt throat. I cracked open one eye. Family or creditor, it was clear the phone was not going to stop ringing. My voice mail was full, so, short of faking my own kidnapping, I was going to have to answer it. Searching through the tangle of sheets, I nearly knocked Muse’s grouchy little calico butt off the bed. Jeez, what time was it anyway?
“Sorry, cat,” I muttered, ferreting the cordless landline out from a pile of pillows.
“Cauley MacKinnon,” I growled into the receiver, my voice heavy with sleep and sounding a bit like Lauren Bacall.
I waited.
Nothing.
“Hello-o-o-o,” I said into the silence.
And there it was.
The unmistakable sound of heavy breathing. The little hairs on the back of my neck lifted, and I blinked myself awake. I’d been getting calls like this since word got out I was testifying in the upcoming federal trial of Selena Obregon, a beautiful, blond Argentinean gang leader who looked like Grace Kelly with fangs.
“Look, you big jerk,” I said into the receiver with a mix of fear and false bravado. I was about to blast the butthead with a string of anatomically impossible suggestions when a deep voice drawled, “I need somebody dead.”
I did a whole-body grin.
Aha! This time it really was my dream guy.
Smiling like an idiot, I wrapped my quilt around me and snuggled deep into my big, empty bed. “Somebody already dead, or somebody you want to get dead?” I said.
Just for clarification.
“The latter.”
I nuzzled the phone to my ear and could practically see FBI Special Agent Tom Logan leaning against his battered gray bureau car, looking like a tall, dark-haired Eagle Scout on high-octane testosterone. “Is this going to be one of those things where I have to help save the world and I get stabbed in the ass and then I don’t get to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning article when it’s all over?”
After a long pause, he said, “Probably you won’t get stabbed again.”
“Tom Logan, how you talk. FBI agents are so mercurial.”
“How many FBI agents do you know?” he said.
“Enough that you shouldn’t leave town again anytime soon.”
I could practically hear him smile over the line, and I wondered where things stood between us. The last time I’d seen Tom Logan, he’d thoroughly inspected my tonsils at the Fourth of July picnic and then disappeared into the night to go interrogate fugitives or use thumbscrews or whatever it was FBI agents did when they were called away in the line of duty.
“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that,” he said, and he sounded like he really meant it. After a short pause, he said, “I need a favor.”
“Right now?” I rolled my head to look at the little analog clock ticking away on the antique nightstand.
Four in the morning. It is my opinion that four o’clock should only come once a day, and it should come firmly entrenched in a happy hour.
In his deep Fort Worth drawl, Logan said, “I need an obituary.”
I frowned. “An obituary?”
Anywhere else in the world, a request for an obituary in the middle of the night might seem crazy. But in Texas, we have a special affinity for crazy. I hear up North they lock their crazy people in the attic. Down here, we prop them up on the sofa and invite the neighbors over for iced tea.
Rubbing my eyes, I said, “An obituary for who?”
“I can’t get into it on the phone,” he said. “I just need to know if you can do it. If you can’t, I can get somebody else… ”
“Well, of course I can do it,” I said irritably. “Besides. How many obituary writers do you know?”
“One is all I need,” he said, and I blinked in the darkness. Was Tom Logan flirting with me at four in the morning?
“It needs to look authentic,” he went on, “with the right wording and on newspaper, printed on both sides so it looks like the real deal. And this should be off the record. No files laying around. No ghost images floating in the hard drive.”
I sighed. Not flirting. But then, that was Logan: all business. “Well,” I said. “The last part’s no problem. We’ve got a Dead Copy file we use to obliterate information from confidential sources. It’s the Sentinel’s reaction to you Feds tippy-toeing all over the First Amendment.”
“We never tippy-toe,” he said, and I smiled.
“So. Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want a fake obituary on a tear sheet?” I said, wondering how I was going to pull that off. “And when would you need this real-looking fake obituary?”
“Now.”
I bolted upright in bed. If Tom Logan said he needed something now, he wasn’t kidding.
“Okay, just… give me a minute,” I said.
Stumbling out of my old four-poster, I stepped on the sharp corner of a DVD case of The Searchers. “Ow!”
“You okay?”
“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” I growled, snatching up the DVD. Logan had given me the flick right after my house had been burgled and my movie collection trashed, probably hoping to win over another John Wayne convert. The movie wasn’t noir, my favorite, but it was pretty good if you like endings where the hero wanders off into the sunset alone.
Which I don’t.
But wandering off into the sunset alone is something I seemed to be doing a lot more of since I met Tom Logan.
“Is this going to be a problem?” he said.
“No… I’m ready, sort of… ” With the phone wedged between my shoulder and ear, I tossed the DVD onto the dresser and yanked open a drawer for a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, wishing I had time to find a killer summer sweater that fit so well it would make him think twice before leaving again.
I glanced in the mirror above the dresser and immediately wished I hadn’t. Ordinarily, no self-respecting southern girl would be caught dead going out of the house with Stage Three Bed Head. But I have found that self-respect is often highly overrated. I swiped a brush through my hair and gave up.
“Cauley? You still there?”
“I said I’m ready,” I huffed, juggling the phone as I hopped on one leg, wriggling into a pair of jeans. “Where do you want me to meet you?”
the dresser and yanked open a drawer for a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, wishing I had time to find a killer summer sweater that fit so well it would make him think twice before leaving again.
I glanced in the mirror above the dresser and immediately wished I hadn’t. Ordinarily, no self-respecting southern girl would be caught dead going out of the house with Stage Three Bed Head. But I have found that self-respect is often highly overrated. I swiped a brush through my hair and gave up.
“Cauley? You still there?”
“I said I’m ready,” I huffed, juggling the phone as I hopped on one leg, wriggling into a pair of jeans. “Where do you want me to meet you?”
“No need,” he said. “I’m in your driveway.”
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Why is this excerpt so emotional for you? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? Like many of us, Cauley is insecure and unsure about her budding relationship with Logan, who she describes as Captain America, who is such a badass she suspects he eats a bowl of bullets for breakfast. As their relationship unfolds, it is funny and fraught with missteps, misgivings and, happily, romance. I’ve had readers tell me they are in love with Logan. But the character who gets the most fan mail is Marlowe, the wolf-like stray police dog that Cauely discovers is really Logan’s dog, who the FBI gent sent to watch over her while Logan is away.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I revise as I write on my laptop. Each time I open the document to get to work, I save that draft with the date and send it to the Cloud so I don’t have to start all over – and yes, I’ve had to start all over before. That’s how I set up this system to save the document.
Other works you have published? Scoop; Dead Copy; A MacKinnon Christmas. “I am currently working on two books (which, turns out, I don’t recommend this technique.”
Anything you would like to add? Writing is hard. If writing wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. Stick to it, write every day, read a lot, learn the craft, and don’t give up!
Kit Frazier is an award-winning novelist and journalist living on a lake in Central Texas near Austin, Texas. Like her character, Cauley MacKinnon, Kit and her dog, Bodhi, are certified Search and Rescue. Her fat floof of a cat, Marlowe, is not involved in search and rescue, and is, in fact pretty much a freeloader who pitches a fit when Fancy Feast is not served on time.
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