POE'S DEADLY DAUGHTERS

What are We Celebrating Again?

2011-07-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley
According to the list of 4th of July facts here, 1/4 of Americans answering a Marist poll did not know the name of the country from which we won our independence on July 4th.

I suppose it can't be avoided--that gradual evolution of a great event into something (for some) of no importance at all. But for me it also raises questions about one of America's greatest rights: the right to an education. Like everything that is free, knowledge can be taken for granted. My teacher colleagues who have taught in far-off lands could not believe how grateful those students were for education; how rooms full of 60 and 70 students would sit in absolute silence, hanging on every word out of their instructor's mouth, because this was their only chance at education.

And while many American students (including mine) are respectful of both education and teachers, I'm sure all teachers, at one point or another, have experienced one of THOSE classes--the ones with students who mock the very idea of education, reading, homework--and who take for granted the very gifts which America has guaranteed them.

Why would they do it? For one, they are assaulted by media images of young people who are oversexed and undereducated. They are fed the visual rhetoric that teen moms and porn stars are the new American heroes, and that fame is necessary for self-esteem ("fame" being a nebulous term which includes being on television for any reason). They are given this shallow, un-nourishing diet of pap, and if they are not given the analytical tools, they will think that this is the world and that these people are what they themselves should be.

"Reality" tv is nothing like reality, and an uncareful viewer might not see the neediness, the narcissism, the affectation and posturing. And unless that viewer occasionally read a book, he or she might not realize how poorly these television stars speak and think.

Remember this footage of poor Miss Teen South Carolina?

Not only can she not explain why Americans can't recognize their own country on a world map, but she can't string together a coherent sentence. But somewhere along the line she was swayed by the visual rhetoric of pretty hair and make-up, of fakery and feigned composure, and by the idea that if it looks good, it must be good.

She's not the only one. Check out this blog, which reveals that more American teens can name the Three Stooges than can name the three branches of government.

No, I'm not trying to depress people on the 4th of July. I am suggesting, though, that the date will cease to have any meaning unless we continue to invest it with some, and to demand more from our cultural representatives in all forms of media.

Let's celebrate America by asking Americans to think--something our founding fathers did very well.

What Fourth of July means to the Deadly Daughters

2011-07-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

This is the holiday that has my husband flipping over hamburgers and hot dogs, an annual event. (He grills, but usually prefers a good steak or such elevated fare as jumbo shrimp and alder-smoked salmon.) For me, the essential element of the holiday is fireworks, the more spectacular the better. I like to sit as close to the source as possible so that the bursts blossom right over my head and I can feel the bass thumps in my chest. Do I wax patriotic? No, I’m too much of a historical relativist. After researching my book about what really happened when Columbus “discovered” America, I’m keenly aware of the ambiguities in any such event, the American Revolution included. But overall, I’m glad it happened—and bring on those fireworks!

Julia Buckley

For me, the 4th of July used to look like this:

These are scanned right out of my family scrapbook (which I abruptly stopped doing about five years ago because it was SO time consuming. My sons will think that one day I just stopped loving them. :)

Yes, the 4th was once about face paint and patio-chalk-flags and excited little boys. I remember one magical fourth, on the evening of which we went to the biggest town park with our blanket and some provisions and waited, with what seemed the entire village, for the fireworks to start. One of my college friends had joined us, the new godmother of my youngest son, and 11-month-old Graham seemed to sense their bond, because he spent the evening crawling on her and occasionally biting her toes.

The fireflies were out, and my older son (the one in the pictures) skipped around and thought everything was SO exciting!

Now they are 16 and almost 13, and seemingly young existentialists. The most exciting thing in life these days is the never-ending array of video games that they have in their collection, and it is indeed hard to pry them away.

But they still love the fireworks, Liz--just like you and every good American. :)

Jeri Westerson

When I was a kid, it was all about the fireworks. But less about big park displays and more about our neighbors getting together with those streetside stands of purchased fireworks: sparklers, Whistling Petes, those whirly things that spun on the ground. We'd pool our resources and have a safe and sane fireworks show all our own.

We can't buy those anymore as they have been outlawed in many California counties so we have to travel to outlying cities to seek out those city park fireworks displays. I like putting together gourmet picnic baskets of wonderful little salads and grilled chicken on skewers, cheeses and fruit. Wine. You also don't get embarrassed about being a little extra patriotic and get the opportunity to just reflect on the past and what brought us to today, appreciating the freedoms we have that even some of the freest democratic countries don't quite enjoy.

Sheila Connolly

I lived in the Philadelphia area for twenty years total, at various times in my life, including elementary school. Yet somehow my suburban Quaker school never offered us a tour of Independence Hall, although I have a dim memory of sitting in a bus and watching the Liberty Bell go by.

When as an adult I worked in Center City, within walking distance of the site, did I ever do the tour thing? No. Maybe I'm a history snob and prefer obscure places to tourist Meccas. It took a visit from out-of-state relatives to force me into the building.

We all probably know the bare bones of the story--representatives of the colonies locked together in a room, the windows closed so no one could eavesdrop on them as they hammered out the Declaration of Independence. One wonders if they were allowed to remove coats (probably wool) and wigs, and roll up their shirtsleeves, to get the job done. Let me tell you, it gets hot in Philadelphia in July!

So when at long last I saw that chamber, I was struck almost viscerally by how small it was. Crammed together, hot, tired, and in equal parts frustrated, exhausted and exhilarated, a small group of men drafted a single document that changed the history of the world. Being in that space made them human for me.

If you're ever in Philadelphia, it's worth the visit.

Postscript: I'm a member of the DAR, which celebrates the role that our Revolutionary War ancestors played in the founding of the country. So far I can list thirteen of mine who participated in some way, and mainly they're in Massachusetts, where I now live. I visit them regularly. Here is one of my ancestors, alongside his brother. The house they were raised in was the inspiration for the Orchard Mystery series.

Sandra Parshall

For me July 4 means the height of the blooming season for the hundreds of daylily plants in my garden -- a glorious sight, prettier than any fireworks display. At least it used to mean that, until the deer in the nearby woods discovered how delicious daylily buds are (they're sweet and tender and are used in some Asian stir-fry recipes). For the past few years we've waged a battle throughout June to protect the precious buds that should burst into gorgeous bloom around the 4th of July. And we've been losing. But this year things are looking up. We've been extra diligent in applying revolting repellent spray, and although we've lost some buds to the deer, the plants have plenty left. Some have already survived to the point of blooming, and others are fattening up, waiting their turn. The countdown begins. What will I find when I walk through the garden on July 4 -- the sad snipped-off stalks that once held flower buds, or a riot of colorful blossoms? Will this be the Independence Day we liberate our garden from the tyranny of the deer?

STUFF

2011-07-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

I was planning to write a post about how we accumulate Things in the course of our lives, and then become stymied with what to do with them all. Then a couple of weeks ago I came upon an article in the New York Times Sunday magazine written by Carina Chocano ('Underneath Every Hoarder Is a Normal Person Waiting to Be Dug out'), and she said many interesting things about hoarding, its history, and our cultural fascination with it. Plus she said them well, and I'm not going to repeat all her points here. However, I think she missed two important aspects of Keeping Things.

I live in an 1870 Victorian house, that most people would consider large--you know, twin parlors with sliding doors, nine-foot ceilings, spacious entrance hall with sweeping mahogany staircase. There's one problem, though: a dearth of closets.

Or, I should say, a conspicuous absence of clothing closets. On the ground floor there is a walk-through butler's pantry with a china closet, and in the dining room there is another china closet with a glass front--I guess that was for the "good" stuff. There is a pantry closet in the kitchen, and I think there was once a second, long since converted into a powder room.

But clothes? Ha! Coat closet? Nope, only two rows of wall hooks by the back door. Bedrooms? One has no closet at all. Two have very shallow closets flanking the chimney flue (lined with hooks, but not deep enough for a modern hanger), and the last has both a closet and a linen closet.

To put it simply, the storage in this house is lousy. Or at least, the easily accessed storage. We have a full basement--damp. We also have a full attic--which is either freezing or broiling, may have a mold problem, and is not easy to access, especially carrying anything larger than a breadbox.

I have a lot of stuff, and I've filled every closet, and a lot of the attic. In my own defense, let me say that it is not stuff that I acquired; mainly I inherited it. My grandmother, a fiercely independent woman, lived for the last twenty-plus years of her life in an exquisite studio apartment facing Park Avenue in New York. Everything she owned was encompassed in that room, plus a walk-in closet and a storage closet on another floor. She chose carefully and cherished each item she kept.

My mother shared her mother's taste, and kept many of the things that my grandmother relinquished. One of the first purchases my mother made when she married was a matched pair of glass-fronted corner cupboards, to display "nice" pieces. I still have them (yes, they're full).

And I inherited all of it. When my mother died, my sister and I divvied up what we wanted, and sold the rest. There were still two trucks' worth that we carted away. The furniture was nicer than anything I had managed to acquire by then, so I was happy to have that. But it's all the other stufff...and I find it almost physically painful to part with something that carries memories.

Someday my daughter (our only child) will inherit most of this stuff. Much of it won't mean anything to her, since she doesn't have the memories that I do. How do I pass those on? What about the collection of demitasse coffee cups that my grandfather--who I never met--collected and enjoyed, as my mother told me on more than on occasion, cradling the cup in her hand? What about the pink jade Buddha with a removable fan? I remember playing "hide the fan" in my grandmother's apartment in the 1950s (we always found it, as you can see). None of these will mean anything to my daughter. But how can I get rid of them? I haven't come up with any answers yet, but I pity my daughter in advance.

The other topic that Chocana didn't address is collecting books. I've always loved books. I truly believed that our local library was giving me books to keep (so I hid them under my bed). My grandmother and my mother read books, usually hardcovers. I had the full set of Nancy Drew before I was ten. I started on science fiction in college, then shifted to mysteries, and never looked back--and all this was long before I ever thought about writing myself. My husband and I collected mysteries when we were first married, and inherited more from his father.

So I have thousands of books, and those are only the ones I chose to keep. I'll admit up front: there's not enough time left to me to reread all of them, especially if I want to keep reading new books as they come out, and now I have to read the ones that my many writer friends are producing. And yet...it's painful to part with a book that I love.

How do you handle it?

Mental Health, Therapy, and Psychopathology: Busting Some Myths

2011-06-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

As an experienced psychotherapist, I frequently wince over errors on issues of mental health, mental illness, and related topics. The mystery community is well aware of some of these. For example, everybody seems to know that everything about the CSI TV shows is wrong. Crime scene and forensic scientists don’t interview witnesses or confront suspects. DNA results come back from the lab in months, not hours—except, of course, when the case has global high priority, as we saw following recent events in Pakistan. But some myths are extremely persistent. Giving life to them in fiction perpetuates them further.

Here are some of my pet peeves:

Myth: If you want therapy to deal with, say, relationship or family issues, you need a psychiatrist or psychologist. Reality: More “talk therapy” is done by clinical social workers (like me) than by psychiatrists and psychologists. Psychiatrists can prescribe psychotropic medications and get patients admitted to hospitals, so a competent therapist would refer a patient with severe symptoms of anxiety, depression, or a thought disorder to a psychiatrist for evaluation. But once they’re stable, the talk therapy could continue.
Psychologists are trained to evaluate a patient or client’s cognitive and emotional functioning, so they might be called in for psychological assessment testing.

Myth: “Multiple personalities” are rare but can pop up anywhere; a variant: they don’t exist or are somehow invented or induced by the therapist. Reality: The current correct term is “dissociative identity disorder.” It’s fairly common, and it develops as a response to severe sexual abuse in childhood. An ordinary therapist treating a client with DID would be well advised to read some of the very good books on the subject and seek supervision with a clinician experienced in such cases. The therapist needs to guard against being fascinated by the different “personalities,” while engaging as many of them as possible in the treatment. The goals are co-consciousness and, eventually, integration. The biggest challenge is when a client experiences an abreaction—a flashback, like those of military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, in this case to the experience of being sexually abused as a young child.

Myth: Accusations of sexual abuse, especially when memories have been repressed but recovered, are often lies or delusions. Reality: Wrong, wrong, wrong. As the Catholic Church recently admitted, the sexual abuse of children is an all too common phenomenon. Repression of memories is a psychological defense mechanism—a survival skill—as is the dissociation mentioned above. Most sexually abused children are not lying, just as most raped women are not lying. I believe that emphasizing the exceptions has a deeply damaging effect on societal beliefs and therefore on the ability of the abused and raped to achieve both emotional health and justice.

Myth: Psychopathic serial killers can have normal relationships and can be appealed to. Reality: A forensic psychologist who worked on the cases of some of the most infamous serial killers put it best: “Dexter doesn’t exist.” There are no magic words a victim can say to change the killer’s mind.

Myth: Alcoholics can go in and out of alcoholism and can eventually drink normally. That proves they don’t really have a problem. Reality: Alcoholism is a progressive illness, and somewhere between alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence is a point of no return. The compulsive drinking is just the tip of the iceberg; emotional, social, and behavioral issues are part of the picture, as are negativity, hopelessness, and despair.

Myth: Schizophrenia is the same as multiple personality and can be used as a synonym for ambivalence or mixed feelings. Reality: Schizophrenia is a thought disorder that is biochemical and to some extent genetic in origin. Symptoms include auditory hallucinations and thoughts and beliefs that depart from reality in various ways.

Myth: People who talk to themselves in the street must be schizophrenic. Reality: Sometimes schizophrenics talk back to their hallucinations, but some of the folks you hear cursing and making inappropriate remarks in public have Tourette’s Syndrome, an entirely different disorder. And even more of them are just talking on their cell phones.

Bad Casting

2011-06-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

Nothing gets crime fiction fans more worked up than the news that a favorite book or series is about to become a movie or TV series.

First reaction: They’ll ruin it, of course. Second reaction: They’re casting WHO in the lead? You’ve gotta be kidding!

All too often, our worst fears are borne out by the finished product. With rare exceptions, the people who make movies and TV shows have no respect for the written word and no understanding of the deep connection many readers feel with familiar, beloved characters.

The latest travesties-in-the-making are a movie starring Tom Cruise as Lee Child’s Jack Reacher and an American TV version of Prime Suspect. Folks on various mystery discussion listservs are throwing a lot of insults at Cruise these days, but the worst is: He’s short. In Child’s novels, much is made of Reacher’s massive, intimidating size. Way over six feet, huge hands. The very sight of him strikes fear into the hearts of lesser men. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, is shorter than his wife. He was shorter than his first wife too. After their divorce, Nicole Kidman joked about how nice it was to be able to wear high heels again without worrying that she would tower over Tom. I happen to think Cruise is a reasonably good actor, but he can’t act his way into Reacher’s shoes.

As for Prime Suspect, I have no quibbles with the casting of Maria Bello as Jane Tennison. She’s a talented actress. What I object to is the jokey, hokey tone of the previews I’m seeing on TV. They seem to have turned Prime Suspect into one of those female-oriented cop shows where every second line is played for laughs and the little lady makes jokes while she kicks the crap out of the bad guys. Spare me. Why did they have to put the Prime Suspect title on the show and name the character Jane Tennison when neither the stories nor the character will bear any relation to the original?

Which brings me to Rizzoli and Isles. I love Tess Gerritsen’s books. I love Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles. I do not see anybody I recognize on the TV show. Again, a somber, thoughtful series has been turned into a breezy, amusing little show in which women run around solving crimes while gossiping about men and taking care (in Maura’s case) not to get their nice shoes and clothes dirty. Angie Harmon is a terrific actress, but the second she was cast in the role the character ceased to be Jane Rizzoli. Jane is frumpy and plain, and her appearance is an important element of the character. Angie Harmon wouldn’t be plain if you put a bag over her head.

Speaking of frumpy and plain, did anybody ever accept Sharon Small as Barbara Havers in the British TV version of Elizabeth George’s novels? The actress is... well, cute, no matter how messy her hair is or how sloppy her clothes are.

I can think of two movies from the past few years that did justice to the books they were based on, and both books were written by Dennis Lehane: Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone. These films demonstrate that it is possible to transfer a great story and great characters to the screen without mutilating them or doing a lot of prettying-up. Dexter, as a character, made a successful transition to TV, although the series doesn’t closely follow the books. I don’t watch True Blood, but fans of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books seem to think it’s great. This kind of success re-imagining of the source material is rare indeed.

Sue Grafton says she would “rather roll naked in ground glass” than see her Kinsey Milhone novels turned into a movie or TV series. Unfortunately, most writers can’t resist the glamorous allure of a film or TV option. They take the money (surprisingly little in most cases), they tremble with excitement, and in the end they see something that barely resembles what they created. Maybe they can draw the distinction – “The movie/TV series is a different animal and has nothing to do with what I wrote” – but a lot of readers can’t do that. We keep hoping for the best but expecting the worst, and the worst is usually what we end up with.

Social Media . . .

2011-06-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

. . . ain’t what it used to be.

Sharon Wildwind

One of the things I learned at Bloody Words is that I thought I knew about social media—and I was wrong. There is so much new stuff out there.

Unlike the other two panel reports I’ve done from Bloody Words, the Social Media and Marketing was a mini-workshop of three back-to-back panels. Essentially the panelists changed and the audience stayed glued to their seats. Attribute the comments to the moderator and ten other panelists, got too bulky, so I’m just giving the gist of the discussion. If you want to know who made a particular comment, send me e-mail and I’ll tell you.

The Bottom Line
All marketing should be based on a cost/benefit analysis of how much time and money you have to spend on social media versus how much name recognition and/or sales do you expect to generate from what you do? If you are a writer, spend the majority of your time writing. Don’t jump on every technological bandwagon. You can attempt every new thing, but should you? It is more effective to spend your time optimizing the search features of 1 to 2 platforms that you feel comfortable with rather than create multiple platforms are poorly indexed. Sixty percent of your connections with other people will come from searches.

The Big Three
Provide quality posts and people will come to you for the good content. Fun comes across on the web; so will boredom. If you are doing something because you have to do it, your readers will know it. Tailor your content and your form to each platform.

Limit, limit, limit personal information. If you wouldn’t want what you’ve posted about yourself to be on the front page of a national newspaper, don’t post it on the web. Be quirky and innocent in what you post. That you have a passion for strawberry shortcake is a good thing to post; that you have two grandchildren, the city where they live, their names and photos is a dangerous thing to post.

If you make a fool of yourself on the web, the reputation sticks. Once information, tacky comments, or dubious photos are on the web they are there forever.

What is a platform?
A way that information is presented on the Internet. Different platforms have different functions and attract different kinds of audiences. Platform choices are personal preferences.Try different platforms. Give each a six-months trial and assess how well it works for you. If a platform isn’t meeting your needs, stop using it. Don’t just abandon it, close it down and remove it from the web.

Multi-platform postings often turn people off, so the content on each of your platforms should be different and geared to the function of that platform. You should build links from one platform to another.

Web Site and blog
This should be your essential go-to site. You should build one even before your book is published. Facebook makes a poor substitute for a web site. A blog can be used as a web page, but it needs to be updated on a regular basis. 1% of the blogs on the Internet have current information and are up-to-date. Blog posts should be about 600 to 800 words because blog readers are under all kinds of time pressures. Think of the word limit like short stories and poems: make every blog word count.

Facebook
Plan to post somewhere between one daily and once weekly.
Professional Page: avoid self-congratulations. Praise other people who connect with you. Readers want to be friends with an author, not fans. Some authors choose to treat their friends page as professional page. They strip the personal information from it and treat it as a fan page under another name.
Fan Page: Because fan pages don’t have back-and-forth exchanges, some people avoid them. The most popular use of fan pages is for characters. Have the characters give advice. Do a running comment on how the writing is going.

Linkedin
Think of this as a living resume. If you’re looking for opportunities to do workshops or to ghost write, this is the place you should be. Balance out how much information you post versus how much information you’re posting that could lead to identity thief.

Twitter
Far more useful than Facebook for marketing and promotion because you can build a following 140 characters at a time. Tweet at least once every couple of days. If you tweet daily, limit your tweeting to no more than three to four times a day. Don’t post exclusively self-promotion. Share resources. Build up other writers. Do mini-book reviews. Create a community feeling. You can participate in Twitter without having any followers. Use hash-tags instead. A hashtag is the # character. #books is a great place to post; #mysteries is not as good because there are far less people on it. #amwriting has a high noise to information ratio, but you can mind gold there about writing, if you spend a little time looking

Piggy-back on to book and reading sites
Use sites other people have set up. Have your own page. Do book reviews. Promote other writers. These sites are particularly good because they target the niches where the readers are. Sites you might want to check out include
Crimespace
Goodreads
Shelfari
Books N Bytes

Reading multiple sites
If you choose to participate in multiple platforms, checking them every day can become a hassle. Try Hootsuite which is a site that will let you view multiple sites at once.

Social Mention
Yes, you’re on the Internet, but are you reaching anyone? What's your reputation out there in web-land? On this site you can plug in your name, or the name of your book and get a quick scan of four areas: strength—how many times is your term mentioned; passion—how passionate are people when they do mention you; sentiment—is that a passionately good or a passionately bad mention; and reach—how much of the social network are you reaching.

Quick-response codes and Microsoft tags
These are portable hyperlinks that can be embedded in print or electronic formats and accessed by phone applications. And they are popping up everywhere.

This is (I hope) the QR tag for my web site. It tool me all of 3 seconds to create it on line.

Writing Action in Mystery (and Why Daniel Craig is my Imaginary Boyfriend)

2011-06-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley
My family and I just re-watched Casino Royale, and I still found it to be an enjoyable flick. It wasn't because of the plot, however, (which I still couldn't really follow in its entirety), and it wasn't necessarily because of the Daniel Craig's charm or his amazing Greek Godly physique. (Although those were nice, and my husband glared at me during the entire "James walks out of the ocean" scene).

What I found was that I was in total agreement with my sons: the appeal was in the action. Granted, this has always been a James Bond staple, so it wasn't surprising that the most compelling parts of the movie were the chase scenes. But I realized, when we dissected the film after viewing it, that we weren't saying, "That was a clever line that he said to the bad guy at the poker table." None of that really stayed with me, and I can't even remember what he said to the pretty woman as he flipped her around in the bed as if she were an attractive pancake.

What I remembered was what my boys remembered: that the guy Bond was chasing was really fast, and James was really fast, and it was exciting to watch two athletic guys running. Then the bad guy did this amazing launch of his body through a tiny window, but James came barreling right through the wall in a most unexpected (and satisfying) way, and we all cheered like groundlings.

My admiration for both Daniel Craig and action makes me eager to see his newest movie, Cowboys and Aliens, which promises to have a unique plot and to provide a plethora of gunslinging with a modern, alien-fighting twist.

From watching Craig's first Bond movie, though, I learned a lesson which I want to apply to my writing: description and narration are necessary and can be beautiful, frightening, fun. But action will raise the reader's blood pressure, action will make them turn those pages, and action might be the only thing they remember when they close the book.

Sometimes, it's all in the action.

Image: Yahoo Images

My Two Worlds

2011-06-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Jeri Westerson

I live in two worlds. That of mystery and of historical fiction. I suppose I’m a failed historical novelist. That’s what I slogged away at doing for ten years, writing opus after stand-alone opus with nary a nibble from publishers. “The historical novel is dead!” declared Publisher’s Weekly in the days I was writing and trying to sell them.

Swell.

Ten years of researching and writing about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but then I crossed over to the dark side, the side of murder, mayhem, and clever detectives. I left behind the stand-alone for the series and found a new love in episodic storytelling. And with an historical mystery, I found success and a publisher at last! For the most part, I never looked back.

Until last weekend.

I attended my first North American Historical Novel Society Conference. And like many of the writing conferences I used to attend in the past, it is chock full of would-be writers, getting a pep talk and some writing advice from their favorite authors in the genre and learning about some new ones. There were also agent and editor meetings, blue pencil sessions where authors critiqued the work of brave writers willing to sit back and take it (which is not to be confused with lying back and thinking of England), and a general chatting away with authors you’d like to know more about while the cocktails flowed.

Historical novelists are akin to literary novelists. Often there is that crossover where publishers give them a little more respect, at least more than they might give to midlist mystery authors. But there are no tagged shelves in a bookstore or library where the historical novels are stored, unlike mysteries. Their novels are generally about famous people from the past. Certainly there is a fair share of the Tudors depicted within these many pages. And the de Medicis. But don’t forget the nautical sagas of tall ships sailing the waves with the smell of gun powder wafting on the breeze (and we were treated to the incredibly loud reports from the cannons on the tall ship/museum anchored just outside our hotel in San Diego Harbor), or the tomes of medieval Mongolia, or even prehistory with such authors as Jean Auel with the newest Clan of the Cave Bear novel. Historical authors span thousands of years of human history between their covers.

But let us not forget those of us who blend mystery with our history. Sometimes we have to get pretty creative with our sleuths. I would say that more than half are of the amateur variety, being that any sort of police force or paid detectives are a modern construct. (Mine is a paid detective, not an amateur, but that was my own “what if” because there were no private detectives in the Middle Ages.) Again, we span all the eras from ancient Egypt and Rome up to the 1960s and all the time periods in between.

My panel was on “Keeping a Series Fresh” with fellow “mystorical” authors moderator Priscilla Royal, Susan McDuffie, Ann Parker, and Judith Rock, writing about thirteenth and fourteenth century England, fourteenth century Scotland, the silver rush boomtown era of the 1880s, and seventeenth century Paris, respectively. That’s a lot of centuries. Besides expressing our opinions on how we use history to twist our plots and our use of minor characters to add interest, we took a few questions from anxious writers hoping to break into the party. In fact, one of the questions was about amateur versus professional sleuth.

I’ve been to many a mystery fan convention, but this was somewhat different. For one, this conference featured a costume parade, authors either wearing the costumes of their protagonists or of suitable characters in their books. From ancient Rome, throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and up to the Colonial period, the American Civil War, and the late 1800s, they showed off their writing and sewing skills! I skipped it this year, but perhaps when the conference rolls around on the west coast again, I’ll dust off my medieval gown and give it a whirl on the catwalk.

Yes, it was lovely being a part of the historical crowd for a change, where dinner table conversations tripped from historical period to historical period, and you could hear the passion in their voices as they plead the case of their pet eras. So many time periods to write about. So little time to do it.

GOT HIM!

2011-06-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

I was going to post a piece today about stuff and why we hang on it to, but it'll still be there later (just like all my stuff). Today I awoke to headlines that the notorious, infamous, heinous (fill in adjective of your choice) Whitey Bulger has finally been captured, after being on the run from the FBI since 1995.

To most of the world this is no big thing, I suppose (despite his long presence on the FBI's Most Wanted List, right after Osama bin Laden, and the two million dollar reward on his head), but if you live in the Boston area, his continued absence has been in the news on and off since he disappeared. Where's Whitey? Is he dead? Nope, he's alive and well, and he's been living in California with his long-time girlfriend, Catherine Grieg.

Since Monday of this week it's been all over the network news that the FBI had launched a new strategy, running ads with pictures of both of them during television programs favored by women, in case anyone had seen Catherine (the "moll") at a beauty salon or dentist's office. Think they'll credit this campaign with the result? (Probably not, given the timing, but maybe the ad campaign was designed to lull Whitey into a false sense of security.)

Before I say anything more, let me add for the record that I am not connected in any way to John Connolly, the Boston FBI agent who was feeding Whitey information for years, which enabled him to leave town shortly before he was to be arrested in 1995. Connolly was convicted and did jail time for his role.

I know more than the average person about Whitey and his gang because when I was writing the Glassblowing Mysteries (as Sarah Atwell), my publisher suggested that the villains should be from the Mafia. Having grown up in New Jersey, I thought the Mafia had been overdone, so I countered with, why not the Irish Mob? I loved the thought of Boston bad guys trekking around the Arizona desert, completely out of their element. In preparation for this, I read a couple of books written by some of Whitey's lieutenants (I won't name names, because I think they're all out of prison now--and doing book tours!). Interesting if scary reading, because the authors were so completely amoral, except when it came to loyalty to their boss. Even now I can't drive though Southie (Boston's South End, Bulger's power base) without thinking of those stories--and where the bodies were buried.

Whitey's tale also held a delicious irony: while Whitey was one of the country's most notorious criminals, his brother William was the leader of the Massachusetts Senate, and subsequently president of the University of Massachusetts system (he admitted speaking to his brother just after Whitey blew town, but swore that he hadn't heard from him since). Nobody has proven that Bill Bulger knew anything about Whitey's whereabouts (or his criminal activities?).

Does fiction get any better than this? A man who has been credited with at least 20 murders, who ruled the Boston underworld with an iron hand, and then eluded FBI pursuit for years? With a beautiful blonde companion?

Want to bet that there will be a Whitey Bulger: My Story book in the works in minutes?

How Safe Is It Out There?

2011-06-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

I was standing with my granddaughters, ages seven and four, on a crowded street corner on Columbus Avenue on New York City’s Upper West Side. These little girls live in rural-turned-suburban New Jersey, which couldn’t possibly be more different from where we were, a few blocks from my apartment.

“What beautiful children!” a passing woman exclaimed. “What are they?” Or words to that effect, meaning their ethnic background. The question was harmless enough, so I told her—half Jewish and half Filipino—she confided that her nieces are half Italian, half Chinese, and gorgeous too, and she went on her way.

“How do you know it’s okay to talk to her?” the seven-year-old asked. Both at school and at home, she’s already being warned against talking to strangers. At that age, in the early Fifties, I may have been traveling to dance lessons on the subway from Queens to Manhattan alone with my nine-year-old sister. By ten or eleven, I was allowed to go by myself—straight to dance or cello lessons and back, with two subway tokens and a dime to call my mother from the station. My own son, raised in Manhattan, traveled to school by bus without an adult from the time he was nine. It could have been sooner, but he was a cautious kid, as he is a cautious parent today.

I explained to the girls that if it’s daylight, there are crowds of people, and the person simply says something friendly and moves on, that’s okay, but if you’re alone and the person tries to get you to go with him, it’s not. I realized later that I should have mentioned that it’s bad if the person tries to get you to tell your name and where you live. But I’m confident their parents will make sure they know that.

What a different world these kids live in from the one I grew up in. I wandered all over my neighborhood by myself. I did once have a conversation with a flasher in Flushing Meadow Park, in the woods where the Van Wyck Expressway now runs. I was twelve and terribly innocent by today’s standards. I didn’t quite comprehend what I was seeing, and it didn’t occur to me to be scared until later, when I told my mother about it. Today’s kids are far more knowing, thanks to TV and the Internet and the spirit of the times, but also far more vulnerable.

My parents were overprotective in many ways. We didn’t dream of staying out past a curfew or not telling them where we’d been or calling when we’d been told to call, even in our teens. We didn’t pierce or tattoo or use makeup. We didn’t have cars at sixteen (thank New York City law for that) or even think about drinking alcohol at a party. But we weren’t taught, overtly or by implication, that the world is a very dangerous place. My granddaughters, who are in fact very sheltered and carefully nurtured, will probably learn sooner rather than later that we live in a world where all kinds of terrible things can happen. Kids get offered drugs in the schoolyard or kidnapped by noncustodial parents. Planes get bombed, pedestrians or shoppers get killed by snipers’ bullets or crashing cars. Big chunks of the planet get shaken by earthquakes and tsunamis. It’s not safe out there, and all we can do is love them, teach them, warn them, and hope and pray that nothing bad ever happens to them.

Officer! Smile, you're on candid camera

2011-06-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

When anti-government protesters in the Arab world streamed video of violent police and military actions to the internet, the whole free world praised the citizens’ courage in daring to share what was happening. Americans cheered the loudest, and we were outraged when Egyptian Secret Police confiscated dissidents' cell phones. After all, we invented free speech and the rights of private citizens, didn’t we? At least we act as if we did. And we want everybody to have the same freedoms we enjoy.

But what happens when ordinary U.S. citizens, supposedly protected by the First Amendment, hold up their cell phones to record police actions on their own streets? Often the police, without benefit of warrants or civility, confiscate the citizens’ private property – their cell phones – on the spot. Sometimes they try to make people believe it’s illegal to take pictures or video of law enforcement officers doing their jobs. This sort of action by police is in the news so often now that it might make you wonder if the police are familiar with the Constitution.

In Atlanta, unlawful police seizure of a cell phone recently cost the city $40,000 in a settlement, and the officers involved are being re-educated about the rights of citizens.

Miami Beach police are embroiled in controversy over a similar incident.

And so on and so on. It’s happening all over the country.

In Washington, DC, a couple of weeks ago, a crowd gathered to watch city police arrest a suspect who injured two officers before he was subdued and placed in a police van. No one has accused the police of misconduct in regard to the suspect. But a bystander who caught the incident on video via her cell phone says officers confiscated her phone at the scene. Witnesses say she was told that she was illegally filming a crime scene. When she got her phone back five days later, the video had been erased.

The assistant chief of police, who apparently knows the woman wasn’t breaking the law, said afterward that the officers actually seized the woman’s property -- without a warrant, a subpoena, or a politely worded request -- because her video might have “evidentiary value.” She said the police have a right to do that. The ACLU begs to differ, and a spokesman for the organization said the police were the ones who acted improperly. As long as a citizen is not hampering the police in the performance of their duties or physically intruding on an active crime scene, holding up a cell phone and taking pictures or video is not illegal, and due process is required if the phone is believed to contain evidence.

With growing numbers of people carrying cell phones with video capacity, we can expect to see more videos posted online of police and other public servants at work. We’re used to The Powers That Be watching us all the time. Now we can watch them, and share what we see with the whole world if we want to. You can hook a Looxcie camera over your ear, capture everything that happens in front of you, and send it to Facebook on the spot. You can use Bambuser, the same Swedish service that Arab dissidents used to stream live video to the world from their cell phones. You can get your video out there before the authorities have a chance to confiscate your device.

And I say it’s a good thing that this capability exists. It was good for citizens of the Arab world who crave freedom, and it’s good for those of us who supposedly already live in freedom.

Most of the time, I respect the police enormously. I certainly appreciate the job they do for the public, and I know it’s difficult, stressful, and sometimes dangerous work. But does that give the police the right to infringe on the rights of citizens when those citizens are not breaking the law?

Are we going to cheer when Egyptians film their police in action, but condemn U.S. citizens for doing the same thing?

Short and Twisted

2011-06-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

compiled by Sharon Wildwind

No the title doesn't refer either to my stature or my sense of humor, though both are certainly true. These are notes from a short-story writing panel that I had the pleasure of attending at Bloody Words in Victoria, British Columbia. Moderator: Jake Doherty. Panelists Sue Pike, Linda Wiken, and Eileen Bell.

Jake Doherty is an author and retired newspaper publisher. His Osprey/Sun Media’s Summer Mystery series evolved into the anthology Mystery Ink.
Because the market for short stories was growing smaller and smaller, I floated a plan with a group of Ontario newspapers that we would publish 6 original short stories, 3000 words or less, each set in an Ontario town that was part of the newspaper consortium. This turned out to be a very successful summer series. There have been multiple takeovers in publishing, based on a need for cost-cutting. One result of this is that publishers are moving from anthologies to serialization on web sites. If newspapers run the webs—as they did for the series described above—their bottom line is whether publishing fiction will bring in readers. If not, they aren’t interested. Readers have short attention spans; they will not stick with a long series, which is why we went for only 6 stories.

Sue Pike has had stories in all seven Ladies’ Killing Circle anthologies as well as many other magazines. In 1997 she won the Arthur Ellis Award for the Best Short Story.
Yes, short stories have a tougher time making a mark. Traditionally word count is that flash fiction is less than 2,000 words. In some cases it might be as low as 100 words. Short stories are 1,000 to 2,000 words and novellas are between 12,000 and 20,000 words. There really hasn’t been a market for stories between 2,000 and 12,000 words. Short stories can be resold to multiple anthologies. Writers should be careful to sell only the first rights. Personally, I don’t outline. I start with the characters and the fewer of them, the better. You have to have at least two in order for conflict to develop. Use the same reference for a character all the way through a short story. He’s Jack—always—not James, Jimmy, Mr. White, etc. to different characters. This confuses the reader. Twist the ending is fun. Timothy Findley said, “Leave off the final “do” as in do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti---. Allow the reader to fill in the final connection.

Linda Wiken, (writing as Erika Chase) writes the book club mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime.
Yes, short stories are harder to sell but that’s because of the format, not because they are genre writing. Many short story writers are taking advantage of technology to repackage older, out-of-print anthologies as e-books. My number one key rule for writing short stories is to use as few words as possible. If you’re going to do an anthology, pick a theme. There are times that this backfires in funny ways. Menopause is Murder, an anthology by the Ladies Killing Circle of Ottawa, ended up being filed in the medical self-help section in bookstores. If your anthology will be open submissions, instead of by invitation, advertise that you are open to submissions. Do blind judging for anthologies because short-story writers usually know one another.

Eileen Bell is a mystery and fantasy writer. Her Pawns Dreaming of Roses won the 2010 Aurora, Canada's National Science Fiction & Fantasy Award.
Yes, short stories are hard to sell, but mystery short stories are probably some of the easiest. Science fiction and fantasy rate lower than mysteries on the publishing totem pole. The economics of publishing make it more lucrative to put together 20 short stories in an anthology rather than 2 to 4 novellas. Therefore novellas have been harder to sell, but this may be changing. Readers who stopped reading for pleasure freqently cite fragmented time as the reason and they love novellas because they are the perfect length. The best advice I can give to someone writing short stories is to know the the ending and then let the characters go to it. Allow the characters to get into loads of trouble during the story, but also insist they hit their mark at the end. Hitting a mark is a theatre term, meaning that actor ends up in exactly the right spot on the stage. I start with a possibility of two endings, so I can surprise myself with which one I pick.

Things for writers to consider before posting book trailers on web sites and YouTube.
It takes a lot of work to make words visual. The more special effects the better and many writers do not have the time or knowledge to do a really good job with computer special effects. We’re not just talking dissolves here. People want professional special effects. Marketing in the U.S. is different from marketing in Canada or other countries, so one-size does not fit all. Trailers will need to be tailored to the countries where you want the most sales; likely different trailers will do well in different countries. How does the viewer find the video? The audience you really want to attract is the people who don’t already know your name. So if you build a search engine reference around your name or the names of your characters, how will that audience find you?

Comments about selling stories for 99¢ on e-sites
Because people are living short-attention, fragmented lives with 24/7 newsfeeds, the short format fits their lives better. The debate is hot, heavy, and unresolved as to whether the short story market expanding or shrinking because of e-postings. Plagiarism—copying the story from a pay-to-read site and posting it for free—remains a huge problem. Orca rapid reads was originally intended for teens with low literacy skills, but it is moving into a general population audience. Keep in mind that there are different platforms, and each one may have different formats and different payment rules. An on-line short story needs a cover image. Many writers don’t know how to assemble the on-line package, and are paying to farm out this task. Since the usual payment is 10¢ for each 99¢ story published, paying for technical help cuts into the profits. Canadian writer and teacher Niccola Furlong writes some great information on how to e-pub.

----
Quote for the week:

I rarely read a novel that wouldn’t have made a better short story.
~attributed to Alice Munro, award-winning Canadian short story writer

I haven’t been able to verify the source. If you know for certain that Munro said this, or didn’t say it, please let me know.

P.S. Happy Summer Solstice everyone.

The New Project High

2011-06-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley

My summer headquarters

I had a plan for the summer which included revising two things and corresponding with various agents. (And by corresponding I mean me writing them letters and them writing back and saying "No, thanks.")

No other plans were on the horizon, and these were things that needed to be done. I had a dearth of creative ideas, as I do every year at the end of a stressful school year. My mind is just played out.

I have heard, though, that if you want a new idea, you need to rest and de-stress, and the idea will come. There must be something to this concept, because every book idea that has ever popped into my head has done so when I am relaxed.

So this week, the one week I have off before I return to teaching, something came to me. A kernel of an idea--just something that seemed interesting.

So I went to the computer and started tapping out ideas. They turned into a chapter one, and then a chapter two. I had to get up and do some household tasks--motherly things like making grilled cheese and driving people places. But then I drifted back to the computer--not out of obligation, as I do the revisions, but out of a kind of passion. Pursuing a new project is like a brand new love affair. I am fascinated by this new thing. I want to know more about it. While people are talking to me, I am partly thinking about my new project.

That is what I call the new idea high, and for me, it's the best part of writing because it's the most exciting and satsifying. Every idea that I manage to translate from my mind onto paper is a pleasure and a satisfaction; I can move on to the next idea and the next, knowing that those first ones have been safely nailed down.

I suppose people can get the same sort of energy from a new household project--building an addition or re-decorating a room. At the beginning you have nothing, and then, suddenly, it starts to take shape, and you can imagine what it will be at the end. But it's the building, sometimes, that is the most fun.

What are some other creative projects that have given you this feeling?

And writers, have you ever had ideas come to you at a time of total rest and relaxation?

Canada Calling: Susan Calder

2011-06-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

Susan Calder is a Calgary, Alberta writer who has published short stories, poems and a murder mystery novel Deadly Fall, which launches a series featuring insurance adjuster Paula Savard.

When promoting a new book, how do you find time to write - or wash your hair?

In mid-February I returned from a winter vacation. Waiting for me was a box containing copies of my first novel, Deadly Fall, a murder mystery published by TouchWood Editions.

I’d seen a picture of the cover; the concrete book was something else. After months of fantasy, my novel was real.

I knew about the importance of the three-month publicity window following a book’s release, that this was the time to grab attention for the book before my publisher and the public move on to the next new thing. Was I going to set aside my writing and focus exclusively on promotion, or write and promote at the same time? Rightly or wrongly, I wound up concentrating solely on promotion. My husband and I combed our address books and sent launch invitations to everyone we’d ever met. We viewed this as sharing good news, rather than advertising. I created a Facebook launch page and a print flyer to give to neighbors and casual acquaintances. I felt awkward approaching people I’d barely spoken to before, but they surprised me with their interest in my writing. It opened up conversations between us. Some came to the launch and/or bought the book.

People invited me to speak to their organizations. I also participated in two local joint readings, did a presentation for my mystery writers’ group and visited local bookstores to see Deadly Fall on their shelves. Most stores still had the copies in their stock rooms. This provided an excuse to chat with booksellers about Deadly Fall, while they tried to locate the copies and lug them out. Signings in their stores? Why not? For years I’d felt sympathy for lonely authors at signing tables, but was eager to try it all. I started blogging about – what else? - my promotion adventures and shared my posts on Facebook.

Late May. Two months into my three-month push. I drove from my home in Calgary, Alberta, to the Bloody Words Mystery Writing Conference in Victoria British Columbia. I tried not to think about all the new people I’d meet, including my publisher and editor, who I’d only dealt with so far by e-mail and phone. I was glad to have my husband and several Calgary mystery-writing friends there for support. On the drive to the conference I did three book signings and a presentation. My sister organized a mini-book tour through her region of southern Alberta for the week after my return.

My three-month window is now drawing to a close. These months have cost me time, effort, and money. I’ve sent numerous e-mails. I’ve written advertising blurbs, designed posters and prepared my readings and presentations. The events themselves ate into evenings and afternoons.

Success varied. For a library workshop, reading and talk I received a generous honorarium and car mileage and sold a bunch of books. Another presentation drew two participants. A third led to an invitation to speak to a book club next fall. I gather the 10 members will buy the book. I found all of the events interesting, but missed writing and often felt overwhelmed. As my to-do list grew, I wondered how I’d keep on top of my promotional tasks and still find time to talk to my husband and wash my hair.

I didn’t intend to cram so much into three months. At the start, I had little scheduled, so I said yes to everything that came my way. If I could have plotted it out in advance, I’d have probably done a bit less. Opportunities don’t dry up after three months. I already have a tentative event lined up for this summer, a couple confirmed for the fall and more possibilities. I think the three- month window could easily stretch to a year, with events staggered between writing time.

And yet, I’m glad for every single reader my efforts have introduced to my book. Who knows which ones will like Deadly Fall enough to recommend or loan it to someone else or otherwise produce some ripple effect? My promotion blitz this spring has contributed to strong initial sales. This is particularly good for a mystery series, where you want to develop a readership base for future books.

In addition, this immersion into promotion has been intriguing in many ways. It took me out of my comfort zone. I learned a lot about marketing and the book selling business. Every day brought something new, some of it frustrating, some exciting.
Maybe with my second book, I’ll be more relaxed, as I was with my second child, and manage to balance promotion with writing. Meanwhile, I’ll wrap up this blog post, share the link on Facebook and set off on my last mini-book whirl for this spring – five venues in three days and who knows what will happen with any of them?

To learn more about Susan and her books visit www.susancalder.com or search for her and Deadly Fall’s fan page on Facebook.

How Many Is Too Many?

2011-06-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

Recently I read, back to back, two books that incorporated multiple characters. I don't mean a handful, but literally dozens of people, who played varying roles in the story. I thought in one case it worked well; in the other, not so much. And I've been trying to figure out why.

These are both cozies, by writers who have written other books in the same series. I've read the other books, and I know and like both authors. I'm not going to name names, because I'm not promoting or slamming either author. I just want to come to terms in my own mind why one treatment was more successful than the other.

Cozies by definition take place within a closed community, which means that the villain can't be a stranger who wanders into town and commits a crime, unless that stranger is one of the existing character's Uncle Fred or Aunt Tillie, come back after plastic surgery to reclaim the stolen inheritance. The rules say there has to be a connection to the town, however obscure, because how else can the protagonist talk to people in town and gather clues?

What size is a small town? Two hundred people? Two thousand? And how many of those people does the protagonist know by name, or know well enough to call by his or her first name? I haven't done any scientific analysis, but I'd guess the pool may be, oh, twenty people? And generally, in a series, these people are introduced gradually, a few per book, and they'll return in future books in the series so the reader can get to know them and remember them. If you the writer are lucky, your readers will contact you and ask, "when will we see So-and-So again?" Which tells you that you've created a memorable and likeable character.

So what went right and wrong in the two books I mentioned? That's what I'm puzzling over.

--Was the cast of dozens organic and relevant to the plot (i.e., did those people have a reason to be there)? Yes, in both cases. In one, it was an unusual situation, but logical; in the other, it was small-town business as usual.

--Did the characters have enough "face time" for us to get to know them? Not so clear. I don't know if there's a standard for word count to establish personality, but in one book the characters distinguished themselves quickly--their own identities, and their relationships to each other. In the other book, there were a lot of people who popped up now and then, and usually the first time they were accompanied by a tag-line explaining them ("Suzie, my former best friend from high school, who had been going through a rough patch with her third husband and was currently living off handouts from her redneck relatives"). The latter smacks of the dreaded "telling, not showing."

I'll be the first to admit that it's not easy to throw in a new character without adding an explanation. It's a challenge to give them a real personality with only a few lines of dialogue and some brief indications of body language. Sure, you can use some description occasionally, but if you add it to each new character, it quickly becomes repetitive and throws you right out of the story.

Back in the golden age (whenever that was), mysteries, particularly British ones, used to include casts of characters right up front, along with maps of the small town and diagrams of the manor house where all the action takes place. The character list was often quite detailed: "Sophronia Everlast, the maiden aunt of Hector Pumphrey, lord of the manor;" or "Tilly, the second chambermaid for the South Wing." It seems quaint now, but if you were reading the book intermittently and managed to forget who was who, it was nice to have a reference handy.

I don't think readers' attention span has improved. Nowadays we're used to quick snapshots of information, and we're often doing two or three things at once. We're not necessarily as able to focus and concentrate on a book, much less keep track of who's who.

Does that mean we the writers have to dumb down our stories? Limit the number of cast members? I hope not. But we do have to be careful not to overload the cast. Okay, the shopkeeper down the street is a lovely person, but couldn't that important clue be delivered by someone else we've already met?

I'd hate to reduce writing in any genre to a formula, but how many characters in a book is too many?

The New Passport

2011-06-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

I’ve just received my new passport, and my, how things have changed in the ten years since I got the last one. Technology, global concern with security, and the opportunities for skulduggery, always of interest to a mystery writer, all ain’t what they used to be.

Let’s start with the application. Last time, if I remember correctly, I went to the post office, stood on a line, went to the photo shop to get my 2x2-inch unflattering passport photo taken, went back hours later after they’d developed it....This time, I completed the form online, then downloaded it as a PDF. I then took my own unflattering photo, holding my digital camera out at arm’s length. The hardest part was taking pictures off the wall so I could stand against a plain white background as required. Immediately after snapping the shot, I downloaded the digital image to my computer, resized it to 2x2, and printed it on glossy photo paper. I popped application, photo, and old passport in a Priority Flat Rate envelope and used a machine at the post office to stamp it and add a delivery confirmation request. Mailing the envelope used to be the easy part: popping it in a mail box. Now, I always hand Priority mail to a human, since if you don’t, it tends to get returned to sender as bypassing proper security precautions.

My new passport arrived with a spiffy booklet entitled, “With Your U.S. Passport, the World is Yours!” and containing five columns of “buts.” Before I travel, I can visit travel.state.gov for consular information sheets and travel warnings. I can register my trip at https://travelregistration.stat.gov/ibrs so that the Department of State can assist me in case of an emergency. There’s a whole section on international adoption, one on illegal activities such as drug trafficking, child exploitation, and human trafficking and another headed, “International Parental Child Abduction isn’t ‘just a custody issue.’ It’s a crime.”

The passport contains an electronic chip, and a whole page covers what it can do, how it works, and “How do I know my Electronic Passport will work?” There’s a special electronic passport logo that I need to look for, since I need to use the special immigration lanes displaying the logo “to be assured of the fastest and most efficient processing.” I wonder if it’ll speed up the most time-consuming bits: taking off the shoes and, in my case, being wanded and patted down, since metal detectors always pick up my titanium shoulder replacement.

So how about the skulduggery? It’s going to be a lot harder to forge electronic passports—I’d like to say impossible, but we know how sophisticated high tech criminals are these days—or recycle lost or stolen ones. I chose to get a handy passport card, good for hopping over to Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean, along with my regular passport. The card, too, has an electronic chip. Mystery writers have already had to adapt to the Internet changing how detectives work and the cell phone requiring that plucky heroines be either unlucky or TSTL (the proverbial “too stupid to live”) to get caught in a dark cellar or a cemetery with a killer and no way of summoning help. Now we’re also deprived of our characters’ option of spontaneously crossing borders in pursuit of or in flight from a villain.

Different Routes to The End

2011-06-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sandra Parshall

Ernest Hemingway once told an interviewer that he rewrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied. The interviewer asked what it was that stumped him for so long. Hemingway replied, “Getting the words right.” He did not, of course, add: Duh.

That’s all revision involves: getting the words right. So simple.

But every writer goes about it in a slightly different way, and I find those variations endlessly fascinating. Recently, when I did a library program with several writer friends I’ve known for years, I was thunderstruck by Ellen Crosby’s revelation that she literally starts over with each new draft. As in blank screen. As in not reworking what was in the previous draft. No cutting and pasting, made so easy by the use of a computer. Each draft is a fresh version of the story. “It’s like writing three books a year,” she said.

Now that’s a really different approach.

But why? Why would any author engage in such exquisite self-torture? Because it works for her. I can’t argue with the results. Her Virginia Wine Country Mysteries (The Sauvignon Secret is next, in August) certainly don’t read as if they were produced under torturous conditions. The very thought of working that way makes me feel faint, but that’s Ellen’s approach to revision, and who am I to question it?

Some writers revise as they go, and when they leave a chapter it is finished. To do this, you have to be sure of the story’s direction, positive you have the characters just right. For a lot of mystery writers that wouldn’t work, because our plots have a tendency to grow tentacles that reach into previously unsuspected places, and if we tie ourselves too rigidly to a preconceived outline we’ll miss the good stuff that makes a story special. So we may do a certain amount of planning and outlining, then turn our imaginations loose on the characters and story and go back to clean it up – revise it – after we have a complete draft.

Some mystery writers are truly brave souls and leave essential research for the second draft. That can wreak havoc when they discover a fatal, so to speak, flaw in their choice of murder weapon or location and have to come up with something totally different.And if they change their minds about who the killer is, they have to comb the manuscript for references and clues that must be altered.

Personally, I enjoy revision. It’s the first draft that I hate. The single most terrifying time in writing a book is the moment when I sit at the computer and tell myself that I must begin. I have to write something, anything. One sentence. GET STARTED. I type out a sentence and sit there in despair, certain this is the only sentence I will be able to produce. But I keep going. I refuse to worry about typos, about unfinished thoughts, about paragraphs that don’t make sense. I will fix all that later, and I will enjoy doing it. Out of this mess I will carve a novel. But first I have to create the mess.

P.D. James once made a statement that I find more than a little spooky because it puts into words a feeling I’ve always had about my own writing: “It's as if the characters exist already, their story, everything about them is in some limbo of my imagination and I'm getting in touch with them and getting the story down in black and white, rather than inventing any of it. So it does feel as if it's a process of revelation rather than creation and one which is not really within my own volition.”

But one thing is within my own volition: revising until I get the words right. Making sure I tell the story and portray the characters in a way that does justice to them. No book will ever be perfect, and sooner or later I have to simply stop and turn the manuscript in so it can go to the printer. But I can’t think of anything more satisfying than reworking a sentence or paragraph until I suddenly realize: Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I want to say.

Are you a writer? What’s your revision method?

************************************
My next book is Under the Dog Star, out in September, and I was revising right up to the second I sent the file to my editor.

Cozy Chicks versus Hard-Boiled Dicks

2011-06-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind (more the compiler here than the writer today)

This is the first of several blogs that I have planned with material from the Bloody Words convention in Victoria, British Columbia.

We begin with a favorite debate: Which represents the mystery genre more faithfully, the cozy mystery or the hard-boiled detective?

The moderate was Don Hauka from New Westminister, British Columbia. A journalist by profession, he’s the author of the newspaper mysteries featuring Mr. Jinnah. As moderator, he kept his comments to a minimum. He ran a great panel and I’m looking forward to reading his series.

Catherine Astolfo, writes the Emily Taylor series. She is the outgoing president of Crime Writers of Canada.

Cozies faithfully represent the mystery drama because they focus on the impact of the death and extraordinary events on ordinary people. Things go on around us in the world all the time, but people are often unaware of them. We tend to focus on what is in our immediate lives. As far as publishing goes, Canadian publishers are more open to wider experiences and different styles of writing, while American publishers are less willing to bend the boundaries. When I write I make a contract with the reader. that my books will contain no rape scenes and no violence to children. If I have an emotional problem with material, I don't write it.

Mary Jane Maffani describes herself as a lapsed librarian. She writes three mystery series (Charlotte Adams, Camilla MacPhee, and Fiona Silk) and is co-authoring a fourth series with her daughter.

The cozy is about setting the world right, not about the autopsies. It deals with ordinary people stepping up to the plate in a way that we all hope we would step up if the situation called for it. The myth is that women read cozies and men read hard-boiled stories. Writers don’t write according to that myth nor do readers read that way. Every reader chooses the percentage of the pie that he or she wants to make up the total reading list. Yes, there are some readers who are 99% or 100% at one end of the spectrum, but the majority of readers pick books all along the way. Most often we sell a set of expectations based on the size and appearance of the book. Readers get very angry if a sub-genre is packaged to look like something else.

Grant McKenzie is the Editor in Chief of Monday Magazine. His two thrillers are Switch and No Cry for Help.

Hard-boiled stories are about using your power within, the stuff you may not have realized you had in you, against very high odds. This kind of book shines a light on what’s really going on in the world. I like to focus on tension rather than body count because tension decreases as deaths increase. Each time you kill someone, you kill some of the tension. One of the problems that all writers encounter is that once you’re published, the publishing world has slotted you into a narrow readership. You break out of that narrow confine at your peril. The economics of writing often dictates what kind of book you write.

Richard A. Thompson—not to be confused with the musician with the same name (minus the A.)—lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His debut novel, Fiddle Game, was short-listed for a Crime Writers of Amera Debut Dagger Award. He’s written two more books, Frag Box and Big Wheat.

Hard-boiled stories are hyper-reality: the world has become a scarier and sexier place to be and people want a literature that reflects the times. I see the darker stories as a heart of darkness versus happy valley where the cozy characters live. That having been said, I think that both forms have left a legacy to the mystery community: the puzzle story comes out of cozies and the examination of underlying emotional issues comes out of hard-boiled detective stories.

Any horrible thing you can think of, someone has done it in real life. There is a threshold to violence, no matter what the sub-genre. My problem with cozies is the trivilization of murder by having it off-stage. Yes, my books have a lot of violence: one has seven killings, all up-close-and personal-deaths. I believe that violence must advance the plot and say something about the character. Historically all genre fiction started out with no character development, but that has changed across the board. The problem is that we lack an adequare vocabulary: cozies is no longer cozy, and hard-boiled are no longer just hard-boiled. As writers we know the nuiances of how things have changed, but we don't have the words to articulate those changes to non-writers.

As for publishing, there comes a point in an author’s career where they are on the threshold of being a best seller. At this point, the publisher is likely to demand certain required elements in the next book in order for that author to cross over into the best-seller list. to cross into best-seller list. Some authors say no. They would rather be true to their style of writing than be forced into writing something that goes against their principles. I would never write a rape scene.

------
Quote for the week:

Random House employes about 19,000 people in its warehouses just to move stock around. When you have that kind of an investment in books, you can't afford to take chances. Their publishers admit that they want the next "the Nabisco cookie," something familiar, produced in large quantities, but just enough different to pique the reader’s interest.
~Richard Thompson, Bloody Words 2011, Victoria, B.C.

Walt Longmire and Lew Archer: The Solitary Brothers of Detective Fiction

2011-06-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley
I’ve always been a Ross MacDonald fan, and until recently I was content to believe there was no one like him. MacDonald’s style is singular—a blend of a great story, a lonely and moral protagonist, and a powerful use of simile and metaphor that elevate his work to the realm of literature. Many mystery writers today have cited MacDonald as an influence, including Sue Grafton, whose “Santa Teresa” is an homage to MacDonald’s fictionalized version of Santa Barbara.

There has never been a match, for me, to MacDonald’s style. But recently I read my second book in Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire series, and I realized that Johnson’s writing parallels MacDonald’s in many ways.

First, the protagonist: It is true that the lonely detective is a part of the American hard-boiled tradition, but Johnson’s Walt Longmire has a similar kind of lonesomeness to Lew Archer, even though the former lives in the wilds of Wyoming and the latter does his work among the wealthy and elite of California. They both wear their loneliness like a shield, and they reveal very little of themselves to other characters or to the reader. Both men were once married, so they are able to feel the absence of their wives as a reminder of companionship.

In HELL IS EMPTY, the latest Longmire mystery, Walt is asked by his deputy if he’s sure he wants to pursue a dangerous criminal alone. He responds, “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure I don’t, but there isn’t anybody else for the job” (Johnson 58).

Similarly, in MacDonald’s great novel THE UNDERGROUND MAN, Lew Archer is approached by a young woman who feels he’s the only person who can solve her dilemma. It is Archer’s day off, but he takes on her task with a shrug: “I’m a private detective. I do these things for a living” (MacDonald 15).

Each detective sees his role as inevitable, and something he must do alone.
My favorite thing about MacDonald’s writing is the way he can take a scene and make it profound with imagery and metaphor—something Johnson has mastered, as well. Here are both narrators, Archer and Longmire, describing fire:

(from THE UNDERGROUND MAN): “I walked toward him, into the skeletal shadow of the sycamore. The smoky moon was lodged in its top, segmented by small black branches. . . . I looked back from the mailbox. Sparks and embers were blowing down the canyon, plunging into the trees behind the house like bright, exotic birds taking the place of the birds that had flown” (MacDonald 40, 52).

(from HELL IS EMPTY): “Lodgepole pines were exploding with the heat, and a crisscross of timber fell down the incline. The darkness lifted long enough to reveal massive logs exploding as the resin inside them reached boiling levels, branches, pine cones and needles swirling in armies of winged fire devils” (Johnson 202).

Both writers take the reader inside the experience with deft language and an immersion in setting—both Santa Barbara and Longmire’s Wyoming forest are prone to forest fires, and so they become a part of the mystery in each novel.

Finally, both detectives have an outlook that is existential but starkly beautiful. Here is Longmire describing his mountains: “Maybe our greatest fears were made clear this high, so close to the cold emptiness of the unprotected skies. Perhaps the voices were of the mountains themselves, whispering in our ears just how inconsequential and transient we really are” (Johnson 123).

And Lew Archer, confronting a suspect: “His heavy gaze came up to my face. He seemed to be trying to read his future in my eyes. I could read it in his: a future of fear and confusion and trouble, resembling his past” (MacDonald 240).

I love the spare and beautiful prose of both writers, honest and poetic as both of their lawmen follow a quest for the truth.

MacDonald has always been a part of my permanent collection; Johnson will now be in that collection, as well.

Works Cited

Johnson, Craig. Hell is Empty. New York: Viking, 2011.

MacDonald, Ross. The Underground Man. New York: Vintage Reprint, 1996. (Original pub date: 1971).

Cliffhangers

2011-06-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Alan Orloff
Author of Killer Routine

Let’s talk about cliffhangers. You know, those teasing, tantalizing endings of scenes, chapters, books, TV shows, and movies that leave something—something vitally important—up in the air. Love ’em or hate ’em, they are an oft-used technique of storytelling.

Cliffhangers probably started back with the cave people. “Hey, Og. Your cave wall painting don’t show what finally happen in hunter versus mastodon fight.” “Well, Grog, you have to come back next month to see how it turn out.”

I remember cliffhangers from my youth (no, I never did any cave drawings). On the Batman TV show, the part I episodes would always end with Batman and Robin in some dire predicament— locked in an airless chamber or tied down on a conveyor belt heading for a buzz saw. Then the deep-voiced announcer would implore us to come back next week, “same bat time, same bat station.” I always used to tease my little brother that this time (this time, for real!), Batman and Robin would not survive (sorry, bro!).

Then there was the famous Dallas episode that had the whole country asking, "Who shot JR?" (Larry Hagman even graced the cover of Time.) You can bet I tuned in the following season to find out! (And I was sure bummed it was that pretty little Kristin—I kind of liked her.)

What about cliffhangers in novels? I’ll admit, I’m a proponent of using cliffhanger chapter endings. I don’t want my readers to close the book at the end of a chapter; I want them to keep turning pages as fast as their fingers can. Of course, cliffhangers have to be used judiciously. I wouldn’t want to be accused of being too manipulative. (Even if my kids say otherwise!)

However, I draw the line at the end-of-book cliffhanger. It’s one thing to compel a reader to turn the pages of a book in front of him or her. In my opinion, though, it’s something else entirely to “force” a reader to acquire another book to find out what’s going to happen. One recent example springs to mind. For the record, I’m a huge fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. But in 61 Hours, he ends the book with Reacher in big trouble, and you have to wait until the next book to find out what transpires. I would have been happier if the book were titled 62 Hours, and the situation was resolved in the end. I haven’t read the next book in the series yet, Worth Dying For, (so no spoilers, please), but I’m guessing by the time I do, the suspense I felt at the time will have waned considerably.

What do you think, dear blog reader? Are you a fan of chapter cliffhangers? How about novel-ending ones?

Thanks for inviting me to guest blog, Daughters—it was a pleasure!

The first book in Alan Orloff’s Last Laff Mystery series, Killer Routine, is now available, at your favorite booksellers. His debut mystery, Diamonds for the Dead, came out last April and was a finalist for the Best First Novel Agatha Award. For more information about Alan and his books, please visit www.alanorloff.com.

SEX, MONEY AND POLITICS

2011-06-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

It has been said (by the ubiquitous "they") that the best way to keep a relationship, romantic or platonic, on an even keel is to avoid talking about sex, money and politics. But where's the fun in that?

As a cozy writer, I am not allowed to write about sex, beyond a steamy liplock and a gently closing door. Likewise, as a cozy writer I don't make a whole lot of money, so I don't have much to say about that.

Which leaves politics. I confess: I have worked on several political campaigns in my life, as both a volunteer and as a paid staff member. This was not based on any deep-seated conviction or philosophy--I just figured I'd better get a first-hand look of something that occupies a major place in our social consciousness. I'm glad I did, and the experience I gained there has stood me in good stead.

It would appear that the campaign season has already started, if the television ads, telephone calls and multipart letters are any indication. Thank goodness for the mute button and the caller ID function, which lets you silence the storm. But wait! Isn't the next federal election NEXT YEAR? All these people are jockeying for position for something that won't happen for eighteen months?

Based on my in-depth experience (note: in all the campaigns I worked for, my candidate lost), it's easier to watch this process as a big game. On the one hand we have the incumbent. Conventional wisdom holds that the incumbent has a distinct advantage, because (a) s/he has name recognition among constitutents, and (b) s/he is ideally situated to raise money, which is the lifeblood of any political campaign. But pity the poor representative, who, facing a two-year term, must start raising money for the next campaign before s/he is even sworn in.

Then there are the contenders for the opposition, and here's where it is really interesting this year: they are coming out in droves. A full spectrum, from conservative to moderate, from highly qualified to absurd. And they're all out there now, stalking the country, buying chunks of air time, making outrageous statements for benefit of the local newshounds and hoping that a major network will pay attention. It's like watching a seething pot of stew: a bubble/candidate rises to the top and then bursts, soon to be followed by another one--a process that ends only when the stew is reduced to sludge or burnt to a crisp.

And this will go on for how long? Don't get me wrong: this is our system, and we've got to love it. Sure, it's unwieldy and darned expensive, but it's what we've got. Changing it is all but impossible. I recall writing a thoughtful paper about electoral college reform when I was in college. I'm coming up on my 40th reunion, and how much has changed in the electoral college? Nothing.

If you want to haul this discussion back to the literary realm, in my opinion Primary Colors, by Anonymous Joe Klein, best captures the mood within a major campaign. Voters would like to believe there is a campaign plan in place, and competent people who are executing it. Uh, not exactly, or not all the time. But that's what makes it so much fun--the energy, the excitement, the high stakes involved. In a way it's surprising there are not more good novels about politics, because all the elements are there--sex, money, and politics. And conflict, and resolution, if not a happily-ever-after ending. And if you're writing the book, you can speed it up!

[Aren't you glad I didn't talk about Rep. Weiner's weiner?]

Sexting: A New Kind of Crime

2011-06-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Susie Vanderlip (Guest Blogger)

Susie Vanderlip is a certified prevention specialist, theatrical motivational speaker, and founder of Legacy of Hope®, a resource for troubled teens and those concerned about them, such as counselors, teachers, and parents. She has performed for, inspired, and engaged in candid conversations with many thousands of teens across America on such subjects as alcoholism, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, bullying, self-mutilation, and suicide. What she has to say about sexting struck me as of great interest to mystery readers and crime fiction writers. It’s a 21st century crime, based on the new technology, that involves a profound paradox: the kids involved are both criminal and victim. EZ

When tweens and teens combine texting with flirting, it can quickly become “sexting.” Sexting is the exchange of naked or semi-naked photos over cell phones. Sending such photos of minors can lead to a criminal charge of child pornography, even when the pictures are sent by a minor.

Some cities and states do not charge youth with felonies, since the intent of child pornography laws is to deter and punish adult pedophiles. But many jurisdictions follow the letter of the law, charging youth who send naked or semi-naked photos of themselves or their girlfriends or boyfriends, and even more significantly, their ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends, with felonies, resulting in prison sentences and a lifetime of regret and recrimination. Teens are very vulnerable to breaking such laws and may end up permanently labeled as sex offenders.

The law hasn’t caught up with technology. Likely a teen’s intent is strictly to share a form of connection with his or her partner. When the couple breaks up, enraged partners may send off nude or semi-nude photos to all of their friends, uploading pictures and abusive text to Facebook. Or a proud teen may send a photo of his or her partner to a few friends who send it to a few friends who upload it to the Internet. Suddenly, a private picture becomes very public. Other teens waste no time in commenting and labeling the subject of the photo “whore,” “slut,” etc. The potential for a teen to feel embarrassed, ashamed, and humiliated is enormous. The subsequent self-loathing has led teens to depression, cutting, and even suicide.

Deputy Frank Navarro of the Sheriff’s Department in San Bernardino, CA, an expert in the field, reports that about twenty percent of teens admit they have participated in sending such pictures by cell phone. Twenty-two percent of girls said they’ve sent photos, and fifteen percent of boys say they’ve disseminated photos when the couple broke up. Some middle schools report sexting as their Number One behavioral problem.

Sadly, such photos can stay on the Internet indefinitely. They are impossible to remove from some vast distributions. When teens look for college entrance or even jobs after college graduation, admissions staff and employers may search Facebook for names. These photos are known to destroy opportunities for youth and can become a nightmare for parents and families.

What’s the worst that can happen?
Teen suicide
Teen violence/guns used in retaliation
Felony charges/prison sentences/lifetime labeling as a registered sex offender
Loss of college entry, job loss, castigation in society, inability to live in certain areas as a sex offender

Teens don’t come preloaded with mind-ware that enables them to understand the consequences of their behavior. In fact, quite the opposite: they act impulsively and lack a realistic view of consequences. Teen hormones and natural flirtations can turn tragic when kids start sexting.

Can we save our libraries?

2011-06-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

We all know libraries are hurting because of budget cuts, but do you have any idea how bad the situation really is?

Here are some figures presented in a recent issue of Publishers Weekly:

The New York (City) Public Library faces $40 million in budget cuts, which would mean eliminating 650 full-time staff positions, drastically reducing the hours libraries are open, and trimming materials acquisitions by a third. This is a library system that currently has 40 million visitors a year (more than attend all local sports events combined). Estimates are that budget cuts will reduce that number by six million and that a million fewer children and young people will be served.

In Detroit, 20% of library workers have already been laid off and those remaining had their salaries cut 10%. The library system’s 2012 budget will be cut from $35.5 million to $23 million.

The Houston Public Library’s budget was $39.3 million in fiscal year 2010; for FY 2012, it will be $32 million. The Dallas library has lost more than half its materials budget in the past few years.

The same sad story is repeated across the nation in communities large and small. State libraries have also been hit with severe cuts in funding, and the Obama administration has proposed eliminating federal funding for the Department of Education’s Literacy Through School Libraries program, which provides funds for materials, staff, and services in school libraries.

Why does any of this matter? What will happen if our library systems implode?

Millions of children in low-income and rural areas will lose the only place that gives them access to books and the internet. Inner city children will lose the only quiet, safe place where they can go to study. People hoping to start small businesses and unemployed people looking for work will lose the research opportunities libraries provide. Everyone who loves to read will lose that magical doorway into other worlds and lives.

As the scope of the potential loss becomes clear, citizens in many communities are mobilizing to save their libraries and make politicians realize that access to a library is a necessity in today’s world, a basic right in a literate society, not a luxury that can be discarded when times are bad. In Oregon, the Hood River County Library, closed for the past year, is about to reopen after citizens approved the formation of a new tax district to pay for its operation. In Los Angeles, voters approved Measure L, which sets aside a greater amount of property tax revenue for the library system and will reverse the major funding cuts imposed last year.

If they can’t sway the budget-makers, some communities are raising funds on their own. In Seattle, Friends of the Library raised $1 million, including $500,000 from a single anonymous donor.

Writers are also rallying to the cause. Karin Slaughter’s Save the Libraries project, backed up by International Thriller Writers, is helping libraries with fundraising events and auctions of items donated by bestselling authors. Go to www.SaveTheLibraries.com for more information. Sisters in Crime’s We Love Libraries Lottery provides a $1,000 grant to a different library every month, with the stipulation that the money be used only for acquiring books. To find out how your local library can enter the drawing, go to www.sistersincrime.org.

We can’t sit back and wait for big organizations and other people to save our libraries. We can’t assume that the slash-and-burn approach to library budgets will blow over and everything will be okay in the end. What’s happening to libraries throughout this country is nothing short of catastrophic. We have to donate money and materials and support fundraising efforts, but we also have to remain aware and be willing to protest the next time a major cut is proposed.

Libraries are the heart and soul of a civilized society. We can’t afford to lose them.

What do libraries mean to you? What would you lose if you no longer had a library near you?

Yes, No, and Maybe

2011-06-07T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind

As I write this, the sun is shining on Victoria harbor, the flowers are blooming, and the wonderful Bloody Words 2011 convention has come to an end. I had a marvelous time, met loads of people, and collected tons of new ideas, but since I have to leave the hotel soon to catch a plane and will get home late tonight, I’ll share just a mini-report right now. More next week.

This is from a panel on How to Maintain Pacing in Suspense and Comedy. The question posed to the panelists was, “Does humor have any place when the story reaches a climax?”

Yes, it does. It humanizes a very difficult situation and can add depth and texture to the climax.
~Don Hauka, reporter and author of the Mister Jinnah series.

Absolutely not. Crisis and the climax is all about tension and humor defuses tension.
~Phyllis Smallman, author of Sherri Travis series.

Maybe. If humor has been a part of the character’s personality all of the rest of the way through the book, it’s unnatural if the humor disappears in the crisis moment. The humor may change, diminish, become darker or brittle, but it shouldn’t go away.
~Anthony Bidulka, author of the Russell Quaint series.

Which just goes to show there are very few absolute answers in writing.
-----
Quote for the week:
Every trip you take should produce a minimum of five written pieces:
a. A memoir
b. A character sketch
c. A poem
d. A travel piece
e. A piece of fiction, even if it’s only a few paragraphs long
~Verna Driesbach, author, editor and literary agent

(Looks like I have my work cut out for me after this trip.)

Writing A Ghostly Nun Tale

2011-06-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley
From the time I entered first grade to the day I graduated from high school, I benefitted from the teaching of Dominican Sisters. I suppose it's no surprise, then, that the second book in my Madeline Mann series, LOVELY, DARK and DEEP, is heavily populated with nuns.

The premise of the book: Madeline is approached by her former high school English teacher, Sister Moira McShane, about the death of a nun named Sister Joanna. Moira fears that Joanna's death--ten years in the past and deemed an accident--was foul play, but her only evidences of this are her own troubling dreams. Madeline, skeptical in her faith and about this case, takes it on merely as a favor to her beloved teacher. In the ensuing investigation, she finds out that even nuns have secrets, and it becomes her task to expose those secrets . . . and a murderer.

So why did I write about nuns? I suppose they are very much a part of my consciousness, and certainly they shaped who I am today. But as Madeline points out in the book, women religious are often misunderstood, and what people don't understand, they turn into stereotypes or caricatures. Yet the nuns Madeline encounters are women of faith and humor; they are regular human beings who are willing to live their beliefs in a structured way.

And their numbers are dwindling. Sr. Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, wrote that "It is true that the numbers of U.S. women religious declined precipitously, by tens of thousands, from the highpoint (at least 120,000) in the mid-sixties to something around 60,000 today. This was due principally to two factors, not identical, namely, the sharp drop-off in numbers entering religious life and a major exodus of professed religious from the life. These phenomena were largely simultaneous which leads many people to fail to distinguish between them."

I went to a parish school in the 1970s, so I was still enjoying the benefits of a large and diverse population of nuns who had many talents to share. What did they give me?

First, a fine education. The women who taught me were professionals who possessed vast knowledge about their fields.

Second, a belief in excellence. These women did not settle for second best, and that has influenced the way I see the world.

Third, an open attitude toward faith. The nuns who taught me theology weren't horrified by students who questioned Catholic doctrine or vocalized their doubts. They wanted their students to think for themselves.

Fourth, a full investment of themselves in the classroom. These were energetic, joyful, intelligent women who wanted to share their knowledge of Latin, English, math, science, theology, chorus. They were women who believed in the pillars of Dominican life, especially prayer, study and community.

So it's not surprising, I suppose, that Dominican sisters would find their way into my writing.

And if Madeline's encounter with the sisters is something that interests you, you can find LOVELY, DARK and DEEP on Nook and Kindle. ;)

This is My Tribe

2011-06-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sofie Kelly (aka Darlene Ryan)
Author of the Magical Cats Mysteries

Writers work alone. We create worlds. We kill. We make love spark and desire simmer. We live, much of the time, in a make-believe world with people who don’t exist outside of our heads and our laptops, and the real people in our lives shake their heads and wonder if we’re deluded. Or delusional.

But for the last week I’ve been taking an online writing workshop, and I’ve been surrounded by a community that doesn’t think it’s odd to talk out loud about imaginary people. Or to them. No one asks, “Why don’t you write something like Twilight?”

Several years ago I sat with another group of writers and heard poet and novelist Sue Goyette say, “We are your tribe. We understand.”

I have found my tribe again in an electronic gathering of like-minded people. In our online class we get giddy over a plot twist or a well-crafted paragraph. We throw ideas at one another, posts crossing in the ether until a suggestion becomes a few words from one person, a few from someone else. “Turn the princess into a vampire witch on a quest to find Elvis in the lost city of Atlantis.”

“Send me your address, I found that book we were talking about yesterday,” someone emails. No one ever complains, “Mom, we have no toilet paper again.”

Writers write and when we aren’t writing, some part of us is always watching, always plotting, no matter what’s happening to us or around us. No matter how sad, how silly, how bizarre, a little voice in our heads is thinking, How can I use this? We are crows. We see shiny pieces of other people’s lives and we reach for them. In our real lives we hear, “Don’t put this in a book.” In class a dozen people type, “You have to write about this.”

This is my tribe. People who sit too long at stop signs searching for the right words to describe a sliver of crescent moon that seems to be teetering on a roof edge. People who fall on a patch of sidewalk ice and ask the paramedic for a pencil and a piece of paper to scribble down the sensations.

In the real world this past week, dust bunnies have met, courted and spawned babies. In the real world there are enough crumbs under the kitchen table to make a sandwich. And in a few more days we’ll be ready to go back to the real world, to hunt down the dust bunnies and sweep up the crumbs. We’re part of the tribe now and we’ll take that sense of community, of encouragement back to the real world. Because the real world is where all the stories begin. Stories about love, hate, despair and what really happened to a dozen double rolls of toilet paper.

***********************
Sofie Kelly is the pseudonym of young adult writer and mixed-media artist, Darlene Ryan. Her first Magical Cats Mystery, Curiosity Thrilled the Cat, landed on the N.Y. Times bestseller list. Sofie/Darlene lives on the east coast with her husband and daughter. In her spare time she practices Wu style tai chi and likes to prowl around thrift stores. And she admits to having a small crush on Matt Lauer. Visit her website at www.sofiekelly.com.

Promotion Redux

2011-06-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

I promise I'll stop obsessing about this soon, but with two books coming out in the next two months, promotion is very much on my mind.The following was part of an email I received this week from an organization I subscribe to on line, and the header line included "Learn Essential Marketing Tools." I was invited to participate in a series of workshops where I would learn how to:

--Develop a branding concept--Develop an overall marketing campaign--Understand and decide what marketing tools (web, print, etc.) best attract customers--Learn how to plan and create the framework for your website--Plan and create a website

All of this sounded very familiar, and I've been hearing it from publishers, agents and colleagues for years. So why am I repeating it here? Because this was targeted at farmers. The email announcement came from SEMAP, the Southeastern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership.

Yes, the workshops are all about how to market your farm business--just add "for your farm" at the end of each of the above items on the list.

And, believe it or not, this put some things in perspective for me. Think about it: electronic media have erased the boundaries between business sectors, and now the same strategies can be applied to mysteries and organic tomatoes. It's kind of humbling.

But it's also an affirmation of the power of the Internet, if you know how to use it. Think for a moment of any of the recent examples of civil unrest in various countries. In an earlier, simpler day, despotic leaders could simply have shut down the radio and television stations and the newspaper (if they didn't already control them outright), and the general population would have had only limited knowledge of what was going on. Now everyone seems to have a cell phone with Internet access and can post minute-by-minute reports on violence, with pictures and videos. It's much harder to stifle a revolution these days.

Or in another case, just this past week in South Boston, close to a thousand teenagers congregated at a local beach, and--no surprise, since it was one of the first nice warm days of the year and no doubt more than one illicit substance was involved--violence broke out. Did all these young people just happen to show up? No. They used Twitter and Facebook to draw people to the beach.

And then there's that hapless Congressman who's gotten into hot water about a nude photo that was sent from his Twitter account to someone inappropriate. I don't know who was guilty of what, but listening to him sputter on camera, it was abundantly clear that he had little understanding of the impact of what had happened. (Bet you have a young aide on your staff who can explain it to you!)

It's an electronic world, and people have become accustomed to instant information. My Luddite husband can barely dial his cellphone, but last week he spent eight hours driving to a conference with a bunch of colleagues, and any time a question came up, one or another of them would say, "let me look that up on my phone." This isn't a novelty any more, this is the norm.

What's a writer to do? We have to embrace ebooks, for one--and that's not easy, because the publishing universe is changing weekly, and even the major publishers are scrambling to keep up, frantically revising contract terms. But we as individuals can't ignore the potential and the power of the Internet, or we'll be left in the dust.

Books We Love, Books We Recommend

2011-06-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

The Malice Domestic convention represents the biggest gathering of avid mystery readers (excluding Bouchercon as drawing lovers of crime fiction and thrillers as well). Malicegoers have a fanatical loyalty to their favorite authors and series characters and an encyclopedic knowledge of the books they’re read (and in many cases, reread over and over). It’s not guaranteed that attendees will have conversations about these books, apart from those of authors who are present and those nominated for the Agatha awards (or the Edgars, which MWA announces just as Malice begins). But it does happen. I had two such conversations during this year’s Malice: one with the old friend with whom I stayed (located conveniently two and a half miles down the road from the convention hotel in Bethesda, MD) and the other with the gentleman who sat on my left during the Agathas banquet, Steve Steinbock, recently appointed book reviewer for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

My friend and her husband are mystery readers, but they aren’t connected to the mystery community, so I had the fun of recommending writers they didn’t know, once they’d told me enough about their tastes to get a sense of whose books they might like. They read James Patterson but find his work “a little too formulaic” and his characters lacking in depth. (They knew nothing of Patterson’s team approach to writing.) They enjoy Robert B. Parker because the formula is redeemed by witty dialogue and characters they have become attached to. (They were surprised to hear that many readers don’t like Susan Silverman.) They don’t mind the gore in Jonathan Kellerman’s books, but think John Sandford goes too far. They had reservations about Linda Fairstein on the counts of characterization and excessive detail in the passages on police procedure.

Between the dealers’ room at Malice and the bag full of books given out to attendees, I was able to give my hosts books I knew they would enjoy along with the fun of making recommendations. Felony & Mayhem Press was selling some of my very favorite traditionals: I bought Janet Neel’s Death’s Bright Angel for them—a police procedural with sophisticated and intelligent characters the reader falls in love with—and Peter Dickinson’s Sleep and His Brother, which I had recently been thinking of and wishing I could reread, for myself. The husband is interested in the World War II era, so he got two excellent books from the goodie bag that I’ve already read: James R. Benn’s Billy Boyle and Charles Todd’s The Red Door. I can’t wait to send my friend a list of series authors she can put on her Kindle, including Margaret Maron, Laurie R. King, and Donna Leon, all of whom I’m sure she’ll love. I think the husband will enjoy Jan Burke, Reginald Hill, and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

Steve Steinbock, whom I first met in the bar at Bouchercon a couple of years ago, is a kindred spirit who loves many of the same books I do. He agreed with (or at least let me rant on about) my theory that the middle ground between the heirs of Agatha Christie and the heirs of Raymond Chandler is occupied by the heirs of Dorothy L. Sayers, who introduced the character-driven novel to mysteries of the Golden Age. This goes largely unacknowledged in the perennial cozy vs hardboiled debate, although imho the descendants of Sayers include some of the most extraordinary writers of traditional mysteries, including Maron, King, Hill, and Julia Spencer-Fleming, as well as (arguably) Laura Lippman and S.J. Rozan (usually considered crime fiction writers) and Nancy Pickard and Charlaine Harris (usually considered cozy writers). Steve and I had a grand time talking about Manning Coles’s Tommy Hambledon spy novels. I was able to recommend to him a writer he didn’t know, Michael Gruber, whose The Book of Air and Shadows I consider the perfect thriller (plot, characterization, listen-to-this language, and even humor) as well as a brilliant World War II era suspense novel he didn’t know, the late Ariana Franklin’s City of Shadows. I also recommended Peter Dickinson's superb King and Joker, a refreshing alternative-history view of British royalty (and a propos as the royal wedding competed with Malice itself).

What mysteries do you love? Which authors do you recommend?

Does online book shopping kill impulse buying?

2011-06-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

Anybody who likes to hang out in bookstores has discovered a new favorite writer by browsing and impulsively purchasing a book that looked intriguing. But when we shop online because our local bookstore has closed or we lack time for leisurely trawls through the aisles, do we buy fewer books on impulse?

A new study by Bowker and Publishers Weekly indicates that we do. According to the 2010-2011 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics & Buying Behaviors Annual Review, 44% of respondents said they went online to buy a specific book, while only 11% said they made an online book purchase on impulse. By contrast, 26% of people who browsed through physical books in a store said they made an impulse buy.

Results were consistent across all trade segments and all categories of customers: browsing in a store leads to far more impulse purchases than buying online. As Publishers Weekly points out, understanding the way people buy online has become a major concern in the industry because in 2010 online retailers surpassed the chain bookstores in sales for the first time, taking in 30% of the money spent on books. Online retailing is now the single largest outlet for books. When all types of brick-and-mortar bookstores are combined, they still outsell online merchants, but PW expects that to change this year as Borders fades and Amazon continues to grow.

The big worry is that as readers shift their book-buying online and go in search of specific titles, sales will become even more lopsided in favor of well-known authors. The challenge for online retailers is to find a way to create the browsing experience on an electronic screen and allow readers to discover new-to-them authors.

Meanwhile, bookstores in Canada are hoping to get a cut of e-book revenue by making it easy for customers to browse through and purchase electronic books in a store setting. A Calgary company called Enthrill is on the verge of offering cards that display book covers and contain electronic access codes. The cards are thin and take up little shelf room, but they’re touted as a way to give the customer the “tangible element” that is missing from e-books. They’re also an easy way to purchase e-books as gifts. Small specialty stores that can’t afford to stock a variety of printed books can expand their offerings with the e-cards. Enthrill will make the cards available in up to 150 stores this summer in a test run with a limited number of titles in a broad spectrum of genres. A similar approach with the Zondervan/HarperCollins Symptio card was a flop – and ended just before the e-book boom took hold. Enthrill believes its book cards are coming on the market at the perfect time.

So the online merchants have to be more like brick-and-mortar stores to capture the profitable impulse buyers, while the stores want to find a way to profit from the e-book revolution.

Anybody brave enough to guess what bookselling – and buying – will look like 10 years from now?

Obsession

2011-05-31T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind

Whether you’re writing from Debra Dixon’s goal, motivation and conflict idea, Donald Maass’ raising the stakes, or other conflict-development theories, if you want a story to have depth and interest, give your protagonists and villains obsessions. Some characters may appear to have a passion rather than an obsession, but that’s just a nicer-sounding word for the same thing.

Being obsessed with marrying England’s Prince Harry would likely be thought a bad thing, especially by Prince Harry; being passionate about ending homelessness, a good thing. Watch those passions, however. When a good idea gets in the way of a normal, balanced life, it turned into an obsession. Remember that as writers, we want to stress, stress, stress our characters so passions that get out of hand can be a good thing.

Passion or obsession, the character can’t get away from the one grand and glorious thing they believe they must do with their lives. Lord Peter Whimsey became obsessed with proving Harriet Vane innocent of murder. Harriet, for her part, was obsessed with maintaining her independence. Those two competing obsessions carried through several books until both of them, passions spent, fell into each others arms.

There are a lot of theories about why obsessions/passions develop. For character development, I favor the traumatic event in the past situation.
1. Something happened to the character that planted the seeds of obsession or passion. Strangely enough, with Peter and Harriet, the sticking point was likely money. Peter had lots of it, but even all of that wealth could not protect Harriet from going to the gallows. He had to give more than money to save her. For Harriet, having to earn her own living after her father died set up that streak of independence.
2. It was an event with emotional significance and it occurred at a time when the character was either truly helpless or thought that they were helpless.
3. Something prevented them from getting counseling, medication, understanding, perspective, or hope after the incident.
4. Something happened to reinforce the victim’s story. The victim’s story says they did this to me. I did nothing/could do nothing to prevent this from happening.

Victim characters are often not very interesting. They tend to whine and that gets tedious. When Peter and Harriet meet, both have moved through the victim’s story to the survivor’s story, though Harriet has a bit more of a victim about her. Her line is that she allowed Philip Boyes to set the parameters of their relationship, that she was a fool to do so, and that her being brought to trial just might be what she deserves for being so stupid.

The survivor’s story says, this thing happened. While I couldn’t prevent it, I did these things to survive. Peter knows what he did to survive the Great War, and more important, what he is doing to survive being a younger son in one of the richest families in England. That bally-ho, fatuous man-about-town image is his survivor’s story, constructed so that people will let him alone.

Both of their survivors’ stories have crystalized around them. What makes their relationship work is that each can see in the other something that other people miss. They challenge one another to come out of their glass prison and be real, true, and vulnerable. Doing this takes time. It’s not a straight shot from survivor to thriver.

Remember that stress, stress, stress? Good fiction is one step forward, and two steps back. Whatever the character risks has to turn on them. This way, when they take a risk again, there has to be a whole lot more motivation, courage, hope, or love pushing them to take that second chance. And yet more for the third time, and so on until the reader feels that there is no possible way that the character will take that final chance, the one that brings them out of being a survivor and into being a thriver.

The thriver’s story says, “I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone, but I’m a better person because I’ve come through the experience and participated in my own healing.”

That’s a great outcome for heroes and heroines, but alas, life never works out so well for the villain. Fortunately for the writer, a good villain remain stuck in the victim’s story. Life has been done to him. He has no way to participate in his own rescue and that warps his view of the world. Think of heroic characters as moving forward and villains as repeating a circle over and over, only the circle gets deeper and harder to move out of each time.

Want character development in one question? That question is What is their obsession?

If you’re interested in knowing more about victims’, survivors’ and thrivers’ stories, see Dr. Rob Voyle’s Book, Restoring Hope.

-----
Quote for the week
Your biggest problems and your worst obsessions contain the seeds of your own growth and development.
~Sara Halprin, writer and process work therapist

Young Love, Righteous Revenge, and The Power of the Personal Essay

2011-05-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley

My husband and I were married twenty-three years ago this weekend, on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We are rather surprised to find ourselves at this milestone, since we like to think of ourselves as still youthful. But time doesn't lie, and neither do our growing children, so here we are.

In honor of the day, I'll tell the rather odd story of how Jeff and I met.

In 1986 I was a junior in college and dating a guy named Bob. My boyfriend and I had been having some rough times, mainly because I think we were realizing we weren't "meant to be," if you believe in that sort of thing. So it was only partly surprising when Bob, who attended ISU, called me in Indiana and said that the formal dance he'd agreed to attend with me--the one for which I'd already purchased expensive tickets and persuaded my mom to alter an old prom dress--was something he could not now attend. He had to work, he told me.

In a cold voice I told Bob that would be just fine. And then I plotted my revenge. I would find a guy--any guy--to go to that dance with me, and I would have fun. I was thinking, at that point, of just going to a random store and approaching all males with my dance proposition, but then I had a brainstorm. My brother, eight years my elder, worked in Chicago in a big glamorous office building (or so I thought at age 20). He had often told me tales of his humorous co-workers. Surely one of them could be persuaded to go out with a cute college girl?

So I called my big brother and told him of my idea. He sounded skeptical. "Uh--I don't really know," he said. "I guess I could ask Jeff Buckley."

"Sure! He sounds great," I said.

"He's very funny," my brother assured me. This, I assumed, was a euphemism for ugly, but I didn't care. I told Bill to go ahead and extend the invitation.

I called that evening to find out the result. "Is he going?" I asked.

"Uh--he might. He has a list of demands."

Pause. "A list of demands? Like . . . a terrorist?"

"You have to know Jeff's sense of humor," he said. And then he read me the demands, which Jeff had scrawled on a piece of paper in his terrible handwriting while he was supposed to be working. To be honest with you, I can't remember them all, but one of them was "You must refer to me as 'Bronco' for the entire evening" and another was "write a five-paragraph essay entitled 'Why I must be accompanied by Jeff.'"

I actually thought this was pretty funny, and I was an English major, so I tossed off the essay in no time and had it ready when Bill and Jeff arrived on the dance day (there was no e-mail then, and I didn't have time to mail it).

Jeff told me later that it was a longshot that he showed up at all; he regretted telling Bill he'd go out with his little sister (he'd been told I was funny, which he assumed was a euphemism for ugly), and was going to call in sick. However, he had so much respect for my brother (and still does) that he didn't want to disappoint him. So he made the one hour drive to my parents' house in the suburbs, then another hour-long drive, with Bill, to Valparaiso University, where we met in our cumbersome formal clothes. I have attached a photo which chronicles forever the awkwardness of our meeting (and the exchange of the essay). (It also shows that on my dorm room wall I had, inexplicably, a poster for CATS and a picture of the "Hey Vern" guy. Go figure.)

Anyway, Jeff and I hit it off quite well, and when he decided to kiss me later that same night, he prefaced it by saying, "Let's get this awkward moment out of the way." That made everything seem pretty inevitable, which I guess it was.

I never did call him Bronco, though. Maybe after forty years.

(Note: This is a slightly-altered version of an essay I wrote a few years ago on my twentieth anniversary).

Writing Historically

2011-05-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

When I was asked to be a permanent participant on this blog the answer was a resounding “yes!” The five ladies who trade off writing blog posts have established an amazing resource with heaps of good writing advice and information on the ever-changing publishing world. Being a part of that was a no-brainer. But I did point out that on my own website, blog, and on my character blog, I usually spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the Middle Ages. But since most of us on this blog are middle-aged, that was okay by them!

I write a series of medieval mysteries that have a darker bent than your Brother Cadfael type. I call them “Medieval Noir,” hardboiled detective fiction set in the Middle Ages with an ex-knight turned detective as my protagonist. Writing historically is not a challenge, it's part of the fun. Not only are you creating these interesting characters and their situations, but you get to put them into a very real world that you find endlessly fascinating!

When I first began writing historical fiction many years ago, I worried that I would get so wrapped up in the research I’d never get to the book itself. We call that “research rapture.” Well, those days are long gone. But I still enjoy the thrill of researching and discovering that great fist-punch-in-the-air moment when you find out something that will work perfectly for your story. I like to write my stories and characters as if they could have existed, as if they perhaps should have existed.

My hero is Crispin Guest and as I mentioned before, he is an ex-knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth century London. And yes, there were ex-knights, degraded knights, as they called them, but none, as far as I know, ever became a detective (a job that was decidedly of my own fiction for this time period). Most of the degraded knights I came across were degraded right before they met a very ignoble and nasty end. So I had to come up with a plausible way for Crispin to have been degraded and survive so that he could re-invent himself as a medieval PI.

Research into the early court of King Richard II when my books are set gave me the answer. You see, Richard became king when he was ten years old. Can you imagine your own ten-year-old becoming king? This naturally came with its own set of problems. I don’t think “spoiled” really covers it. His reign started with great promise, but later, he was accused of favoring too many hangers on and generally making a hash of it.

Meanwhile, Richard’s uncle, the daunting duke of Lancaster, was the richest man in England and an indomitable warrior and experienced statesman. Parliament feared, and rightly so, that the duke would try to jump the line of succession and take the throne for himself and he made promise after promise that he would not do so. That didn’t stop the conspiracy theorists from hatching plots (of course, who’s to say that there weren’t any?)

So here’s where my fiction kicks into the historical facts. I made Crispin the duke’s protégé, had him raised in the duke’s household since he was seven years old, seeing the duke as a father figure. And so naturally Crispin throws in his lot with these conspirators, thinking that it is for the good of England. The conspirators are caught and all are condemned. Crispin is up for execution, too, but instead, the duke begs for his life. His life is granted but all else is taken from him: land, wealth, status. All that defines him. He’s thrust into the heart of London with nothing but the clothes on his back. Instant angst, instant chip on shoulder. Much can be done with his inability to blend into the lower classes when he clearly is not, and that, in his heart, he is and always will be a knight.

I love it when a plot comes together.

But now comes fleshing out the rest of the world. What are the people wearing? What are they eating and drinking? What are they eating and drinking on? Where do they sleep? What are the customs they encounter? What is the difference between the classes? What does London look like in 1385?

University libraries, archives on the internet, emails to people across the pond. These are the places I find all the bigger facts I need. For some of the smaller ones, I prefer a little hands-on approach. I have a book of medieval recipes from King Richard’s court and I’ve cooked my share of (small) feasts. I’ve brewed my own medieval ale, from preparing the grain and allowing it to sprout, to roasting it, to grinding it, to actually brewing it. I’ve made and worn the clothing. And I’ve collected the weaponry and know how to use it. Having a hands-on approach can give you a true appreciation for the experiences of medieval people.

One of the nifty facts I haven’t been able to use yet in my stories was something I uncovered about London. About how a lot of medieval men met their accidental deaths. It seems there was an inordinate number of men dying from falling out of windows. Naturally, I thought this bore more investigation. What I discovered was that, with a fair amount of alcohol involved, these men would get up in the middle of the night to accede to a call of nature. But instead of climbing down long staircases or rickety ladders, they would open the windows (which had no glass, just shutters), stand in the open window, and…well, misjudge. Talk about being caught dead with your pants down! It’s one of those facts I can’t wait to use.

Each fact that’s uncovered unfolds more plot points, more places for the characters to go. I utilize real figures from the Middle Ages. Without telling any spoilers, let me just say that some are very unusual characters indeed, a real case of truth being stranger than fiction. That’s the real joy of writing historically. Rather than limiting, I find it an endless cornucopia of fodder for my stories.

What is it worth to you?

2011-05-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

I’m a genealogist in my so-called spare time, and recently I realized that while I hadn’t been paying attention, the Registries of Deeds in Massachusetts counties have been busy scanning their deeds (which means that in Plymouth they really do go back to 1620) and uploading them so they can be accessed online. If you’ve ever done research using the originals, you know how challenging interpreting both the handwriting and the terminology can be, and print-outs used to be very expensive, so you’d spend a lot of time laboriously copying the relevant information and hoping you got it right.

Now you can go to each county and call up the electronic version through an online database. For the earlier years you need to know the book and page number for the deed(s) you are looking for, but you probably already have that. So they’re still working on the system—it’s not perfect yet, but for researchers like me it’s a huge step forward.

But (of course there’s a but), all counties do not approach this process in the same way. I was lucky to strike gold in Hampshire County (where my Orchard Mysteries are set), which will let you read and print out images of the originals for free. Since I’ve got a lot of ancestors out that way, this was wonderful for me.

But I live in Plymouth County, and I’m curious about the ancestors who lived here, as well as about the history of my house, so I next checked out my county’s system. Uh-oh, they want money. I guess they’re assuming that most users are involved in real estate, one way or another, so for them paying $30 a month to access deeds is simply a business expense that gets passed on during a land transaction. Then I decided to check out Norfolk County, where I had still other relatives (they’re everywhere in this state, believe me). Gulp: they want an upfront subscription fee of $100 per year, plus a $1 per page printing fee, also prepaid. All those lovely images of 18th and 19th century deeds, many of which I’ve never seen personally—how much are they worth to me? That’s what I have to decide.

And, to get to the point (yes, I do have one), I realized that this is similar to the ebook business these days. While the numbers of ebooks published, and the range and quantity of ereaders, have both grown exponentially over the past couple of years, the pricing model is still all over the place. Speaking from my admittedly limited experience, at the high end we have Major Publisher ebooks, which cost the same as the paperback version, or maybe a dollar less. Not a bargain, unless you (the reader) place an implicit value on instant gratification.

Then you have a lot of people who are uploading books themselves. These include well-established authors who happen to have a backlist that is long out of print. Why not sell them on Amazon and make a little more from them? In addition, there are established authors who have unpublished manuscripts that are not in the genre that is their bread and butter; now they can upload them themselves and promote them, with or without using a pen name, and make some money there (and we writers hate to waste a book!). And finally you have the legions of writers who are tired of slogging through the agent-publisher morass and just want to get their book out there so they can tell all their friends and relatives.

How do you put a price on these books? That’s a business decision, or a marketing one—and many writers are ill-equipped to deal with pesky realities like that. If you sell it for 99 cents, are you devaluing your work before it even goes live? Is it arrogant to price it at the same level as a physical book? Are you using the book as a teaser, hoping to hook readers and planning to raise the price on later offerings? Where is the happy medium that allows you to look worthy but not greedy?

Barry Eisler announced to the world a couple of months ago that he was going to eliminate the middlemen and publish himself, although this week he’s cut a deal directly with Amazon’s new mystery imprint (is it an imprint if it’s not, well, printed?). See how fast things are changing? But Eisler already has a solid group of followers. At the same time there are plenty of eager authors who are loosing poorly edited and formatted works on the reading world, and doing themselves no favors. If you paid $7 for a bad book, would you feel cheated? Would you buy anything else written by that author, or has s/he blown their one and only chance? Would you feel differently about a bad work if you had paid only 99 cents?

What is a book really worth?

Folk Music and Murder Ballads

2011-05-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

My blog sister Sharon Wildwind recently posted a blog about folk music, and a lot of people chimed in, including the rest of us Deadly Daughters, suggesting that there’s still a lot of interest in traditional music and nostalgia for the heyday of its popularization in America in the 1960s. Of particular interest to mystery lovers is the subgenre of murder ballads, which began centuries ago in England and Scotland, was brought to America and preserved in the Appalachians, added to by modern songwriters, and still sung with great relish by today’s aficionados of traditional music.

I was introduced to folk music in the late 1940s, when Oscar Brand, the “shoeless troubadour,” had a radio show on WNYC and Appalachian ballad singer Jean Ritchie was his frequent guest. (I saw them perform, both in their eighties and still singing up a storm, as recently as 2003.) In the early 1950s, I went to a “progressive” summer camp, where I heard the legendary Pete Seeger, already a hero in those circles as the successor to Woody Guthrie, long before the Weavers burst onto the scene. In high school, I was already one of those kids who partied by sitting on the floor with our guitars rather than going to dances or drinking in cars.

I was a college freshman the year Joan Baez’s first album came out. She sang the true crime song, “Mary Hamilton,” in that one—well, maybe an apocryphal true crime song, in which one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting gets pregnant by the king (one of the Stuarts, reign unspecified), gets rid of the newborn by sending it out to sea in a little boat, and gets hanged for it. The second album included “The Silkie,” a ballad from the Orkneys of which I already knew and sang a more traditional version: the legend of the seal turned human (to which I added a serial killer twist in a short story many years later), and “Banks of the Ohio,” one of many in which a man kills his pregnant girlfriend so he won’t have to marry her. (Others are “Pretty Polly” and “Down in a Willow Garden.”) On the third album was “Pretty Boy Floyd,” a true-crime song about a bank robber who may or may not have had Robin Hood-like ideals. (The song says yes: “As through this world I’ve wandered, I’ve met many kinds of men/Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.” The recent movie Public Enemies shows a different side of Floyd.) On the same album was “Matty Groves,” about a man who sleeps with a lord’s wife and gets killed when the husband catches them in bed together. The Irish group Planxty had a version I like even better, in which the doomed lover is “Little Musgrave.”

Somebody is always dying in folk music and its contemporary counterparts as modern songwriters continue the tradition. One of my favorites is “Long Black Veil,” written in 1959 and performed by everybody from Johnny Cash to the Chieftains. That one’s a paranormal murder mystery with a twist: the first person protagonist tells the story from beyond the grave, having been hanged for a crime he didn’t commit with an alibi he couldn’t use: he was “in the bed of my best friend’s wife.” In the 2000 film, The Songcatcher, a collector of Appalachian ballads in 1907 finds the local folks playing out the themes of true love betrayed and two-timing husbands murdered as well as singing the ballads brought over from England and Scotland two hundred years before. In my folksinging days, my mother always used to say, “Can’t you sing something cheerful?” She didn’t live to see me a published mystery writer (she’d have been 105 when the first book came out), but if she had, no doubt she would have asked, “Why does somebody have to be murdered?”

The Good Reader

2011-05-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

Somebody on DorothyL asked a few days ago, “What makes a good reader?” As in, we know what readers expect from writers (perfection!), but what do we expect – or at least wish for – from readers?

I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in my contacts with readers. I love hearing from them. I’ve received many e-mails and in-person comments that were so wonderful and gratifying that they kept me going for weeks afterward. I’ve suffered only indirect blows from those who think the very existence of my books is an affront to everything they hold dear. My portrait of The Good Reader is drawn from the experiences of other writers as well as my own.

The Good Reader pays attention to what she’s reading and does not complain to the writer about nonexistent errors or omissions.

The Good Reader lets an author know that she has read and enjoyed the writer’s book(s).

The Good Reader doesn’t rush to ruin an author’s day/week/year with a long e-mail or online “review” detailing every reason large and small why she hated the writer’s new book.

The Good Reader realizes that few authors make much money, that most of us do this because we love to write, that a single book represents a year or more of intense creative work, and it’s disheartening, to say the least, when a reader makes it her personal mission to go around the internet urging everybody, everywhere, to shun it. The Good Reader realizes that his or her taste may not be shared by all readers.

While The Good Reader is certainly entitled to express an opinion, she doesn’t use online reviews to instruct a professional author on how to improve his or her writing in future books. That’s an editor’s job.

(Note: Many professional writers make it a point to avoid looking at reader reviews on sites like Amazon.)

The Good Reader realizes that the characters in a book are not stand-ins for the author who created them. If a character does something awful or expresses an unfortunate opinion, that doesn’t mean the writer behaves or thinks that way.

The Good Reader may voice a wish for the future direction of a series character’s life – as in, “I’d love to see her marry Tom” – but doesn’t become aggressive about it (as in, “If they don’t get married soon, I’m going to stop reading your books”).

The Good Reader realizes that an author with a traditional print publisher probably has no control over the release of an e-book version of her novel. The Good Reader doesn’t ask about the e-book repeatedly, then when it’s available, decide not to buy it after all.

The Good Reader doesn’t ask an author published by a small press why her books aren’t all prominently displayed at the local Barnes & Noble.

The Good Reader doesn’t tell an author that she looks nothing like her picture on the book jacket.

I’m sure any writer who’s reading this could add to the list. Feel free.

Reality Fiction

2011-05-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind

I have a confession to make: I rarely read outside of genre fiction.

This choice has more to do with reading time available than for any prejudice against literature or, even worse, Literature. That’s why, several times, I passed up a book on my local library’s “staff’s picks” shelf until I finally said, “What the heck” and checked it out.

The book is Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). It is a maybe, maybe not work of fiction about The Brown siblings, Maxine, Jim Ed, and Bonnie. What made reading this book weird was not only that it was impossible to tell where real life left off and fiction began, but that I have, however tenuous, a connection to the Browns.

There is a slight statistical possibility that they performed during one of the rare times I was privileged to see the Louisiana Hayride in person. Without a doubt I heard them on the radio, when the Hayride was broadcast over KWKH Radio, Shreveport, Louisiana. We’re talking icons of my childhood here.

Bass thanks the Brown family for a five-year association, so I assume that this book was written with their help and blessing. Since the other major characters—Gentleman Jim Reeves, Mary Reeves, and Elvis Presley—have long since departed this world, I assume as well that their estates had no problems with the book. In fact, I found the book an enjoyable read, a fascinating glimpse not only into country music life, but into the hard-scrabble life of a logging family in 1950s Arkansas. My two questions were what was true, and what wasn’t? And did it make any difference if I couldn't tell? In these days when photos can be “shopped” and reality shows are scripted, has that distinction between truth and fiction disappeared? I don’t know.

It also brought to mind one of the favorite writer questions. Is is okay if I use the names of real people, places, brands, and events in my fiction? If you’re on any sort of writers’ list, you know that this question reappears with such regularity that you can set your calendar by it.

The only absolute negative answer has to do with song lyrics. While you can use the titles of songs, you can not—absolutely can not—use any song lyrics, of any length, without written permission from the person or company who owns the copyright. And good luck tracking down that person or company. You can, however, bend yourself around the rule with occasional obscure references, such as “In the background, the Beatles complained about how hard the day had been.”

As far as any other real-world reference, the general consensus is usually if the reference is positive, go ahead and use it. If it’s negative, don’t. So if you want to mention that your protagonist enjoys a certain brand of soda pop, fine. If poison is going to be administered in that same soda pop, forget it.

If the reference is in passing, “I got home just in time to see George Stephanopoulos start a rundown of the latest political scandal in Washington.” you’re okay, but if George S. is to be your amateur detective, you’re not okay. There is also the school of thought that the more real-world references, the more you date—and likely out-date—your book.

The problem is that general consensus, even among writers, isn’t the law. And publishers are becoming very, very wary. Some are requiring that an author have written permission for every real reference used.

The murders take place in Madison, Wisconsin? You’ll need a letter from the Madison City Council saying that is okay with them. The protagonist watches Good Morning, America? That better be backed up by an approval letter from the ABC legal department. Your street-wise detective stops off for a burger and fries from a recognized establishment? You’ll have to have the golden stamp of approval before that happens.

Is it any wonder that writers go a little crazy?

----
Quote for the week:
There was a certain sound, a ringing, that a fully tempered saw made when it had achieved that absolute perfect edge. . . . The sound they listened for—the perfect blade—held an eerie resonance, the faint sirenlike echo of a high harmonic that was a little different from the tempered harmony the Browns were already learning to achieve with their voices.
~Rick Bass, Nashville Chrome

The Mystery of Aphasia

2011-05-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley

The neurological term "aphasia" has been in the news a great deal lately, ironically because it affected not one but two normally healthy newscasters named Sarah Carlson and Serene Branson. Aphasia occurs when the part of the brain responsible for language is permanently or temporarily damaged, and the speaker's words can become garbled or nonsensical (click the title to see GOOD MORNING AMERICA'S discussion of the newscasters' experiences with aphasia).

I am more familiar with the term than I would wish to be, because in the last several months this disorder has affected my mother, and I've watched this intelligent, outgoing and extremely verbal woman retreat inside herself because she has lost the ability to communicate her thoughts to the outside world.

Initially it was sporadic: a silly word or statement would slip out at the end of an anecdote, and we would laugh.

Then the "nonsense" language grew more common, and my mother would sometimes slip from English into German, her native tongue, without realizing she was doing so. My father took her to a speech therapist and a neurologist, the latter of whom suggested that this could be the result of mini strokes--events that may have happened at any time in her life--that have hardened the brain tissue and therefore made it difficult for her original thoughts to process through her language center.

My mother does remember having an episode of aphasia in her youth, when I and my siblings were little. She was having coffee with a friend and suddenly nothing that came out of her mouth made any sense. The friend panicked and begged her to stop; neither of them knew what was happening. After a minute or so, she was back to normal. She never went to the doctor. No one thought of it, then, as something that would require a medical examination.

So even then my mother's brain might have experienced something that is causing her extreme trouble now. Because of her aphasia, which has increased to the point that she cannot sustain a conversation, she has become very dependent upon my father to help her communicate. This is frustrating for him, because often she'll expect him to read her thoughts; her eyes will beg him to understand what it is that she wants to say, and to become her voice.

It has affected her social life to the extent that she withdraws from group situations. She no longer likes parties or visits with friends. Her aphasia embarrasses her, others her, in a way that she cannot bear. With her husband and her children she still tries, but she becomes angry at herself when the words that come out are not the words she intended.

Recently, she has given up her favorite thing of all: singing in the church choir. Although the aphasia doesn't seem to affect her as much when she sings (also a mystery), she is embarrassed when she can't talk with her choir mates or respond to the choir leader.

This last loss has made her more sad even than the loss of words.

This aphasia is painful for us all. My mother has always been a great deal like me--a reader, a writer, a thinker. She loved to have philosophical conversations, and our family dinners, back when I lived at home, would sometimes last for hours as we lingered, chatting and exchanging thoughts.

Aphasia has robbed her of almost everything she holds dear. She can still appreciate the cards we send her, but her once-perfect handwriting has also been affected by the disease, and she has been deprived of yet another vanity.

What troubles me most about aphasia, aside from the pain it has caused my mother , is its mysterious origin. Who knows why, in a quick chat with a neighbor back when she was in her thirties, my mother was suddenly deprived of speech? Who knows why, or how, this might have affected her current condition?

Why are some brains prone to this condition and others not?

Life has its random surprises, and aphasia seems to be among them.

(Image from the Stroke Foundation website).

Canada Calling: The Arthur Ellis Shortlist

2011-05-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

Once again we are that heady time of year between the short-list announcement for the Canadian Arthur Ellis Awards, and the banquet where the winners will be named. The banquet happens on Thursday evening, June 2, in Victoria, British Columbia.

For a more in-depth look at the nominated books, go the Crime Writers of Canada’s special Cool Canadian Crime issue dedicated to the A.E. shortlist.

If you’re building your 2011 summer reading list, I suggest you print off this list and take it with you to your library/book store of choice. It’s the best of the best from Canadian crime writers. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to get a copy of the unhanged Arthur yet, but we all have our fingers crossed for the nominees being published soon.

Best Crime Novel
A Criminal to Remember, Michael Van Rooy, Turnstone Press
Bury Your Dead, Louise Penny, Little, Brown UK
In Plain Sight, Mike Knowles, ECW Press
Slow Recoil, C.B. Forrest, RendezVous Crime
The Extinction Club, Jeffrey Moore, Penguin Group

Best First Crime Novel
The Damage Done, Hilary Davidson, Tom Doherty Associates
The Debba, Avner Mandelman, Random House of Canada
The Penalty Killing, Michael McKinley, McClelland & Stewart
The Parabolist, Nicholas Ruddock, Doubleday Canada
Still Missing, Chevy Stevens, St. Martin's Press

Best French Crime Book
Cinq secondes, Jacques Savoie, Libre Expression
Dans le quartier des agités, Jacques Côté, Éditions Alire
La société des pères meurtriers, Michel Châteauneuf, Vent d’Ouest
Quand la mort s'invite à la première, Bernard Gilbert, Québec Amerique
Vanités, Johanne Seymour, Libre Expression

Best Crime Nonfiction
Northern Light, Roy MacGregor, Random House
On the Farm, Stevie Cameron, Alfred A. Knopf Canada
Our Man in Tehran, Robert Wright, HarperCollins Canada

Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book
Borderline, Allan Stratton, HarperCollins
Pluto's Ghost, Sheree Fitch, Doubleday Canada
The Vinyl Princess, Yvonne Prinz, HarperCollins
The Worst Thing She Ever Did, Alice Kuipers, HarperCollins
Victim Rights, Norah McClintock, Red Deer Press

Best Crime Short Story
In It Up To My Neck, Jas R. Petrin, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
So Much in Common, Mary Jane Maffini, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
The Big Touch, Jordan McPeek, Thuglit.com
The Piper's Door, James Powell, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
The Bust, William Deverell, Whodunnit: Sun Media’s Canadian Crime Fiction Showcase

Best First Unpublished Novel (Unhanged Arthur)
Better Off Dead, John Jeneroux
Uncoiled, Kevin Thornton
When the Bow Breaks, Jayne Barnard

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE PROMOTIONAL SUN

2011-05-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

(Last Friday Blogger ate this post, along with a lot of others. But it's no less timely this week.)

Thank you, Tony Perrottet.

Who's he, you ask? I didn't know either, until I read his essay "Building the Brand" in the May 1 New York Times Book Review. He's a writer with several books to his credit, the most recent of which, The Sinner's Grand Tour, came out this week. If you want more details, see http://www.tonyperrottet.com/

If you're wondering why I'm thanking him, it's because he wrote about promotion. Now, for those of you who simply enjoy reading and aren't enmired in trying to get a book sold to a publisher and into the hands of as many readers as possible so you can do it all over again, let me tell you that promotion is the bane of our existence. You think all you have to do is write a good book and people will flock to buy it? Wrong.

You write the best book you can, the publisher assembles it in whatever format, then shoves it out into the cold cruel world and tells you, "okay, now go sell it." They may send out Advance Reader Copies or pay for bookstore placement, but it's up to you the author to drum up attention for the book. What nobody tells you, when you are nursing that germ of a story and sending it out to agents and editors, is that promotion will eat up half your waking life, if you're lucky enough to sell it. Personal appearances, at large and small events; bookmarks and postcards; newsletters; blogs; crazy stunts; and, yes, social networks--we are supposed to use them all, all the time.

So where does Tony fit? In his essay he points out that this is not new. In fact, the concept of manic promotion goes back to at least the 5th-century BC (yes, you read that right), when the Greek author Herodotus paid for his own book tour (nothing has changed) around the Aegean Sea, and was smart enough to include a stop at the Olympic Games.

In the 12th century, the cleric Gerald of Wales put together his own book party in Oxford, where he provided his invited guests with room and board, and food and ale, for THREE DAYS, and all they had to do in exchange was listen to him recite from his books. For three days. Fair exchange? (BTW, I've read his book on Ireland: he hated the place, and all the native inhabitants, and he didn't hide the fact.)

The list goes on, and you might be surprised by some of the examples. Guy de Maupassant hired a hot-air balloon and inscribed it with the title of his latest short story and sent it flying over Paris. Colette created a cosmetics line (which flopped); Virginia Wolff did a fashion spread with a magazine editor. The mystery writer Georges Simenon contracted to write a novel in three days while suspended in a glass cage outside the Moulin Rouge in Paris--with input from the audience (it didn't happen because his sponsor went bankrupt). Walt Whitman wrote unsigned reviews of his own works (sound familiar?).

Perrottet's prime exemplar is Ernest Hemingway. Perhaps you think of him as a terse and manly writer. Would it disappoint you to learn that he shilled for beer ads (Ballantine Ale), Pan Am, and Parker pens?

Those of us who live in the current electronic world can moan "but what about the Internet?" That's a mixed blessing, or do I mean curse? Using the Internet means that you can reach a lot of people very quickly. The downside is, it never stops. You can tweet yourself blue in the face, andTwitter is still there, hungry, waiting.

What works when you're trying to sell a book? No one really knows. How much is enough? Same answer. But we all keep trying, because we like to write books and we want people to read them.

Interview with Margaret Frazer

2011-05-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Interviewer: Elizabeth Zelvin

Margaret Frazer is the author of the best-selling, award-winning, long-running Dame Frevisse medieval mystery series and the spin-off series featuring Joliffe, player and spy.

Liz: Let’s start at the beginning, when two mystery authors collaborated to write the first Dame Frevisse mystery. Or is it Sister Frevisse? Is your former co-author’s name a secret?

Margaret: No, my co-author is no secret. We’re even friends! Of course right after we went our separate ways, people would ask one or the other of us, “Is she still alive?”, supposing mystery writers would know how to kill each other, I guess. But we parted amicably. After six books together, Mary simply got tired of the Middle Ages and left the series to me. Her own first mysteries were published under the name of Mary Monica Pulver. Now, as Monica Ferris, she’s writing a cozy series of modern needlework mysteries.

As for Frevisse, I’ve always called her Dame Frevisse, but the publisher got stuck on Sister Frevisse at the first and took a long time to get past it. Hence the confusion.

Liz: Your website bio mentions that you met at the Society for Creative Anachronism. SCA is the organization whose members role play medieval characters. It resembles historical reenactment groups, except the geography and wars are imaginary. Did you have a particular character? How seriously did you take SCA? Are you still a member? And to what extent did your SCA experiences help you create Dame Frevisse’s and later, Joliffe’s 15th century?

Margaret: I did have a particular character: Ailis FitzUre, daughter of a merchant family in York, England, who became knowledgeable about the wool trade during her first, arranged, and very happy marriage to an older man. When widowed, she married a knight interested in becoming involved in the wool trade: he had the wool; Ailis had the connections. As you can see, I was even then of a practical, rather than a romantic, bent in my approach to medieval life. I came into medieval England by way of the big events of the time, but soon became fascinated by the minutiae of everyday living that made up most people’s lives.

I took the SCA quite seriously, separating the fantasy elements of it from what aspects gave me insight into medieval experiences. I no longer belong, have not belonged for a long time, because after I began spending all day of most days “in the Middle Ages” with my writing, going medievaling on the weekends just didn’t have the appeal it once did. But by then I had got a great deal from the SCA. Wearing the clothing was invaluable. So much changes when you wear long skirts and keep your head wimpled and veiled for decency’s sake. When I returned to modern clothing after one long weekend event, I actually felt indecent with my head all “naked”. Even wearing the soft-soled shoes tells you a lot – the way you walk and your relationship to the ground is different. And using the manners of the time taught me so much. When I came to write the first draft of The Novice’s Tale I kept having characters curtsy and bow, and not only curtsy and bow but do it in gradations according to whom they were encountering. Because I kept doing this and couldn’t stop it, I became quite impatient with myself – until I realized that in the SCA I had taken to practicing exactly that kind of respect to those around me in a hierarchical society and it had become engrained in me just as it would have been for medieval people.

Those are only some of subtle things I learned in the SCA that have been useful in the books. I’ve yet to use my experience of fighting in a melee in armor on a July day, but one of these days . . .

Liz: The late historian Barbara Tuchman called the 14th century “calamitous.” How would you characterize the 15th century, and what prompted you to choose it?

Margaret: Would it be facetious to characterize the 15th century as “not as bad as it might have been”? I didn’t so much choose it as come to it by chance. I was in my mid-teens when my mother took me to see a production of Shakespeare’s Richard II. (It remains one of my favorite plays – the language is beyond wonderful and the characters complex, and when I had a chance to write a Shakespearean mystery for an anthology, I based my short story “Death of Kings” on it.) It was my first encounter with medieval England, and I wanted to know more. While reading up on Richard II’s time, I happened on a mystery novel that I thought was about him but turned out to be Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time about Richard III.

I promptly abandoned the 1300s for the 1400s, but found that to thoroughly understand what happened to Richard III, I needed to understand what led up to his time and how and why people thought as they did in medieval England; and before I knew it, I had fairly well abandoned Richard III in favor of being fascinated by his parents. The reign of Henry VI became my focus of research, so when chance came to set a novel in medieval times, I had my time and place, and I deliberately chose the 1430s to start Dame Frevisse’s series because things were fairly peaceful in England at that point. The Wars of the Roses were decades away, the Hundred Years War was across the Channel in France, and there were no great outbreaks of plague. I could explore daily medieval lives and relationships in a time of ordinary living (up to the point where someone gets murdered, of course) instead of belaboring the plots with political machinations and plague and other familiar elements of historical mysteries and novels.

Of course as Dame Frevisse’s series went on and the years passed for her, I began to get into more troubled times and have had fun weaving those into the plots now. After all, how could I have resisted involving her in the mysterious (and historical) death of the heir to the throne in The Bastard’s Tale, or bypassed the upheaval of Jack Cade’s Rebellion in The Sempster’s Tale, or the multiple political murders of 1450 in The Traitor’s Tale? And of course now with Joliffe becoming a spy, there’s more of that sort of thing going on, but I still try to write in depth about ordinary life as a frame to the rest, because it’s the contrast to the ordinary that makes murder so much more a wrenching apart of people’s lives.

Liz: In a recent interview (on being given Malice Domestic’s Lifetime Achievement Award), Sue Grafton said, “I hate giving anyone else a vote about my work.” Yet a collaboration that clicks can be magic. What was the collaborative process like for you? How did it differ from writing alone? Was the transition a moment of crisis for you? Did you consider giving up the series?

Margaret: The collaboration was a fascinating experience. It didn’t set out to be the two of us writing together. Mary was already the published author of several short stories and a modern murder mystery when she got the chance to write a medieval mystery novel. Her persona in the SCA was a Benedictine abbess of the 1400s, and Mary had researched monastic life but realized when she came to start plotting that she didn’t known nearly enough about any other aspects of England at the time. I had been researching (and trying to write about) the century for decades and eagerly offered to provide information and ideas. We even did a little plotting together – Mary wanted to set the book (it wasn’t a series then, just a book) in Oxfordshire; I knew about St. Frideswide being popular there and I found Frevisse’s name as a variant of Frideswide; we decided to play against the grain and set the small nunnery in the countryside and have the nun protagonist want to be a nun, without some dire backstory, loaded with angst, having brought her to it. And so forth. But when Mary came to start writing, she got writer’s block, could not get past the first few pages. Half-joking, I offered to write the book instead. She was so desperate, she gave her notes and everything over to me. I completed the outline and set to work, but after a few chapters shared with her what I’d done. That broke the block, and after that we eventually developed a routine where we would discuss a planned book, I would do the outline and start the first draft. After a few chapters, I would give those to Mary to start rewriting while I continued forward. Then, when I was done with the first draft and she was finishing writing the second (close on my heels, as it were), I took her version and wrote a third. Fortunately we lived about five miles apart, so we couldn’t hear what rude and complaining things we said about each other’s work at that point. But then, for the fourth and final draft, we would get together at her computer. Her husband used to wander past the door of her workroom, checking to see if we’d blown up at each other yet. It never came to yelling, but there were some tense moments during the first two books. An author’s creation is a very personal thing – and this other person was messing with my/her vision of things.

Then we made a major conceptual breakthrough: when we had a scene where Mary’s version was widely different from mine, if we stayed calm and made a blended version of that scene, it came out both better and shorter than what either one of us had written alone. We thought that was great, and everything went far more smoothly for us thereafter.

For me the collaboration was both a growth and a learning experience that I am the better for. That said, I have been very happy continuing to write alone. At the beginning of our collaboration, Mary was the one of us who was published; I had no such credibility and so she could “pull rank” on me, as it were. As I came to take an increasingly stronger hand in the stories, Mary’s interest in the series waned, to the point she did not want to be in the Middle Ages anymore. So she returned to modern times, while I never had any urge at all to leave the 1400s and have stayed there happily ever since.

Liz: How much research did you do in the beginning, and how does it compare with the amount you do now? Where do you find such details as the daily life and routines of Joliffe’s company of players? What resources do you use besides books?

Margaret: I started researching the 1400s in my mid-teens, slightly at first but with growing intensity (or – less charitably – obsession). By the time The Novice’s Tale was published, I had been at it for about 30 years, had a file drawer for every decade from the 1420s to the 1480s with 3x5 cards with chronological information of events and people, half a dozen large notebooks of biographical information, file cabinets of notes and photocopied articles, shelves of research books. I would like to say that, with all of that, I no longer need to do research – but that would be a lie. I continually come up against “No, wait, I don’t know that” and have to go looking for it. It is gratifying to have so much to hand, but there’s always something I don’t know. And when I needed to understand something about Jewish life in the late Middle Ages for The Sempster’s Tale, the notes I took made a pile of paper almost as thick as the finished manuscript. And so it goes. Happily, I love to research.

For Joliffe and his company of players, I’ve drawn, first, on my own experiences as an actor. I’ve mostly done period plays and usually on outdoor stages, with the audience very close. The skills needed by actors -- like those of other craftsmen whose crafts go back for centuries – remain fairly steadily the same, but there is very little actual detail to be had about medieval actors – players, as I call them, since “actor” is a later word. We know they were there in medieval times, that they were professionals, and that they traveled around in companies, often with patrons. That much shows up in the records, but not much else about them. We have a surprising number of the quite sophisticated plays they performed but few details of performance. So I extrapolate a great deal about both the performances and their daily life, drawing every ounce of information possible from sources like the Records of Early English Drama.

It was grand to find that so much of what I had been imagining and creating for Joliffe in A Play of Heresy was substantiated by what I saw when I went in 2010 to Toronto to see the twenty-three plays of the Chester cycle performed on wagons moving from place to place. Not an exact medieval experience but one from which a great many possibilities could be drawn.

Liz: One criticism that is sometimes leveled at writers of historical fiction is that they give historical characters a modern sensibility. You have avoided that with Dame Frevisse. One detail that impresses me is that where most modern women would rebel against the restrictions of the convent, Dame Frevisse likes the contemplative life and gets a little cranky when she has to travel in the outside world. To what extent are you conscious of this issue? How does the medieval sensibility differ from the modern?

Margaret: I was highly conscious of the issue from the very first. One benefit of all the research I had done before ever “meeting” Frevisse was that I could go some way toward seeing the world from the perspective of the time. I’d read not only studies about medieval England but actual medieval literature, their books on manners, their accounts and chronicles and philosophical works, even – heaven help me – their government documents as reprinted in the Rolls Series. (You know you’ve been at it too long when you start reading bureaucratic language with ease.) I wanted to be able to think medieval. How otherwise could I understand the motivations and emotions that underlay their overt actions?

From all of that I was able to see what deep value was placed on the spiritual life, how people approached it and lived in it. Religion permeated medieval life, and I thought that if a nun was to be the protagonist, how much more interesting it would be to experience her as someone completely engaged in her nunnery life by choice and heart-desire, rather than weighing her down with a heavy-duty backstory. For Frevisse the tension comes not from having come to the nunnery unwilling, with dire secrets in her past, but from being taken unwilling out of a life she has freely chosen. Of course not all nuns were happy to be nuns, but that adds texturing to the stories, and by telling all the books from two points of view – Frevisse’s and the title character’s – I get to explore not only Frevisse’s approach to her world but that of a wide array of people across the spectrum of medieval society.

Human emotions are apparently the same across time, but what may cause a particular emotion, and the value placed on that emotion, do differ with time and place. So my characters move and feel in the context of their time, rather than in ours.

Of course, since I’ve become so immersed in medieval thoughts and feelings, I do occasionally behave rather oddly in the 21st century. Just ask my family. Or – better yet – don’t ask them; I’d rather they didn’t say.

Liz: How much of what you know about your period ends up in the first draft? How much remains in the finished product?

Margaret: I’ve learned (the hard way, I have to add, by having it cut out by my editor) what period information doesn’t need to be in a book, so any more the first draft usually has as much period knowledge as the story seems to require. That of course can vary from story to story. Then in the rewriting I cut away what still seems extraneous – but also will add anything needed, remembering that what seems clear to me may not be to a reader. But always I work to blend the information into the flow of the story so there’s never a break while I explain things. Interestingly, I’ve found that if I can’t slip in any extra bit of explanation with no more than a parenthetical phrase, then I don’t understand the thing clearly enough myself and I’d best read up on it. When I understand a thing clearly, I can make it clear to the reader without interrupting the story.

That said, I hold with the truism I’ve seen elsewhere – that 95% of what I’ve researched never makes it into a book. But it’s necessary that I know that 95% because it informs me about what I shouldn’t have in the book. With the example I mentioned before – of all the research I did for The Sempster’s Tale, very little of it surfaced in the actual story, but it’s there in how the characters think and behave, their relationships and fears, much of which I would not have understood well enough to make clear if I hadn’t done all that research.

Liz: How much revision do you do?

Margaret: I usually have three drafts of a book. The first, rough draft I try to write straight through from beginning to end, not going back to fix or change anything. Even if – along about Chapter 18, I’ve changed my mind about something or someone in Chapter 3 – I don’t go back. I post a note by my keyboard and keep going. If I have a question about a word or a type of cloth or what food there is at a feast or anything else not immediately germane to the plot, I don’t stop to look it up; I put ^ beside it and keep going, getting all the action down and the characters developed before worrying about the rest. The second draft is when I do all that looking up and filling in and correcting of the plot, so all the pieces fit together, beginning to end. In the third draft I polish, polish, polish. Then I accept it’s never going to live up to my absolute vision and I let it go.

Liz: Who reads your manuscripts besides your agent and your editor?

Margaret: Since I’ve been writing on my own, I’ve never had anyone read my manuscript other than my agent and editor. In the first draft, things are too messy. By the third draft, I don’t want to be distracted by other people’s ideas of “how it should be”.

Liz: Do you change any of the actual history?

Margaret: I never, never, never change the actual history. Books where the author changes history to suit her/his convenience (“I have tightened eleven years of King Alfred’s reign into two for the sake of the story.”) become historical fantasy novels, in my opinion, and there ought to be a particular category of that name to accommodate them. Once, when I was complaining that there was no way I could logically have Frevisse on board ship with the duke of Suffolk when he was murdered, someone said blithely to me, “Oh, we’re writing fiction! We can do whatever we want!” Which for her included having a king of France allow his sister to travel abroad attended by a handful of men and no women. Fantasy.

That said, there are places where the chronicles give contradictory reports of what happened. In that case, I have to use my best judgment, sorting events out into some coherent order. For instance, the chronicle reports of what happened in London during Cade’s invasion in 1450 have generally the same events but not in the same order. When I dealt with those events, I had to decide which order made better sense. An historian can slide over the contradictions; a novelist has to deal with them. In The Traitor’s Tale, I had to forego dealing with one historical murder because – even though I had the whole scene laid out in my mind -- there was just no sensible way my characters could have been present. The best I could do was have them hear about it. The waste of a perfectly good murder -- so aggravating.

Liz: Have you ever been caught out in an egregious error or anachronism?

Margaret: I’ve more often had “errors” pointed out that weren’t errors, and so far (fingers crossed for luck and knocking on wood) no one has told me of any major flaws. The one that still grates on me – and I found it myself long, long after the fact – is that in The Maiden’s Tale I repeatedly referred to a physician as a doctor, which is not what he would have been called. This will be changed in the e-book!

Vocabulary is one thing I particularly enjoy with all my books. As Frevisse’s series went along, I tried increasingly to keep all vocabulary to words in use pre-1500. This is an excellent way to discipline myself into staying within medieval parameters of thought. Of course that means I occasionally come up against things like “Agh! The plot depends on an allergy but the word didn’t exist until after 1900! They had to have had allergies! What can I call it!” Or having a title character in The Clerk’s Tale who is a nervous man, but while the word “nervous” existed in the 1400s, it didn’t mean at all the same thing is does to day, so “Agh, how do I describe him!”

Liz: Short stories about your characters are available for Kindle and other e-readers. Were these published elsewhere first, or did you write them specifically as e-stories?

Margaret: All but one of the short stories so far published appeared previously in anthologies. “Strange Gods, Strange Men” appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. No, as I typed that, I realized that there’s an anomaly among the stories. With the e-version of “The Stoneworker’s Tale” there’s included a much earlier version of the story – “The Sculptor’s Tale” – written as an 800-word “minute mystery” for a German-language Swiss magazine. I never saw the German version, and the English version has never appeared until now.

Liz: How else are you adapting to the current upheaval in publishing? Has it affected your career? Do you expect it to?

Margaret: There is also soon going to be a Frevisse novella for e-sale – “Winter Heart” – written especially for the e-market. This is part of my adaptation to the changing world of publishing, and I’m encouraged to make the change by the fact that I get a larger percentage of the profit from e-sales than my normal publisher gives me. Beyond that, publishers seem to be presently confused, trying to decide which way to jump, and the more I’m able to do for myself, the better, while waiting for them to make up their minds and settle down.

Liz: Tell us about your latest release and what you’re doing to promote it. How much promotion do you do?

Margaret: My latest book is the sixth in Joliffe’s series. A Play of Piety. I haven’t done much in the way of promotion, I’m afraid. My life has been specializing in upheaval the past couple of years, and I’ve given my greatest energy over to writing rather than appearances and so forth.

Liz: To what extent is your publisher involved vs having to generate your own publicity?

Margaret: My publisher has never shown more than brief sparks of interest in promoting me – I was well into the Dame Frevisse series before I found out I even had a publicist there. They send out review copies, did have bookmarks printed up for me once, and paid my hotel bill and the cost of the dinner when I had an Edgar Award nomination. Beyond that, I’ve been on my own, and I’m afraid my greater interest is in the writing, not in being in public. To the good, one of my sons has lately taken me in hand. Not only did he design my latest bookmark and all the covers for my e-stories (as well as readying them and getting them up for sale), he’s pushing me to come out of the 1400s and engage with the present century. (“Look, Mom – the Internet – fantastic, isn’t it? Mom! Come back here! It’s not 1452 anymore! Face it!”)

Liz: What are you working on now? What does the future hold for Dame Frevisse, Joliffe, and Margaret Frazer?

Margaret: I finished A Play of Heresy, Joliffe’s next novel, a few months ago. While I was finishing it, I was sideswiped by an idea that came out of nowhere, knocked me flat, rolled over me, picked me up, gave me a shake, and said, “Write me!” It’s about neither Frevisse nor Joliffe, and is not a mystery. Instead, it’s a straightforward historical novel, presently called Never Remember Eden and set in the 1480s. I don’t know what this means for my two series. I feel I brought Frevisse’s to a satisfactory end in The Apostate’s Tale, but greatly enjoyed spending time with her while writing “Winter Heart”, so suspect there will be more short pieces with her. Joliffe, on the other hand, is just hitting his stride, I think. Plying his two careers as player and spy should serve to get him deeper into political troubles than Frevisse was ever forced to go. I have plans for him but am awaiting the whim of the publisher.

Liz: Are you ever tempted to write a contemporary novel?

Margaret: I’ve never had any urge at all to write a contemporary novel. There are still so many aspects of medieval life to explore in depth and detail (and so many misconceptions to try to counter) that I don’t see ever wanting to leave. Whatever I get up to next, it will be something to do with medieval England. But just to show that I’m not a complete recluse, I’ll be at the Historical Novel Society Conference in San Diego, CA, in June, 2011, moderating the panel “Keeping a Series Fresh”.

Having found her way into late medieval England while quite young, Margaret has stayed there pretty much all the time since then. Too busy researching and holding down jobs just long enough to earn enough money to travel, she never managed to get a college degree, and over the years her forays into various jobs were many and usually brief until she became a full-time writer about 18 years ago. (In other words, she finally found a job she didn't want to quit!) Her novels have twice been nominated for Edgar Awards, and her short story "Neither Pity, Love, Nor Fear" won an Herodotus Award.

Shadows of Past Lives

2011-05-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

It’s a feeling most of us have experienced: I know this place. But how is that possible, when I’ve never been here before?

Some people call it deja vu, a trick of the senses. Others accept it as an echo of a past life.

The belief in reincarnation is common all over the world. It’s the foundation of Hinduism, Jainism, and other religions that have hundreds of millions of followers. But for many people it has nothing to do with religion. They’ve come to believe in reincarnation because they sense the shadows of past lives walking beside them through the present.

The CBS morning show did a report last Sunday on a massive gathering in New York City of people eager to discover more about their past lives. The report quoted a startling statistic: one in 10 Americans believes in reincarnation.

Steven Pressfield, author of a number of novels about warfare both ancient and modern, has a recurring character in his books who has been a warrior in many lives. When I interviewed Pressfield recently about his new book, The Profession, for the June issue of the International Thriller Writers newsletter, he confirmed that he believes in reincarnation and thinks he lived in ancient Greece in a previous life. I doubt Pressfield would strike anyone as a crackpot.

Personally, I find one life more than enough to deal with and don’t want to root around in the past for proof of others. However... I have to admit that when I visited Scotland for the first time, I had that I've been here before feeling. I have Scottish blood (born a Grant), so I could have been experiencing a kind of genetic memory passed down through generations. This type of memory exists in other species. We usually call it instinct and shrug it off. But think about this: the monarch butterflies returning to the US this spring aren’t the same insects that migrated south in autumn. They’re several generations removed from the monarchs we saw in our gardens last year. Yet they know exactly where their forebears came from, and they know how to get here. Why shouldn’t humans – much more complex organisms than insects – also pass on memories through the generations? Isn’t that a logical explanation for the common deja vu experience?

But if you feel a powerful affinity for, say, ancient Rome, if you’re sure you’ve been there, yet to your certain knowledge you don’t have a drop of Italian blood, you can’t attribute that sense of familiarity to genetically imprinted memories. Could you be “remembering” a past life?

It’s an intriguing idea, one that a lot of sane people have fully embraced. And it raises questions about the very definition of life and the nature of the human soul and psyche.

How do you feel about it? Do you think it’s crazy, or does reincarnation make perfect sense? Have you ever suspected that you have lived before?

Object-ivity

2011-05-17T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind

This is the first time in six days that I have touched the keyboard. My significant other and I spent the past week organizing a garage sale for a woman in her late seventies.

Last Wednesday was a disaster. Whatever we needed to do always demanded that something be done first, and that something inevitably couldn’t be done without the input of a third party, who wasn’t available. The log jam finally broke about four in the afternoon, by which time it was too late in the day and we were too stressed to do anything. A whole day down the tube.

Thursday we started at 9:00 AM bringing stuff from different parts of the house to the staging area in the living room. We were dealing with your typical 1950s three-bedroom, bath-and-a-half, full basement, large yard, and storage shed situation. T and T had lived in that house for over fifty years. T(him) died several years ago, and T(her) has decided to move to smaller quarters.

They were a fascinating couple who had a lot of interests. They raised a child, made art, wrote music, enjoyed camping and traveling, loved the out-of-doors, and gardened. Each activity required stuff: tools, materials, references, places to store everything. Both of them were older teen-agers during World War II, one with a father away in the military until 1949 and the other growing up in occupied Europe. So both of them had an appreciation for having spares and for hanging on to things “that might come in useful one day.”

Not that their house was a mess. It was an extremely clean and tidy house, full of fifties-style furniture, original art work, and a lot of storage space. Emphasis on the full of furniture and lots of storage space. We started Thursday morning at the furtherest back corner of the basement and did a walk-through of the entire basement, followed by a walk-through of the entire ground floor. Everywhere we went there were drawers and cupboards, and closets to open. Every one of them was packed. By Thursday at 6:00 PM we hadn’t brought more than a fraction to the items to the staging area.

We started again at 9:00 AM Friday. The whole day was non-stop sorting, matching, cleaning, pricing, and stacking. We oohed, ahed, squealed with delight over a particularly juicy find, occasionally teared up over a sentimental one, and eventually evolved three piles: garbage it, sell it, and what the heck is that? Every couple of hours, the significant other and I made the grand rounds of basement and house and every time we discovered another darn cupboard tucked away in some obscure corner.

At 1:30 Saturday morning I fell asleep on a black leather couch, surrounded by complete chaos. I started working again three hours later, significant other showed up at 6:00 AM—there wasn’t room for us both to sleep there—and with the help of a whole whack of gracious and generous friends that T and T had known for years, the sale started on time at 8:00 AM Saturday morning.

It was utter chaos until about four in the afternoon, when a Stanley Cup Playoff game started and the crowd thinned considerably. It appears that hockey beats garage sales.

Item we salvaged and sold the most of: fabric. T is an avid seamstress and there were multiple cupboards packed with fabric, all of it clean and pristine. We spent hours unfolding, measuring, labeling, and rolling fabric, then attaching labels with the fiber content, length, width, and price. But it was worth it. The fabric went away almost as fast as we restocked the table.

Item we discarded the most of: plastic bags. We pulled them out of hiding places not by the bag full but by the pound.

Most unexpected item we found: a piece of silver-and-turquoise jewelry that T(him) hand-cast decades ago.

Strangest objects we found? It was a toss-up.

Initially it was two tubes of silicone caulking so old that they had hardened completely. When the cardboard tube was peeled away, the silicone was still the same shape. I looked at my sig other and pondered, “Can you carve that and use it for stamping?” As it turns out, you can. I’m looking forward to experimenting with the rest of it.

The silicon came in second for strangeness to a bottle of high-proof Vodka with amber necklace beads filling the bottom third of the bottle. T’s brother considers drinking amber a spring tonic and a cure for what ails you. I’m wondering if I can salvage amber that has been immersed in alcohol for a couple of decades. If I can, I’m going to make something out of those beads.

After the garage sale ended, it took us fourteen hours on Sunday and nine hours Monday to strip bare every one of those drawers, cupboards and closets. The haul-away-your-stuff truck pulled out of the alley at 1:30 Monday afternoon, and there is a huge pile of garbage bags and recycling bags to be gradually put out for pick-up over the next few weeks. We still have to make some trips to vintage stores, record stores, the fire hall chemical collection point, and the pharmacy for disposing old, no make that vintage, medicines. Vintage become our by-word this weekend.

Through all of this what stood out the most were the friends who came to help. There were a ton of them, all the way from someone who knew neither T, but lent a sunshade anyway, to two of her long-term friends, both about her age, who worked rings around us younger folks all day Saturday. I hope I'm that fortunate in my friends when I get to be T's age.

All in all, we had a great time. Now we’re going to take the next two days off to have a great rest.

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Quote for the week
If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
~Edgar Watson Howe, (1853 - 1937), American novelist and editor

Playing the Movie Game

2011-05-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley

My family loves movies, so my husband made up this game. Everyone throws a few papers into a hat, on which are written the names of living actors or actresses, the possible title for a future movie, or a word that a must appear in a title.

Then someone picks a couple things out of the hat and has to think up a movie premise based on what is written on their two pieces of paper.

My son Ian picked these two: Hal Linden and Robert De Niro.

His movie idea was this. Hal Linden and Robert De Niro play older secret agents who must prove that they still have what it takes to bring down the bad guys and can keep the nation safe. Title: SOCIAL SECURITY. :) (My younger son said that they both have to wear turtlenecks and hats. Not sure why).

Graham picked "House of the--" and "Jack Black." He decided that he would create an action comedy called HOUSE OF THE DEMON SPAWN, and Jack Black is a neighborhood man who is initially frightened of the haunted house, but hears a heavy metal song that inspires him to arm himself with axes that will allow him to take down the demons (my children are violent).

My husband picked Willy Nelson and Burt Reynolds. His premise: Willy Nelson is an old-time country music star who has retired. Burt Reynolds is his biggest fan from years back; he goes on a quest to find him and determines that Willy's character has hit rock bottom, so he makes it his goal to rejuvenate Willy's career. His title: NEW TRICKS (as in, you can't teach an old dog . . .). This one sounds like a movie cliche, but that's part of the goal of this game.

Ian picked "Tobey McGuire" and "Snow Serpents." His premise: Tobey McGuire is a scientist who has heard about seismic events in The Alps. Sure enough, giant serpents are wreaking havoc on the Alps skiing communities. Tobey has no way to fight them; he attacks one with a pen he has in his pocket, and the serpent bites off his hand. His hand is eventually replaced with a flame-thrower, which he uses to battle the serpents in their icy realm. Mila Kunis plays his snow-suited love interest. The title, of course, is SNOW SERPENTS.

It's a fun creative exercise, and of course it could apply to all of our favorite mystery staples. Here are some starters:

Philip Marlowe
Peter Wimsey
A clue
The necklace
Miss Marple
The road to
The girl in the
Redemption
Tom Selleck
Kathleen Turner
Michelle Williams
yellow dress
dirt-covered locket
Daniel Craig
Penelope Cruz

Add some of your own and brainstorm your way to the next big mystery!!

What do you think?

Ed Lynskey's Small Press Adventure

2011-05-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend's guest blog is from Ed Lynskey, the author of the P.I. Frank Johnson mystery series (including The Zinc Zoo out in 2011) as well as a small town cozy mystery, Quiet Anchorage, also out now.

My Writing Career Kicked Off in the Small Presses

by Ed Lynskey

First, I’d like to extend a warm thank you to the good folks at Poe’s Deadly Daughters for the opportunity to hang out with them today. Sandra asked me about Wildside Press, the publisher of Lake Charles, my new Appalachian noir. So, I thought I’d discuss how I got my start in writing through the small presses and then speak of Wildside Press.

While I attended a community college in my early 20s, I was introduced to the small press and little magazines community, and it opened up a new world to me. Scores if not hundreds, of little magazines edited by literary-minded folks published their own journals. They were often crudely produced although the so-called “mimeos” (from their copies reproduced on a mimeograph machine) came out before my time.

Long story short, I published poetry, reviews, and the occasional short story in the small press magazines over the years. I’ll also lump in the literary magazines produced by many of the graduate school writing programs (the MFA degrees). Some of the leading editors, such as David Wagoner and Stephen Berg, liked my work enough to publish it. After a time, I landed big credits at The Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, and Washington Post. That was heady stuff.

It was never about the money. The small presses and little magazines operated on shoestring budgets and done as labors of love. Many of them folded before my work even appeared in the slated issue. The only pay was often in one or two contributors’ copies. Their distribution was counted in the dozens or hundreds, if even that. But it was during this long period that I honed my craft, as they say. Or at least I had lots of practice at writing, and I like to think it enabled me to get my writing chops.

The big drawback with the small presses, and literary writing in general, is the limited audience, where few people have the access to read your work. Moreover, literary writing has a niche reader appeal. For instance, my mother and two sisters are voracious readers, but they never enjoyed my “literary writing.” That troubled me. After all, we write in order to be read by as many as possible and, hopefully, to thrill or intrigue them.

So, you have to write the stories the majority of readers like for their entertainment. The late Tony Hillerman told the anecdote about how early in his writing career, his goal was to reach a wide readership, so the popular mystery, not literary (he was a journalism college professor), was the fiction genre he chose to work in. Lucky for us fans he did. Anyway, that notion got me to thinking on how I might increase my audience.

I’d been a devotee of mysteries since an early age. Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, and Hugh Pentecost were the first trio of crime fiction authors I was turned on to as a kid. I checked out their books from our small town library and devoured them over the summer breaks. Some ten years ago that old affection launched me into creating my own mystery novels. The PI Frank Johnson series marked my first titles to see print.

Wildside Press brought out Frank in The Blue Cheer in 2007. It sold reasonably well, distributed through Diamond Comics, before the economy took a nosedive (oops, I almost wrote “swan dive” there). But things in 2011 are looking up again, and Lake Charles will hit the streets. It’s a coming-of-age yarn set in the 1970s and based in the Great Smoky Mountains. I’m relieved and appreciative the initial reviews have been favorable ones.

This year I also went soft-boiled by writing a small town cozy mystery titled Quiet Anchorage, featuring two elderly but spry sisters who’re amateur sleuths; this book is currently on sale, and its reviews have also been positive ones.

Finally, Frank will also be back this year in all his raging glory in The Zinc Zoo. Despite his move to the Virginia suburbs outside of Washington, D.C., he still manages to get into more trouble than he can handle.

Perhaps best of all, my mom and sisters are now reading and liking my books. A few other readers have read them, as well, and attracting a real audience for once feels gratifying to me.

Read the first chapter of Lake Charles to learn more about the book and author here:

Lake Charles is up for pre-order sales at Amazon Books.

A Tale of Woe

2011-05-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

A house in the Hamptons—how glamorous it sounds! Our flimsy little house (800 square feet—yes, that’s two zeroes—in its half acre of crabgrass, sand, and rocks (“For this, my grandfather left Ireland?” my husband said when we first tried to dig a garden twenty years ago) is about as far as you can get from a celebrity mansion on the dunes. That’s probably why it was targeted and broken into over the winter, as we found when the plumbers came to turn the water on in April. No massive doors, no live-in caretaker, no electronic security system. We think the thieves may not have been too bright, because it seems they didn’t realize that a house this cheap would contain nothing worth stealing. They broke a window, jimmied two locks, and they were in. They opened a few drawers, left a once-expensive camera and its lenses lying on the bed—not digital, so why bother?—and got away with my jewelry (one pair of earrings I didn’t like much and a bunch of costume jewelry that I bought at yard sales) and my husband’s work boots, for which he paid $40 at Kmart fifteen years ago.

So we had more visitors at the house that weekend than we’ve had in years: first the cops, then the locksmith and the glass guys (who might or might not charge enough for us to make our deductible on the homeowner’s insurance, which covers vandalism but not theft), and the specialists we needed to fix all the other problems that materialized while the house was closed: the refrigerator guy who confirmed that our fridge (old enough to vote but until now reliable) had died and the cable guy, who restored our service after a tense twenty-four hours of Internet deprivation. We also did more visiting than usual: to one neighbor to leave our milk in their refrigerator and pick it up each morning, to another to leave the key to our new deadbolt locks. Once we could get online, we had to shop for refrigerators, which cost a bundle and, according to the repair guy, break down after three years nowadays. We have to replace a broken hinge on the gate to our deer fence, but after studying the nibbled-down shoots of daylilies in the garden, I concluded that the deer, not the human intruders, are to blame for that bit of vandalism. Did I mention that we closed the house and drained the water to save money and avoid winter damage? Well, the pipes didn’t burst this year—but I’m not at all sure we came out ahead.

On the glass half full side, the vandalism didn’t get ugly, as could easily have happened. We didn’t lose anything of value (the TV also being old and cheap and the computer having spent the winter in the city). The garden is filled with daffodils, the forsythia are in bloom, and I’ll be only a ten-minute drive from the beach all summer.

Back on the Review Rollercoaster

2011-05-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

Everyone who leaves a comment today will be entered in a drawing for an ARC of Under the Dog Star.

Now begins the review roller coaster. The giddiness that comes with a glowing review, the despair that follows even the slightest criticism of my newborn literary baby.

Under the Dog Star won’t be published until September, the only version available now is the uncorrected proof (ARC, or advance reader copy), and it doesn’t even have a final cover yet (although a rough mockup that has since been discarded is popping up everywhere). But the first review has appeared. Of course I’m obsessing about it. It’s on an internet review site called BookIdeas.com, not in one of the powerful industry magazines (Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, Kirkus), but it’s all I have at the moment, so I’m obsessing about it.

Not that it’s negative. Although the reviewer takes a slightly jokey tone in spots, it’s a favorable review without a single outright nasty comment. Some samples:

“The author manages rather deftly to address some basic ideological issues in her narrative... the conflict between the rule of law represented by our deputy sheriff and the mob rule of a renegade posse is vividly presented.”

“The... storytelling technique is similarly solid, particularly the author’s attention to detail in presenting dialogue.”

“Rachel is portrayed as a person of pluck, stubbornness, and passionate dedication to her cause.”

“Fans of murder mysteries will get their fill of mayhem and local color and characters in this well-written tale.”

So what bothers me? The reviewer doesn’t think Tom Bridger, the deputy sheriff who is co-protagonist with Rachel Goddard, is charismatic. Tom, the reviewer notes, lacks the “charming insouciance of Peter Falk in Columbo or the dry humor of Jerry Orbach in Law and Order.”

Waaaah!

I love Tom. Rachel loves Tom. I think Tom is strong, honest, courageous. He has no patience with idiots and heartless bastards. He’s a tough cop in a place where just about everybody owns a gun and resents law enforcement. Hit him and he’ll hit you back, with interest. He has been known to land a hard kick to the ribs of a drug dealer, and in Under the Dog Star he uses a particularly painful method of getting vital information from a bad guy. But he absolutely does have a sense of humor and a soft side. He loves and protects Rachel, his little nephew Simon, and Billy Bob, the old bulldog he inherited from his father. In this book, though, he’s dealing with some of the worst scum he’s ever encountered, so the lighthearted moments don’t come often. Does he really have to be insouciant like Columbo or a wisecracking cynic like Orbach’s L&O character Lenny?

Okay, this should be enough to make you understand what I go through – what most writers go through – when reading reviews. Forget all the good stuff, all the praise. What I always home in on, and remember forever, are the negatives, however small they might be.

I wasn’t expecting the first review so early. I thought I'd at least have a final cover before the reviews started. But now I’m over that initial hurdle and braced for more.

Bring ’em on.

I’m ready.

I hope.

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Leave a comment to enter the drawing for an ARC of Under the Dog Star. Make sure I can reach you by e-mail if you win -- either include your e-mail address in your comment or send it separately to sandraparshall@yahoo.com. I ask only this of the winners: If you like it, please tell a lot of people, but if you don't like it, please tell no one.

Background List

2011-05-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind

As much as I love DCI Tom Barnaby, both as played in Midsomer Murders by John Nettles, and as written by Caroline Graham, I love Graham’s stand-alone Murder at Madingley Grange even more.

A brother and sister who are in need of spare cash decide to take advantage of their aunt’s departure for the continent to raise capital. Simon Hannaford thinks a murder weekend will be a breeze. They have Aunt Maude’s imposing pile, Madingley Grange, complete with peacocks, as a backdrop. They have his sister, Laurie’s, cordon-bleu cooking skills to feed the guests. They have a trunk full of 1930s regalia for the guests to wear. What they don’t have is a group of hired actors and a plot for a murder weekend.

No problem, Simon says. He’ll whip up a little murder outline and the guests can do improv theater for the weekend.

The punters arrive—not as many as Simon had hoped for—but enough to anticipate a profit. Each comes for his/her own reason, not all of them having to do with murder. Derek, an obsessed Sherlockian arrives wearing a cape and deerstalker. The weekend is a bitter disappointment to him. He’d envisioned cozy evenings by the fire with fellow aficionados discussing blood spatter patterns, obscure South American poisons, and the Reichenbach Falls. Instead he’s awash in people who not only don’t read mysteries, but some may not have read a book at all.

One evening Derek holds forth with a convoluted discussion about Jane Marple and Maude Silver, finishing with, “And it must be noted that they constantly knit baby clothes. Now what do you think of that?” Half of the punters think Derek is a nutter, and none of them have the slightest idea what the deuce he’s talking about.

To tell the truth, I don’t either, and Graham never explains it, which makes it all the more fun.

At least Derek recognized the importance of the background list. A background list is a way to use tiny details to enhance a story.

Background lists work like this. All books have a theme, a global umbrella under which the author works. It might be is revenge any less deadly when served cold, or the consequences of not being able to let go, or—one of the romance genre standards—a second chance at love, as in the British TV series As Time Goes By. Two young lovers are separated by circumstances during the Korean War. Forty years later they meet again. Is it too late for love?

Second chance is great for a background list because you have three words to work with: second, chance, and love. Draw three columns and head each column with one of those words. Then think of as many related words as you can. Usually 10 or less per column is enough. For example: Second—two, twins, pair, second-place, second-class, runner-up, second-best. Chance—luck, gambling, chance meeting, no chance in hell, odds, dice, chancer, risk, opportunity. You can do love for yourself.

What you use the background list for is fine tuning a manuscript, the place where you can take advantage of eensy-bitsy-tiny details to reinforce your theme. A character has to stand in line at a bank. Put him second in line. She has to do an activity that the man doesn’t approve of. She goes out gambling with the girls. He refers to immigrants as, “Being treated like second-class citizens.” The woman’s daughter is upset because she was a runner-up in the school’s election.

What you’re doing is bombarding the reader with subtle references to second-chance-love. It’s called subliminal messaging, and it’s so powerful that it’s illegal in Australian and British broadcasting. Nothing has been said about books.

The way I see it is, he’s going to have to stand in that line anyway. Why not make that count for something? She has to have a conflict with the daughter. Why not make that count for something, too?

John Nettles, incidentally, is leaving Midsomer Murders after 13 seasons. You can read about the change here. I’ll miss him, and there’s nothing hidden or chancy about that.

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Quote for the week:
I wanted to die in noble fashion in the service of my country and then be buried with full military honours in Westminster Abbey.
~John Nettles, actor

In fact, the producers assure us that Tom and Joyce will simply retire.

Memories of the Bookstore

2011-05-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

After I had taught for five years at my first job, the school RIFFed ten teachers due to budget problems; since I was twenty-seven and at the bottom of the totem pole, I was among those who had to go.

Finding another teaching job proved to be difficult, so I started scanning the want ads. I was thrilled to see that a giant Barnes and Noble was opening near me, and they were hiring! I called and arranged an interview. When I met with the two managers who were hiring, I said that I preferred a managerial position, preferably in fiction. They asked what my credentials were. I told them that I had a B.A. in English and was an avid reader. I produced a typed sheet of every mystery novel I'd ever read, who wrote it, and a brief description of why I loved it. I got the job--manager of fiction.

It was a nice job. I soon learned how to use the register, how to stock shelves in the stockroom, and how to work the floor. Soon enough the managers of other sections knew to send people with questions to me, especially if they were questions about mysteries. "You'd have to ask Julia," they would say, "because mystery is not my area."

I loved helping people find books--either because they were hunting for something but couldn't remember the name of the series, or because they wanted to discover something new--maybe, for example, they just knew they wanted "something funny." So I'd introduce them to Joan Hess or Sparkle Hayter or Dorothy Cannell, and they'd come back and say they loved the book and would proceed to buy the whole series.

There were down sides to the job, of course: we were open until 11 at night, and the truly creepy people seemed to wander in at about 10:45. One man, in a chilling moment that is far creepier in retrospect, asked me if we had books about live burial. I was so naive that I didn't know what he meant. I said I didn't think so. Then he asked for books about women's make-up. Twenty years later I'm still haunted by the idea that he was somehow planning to bury a person alive. My husband tells me I've read too many suspense novels.

The other problem with the job was that I was exposed daily to beautiful, glossy books, with new titles coming in every week, and all I wanted to do was find a quiet corner and read one. That, of course, was against the rules. Also, with my 15% discount, I spent far too much on book every week. Over the seven months that I was there, my husband and I spent well over a thousand dollars "saving" money on books. :)

So finally I realized that I'd have to go; I found a good job at a boys' school in Chicago and felt that I was ready to get back into the classroom, a place where I got paid to talk at length about books. There really is no better environment than that for a bibliophile.

My beautiful Barnes and Noble is now empty, and the huge parking lot that was once jammed full of cars is an empty expanse of concrete. It's a lonely place that seems to invite some tumbling tumbleweed. When I pass it I see it as a metaphor for the book industry, and the way we're moving out of giant buildings and into our own laptops, either out of laziness or a sort of widespread agoraphobia that suggests we no longer prefer to meet people in person. I can't complain, though, because I'm sitting here on my laptop and "chatting" with people online, and later I'll probably make a purchase online because it will be so much more efficient than running a physical errand.

So the trend is insular--we stay in our houses--except that the pendulum may well swing back again. We'll get tired of virtual everything and demand a Renaissance of palpable things and human interaction.

Only time will tell.

It Only Took 13 Years

2011-05-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Laura Alden
Agatha Award nominee, Best First Novel

After almost 13 years of writing, I’m now a published writer. An author. Hard to believe, but true. Which means that, to some people, after 13 years of spending much of my free time writing and reading about writing, and studying other writers and kinda-but-not-really telling friends and family that I was working on manuscripts, I’m suddenly an authority on All Things Writing.

Hah. As if. Some days I think I know less than I did ten years ago.

People ask me about e-books and sales figures and what the market is for memoirs and what’s the best way to sell a non-fiction manuscript? They ask me about selling poetry and children’s books and how do I think a novel about a young boy who learns he was adopted by a family of vampires would sell?

Um, no clue. Honest. I really have no idea.

“But you’ve written a book,” they say, looking at me sideways, letting their words rise at the end of the sentence, adding just a dash of doubt.

Sorry, I tell them. Wish I could help you, but I really don’t know. I just don’t know that much about writing.

And I don’t. How can I? See, for me the hardest thing about writing is knowing if what I’ve scribbled down is any good. If I don’t even know that, how can I pretend to know anything about writing?

When I’m writing, I have no idea if any of it is worth keeping. Even when I’m rereading, I really don’t know if it’s crap or if it’s decent. The really weird thing is that sometimes, on rereads, any given scene will scan like a champ. (Yes! I can write! I’m not a complete imposter!) A week later I’ll read the same scene and want to delete the whole thing for being such an insipid and pointless piece
of drivel.

My only comfort is that this feeling of I-have-no-clue-what-I’m-doing seems to run rampant in authors, even very successful ones. (Yes! I am not alone!) Of course, this comfort is completely overshadowed by the hollow realization that very successful authors can feel that they have no clue what they’re doing.

Uh-oh. If they feel that way, what chance do I have of getting a clue?

Well, none, actually.

But you know what? I don’t care. I love to write. I love to create stories and people and places. If I can keep on doing that, I can live with muddling my way through this business of writing, putzing along, doing my best. And with any luck, every once in awhile, I’ll be able to make someone smile, way deep down inside. If I can do that…well, then everything turned out just fine.

************************************
Laura Alden grew up in Michigan and graduated from Eastern Michigan University in the 80’s with a (mostly unused) Bachelor of Science degree in geology. Currently, Laura and her husband share their house with two very strange cats. When Laura isn’t writing her next book, she’s working at her day job, reading, singing in her church choir, or doing some variety of skiing. Laura’s debut novel, Murder at the PTA was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Her second book, Foul Play at the PTA, will be released in July.

It Ain't Me, Babe

2011-05-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

by guest blogger Julia Williams, bookseller extraordinaire and offspring of Sheila Connolly, for reasons which will shortly become clear.

Hello, internet world! I’m guesting today for my mother, Sheila Connolly, as a broken ankle and general post-conference brain-friedness prevent her from coherent typing. The doctors told her to stay away from keyboards for at least a week, but you know how she is. She continues to claw at the laptop as I write this, attempting to wrest back her sacred blogging duty, but I’ll have none of it. I think she’ll pull through. In the meantime, you’ve got me. You can call me Julie.

In case you hadn’t heard, though I’m guessing you had, this past week saw mystery writers and readers and lovers of all stripes convene for Malice Domestic 23 in sunny Bethesda, Maryland. Actually, I’ve just asked my mother if it was in fact sunny there, and she reports that she didn’t see any windows, just the inside of the conference hotel. So it might have been sunny. I’ll speak with the fact-checking department and get back to you. With the grownups gone off to points south, it was my job to hold down the fort here in Massachusetts, and while I am generally a nervous person where creaky Victorian houses are concerned, I hardly found time to be frightened, between working sixty hours a week and my very important commitments to Monday night pub trivia and constant attention to Bravo reality programming. Besides, any time I wondered what the folks might be up to, I had only to log onto Facebook, where Malice photos soon began popping up in my feed like crocuses on the neighbors’ lawns. There was my mother, chatting variously with Liz Zelvin and Krista Davis (both of whom I had the pleasure of meeting last year at the Virginia Festival of the book — small world!), and snaps here and there of another Facebook friend, the talented and eternally chic Hank Phillippi Ryan. It looks like everyone had a good time! There is something marvelous about writers’ conferences, isn’t there? You never can tell what’s going to happen.

This puts me in mind of the first conference I can recall attending. It wasn’t strictly a conference for writers, but it was an academic event at which thinkers presented their work and looked to foster dialogue within their field of study. I was in my first year of college, and drove down from school with a few other students to meet up with a professor whose history class we were all taking at the time. One morning, our group arrived late from the local bed and breakfast and sat in the back of a large conference room for the first talk of the day. After a long presentation on atrocities in Europe during the past century, we all slumped in our chairs and looked at our shoes as the audience began to file out. A tiny woman in her eighties shuffled up the aisle toward the exit, but stopped when she saw us. She patted my friend on the shoulder, said “Cheer up, dear,” and walked on. We all chuckled, felt the mood lighten a bit, and left for a late breakfast. We only discovered the next day, at the conference’s keynote reading, that the woman had been the great writer and poet Grace Paley.

Which describes perfectly what I love about conferences. You may hardly know what’s happening outside the hotel walls, but the excitement of the conversations and connections going on inside make you forget to care. Be it in Atlanta or Austin or Boston or Bruges, the simple aggregation of creative types in one place with one focus makes for an interesting time. Did you ever put some beetles in a jar when you were a kid, and then shake up the jar to make them fight? No, I didn’t either. That would be cruel. Don’t do that. But you get my point. Conferences are a great time once a year (or twice, or many times, depending on how you feel about travel) to recharge your creative batteries, to get excited about your craft, and, heck why not, schmooze with the writing community over tiny quiches and wine. What did you all get up to at Malice this year, if you went? Do tell.

Thanks for reading, cats and kittens. You’ll get Sheila back next week, I promise. Over and out!

Help! I'm shrinking!

2011-05-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

I’ve been hearing the expressions “little old man” and “little old lady” all my life, but it never occurred to me that people actually shrink as they age until I read Isabel Allende’s 1985 novel, The House of Spirits. There’s a climactic passage near the end of the book that I found utterly memorable. Alba, a young woman who has been imprisoned and tortured, is freed and has a tearful reunion with her grandfather.

“Grandfather!”
“Alba!”
“Grandfather!”
“Alba!”

Who knows why this simple exchange was so unforgettable for me? But it was, and I was equally struck by Alba’s realization that her grandfather—a towering figure her whole life, a man strong and powerful enough to sweep a peasant girl up on his horse and rape her (the former at a gallop, the latter presumably sans horse)—has turned into a little old man.

I was only in my early forties at the time, so I didn’t take it personally. I did start to notice the fact that my parents (in their forties when I was born) were definitely shorter than they’d been when I was younger. Some time in my adolescence, I stopped growing at the comfortably medium height of 5’5’’. My dad was a little taller than me, my mother a little shorter. By the time they reached their nineties, I topped them by a head. (See photo of my son with my mother, who was 95 at the time.)

My own shrinkage began some time in my fifties. I used to order custom-hemmed pants from a particular catalog, and I gradually became aware that my inseam (the actual length of the leg from groin to ankle) had changed from 29 inches to 28. If I didn’t order them shorter, the pants legs would flop over the tops of my shoes.

I kept putting 5’5” on forms and documents, but I knew that I was really 5’4” now. I accepted it. I got used to it. A first: I put 5’4” on my application to renew my passport a few weeks ago. So imagine my horror when the doctor measured me during my annual physical a couple of days later and broke the news that I am entering my late sixties at only 5’ 3 ½”. I don’t like it! I want a do-over! And worse, is this going to go on? I’m afraid it is.

There is a way to keep oneself from shrinking. My doctor confirmed it when I asked, but I first learned of it from my best friend from third grade. When we were both eight years old, I was taller than she was. I was still the taller when we were forty. If she resented it, I never knew. It was just the way things were. She was double-jointed (she can sit easily in full lotus position and could probably still wrap her legs around her ears, if she chose to try), and I was taller. But now I’m not. Her secret? Weight training. She does it with a trainer at the gym twice a week, and it works. I’m shrinking. She is not. And I love her, but I cannot deny she gloats.

Am I going to start lifting weights in a belated attempt to stop this discouraging natural process? Probably not. I won’t enumerate the many things I already do to keep myself fit and healthy as I age. I’ve got to leave some time for writing and the rest of my life. I’d better warn my grandchildren that by the time I’m ninety, I’ll be looking up to them. Way up.

Sue Grafton at Malice Domestic

2011-05-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

Accosting a world-famous author in the restroom at a conference is considered the worst kind of behavior. But there was Sue Grafton at the sink, and there I was, and I doubted I’d get another chance. Besides, I didn’t actually accost her – never touched her, in fact. All I did was babble about what a thrill it was to have her at Malice Domestic and to hear her speak in person.

She was most gracious. Something similar probably happens whenever she sets foot in a public place. Each time I saw her or heard her speak over the weekend, I was impressed by her accessibility, her cheerful personality, and her patience with adoring fans. If any author has earned the right to be a prima donna, Sue Grafton has – she was at Malice to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award – but she remains... well, nice.

She’s also very funny. On a panel with other honorees Donna Anderson and Carole Nelson Douglas, she shared some of the gratifying, amusing, and occasionally bewildering letters she receives from readers. (She responds only to real letters sent through regular mail. If she tried to answer all her e-mail, she probably wouldn’t have time to eat and sleep, much less write.) In the bewildering category, one reader accused her of endorsing animal abuse because she wrote about a character who did nasty things to innocent creatures. A lot of readers apparently want to see Kinsey Millhone on TV or in movies. Sue said she would rather roll naked in ground glass than sell the rights to her character. She worked in Hollywood for 15 years before turning to mystery writing, and she doesn’t want Kinsey in the hands of scriptwriters and producers.

A reader once asked whether she is paid for “product placement” in her novels. The answer is no, but she’s received unsolicited gifts from the folks who make Vlasic pickles and Jif peanut butter (ingredients in Kinsey’s favorite sandwich), and the company that makes Saucony athletic shoes. After someone at Saucony saw a photo of Sue wearing that brand, she began receiving a new pair of shoes every few months. After a while she’d accumulated so many that she asked her benefactor to desist. Now she’s sort of regretting that she stopped the flow of free shoes. (She wears size 6, by the way.)

On another panel, Sue told her own aspiring writer story (every writer has one). She worked in Hollywood, hated writing by committee, and was desperate to get back to solo writing. She had seven unpublished novels. An agent had told her she showed no talent for plotting. That assessment made her so mad that she was determined to show the woman just how well she could plot. We probably have a blind-to-talent agent to thank for the Alphabet Mysteries.

What will happen when she reaches the end of the alphabet eight years from now? (And would she like a nickel for every time she’s been asked that question?) She doesn’t know. Every new book scares her and makes her wonder if she can do it again. She doesn’t even know yet what the W will stand for in that book. “I don’t want to outstay my welcome,” she said, and she isn’t sure whether she’ll continue writing.

She promised her readers one thing: she won’t kill off Kinsey in the last book. But exactly where her character will be and what she’ll be doing when the series ends – “That’s up to Kinsey.”

A Writer’s Fantasy Tool Box

2011-05-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind

Last week I had a wonderful time at a non-writing-related conference. Saw old friends and acquired new ideas.

One of the speakers talked about tool boxes. About how we all start our careers with a basic tool kit (the equivalent of having only a hammer, screwdriver, and pliers) and how, over the decades, we both acquire new tools and toss out what no longer works.

That got me thinking about a useful toolbox for writers. Not the mundane one filled with grammar, spelling, writing dos and don’ts, or even marketing tools. What I want is more akin to Dr. McCoy’s medical tricorders or Batman’s utility belt. I want a writers’ tool box filled with impossibly useful tools that fly in the face of the way the world works.

The first thing I want is a Digital Plot Generator with optional Plot Analyzer. Come across a great fact or piece of information? Enter it in the machine. When you’re ready to write, ask the machine to combine mini-ideas at random to form the plot for your next story. Or, if you’ve got a plot, feed it into the machine for analysis. It scans millions of stories stored in its memory and gives a readout of how often individual elements have been used before.

Next, I want a Sexy Spellchecker, something with a silky masculine voice, who says, “Love, you’ve misspelled that word the same wrong way five times in a row. Let me lead you through the correct spelling. I have a reward for you if you learn to spell this word correctly.” I’m sure I’d learn spelling a lot better if there was a lascivious component to it.

Speaking of spelling, how about a Homophone Head’s Up? This would be a grammar checking that can tell when I type in their for there or brakes when I really mean breaks. That would be a mighty useful tool.

So would a Literary Trend Identifier, a tool that could peak into the future and predict what stories will be hot, say, five years from now. That way I could hit the market with a winner every time.

The ultimate fantasy tool would have to be an Automated Manuscript Distribution Coordinator. All the writer has to do is polish the finished manuscript and the tool does the rest. Researches the markets. Picks a likely list of agents and editors. Writes and sends a dynamite query letter. Packages up the manuscripts and mails them out. Keeps track of how many manuscripts are out, whose got them, how long they’ve had them, etc. It would have a little bell that would ring when I get an offer to purchase. Meanwhile, I’ll be writing the next book down the line — with a lot of misspellings, of course. Got to keep that Sexy Spellchecker busy, don’t I?

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Quote for the week
The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of one's own, in one's relation to the tool, the material and the colors.
~Emil Nolde, (1867 – 1956), German painter and printmaker

The Illusion of Summer

2011-05-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley

On a brief spring break on the Lakeshore, I allowed myself to dream of what it would be like to be at the lake in peak season--when there were other people there and the polar winds had changed to balmy summer breezes. I started making up little stories for myself. Version one: I live at a beachfront home in summer. Each morning I wake up and head down to the sandy shore for a long, invigorating walk. It's so enjoyable that I forget it's exercise, and by the end of the summer I lose weight without even trying.

Version two: Each morning I take my notebook down to the beach. While watching the sun gradually move higher in the sky and listening to the gulls call to each other in their quest for food, I am inspired to do some of my best writing. At the end of the summer, three agents fight over my new book.

Yes, something about that scenery made me indulge my dreams. And something about the lure of summer makes me think every year that THIS summer will be different. That I'll find the time to do all those jobs, read all those books, and attend to all those household tasks. I build the illusion of forever around summer, which actually grows shorter every year.

In summers past I, as a teacher, had some time off, but it always seemed to fly right by. This summer I'll be working a second job, so I'm assuming that it will go by even more quickly. And yet I still find myself pushing everything into an imaginary, endless summer. Yes, that's when I plan to read the books, organize the desk, get that garden in order, edge the patio, paint the boys' room, do that entertaining, see those movies. Summer will let me do it all.

But of course I'm placing too much responsibility on the shoulders of fragile, whimsical summer. Before I know it, she will have run off and I'll be facing somber Fall, who will be holding me responsible for all that I haven't done. :)

Still, when I smell that spring breeze and notice new flowers opening with each sunny day, I find myself pinning my hopes on Summer once again. It's foolish, but I guess it's a seasonal reality, illusory though it may be.

What are your summer dreams?

"Oh My Goodness, I'm Laughing Out Loud!"

2011-04-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

E. J. Copperman

I am, unquestionably, the world’s worst texter.

It’s not that I refuse to try new technology; I’m a fan. And I show up on Twitter (@ejcop) and Facebook (E.J. Copperman), and do all the other 21st Century things one is supposed to do. I’m not sitting in my 1970 Dodge Dart with the 8-Track player running and wondering why people don’t realize the true artistry of the Bay City Rollers. Not at all. I text, mostly with my daughter, but I do text.

Still, I refuse to conform in one way—I will not mangle the English language. I won’t write “ur” when I mean “you are.” I won’t fail to capitalize a name just because you have to press another key before the letter (don’t we do that on keyboards?). And no matter what the Oxford English Dictionary things, I will not, in any medium, un-ironically write “LOL” or “OMG.” I won’t.

I use words for a living. Words, to paraphrase the immortal Chico Esquela, have been very, very good to me. I think they hold power; they can amuse, uplift, persuade, convince, provoke or galvanize. Words can be weapons or roses; they can be tools or blunt instruments. They can inspire love or rouse the rabble. Words have recently brought change in Egypt and Tunisia. Words fill the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta and Mein Kampf.

To turn them into truncated versions of themselves merely to save a few keystrokes and work one’s thumbs less vigorously seems to high a price to pay. I won’t do it.

And so, my daughter (and to be fair anyone who texts with me) has a good chuckle at how long and formal my text messages are—she always says I sound like I’m writing a term paper. I always say she sounds like she’s writing in Estonian.

I teach a writing class at the college level. And every time a new term begins, I have to remind my students that what they will be writing for me will not be text messages. That means “your” and “you’re” have to be used correctly. Punctuation and capitalization will count. “It’s” will only have an apostrophe when contracting the words “it is.”

I’m sure they think I’m a dinosaur, a relic of a different age. Someone whose values are being displaced and obliterated by the onslaught of modern technology. Someone whose opinion on such matters is irrelevant and unimportant.

But then I get to grade them at the end of the term. Those who don’t use proper English in a writing course will see their grades suffer because their usual means of expression comes in 140 characters or less.

This is called “learning a lesson.”

I might be a lousy texter, but I am a really serious advocate for words.

E.J. Copperman is the author of AN UNINVITED GHOST, the second in the Haunted Guesthouse Mystery series from Berkley, which was published April 5. This tale of sand, surf, murder, reality TV and ghosts follows NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED, which began the series last year.

Whatever Happened to Women's Fiction?

2011-04-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

When this blog posts, I expect to be at the Malice Domestic convention in Maryland. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s an annual event that brings together several hundred writers and fans to celebrate traditional mysteries. It’s a lot of fun.

If you scan the crowd there, you will quickly see that the majority of attendees are women, both writers and readers. Since women make up a large of percentage of the readers of this genre, that’s not surprising. However, it’s not true of other mystery conferences such as Bouchercon, where you will see a better gender balance in the crowd. Of course, the definition of mystery there is much broader, encompassing thrillers, procedurals, suspense, etc.

The national organization Sisters in Crime, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, in 2010 commissioned a survey evaluating who buys and reads mysteries and why. The analysis showed that 65% of mystery readers are female. Why, then, do male mystery writers make more money and get more reviews? One simple (simplistic?) explanation is that women will read across the spectrum of mystery writers and subgenres, but men read books by women much less frequently than do women (and they’re also less likely to read traditional mysteries).

An article in the Southern Review of Books this month adds to the mix the fact that the publishing world is increasingly dominated by women as editors and publishers, but for all of that, in the New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement, reviews of books (all genres) written by men far, far outweigh those of books written by women, sometimes by as much as three to one.

All right, perhaps I’m ranting. Many of us female writers know this, and have known it all along. I started thinking about it again recently because I’ve been reading Meg Wolitzer’s new book, The Uncoupling, published last month. In the story the women of a small New Jersey town all stop sleeping with the men in their lives—and yes, the Greek play Lysistrata plays a role in the book). It’s not a Mystery (although it may be a mystery)—there’s no crime, no blood, no officers of the law poking around. But it felt familiar, and I realized that was because it reminded me of a crop of books that came out in the 1970s—books by Alison Lurie, Gail Godwin, Fay Weldon, Marilyn French and their peers. These were books about relationships and characters—mainly women. Women as wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends (not necessarily in that order). The books were labeled “women’s fiction.”

Somewhere along the line the term acquired negative connotations, although I’m not sure why. But to come full circle, I think I write the kind of mystery I do—call it traditional or cozy or amateur sleuth—because of these books, many of which are still on my bookshelf. In all my books my protagonists are women who happen to solve crimes. They’re smart, they’re independent, and they understand people, and that’s how they unravel murders. At least, that’s what I’m aiming for. And that’s why it’s such a pleasure to go to Malice Domestic, which gathers together lots of intelligent, interesting women who enjoy that kind of book.

One final note: just this week Harvard history professor and author Jill Lepore wrote an article for the New York Times entitled “Poor Jane’s Almanac.” It’s about one of Benjamin Franklin’s many sisters, one who wrote to him regularly, and the one to which he wrote most often—and their letters have survived. A woman who could read in Jane’s 18th-century world was a rarity. Jane Franklin did not lead an easy or happy life, and yet she never stopped reading or writing. Nor do women now, with or without accolades or reviews or recognition. That’s why I wouldn’t miss attending Malice.

We’re off to play at Malice!

2011-04-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

Today is the day I pack up my car with bookmarks, chapbooks of my Agatha-nominated short story, dress-to-kill duds for the banquet, the obligatory box of books, and a few boring necessities like toothbrush and clean underwear, and head south on the New Jersey Turnpike toward Bethesda, MD, the site of this year’s Malice Domestic, the annual gathering of traditional mystery lovers. For me, Malice has been one big lovefest every time I’ve attended, even the first time, when I knew almost nobody and had great apprehension about whether I’d enjoy it. Today, on the eve of my fourth Malice, I can hardly wait.

Malice is primarily a fan convention, and I suspect one of the reasons it works so well is that the authors who attend are themselves fans and avid readers of traditonal mysteries. So we’re all in it together, voting for our favorites for the Agathas, getting a kick out of sharing a dinner table with Margaret Maron, Nancy Pickard, or Barbara D’Amato—first come, first served, no celebrity tables at the Agathas!—talking a mile a minute about the books we love, and taking home more of them than we promised ourselves we would.

Malice begins on Friday, and the reason I’m driving down today to get there bright and early tomorrow is one of my favorite features of the con: Malice-Go-Round, billed as speed dating for authors and readers. Groups of readers are seated at fifteen or twenty tables, and pairs of authors make the rounds, presenting at each table in turn pitches that have varied, since I’ve been doing it, from a challenging ninety seconds to a leisurely three minutes. In fact, one year I prepared for ninety seconds and then found we’d have twice the time. I started my pitch with: “I’m from New York City, so all I have to do is talk more slowly.” It’s an opportunity for the authors to give out promotional materials for their new work in optimal conditions and for readers to form a connection with the authors that gives everyone an extra charge that lasts till Sunday afternoon. That sense of connection has me grinning all weekend and hugging people at the drop of a hat.

Speaking of hats, there’s no longer a hat contest at the closing tea on Sunday, but anyone who feels like wearing her most outrageous Easter bonnet is more than welcome to do so. I won the last contest for Most Creative Hat in 2008. It was a black confection with a bobblehead Poe (a favor from the previous year’s Edgars) perched on top and a black bat hanging down, as well as a blood red rose and a little tombstone. You can still see pictures of it on my website.

Besides the Agathas banquet, socially eventful meals include the New Authors breakfast, at which everyone with a first book out gets showcased with a brief but excellent interview, the Sisters in Crime breakfast highlighting the national organization’s work for the year, and what has become a traditional lunch gathering of Guppies, the online chapter of Sisters in Crime that started out as the Great UnPublished and currently has five hundred members—two or three dozen of whom attend Malice—and an impressive collective record of publications and awards. Again, I’m looking forward to a lot of squeals and hugging.

If you’re going, see you there! I can’t wait—and I don’t have to, because I’m ready for the road!

E-books are not the problem

2011-04-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

As many of us head off to Malice Domestic, where the traditional printed book is the focus, news from the publishing industry is grimmer than ever. In the first quarter of this year, while e-book sales jumped by 169.4%, sales of print books in all categories fell a total of 25%.

According to the American Association of Publishers, e-books and trade paperbacks were tied in the early part of the year as the leaders in all book sales.

Nielsen BookScan, which covers approximately 75% of retail book sales, reported that in the first quarter mass market paperback sales dropped by 26.6%. (The AAP statistics show an even steeper fall of 36%.) Hardcover fell 7.2%, and trade paperback dropped 6.4%.

Adult fiction lost the most ground among the various categories, falling 18.3%. (By contrast, adult fiction is the strongest segment among e-books, accounting for 61% of sales.) Juvenile nonfiction fell 11.7% and juvenile fiction dropped 8.1%. Only adult nonfiction, with a 1.1% drop, avoided a precipitous fall in print sales.

The soaring sales of e-books takes some of the sting out of the decline in print sales, but the sad truth is that books in all forms are losing their attraction as a source of entertainment and information. Vast numbers of people simply do not read books. Ever. In any format. However, the average Facebook member spends more than seven hours on the site every month. The average American watches more than 84 hours of television each month. Video games also claim a huge share of our attention span, and a single video game will sell more units in a month than all the top 20 New York Times bestselling books combined.

In a recent issue of Publishers Weekly, independent publisher Rudy Shur of Square One Publishers noted that our concern over the rise of e-books and the decline of print books is misplaced. The real competition isn’t between different forms of books but between books and other forms of entertainment. Putting a book on the Kindle won’t suddenly turn non-readers into readers.

All the evidence is that reading as a pastime began to fall out of favor when computers and then the internet became ubiquitous. That decline continues. But as fewer and fewer people bother to read books, those of us with an emotional, intellectual, or financial investment in all forms of publishing spend our energy arguing about whether e-books are good or bad. We should be talking about how to turn more people on to reading. We should be trying to figure out what it takes to lure kids away from video games. We should be trying to reawaken the love of reading in people who may have given it up because they were too busy raising kids and working. We should be persuading parents that reading to and with their kids is good for all of them. While we’re at it, we should support our local libraries in any way we can.

E-books, print books – what good will any of them be when no one is left to read them?

Latching on to characters

2011-04-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind

Last week I wrote about inspiration for a new novel. I’m thrilled to report that it’s been a great week in novel land. I’ve had so much fun auditioning bits and pieces of my use-one-day collection to see if they might work in this book.

The only downer was day I found out that the marvelous 1890s brick school building where I attended first grade has been torn down and the land it was on turned into a mall, but such are the perils of research. At least I was able to add to my do-some-day list writing a story set in that building as I remembered it.

This is that heady period, before the first word of Chapter 1 is written, when anything goes and everything works. My plot is inspired, my mystery is devilishly clever, and my characters paragons of just about everything. We all know, of course, that first paragraph in Chapter 1 will begin to rub off the shine, but I’ll just hang on to my illusions for a few more weeks, okay?

I’ve also been re-reading my basic tips binder to remind myself of things I should have already learned. Some things I have learned, for other things the refresher is a good idea. Here are some tips I came across about how to develop characters whom the reader will want to latch onto.

Introduce the character in media res; that is, smack dab in the middle of something with a high physical and/or emotional content.

Give each character a unique name. Mix up names so that there is a variety of sound mixes, number of syllables, and ethnic origins.

Give each character a unique ways of relating to the physical world. This includes their physical description, clothes, food, living spaces, possessions, automobile, electronic gadgets (or lack thereof) and their relationship to each of these.

Limit the number of names and titles referring to one character. For example, a character named William Smith, should not be referred to as William, Bill, Billy, Willy, Willy-Boy, Mr. Smith, the Boss, and Old Red-Face by different characters.

If two or more characters share the same descriptive title—several doctors, or priests, or detectives—give each character a unique name and character sketch so that Father D’Arcy won’t be confused with Father Rafael or Father Whitcombe.

Make it clear immediately how characters with the same last name are related, or if using name confusion as a plot device, give each character an attitude toward being frequently mistaken for the other person.

At the beginning of a book, the reader files every new character with due diligence until she can figure out how important a particular character is to the story. Avoid minor characters in the first three chapters, other than background characters who make the story flow. The doorman at the hotel or the dry cleaner who ruined the protagonist’s best dress, can set events in motion, but they should be mentioned in passing without names or details. The more details the reader is given—that the dry cleaner is named Moe, he’s fifty-five years old, he lives over the shop, and he speaks with a New York accent—the more the reader expects Moe to play a major part in the story. A summary like, “On Tuesday, the dry cleaner ruined my best dress” will cover what’s needed to move along.

A character doesn’t usually gel with a reader until they have appeared least three times, in three different roles or relationships. It’s important to gel all of your major characters with the reader as soon as possible. There is no hard rule about this, but as a general guideline, all of the major characters should be firmly fixed in the reader’s mind by the end of chapter three. The only exception is your detective(s); it’s hard to have him or her show up before the first body is discovered. But then, there are endless discussions about needing a body by the end of chapter three as well.

If you must hold a major character in reserve until later in the book, at least making a general reference to him or her. Statements like, “My sister is arriving tomorrow. You’re going to love her. She has such a sense of humor,” or “What really pisses me off is a guy in a thousand-dollar suit, with that look-at-me attitude” sets up reader expectations. They’ll be expecting the sister to arrive or for the protagonist to meet a guy in a thousand-dollar suit.

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Quotes for the week (It’s a two for one week)

Give your reader time to sink into one person’s mind and experience what’s going on there, before you yank them out and pull them into another mind.
~Beth Anderson, mystery and romance writer

Choose names very carefully. Pay attention to the meaning and the sound, and to connotations that people will give a name.
~Elizabeth George, mystery writer

A Celebration of Charlotte

2011-04-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Julia Buckley

With the success of yet another film version of JANE EYRE, and with a very recent anniversary of Charlotte Bronte's birth, I thought I'd pay tribute to both the woman and her work. On April 21st, 1816, Charlotte Bronte was born--one of six children of a clergyman in Yorkshire. She wrote often, even as a young person, perhaps as an escape from a rather dreary life. In adulthood she wrote under the name Currer Bell. Her greatest work, of course, is Jane Eyre.

I often teach Jane Eyre to freshmen, and I would have to say that it is the most underestimated and unappreciated work of all the literature that I teach. The young people, in general (despite a few fans in every class), cannot seem to relate to Jane Eyre, and yet I wonder why. It's wonderfully Gothic, and young people still appreciate the Gothic elements in their books and movies; it has a touching love story, a strong sense of mystery, a focus on the underdog--the very plain Jane. Yet it often leaves them cold.

I suppose the difference is that many young people can no longer stomach the style--the long sentences, the formal diction (much of which they don't know and often refuse to look up), the antiquated sensibility. This is about a girl, then a woman, who is continually oppressed. What the girls don't always see, however, is the gradual journey Jane makes: from weakness to strength, from ignorance to awareness, from anger to enlightenment. It's a remarkable work, and my continuing job as a teacher is to try to make them see that.

I first discovered Jane Eyre on my mother's bookshelf when I was very young--eleven or twelve,perhaps. I wanted to read it because it looked very adult: it was big, leatherbound, and intimidating. But when I opened it and found Jane sitting behind a curtain at Gateshead, hiding from her horrible adopted family and looking out at the dreary November day, I was hooked. Bronte was a brilliant storyteller, and Jane is such a worthy protagonist that reader can't help but be drawn into her life and to root for her success.

And of course one of my favorite things about Jane Eyre is its mystery; the wonderful sense that there is something going on that Jane doesn't understand, which creates tension for long portions of the book. I don't wish to spoil anything for those of you who might now be inspired to pick up Jane Eyre in honor of Charlotte's birthday, so I'll just say that the mystery itself has made an indelible imprint on our literary culture, and Jane Eyre remains as a beloved work of English literature.

Goodbye is not an easy word . . .

2011-04-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

By Lonnie Cruse

I've been a member of Poe's Deadly Daughters since the very beginning. I've loved working with these lovely ladies, excellent writers, wonderful friends, one and all. But it's time for me to move on. Therefore, I'm leaving Poe's Deadly Daughters today and Jeri Westerson is taking my monthly Saturday slot. I wish her good luck. I wish the other "Daughters" much continued success.

I'm now writing non-mystery non-fiction, so to continue to hog a good spot here on PDD isn't fair to other authors and doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm going in another direction with my writing, but I will ALWAYS be a mystery fan and will never stop reading mysteries until someone pries a book out of my cold, dead hands. I'm sure that is true of the rest of you. Mysteries are such fun to read, be they cozies (my personal choice) or fast-paced thrillers (which scare me too much to read, sigh.)

If you want to keep in touch, I will still have a web page at http://www.lonniecruse.com and I will still be writing my weekly newsletter for women: Encouraged Together, every Tuesday. You are welcome to hang out with me at my web page and/or subscribe to said newsletter. Back issues are archived there, should you wish to check them out.

May all your mysteries be great and your TBR (To Be Read) pile ever full, near to toppling over. May you never lose the delight of being so lost in a book that waking up to reality is a bit of a shock. And please remember, I STILL have six mysteries in print, available on Amazon or to order from your local book store.

Thanks ever soooo much for reading me here and in my mysteries. Good--nope, can't type it, so let's just say "So long" for now.

Lonnie

World enough and time

2011-04-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Connolly

"Had we but world enough and time…" Andrew Marvell began his poem, To His Coy Mistress, with that line, in the mid-17th century, and while the rest of the poem wanders off happily into ramblings about fleshly love, that first line is lovely, and sticks in my mind (with a lot of other assorted stuff).

But lately, being limited in my mobility, which in turn limits the range of my activities, my take on time has changed. As I’ve said here before, I’ve been doing a lot more reading. The past week I’ve torn though The Dirt on Clean, by Katherine Ashenburg (which I bought when it came out in 2008 and have only just arrived at), and I’ve started Christopher Kimball’s Fannie’s Last Supper, which was published last year.

On the surface these would seem to be very different books, but both have made me consider how people in any culture choose to spend their time. Perhaps “choose” is too limiting a term, because for a long time most people did whatever they had to do to survive, which consisted mainly of hunting or growing food, procreating, and dying early. No doubt there was little discussion about how to best use leisure time—because there wasn’t any.

Ashenburg addresses attitudes toward personal hygiene, and how different cultures perceived cleanliness over history. Indoor plumbing has been around for a long time (the Romans did a pretty good job with that, as did some religious orders like the Cistercians in the Middle Ages), but its perceived importance has fluctuated widely. At times people thought bathing was evil, and changed their clothing rarely. But the pendulum swung and now many people are obsessed with both personal odors and germs. Have you looked at the range of settings on a new washer? It takes a degree in computer science to figure out how to program one for a simple load. And if you’re supposed to treat each kind of fabric, each color, separately—how much time are you spending at it?

Kimball’s book is interesting because the author takes it upon himself to recreate a (high-end) meal based upon the Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking-School Cookbook from 1896. This involved twelve courses, each incredibly elaborate, all cooked on an authentic cast-iron stove. The author, clearly passionate about both cooking and the Victorian era, also includes a wealth of peripheral detail (who knew that Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix existed before 1900?).

Admittedly this event does not represent the way most people in the country approached making a meal; instead it captures a particular moment in urban, upper-middle-class fashion. In this rarified niche, It took well over two hours to consume such a meal, and that was with servants presenting each course and clearing away the detritus from the prior one. More servants operated below stairs, chopping, peeling, simmering, etc., etc., to create individual dishes designed to impress and delight—and to disappear within minutes, to be followed by the cleanup (imagine all those dishes!). It didn’t last, though. Servants became harder and harder to find, so the woman of the house began to assume a greater role in shopping and cooking, and then there were all those wonderful time-saving machines and packaged foods that came along in short order.

But for all of that, domestic service was a way to enter American culture. For a time a lot of cooks and maids were Irish, and that included my father’s mother, two of her sisters, and two of my father’s father’s sisters, all of whom arrived in New York shortly after 1900. The house I live in now, which in 1910 housed five or six unrelated people in addition to the owners, also had a servant who was Irish—her room was in the unheated attic. By 1920 there was no servant.

Modern perceptions of time, particularly “free” time, keep changing. Take reading (please!). These days it is a luxury to sit down and immerse yourself in a book, to lose yourself in an alternate universe or a wealth of factual information, purely for your own pleasure. The recent and continuing evolution of the ebook is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because books are now available instantly, in a form that can be carried anywhere; it’s a curse because readers now snatch minutes here and there to read a paragraph or a page, before we’re interrupted by something else. Children, teenagers, twenty-somethings reduce their lives to 140-character tweets in an endless stream.

Does this change how we read, and how we write books? Will the rising generation have the attention span of a gnat? Must we as writers make our stories bigger, brighter, faster, just to keep them fresh in an intermittent reader’s mind? There are those who say that we mystery writers must put the body in the first chapter, and add a hook to the end of each chapter, to keep our readers engaged. We’re happy that they’re reading at all, but how must we adapt to keep them reading?

The up side of aging memory

2011-04-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Zelvin

No, I’m not talking about how much easier it gets, the more we age, to forget whodunit when we put the book aside, so that we experience the joy of a fresh solution every time we reread a mystery—although it happens. I’m not even talking about how, no matter how many songs extol the passionate melancholy of “I will always love you,” when we Google him thirty years later and find he’s married and living in New Zealand, it doesn’t hurt any more—though that too is true.

Like most people, I have some early memories that have never left my mind, lodged there by some kind of mental superglue. Are they random or emotionally selective? Are they true memories, or do I just remember that I once remembered them, as I remember telling these stories over and over in the course of my life? I don’t know. But on some level, I have never forgotten them. I can call up the image of scribbling in crayon on the margin of another little girl’s Bugs Bunny coloring book; of my first grade teacher breaking it to me that I didn’t know everything; of my seventh grade classmates applauding when I returned to class after winning a big spelling bee—and not applauding when I lost the next round. I even remember the word I misspelled that time, back in 1955.

Do the math, and you’ll know I’m no spring chicken. The older I get, the more I experience the truth of certain platitudes. The parent’s warning: “Wait till you have children!” Yes, whatever one’s transgressions as a child, the tables get turned when the next generation comes along. The French saying, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Look at politics—any level, any time—for examples of that one. Another French one: Si la jeunesse savait, si la vieillesse pouvait. “If youth only knew, if the old only could,” an irony I find playing out in life in all sorts of situations.

But something new and marvelous has been happening to me lately: I’ve been retrieving fifty-year-old memories that were lost until some incident or object, a Proustian madeleine, triggered the recollection. I couldn’t find on Google (on the first page of Google, anyhow) how old Proust was when the dipping of a cookie in linden tea unleashed a flood of memories, seven volumes’worth, in fact. The trigger in this case was smell, although I read a passage about how simple words spoken on film or video in a forgotten childhood language triggered vivid memories of the writer’s (a blogger’s, not Proust’s) grandparents. The phenomenon is called involuntary memory.

My memories have been unlocked not by anything as precise as a scent or a word, but floated up into consciousness in the course of relevant encounters. With half a dozen friends from junior high, I heard one of our number read a passage about his father at a bookstore signing. This group has talked about our friend’s father many times since we all rediscovered each other fifty years later: he was our favorite teacher, and we adored him. On this occasion, the son happened to read a line about how after having a heart attack, his dad went right back to “all his former habits.” And all of a sudden, there was my madeleine: a vivid memory of Mr. C.’s breath. “Your dad smoked,” I said, “right? Did he also use very strong cough drops?” “He did. After he died,” the son said, “we joked about Vick’s going out of business.”

If you’re of a certain age, you may remember actress/singer Elly Stone, who popularized in English the works of francophone/Flemish chansonnier Jacques Brel. I ran into Elly, now over eighty, sat across from her at dinner, actually, at a party given by mutual friends. It wasn’t till late in the evening that I realized she must be that Elly. “Jacques Brel, right?” She confirmed it. As it happens, although I knew of her association with the Brel songs, I had never paid much attention to them. After spending two years in the Peace Corps in francophone West Africa, I had been crazy about Jacques Brel himself and listened to his songs (and sang some of them) in the original French. But I remembered Elly Stone all right, and this memory, too, came out of fifty-year storage for the occasion. “I see you on the stage at Carnegie Hall,” I said. “You were wearing a bright green strapless evening gown.” “Oh, yes,” she said. “It was a Givenchy, and it was absolutely the wrong thing to wear to a hootenanny, but I didn’t care. I loved that dress.”

When did this Carnegie Hall hootenanny take place? Wikipedia tells me it might have been 1958 or 1959. Elly told me which of these two years she wore the green dress—but I can’t remember.

Do book awards have a future?

2011-04-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Parshall

In the past couple of years I was invited to judge novels for two major crime fiction awards. I accepted both times, not because I’m a glutton for punishment (although that might have been a factor) but because I wanted to know what the juried awards process was like on the inside.

We all quibble with the nominations and winners of the so-called “fan awards” given at conferences – the Anthonys, the Agathas, etc. – but in the end we accept that the people who pay to attend the conferences have the right to honor the books they like the most. The juried awards, though, provoke the same critical questions year after year. How can a small panel of people be trusted to choose the “best” books of the year? How could so-and-so’s brilliant work be overlooked? Why does she-or-he rack up so many nominations (and wins) while other worthy writers are slighted? Why are some obscure works nominated instead of books and stories “everyone” has read? And, of course: Why are so few women writers nominated for certain awards?

Many people, most of them writers, seem to assume that bias drives the decision-making. I wanted to find out if that was true. I especially wanted to find out if my own judgment would be fair or if I would feel a tug toward books written by friends.

I don’t know what went on the heads of other judges, but I can say honestly that I was as fair as I know how to be, and I didn’t observe any bias on the part of other judges. I’m acquainted with a lot of the writers whose books I was judging. Some are my friends. But personal feelings for the writer never influence me when I’m reading, and they didn’t influence me as an award judge. Furthermore, I never gave a thought to the author’s gender while I was evaluating a book. All I cared about were the words on the page.

I can’t go into detail about any books I judged, but I have to say I was amazed by the number of ineligible novels that were submitted. Most entries come from publicists at publishing houses, and I don’t think they bother to read the guidelines when they mail tons of books to awards judges. They throw everything into the pot and, apparently, hope the judges don’t pay attention to the guidelines either.

But let's get real. A cooking or craft cozy, while it must have suspense in order to succeed as a mystery, probably won’t win a thriller or suspense award. To be considered in those categories, the thrills and suspense must be primary, not secondary. The same goes for “romantic suspense” novels in which the suspense vanishes for long stretches while the romance plays out in the foreground. These books face a lot of world-class competition from authors who always put the crime story first. Different awards exist for different kinds of books, and I find the claims of bias a bit baffling. After all, Lee Child doesn't complain because his books are never nominated for the Agatha Award.

I accumulated a big stack of books that had little or no chance of winning the awards I was judging. I gave all of them to a library book drive organized by Mystery Writers of America. I thank the publishers for their contributions to an underfunded library system in Mississippi.

As I completed my judging duties, the digital revolution was getting underway. E-books were, and are, threatening to take over the publishing business and relegate printed books to secondary status. That makes me wonder if I was one of the last participants in an awards process that will soon be obsolete. When major authors take their work directly to e-publishing platforms, leaving Big Publishing behind, and midlist and small press writers conclude they can make more money by getting out of print and self-publishing their novels as e-books, will mystery awards be rendered meaningless?

If the awards are to continue, shouldn’t they include all books, regardless of platform? If all books are included, the number submitted for awards consideration will be staggering. Will awards committees become huge and the process of dividing up the books for judging impossible to manage? If e-books kill mass market paperbacks, as is predicted even by professionals in traditional publishing, will entire award categories vanish and all books be lumped together? That, of course, will further diminish each individual writer’s chance of being honored.

Will there still be a place for awards in the publishing world of the future? What do you think? Do awards serve a purpose? Are they worth keeping? If so, how do we do it?

Folk Music

2011-04-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon Wildwind

Last Friday night I went to a performance at a local folk club, and had a terrific time. The house band played the first set. A young local performer — a little unpolished, but great potential — did the second set, and a person I know off-stage and love listening to on-stage, the third set. I listened by candlelight (tea lights in orange globe holders), with people around me eating meat pies and sausage rolls, and drinking beer, and realized I’d been going to this kind of thing a darn long time.

Earlier that day I’d heard a CBC program about Record Store Day, which happened on Saturday. RSD is a celebration of vinyl records and the record stores that still sell them. Part of the show was someone asking people what was the very first vinyl album they bought.

No brainer. Summer of 1962, with money saved from baby sitting, I bought Peter, Paul, and Mary. Sometime around there I briefly took up the guitar long enough to learn the G-D-and A7 cords before giving it up as a bad job. The problem was tuning. I couldn’t turn a tambourine, much less a guitar. I realized very early that my role was going to be listening.

For a long time my contacts were records and later cassette tapes, and the all-too-infrequent performances by folk musicians on radio and television. None of my family was musical, except my brother who played clarinet in the high school marching band, so we had very little connection to live music. I knew about the Newport Folk Festival because of Bob Dylan being booed off the stage there in 1965 because he dared to go electric instead of acoustic, but I had no idea that folk festivals were springing up across the country. It didn’t dawn on me until decades later that I could climb in a car and go to a folk festival.

My first folk festival was a consolation prize. Big vacation plans fell through. I ended up with two weeks off and nothing to do. I decided to go to Vancouver, British Columbia because I’d never been there. When I picked up my room key, the motel clerk asked me if I was in town for the Vancouver Folk Festival. A folk festival sounded a whole lot better than doing nothing, so I took a cab to Jericho Beach Park. The only time I saw my motel room for the next three days was to sleep.

I was hooked. I listened to Simply Folk on CBC radio. I went to local clubs. I went to every Canadian folk festival within reachable distance. I volunteered several years with one of the festivals. I met a few musicians and became a groupie. I had a great time!

Getting married put an end to all that, going to folk festivals I mean, not having a great time. Different interests, different uses for money, different ways to spend our vacations. I went back to CDs and music on the radio. Only by now the Internet had come along. Every year it became easier to listen to a global range of folk artists in the comfort of my living room.

Which was why it was such a treat to go to a live performance again. The weirdest thing happened in the middle of that second set. One after another, images going way back to that Peter, Paul, and Mary album flooded through me. I realized that each image would make a great scene in a book. I realized that I had a lot of good stuff tucked away about folk music, about musicians, about clubs, about folk festivals. So much good material that I’m pretty sure I’ve just started my next book.

By Saturday morning I knew who my protagonist would be. Her name is Robbie Breland. She’s the volunteer coordinator at a folk music club, and one night, while she sits in the club listening to music, everything she thinks she knows about herself, her two ex-husbands, and the folk music scene starts to unravel. Then, of course, a body is discovered.

Stay tuned for further developments.
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Quote for the week
Alan Barrows: I always thought it was “hey nonny no, nanny ninny no” and I’m getting kind of confused with all the nannies and the ninnies.
Jerry Palter: There’s no nanny, just take that out of the equation. It’s “hey nonny no, nonny ninny o”.
Mark Shubb: Iron clad rule, Alan. Nonny before ninny.
~from the inimitable movie, A Mighty Wind, which is a very cool riff on folk music