The Agatha Nominees: Best Short Stories of 2009

Elizabeth Zelvin

The short story is a form of mystery fiction that is often overlooked or underrated. For the writer, they can be both challenging and satisfying: a chance to explore new voices, settings, and subgenres; a discipline involving tight plotting, freshness and originality, a limited word count, and a twist at the end; an opportunity to heave a sigh of relief and write "The End" after a week or two rather than a year or two. For the reader, they're a chance to read new authors before investing in a book and a reading experience that even if it delays your turning out your light at night, won't keep you up all night turning pages.

This year's Agatha nominees for Best Short Story are a group I'm proud to be part of. Rather than tell you about Dana Cameron, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Barb Goffman, Kaye George, and me, let's let their stories speak for themselves. Through the magic of the web, you can click on the links and read all five of them well before it's time to vote for your favorite at Malice Domestic at the end of April.

Elizabeth Zelvin, “Death Will Trim Your Tree” in THE GIFT OF MURDER, (Wolfmont Press, a holiday crime anthology to benefit Toys for Tots)
http://www.elizabethzelvin.com/PDF/Zelvin, Death Will Trim Your Tree PDF.pdf

Barbara makes latkes and Jimmy supervises while Bruce wrestles with those pesky strings of lights. When a trip to the hardware store leads to murder, the crucial clue is something only a recovering alcoholic could know.

Barb Goffman, “The Worst Noel” in THE GIFT OF MURDER (Wolfmont Press, a holiday crime anthology to benefit Toys for Tots)
http://www.barbgoffman.com/The_Worst_Noel.php

Mom loves Becca best. Gwen's always known that, and she's put up with it - until this holiday season. A little too much family togetherness, coupled with some professional humiliation caused by Mom, pushes Gwen over the edge. So she plans a Christmas Eve dinner that no one will ever forget.

Dana Cameron, “Femme Sole” in BOSTON NOIR (ed. Dennis Lehane, Akashic Books)
http://www.danacameron.com/2010/02/femme-sole-for-your-agatha.html

In 1740s Boston, Anna Hoyt owns a North-End tavern and all the local
thugs—including her husband—want a piece of it. What's a lone woman to
do when waterfront rats threaten her livelihood?

Hank Phillippi Ryan, “On the House” in QUARRY (Level Best Books)
http://hankphillippiryan.com/short-on-the-house.php

A twisty tale of broken promises, broken hearts and intricately-planned revenge proves when true love goes wrong, a woman's best friend may be her dog. Or--not.

Kaye George, “Handbaskets, Drawers and A Killer Cold” in CROOKED (a crime fiction e-zine)
http://www.geoffeighinger.com/Crooked1.pdf

When Chicago cop Cal Arnold stops at the drugstore for cough syrup to tame his raging cold, he ends up taking in a hold-up artist instead. On his next attempt, same drugstore, another robbery is in progress. This time the felon is Nate, the wayward brother of Cal's wife and the guy who was the subject of their latest heated argument. The sixteen-year-old has a wild streak as wide as Lake Michigan, a chip on his shoulder the size of the Sears Tower, and has recently been kicked out of Cal's house. Nate speeds away from the drugstore while Cal is paralyzed by a coughing fit, but Cal is positive he has recognized the vehicle. Go after his brother-in-law? Write up his report and leave out the vehicle? Cal has to decide whose wrath he fears more, his wife's or his captain's.

The Joy of Reunion

Elizabeth Zelvin

It all started with an email from a friend I haven’t seen in fifty years, though she lives only a subway ride away—the same ride I used to take as a high school girl from Queens making weekly pilgrimages to Manhattan, where I live now. She’s a lawyer, and she told me that a mutual friend had died. He and I had remained friends, having much in common. Like me, he was a therapist and a poet—though the third string to his bow was not mystery writing but standup comedy. We weren’t in constant contact, but we always had a long phone conversation around our birthdays, two days apart, in mid-April. This year, I was surprised he didn’t respond to my book announcement or show up at my launch party. The latter was actually on my birthday, and for the first time in decades, he didn’t call or answer my emails. (I don’t phone if I can help it, but that’s another story.)

As my lawyer friend told me, he had a good excuse: he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the fall and died a week before our birthdays. I felt terribly sad not only about losing him but that he’d chosen not to let me know he was ill. Apart from the bad news, I was delighted to be in touch with her again. We had spent two years together in an extraordinary group of boys and girls at Parsons Junior High in Queens (two years after Simon and Garfunkel) designated the SP orchestra class. That meant we did three years of junior high in two, skipping eighth grade, had tested high for musical aptitude, and all had IQs of over 130.

There’s nothing like a death to make you realize you’d better stop putting off getting together. So one thing led to another, we found 10 out of 17 girls and 13 out of 19 guys, and we've already had two gatherings in New York. Sadly, one woman and one man have died. In other words, at 51 years since graduation, it’s high time, and it’s a good thing we’re seizing the moment.

In the old days before the Internet, a reunion was a one-shot event. You got all dressed up, traveled to some hotel ballroom, and spent an evening saying, “Hiiiii! How are you?” and thinking, Good grief, he’s lost all his hair! Thanks to email, the reunion was in full swing a month before the dinner. By the time we met in person, we'd already done enough catching up to be dining and partying not just with fondly remembered childhood friends but with friends indeed.

There is nothing more delicious than fifty-year-old gossip. Among the hot questions were who took whom to the prom, who kissed whom at Spin the Bottle, who became a hippie, who came out. Some confessed to secret crushes. Others reported fascinating career paths. The guy who died developed the eponymous Chaikin's algorithm, a way to draw curves on the computer. The woman who died co-founded a journal of radical Asian scholars. The one who left academia to manage hedge funds has a new marriage and a baby the age of my granddaughter. So far, I’m the only one who’s written a novel, but I’m happy to hear there are mystery lovers among us. In an amazing stroke of networking luck for me, one’s the mom of a major Hollywood producer, and she’s offered to pass on my book. I’ve always wondered who those 30-year-old heads of studios were. Now you know, she says. They’re the kids of people you’ve known since you were kids. So if I become the next Charlaine Harris (I can dream, can’t I?), it’ll be thanks to the SP orchestra class at Parsons Junior High.

Note:In the class picture, I'm fifth from the left in the third row. In the snapshot below, I'm on the left in the second row.

The Bar at Bouchercon

Elizabeth Zelvin

I’ve just returned from my first time at Bouchercon, mystery’s biggest annual convention, which draws hundreds of writers and even more hundreds of fans. I’ve heard over and over that the best place to network at Bouchercon is the bar. This has presented me with a dilemma, since I’m an alcoholism treatment professional whose debut mystery, Death Will Get You Sober, is about recovery. Who would I meet at the bar but people who drink too much? It was an educated guess, since in more than twenty years as a therapist and program director I’ve been exposed to the pain and tragedy of hundreds, even thousands of men and women who met their alcoholic loved ones—or a series of disastrous loves—in just that way.

But I was wrong. As I realized within half an hour of sailing through the lobby of the Sheraton Baltimore City Center into Shula 2, a subdued but not dim or smoky space so packed with mystery lovers it resembled, as we say in New York, the IRT at rush hour, I realized that at Bouchercon, the bar is not where people go to drink. It’s where they go to schmooze. And hey, I was born to schmooze, so I fit right in.

As early as the Wednesday night before the convention’s opening day, the bar was packed three deep and every table filled. Some folks were drinking beer. Others were eating dinner. And the rest, like me, were talking a mile a minute about crime fiction and writing and everything under the sun.

Kaye Barley from Boone, NC, a reader well known on the e-list DorothyL, reported afterward to the list: “There was a group of us sitting around a table just talking and feeling so totally comfortable with one another that we decided to pass on going to the Lee Child Reacher Creature party to just continue sitting around getting to know one another and enjoying one another’s company. It was lovely.” It was indeed. It was Kaye’s first Bouchercon too, and, like me, she’s already signed up for Indianapolis in 2009. That group, by the way, included authors Shane Gericke, Robert Fate, and Gwen Freeman.

What else happened in the bar? British author Stephen Booth recognized me as one of his MySpace friends, and we had a long conversation about cabbages and kings. Reed Farrel Coleman and I bonded on the topic of blowing off a major Jewish holiday because we didn’t want to miss a thing at Bouchercon. And I know he went home happy, because he won the Shamus award for Best PI Novel.

I ate delicious crab soup and seared tuna and exchanged life stories with my roommate, Kate Gallison. (Kate’s new series set in the age of silent film, written under the name of Irene Fleming, is coming from St. Martin’s in 2010.) We were strangers when we agreed to room together. “Never met” is the wrong phrase in this age of online relationships. We didn’t have one of those beforehand either, but it was a match made in heaven. We talked nonstop and will surely room together at future cons. I met Joe Konrath, whom I got to thank for one of the three best tips ever for authors going on book tours: Get a GPS. When I told him about how Sadie got me to my destination all over the country, was never wrong, and never lost her temper, he confided that his is named Sheila and that they, like Sadie and me, have lengthy conversations on the road.

I had wonderful conversations in the course of the event in numerous rooms and corridors and restaurants. I hugged Ken Bruen in the lobby and had a long talk with Donna Andrews about cultural competence in social work (really) at the St. Martin’s Minotaur party. And I had a peak experience in the Ladies signing a copy of my book for Poe’s Deadly Daughters regular Caryn St. Clair. For the record, it wasn’t her fault. On the contrary. She told me she’d won the PDD basket at the silent auction and asked if she could wait outside. I’m the one who said, “Are you kidding???” and whipped out not only my signing pen but my camera as well. So thanks, Caryn, for making the day of this first-time author.

But if you come to Bouchercon Indianapolis, especially if it’s your first time and you’re feeling shy and friendless—you’ll find me in the bar.

The Wildlife in My Yard

Elizabeth Zelvin

Many years ago, I saw the Olivier movie version of Hamlet with someone who’d never read or seen the play in any form. I remember constantly having to shush him as he laughed with delight at discovering where “all those one-liners” came from: “To be or not to be,” “the play’s the thing,” “something’s rotten in the state of Denmark,” and “frailty, thy name is woman.” Before images and turns of phrase become cliché, someone with a gift for a fresh turn of phrase has to think them up. Shakespeare probably holds the record, certainly in English, for original expressions that remain vivid and well used four centuries later. I suspect that his collective works is topped as a source of “one-liners” only by the Bible.

Many useful metaphors and similes, however, have emerged not from literary genius but from everyday observation. I first read Hamlet at fifteen (and fell in love with the melancholy prince, whom I pictured as a cross between Olivier and my high school English teacher). But not until much later in life, when I acquired my first backyard bird feeder, did I realize that such expressions as “the pecking order” and “the peaceable dove” are based on actual bird behavior.

For the cost of a forty-pound bag of black oil sunflower seed, I’ve had endless hours of entertainment sitting on my deck—or even at my strategically positioned computer looking out through the sliding door—watching an endless parade of birds doing what they do. At one moment, a squabble breaks out among a band of house finches. As Roger Tory Peterson, legendary ornithologist and bird book author, says, house finches are “aggressive at the feeder.” A feisty little tufted titmouse nudges a skittish white-breasted nuthatch off the perch: the pecking order at work. When the oversized grackle with its iridescent black feathers and malevolent yellow eye arrives, all the other birds vanish. He’s the highest on the pecking order of all our visitors, with the possible exception of the red-bellied woodpecker, who’s big and self-confident enough to defend the block of orange-flavored suet. Mourning doves scratch the ground for fallen seed. The reason they’ve been used over and over as a symbol for peace is that they stand outside the pecking order altogether. They ignore the other birds, and none ever try to jostle or chase them away.

Let’s take “bird-brained” as a metaphor for unintelligent or foolish. It certainly fits the little black and white downy woodpecker, which never learns that all it has to do to get the suet is pop into the cage that keeps the squirrels out and dig in. Every time, it starts by perching at the top of the wrought-iron pole from which the suet cage hangs, swivels its head in a series of jerks like C3P0 to check all around, and slides down the pole like a firefighter. It jabs through the bars of the cage, working its way all around, before it finally hops inside and starts to feed. (Imagine yourself clinging to a six-foot block of chocolate and chowing down.) The whole process takes so long that some higher-echelon bird, the raucous blue jay or the persistent catbird, comes along before it gets a single bite. Male or female (Mr. Downy has a blotch of red at the back of his head), one generation after another, they miss a lot of meals because they’re programmed for these lengthy preliminaries.

The feeder birds move faster than my four-year-old granddaughter, which is saying a lot. My digital camera did better with the hefty rabbit—a baby bunny just a month ago—and the squirrel. Squirrels are a little smarter. The baffles on our bird feeders—cone-shaped metal collars half way up the pole—work. But every generation or two a thinking squirrel comes along. You’ll see it test the baffle over and over, then retreat to the ground and stare up at the seed beyond, wondering what else it can try.

Over the years, we've had visits from possum, raccoon, turtles, chipmunks, field mice, owls, hawks, and so many deer that the deer fence I got to keep them from eating the flowers a couple of years ago is at the top of my list of favorite presents ever. We've had AWOL puppies drop by, and a neighboring cat had her kittens in our crawl space. We've had a bird knock itself out against our sliding door, another get stuck with its head in the tube feeder. To my relief, both of these incidents ended happily, with the bird recovered and flying away. In general, it's nice to share the planet--and the yard--with these lively visitors.

Shrink to Shrink: Roberta Isleib Interviewed by Elizabeth Zelvin

Liz: With the third Dr. Rebecca Butterman mystery, Asking for Murder, just out, I’m delighted to have Dr. Butterman’s creator, Roberta Isleib, visit us on Poe’s Deadly Daughters. As a therapist myself, I get a big kick out of Dr. Butterman and her adventures. Roberta, what prompted you to make Rebecca an advice columnist rather than having her sleuthing come out of her therapy practice?

Roberta: Besides being a psychologist, I’m an advice column junkie—my fave is “Can this marriage be saved?” in the Ladies Home Journal. When I was looking for a hook, the column seemed like a natural. As it turns out, clues come to her in both kinds of work—advice and therapy.

Liz: I particularly appreciate the concern Rebecca has for maintaining the boundary between how she works as a therapist and the kind of advice she gives as Dr. Aster. What’s the difference?


Roberta: These two jobs set up quite a bit of internal tension for Rebecca. The kind of therapy she does allows her patients to plumb their psychological depths and root out old baggage that interferes with daily life. Advice is very different—no plumbing, more of a jazzy style of delivery (or I should say, Rebecca and I try to sound jazzy), as she skates over the surface.

Liz: How easy or hard is it for you to come up with advice-column dilemmas and snappy answers? Which is more fun to write: the questions or the answers?

Roberta: Definitely the questions! I’m here to say writing the answers is not as easy as the columnists make it look. If I wrote a column, I’d worry a lot about whether millions of readers are taking my pearls as gospel. What if I was totally off base and some poor sucker made an important decision based on my advice? Rebecca worries about that kind of thing too.

Liz: Your first series featured Cassie Burdette, whom you characterize on your website as a “neurotic professional golfer.” I think a lot of people still think of “neurotic” as meaning “slightly crazy in a Woody Allen kind of way.” But I find that nowadays professionals tend to use “neurotic” as a synonym for “reasonably healthy considering our crazy world.” So what’s neurotic about Cassie? And is that a good or a bad thing?

Roberta: I would lean toward your first definition—mildly crazy! Cassie had “issues” that kept her from performing at a high level in the golf world. Her father was a golf professional who failed to meet his own goals and acted out his disappointment by leaving his family. So Cassie’s strong connection to golf is tied up with her feelings about being abandoned. And she wonders (unconsciously of course) whether it’s okay for her to be successful if her father wasn’t. (Isn’t it wonderful how real these characters become to us?)

Liz: And how about Dr. Butterman? What issues would you expect Rebecca to bring to you if you were her therapist? What would you hope for her to accomplish in treatment?

Roberta: Rebecca had a double-whammy as a kid—her mothered committed suicide when she was four, and then her father left the state. (He explains more about that in Asking for Murder.) So I wouldn’t expect her to be able to find a strong relationship until she sorts that out. It amazes me how well people function sometimes in spite of their tragic histories—Rebecca is one of those people. She’s a wonderful therapist, but she has blind spots in her personal life. She’s working on those!

Liz: Let’s talk about emotional health and murder. Why do we love murder mysteries? What do they do to us, and what do they do for us?

Roberta: There are different theories about this. Some people say reading murder mysteries is a way of containing the violence we can’t contain in the real world. Folks like to see the perpetrators caught and punished: Justice is served. Other people like mysteries because they enjoy the puzzle—working out the solution as the sleuth does (or ahead of the sleuth!) And some people read for the characters, the feeling of a familiar set of old friends who reappear in new books. I think I fall in that category.

Liz: Me too! Characters I care about with plausible relationships get me every time. You and I are different kinds of mental health professional: you’re a clinical psychologist, I’m a clinical social worker. So how come you made the social worker the victim in Asking for Murder?

Roberta: I couldn’t very well kill off my main character! Seriously, it was interesting when I was in training to notice the undercurrents between psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. While they do similar work, the length and depth of their training can be very different. There was definitely a hierarchy and some snobbishness. I worked some of that conflict into Asking for Murder, though in the end, I’d say the social worker comes off very well. Don’t you think, Liz?

Liz: Therapy is about change and growth, while advice of the kind Dr. Aster gives is more about snappy solutions. As the series continues, will Rebecca change and grow? What kinds of challenges will she face? Will we see anything dark in future books?

Roberta: IF the series were to continue (and that’s always a question in these uncertain times,) you will certainly see Rebecca change. She learned a lot from her experience with sandplay therapy and she will apply that. Like Cassie before her, she has some issues to work out with her father. She’s on her way to that! There’s a snotty teenager who makes an appearance at the end of AFM—you could look for her in future installments!

Liz: The kind of mystery series you write are often categorized as cozies. And how do you feel about that? (I had to get shrinks’ favorite question in there somehow.)

Roberta: I’m so glad you did! I don’t really care what you call the books as long as they sell and people enjoy them. But I don’t want to shock readers who are expecting some other kind of book. This series is a little darker and more realistic than what most folks think of as “cozy”—I warn people about that.

Thanks so much to Liz and Poe’s Deadly Daughters for your hospitality!

Seven Years Ago

Elizabeth Zelvin

I can’t bring myself to write about mysteries today. Seven years ago, we who live in New York City experienced our own international terrorist thriller, and it was no fun at all. Apart from a few passing storms, we're having the same kind of fall weather as we did in 2001. September 11 was a beautiful day that year: crystal clear blue skies, sharply etched buildings, the trees in the park still shaggy and heavy-headed with green. In the weeks that followed, we who survived marveled at the heartbreakingly beautiful weather that went on and on as we struggled to get past the shock, mourn our losses, and figure out how to function in a world that had gone suddenly unsafe.

I heard the news at about the time the second plane hit. I had been running around the reservoir. I emerged from the park elated from my run, crossed Central Park West at 86th Street, and waved to the little guy who sells newspapers on the corner, who always greets me warmly even though I never buy a paper.

“An airplane has hit the World Trade towers!” he called out. “No, two planes!”

I’m sorry to say that at first, I underreacted.

“That’s terrible,” I responded politely as I continued to jog down 86th Street. I don’t ordinarily get caught up in disaster news. I’m not an avid follower of human tragedies and spectacular trials as televised and hashed over by commentators. And the reason I don’t buy the paper is that I prefer not to start my day with a dose of bad news. But as I gradually realized that normal traffic had stopped, that knots of people were huddled around the radios in cars parked on the street, I slowed down and finally stopped.

“What happened?” I asked. At last, I began to take in the magnitude of what we soon started calling 911, for the ironic convergence of the date and the numbers we dial for help in an emergency. This time, I was not a spectator. This was happening to me.

So deeply were people affected by the attacks that, to my relief, there was no exploitive rush to churn out books and movies on the topic. Five years later, novelists began writing their deeply felt 911 books, and special-effects-heavy disaster movies started to reappear. I know a couple of writers who thought they might never write again. To them, telling stories to entertain, especially stories of violence, seemed trivial and inappropriate in the circumstances.

I had a different reaction. I had not yet completed the first draft of what would become my first published mystery. At that time, I was involved with several songwriting groups, and song was the medium that came to me in which to grapple with the events of 911. I didn’t plan or choose it. The song came pouring through me on September 12 and was complete on September 13. I sang it the same day to fellow mental health professionals in a Red Cross van jouncing downtown to the respite centers where families were still hoping for news of survivors.

Here’s what I have to say about what happened in New York on September 11, 2001.

Two Tall Towers
(Click to hear the song)

Beaches

Elizabeth Zelvin

Among the lessons I learned at my mother’s knee is this one: the ocean is better than the bay; a lake is better than a pool. I grew up spending as much of every summer as I could on the world-class beaches of Long Island, including Jones Beach, which was an easy drive from where we lived in Queens, and Hampton Bays, which was not at that time considered one of The Hamptons, since its year-round population was working-class conservative and its summer people, at least the ones we knew, were a small band of “progressives,” many of them teachers like my aunt who had a house there. The big social event of the season was always a Labor Day party to benefit the latest leftist martyrs, the Something Seven or the Something Ten. But let’s talk about the beach.

The modest little house my husband and I were lucky enough to snap up during a “soft” period for real estate in 1990—having rented unwittingly to a trio of drug dealers who set the neighborhood on its ear, the local businessman who owned it was glad to get rid of it—is only seven miles from one of the superb beaches maintained by the Town of East Hampton, which stretches from Bridgehampton to Montauk. At low tide, you can walk for miles along the beach if you’re so inclined. If you want less wind, you can lie back against the pillowy dunes—not on or in the dunes, please: every spike of beach grass was lovingly planted by the hands of environmentalists, and the humps of sand have only recently recovered their full roundness after being sheared off by a hurricane nine or ten years ago. Or, as I do, you can choose a front row seat, where a cool breeze is always available, even on the hottest day, and if you don’t watch out, a curl of wave on the incoming tide may swamp your beach towel and carry your sandals off to Spain.

My mother, who if asked, “How was your vacation?” would respond by enumerating the swims she’d had, taught me not just to observe but to revel in the fact that the ocean is always different. At least that’s true of the Atlantic off Long Island. My mother always maintained that there’s nothing like the morning swim. When I was a kid, we’d stay at the beach all day, “earning” our lunch by leaping and diving through the waves (“Over!” “Under!”) in that icy morning water. Now, between adult responsibilities and the hole in the ozone, I seldom get to the beach before 3 PM. But I still miss that morning swim.

It’s not just a matter of the weather: bright and clear one day, hazy and humid the next, overcast on the third day, with a storm rolling in overnight. Even if the skies stay blue, flat silky seas on which it’s easy to swim laps (without having to turn every sixteen strokes as you would in a pool) can be replaced by rearing “seahorses” of foam and crashing breakers. In 1995 I spent several days on the campus of the University of California at San Diego for a conference, and I was amazed by the way the turquoise waters of the Pacific in La Jolla remained consistent over time. If I went to the same spot near the jetty every day, I could jump the same gentle rollers day after day after day. It was nice for a change, and La Jolla itself is probably one of the most beautiful places in America. But I’m an East Coast girl, and I like an ocean to surprise me.

Wrapping Up the Book Tour

Elizabeth Zelvin

I'm home from the road after more than two months of touring to promote Death Will Get You Sober. I've had a grand time, and I'm glad to be home and ready for a rest--except for updating all the information on the website, unpacking the mountain of stuff I somehow managed to fit into two suitcases at under 50 pounds for the airlines' rigorous new limits, laundering, filing, and throwing away all that stuff as appropriate, opening mail, paying bills, printing out all the text that's been accumulating on my laptop, reconnecting with family and friends, and thinking about what I'll write next.

I came back with more books than I started with, more friends than I started with, and enormous respect for the booksellers and librarians who keep the love of books alive and booklovers' insatiable desire for more satisfied one book at a time.

I'm also grateful for 21st century technology: my laptop, which kept me available to my therapy clients in the US and the UK; Sadie the GPS, who found every destination I needed to go, kept me company on long drives, and never once lost her temper; my digital camera, which recorded priceless moments like my signing at Book Passage with Salman Rushdie (we signed in different rooms, but it was a great photo op); my cell modem, which linked me to the Internet when my aging computer didn't want to talk to the wireless connections in friends' homes and cafés; my Bluetooth earpiece, which let me keep both hands on the wheel; and my cell phone, which kept me connected with the old and new friends who put me up in their homes, fed me, drove me across state lines, up and down mountains, and all around urban mazes to give me and Sadie a break, and supported the book and my events in all sorts of ways. Phone and email also allowed me to keep track of a million and one details and stay in touch with my husband and the folks at my publisher's in New York, my publicist, PJ Nunn, in Texas, and booksellers and librarians in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The tour started at the Public Library Association convention in Minneapolis at the end of March (15 or 20 Sisters in Crime and 10,000 librarians) and ended at the American Library Association's annual meeting in Anaheim (15 or 20 Sisters in Crime and 25,000 librarians). Heartfelt thanks to the mystery writers all over the country who proved over and over the truth of the saying that writers in our genre are unfailingly generous and helpful to each other--and to the readers who enjoyed Death Will Get You Sober, told me they loved the title and the cover, asked me when the next one will come out, and talked about Bruce and Barbara and Jimmy as if they were not just fictional characters but real people.

Salman Rushdie and Me

Elizabeth Zelvin

One of the great pleasures of touring to promote Death Will Get You Sober has been the opportunity for face to face contact with other writers across the country. Fellow Guppies from Sisters in Crime—serious writers committed to achieving publication and quite a few who already have—have come through for me everywhere: driving considerable distances to my signings, buying my books, taking me out for lunch and dinner, driving me to and from book events, and putting me up in their homes.

The other day, sixteen Sisters in Crime from the Sacramento Capitol Crimes chapter turned out in 108 degree heat to give me lunch and hear me talk about Death Will Get You Sober, my work habits as a writer, and my journey to publication and beyond. The old friend who’s been escorting me around Northern California—not a writer, but an avid reader and retired high school English teacher who appears in my Acknowledgments as the first reader of the first draft—had heard my shtik at least twice before. She was fascinated by the difference in content and tone that an audience of fellow writers elicited, even though I told many of the same stories.

“Did you see them nodding their heads?” she asked. Indeed I had. They understood perfectly when I talked about both the craft and the business of becoming a publishable and eventually published writer. What evoked those nods? Among others, these observations:

. That it took years to become willing to “kill my darlings” by editing out treasured passages, because for a long time I was afraid the well would run dry.

. That I was relieved to find that many other writers had characters who, like mine, came to life, talked in their heads, took the story in directions they hadn’t intended, and laid down the law about what they would or would not do or say.

. That a fellow writer illuminated a piece of the process when he told me he found passages that came easily and those he had to grind out word by word appeared to be of exactly the same quality on rereading.

. That it’s probably impossible to avoid all of the potential pitfalls in the quest for an agent, no matter how careful we are.

. That persistence is essential, but we can’t do anything about luck except keep persisting until it comes along.

. That we (in this case, Sisters in Crime; in my case, Mystery Writers of America and online communities including DorothyL, Murder Must Advertise, and Crimespace as well) are incredibly lucky to have each other, because tilting at the windmill of publishing novels in the 21st century would be a nightmare if we had to do it alone.

So what does this have to do with Salman Rushdie? Mr. Rushdie is not a mystery writer, though his new book, The Enchantress of Florence, seems to be a historical fantasy. But he became a hero to most writers in 1989 when he continued to write after being condemned to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini for publishing The Satanic Verses. V.S. Naipaul called the terrorist threat, which has colored Mr. Rushdie’s life for the past twenty years, “an extreme form of literary criticism.” As we say in New York, oy vey!

Anyhow, a few weeks after getting confirmation of a coveted booking at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, I learned that the great bookstore had had to schedule Mr. Rushdie’s appearance for the same date and time as mine. This was the only time slot he had. What did I want to do? they asked apologetically. Cancel? Certainly not. Would I accept another date? Unfortunately, we couldn’t find another slot when the store was available and I was still in the area. So it was Salman Rushdie and me: he in the big event room, speaking to a standing-room-only crowd, and me giving my talk to an audience of eight (a respectable crowd in my debut-novelist’s experience) in the Mystery Nook next door.

“Can I have a photo op with Mr. Rushdie?” I asked. I was half kidding, but shortly before our talks were scheduled to begin, they trotted him over to the next building so I could shake his hand and get someone to snap our picture together. He posed graciously and patiently as the impromptu photographer figured out my camera. I couldn’t think of anything memorable to say, but I was delighted to shake his hand and tell him what an honor it was to meet him. And it was. If Salman Rushdie can write twelve books with a death threat hanging over his head, who am I to quit trying?

Characters We Love

Elizabeth Zelvin

I woke up this morning thinking about Brat Farrar: not just Josephine Tey’s 1949 mystery, but Brat himself, the horse-loving orphan who agrees to impersonate a lost heir and finds his “belonging-place.” Yep, I remember the dialogue as well as the characters, decades after I last reread the book. If that’s not a measure of the novelist’s art, I don’t know what is.

Nowadays we hear a lot about “crime fiction,” sometimes accompanied by a dismissal of the traditional mystery. For me, character is the heart of a good book, and my favorite traditional mysteries have it. No matter how long it’s been since I visited them, I’m not going to confuse Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane with anybody else or forget the important events in their lives. The same goes for Judge Deborah Knott, Sharon McCone, Mary Russell, Kate Shugak, Anna Pigeon, and Skip Langdon. All of these characters go through a process of growth and change in the course of a series arc.

One of my newer favorite authors is Charlaine Harris, not because her deft mixing of subgenres started a trend but because each of her protagonists is distinct and memorable. Lily Bard’s the one who survived a horrific abduction and rape, learned martial arts, cleans houses, and roams the streets at night. Sookie Stackhouse is the telepathic barmaid who dates vampires. Harper Connelly got struck by lightning at fifteen and now finds dead people, arousing suspicion and challenging disbelief with her knowledge of how they died. Nor are these details simply backstory stuck onto a generic protagonist figure. All these women have depth and complexity. All are endearing. After reading about them, I’m always eager to come back for more.

My favorite characters in other genres share this ability to leap off the page and into the reader’s heart: Jamie and Claire Fraser, Miles Vorkosigan and Ekaterin, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Philippa. To me these are real people, whether they live in the past or in the future. In a weird way it doesn’t matter that they exist only on the page. Great characters forge a bond between the author’s imagination and the reader’s and create a small miracle every time we open a book.

Now I’ve got a book and characters of my own. I would be thrilled if they find their way into readers’ hearts like those I’ve mentioned. A few people are starting to talk about my protagonist Bruce and his sidekicks Barbara and Jimmy as if they’re real, as if they have a past and a future outside the covers of Death Will Get You Sober. In fact, I know they do, because they talk to me in my head while I drive or take my daily run. They’re insistent, opinionated, and sometimes smarter and funnier than I am. For sure they’ve got fewer inhibitions about what they’ll say. Come to think of it, they’ve already found their way into at least one real-life person’s heart: my own.

Don't Go to Dayton in June, Either

Elizabeth Zelvin

This piece was inspired by Rosemary Harris’s guest blog on The Stiletto Gang, “Don’t Go to Dayton in February and Other Lessons Learned on the Road.” Like her, I will start by saying the people in Dayton were wonderful and welcoming to me and my book. The problem for both of us lay in getting there. Rosemary got ice storms. Here’s what happened to me.

The sign said, “Bridge Out—Local Traffic Only.”

Sadie the GPS said, “Continue 13 miles on Route 35.”

My husband and I decided to keep going and see what happened. New York skeptics that we are, we couldn’t quite believe the signs. I was determined to get to West Alexandria, the small town near Dayton where folks were waiting at the library to hear me talk about Death Will Get You Sober. I figured if we got to the bridge and it was indeed out, Sadie would see our plight from her satellite and direct us around it.

“They must have a man at the bridge directing traffic,” my husband said.

“This is the country,” I said. I waved a hand at the fields around us, where the only signs of life were a couple of cows. “I don’t think it works that way out here.”

We kept driving. Beautiful day. Big sky. Rows of corn no bigger than your thumb. No people. Finally we hit a crossroads. The orange sign said, “Detour.” The arrow pointed left.

Sadie said, “Continue on Route 35.”

“She doesn’t know the bridge is out,” I said.

A marital interlude followed. We turned left. At the next intersection, Sadie told us to turn right.

“She’s trying to get us back to the bridge,” I said. “She doesn’t know it’s out.”

You have to be firm with Sadie. She’s got the view, but we’ve got the wheel. We went straight.

“Recalculating,” Sadie said. One good thing about a GPS is that it doesn’t lose its temper. However, it can be persistent. “In point one miles,” she said, “turn right.”

“She sounds testy,” I said. “She’s still trying to get us back to the bridge. She doesn’t know it’s out.”

“Cell phone,” my husband said. “Call the library.”

At the library in West Alex, they didn’t know the bridge on Route 35 was out. “Really?” they said. “Now, the bridge on Route 503, we know that one’s out. We’ve got your cheeseburgers waiting for you. With fries.”

Eventually we got on the phone with somebody who could identify the crossroads where we’d pulled up to call. They gave us directions: “Turn left at the stop sign onto Preble County Line Road….” It turned out to be the fifth stop sign, but never mind. We eventually crossed a little bridge in working order over a teeny weeny creek and rolled into West Alex, where I’m glad to say they hadn’t eaten our cheeseburgers.

Twin Creek wasn’t always this small, they told us. “You’ve just met Castor,” Suzanne the librarian said. “You should see Castor and Pollux in flood.”

That must be in February, when Rosemary Harris says don’t go to Dayton.

PD James: Time Traveler from the Golden Age of Detection

Elizabeth Zelvin

I recently read PD James’s 2005 mystery, The Lighthouse. It’s a stately read that is best savored at a leisurely pace rather than gobbled up in a night. In fact, I had saved it for airplane reading to and from a signing in Minneapolis, where it not only entertained me but provided a promotional bookmark (mine, not James’s) to give to the potential reader in the next seat.

Even in the first 50 pages, it struck me that James, at 80 a revered and much honored author, is allowed to construct a mystery that would never pass muster with agents or editors from a newbie, even if a beginning writer could achieve her magnificent prose style. Today we’re exhorted to put the murder up front—in the first chapter if not on the first page—and keep the action non-stop. Some respected authors who teach writing insist that the right amount of backstory in a manuscript is none whatsoever. It’s considered amateurish to “tell, not show” what our characters are like. The omniscient author point of view is out of fashion, and if we introduce too many POV characters, we’re castigated for “head hopping.”

It’s inevitable that the literary world says James’s Adam Dalgleish series “transcends the genre.” Yet The Lighthouse is constructed quite like a Golden Age mystery of the Thirties, when Agatha Christie reigned and Dorothy L. Sayers ruled the Detective Club with an iron hand. In the opening scene, Dalgleish is presented with the case by his superiors. Each of his subordinates gets a scene detailing the daily life that gets interrupted when the murder call comes. This tells us that we’re reading a police procedural, in which all the investigators will have their turn on center stage. The scene then shifts to the isolated island where the murder has occurred, rolling back time to the day before and giving us in turn the close third-person point of view of the victim and each of the nine or ten characters who will become suspects. Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh did the same, whether in narrative form like James or by listing a “cast of characters” at the beginning of the novel. The scene in which the body is discovered begins on page 55, too late, or on the brink, if it appeared in an unpublished writer’s manuscript.

The Lighthouse abounds in magnificent and detailed descriptions of the isolated island off the Cornish coast which acts as a “locked room”—another favorite Golden Age device—for the murder. Today’s mystery writing gurus suggest avoiding unbroken passages of description. “Don’t start with a weather report,” one of them, I forget which, advises. James’s landscapes and interiors run for paragraphs, sometimes for pages. Characterization too, for the most part, proceeds by “telling, not showing.” Interior monologues present characters with texture and complexity. But except for the victim and his daughter, characters’ behavior seldom demonstrates the truth of the analysis.

Along with the subtleties, James throws in stereotyped characterizations that are far less convincing from the perspective of today’s worldview than they were in the Golden Age. “It was a scholar’s face,” she says of one suspect from the detective’s point of view. What is a scholar’s face? Like Homer’s “wine-dark sea,” it’s a stock epithet rather than a description based on observed reality. Actually, I think I know what James meant: a resemblance to the portraits of such historical figures as Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Such assumptions used to abound in British fiction, not just in the Thirties but through the Fifties. Example: the classic The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, in which the detective comes to believe that King Richard III was framed because in his portrait, he looks like, yep, a scholar and someone who’s known suffering rather than like a villain.

I enjoyed reading The Lighthouse, even though I guessed more of the plot than I would have before I started writing mysteries of my own. It held my interest, and the literate prose was a pleasure to read. I prefer series, with their extended character arcs, so I was interested to hear more about the recurring characters’ lives, even though I still don’t find the relationship between Dalgleish and Emma quite convincing. In general, James at 80 is finally writing, if not erotic scenes, scenes of and passages about sexuality, which she never used to do. Overall, it’s a fine novel—but reading it is a very different experience from reading the mysteries of 21st century authors.

Using Our Words

Elizabeth Zelvin

A feature of contemporary parenting as practiced by generations younger than mine that always tickles me is the way parents deal with temper tantrums by telling a screaming toddler, “Use your words.” It’s a pithy definition of what writers do.

This piece occurred to me as I sat around the breakfast table at a country inn in Oakmont, PA with two writer friends, Rosemary Harris and Barbara D’Amato, with whom I appeared at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop Festival of Mystery. It’s always great fun to schmooze with other writers, and we got to talking about what different kinds of writers do and how it’s not as easy as it looks to the people who perennially tell writers, “I’ve got a great idea, why don’t you write it and we’ll split the profits.”

I’ve done a significant amount of writing in four distinct genres, or five if you count short stories separately for novels: fiction, poetry, songwriting, and academic or professional writing—six if you count blogging, which I consider a form of journalism, though for some bloggers it’s rather a form of journaling, not at all the same thing.

As someone said at breakfast, it’s marvelous that there are so many words in the English language that each writer comes up with something unique on any given theme. Aspiring fiction writers don’t always realize this. Newcomers sometimes worry that if they send their manuscripts out to agents and editors, these professionals may steal their uncopyrighted material. I’m told this sometimes happens with movie pitches in Hollywood, but it makes veteran novelists laugh.

One, there are proverbially only seven original plots.

Two, the ideas are the easy part: imagination, craft, organization, and perseverance in putting the words on paper (or on screen) are what distinguishes the writer from the wannabe. (Note that this pejorative term becomes less ugly when defined by the writer’s ability to follow through and complete a work, not by publication status.)

Three, I've met at least one writer who expressed concern that his manuscript, also about a recovering substance abuser in lower Manhattan, might coincidentally be too similar to Death Will Get You Sober. I assured him it didn't worry me. I believe someone else has about the same chance of coming up with my characters, my dialogue, and my voice as those monkeys who are supposed to type Shakespeare’s plays if they keyboard long enough.

Poetry, a craft I’ve been practicing for more than thirty years, allows the individual writer to create a unique work by using fewer rather than more words. The challenge is to tell a story (or paint a word picture, depending on what kind of poem one writes) in 100 to 200 words if it’s a typical free verse one-page lyric poem, in seventeen syllables (three lines divided five-seven-five) if it’s a haiku.

Song lyrics are often equated with poems, but in my experience, the crafts of songwriting and writing poetry are distinct. Without demonstrating it here, I can assert with confidence that I can pair songs and poems I’ve written on a single theme—alcoholism, love lost or found, and death, for example—in which I address the theme in two entirely different voices and ways of using words. The power of good songwriting is not only that, like poetry, it’s condensed, but that it expresses what the writer wants to say not in the most original words but in the simplest and most basic words of one and two syllables, while managing to give this simplicity a fresh twist and depth of emotion that can move listeners in much the same way as a poem moves hearers or readers.

In contrast to all of these storytelling genres, professional writing requires the writer to use specialized language—a jargon or, more kindly, idiom—with a precision that will make it perfectly comprehensible to any colleague in the same profession—and do so without telling any stories at all that aren’t true.

Boy Books and Girl Books

Elizabeth Zelvin

Not long ago I heard an eminent editor admit that in his publishing house, people refer without irony to “boy books” and “girl books.” Since I became active in the mystery community, I have heard many discussions of the fact or belief that, by and large, men will not read books, or at least novels, by women. That’s why many female writers conceal their gender behind initials, although like the initials in phone book listing, the use of initials in authorship has become a signal that the person thus identified is probably a woman.

Men may object to this generalization, which oversimplifies as generalizations always do. It might be illuminating to ask what books by women they read. Are they “boy books” written by women? Are they crossover books? Noir is very fashionable these days, and women as well as men are writing noir. Megan Abbott comes to mind—a woman who had already written a scholarly examination of the tough guy in American fiction before her first novel was published. Or how about women whose prose style is “tough” and would have been called “masculine” before the women’s movement? I think of SJ Rozan, a writer I admire greatly, of whom I like to say (when I can get away with it) that her prose is built like a brick s***house. Not a wasted word, not a dangling clause, not an adverb. It doesn’t hang together—it grips.

A hundred years ago, when I was a college English major, there were two kinds of writer, or rather, two prose styles: Hemingway and Henry James. Hemingway’s the guy who put the kibosh on polysyllabic words of Latin derivation and made action verbs king of the sentence. Back then, it was possible to say, “I don’t warm up to that Hemingway style. I don’t know that I want to write that way.” I know, because I said it, and no one lynched me. Today, that choice has become an absolute. I heard the highly respected Stephen King tell an audience how to be a writer the year he was made a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America: “Read, read, read. Write, write, write. And lose the adverbs.”

I confess I have mixed feelings about abolishing a whole part of speech, maybe a quarter of the English language, by fiat. Actually, adverbs aren’t lost. They have migrated to the other side of the aisle, where the girl books sit. I learned this from a prolific and talented short story writer named Tom Sweeney. He’s been published in Ellery Queen and SF magazines and also in Woman’s World, which I’ve heard is a tough market to crack and pays well. Tom told me Woman’s World wants adverbial writing. When he writes for that particular market, he makes sure he puts those adverbs in.

Am I saying women don’t write nice tight sentences with action verbs? No, of course not. And I can delete an adverb with the best of them. I think it’s subject matter, focus, and sensibility, to use an old-fashioned word, rather than prose style that separate the boy books from the girl books.

I’ve written before about relational psychology—the theoretical approach that explains how and why men mature through separation and women through connection. Separation and autonomy—the tough-guy loner PI—boy books. Connection and relationship—mysteries, and not just cozies—girl books. Another psychological model uses the gender-related concepts of instrumental and expressive traits. Instrumentality is about how stuff works. Expressiveness is about how people feel. Instrumental—technothrillers—boy books. Expressive—romances, sure, but also character-driven mysteries—girl books.

Am I exaggerating? Still oversimplifying? Of course. But like the eminent editor, I’m making the point that there are boy books and girl books. Let’s tackle the distinction from another angle. Let’s look at the Great American Novel. Suppose we lived in a less patriarchal society. Suppose we had always acknowledged that there are boy books and girl books that have to be judged separately on their merits within their own categories, the same way there’s a male winner and a female winner in the New York Marathon. Here are my picks. Great American Novel, boy book division: Huckleberry Finn. Great American Novel, girl book division: Little Women.

How many men have read this wonderful book? Its author created characters so real that it’s still in print almost 140 years after publication, still read for pleasure—and with pleasure—by millions of readers, and still capable of moving readers to tears on an umpteenth rereading, as well as inspiring some of us to become writers like its protagonist. My husband has. I’m proud to say he’s read almost all of Louisa May Alcott, motivated by an interest in the vivid and accessible picture of life in 19th century New England in the context of Transcendentalism, whose theorists included Emerson, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father. He (my husband, not Bronson Alcott) also wanted to know what was in those battered books that I was crying over every time I read them. I’d like to hear from any other man who has.

Book Tour: Don't forget to pack your resilience

Elizabeth Zelvin

In general, I’m a good packer. I take plenty of changes of easily washed underwear. I don’t forget my migraine pills or the charger for my electric toothbrush. For the first leg of my first book tour, I threw six copies of Death Will Get You Sober into my suitcase, the air traveler’s equivalent of the proverbial box of books in the trunk of the author’s car.

By Day 2, I was glad I’d taken the books. At the first bookstore where I was scheduled to appear, the copies they’d ordered had not arrived. The bookseller was reluctantly ready to cancel when I offered to bring my own books. She was glad to work it out so the books people bought at the event registered as genuine sales, essential to my publisher’s good opinion of me. Books, I thought, that’s the essential, just as experienced authors had told me.

By Day 5, I’d decided the essential was the GPS. I owed that tip to the master of book tours, Joe Konrath, whom I don’t know personally but whose 600-bookstore tour a year or two ago is legend. I got the GPS in January so I’d have time to practice, fell in love with it immediately, and quickly became completely dependent on it. Her. I call her Sadie. (I’ve since learned that almost everybody names their GPS, talks to it, and feels as if they have a relationship with it.)

Unfortunately, my own Sadie developed laryngitis the day before the start of my trip, so I had to rely on my rental car providers for a GPS. My first experience was good: Avis provided a unit that was less advanced than my own, but when I turned it on, there was Sadie. Same voice, same patience with my mistakes on the road (“Recalculating,” she says calmly), same perfect navigational timing.

Next state, next rental car: Disaster! Alamo is a lot cheaper than Avis, and their GPS is correspondingly less advanced. Not only did this strange woman—not my Sadie!—fail to announce the names of streets, but she failed to pick me up on satellite as a went around and around confusing airport boulevards, ending in a Walmart parking lot having a meltdown on the cell phone to my husband in New York. “I don’t know where I am!” I wailed. (He’s used to this. His daughter once phoned from Bruges to say she was lost, but that’s another story.)

Not-Sadie finally located me on satellite and guided me more or less to my hotel, which turned out to be a little inn so secluded that I drove around the block several times before I figured out how to arrive, as opposed to being almost there and lost again. I did ask: the next-door neighbor had never heard of it. It’s that hidden. You have to walk through a jungle to find the office. I was still getting lost between bed and breakfast the next morning.

Let’s see, what else on Day 6? No air conditioning in my tropical room. They offered to move me, but considering I still have bricks—I mean books—in my suitcase, I settled for a fan. My next-stop bookstore canceled because their books hadn’t arrived, and being a chain rather than an indie, they couldn’t make do with my copies. I called my 88-year-old cousin, who had invited her book club to that event. She didn’t think they’d mind—actually, she said she didn’t think they’d care—but there was a hitch to our plan for a nice familial visit: she was about to go to the hospital for an emergency procedure.

At that point, I decided that if you can only take one indispensable tool, forget the books. Forget the GPS. Just make sure you pack your resilience. The book tour will kill you without it.

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane...

Elizabeth Zelvin

The Peter, Paul, and Mary song, one of my favorites, has been running through my head these days as I email and pack and organize the hell out of my life for my very first book tour. For those who may not know, nowadays only bestselling and celebrity authors get the traditional publisher-sponsored tour. For the rest of us, it’s a do-it-yourself venture—and essential to success for a debut mystery author. Luckily, I’m enjoying the process enormously, in an overwhelmed and anxious kind of way.

One big advantage I have over some writers doing this is that I adore public speaking. Talking or sharing my work with an audience, for me, taps into the same hunger for connection that, in my “other hat” as a therapist, I express through listening.

For example, I’m proud that on occasion I have been able to make people cry. As a poet, that’s meant I’ve moved them. As a therapist, it’s meant I’ve helped them tap into something deep and genuine that they need to release. As for making them laugh—what a high! I’m not a constant comedian, but on a few memorable occasions, some going back decades, I’ve been able to set a big group roaring with laughter. Those memories are indelible. In fact, I’d call each one a peak experience.

Another asset: as a veteran of thirty years of poetry readings, I am thoroughly familiar with the event to which no one comes. I remember one in a Brooklyn Heights art gallery in which the sole attendees were the husband of the other poet who was supposed to read with me (she had the flu), my parents, the woman who ran the art gallery, and a crazy person who wandered in off the street. The latter, by the way, is a perennial feature of such events. My recent book launch for Death Will Get You Sober—very well attended, I'm glad to say—ended with my husband helping the bookstore staff escort a drunk off the premises.

Experienced writers and publicists have told me that the primary agenda on a book tour is getting to know the booksellers along the route. Selling books is a bonus. In fact, I’ve heard numerous authors say that visiting a bookstore generated sales not at the event but later on, as people who may have met them briefly at the event come back to buy signed stock, ie the copies of their books that the author autographed for the bookstore to display. I’ve taken this approach to heart and made mystery bookstores the milestones of my tour. In towns along the way—or towns where I have friends—that don’t have a store devoted to mystery, I’ll visit independent bookstores that are friendly to genre fiction. And I’ll do “meet and greet” events in some of the chains as well.

At my publicist’s suggestion, I’ve added libraries to the mix. I’ve become addicted to library conventions, which are a terrific opportunity to meet librarians—enthusiastic readers all, and many with impressive budgets for new books—while hanging out with other mystery writers at the exhibit table of Mystery Writers of America or Sisters in Crime. Some of the librarians I’ve met at these huge events have been happy to have me come and give a talk to the general public or the mystery book club at their library. And I'm delighted to visit their libraries.

From the initial response, my willingness to tour and schmooze with book people makes not only the pros but readers happy, especially if they live in small towns in the country. For example, a cousin of mine who lives in rural New Jersey helped me contact his local librarian, and as a result I got not only a date for a signing and discussion but the following delightful letter from his 9-year-old daughter:

Dear Liz,
Congradulations about your book. I saw your summary about yourself at the Ringwood Public Library and I hear that you are coming to the library at my place to talk about your book. Congradulations!
Your cousin,
Emily

Solitary writers? I don't know any

Sandra Parshall

Mystery writers, as much as any other authors, like to play up the image of the solitary wordsmith pecking away (preferably in an unheated attic), writing about imaginary people but shunning contact with the real kind.

Attend a mystery conference and you’ll see how absurd that notion is. Mystery writers are the friendliest people I’ve ever met, and many are likely to give you a big hug even if your previous acquaintance has been limited to online exchanges. (I’ve gotten used to people I’ve never met throwing their arms around me, but I'll admit it was startling at first.) In between conferences, those online chats keep everybody in touch, but there’s nothing like a mystery con to make a writer feel like part of a huge community of authors.

I’m only going to two conferences this year, and the first, Malice Domestic, is now past, leaving behind a lingering nostalgia for the energy and enthusiasm of a big crowd of writers and fans. Okay, I’ll admit Malice Domestic was more exciting last year, when I was an Agatha nominee (and winner). But this year was great in its own way because four friends from the Guppies Chapter of Sisters in Crime were nominated.

Liz Zelvin, my blog sister, was nominated for Best Short Story, as was Nan Higginson. Beth Groundwater was nominated for Best First Novel for A Real Basket Case. Hank Phillippi Ryan won the prize for her first novel, Prime Time. Here they are: Liz, Beth, Hank, and Nan.


They’re all terrific writers, and you’ll be hearing a lot more from and about them in the future.

The personal highlight of Malice this year came when a woman in the audience at my panel (“After the Agatha: You’ve won! What’s next?”) revealed that she is one of Poisoned Pen Press’s manuscript screeners and was delighted to have played a part in getting my first book, The Heat of the Moon, published. I wanted to find her and thank her afterward, but she had vanished. I hope she knows her words gave me a warm glow that's going to last a while.

So far everything I’ve done at Malice has been tied to The Heat of the Moon. In 2006, the book had just been published and my only goal was to make people aware of it. In 2007, I was on the Best First Novel nominees panel and feeling a little anxious that THOTM would overshadow the newly-released Disturbing the Dead. This year, I was on a panel of past Agatha winners, having fun but regretting that I didn't have another brand-new book in hand to talk about.

What’s in store for me next spring? Even I’m not sure yet. But I know I’ll be at Malice, getting and giving hugs, exhausting my cheek muscles with nonstop smiling, and enjoying the great company.

More of my Malice Domestic photos are posted at: www.flickr.com/photos/guppies/

Learning Today’s Publishing While U Wait

Elizabeth Zelvin

I first said I wanted to be a writer in 1951. I got my first rave rejection, for a children’s story, in 1970. (“So the next sentence should be an offer of contract. Unfortunately, Mr. Nixon…the economy….” Some things never change. And some things a writer never forgets.) I had an agent but failed to sell three mystery manuscripts in 1975 or so. I began my current journey toward publication in 2002, and my mystery came out just ten days ago.

What’s changed in publishing since 1951, or even 1991? What hasn’t changed? Small companies that cherished their authors and readers have become conglomerates focused on the bottom line as calculated by computers. Some have stopped publishing mysteries as a result. I know personally at least two award-nominated authors whose series have died because houses whose names were synonymous with mysteries—Walker for hardcovers, Pocket Books for paperbacks—stopped putting out that kind of book.

Thanks to the Internet, I know dozens, perhaps hundreds of mystery writers trying to break into print. I was one of them for five years between completing the first draft and getting an offer for Death Will Get You Sober. The process is rigorous and discouraging. The odds against are enormous. The pool of writers is vast and the pool of publishers small, even including small presses. My mantras throughout those five years were, “Talent, persistence, and luck,” and, “Don’t quit five minutes before the miracle.” May you never experience such a long five minutes!

Waiting was agony, and so were the many, many rejections. It was hard not to take them personally, even though thanks to the Internet I was in touch with others getting the same scribbled notes on their query letters, the same coffee-stained manuscripts returned; even though, in the long run, I came to agree with and learn from some of the criticisms offered.

Looking back, however, I can see that not a single day of that interminable wait was truly wasted. I used it to learn the craft of today’s mystery writing, which differs from the standards of twenty-five years ago in structure and pace and point of view and how people interact and what’s a viable motive for murder among other elements. And I served a priceless apprenticeship—in Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, e-lists like DorothyL and Murder Must Advertise, and social networks like CrimeSpace—in the business of 21st century publishing.

As a result, I'm arriving on the field well equipped to beat the odds. Will I succeed? As Dick Francis has written, anything can happen in a horse race. The same is true of the gamble of mystery publishing. But at least I’m not starting out with blinders on. I find that when well-meaning friends offer suggestions or ask questions, I can bring a lot of knowledge to my answers. Just a few:

Q. Why don’t you go on Oprah?
A. That would be great—do you know anyone who has a contact with her? You can’t send her your book—it doesn’t work that way. She has to find it for herself.

Q. I’ll wait for the paperback to come out.
A. Unfortunately, if we don’t sell enough of the hardcover, the publisher won’t bring out a paperback. The book will go out of print, and in most cases, no other publisher will take the series.

Q. What about John Grisham and J.K. Rowling?
A. The odds are about the same as winning the lottery.

Q. The publisher doesn’t arrange your book tour?
A. No, not for a debut fiction author unless you’re a celebrity or have written a blockbuster. But that doesn’t mean the publisher’s publicity department does nothing. My publicist at St. Martin’s has worked actively with me to sell the book to booksellers, make sure reviewers get it, and make the most of any kind of hook so I’ll stand out from the crowd.

Q. Isn’t MySpace just for kids?
A. Not at all. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the process of building up to 1160 friends on MySpace. They include fellow writers, mystery lovers, and people in recovery from alcoholism, other addictions, and codependency—the very people who might get a kick out of Death Will Get You Sober. There’s a culture and a community on MySpace, and it’s fascinating. You can learn so much about people—their interests, their dreams, their heroes—as well as what they read and whether they drink. What a great way to find readers!

Telling A Story in 28 Lines

Elizabeth Zelvin

I was amazed when I first heard of flash fiction: super-short stories that do the job in 1500 words, 1000, or even 500. How can that possibly be done? I marveled. And when I began to read some flash mysteries, I was impressed at how some writers manage to condense a story arc, breathe life into their characters, even surprise us with an unexpected twist within that very short framework.

But why should I be surprised? Before embarking on the quest for publication of my first mystery novel—and the writing of several more 70,000-word manuscripts along the way—I was a poet for thirty years. Poets routinely tell stories in far less than 500 words. My most recent one, appearing this month in the Jewish-themed journal Poetica, takes 167 words—168 including the title—just 28 lines.

My poem is called “Miriam,” and it’s a midrash. Based on an ancient Hebrew word, a midrash is an interpretation or exegesis of a Bible verse or, by extension, any myth or archetype. Not being a Biblical scholar, I first heard the word in connection with feminist retellings of traditional stories. For a while there, among Jewish women poets, everybody had an Eve poem, a Sarah poem, a Lilith poem. Feminist poets reimagined Persephone, Mary Magdalene, Grendel’s mother. Nor must we limit the concept to women’s writing. We might argue that each of the tales in James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories is a midrash. Come to think of it, most of his subjects are women: Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood. Being a feminist myself, I’d say that’s because women’s stories have been in most radical need of reinterpretation.

But back to my “Miriam” poem. Miriam was the sister of Moses and Aaron. She was with them when the Jews escaped from slavery in Egypt. It’s a great story: Moses pointed his staff at the Red Sea, the waters parted so the Jews could cross and then came together again so that Pharaoh and his troops, pursuing, drowned. And what did Miriam do? According to the Old Testament, “And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.” (Exodus 15:20) Or, in modern speech, Miriam led the women in singing and dancing. That’s all it says.

At this time of year, Jews all over the world celebrate Passover to commemorate the Exodus. At the ritual meal, the Seder, we read the Haggadah, which is not exactly a telling of the story, more like bits of the story and the notes of a lot of rabbis arguing over the exact interpretation of every word and phrase in the story. In my family, the children used to be bored to death before we got to eat. Nowadays, many less traditional families create their own Seder rituals, their own versions of the Haggadah. In our house, we use parts of something called the Egalitarian Haggadah, which explains that the Jews took with them Egyptian goods that they considered four hundred years’ worth of back wages. It also includes a prayer for vegetarians to substitute for the part about animal sacrifice.

One feature of the traditional Seder is Elijah’s Cup. We fill a glass of wine for the prophet Elijah and open the door to our home, not only so that Elijah can come in and bless those gathered to feast but as a sign that we welcome the stranger in our midst. Many feminist households have added Miriam’s Cup. I liked that idea and hunted through the flea markets till I found the perfect Miriam’s Cup: a delicately etched wine glass flushed with pink and rimmed with gold. And that got me thinking about Miriam.

Because I’m a story teller, I thought: what’s the story? Here they are, at the edge of the desert where they’ll spend the next forty years wandering (though they don’t know that yet). They’ve just fled their homes in such a hurry they didn’t even have time to bake bread (hence matzoh). They’ve miraculously crossed a great sea without getting their feet wet. They’ve had soldiers and chariots after them. Now their enemies are dead. That’s great news. But dancing? Singing and dancing? Under what circumstances could that possibly have happened?

Here’s my story, in poem form:

Miriam

the men sit perched on rocks
their faces grimed
furrowed with runnels of sweat
their sandals crusted in Red Sea salt
stunned by their change of fortune
the power in Moses’ staff
the thunder of the sea overrunning Pharoah
the scream of terrified horses
the crack of chariots breaking up
the wall of water at their heels
they stare outward into the desert
will not meet one another’s eyes

Miriam moves among the women
offering one the water skin
another a cloth to wipe her dusty feet
a quiet word here
there a hand pressed gently on a shoulder
crouched where they dropped when Moses called a halt
they have instinctively formed a circle

Miriam completes her round
pours the last few drops of water
on a corner of her shawl
passes it across her face
shaking off weariness like a scratchy cloak
she gathers them with her eyes
her slow smile blossoms
“Ladies,” she says, “we’re free!”
“Who wants to dance?”

If you want to read it at your Seder, please do!

On the Launch Pad

Sharon Wildwind

Tonight at 7:00 P.M., at the Mysterious Bookstore in New York City, something wonderful happens. Our own Elizabeth Zelvin, launches Death Will Get You Sober. If you’re in the New York area, drop by. If you’re not in the area, as unfortunately I’m not, join me in sending cyber-congrats to Liz.

A book launch is very much like a christening. All the hard work of the labor-and-delivery is over, all the hard work of raising the baby is ahead, but today it’s party time.

Recently I was invited to a christening for the daughter of a woman with whom I work. Her daughter has been born into a culture that truly believes it takes a whole village to raise a child. This fortunate little girl has over 50 godparents, some of them present in the church for the christening, some of them far away in the tiny village where the parents lived before they immigrated to Canada.

I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the literary world, but those of us who write in the mystery genre, come from that kind of a village, too.

I think one of the reasons that mysteries continue to have a solid sales record, even in a time of declining reading and a tough economy, is that each one of us cares about the other getting it right.

Some of you may be familiar with Tom Clancy’s book, The Hunt for Red October. The way the red banner northern fleet pursued the submarine, Red October, is nothing compared to the way mystery writers pursue information for one another. Want to know how to blow up a car? The rules for Federal Marshals carrying guns on airplanes? How about, a prescription medication that will make Great Aunt-Matilda appear ga-ga? All you have to do is ask.

If no one has the answer, they immediately invoke the six-degrees-of separation, as in, “My husband’s, uncle’s, best friend’s, next-door neighbor works for the F.B.I. Do you want me to put you in touch with her?” And then there are the research stories. My personal favorite involves repeatedly stabbing a thawing turkey carcass to determine how difficult it is to insert a stiletto between two ribs.

The degree to which we support one another is truly amazing. We not only read one another’s books, but make a point of asking booksellers and librarians why they aren’t stocking other authors. We form book signing tour groups and blog groups—like this one—to promote one another’s work. We care about who’s sick, who has a new grandchild, who is going through a rough patch, who is due for cyber-champaign, dark chocolate, and dancing on the tables in celebration.

So, come five o’clock tonight, my time, I’ll be dancing on the table for you, Liz. Hope you have a great time!
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Writing quote for the week:

If you drop a dream, it breaks.
~Denise Dietz, mystery writer