Guest Blogger Colleen Collins

Missing Persons 101 by Colleen Collins

And the winner of the disguised book safe is......Jane. Congratulations! Jane, please get in touch with Colleen at cocowrites2 at gmail.com. (Change the at to @.) Thank you so much Colleen for being our guest this weekend and thank you to everyone who stopped by and commented.

[*Copyright Colleen Collins 2008. All rights reserved. You may not duplicate or distribute this article without written permission from the author.]

Are you writing a story where your fictional PI, law enforcement officer, or amateur sleuth needs to track a missing person? Or maybe you’re simply curious about how to start looking for that long-lost friend? As a PI who is often is hired by attorneys, corporations, and others to perform “locates” (a term that means to find someone), I can tell you some basic, tried-and-true steps for finding people. Because I’m also a writer, I’ve added some questions at the end of this article to ask yourself about a character (such as a PI) who specializes in finding missing persons.

And because I wanted to add some fun, I’m giving away a free gift at the end of the blog. On Sunday, June 1, I’ll throw all the names who posted a comment/question into a virtual hat--one person will be picked to win a disguised book safe (a book with a secret storage compartment).

For the rest of this article, I’ll mostly refer to how a PI does locates because that’s my profession, although as mentioned above, these steps can be used by any fictional character or real person. Also, rather than trying to be politically correct by using the combo-pronoun he/she, I’ll simply switch between he and she.

So let’s get started with an overview of PIs as finders of lost souls…

How Much of a PI’s Work Involves Finding People?

Quite a bit, actually. A large percentage of a PI's work involves finding persons whose location is unknown to the PI. For example, a PI might do a locate for the following:

· To serve a lawsuit on someone whose current address is unknown.

· To locate a debtor who absents himself from his residence with some frequency to frustrate the creditor.

· To find a key witness.

Most people who don’t want to be found do it sloppily, leaving a trail of clues in their wake. Others, however, are more careful and deliberate in hiding their tracks. For example, a father who has abducted his daughter and has taken off to another state might be more deliberate in his efforts, might travel farther, and has probably covered his tracks more thoroughly than a "credit skip.” (Originally, a “skip” referred to collection agencies’ attempts to locate a debtor who’d “skipped out” on his obligation. Today, the terms “skip” and “locate” have essentially blended into the same meaning).

What Steps Might a PI Take to Start Finding Someone?

Here’s the fun part. Finding a missing person (or one whose location is unknown) might involve one or more of the following tasks:

Checking the local telephone directory for each city in the area. Look for telephone listings under the missing person’s name or even a spouse’s name. It’s surprising how many times a simple check in the telephone book does the trick. We know a PI who was contacted by an attorney who wanted to locate a missing person. The PI looked up the person’s name in the local telephone book, forwarded that number to the attorney, and charged $75 to do so! As the PI said, “If the attorney was too dumb to look it up, then he paid me to do it.”

Calling directory assistance. After all, they’d have the most current up-to-date information publicly available.

Searching databases that contain public records and credit header information. Some of these are proprietary and require one to be a PI, law enforcement officer, government official, etc. But there are also many, many online public records than anyone can check (for example county assessor’s sites have lists of owners of real property, along with information about the assessed value of that property; privately owned cemeteries and mortuaries will have burial permits, funeral service registers, funeral and memorial arrangements, obituaries, intermediate orders, and perpetual care arrangements; Social Security Death Index provides lookup on whether a person is deceased (http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/); and one can even look up a seller/member on EBay at http://tinyurl.com/6q6ol.

Interviewing people who may have known the subject (for example, past and current neighbors as well as with relatives, past and current landlords, co-workers, and known associates).

Researching court records (In our class, www.writingprivateinvestigators.com, we discuss this in more depth. For this article, however, I’ll point you to a few links about accessing court records:

· A recent online article about public access to court records: http://www.prlog.org/10049908-public-access-to-court-records.html

· Another recent online article with tips on accessing courts and court records: http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/practical-tips-accessing-courts-and-court-records

Searching the Internet (using engines such as Google, AltaVista, FAST! and MSN Search for blogs, images, news, etc). You’d be surprised what you can find by simply typing in a telephone number into the Google search window, for example.

Checking Internet communities (such as MySpace, (www.myspace.com/, Facebook (www.facebook.com, etc). We located a missing person who was on the run, but she still found time to log into her MySpace account and blog away.

Putting an ad in the local paper (and in the papers in surrounding areas) where the missing person may reside. Some newspapers also provide the option to do an online search of their archives.

Building a simple website to advertise who you’re looking for. It’s easy to build a simple, often free, website these days. Plus, many services will host/advertise it at no charge.

Signing up with subscription-based services for alumni organizations the person may have belonged to (such as Classmates.com or Alumni.Net). Sometimes high schools have their own alumni organization, so check the person’s former high school’s website and contact the alumni listed there (who are sometimes listed by years of graduation).

Checking the Coles Directory (a handy tool found at the reference desk of many public libraries). Coles Directory publishes household directories for every major population area in the United States and Canada. This book cross-references addresses and names, and provides places of employment for many of those listed.

Conducting surveillance at locations where the subject has been known to "hang out" (everything from bars to Twelve Step Meetings to softball games).

Searching garbage (called “trash hits,” “trash covers,” and our personal favorite “refuse archeology”) for uncovering details about the missing person’s life. Trash, after all, is ripe (no pun intended) with details about people’s lives. It’s amazing how people put their most secret information, from receipts, phone numbers, personal letters, credit card statements, phone bills, etc. into the trash. We don’t recommend this as a real-life approach to finding someone because let’s be honest, not only are there different laws protecting people’s trash in different cities and you could get arrested for trespassing or worse. Also, it could be potentially dangerous for you to start lurking around someone’s home waiting to skulk away with their refuse. However, think how great this would be to use in a story. A fictional PI/sleuth might find return addresses in the subject's trash, such as that belonging to a family member, where the missing person might have taken refuge. Or imagine a humorous scene where an obsessively neat PI (think Monk) is forced to dig through somebody’s trash for evidence.

It was through such refuse archeology that we found a five-year-old who had been abducted by her father. We searched the despondent, unemployed father's garbage (he had failed to return his daughter to the custodial parent at the scheduled time) after we had gone to his apartment and learned that he had suddenly moved earlier in the day. We found shipping boxes, with Christmas labels, which appeared to have contained Christmas presents that he had discarded. Ultimately, it was one of those addresses in a mid-west state where authorities located the child with her father.

Note: As a practical matter, all of the above techniques are often used in combination. In our investigative business, we’ll typically start with Internet/database searches, then work our way up to more specialized techniques (placing ads, interviewing neighbors, etc.). If you’re writing a story with a fictional PI/sleuth, your character can employ bravado, intuition, and creativity while combining these different techniques!

What Character Traits Apply to a PI/Sleuth Who Specializes in Missing Persons?

If you’re writing a story with a PI who specializes in finding missing persons, here’re some things to think about:

· Does your fictional PI have a strong, innate curiosity?

· How tenacious is your fictional PI? This kind of research can be time-consuming, detailed, frustrating, with lots of dead-ends before finding a clue.

· Is your fictional PI a people person? Because most likely he’ll be talking to a number of people and trying to, in the course of the conversations, pull the nuggets of information he needs.

· What kind of tools does your PI use? Does she have access to a computer, different proprietary databases, an adequate vehicle to conduct surveillance? Is she comfortable/knowledgeable doing research in public libraries, courthouses, and the like?

· Does your PI like putting together jigsaw puzzles? Because that’s what locating missing persons is like—assembling varied pieces of information from disparate sources to get, finally, a clear picture.

Thank you to Darlene Ryan and Poe’s Deadly Daughters for inviting me to be their guest blogger. Feel free to post questions/comments, and I’ll be happy to respond. At the end of Sunday, a name will be picked to win the disguised book safe!

My porch or yours???

By Lonnie Cruse

When I'm away from home and need a stress-free place to go, at least in my mind, I visit a porch solidly built in the twenties or thirties or maybe even the forties. A porch where people once sat and rocked and watched the occasional car passing by, stirring up the dust covering the road that runs just beyond the iron gate. A porch where bees buzz drowesly from bloom to bloom on the climbing rosebush carefully tied to a nearby post. A porch where birds flit back and forth from the ground to a nest crammed into the eaves, carefully building it even higher or stuffing fat worms into tiny beaks.

The woman seated there waves the cardboard fan, given her at the last funeral she attended, back and forth in front of her tired face, to ward off the summer's heat and flies. The man mops his brow with a red kerchief and comments on this year's crop. His overalls need washing after long hours in the nearby fields.

I'm seated in the swing, unseen but listening in. Unseen because the man and woman are long gone and the porch sits abandoned, still attached to the old house, also abandoned, having outlived the family and its usefullness. And I'm only here in my imagination.

One of these days I'll get out of my car and go sit on one of those porches for real, tresspassing if need be. I love looking at old houses, imagining the people who once lived there.

Nearly every house has some sort of porch, or stoop, if you will. Be it a small square of concrete, just large enough to stand on while unlocking the door. If the owner is lucky, there is an overhang or awning above to keep off the rain while you fumble for your keys. Then there are porches with awnings or covers that are large enough to sit under and enjoy the view, or feed the dog and stay dry during a rain shower, or to water the plants from. And who can deny the beauties of a screened-in porch, fending off the attacks of the various summer insects who live only to irritate?

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a porch person. In nearly forty-five years of marriage, the very best gift hubby has ever given me is a sun porch. When I'm at home, I practically live there. But let me back up. When we moved to our current home eleven years ago, he had two concrete porches poured, one for the front door, one for the back, each supported underneath by brick, with three steps leading up, but no cover to protect us from the elements. There are no trees nearby, so sitting on the porches meant sitting in the hot sun, or the brisk wind, or the rain, assuming I was that hardy. I love watching it rain, having grown up in the desert, but I'm not quite that hardy.

We were planning our fortieth anniversary celebration a few years ago and decided to use what we'd saved for a trip to buy lumber for a porch instead. And windows. And dry wall. And paint. And . . . you get the picture. Hubby built most of it all by himself in nearly a year. (Yes, I helped when I could, but I'm not much of a carpenter.) Now that lovely porch sports fourteen windows and a door and a futon to sit on and watch the rain or take a nap and a dining table to feed family and friends and watch the birds and squirrels eating with us. Or the occasional deer who meanders by. And there is his tomato plot just beyond the porch to keep an eye on. And mine. I'm ahead of him so far this season, but tomatoes are fickle, so who knows which of us will harvest first?

There is a point in here somewhere. Ah, yes, there it is. Back in the day--as a friend of mine says--before air conditioning and television took over our homes and our lives, people sat on porches and fanned and watched the world pass by. I wonder how much we all miss out on now, sitting inside where it's admittedly cooler, watching a fictional world pass by.

May I invite you to join me by going outside on your porch, whatever size it is, or perhaps out in the yard, and look at life out there? Listen to the birds or the insects or the rain? De-stress? I'll be drinking a cup of cinnamon tea. Probably be wearing my favorite robe. If you'd like to join me in a toast, I'm in the mid-west, so point your cup that'a way. We should probably have some cake too, don't you think?

I wish you a lovely summer of birds and trees and breezes and rain and memories with your family. And time on a porch. Mine or yours?

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.

The Enduring Charm of James Bond

Sandra Parshall

The debonair manner, the confidence in the face of danger. The tailor-made clothes and meticulous grooming. The cool gadgets and the hot women.

Is there any corner of the world where James Bond is unknown? Agent 007 is the perfect spy, without baggage or scruples, a refreshing over-the-top contrast to Le Carre’s angst-ridden heroes and the morally muddled types springing up in today’s espionage fiction. Bond has never been about making us think. Bond is entertainment, and he’s still going strong 56 years after he first appeared in Casino Royale.

It’s only fitting that we pause today to raise a glass to Ian Fleming, Bond’s creator, on the 100th anniversary of the author’s birth. To mark the occasion, everyone who leaves a comment about Bond today will be entered in a drawing to win a complete 14-book set of Penguin’s new paperback editions of the Bond novels and short stories. Penguin began releasing the new editions, with appropriately sexy cover art, in 2002, the 50th anniversary of Casino Royale’s publication.

In Britain, Fleming and his creation are being celebrated in a year-long exhibit at London’s Imperial War Museum and a set of commemorative stamps. A web site -- www.ianflemingcentenary.com –- is devoted to the author’s life and career. Not bad for a guy who called his first book “an oafish opus” and declared, “I’m not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.”

By most accounts, Fleming drew on his own experiences and habits when he wrote about Bond. As a foreign correspondent, a banker and stockbroker, and a senior naval intelligence officer, he moved in sophisticated circles and had the reputation of a ladies’ man. He once borrowed his mother’s chauffeur-driven Daimler for a date with a dancer named Storm and returned it with black boa feathers strewn over the back seat. Mum was
not amused.

By the time Fleming began publishing the Bond books, he had married, and for the last 12 years of his life he followed a rigid writing schedule. He produced the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and a travel memoir titled Thrilling Cities in addition to 12 Bond novels and two collections of short stories about the character. He died of pleurisy in 1964 at age 56.

Forty million copies of the Bond books were sold during Fleming’s lifetime, and the first Bond film – Dr. No, starring Sean Connery – was released two years before his death, but he didn’t live long enough to see Bond mania hit its true zenith, propelled by the most successful movie franchise in history. Today a whole generation knows Bond primarily as a movie character who never ages even as the plotlines and the weapons evolve to mirror the changing times. Another new Bond movie comes out in the fall. Published reports have Leonardo DiCaprio planning a biopic in which he’ll play Fleming.

Bond’s adventures have also been turned into graphic novels, and this year – today, in fact – Doubleday brings out a new full-length Bond novel, Devil May Care, written by Sebastian Faulks. But to find the real Bond, the original, you have to turn to Fleming’s novels and short stories.

If you’d like a chance to win the complete set of Penguin’s handsome new paperback editions, leave a comment about what James Bond means to you. What do you think explains the enduring popularity of the character? Did you become a fan through the books or the films? Do you think the movies are true to the character as Fleming wrote him? Which actor do you think has best brought Bond to life on the screen? Everyone who comments will be entered in a drawing for the books, and I'll notify the lucky winner in a couple of days.

Fast and Dirty

Sharon Wildwind

When I was almost forty, I asked a young man half my age if he would take me through an experience I’d wanted to have for a long time, but one I needed a partner to enjoy. He agreed, but said I’d need to go shopping first. One Saturday morning, he took me to the most interesting store. I was the only woman there, but as my guide, my friend explained all the merchandise to me and helped me pick out what he called “a starter set.”

That afternoon, as my GM, he helped me use my new dice to roll up a character, and I played my very first RPG. GM, of course, is Game Master, and RPG is role-playing game. If I remember correctly, that first game was a cyber-punk setting, something á la William Gibson’s Neuromancer universe.

Over the next five years, I gamed in a lot of universes: cyber-punk, Cuthulian 1920s, science fiction, and my eventual favorite, what’s now called steam-punk. One of the reasons I came to love the RPG Space 1889 was that the characters were fast and dirty. I don’t mean that they lacked personal standards of either morality or cleanliness, but they were quick to roll up. To play, all I needed to determine was a primary career, a secondary career, and a handful of attributes. A few rolls of the dice, and I was done and ready to play.

Since life is a spiral, and we keep coming back to the same experiences, I’ve recently gone through a similar experience in regards to my fiction characters. Over the years, I’ve collected a fat notebook of “things to know about your characters.” I managed to distill the notebook down to one-page, typed, single-spaced of essential things to know.

The problem was that each book I write tends to have more characters. The one I’m currently working on has 25 speaking parts, of whom 11 are characters continuing from previous books in the series, and 14 are completely new. It dawned on me that if I did a complete character sketch for each character, I’d probably be ready to begin writing sometime in 2011. Then I remembered Space 1889, and how it was possible to start playing a game knowing only some bare facts, and develop the character as the game was played.

Using that logic, I scaled down to 10 key character points. If I know these 10 things about my character, I can start writing and allow the rest of the character development to come along as I write the book.

1. What is the character’s name? Does the name mean anything special in their family?

2. How old is the character? What year did she turn 6, 15, 18? The reason I picked those three specific ages is that they are often turning points. At 6, most children enter school. It makes a huge difference to who the character is if she turned 6 in Austria, at the beginning of World War II, or turned 6 in Kansas in 1985. Fifteen is the point where a lot of cultural norms are laid down. It’s the music we hear at 15, the clothes we wear, or our favorite junk food that, almost always, marks the "good old days." At 18, career and education choices are often made. Again, it would make a difference to how a black teen-age character was shaped depending of if he turned 18 in downtown Detroit in 1968, or in suburban Boston in 2004.

3. What is the person’s gender and racial background?

4. What’s the person level of education? What is her work? I define work as the thing that most fills her day. It doesn’t have to be paid work, though it likely is.

5. What is her sexual orientation? Is she in a relationship and how is that going?

6. Dominant impression? This comes from Debra Dixon’s Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts. Two words—one adjective and one noun—that summarize the character. The noun is not the same thing as a profession, but it may indicate a role similar to a profession. For example, the character might run a corporation, but she’s also a woman who likes control. She likes to be in charge. So when I say her dominant impression is a “stern boss,” I’m referring to that need for control, not the fact that she occupies the CEO’s office.

7. What is the character’s tag line? This is a second idea from Debra Dixon. For E.T., the tag line was “phone home.” For Indiana Jones, it’s “Why does it always have to be snakes?” It’s one sentence that describes the character’s main motivation. Though we try to avoid cliches in writing, this is one place that cliches are useful. A tag line of “party hearty,” would immediately give you a different impression of a woman than if she had the tag line “nothing says loving like something from the oven.”

8. Flawed life view comes from Liz Lounsbury. How has the character got it wrong about life/and or relationships?

9. Donald Maass introduced me to the line she will not cross. What is the one thing the character would never do? At least, until this book, then she is going to do it and have to live with the consequences.

10. What jobs does this character have? Jobs are different from work above. It’s at least three good reasons that this character is in this book. Carolyn Wheat identified jobs as an essential thing to know about each character.

Every answer to the 10 first questions should have stress built into them. This is your first opportunity as a writer not to be nice to your characters. Rev em’ up, give em’ juice, and let the game begin.
-----
Writing quote for the week:

My secret is to stress my heroine to the limit, until all turns out well in the end. Oh, she might have a bit of fun along the way, and she might think things are going well. But she's simply deluded.~Jan Christensen, mystery and romance writer

What I Learned from My Drug Overdose

by Julia Buckley

Whenever I used to hear of some famous person dying of an "accidental" drug overdose, I would tend to sneer. Didn't they have to consciously take the drugs, therefore rendering it not accidental? I sat on the pedestal of righteousness--a person who had never taken recreational drugs and rarely needed pharmaceutical ones.

Recently, though, some things have changed my perception of just what drug overdose means, and how it can happen.

First of all, anyone who takes more than the recommended dosage of pain reliever is overdosing on drugs. I sat on a consumer opinion panel last year for a company that was developing a new pain reliever; they wanted to talk to women about pain. The women on my panel tended to have intense pain, like migraine headaches or severe menstrual cramps. These were smart people: sensible homemakers, businesswomen, teachers. And yet almost every woman on the panel admitted that she did not base her dosage on what was recommended, but on what it took to relieve her suffering. One woman said that it was not unusual for her to take seven or eight Advil at a time, because anything less simply didn't put a dent in her pain.

That was surprising to me at the time. But after yesterday, when I overdosed on drugs, I can see things far more clearly.

I have been fighting a sinus infection for about a month. I've tried an expensive assortment of over-the-counter remedies because my doctor doesn't think I need an antibiotic. Nothing seemed to work, and I was getting most tired of not being able to breathe. One thing that gave me temporary relief was sinus nasal spray. I started with a four hour medicine and then purchased a stronger one which had "12 Hour" in its title. The dosage was clear even in the name of the product. So I would use it every twelve hours, and it allowed me to breathe.

Yesterday, though, I mowed the lawn and weeded the garden, and perhaps all the plants or pollen or whatever made my condition worse, because my head swelled up. I took my handy nasal spray and waited for a few hours, only to find that it hadn't helped: total congestion. So I went into my bathroom and took the 4-hour nasal spray, which didn't seem to do much. So a few hours later I took the 12-hour spray again. Three doses, maybe nine hours. And the most important thing here is that I didn't even think about it. If I had any conscious thought at all, it was "I would like to breathe more freely."

What I didn't contemplate--not once--was that I was pumping a chemical called oxymetazoline into my body, and that more than the required amount, according to the drug's website, "could be very harmful."

I went into my living room and sat down with my family. A few hours later I realized I felt very hot. The room was cool; it was only about fifty degrees outside. I shifted in my chair. I could not find a comfortable position, and my heart was racing as though I had taken a huge dose of caffeine. When I realized that I didn't feel right, I began to suspect (finally) my medicine. I went to the bathroom, retrieved the spray, and read the tiny, tiny print.

I had the sensation that people must feel when they've been bitten by a snake: I could not undo this. It had passed from my membranes into my blood, and now I would have to suffer the consequences. I walked back, a bit disoriented. I had been distracted for hours, losing things, finding them, and then immediately losing them again. My heart was racing, so I tried to do some deep breathing while my husband called a 24-hour pharmacy. There an apathetic yet scornful pharmacist told him that he should keep me from taking any more decongestants.

So I endured my overdose--the racing heart, the suddenly sluggish feeling, the discomfort, the foggy mind--until two in the morning, suffering the dictates of a body ruled by chemicals. And I realized just how foolish I'd been.

Today I am penitent and drug-free. I am craving the spray, though, because I still can't breathe. And here is the lesson I've learned: my problem is mild when all is said and done. But what about people who have really intense pain or very deep depression? Do they, like me, focus not on what they're taking, but on the suffering itself? Do their thoughts pare down to the one vital idea of anything to relieve the pain?

I don't excuse the irresponsible use of drugs, mine or anyone else's. People should read labels and be very careful about what they're putting into their bodies. But I know from experience that overdoses, while not strictly accidental, can certainly be unintentional, if you'll allow the distinction.

I read in the paper last week that more Americans than ever before are on prescription drugs. How many of us can imagine life without our prescriptions? If we can't do without, well, that's dependency, right? And one step beyond drug dependency lies drug abuse, if people make wrong decisions.

Now I know that drug abuse can't be viewed as a problem "out there." It's a problem lurking in our own homes, as near as the tempting products in our medicine cabinets.

Guest Blogger HelenKay Dimon

And the winner is...(I feel like Ryan Seacrest) Dina! Dina please send your address to me--darlene at darleneryan.com Change the "at" to @ of course. Thank you to everyone for your comments and to HelenKay for visiting this weekend. Keep stopping by. We have more giveaways planned.

HelenKay Dimon is the author of Viva Las Bad Boys, Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy, Right Here, Right Now and the upcoming Hard As Nails. Her writing has been called, “witty, romantic, sexy and just plain fun”. And it is. Visit HelenKay at www.helenkaydimon.com

Thank you all for having me here today. It's a special thrill because I stop by frequently both out of a love for the name of the blog and out of a love of reading mysteries, suspense and everything similar. In fact, I had a recent brush with ignorance thanks to the mystery genre. I wish I could say this brush with ignorance was a rare occurrence. Yeah, not so much. Occurs almost daily. This time it happened about 3,000 miles from home. At least it happened in a fun city...

See, I was in New York City for a wedding. In looking for a way to deduct the entire trip without ticking off the IRS, I combined the event with a visit with my editor at Kensington Publishing. This was a time for general sucking up, mixed with a concentrated effort not to do anything stupid. The next day I welcomed the opportunity to sit down and discuss my career (and my desire not to inadvertently destroy it) with my agent. Specifically, we talked about a proposal I'm writing for a romantic mystery series. Some of my books include suspense elements, but they have all been more romance than mystery. I've been looking at trying something new. Honestly, I want to break into a genre that is known for being a bit hard to crack - romantic suspense.

During this conversation, my agent asked a question that stumped me. It wasn't that I was unsure of my answer. If only. No, it really was a matter of not even understanding the question. I hate that. I was even more disgruntled at how, after selling eight novellas and seven single titles, I still am a hopeless novice in this business. I'll whine about that into my laptop and spare you. Back to the discussion with my agent...

His question: What kind of mystery is it?

My answer: Uh, what?

Impressive show on the knowledge of my profession, isn't it? What's worse is that the very first thing that popped into my head - the part I did not say out loud by some miracle - was something of the what the heck is he talking about variety. The uh, what? part was my fall back and slightly more intelligent position. After a few seconds of mindless nothing, a string of mental babble about cozy mysteries, cat mysteries and...well, that was about it...hit me. I somehow managed not to say any of it. Instead, I stayed quiet and nodded. I find the blank face nodding tends to get people explaining. And that's what happened here. My agent talked about women-in-peril stories and serial killer mysteries and a whole bunch of story types I had never even considered Or, to be more precise, had not really thought of as separate types.

So, I'm back to studying again. My respect for the mystery genre demands that I not try to leap in without knowing what I'm doing or what's out there.

Back to my proposal...

Want to see how HelenKay manages to mix suspense into her romance writing? Ask a question, share what type of mystery you're writing--or just say "Hello" in comments. We'll toss all the names in a hat and one person will win a copy of Right Here, Right Now, HelenKay's latest release. Check back here Sunday night to find out the winner.
**And don't forget, you still have time left to bid on the Poe's Deadly Daughter's mystery lover's tote bag in Brenda Novak's Diabetes auction. www.brendanovak.com

Interview with author Patti Abbott . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

Today's post is an interview with short story and blogger author Patti Abbott. I like her blog and invited her to chat with me here. I love reading and writing short stories too, but it's sometimes a tough job.

LC: Please tell us a bit about your short stories. Where can we read them? Is there a general genre or theme, or are you writing all over the map?

PA: I’ve had about 45 short stories published in print and on zines, and maybe another dozen or so flash fiction stories. The first half were exclusively in literary print journals. But I became interested in trying to write stories like the ones I preferred to read: crime stories. And more and more, the literary journals rejected those stories. I found a home at just the right moment with the crime zines.

Almost all of my stories are about flawed individuals who find themselves in a situation where their flaw handicaps them or trips them up. That sounds more highfalutin’ than it is. Even the more literary stories fall into this category: a dying man can’t care for his mentally-challenged son; an estranged brother and sister finally tell each other the truth about their childhood; a man discovers someone else has used his name with more success than he has. You can see these all veer close to crime stories—kill the son; the brother and sister had a background of abuse neither has admitted; a name is stolen.

You can find my short stories in places such as Thuglit, Demolition, Hardluck Stories, The Thrilling Detective, Spinetingler, Pulp Pusher, Plots with Guns, Shred of Evidence, MystericalE, Mouth Full of Bullets, Murdaland, Word Riot, Apollo’s Lyre and several of the zine flash fiction sites. I have a forthcoming story in Crimespree Magazine and stories in Ed Gorman’s Prisoner of Memory and Thuglit’s Sex, Thugs and Rock and Roll.

LC: Wow, some very impressive zines have published you! Congrats! Why short stories instead of novels?

PA: I came to short stories from writing poetry and I didn’t even begin doing that until my mid-forties. More and more poetry journals were writing back to me that my stories were overly narrative. I decided to use one of the poems as an outline for a story and found out they were right. It just fell into place. In writing short stories, I was able to preserve the thing I loved most about writing: agonizing over every word. Novels don’t allow that luxury unless you want to spend ten years writing each one. I also like spending a few weeks with a character(s) and then moving on to a new person with a new problem. Last year I tried to find an agent for a novel in short stories. He said come back when you have a real novel. I have one now but am still at the beginning of the process of finding an agent. And I must say, I return to the short stories with great relief.

LC: Good luck with the agent search. How long does it take you to write a story?

PA: I would say the average story takes me about 3 weeks to write if I am able to spend 3-4 hours a day on it. I don’t know if that’s fast or slow. Probably slow. Every day I begin with the first sentence and rewrite to the last before I move forward so I’m sure the beginnings of my stories are overworked and the ends are a bit rough. But by the time I get to the end I am usually thinking of a new person and his/her problem. No attention span!

LC: How do you market your stories? I understand the market is tight these days.

PA: When I wrote literary stories, I was able to multiple submit, but even with that, it took months to get a response. With the online markets, the response is much faster and I almost never multiple submit. It’s a small world and that’s not playing fair. I’ve had pretty good luck with online zine acceptances. And several times an editor (Tony Black, Kevin Burton Smith, Neil Smith, the guys at Murdaland ) have told me exactly where I lost them and I was able to rewrite to their tastes or needs. I think with zines it is so much about writing the story that particular zine likes to publish. I have great respect for these editors who often spend their own money keeping the sites going. My only wish here would be for a zine that catered to less hard-boiled stories. I love writing both but have a lot more trouble getting the softer stories published. I’d love to start my own zine but I lack the technical skills, I fear. Plus I would find it nearly impossible to reject stories from anyone I knew.

LC: I'd have the same problem with rejecting friend's stories! I've read your blog and it's great. What's your secret to attracting so many readers/commenters.

PA: Thanks so much. Oh, my secret is pretty simple. I read a lot of blogs and comment on their entries. It’s pretty much about mutuality. If I go to someone’s blog and comment now and then and they never respond and never visit my blog, after a while I stop going there unless it’s an informational blog where comments are not expected. Along with that when someone comes onto my blog and comments, I almost always respond to their comment. It’s like leaving a message on an answering machine to me. It’s just impolite not to respond. I know some blogs are too popular to do this and some just don’t operate like this, but at this point, it’s not hard for me.

I also try to vary what I blog about: Detroit, writerly concerns, reading, movies, politics. I think different people respond to different subjects. I try not to talk about myself too much. I rarely stick with reading blogs that read like a diary or a bitchfest. I don’t really think about it too much. Just talk about what’s on my mind.

LC: I think most readers prefer not to read daily posts about the author's private life. You do a terrific job with yours. What does blogging do for you and your writing? Helps? Takes too much time? Keeps you sane? Drives you nuts?

PA: I know blogging takes too much time away from other things but I spend more time reading other blogs than writing mine. That’s even more inexcusable. It does keep me sane though and suits my personality. I have a lot of stress in my life right now and this is better than a shrink for me.

My kids always told me I could ask more questions in ten minutes than anyone in the world and that’s what I do on my blog. I ask questions and I usually get wonderful answers. This week I asked what made people put a book down without finishing it and I got some answers that made me see some flaws in my own writing immediately. It also told me I wasn’t the only one not finishing a lot of books lately.

LC: Ahh, a secret all authors want to know: Why do readers sometimes stop reading. What is your writing schedule like, assuming you have one?

PA: In the summer, I write every day for about 3-4 hours. I have the same schedule the four days a week I don’t work the other nine months. On the days when I go to the office, I work on my current story on my lunch hour and usually for an hour at night. I love those hours most of the time. I know some people say they like “having written” more than the writing itself. But I love those hours writing, especially the ones rewriting.

LC: Who are your writing inspirations? Who do you like to read and why?

PA: Ten years ago my writing inspirations were very different and I would have named Alice Munro, Bobbie Anne Mason, Raymond Carver, Anne Tyler, Richard Bausch, Russell Banks, Anne Beattie, Charlie Baxter, Antonya Nelson. I was still in the throes of my writing classes then. I still love those writers but now I would name Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar, Charles Willeford, Ken Bruen, Daniel Woodrell, Ross McDonald, Stewart O’Nan, Lawrence Block, William Kennedy, Pete Dexter, Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and my daughter, Megan. I can’t say enough about Woodrell’s Winter Bone. I sample a lot of the current writing but hate to name names for fear of leaving someone out. I read a lot of crime and a lot of contemporary literary fiction. I recently enjoyed Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris, which tells the story of the five pictures nominated for best picture in 1967, Also just read Olive Kitteredge by Strout. Amazing.

LC: Very impressive list! Anything else you'd like our readers to know about you?

PA: Yes. I am running a blog project called Friday’s Forgotten Books right now (which Lonnie is kindly participating in) where writers and readers pick a book they believe is neglected or forgotten and tell a little about it on their blog. Every Friday I post the links on my blog. I am always looking for people to do this. So please contact me if you’d like to join in.

I go into used bookstores and see shelf after shelf of books that were well-reviewed and read in the middle of the last century and are all but forgotten now. I am hoping to put these books in the public eye a minute longer before they are all landfill. It breaks my heart to see the writers no one under fifty now remembers. Of course, it was always so, but now everything seems even more transitory.

My blog is http://pattinase.blogspot.com/

Patti's latest blog post is a review of a book by me. Thanks so much for joining us today, Patti and for letting me post on your blog. I hope you get a great response to the forgotten books project.

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.

Interview with Lisa Unger

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


My guest today published four novels in the Lydia Strong series under the name Lisa Miscione before she switched to her married name, Lisa Unger, for publication of the bestselling suspense novels Beautiful Lies and A Sliver of Truth. Her new book, Black Out, will be released May 27 and is already garnering rave reviews and has been named a Booksense Notable Book for June. Lisa was born in Connecticut, but her family moved a lot – as far as Holland and England – during her childhood before settling in New Jersey. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as a publicist for a major publisher. She lives in Florida with her husband and young child.


Q. Would you tell us about your upcoming book, Black Out?

A. Black Out is about a woman name Annie Fowler, whose perfect life in a wealthy Florida beach community is little more than a façade.

She’s literally and figuratively left a horrible past behind -- having fled her true identity and forgotten most of the trauma of her childhood and adolescence. But a series of terrifying events start triggering unwanted memories. And she realizes that she has to face the past she’d rather forget to claim her future -- and save her daughter.

Black Out was my most intense writing experience, and Annie is my darkest, most complicated heroine. I see the resolution of a lot of themes that started in my Lydia Strong books and continued through to Ridley Jones -- the lost girl, fractured identity, how we must claim ourselves rather than wait to be rescued. I felt a terrible urgency to resolve these themes in Black Out.

Q. Why did you decide to use the name Unger after writing four Lydia Strong novels as Lisa Miscione?

A. There are a lot of reasons. First, Beautiful Lies represented such a departure, such an evolution in my writing that it didn’t seem like a Lisa Miscione book at all. I was moving on from the Lydia Strong series and from St. Martin’s Minotaur to be published at Shaye Areheart Books/ Crown. Unger is my married name. So it seemed like a normal and even necessary step. So, I just sent an email to the five people who’d read my Lydia Strong books and let them know to look for Lisa Unger in the future. The transition was fairly smooth, thanks to mostly supportive mystery independent stores who did a lot of handselling and the chains that have supported the Lisa Unger books in a big way.

Q. I see Beautiful Lies and A Sliver of Truth as a single story told in two parts, and it’s hard to imagine that you didn’t originally intend to write a second book about Ridley. At what point did you realize there would be a second book?

A. I didn’t know there was a second book until after Beautiful Lies was done and I’d decided that there wouldn’t be a series. I didn’t want to write another Ridley. I knew the ending wasn’t easy. I knew that a lot of things went unanswered. And I knew that in BL Jake had lied to Ridley, and fooled her completely. But that’s life, right? There’s so much that never gets resolved, people go unpunished, some answers are never found. But I thought, Ridley’s okay. She’s on her own. After a while, though, all those unresolved points kept nagging, and I kept hearing Ridley’s voice. So I wrote Sliver of Truth. Now, of course, there are a lot of unresolved issues at the end of that book, too.
So …

Q. Have you decided yet whether you’ll write a third Ridley book? Do you think it would be possible to make a third story as deeply personal for Ridley as the first two are?

A. I do still think about Ridley a lot. I think about Max and Ace, even Jake, still. I also wonder about Grace from time to time. So, never say never. I feel connected to Ridley, so I know if I choose to write about her again, it will be a deeply personal story, about the next level of her journey. I wouldn’t write it by design, under some outside influence to write more about her. All my novels well up from within, each of them had to be written for reasons largely unknown to me at the time. This is especially true with the Lisa Unger books. I feel like I really found my voice with Beautiful Lies. I started writing Angel Fire when I was 19 years old. Lydia was a product of a very young woman’s imagination, of very young issues working in my subconscious. As much as Beautiful Lies and Sliver of Truth are Ridley’s coming of age story, they’re mine, as well. So yes, I’m confident that any evolution of Ridley’s story, should it demand to be written, would be deeply personal for her, and for me.

Q. To me, the most striking quality of your writing is its sheer emotional intensity. Do you have to work at heightening the emotion during the revision process, or does it all come tumbling out of you as you write the first draft?

A. I am a very emotional person, so if anything, I think … god, is this too over-wrought? I don’t know if one can fake -- or heighten, as you say -- emotional intensity. If it is possible, I don’t know how.

Q. How much planning or outlining, if any, do you do before you begin writing? What is the first day of working on a new book like for you? Do you choose a day to begin, or wait until you reach a point where you feel compelled to sit down and get started?

A. When I sit down to write, I have no idea what’s going to happen. I might hear a voice in my head, a phrase, see a news story, a song lyric, an image and I’m off. I don’t know how things are going to end, who is going to turn up on the page. For example, in Black Out, Dax -- one of my favorite characters from the Lydia Strong books -- turned up. How did he get into this new universe? No idea.

My golden writing hours are from 5 AM to noon. That’s generally when I work. Of course, I have a toddler now, so she takes precedence over almost everything, including my writing. So I have to be a bit more flexible. I write again the way I did when I had a full time job -- I make the time, squeeze it in between the other demands on me. Luckily, it’s really harder for me not to write than to find the time, so somehow it all seems to work out.

As for choosing the day or not, it’s kind of some combination between discipline and inspiration. You can’t always make the magic come, but you have to be open and available to it. If you are disciplined about making time to work, then the magic finds you. But, usually, the idea for a new book comes like a lightning bolt. There’s no seeking it and no avoiding it.

Q. Do you revise as you go, or concentrate on getting the whole story down before you rewrite?

A. I tend to do a bit of rewriting and revision as I go along. Going back and reworking this paragraph or that scene helps settle me into the manuscript for the day and often leads to a propulsion forward. I don’t spend too much time on revision during the first draft, though; forward momentum is very important.

Q. How much time do you devote to research, and how do you go about it? For example, when you wrote Twice, how did you learn about the lives of the homeless who live in tunnels beneath Manhattan?

A. I spend quite a bit of time on research. Mainly because I know next to nothing and have to learn about everything! I love the Internet for its immediacy and wealth of information. But there’s nothing like anecdotal research, talking to people, hearing their stories. I have a couple of people who I really rely on for the nuts and bolts of crime and police work. And for Black Out, I conducted a number of interviews -- a clinical psychiatrist, the head honchos at a privatized military company. I also read a lot of non-fiction, and this is in a way a kind of research just because I’m a knowledge and experience junkie, just taking it all in, never knowing what I’ll use later.

With Twice, I’d been fascinated for a long time about the people living in the tunnels beneath Manhattan. A book by Jennifer Toth called The Mole People had really captured my imagination when I was in college. And then I was in a seven-year relationship with a New York City police officer (a whole other kind of research, not for the faint-hearted). And he confirmed that there was an indeed a whole community of homeless living beneath the streets of New York, though no one wanted to admit that. So a lot of what I learned came long before I wrote the book. There have also been a number of great documentary films made on this topic, which served as research and inspiration. I also did a lot of investigating about the system of tunnels beneath the city, unmapped and uncharted, miles and miles of old tracks and abandoned stations. That just always impressed me as enormously cool. For a dark imagination like mine, it’s heaven on earth.

Q. Why do you prefer thrillers to straight mystery? What does the experience of writing a thriller offer you as a writer?

A. Strangely enough, I’m not sure I understand the difference. I get that it’s a pacing and intensity thing.

But, in my heart, I feel as though these are labels created by publishing companies and booksellers to categorize books for sale. I just write what I write, and some people think I’m a thriller writer, others think I’m a mystery writer. I read a review of Beautiful Lies that called it chick-lit. I’ll leave it to others to decide what I am. I’m a writer who tends toward crime and the dark side of things … that’s where my imagination takes me. What other people call me is up to them, I suppose.

Q. Thrillers used to be the domain of male writers. Do you think women have achieved equal status with readers -- or have you encountered male readers who still won’t touch a thriller written by a woman?

A. Hmm … good question. I do have quite a few male readers and am amazed to get mail from them, telling me how much they enjoyed the books. I guess I don’t really expect to have male readers in the first place. So when they take the time to write, I’m really shocked. I had one bookseller in California tell me that the Lydia Strong books were hard-boiled and that male readers in his store who don’t read women, read me. I did take that as a compliment -- sort of.

I do think there’s a bit of a boys club in the genre -- and not just among readers. Maybe it is simply because so many writers and readers of the thriller/mystery genre were forged by noir, which was very much so dominated by men. I definitely feel that a certain type of reader -- uncomfortable with strong female characters, emotional content, sex as told from the feminine perspective - might still shy away from books written by women. But they’re missing out. We have a lot to offer the genre, a new perspective, a fresh voice. Some of the best people writing are writing crime fiction, and quite of few of those writers are women.

Q. What kind of work did you do in publishing? Were you writing throughout that time? When did you decide to go for a full-time career as a novelist?

A. I was a publicist, booking author tours, setting up interviews, appearances, parties, etc. It was a very cool job and I learned everything I ever wanted to know about the industry.

But I have always been a writer and went into publishing as a way to get closer to my dreams without actually committing to it. But, of course, my job got bigger and bigger and I wrote less and less. Finally I had an epiphany -- I realized that I had stopped writing, had never been further away from my dreams and if I didn’t start writing again, I’d have to look back and myself in five years, ten years and say, “You know what? You never even tried to do this.” I couldn’t live with that, so I started writing again, every day, staying up late, getting up early, staying in on weekends, writing at lunch. From that point it took me another year to finish Angel Fire. I started it when I was 19 and finished it when I was 29. Ten years and it’s not a very long book. It’s a little embarrassing, actually.

Q. Do you think finding an agent and selling your first novel was made easier by your experience in publishing?

A. It was easier and harder at the same time. It was easier to find an agent because an editor friend liked the book -- but not enough to buy it. She did, however, suggest a few agents who might like it enough to work on it with me. One of those agents, Elaine Markson, signed me on and helped me rework the manuscript into something publishable.

I may not have had that opportunity if I hadn’t worked in the industry. On the other hand, anyone who wants to slave away in publishing for no money for ten years as a way to get her foot in the door, be my guest. We all pay our dues, one way or another, and no one does anybody any favors in this or any money-making industry.

None of the editors I had known, and none of the publishing companies where I’d worked made offers on my manuscript. They all, in fact, turned it down. When Angel Fire went to St. Martin’s, it was to an editor I’d never met.

I think people don’t want you to change. They see you one way, in my case as a book publicist, and they don’t want to see you any other way. So I think that made it harder to sell my first book.

Q. Do you have a pet peeve about the publishing business?

A. I actually love the business. I love everything about it. I think it’s a wonderfully romantic way to make a living -- as a writer, or an editor or even a publicist. Which is not to say that it isn’t as brutal as any other industry -- dreams are made and crushed everyday; talent doesn’t necessarily mean success; numbers matter more than high achievement in craft. The highs are dizzying; the lows are abysmal.

Success is not guaranteed, no matter how auspicious your beginning -- in fact it’s harder to succeed as a published writer than it is to get published in the first place. But I have never wanted to do anything else but write, so I’m profoundly grateful to make a living in this business.

Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

A. Write every day. Dig deeper every day. Be true to yourself. Think of publishing as an incidental element to the act of striving to be the best writer you can be, secondary to getting better every day for your experiences and dedication to the craft.

Q. Will you be at any mystery or thriller conferences this year where fans can meet you?

A. I’m planning to make it to Bouchercon this year, schedule permitting. Hope to see you all there!

Visit Lisa’s web sites at www.lisaunger.com and www.lisamiscione.com

Bobbies

Sharon Wildwind

Those of you familiar with Canada may know that yesterday we celebrated Victoria Day, also known as “the Auld Queen’s birthday.” Or, as it’s known in our house, the official beginning of summer. We Canadians can’t wait around for June 21 (which is mid-summer anyway, you know mid-summers eve and all that) to declare summer because, by that time, Arctic winds are massing around the North Pole, waiting to sweep through the Canadian prairies. Any time we make it through the first week in August without a killing frost, we consider it a good year.

Back to Queen Victoria, and to the most famous Victorian detective, Sherlock Holmes, who was in business (courtesy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) from 1878 to 1914, allowing for a short interruption where he went over Reichenbach Falls, and took a bit of time to come to his senses and return home after the ordeal.

All in all, Holmes worked with five Scotland Yard law enforcement officers: Inspector Lestrade, Tobias Gregson, Stanley Hopkins, Alec MacDonald, and Athelney (Peter) Jones. Many of us in the mystery community speak with great familiarity about Scotland Yard, “The Met,” bobbies, and other bits of Victorian policing. So, in honor of the Auld Queen, and Mr. Holmes, I thought I might give a big of a guide to policing in London in the nineteenth century.

Dating back to medieval England and firmly rooted in English common law is the practice that any citizen can make an arrest. In fact, every citizen was encouraged to be mindful of what was happening in his community and to take steps to reduce crime, and to apprehend criminals. Into the early 1800, formal law enforcement was handled by private security services, night watchmen, and hired “thief takers,” who were essentially bounty hunters.

Magistrates, also known as Justices of the Peace, often had no formal legal training. They were educated men of some substance, who volunteered their time to hear minor legal proceedings for a certain district. The novelist Henry Fielding was appointed a magistrate in the Liberty of Westminster in 1748. He lived and held his court at #4 Bow Street. His “thief takers” came to be known as the Bow Street Runners. Essentially, their law enforcement consisted of being told by Mr. Fielding, “Go get this person,” and they did. They did not act as detectives, make patrols, collect evidence, or try to prevent crime. Such an arrangement was common throughout the City of London and the surrounding counties. As you can imagine, it didn’t do a lot to make neighborhoods safer.

The Metropolitan Police Act was introduced by the Home Secretary Robert Peel and passed by Parliament in 1829. It created the third urban, non-paramilitary police forces in the world—the previous two were in Glasgow, Scotland, and in Paris, France.

We get police nicknames of “peelers” or “bobbies” from Robert Peel’s name.

Police patrols took to the London streets on September 29, 1829, and they were not popular. The first policeman was killed in the line of duty nine months later. The Coroner’s Inquest ruled his death justifiable homicide. Other officers were beaten, blinded, and attacked.

For ten years, The Metropolitan Police Force covered the City of London, and any place in the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex or Kent, as long as these places were within twelve miles of Charing Cross. In 1839, the London Police Force was formed, essentially leaving “The Met’s” enforcement area looking like a doughnut. They were able to police all around the City of London, but not inside the city itself.

Keep in mind that the “city” of London is only about one square mile. It is the very heart of London, so the doughnut hole wasn’t very large, compared to the whole doughnut.

The original MPF headquarters was located in Whitehall, and to enter the building’s back entrance, the policemen had to cross through a bricked courtyard called Scotland Yard. The name stuck. However, because there was a great fear of organized spy rings and of the police spying on private citizens, the original metropolitan force didn’t have any detectives. The Detective Branch wouldn’t come into being until 1842. After several reorganizations over the next century and a half, it came to be what today is called New Scotland Yard.

Peel based his police force on two radical principles: first, that police officers must prevent crime and second, that the first objective could be achieved only if the public trusted, recognized, and were willing to assist police constables. To achieve both of these objectives, Peel authorized a whole set of conditions by which the police were to operate.

You might come across a list called “Peelian Police Principles,” which is represented as a list that Peel himself wrote down. Recent scholars makes a very convincing argument that Peel never wrote down such a list, though you can find references to many of the things on the list in his speeches and writings.

Here are the things that Peel promoted, which startled London and the surroundings counties, and set British policing on it’s ear:

Each constable was given a badge with a unique number. The constable was required to give his badge number to anyone who asked for it. A policeman could no longer hide behind the anonymity of his fists and a mask.

Constables wore blue uniforms, and carried only a truncheon to distance them from the army, who wore red uniforms and carried firearms. Previously the army was responsible for violent responses, including the use of firearms on civilians.

Constables were expected to enlist voluntary public cooperation in what we would call today Neighborhood Watches. Peel stressed that every English citizen still had the traditional responsibility for reducing crime and apprehending criminals. The police, however, were to be the only full-time, paid guardians of the law.

Policing was based on a series of local patrols. Constables were to know every nuance of their beats; restrain from using physical force; concentrate on persuasion, advice and warnings; and stay out of public houses during duty time.

The absence of crime and disorder was to be used as the measuring standard as to success of police efficiency.

Peels policing reforms worked. By the time Mr. Holmes investigated A Study in Scarlet in 1878, the bobby had become recognized around the world, whether as the caped, blue-uniformed beat cop, appearing out of the fog, tipping his hat, and wishing Holmes a good evening, or the red-faced, portly constable consulting his notebook in the witness stand and saying, “On March 27 of this year, at 9:52 PM, I was proceeding in a westerly direction, in the performance of my duties…”

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Writing quote for the week:

The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
~Sir Robert Peel, British Home Secretary, 1834 to 1835 and 1841 to 1846

Indiana Jones and Me

by Julia Buckley

I took my sons to Blockbuster over the weekend to pick out a couple of movies. Inside we were confronted by a huge Indiana Jones display: posters, limited edition prints, popcorn holders with scenes from the movie. I wandered over and lingered in front of it.

"Boys," I said. "Look at all this cool stuff."

They glanced at it, not that impressed. "Yeah," said my older son.

"Look at this neat poster. It's for the new movie. Only five dollars. Don't you want one?"

"Nah."

I ran an affectionate finger over the plastic wrap. "Are you sure? Look what a great poster it is. He looks just like he did in the first movie."

The boys moved on, and I realized that I hadn't wanted the poster for them. I had wanted it for me. Once I faced this realization, I bought the poster, and when I got home I hung it in my office.

All you have to do is watch tv news to see the significance of the debut of the new Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. People are going nuts for this fourth installment; they're digging out their fedoras and bull whips, their Indie action figures, their leather jackets. They're marching around outside of theaters looking as goofy as those parents who dress up on Halloween. But I understand how they feel. It's about nostalgia.

I fell in love with this character long ago, back in the 80s when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theatre and knew, deep down, that Harrison Ford was the man for me. (I had already suspected it when I saw Star Wars). The arrival of the new movie brings back that wonderful rush of pleasure that seeing the movie brought. Added to the exciting mix is the return of Karen Allen, who played Marian Ravenwood in the first movie and then sort of disappeared from Indiana Jones history. Now she's back, 56 years old and as pretty as ever, playing Marian and bringing us fans back to that wonderful first movie, the best of the three.

As a writer, I see the perfection of the Raiders story: the kind that catches you from the very start and then never stops shocking you until the very last ironic frame. It's a masterpiece of storytelling, of cinema, and yes, of mystery.

The local news here suggested that there had been some "negative buzz" about the movie, whatever that means, but it would be awfully hard for this movie to disappoint people like me, who have been waiting for years to see this reunion, and will be cheering the moment Indie appears on screen and adjusts his hat over his eyes.

Who's with me? It opens this weekend. I'll get the popcorn (and yes, I did buy the limited edition Indiana Jones popcorn holders). I may be a sucker for Harrison Ford, but I know I'm not the only one.

Guest Interview: Elena Santangelo

Elena Santangelo is a mystery author and musician with a wicked sense of humor. In addition to writing both short stories and novels, she sings and dances in Philadelphia Revels productions, composes choral and handbell music

PPD
On your web site, you seem to be having entirely too much fun: essays about play, a stuffed pig in a paper hat, wicked song parodies, short stories about corporate bosses polished off while riding their Harley. Is nothing sacred to you?

Elena
Walter prefers "warthog" to "pig." And the parodies are tame compared to some of those hidden in my PC, covering a variety of, as Tom Paxton puts it, short-shelf-life political topics. But sacred-wise, I hate humor that's mean. Humor ought to be born of wit, or stem from the ridiculous.  Other than that, anything that can be observed can and should be made fun of.  People need to laugh more.

PPD
Both ghosts and historical mysteries are hot right now. You've combine both themes in your Pat Montella series. What's the most important thing to remember when writing a ghost as a character?

Eleana
That the ghost is a human being who happens to be dead. The only motivation missing from the character is that of survival. Everything else is possible. Ghosts need to be as 3-dimensional as every other character in the book, and must be true to the thinking of his/her time period. The coolest thing about putting ghosts in my novels is in figuring out how each one is going to communicate with Pat (or with anyone else in the book). I work on the assumption that straight-forward conversation isn't possible between here and the Other Side (because, heck, that would be BORING!). Better to have the whiff of black powder, or a phantom kiss beneath the mistletoe. Or even to have an invisible cat brush up against your leg.

PPD
One of your books ties into the American Civil War, another into Reconstruction, and the latest one into the decade after the American Revolution. Each book has a different feel. What do you do to recreate these historical periods? What obligations, if any, does a fiction author have to represent real history accurately?

Elena
My first historical fiction was a short mystery about Valley Forge. I thought my research was decent and I was proud of wanting to be accurate, so I gave it to one of the historians at Valley Forge NHP to read. He tore it to shreds. I vowed never to write a historical again. But I fixed that story and it won a national fiction award.

Now I immerse myself in the time period, listening to the music, viewing paintings of the time, visiting building as old as the ones in the books to see what they feel like, hefting objects like fire irons, weapons, tools. Almost exclusively, I use primary documents (that is, documents written during the time period, like diaries, newspapers, letters, etc.). I try to be accurate to the vocabulary of the time, at least, and not use modern expressions or words. As a musician, I have a personal need to get the SOUND of the prose right.

I don't think a fiction author necessarily has any obligation to be accurate, but the more accurate I can be, the more satisfied I am with the final product. Also, I believe readers enjoy the books more. You have to assume your readers will know something about history and you don't want them gagging on your anachronisms.




PPD
Kay and Karen Bishop are characters in some of your short stories. What are the advantages of having twin psychologists as your protagonists?

No advantages at all, apparently, since I've never been able to interest anyone in publishing a novel about them, even though I've tried changing their names, ethnic backgrounds and hometowns twice. I came up with the notion of Karen's character first--a college prof specializing in personality theory who occasionally assists local police by profiling criminals. It gives her an 'in' on murder investigations but she isn't a full-time law enforcement pro. Instead of giving her a usual sidekick--the cop lover, for instance--I gave her a mirror-twin sister. The relationship is fascinating to play with.

Kay is left-handed.  And one thing that, if I remember right, isn't mentioned in the stories (because it's not important), but came out in the novel, is that they were connected at birth on their non-dominent arms from elbow to pinkie.  When they were separated, Kay got a full pinkie, Karen has one knuckle. Because Kay's left handed, she's right brained--very creative, very good at seeing the big picture.  Karen's got a scientific brain (sort of like Beth Ann grown up)--very logical and good at details.  Fascinating because of this difference, but also, most 20-something identical twins (the ones I know), before they're comfortable in their own skins, they have a few more identity problems than normal folks.  The insecurities feed into all sorts of great character conflict.  Plus, there's always the mistaken identity possibilities.

PPD
In addition to being a mystery writer, you're a musician, dancer, and composer. Are you planing any mysteries with a musical bent?

Please don't call me a dancer. My friends who are genuine dancers, on reading this, will spew whatever they're drinking onto their keyboards and make me pay for the damages. I do love folk dancing, though. Favorites: square dancing, a beautiful Israeli dance called Ma Navu, and a wild French Canadian dance called La Bastringue. But that wasn't your question.

HANG MY HEAD AND CRY has a modern character who's a part-time church singer, and much of the book (including the title) has references to spirituals, which are probably my favorite folksongs. POISON TO PURGE MELANCHOLY has a main character who's a fiddler and music master in 18th century Williamsburg. The thing is, history is FILLED with people making music. It's only since the advent of radio and recordings that Western society started getting odd ideas about music being for musicians only. Before that everyone sang and many people played instruments. Book 4, FEAR ITSELF (hopefully coming out in 2009) begins with a Carnivale celebration in an Italian immigrant community in 1933, dancing tarantellas to tunes from a concertina (a.k.a. a squeezebox).

PPD
What's next?

As mentioned above, FEAR ITSELF in the Possessed Series will hopefully be published in 2009. In the meantime, my first non-fiction book, DAME AGATHA'S SHORTS, is coming out later this year. It's a bedside companion to Agatha Christie's short stories, giving a little review of each, plus information about what was going on in her life as she wrote them, how the series characters developed, and things like chronological lists for you folks out there who like to read works in order. Other than that, I have an idea for a parody on gas prices...

To learn more about Elena and her books, visit his/ her website at www.elenasantangelo.com
 

Gardening by the inch?

By Lonnie Cruse


I'm sure some of you have seen the show GARDENING BY THE YARD on HGTV with host Paul. He's totally insane, so I can relate. But personally, I garden by the inch. Strawberry pots here, old fashioned washtubs there. Works for me because I recently harvested my very first strawberries. Yes, I've planted them before. No, they haven't produced. Sigh. But THIS time I have berries. Okay, THREE berries, but it's a start and more are ripening even as I type this. The strawberries are growing on my front porch along with petunias to attract the hummers to the hummer feeder and some sort of vine one of the lovely librarians gave me last year when I attended an author day at the Crab Orchard Lake Library. It grew a little last year but is making every effort to take over that end of the porch this year and I'm letting it. The huge pot beside the petunias is filled with rosemary.

Last week, out back of the house I planted five tomato plants by the side of the porch steps. I put them there because the area gets full sun (assuming it ever stops raining) and it's close to the brick base of the porch. I've observed from watching friends grow tomatoes that those who plant them near a brick wall get the best and largest crops. I'm assuming it's because the brick gets hot from the sun during the day and holds the heat at night, like a hot house. Whatever. It works!

I'm trying something new I read about to control weeds, hoping it works. I put newspaper on the ground first, wet it down so it would stay, then put four wheelbarrows of dirt in the area (yes, I dug three of them and transported, hubby joined me and dug/transported the fourth. He also transported some bricks for me to line the area so he won't mow over it.) After I planted the the tomatoes and "hilled up" the dirt around them, I put more wet newspapers around the plants, watered them down, and covered the papers with just a bit more dirt. The newspapers are supposed to keep weeds out (and they biodegrade over time.) It looks a bit messy, but if it works . . . . I also planted marigolds in a row around the tomato plants which does a good job of keeping worms off the plants. Supposedly the worms that usually destroy tomato plants won't cross a line of marigolds. I hope they know that.

Now, I usually, um, cheat with my tomatoes. Meaning I slip over to McPlants in Metropolis and buy one of their hot house tomato plants that already has blooms AND baby tomatoes in early May. Unfortunately, this year, while they had plants a foot tall or better, NONE of them had blooms and/or tomatoes. What IS this world coming to? Really. So I bought one tall plant sans blooms and four small plants, and we'll see. In July, if I'm lucky.

To the right of the porch are two antique washtubs, (oval) one with rosemary (I adore rosemary, use it to cook and I often put it in the pages of my journal, just for the smell.) Next to the rosemary is the tub with two kinds of mint, regular and pinapple. The pinapple doesn't smell as good (I'm an olfactory person, if you hadn't guessed) but the varigated leaves are lovely.

A few feet further down is a huge square washtub with the rest of my herbs, chives, marjoram, thyme, basil, etc. All but two of the plants in that tub made it through the winter and I replaced those. The rosemary stayed green all winter, including surviving the severe ice storm we had, and while the mint hid in the bottom of the tub, it came out at the first sign of spring.

We have a HUGE yard, so I could easily garden on a grand scale. But it's really too difficult, between the deer and the bunnies (yes, I've tried every method known to gardeners to discourage them, but they seem not to have gotten the memo on that) and our 2.2 acres used to be a corn field and we assume all the spraying, etc has made it so difficult to grow things. I have a few roses and other plants out, but it's a challenge here. The porch and the areas nearby seem to be the best place.

The three strawberries I harvested and ate were delicious. Can't wait for more. Love using the rosemary with chicken or in spagetthi sauce. And this container gardening is small enough for me to maintain without killing myself. If you aren't a gardener, or think you have a black thumb, may I suggest some container gardening on your front or back steps? It's fun and very satisfying.

And if you would love to be a writer but are afraid to tackle an entire manuscript, how about container writing? A chapter here and there? Bit by bit? You'd be surprised what you can harvest that way. Good luck with it.

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.

Torturing Women for Fun and Profit

Sandra Parshall

I’ve just put aside, unfinished, yet another “Instant NY Times bestseller!” that features long and thoroughly sickening passages told from the point of view of a deranged serial killer.

As I wrote in a previous blog, I’m not terribly squeamish about violence in fiction, and I’ll admit that I like Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter novels, but I usually steer clear of serial killer stories. They seem to be taking over crime fiction, though, so they’re hard to avoid. And they’re more graphic than ever before, especially in the degrading way they treat women. What’s especially disturbing is that many of these books are written by women.

The one I just gave up on went into great – and, dare I say it, loving – detail about the killer’s torture and rape of his female victims, and the sensual pleasure and sexual satisfaction he experienced. After three or four such scenes, I was feeling queasy and disgusted. I had to ask myself how many more descriptions of the killer’s engorged penis I really wanted to encounter. The answer was none.

The book was a bestseller, and it was written by a woman, which means that in all likelihood the majority of its readers have been women. I have to wonder what enjoyment female readers get from this kind of story, which seems to me to be a kind of pornography. Yes, justice will be done in the end, but is the triumph of good over evil in the last chapter enough to make the degradation that precedes it a pleasure to read?

There’s no question that crime fiction writers have to come up with ever more shocking scenarios to grab attention in a crowded marketplace, and taking readers into the sick mind of a serial killer seems to be a favored approach. It’s all imaginary, since the average writer isn’t a serial killer and has no firsthand knowledge of the psychopathy involved. The author can make up anything he or she wishes to produce suspense and shocks. Most of the time they choose to portray women as victims of torture. These unfortunate females are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, kicked, raped, sexually assaulted with objects, starved, suffocated, drowned, shot, stabbed, buried alive -- every awful bit of it described in detail, all in the name of entertainment.

Sure, the occasional story will have a male victim. But fictional serial killers have a lot more fun torturing and murdering women. And apparently readers find women much more appealing than men as victims. I’m trying to understand why.

Why does the reading public support the mass production of books about the torture and killing of women? Why are so many readers, many of them female, entertained by this kind of novel? What emotional need does this entertainment meet in the reader? Why do women make “better” victims than men?

An even scarier question: After these maim-and-kill-her books begin to seem tame, what’s next?

Falcon and Falconer

Sharon Wildwind

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold …
~William Butler Yeates, The Second Coming

There are a lot more favorable reports than I expected from people who bought a Kindle last Christmas. The talk turned very quickly from “Will I like this?” to “Where can I download books.” The answer, of course, is only from the company that sells the Kindle. But in the ensuing discussion about downloading, I learned that lots of libraries now offer a download service for e-books. The download is good for three weeks, then something—I’m not quite sure what—happens so that the book is no longer readable. I have visions of Peter Graves watching the smoke coming out of the tiny tape recorder at the beginning of Mission Impossible. In any case, this e-book service is apparently spotty, available in certain parts of the country, but not in other parts.

Along the same intersection of technology and geography theme, Blogger, the people who host this very blog, have installed a post-now, publish-later feature. This means I can write my next blog at any time, post-date it, and have it magically appear at the right time on Tuesday morning. The only problem is we are having some trouble with the timing on the automatic poster. One of the Deadly Daughters discovered that the default time setting for this service matches the current time in Belize. No one knows why or how to fix it.

All books are now classified as thrillers, which has come to mean, “We want you to buy this book.” The name cozy mysteries, which went through an identity change a few years ago to become traditional mysteries, now appear on the verge of being morphed again into classic mysteries. Again no one knows why, how to fix it, or if it even needs fixing.

The on-line mystery lists, the mystery conventions, booksellers, and almost anyone else you care to name are on exhausting round #937, or there-about, regarding inclusion versus exclusion. Is an author an author or not? Many of the lists have stopped being helpful in themselves and have become a nexus or clearing house for other information. Click here to read my sample chapters. Click there to read my blog, follow my virtual book tour, link to my pod cast, or read what I’ve posted on my web site. I’ve even gone over to the dark side and now subscribe to two sets of writing-related pod casts and one RSS feed. This morning, I have 22 pod cast episodes to listen to and 55 RSS headlines to read.

The way the mystery world is changing is enough to drive me crazy.

Did I mention that, in spite of taking my cholesterol meds and eating all the right things, my happy cholesterol (what I call the high-density variety, the good stuff) is the pits? My doctor had one word for me: exercise. So every morning now, I’m out pounding the pavement for thirty minutes. And no, I haven’t flipped out. There really is a connection between Kindles, e-book downloads not being available in Montana, blogs running on Belize time, identity questions, pod casts, RSS feeds, and cholesterol.

When I get past my warm-up phase and into my walk all of this noise floats away. Yes, the mystery world is now confusing, but those of us in the mystery community, both individually and collectively, are strong, smart people, and we’ll find our way through the background business noise. The important things remain the same. Who dies? What effect does that death have on people around them? How do I make my villain likable and dastardly at the same time? How can I make my heroic heroine bigger than life? What’s the difference between a clue and a really good red herring? What’s the difference between good and evil and what is justice, anyway? It’s important that we don’t lose sight of what’s at the centre of the genre we write.

_____
Writing quote for the week:

The only thing really worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
~William Faulkner, southern author

Jess Lourey On the Herstory of Mystery

(submitted by Julia Buckley)

Thank you to the Deadly Daughters for allowing me to guest blog today on a topic that is near and dear to my heart: female mystery authors.

It is widely accepted that the first published mystery was “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” penned by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841 (and if you were going to contend this assertion, the blog of Poe’s Deadly Daughters wouldn’t be the place to do it). Wilkie Collins published his riff on detective fiction, The Woman in White, in 1860. Then, Sherlock Holmes hit the scene in 1887, providing the ultimate detective prototype. The mystery genre was taking shape, and by the turn of the century, it obtained mass appeal with the publication of pulp magazines and dime novels.

Like much literary history, the ascendance of the mystery novel is dominated by male authors. Heck, even Nancy Drew was originally penned by a guy. As Virginia Woolf wryly observed in 1928, it’s difficult to write without a room of one’s own. However, despite the obstacles of the time, three women managed to write their way to the top of the pile, redefining the mystery genre and turning out some amazing fiction. So, allow me to present to you a short herstory of mystery, featuring Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Agatha Christie.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Although Sayers considered her greatest work to be her nonfiction translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy and her time better spent writing literary works than detective fiction, she is best known for her mysteries. Sayers was born in England in 1893. She earned a degree in Modern Languages in 1915 and went on become a copywriter, which is what she was doing when she published her first novel, Whose Body?, in 1923. Whose Body? introduced the aristocratic, monocled amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey, who helmed 14 of her novels and short stories. She once commented that she envisioned Wimsey as a combination of Fred Astaire and P. G. Wodehouse’s fictional Bertie Wooster. In 1931, Sayers introduced Harriet Vane, her other main protagonist, in the novel Strong Poison. Critics suggest Vane, an Oxford-educated mystery writer, was a stand-in for Sayers.

Sayers is most famously known for bringing a literary element to detective fiction. Her writing is praised for being intelligent and layered, and she’s really, really creative with the cause of death in her novels (poisoned cat’s claw, anyone?). She also had a killer personal life, including a lover who was an unemployed car salesman at the time of their trysting, an illegitimate son, a devout Catholic faith, and amazing contemporaries, including C.S. Lewis. Sayers stopped writing detective novels in the late 1930s and instead focused on her poetry, religious dramas, and nonfiction.

Margery Allingham

Margery Allingham, though today not as widely known as Sayers or Christie, was one of the great Golden Age mystery writers. She was born in London in 1904, and both her parents were successful writers at the time. Although she published her first book, Blakkerchief Dick, in 1923, it wasn’t until 1927 that she published her first piece of detective fiction, and not until 1929 that her seminal character, detective cum adventurer Albert Campion, appeared on the scene as a minor character in The Crime at Black Dudley. Rumors have it that Campion was intended as a parody of Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey.

While Margery Allingham is unknown to most mystery readers today, I include her in this herstory because she wrote some great books worth discovering, and she is easy to identify with. She began writing “serious literature,” but found it out of touch with her easygoing nature and so switched to mystery, which she found neat and clean, a box with four sides—"a Killing, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an element of satisfaction in it." According to the Margery Allingham Society website, mystery writing was “‘at once a prison and a refuge’ to a writer unsure of her aims but confident of her powers.” She improved with each book, stuck with mystery writing even when she couldn’t make a living off of it, and took risks with her characters. How many mystery writers out there can relate to that?

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is not only the best-selling mystery author of all time—-she’s the best-selling author, period. Her collected works have only been outsold by the Bible, and I’d argue that her writing has much better pacing.

She was born in England in 1890, married in 1914, and had one daughter in 1928. She published her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, in 1920. Christie’s beloved protagonist Miss Marple first appeared in 1930 in The Murder at the Vicarage. Under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, she wrote six romantic novels, and she also wrote four nonfiction books (note to you mystery writers who want to branch out—-even Christie did it!). All told, Christie wrote over 80 novels and short story collections and more than a dozen plays.

Anyone who has read Agatha Christie will have their own argument as to why she is still so widely read. For my money, it’s her character development, timeless examination of human corruption, and wicked (but fair) plot twists that keep me coming back for more. Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Christie’s characters have a keen eye for detail, and I never finish one of her novels without feeling like if I just paid a little more attention in life, I’d see a whole new world.

And how can you not love a woman who says things like this?

· “An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.”
· “Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.”
· “I’ve always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.”
· "If I was born once again, I would like to be a woman - always!"

Although more women were becoming published authors in the early 1900s than in any other time in history, they were still underrepresented in all but one area: mystery. They dominated this genre. Danced on it. Slapped it and made it their own. Thank you, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Agatha Christie, for opening all those doors for us and for providing limitless entertainment and inspiration.

And so tell me: who did I miss on this herstory of mystery?

Jess Lourey, the guest blogger for today, has just released August Moon (http://www.jesslourey.com/august.html), the fourth novel in her Lefty-nominated Murder-by-Month series. Of August Moon, Denise Swanson, author of the Scumble River Mysteries, writes, "Lourey has a gift for creating terrific characters. Her sly and witty take on small town USA is a sweet summer treat. Pull up a lawn chair, pour yourself a glass of lemonade, and enjoy."

Jess will be touring the West Coast with mystery author Dana Fredsti in May and hitting the Midwest in June. Check her website for more details. Also, to win a free copy of August Moon, be the first person to email Jess through her website and correctly identify the female Scottish mystery author who was a contemporary of the above three and should probably have been included in this post. Be sure to tell her that Poe’s Deadly Daughters sent you!

Guest Blogger Tamara Siler Jones

Award-winning writer, Tamara Siler Jones, mixes magic, fantasy and forensics in the Dubric Byerly mysteries – Ghosts in the Snow, Threads of Malice, and Valley of the Soul. Tamara is currently working on the fourth book in the series. Visit her website at www.tamarasilerjones.com

Black Feathers

Many, many years ago, a man named Walt Disney made a movie about an elephant. Most everyone has seen it - I hope - and most folks know that Dumbo was an elephant that could fly because he had these REALLY BIG ears. And, well, he could just fly. How cool is that?

Anyway, some well meaning blackbirds and a mouse convinced Dumbo that, in order to fly, he needed a black feather. He didn't. He just needed to believe in himself.

Sometimes writers, both working and aspiring, cling to their black feathers, often when they're faced with failure. They brandish their feather and lay blame somewhere else. It's difficult to believe in yourself, it's a lot easier to believe in the feather, or fault things that render the feather impotent.

My critique group sucks!
I can't find a critique group!
I write perfectly! Don't need a critique group!
I write too big for genre!
I write too niche for genre!
I'm too original for these small minds!
I write too cozy for these highbrows!
They're all crooks anyway!
My book's worth a million dollars!
My cover art sucks!
My cover art doesn't fit my story!
How-to-write books are all wrong!
How-to-write books say this is the way!
How-to-write books disagree!
My agent dropped the ball!
My editor doesn't give me enough time!
Writing well is all about following the rules!
Writing has nothing to do with the rules!
I had shitty distribution!
I hate first person but that's all they buy!
I hate third person but that's all they buy!
Marketing didn't advertise it!
No one understands my brilliance!
I deserve to be published!
Reviewers get paid to write hatchet jobs!
XXX has it in for me!
My story's got plenty of plot!
It's literary! I don't need a plot!

And on and on and on. We've all heard them, we've probably all said them. I have too, on occasion.

The truth of the matter is, there are no black feathers, no tricks, no gimmicks, no sure things. It's up to us to fly. It's also up to us to make sure that we write things other people want to read. If you've submitted your story to every publisher and agent on the planet and they've all said "No", toss the feather away and admit it's probably not them.

It's the writer's job, their responsibility, to tell a compelling story that people want to read, in fact they'll want to read it so much that they'll pay money for it. It's the writer's job to fly, not the feather's fault when they don't.

"I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. If one is writing for one's own pleasure, that fear may be mild -- timidity is the word I've used here. If, however, one is working under deadline -- a school paper, a newspaper article, the SAT writing sample -- that fear may be intense. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that, Dumbo didn't need the feather: the magic was in him."
-- Stephen King,
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Gotta love The Steve. :)

Killing your darlings . . . say what?

"Kill your darlings" is a familiar phrase to writers. And trust me, none of us like to hear it. We write something we think is absolutely fabulous, can't wait for others to read and adore it like we do. Then we send it to our friendly readers or critiquers or editors and they say: "Kill it!"

Shriek! Kill it? Say what? Surely you jest? It's some of the best stuff I've ever written! Women will read it and faint in delight . . . grown men will sob with joy! HOW CAN you possibly suggest that I kill it???

Because it doesn't move the story forward, they say. Because it stops the flow. Because it doesn't add anything. Because you've climbed on your private soap box to preach to the reader. Because it doesn't even fit into the story.

So we crawl into the nearest closet and lick our wounds, unappreciated, unloved, misunderstood. Sigh. Then we think it over. These criqituers know our stuff. Even like our stuff. If they are saying something needs killing, it probably needs killing. So we crawl back to the computer or typewriter, poise a finger over the delete key, silently apologize to our darling, and hit DELETE. Sob.

The point of all this, assuming I have one, is that as writers, we are way too close to the "forest." We are IN the story as we write it. We know exactly where the characters are sitting or standing, what the setting looks like right down to the smallest detail, what the characters are wearing, thinking, saying. It's like standing at a party with a paper plate full of appetizers in hand, listening in on the surrounding conversations. So we whiz merrily along, fingers flying over the keyboard, describing what we're seeing, what our characters are doing, and sometimes we might take off on a tangent. That's why we need others to read for us. To keep us on track. To tell us what works. And more important, what doesn't.

The hardest thing for a writer to do is to ask for criticism. And it's what we need the most. Independent eyes, fair eyes, to catch not just typos but plot holes and errors. Things that bring the story to a screeching halt. So we search for good critiquers or editors, those who know and understand our style and can help us stay true to it without wandering off somewhere into left field. And someone who respects our talent enough not to try to get us to write it "their way." And we listen to them and do our best to learn from them.

Because once the book is published, the very last person we want to stop reading our work is the reader who has paid for the opportunity.

Having been on both sides, a writer receiving critiques and a critiquer saying: "Kill it!" I know how tough both jobs are. But a good critique can make the difference between a so-so manuscript and a break-out manuscript. Are you in a good critique group? Have a terrific editor that polishes all the rough edges off your manuscript? If you are struggling to get published, maybe it's time for a fresh pair of eyes on your manuscript?

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.

Are conferences worth the money & time?

Sandra Parshall

A popular mystery writer once said that her agent told her she could either be a “conference slut” or she could pick one or two conferences to attend each year and spend the rest of her time at home, writing. She chose the second course, and it certainly hasn’t hurt her career.

I remember her words when I see a newly published writer struggling to attend as many conferences as possible and still get the next book written.

As I wrote last week, mystery conferences are fun, and they give us a chance to see friends and take a break from the isolation of writing. But the number being offered is staggering. Some are strictly for fans, with published authors trying to be entertaining enough in their panel performances to send the audience first to the book room, then to the signing line. Others are aimed at aspiring writers who want to learn from published writers – and again, the authors participate in the hope of selling some books and making themselves better known.

In virtually every case, writers have to pay their own way. A lot of mystery writers out there, especially first-time authors, are spending their entire advances and much more on travel and conference fees. It seems to make sense – after all, if you don’t get a rave review in the New York Times and your publisher won’t buy big splashy ads for your book, you have to get the word out somehow, don’t you?

But does it benefit the average writer’s career if she turns up at half a dozen or more conferences every year? Will she sell many books at those conferences, or will she always sit at her signing table, twirling a seldom-used pen and watching the bestselling author across the room autograph tall stacks of books? I don’t know the answers, not even for myself, since Malice Domestic and Bouchercon are pretty much it for me.

I’d like to hear from other writers – and fans – about this.

If you’re a writer, how have you chosen the conferences you attend? Do you think those appearances have given your career a boost? Do conferences take you away from your writing?

If you’re a fan, do you feel as if you see too many of the same writers year after year, or do you look forward to seeing familiar faces? Have you discovered any new-to-you writers at these events?

For both writers and fans: Which conferences are on your must-go lists, and why?

I Got By With A Little Help From My Friends

by Darlene Ryan

* Sharon Wildwind will be back next Tuesday.

Most of you probably don’t know that I've spent the last three months in a cast after having surgery on my right foot and leg at the beginning of February. Well, three casts if you want to get technical; one made of gauze and plaster, which weighed a ton, one made of gauze and fiberglass--red fiberglass which is what happens when you have a ten year-old with you--and one that was rigid plastic with more straps than a medieval chastity belt.

I learned a lot of things while I was cast-bound. For instance, a man will never miss an opportunity to cop a feel while holding a woman upright in the shower even though he has been married to her forever, and her leg is wrapped from toes to hip in black garbage bags and she hasn’t shaved her armpits in six weeks. It’s way more fun to watch Jesse come back from the dead on All My Children than it is to take a tour of the inside of Dr. Oz’s digestive tract on Oprah. (BTW, Darnell Williams who plays Jesse? Yummy with a spoon.)

After the surgery I was sick. I don’t mean kind-of-queasy-feel-sort-of-crappy sick. I mean SICK. Wretchedly, dry heaving sick. Had to be held upright by nurses sick. Flashed a room full of strangers sick. Yes, that is the third time I’ve flashed people in a hospital. No, I swear I don’t have a secret desire to be a stripper. Later, when I'd been shot full of some anti-nausea wonder drug it occurred to me that being a writer is kind of like wearing a mental hospital gown all the time. You have to be willing to expose yourself—your inner self, not your dimpled backside—when you write. You have to be willing to share some of what moves you, what terrifies you, what motivates you, with your characters and with your readers.

Once I was home, what little mobility I had came with the assistance of crutches. Crutches aren’t easy to use. They take time and practice to master, especially when you tend to be klutzy. Using crutches involves technique. And you can’t learn it from the Bruce Willis thriller Striking Distance. (Try using crutches the way Willis does in a courtroom scene early in the movie and you’ll end up in traction.)

Writing requires technique as well; where to put the commas, how to develop characters, when to end a chapter, how to write a synopsis. It takes time and practice to write well. And it helps to learn the techniques from people who know what they’re doing. In other words probably not from Bruce Willis movies or your mother, unless you happen to be, say, Jesse Kellerman which would make best-selling author Faye Kellerman your mom.

Maybe the most important lesson I learned was that while writing may be a solitary profession, being a writer doesn’t mean you have to be a solitary person. It was my writing friends that kept me from going totally bonkers. My blog sisters kept me up to date on everything happening in the writing world. Fellow Guppy, Janet, made me laugh with her emails. Susan sent me sugar-free chocolate which tasted like the real stuff. Sharon Wildwind helped me deal with peeling toes.

Hank Ryan’s Face Time landed in my mailbox in the middle of a snow storm when I had RUN OUT OF THINGS TO READ and the library was closed. HelenKay Dimon’s Right Here, Right Now got me through a two hour wait at the fracture clinic, and made the orthopedic technician blush. And Lynn Viehl’s advance copy of Twilight Fall kept me company when I got ordered back to bed. Thanks guys!

One Last thing:

Brenda Novak's 2008 On-line Auction to Benefit Diabetes Research is now underway and will continue all month. www.brendanovak.com There are hundreds of items to bid on, including books and gift baskets from well-known authors. For writers there are reads and critiques offered by some of the best agents and editors in publishing. Poe's Deadly Daughters has a Mystery Lover's tote bag in the gift basket section, Item # 1011096. Along with our books there are other treats including a Metropolis tee shirt and a Poe action figure. And of course, lots of chocolate! All the money raised goes to research to find better treatments and eventually a cure for diabetes. As someone who will benefit from that, a big thanks in advance for your bid.

Take the Superhero Challenge

by Julia Buckley

I saw Iron Man yesterday; if you're considering seeing it, you can read my glowing review here.

The link between the superhero and the great detective is clear. What made Holmes such a memorable fellow was that he enjoyed, with every case, both SUCCESS and SUPERIORITY. We wouldn't want Holmes, or any of our favorite detectives, to have anything less. We WANT them to out-think, out-maneuver, and generally out-shine the experts and the know-it-alls. We want to watch them succeed, because we are able to live vicariously through their success. And in the case of the amateur detectives, we want to see the underdog achieve greatness.

The superhero takes that a step further. A "normal" person is placed into a dangerous situation, but is provided with surprising new skills that allow him or her to face that danger and conquer it. The superhero becomes a metaphor for courage.

I've been contemplating superheroes in general; I was playing online (do you ever do that?) and I ran across this quiz. If you take it, it will tell you what sort of superhero you would most likely be.

I would have the power of SUPER SPEED. This seems appropriate, since I would most certainly enjoy that power. I wouldn't have to ride in any vehicle--I would just rely on my own shell and my super velocity.

What about you? Take the quiz at the bottom and share your results.

Your Superpower Should Be Super Speed

You're quick witted and fast to act. You're mind works at warp speed. From your perspective, everyone else is living in slow motion. You get so much done, people have accused you of not sleeping. Definitely not a couch potato, you feel a bit crazy if you're not busy doing something. Why you would be a good superhero: You're be the first on the scene... and likely to finish the job before anyone else shows up Your biggest problem as a superhero: Being bored by everyone else. Including other superheroes!

What Should Your Superpower Be?

Canada Calling: Ghosts of Mysteries Past

Sharon Wildwind

When I told my husband that today Canada was going calling on Arthur Ellis and Grant Allan, he asked me if I was going to use William Lyon Mackenzie King as an intermediary.

It’s a Canadian joke.

William Lyon Mackenzie King was, initially, the tenth Prime Minister of Canada. King first came to office in 1921. Unlike in the American system, Prime Ministers can return to office at intervals, which King did in 1926, and 1935. He holds the record for being the longest serving Prime Minister, not only in Canada, but in all of the British Commonwealth.

Faced with the incredibly hard times of taking Canada through recovery from The Great War, the Depression, and then World War II, King sought advice and council from the spirit world. His diaries describe his frequent consultation with Leonardo da Vinci, his own dead mother, and several of his deceased Irish terriers. All of the dogs were named Pat. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, depending on how you want to vote, W.L.M. King lead the country through some very dark days.

Anyway, the reason I might need King’s assistance for this blog is that both Arthur Ellis and Grant Allen are dead.

The Arthur Ellis Awards

In a sense Arthur Ellis never even existed. A man named Arthur Bartholomew English was Canada’s hangman from 1915 to 1935. He adopted the pseudonym Arthur Ellis after the famous English executioner, John Ellis, though stories that the two were related are not true. Several of Bartholomew's successors adopted the same pseudonym.

Each year, the Crime Writers of Canada awards the Arthur Ellis Award for the best Canadian crime writing in both fiction and non-fiction. Last year, they added a new category for the best unpublished fiction.

Last week, the finalists were announced for the 2008 AE awards. I commend all of these authors to your reading list. The winners will be announced at the Arthur Ellis dinner on Thursday, June 5, in Toronto at the Downtown Marriott Eaton Centre Hotel. For more information on the dinner, and to see photos of the “Arthur” go to http://crimewriterscanada.com/cwc/index.html.

This dinner is held the night before Bloody Words VIII, the annual Canadian mystery convention, begins. For more information on this year’s convention (June 6 to 8, in Toronto), go to http://www.bloodywords.com/. It’s a great convention and we’d love to have you come north for a visit.
 
2008 Arthur Ellis Awards Shortlists

Best Short Story
Vicki Cameron, “Eight Lords A’Leaping” in Locked Up (Deadlock Press)
Maureen Jennings, “Wreckwood” in Blood on the Holly (Baskerville Books)
D.J. McIntosh, “The Hounds of Winter” in Blood on the Holly (Baskerville Books)
Rick Mofina, “As Long as We Both Shall Live” in Blood on the Holly (Baskerville Books)
Leslie Watts, “Turner” in Kingston Whig-Standard (July 7, 2007)

Best Non-Fiction
Rodrigo Bascunan & Christian Pearce, Enter the Babylon System (Random House Canada)
Robert J. Hoshowsky, The Last to Die: Ronald Turpin, Arthur Lucas, and the End of Capital Punishment in Canada (Hounslow/Dundurn)
Julian Sher, One Child at a Time: The Global Fight to Rescue Children from Online Predators (Random House Canada)
Brian Vallée, The War on Women: Elly Armour, Jane Hurshman, and Criminal Violence in Canadian Homes (Key Porter)
Paul Watson, Where War Lives (McClelland & Stewart)

Best Juvenile
Anita Daher, Racing for Diamonds (Orca)
Anita Daher, Spider’s Song (Puffin Canada/Penguin Canada)
Vicki Grant, I.D. (Orca)
Shane Peacock, Eye of the Crow (Tundra)
Drew Hayden Taylor, The Night Wanderer (Annick Press)

Best Crime Writing in French
Mario Bolduc, Tsiganes (Libre Expression)
Johanne Seymour, Le Cercle des Pénitents (Libre Expression)
Pierre H. Richard, GHB: Grossier, Horrible et Bête (Editions Pratiko)
Diane Vincent, Epidermes (Triptyque)
Norbert Spehner, Scènes de Crimes: Enquêtes sur le Roman Policier Contemporain (Alire)

Best First Novel
Claire Cameron, The Line Painter (HarperCollins)
Sean Chercover, Big City, Bad Blood (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
Liam Durcan, García’s Heart (McClelland & Stewart)
Susan Parisi, Blood of Dreams (Penguin Australia)
Sharon Rowse, The Silk Train Murder (Carroll & Graf)
Marc Strange, Sucker Punch (Castle Street Mysteries/Dundurn)

Best Novel
Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye (Bantam)
Terry Carroll, Snow Candy (Mercury Press)
Maureen Jennings, A Journeyman to Grief (McClelland & Stewart)
Louise Penny, The Cruellest Month (McArthur & Company)
Jon Redfern, Trumpets Sound No More (RendezVous Crime/Napoleon & Company)

Best Unpublished First Crime Novel: the Unhanged Arthur
Patricia Flewwelling, Mummer’s the Word
D.J.  McIntosh, The Witch of Babylon
Amy Tector, The Paris Letters
Kevin Thornton, Condemned

If you can’t get to Toronto in June, how about coming to Wolfe Island, Ontario, in August. On Saturday, August 9, 2008 the Scene of the Crime festival will celebrate the life of Grant Allen, and honor New York Times bestselling author, Canadian Joy Fielding.

Grant Allen, Canada’s First Mystery Writer

Canada's first crime writer, Grant Allen, was born on Wolfe Island, Ontario in 1848. He published forty novels, and, after he immigrated to England was a next-door neighbor and friend to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This is Wolfe Island’s fourth year celebrating the beginning of mystery fiction in Canada. The one-day festival includes a ferry ride (it’s the only way to get to the island), an old-fashioned church supper, and an award celebrating one of Canada’s crime-writing pioneers. The supper is always sold out, so if you want to attend, go to the website listed below and book your tickets now.

The award recipient this year is Joy Fielding. Her works include See Jane Run, Don't Cry Now, The Deep End, The Other Woman, Mad River Road and her latest, Heartstopper , Joy's website is: www.joyfielding.com.

As part of the Wolfe Island festival, there’s also a short story contest open to unpublished Canadian authors. Deadline is May 15, and details of how to enter is on the web site festival website, http://www.sceneofthecrime.ca/

-----
You may have expected Darlene Ryan’s blog this weekend. We made a few scheduling changes for May. Here they are
--Darlene will blog in my usual spot, next Tuesday, May 6.
--Instead of Canada Calling on the 3rd weekend of the month—where it usual is—that weekend PDD will feature an interview with author Elena Santangelo, author of the southern, paranormal Pat Montella mystery series.
-----
Writing quote for the week:

When it comes to politics, one has to do as one [does] at sea with a sailing ship... reach one’s course having regard to prevailing winds. ~William Lyon Mackenzie King, 1874 - 1950

The same might be said about writing and publishing.

Everything I need to know I learned from Captain Kangaroo

By Lonnie Cruse



I confess, I'm one of those pathetic parents who continued to watch Captain Kangaroo daily, even AFTER my youngest child went happily off to school. I couldn't bear the quietness of the house and we didn't have cable back then, so the Captain and Mr. Green Jeans kept me company while I mopped and dusted and tried not to miss the three charming little fellas who'd been whisked away in the big yellow bus for the day. A lot of famous people popped up on the screen to wish the Captain a good morning, making it even more interesting to watch. And I always thought Cosmo Alegretti was kinda cute.



Sometimes the Captain would have an attack of the giggles over something another character did on the show, which, of course, set me to giggling as well. He entertained, but he educated at the same time, and the show ran continuously for over twenty-nine years, so they must have been doing something right.



Along with the rest of the world, I learned about Kinkajous and prehensile tails. Stuff every parent needs to know, right? And I watched and snickered as the characters played tricks on one another, like Mr. Moose using knock-knock jokes to trick the Captain into saying the words that triggered the zillion ping-pong balls dumped on his head. Or Mr. Bunny managing to snag carrots from the unsuspecting Captain.



Way back then, the Captain worried (off-camera, of course) about the amount of time children spent in front of the TV before they were old enough to go off to school. Imagine how much that viewing time has increased by now! There are a lot more quality programs for children these days, but there is also a lot more trash. And I read somewhere that babies can't differentiate between the live humans in the room with them and the humans on television. They see faces, so they assume that person is actually right there, and that what they are watching is reality. Interesting. Possibly scary.



Yesterday my youngest child turned the BIG FOUR-OH, which set me to reminising about children and childhood and my "friend" Captain Kangroo. We sent our son a really nice birthday gift. We also sent black balloons because unfortunately I couldn't figure out a way to dump ping-pong balls on him from this distance. And we called and sang off-key to his voice mail several days in a row. I can't imagine why, but he's threatening to move to a different state (without leaving a forwarding address) and change his name. I asked what his new name would be, but we raised him too well, and he's far to smart to fall for that one.



More than anything, I've learned how fast the time flies, particularly when you're having fun. How quickly children grow up, leaving mom behind to watch their favorite show all by herself, and fight the tears, and wonder where the time went.



Have you hugged your kids today? Better yet, do you have access to a zillion ping-pong balls? Just a thought.

(Moose clipart from kidsturncentral.com)

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