I’m delighted that I’ll be appearing at the 2017 Texas Book Festival. It’s a huge, exciting event — often, 40,000 people attend — and I’m honored to be invited. It’s also a whole lot of fun. If you have a chance to get to Austin the weekend of November 4-5, check it out.
My schedule:
Texas Book Festival
Austin, Texas
“The Long Arm of Crime”
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Time: 10:00-10:45 a.m.
Session Location: Texas State Capitol Extension 2.030
Signing Location: Main Signing Tent
Here’s an update on plans to develop UNSUB into a CBS television series. From Deadline Hollywood:
EXCLUSIVE: CBS has bought Edgar-winning author Meg Gardiner’s novel UNSUB. The project was picked up by CBS Television Studios earlier this year, ahead of auction. The book was published in June by Dutton. The network has ordered a pilot script to be written by Liz Friedman, who will be executive producer and show runner, and who co-created ABC’s Conviction and co-wrote the pilot to Orange Is The New Black. Latter got her an Emmy nomination. Friedman was also an executive producer on Marvel’s Jessica Jones, and writer and senior producer for almost the entire run of both House and Elementary.
The project will be developed by Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman, who’ll serve as executive producers through their studio-based Timberman-Beverly Productions banner, and Shane Salerno through The Story Factory.
To say I’m excited is an understatement.
Next month I’ll be teaching at the La Jolla Writer’s Conference in San Diego. I’ll also be giving a keynote address to the conference. To say I’m happy about getting a chance to spend a weekend in beautiful La Jolla, talking about writing, would be an understatement.
If you’re interested in attending the weekend, check it out: La Jolla Writer’s Conference.
This Saturday, September 23, I’m giving a workshop as part of a full day program of writing instruction and discussion for Texas Writes. As always, the program will be given at a rural Texas library. It’s free and open to the public, but if you want to attend, you should call and preregister.
My session:
PLOTTING TO KILL: WRITING MYSTERIES AND THRILLERS
How do you create compelling characters and put them in memorable conflict? Meg will talk about heroes, villains, and the hook, and discuss techniques to to ramp up the suspense and tension in your story. She’ll show how writers can use point of view, flashbacks, and dialogue to create riveting scenes, keep readers guessing about what will happen next, and have them turning the pages until the end.
Texas Writes at the Bosque Arts Center
215 S. College Hill Drive
Clifton, Texas
To pre-register for this event, contact the Nellie Pederson Library at (254) 675-6495.
Spread the word to your writer friends. I hope I’ll see some of you there.
Who wants a sneak peek at my next novel?
Into the Black Nowhere — the sequel to UNSUB — will be published on January 30, 2018. I can’t wait. Here’s a teaser:
On Saturday nights, women in Texas are disappearing. One vanishes from a movie theater. Another is ripped from her car at a stoplight. Another vanishes from her home while checking on her baby. Rookie FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix, newly assigned to the FBI’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, fears that a serial killer is roaming the dark roads outside Austin.
Caitlin and the FBI’s serial crime unit discover the first victim’s body in the woods. She’s laid out in a bloodstained, white baby-doll nightgown. A second victim in a white nightie lies deeper in the forest’s darkness. Both bodies are surrounded by Polaroid photos, stuck in the earth like headstones. Each photo pictures a woman in a white negligee, wrists slashed, suicide-style — posed like Snow White awaiting her prince’s kiss.
To track the UNSUB, Caitlin must get inside his mind. How is he selecting these women? Working with a legendary FBI profiler, Caitlin searches for a homology–that elusive point where character and action come together. She profiles a confident, meticulous killer who convinces his victims to lower their guard until he can overpower and take them in plain sight. He then reduces them to objects in a twisted fantasy–dolls for him to possess, control, and ultimately destroy. Caitlin’s profile leads the FBI to focus on one man: a charismatic, successful professional who easily gains people’s trust. But with only circumstantial evidence linking him to the murders, the police allow him to escape. As Saturday night approaches, Caitlin and the FBI enter a desperate game of cat and mouse, racing to capture the cunning predator before he claims more victims.
I’ll be talking more about the book as we get closer to publication. But for the moment, you can pre-order.
Since Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast, messages of worry and goodwill have been pouring in. I’m immensely grateful for your concern.
My family and I are fine. We’re in Austin, which escaped the full fury of the storm. Our neighborhood got only 6.5 inches of rain over the weekend. The city is up and running. The sun rose on blue skies this morning.
But in the photo above, you can see a low line of cloud on the eastern horizon. Everybody under those clouds, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico two hundred miles away, is still at risk. The Texas coast suffered catastrophic damage. Towns down the highway from us are covered with flood water. And Houston is bracing for more devastating rain.
If you want to help, here are a couple of great articles with links to organizations providing rescue, shelter, food, and help to the hundreds of thousands of people who need both immediate lifesaving assistance and longer term help to rebuild. Check them out.
Hurricane Harvey: where you can donate to help with disaster relief and recovery
Here’s How You Can Help People Affected By Harvey
Thanks!
I was recently asked a question about outlining a novel:
“I’m now working on an extensive outline in hopes that doing so will better help me see a novel through to the end. It sounds like doing so made all the difference for you. I am wondering if you could respond and further explain your outlining and writing process and maybe even include some images from the Unsub outline. Do you plot down to the chapter and scene level or is it more of the acts of the story and major plot points? Do you sketch these out on a pad or are you strictly working on Word files? I’d love to see what that actually looks like when done by a pro.”
Here’s the gist of how I responded:
When it comes to outlining stories: Do whatever works. Over the years I’ve found it most helpful to write an outline that’s like a story summary—it will include the beginning, major turning points, and ending. That’s what works for me. The more I can come to understand the characters before I dive into a first draft, and ramp up their motivations and conflicts, the better grasp on the story I’ll have—and the more ideas for how to develop the plot to a slam-bang ending.
I don’t format the outline with Roman numerals or anything that stringent—I write it up as if I’m telling the gist of the story to a friend. I’ll include a quick precis of major scenes, and emphasize the twists and turns in the plot, with particular emphasis on the protagonist and antagonist.
That’s just me. Whatever helps pull ideas from the air (or the unconscious)!
Crafting a novel is a discipline that simply takes time and practice. We all careen along the trail, hoping there will be a brass band at the finish line.
__________
I promised the querier that I would expand on these thoughts in a blog post. So:
Over time, I’ve come to outline my novels in greater detail and at greater length. For example, for The Shadow Tracer, I wrote a two-page outline. Here’s a screen shot.
I hadn’t read that outline for several years. When I did, I was struck to see that it’s mostly summary and backstory.
Actually, I was taken aback. I mean, the outline continues: “Sarah has a desperate secret. Zoe was placed in her care by her dying sister, Beth, who sacrificed her own life to protect her. Beth had unwittingly been put in danger by Zoe’s dad. He was a good-hearted young man who’d fled a nightmarish upbringing.” And it goes on like that for several more paragraphs. It’s almost all setup. The outline doesn’t even reveal the ending.
Since then, I’ve come to understand that getting the central conflict on the page, and explaining it in terms of the push-and-pull between the hero and antagonist, are incredibly helpful. What matters is to tell the story in the outline with as much drive and verve as possible. So now when I outline, I write the summary the way I write the book: I dive straight in. The action comes first; any explanation or backstory comes later. What counts is to dig into the heart of the characters’ emotional lives and excavate what’s at stake in the story.
So I’ve moved toward writing what are essentially story treatments for the novel. These are longer documents that include some mini-scenes and bring the story more immediately to life.
Here’s the opening of the UNSUB outline.
The UNSUB outline runs to almost twenty pages. Writing it took me months. And months, and more months. But when I finished it, I knew who the characters were. I knew what they meant to each other. And what they would do to each other. The UNSUB outline put all the elements of the plot on the page, with every major twist and turn, from beginning to end. And, importantly, it did so while delving into the emotional connections between the characters, and highlighting every major conflict, surprise, and revelation in the story.
Because of that, it took much less time to write the first draft of the book than to write the outline. And that first draft didn’t meander or require extensive cutting. When it came to plot and character development, I’d done the heavy lifting already.
Your mileage may vary. You may decide not to outline a single word of a story or novel. But if you get nothing else from this blog post, take this away: Even after writing thirteen novels, I’m still learning how to do it better.
Out now!
