“Author Sandra Ruttan’s writing is some of the smoothest and most realistic you will ever come across. Everything from the setting to the dialog to the courtroom process rings true – and as an attorney I am hard on courtroom scenes, trust me – and the characters are so finely drawn it feels as though you’re reading about people who could be your friends or neighbors. Indeed, Harvest of Ruins will not only entertain you, it will cause you to take a lingering look at those around you, forcing you to wonder what may be going on with them just beneath the surface, waiting to boil over.”

- Elizabeth A. White, All-Purpose Monkey

(Snubnose Press, Kindle edition, £0.70)

Showcasing some fine noir writing, mostly from America, it’s a white-knuckle ride that takes the reader to some dark places. The overall standard is excellent, but the stand-
out stories from Matthew C Funk and Richard Thomas demonstrate what can be achieved with simple prose and a masterly use of tension. Real page-turning fiction that never resorts to cliché or stereotype.

Also: My post, The Fine Line Between Heeding Wisdom and Selling Out Creatively, is up at Do Some Damage.

HARVEST OF RUINS

Detective Sergeant Hunter McKenna is on trial, charged with negligent homicide after her investigation into the suspicious death of a local teenager led to more deaths and personal tragedy.

Hunter faces accusations in the courtroom, and is tormented by her own guilt over personal choices she’s made. The community’s grief demands someone to blame, and Hunter can’t deny she’s haunted by regret.

As her partner, DS Noah Wilmott, continues to investigate, he wonders if the nightmares plaguing his partner are really Hunter’s subconscious, piecing things together, or something more, and when he follows a hunch it leads to answers that will stun a community.

“Ruttan combines devilishly clever plots with genuinely empathic characters…” Russel D. McLean, Crime Scene Scotland

“One absolute wallop of a novel. Not only does it make you want to know when Sandra Ruttan’s next book is due, but when’s the next flight to Canada… A totally mesmerizing narrative and a plot that burns off the page.” Ken Bruen, Shamus Award-Winning Author of THE GUARDS

“A taut, crackling read with switch-blade pacing. A sizzling story by one of crime fiction’s hot new voices.” Rick Mofina, internationally best-selling author of A PERFECT GRAVE

“Sandra Ruttan writes with utter ferocity. Twists and turns that stun and dialog that absolutely crackles with wit and authenticity. With each page, Ruttan delivers the goods.”
GREGG OLSEN, New York Times Bestselling Author of A WICKED SNOW

“Ruttan effortlessly brings to life a varied cast of complex characters. She writes with tremendous passion, honesty and skill. This is a story you will care about.”
Allan Guthrie, Edgar Nominated Author of KISS HER GOODBYE

“Ruttan has a spellbinding style.” NY Times Bestselling Author Clive Cussler

“Ruttan clearly has the potential to be a very successful author… Lots of talent which I expect will be realized!” Maddy Van Hertbruggen, Mystery News

“Ruttan has made one big mistake in my eyes, she waited too long to bring her writing to us. She is talented in the way that a natural musician is talented, making all the notes seem effortless. Characters that feel very real, and a wonderful sense of timing, Ruttan brings it all and leaves it on the page. Lucky us. And unlucky me, because now I have to wait for the next one…” Jon Jordan, Crimespree Magazine

“Watch for more efforts from Ruttan, who shows a great deal of skill in developing an intriguing, complicated story.” Lesa Holstine, BookBitch

“Ruttan has a keen eye for description, a wonderful ear for dialogue, and an acute instinct for the nuances of characterization.” Anne Frasier, USA Today Bestselling Author of HUSH

“Sandra Ruttan writes with a machine gun rhythm that pulls you through every unexpected twist and dark turn.” Bill Cameron, Author of LOST DOG

Ruttan’s deft touch intrigues and satisfies, making her a powerful new force in the mystery field.” JT Ellison, ITW Award-Winning Author of THE COLD ROOM

For sale on Amazon

For sale on Amazon

My short story, Childhood Dreams, is currently available via Smashwords for free. Download Childhood Dreams here

However, a lot of ‘mistakes’ are subjective. Over time, we learn how to improve our writing. We learn how to use tense for impact, we learn how to avoid word repetition, we learn how to self edit. We learn how to show the reader what we mean instead of telling them everything, and we add dimensions to our writing.

The writing curve for writers in the early years is huge.

As a writing course tutor, one of the realities is that I’m constantly pointing things out to students that I’ve done myself. I recall being in that position, having a critique from someone who was calling me out on a mistake I’d seen them make in their own writing in the past.

The critical words there are in the past. Every writer has to be willing to grow and improve. That doesn’t mean we haven’t made our mistakes; it means we’ve learned from them, or are in the process of shaking our own bad habits, and we’re trying to pass on what we’ve learned to others so that they can avoid the same mistakes.

Writing is a humbling experience at times, and we must all be open to constructive feedback. If we aren’t, we risk inhibiting our growth, and the only people we’ll hurt will be ourselves.

Brian will be the first to tell you that I’m not a clean freak, and when I’m locked in, working on a manuscript, the dustbunnies can grow into monster-sized Wraithrabbits that have to be fought and killed to be removed.

However, when it comes to writing, I’m a bit of a clean freak. Ask anyone who’s received a critique or graded assignment back from me.

The reality is, it’s almost impossible for a book to be published without a typo, typesetting error or blatant mistake. Not all of these glitches in a published product are the result of laziness or indifference, either. For example, imagine you have a character in your draft named Gina. For a number of good reasons, you decide to rename Gina and call her Lucy. You set up find and replace, hit replace all, and think you’re good to go.

But you forgot to click ‘whole words only’ and every time you used the word original in your book, it became oriLucyl. Yes, these things happen, and when you’re editing a 300+ page manuscript it’s very easy for one mistake to slip past you.

I know from my own recent experience, attempting to upload a Kindle file, that although the formatting was perfect in Word, when it converted it indented whole paragraphs and removed the formatting in other places, and I’m trained in layout and design, desktop publishing, Word formatting and have a lot of experience to draw from.

Imagine someone who doesn’t know how to use the features and settings for Word, who tries to upload their file. Heaven help them.

And it’s not just self publishing e-books where there can be legitimate problems. Typesetters try to make words fit on lines and pages and in chapters and sometimes, words are removed to fix a formatting issue. Sometimes, in the final editing phases, someone doesn’t realize the correction to their problem has created a new one. Just ask Barry Eisler about the name Dox in The Last Assassin, and how someone in the production phase with the book made a mistake that had to be corrected for subsequent printings.

No matter whose mistake is transferred to the pages, it’s the author who tends to get the blame. This is why authors should make every effort to ensure their copy is clean.

Most authors are 40+ when their debut novel is published, so I feel it’s fair to say that by the time the majority of authors are published they’ve had over twenty years of writing experience, and at least ten years of education related to writing. How to make a sentence, a paragraph, a story, an essay. Punctuation, grammar. Nouns, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions. Anyone who’s been to elementary school has a foundation in the basics of writing.

Which means they have a base line of pre-existing knowledge about how to construct sentences before they even sit down at their keyboard.

Depending on how rusty your skills are, it will take anywhere from a matter of hours to a few days to brush up on the basics of grammar and punctuation.

It will take considerably longer to learn how to write creatively and transfer your ideas to the page in a compelling way.

For those who do know how to use Word, the spelling and grammar checkers make it easy to correct simple mistakes as you go, and a lot of punctuation errors will be caught as well.

Here are some simple truths you may not know, or want to believe.

1. Editors will reject submissions that are filled with mistakes.

2. Agents will reject submissions that are filled with mistakes.

3. By the time you’ve drafted your masterpiece and revised it again and again and again, you will be so sick of your work that you won’t want to read it again.

4. By the time you’ve drafted your masterpiece you’ll have read it so many times the words will blur and you’ll recite parts by heart. This is not necessarily a good thing, because if you have to correct basic mistakes your mind will visually compensate. You’ll read what you know you meant to type, instead of what you actually did type, and easily miss mistakes in your work.**

5. You’ll have to re-edit the whole book if you wait to the end to figure out how to use punctuation and spell words properly. I’ve already explained why find and replace can’t necessarily cure all your spelling problems. If you learn the basics at the beginning, you’ll have far less to edit when your manuscript is finished.

Here’s my tip. Every time you sit down to write, re-read what you wrote the last time. It will help you remember where you are with the manuscript, and as you read you may catch errors or fix anything that isn’t working. You’ll be looking at the text with fresh eyes, and for most of us, thirty minutes of editing is enough to make us anxious to start writing. You’ll be motivated to keep your writing as clean as possible as you go, because you won’t have to spend so much time fixing mistakes next time you’re writing. Best of all, you won’t forget what you’ve written, avoid repeating yourself, and catch continuity errors in the text faster.

One final thought. We constantly hear about the battle with Writer’s Block and struggling through portions of the book when the ideas don’t seem to flow smoothly. Instead of letting the lack of inspiration derail your progress, start editing your work. It will save you time later. You’ll start catching your common errors and be able to avoid them as you write, and for most of us, root canal is preferably to extensive technical editing. Editing your work should help get your creative juices flowing again, so that you can get back to the writing.

And, in case you doubt just how vicious the reviewer and reader response can be when a text is filled with mistakes, read this review, and see how poorly the author conducts herself in the comments. Within days the author’s amazon page for the book was filled with negative reviews.

** A tip from author Alexandra Sokoloff: change the font of your manuscript when you re-read it. The words will look different on the screen or page, and will be in different places. It will help your eyes actually read the text instead of skimming it.